8 Jan. 46
What happened to complaints — even from the
Vatican — as to religious affairs in the overrun territories is
disclosed in Document Number 3266-PS, Exhibit Number USA-573, which I
now offer in evidence. This is a letter from the Cardinal Archbishop of
Breslau to the Papal Secretary of State, dated December 7, 1942. It
bears a Vatican authentication similar to those already read.
This letter lays at the door of the Party Chancellery the
responsibility for determining the policy and exercising final authority
on religious questions in the occupied territories. I quote from Page 1,
the first paragraph of this letter, and remind the Court that the
Defendant Bormann was at that time Chief of the Nazi Party Chancellery
and that the Defendant Kaltenbrunner was the Chief of the
Reichssicherheitshauptamt, the RSHA. I quote from Document 3266-PS,
beginning with the sixth line:
"About some of the gravest injuries
inflicted on the Church, I not only protested on each occasion as the
individual incident occurred, but I also made a most formal protest
about them in globo in a document which, as spokesman of the
Hierarchy, I sent to the supreme ruler of the State and to the
ministries of the Reich on December 10th, 1941. Not a word by way of
answer has 'been sent to us.
"Your Eminence knows very well the greatest difficulty in the
way of opening negotiations comes from the overruling authority which
the 'National Socialist Party Chancery' exercises in relation to the
Chancery of the Reich and to the single Reich ministries. This
'Parteikanzlei' directs the course to be followed by the State,
whereas the ministries and the Chancellery of the Reich are obliged
and compelled to adjust their decrees to these directions. Besides,
there is the fact that the 'supreme office for the security of the
Reich,' called the 'Reichssicherheitshauptamt' enjoys an authority
which precludes all legal action and all appeals. Under it are the
'secret offices for public security,' called 'Geheime Staatspolizei'
(a title shortened usually to Gestapo), of which there is one for each
province. Against the decrees of this central office and of the secret
offices there is no appeal through the courts, and no complaint made
to the ministries has any effect. Not infrequently the councillors of
the ministries suggest that they have not been able to do as they
would wish to because of the opposition of these Party offices. As far
as the executive power is concerned, the organization called the SS,
that is, 'The Schutzstaffeln der Partei,' is in practice supreme ...
"On a number of very grave and fundamental issues we have also
presented our complaints to the supreme leader of the