many were compelled to join. The chairmen of the
unions were taken into custody and were subjected to ill-treatment,
ranging from assault and battery to murder.
In their effort to combat the influence of the Christian
churches, whose doctrines were fundamentally at variance with
National Socialist philosophy and practice, the Nazi Government
proceeded more slowly. The extreme step of banning the practice of
the Christian religion was not taken, but year by year efforts were
made to limit the influence of Christianity on the German people,
since, in the words used by the Defendant Bormann to the Defendant
Rosen-berg in an official letter, "the Christian religion and
National Socialist doctrines are not compatible." In the month
of June 1941 the Defendant Bormann issued a secret decree on the
relation of Christianity and National Socialism. The decree stated
that:
"For the first time in German
history the Führer consciously and completely has the leadership
in his own hand. With the Party, its components and attached units,
the Führer has created for himself and thereby the German Reich
Leadership, an instrument which makes him independent of the Treaty .
. . . More and more the people must be separated from the churches
and their organs, the pastor . . . . Never again must an influence on
leadership of the people be yielded to the churches. This influence
must be broken completely and finally. Only the Reich Government and
by its direction the Party, its components and attached units, have a
right to leadership of the people."
From the earliest days of the NSDAP,
anti-Semitism had occupied a prominent place in National Socialist
thought and propaganda. The Jews, who were considered to have no
right to German citizenship, were held to have been largely
responsible for the troubles with which the Nation was afflicted
following on the war of 1914-18. Furthermore, the antipathy to the
Jews was intensified by the insistence which was laid upon the
superiority of the Germanic race and blood. The second chapter of
Book 1 of Mein Kampf is dedicated to what may be called the
"Master Race" theory, the doctrine of Aryan superiority
over all other races, and the right of Germans in virtue of this
superiority to dominate and use other peoples for their own ends.
With the coming of the Nazis into power in 1933, persecution of the
Jews became official state policy. On 1 April 1933, a boycott of
Jewish enterprises was approved by the Nazi Reich Cabinet, and during
the following years a series of anti-Semitic laws was passed,
restricting the activities of Jews in the civil service, in the legal
profession, in journalism and in the armed forces. In September 1935,
the so-called Nuremberg Laws were passed, the most important effect
of which was to deprive Jews