18 Dec. 45
Reich Minister of the Interior, in which the Party
Chancellery prominently participated, to the effect that the church
institutions should be paid amounts corresponding to current mortgage
charges on the premises without realizing any profit. The writer further
suggests that such payments should never be made directly to the
ecclesiastical institutions but rather should be made to the creditors
of the institutions.
I now quote from the fourth sentence on Page 3 of that document, the
English translation, whereby such an arrangement would be in line with "the
basic idea of the settlement originally worked out between the Party
Chancellery and the Reich Minister of the Interior."
I understand the Reich Minister of Interior for 1933-1944 was the
Defendant Frick.
The Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party participated in the suppression
of religious publications and interfered with free religious education.
In a letter dated 27 September 1940 Reichsleiter and Deputy of the Führer
Bormann transmitted to the Defendant Rosenberg a photostatic copy of a
letter from Gauleiter Florian dated 23 September 1940, which expresses
the Gauleiter's intense disapproval, on Nazi ideological grounds, of a
religious pamphlet entitled, The Spirit and Soul of the Soldier,
written by a Major General Von Rabenau.
I now offer in evidence Document 064-PS, Exhibit Number USA-359. It is
an original letter signed by Rosenberg attaching the copy of that
matter. It contains Defendant Bormann's letter to Rosenberg, dated 27
September 1940, transmitting the Gauleiter's letter of 23 September 1940
to the Defendant Hess, in which the Gauleiter urges that the religious
writings of General Von Rabenau be suppressed. In his letter to the
Defendant Hess, Gauleiter Florian discusses a conversation he had with
General Von Rabenau at the close of a lecture delivered by the General
to a group of younger Army officers at Aachen. This conversation
illumines the hostile attitude of the Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party
towards the Christian Churches. I quote from the second sentence of the
second paragraph of the second page of the Gauleiter's letter to the
Defendant Hess, which appears on Page 2 of the English translation —
the second paragraph — and I quote:
"After he had affirmed the necessity
of the churches, Rabenau said, with emphasized self-assurance,
something like the following:
"'Dear Gauleiter, the Party is making mistake after mistake in
the treatment of the churches. Obtain for me the necessary powers from
the Führer and I guarantee that I shall