The Christian Spirit

In the Rhineland the U.S. occupation army chose a governor for the largest political entity yet carved out of conquered Germany.

The governor: 70-year-old Dr. Hans Fuchs, a Catholic who had been a pre-Nazi Oberpraedsident of the Rhine Province. His realm: an area of 14,600 square miles with a peacetime, predominantly Catholic population of 8,000,000.

Under the Nazis he had lived in unpolitical retirement ("I spoke critically of the Nazis in private but I did not speak publicly"). Of his new job Dr. Fuchs said: "My greatest aim is to inculcate a new Christian spirit in our youth, a Christian spirit in which both Catholic and Protestant churches must collaborate. . . ."

. . .

Said Britain's Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Geoffrey Francis Fisher, in a diocesan letter which the London Times reprinted last week: ". . . The most unendurable revelation of what has been done in concentration camps has not only shocked us, but shows us how perverted her people are. For the people as a whole cannot be acquitted of knowledge and of acquiescence. But we must not allow ourselves to think that there are no good Germans. Let us always remember that thousands of Germans suffered and died in those camps in their resistance to the Nazi regime. . . . And it is to the Confessional Church and the Roman Catholic Church of Germany that we must look with sympathy and hope."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.