17 Dec. 45
decree that in the future Party members who enter the
clergy or who turn to the study of theology have to leave the Party."
In this directive Bormann also refers to an earlier decree, dated 9
February 1939, in which he had ruled that the admission of members of
the clergy into the Party was to be avoided. In this decree, also,
Bormann refers with approval to a regulation of the Reich Treasurer of
the Party, dated 10 May 1939, providing that "clergymen as well as
other fellow Germans who are also closely connected with the Church
cannot be admitted into the Party."
I now offer in evidence Document 3268-PS, Exhibit Number USA-356, which
contains excerpts from the Allocution of His Holiness Pope Pius XII to
the Sacred College, June 2d, 1945. In this address His Holiness, after
declaring that he had acquired an appreciation of the great qualities of
the German people in the course of 12 years of residence in their midst,
expressed the hope that Germany could "rise to new dignity and a
new life once it has laid the satanic specter raised by National
Socialism and the guilty have expiated the crimes they have committed."
After referring to repeated violations by the German Government of the
Concordat concluded in 1933, His Holiness declared; and I quote from the
last paragraph of Page 1 of the English translation of Document 3268-PS:
"The struggle against the Church did,
in fact, become ever more bitter; there was the dissolution of
Catholic organizations; the gradual suppression of the flourishing
Catholic schools, both public and private; the enforced weaning of
youth from family and Church; the pressure brought to bear on the
conscience of citizens, and especially of civil servants; the
systematic defamation, by means of a clever, closely- organized
propaganda, of the Church, the clergy, the faithful, the Church's
institutions, teachings, and history; the closing, dissolution,
confiscation of religious houses and other ecclesiastical
institutions; the complete suppression of the Catholic press and
publishing houses ...
"In the meantime the Holy See itself multiplied its
representations and protests to governing authorities in Germany,
reminding them, in clear and energetic language, of their duty to
respect and fulfill the obligations of the natural law itself that
were confirmed by the Concordat. In these critical years, joining the
alert vigilance of a pastor to the long-suffering patience of a
father, our great predecessor, Pius XI, fulfilled his mission as
Supreme Pontiff with intrepid courage.
"But when, after he had tried all means of persuasion in vain,
he saw himself clearly faced with deliberate violations of a solemn
pact, with a religious persecution masked or open but