Mr Southwood (who he?) goes blah...

Some person called "Southwood" has bust a gut because I pointed out that it was the Protestant areas of Germany that voted for Hitler and not the Catholic areas and that it was the Protestant "German Christian" movement and the Protestant Reich Bishop, Ludwig Muller, who supported Hitler and not the Roman Catholic Church.

The German Catholic bishops condemned Nazism time and again.

Mr Southwood can't face this.

The truth upsets him.

Where does Mr Southwood get his information?

You guessed it folks - from books that are written by anti-Catholics and fanatics.

But just to give you a flavour of where Mr Southwood is coming from, here are some of his views:

- the SS were Roman Catholics (yep, really!);

- Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, Heydrich, Hess were all fully paid-up, practising and devout Roman Catholics, apparently (hmm, excuse me, Mr Himmler, I don't think I saw you at mass last Sunday...oh, I see, you were in the garden worshipping Wotan, were you? That famous Christian god....).

- Not one Protestant nation became Nazi (err, right, Germany would be a Catholic nation, then, would it? Tell that to Martin Luther!).

- Do not include Germany because it was "in the hands of the RCs" (oh, right. So anything bad is, by definition, RC, is it? Even when it isn't? Oh, of course, logical, logical...)

- But this was because "Lutheranism in Germany was an apostate body in large part" (oh, well then of course it must have been RC, by definition - see above: everything bad = RC.)

- Austria was a Fascist nation under Dollfuss (oh, right. Err... then why did the Nazis murder him, I wonder...?)

- Cornwell says that Pius XII was "Hitler's Pope" so therefore he must have been (no possibility that Cornwell was wrong, of course. But hang on...Cornwell was brought up RC, wasn't he? So he must be bad and so cannot be believed, right? Oh, I see. RCs who agree with Mr Southwood are OK but not those that don't? Yes, of course, logical, logical...)

- Serbs were massacred in RC Croatia (but let's just forget about Croats murdered by Orthodox Serbs. That would be inconvenient to our thesis that only RCs are the bad guys).

And so on and so on, with more ill-informed bigotry.

Norweigan Nazi collaborationist Minister-President, Vidkun Quisling, was the son of a Protestant pastor

Where, one might suppose, does Vidkun Quisling fit into this picture, the son of a Protestant pastor of the Lutheran evangelical Church of Norway. Quisling, who had been awarded the CBE by the (Protestant) British government became an ardent friend of the Nazis and served as Minister-President of the Norweigan collaborationist government.

Whoops.

And what about Martin Luther himself, that great Protestant anti-semite?

Martin Luther, founder of Protestantism and author of On the Jews and their Lies (1543)

Well, make up your own mind, folks.

Here are extracts from the works of the founder of Protestantism about the Jews in a book called On the Jews and their Lies of 1543:

"[they are a] base, whoring people, that is, no people of God, and their boast of lineage, circumcision, and law must be accounted as filth."

"[they are] full of the devil's faeces ... which they wallow in like swine"

"[the synagogue is an] incorrigible whore and an evil slut".

He argued that their synagogues and schools be set on fire, their prayer books destroyed, rabbis forbidden to preach, homes razed, and property and money confiscated. They should be shown no mercy or kindness, afforded no legal protection, and these "poisonous envenomed worms" should be drafted into forced labor or expelled for all time. He also seems to advocate their murder, writing "[w]e are at fault in not slaying them".

Paul Johnson writes:

"Luther was not content with verbal abuse. Even before he wrote his anti-Semitic pamphlet, he got Jews expelled from Saxony in 1537, and in the 1540s he drove them from many German towns; he tried unsuccessfully to get the elector to expel them from Brandenburg in 1543".
(A History of the Jews p. 242)

Well, Mr Southwood, bang goes your theory about the virtuous Protestants who were not Fascist or anti-semitic, eh?


...

Fathers Alfred Delp and Hermann Wehrle - martyr-priests murdered by the Nazis

Rev Dr Alfred Delp SJ and Rev Dr Hermann Wehrle SJ were both dragged before the Nazi People's Court on trumped up charges and martyred chiefly for being Catholic priests.

Fr Wehrle had merely heard the confession of a German cavalry officer, Major Ludwig Freiherr (Baron) von Leonrod, who was not even part of the 20th July plot to overthrow Hitler. He had declined to get involved.

Baron Leonrod was nevertheless condemned to death for not revealing what he knew about the plot, which was, in any case, very little.

Fr Wehrle knew even less but Baron Leonrod came to him for spiritual counsel and confession. Fr Wehrle gave him him open spiritual counsel and told him that tyrannicide was moral if the tyrant had no legal right to be leader.

Outspoken opposition to the Nazis by individual Jesuits resulted in harsh response from government officials, including imprisonment of priests in concentration camps.

The government takeover of church property, "Klostersturm", resulted in the loss of valuable properties such as that of Stimmen der Zeit, the Jesuit newspaper, and limited the work of the Jesuits in Germany. The Jesuit provincial, Rev Fr Augustin Rösch SJ, Father Delp's superior in Munich, became active in the underground resistance to Hitler.

It was Augustin Rösch who introduced Delp to the Kreisau Circle. As of 1942, Delp met regularly with the clandestine group around Helmuth James, Count von Moltke to develop a model for a new social order after the Third Reich came to an end. Delp's role was to explain Catholic social teaching to the group, and to arrange contacts between Moltke and Catholic leaders, including Archbishop (later Cardinal) Preysing of Berlin.

Rev Dr Augustin Roesch SJ, the Munich Jesuit Provincial
who clandestinely opposed Hitler and the Nazis

This was the difficulty for German Christians. Hitler had been voted in constitutionally. Was his government legitimate? Seemingly, then, yes. But then he had also usurped power as Chancellor but creating himself Fuehrer or "Leader" which was not a constitutionally recognised post. He had done so through the Ermaechtigungsgesetz or "Enabling" or "Empowering" Acts which purported to be constitutional but, in reality, could hardly be called so.

True, Chancellor Bruening (a Catholic) had persuaded President von Hindenburg to sign over to him the emergency powers under Article 34 of the Weimar Constitution but that was all legal and only temporary. This seemed different. But, on the other hand, the Weimar Constitution had only come in, after World War I, and in duress. Was it the last word on the subject?

All these debates, the 20th July plotters repeatedly considered, anxious to ensure that they behaved with impeccably correct morals and justice.

It is easy for us to sit back in our armchairs and say "what was the problem?". But we were not there and called upon to risk our lives. The issue is still live. As Catholics we are taught to obey the legitimately constituted government and not to seek to overthrow it unlawfully just because we do not like it. We do not have the right to impose upon others our own dislike of the government.

These distinctions were lost on a brutish thug like Roland Freisler, the ex-Communist then fanatical Nazi, President of the Nazi People's Court.

Newly released footage below shows the eloquent defence of Fr Hermann Wehrle and others and their ill treatment at the hands of the odious Freisler.

Rev Dr Hermann Josef Wehrle SJ
curate at Holy Blood Church, Munich,
martyred for the Faith in 1944

Freisler acts as both prosecutor and judge in a blatant breach of elementary natural justice and then, with all the venom he can muster, he screeches and screams at the victims earning himself the clandestine sobriquet "raving Roland".

He ensured that his victims, the false accused, were further humiliated by having them dressed in old ragged clothes, often without any belt to keep their trousers up, so that they appeared before this Nazi kangaroo court looking shabby, scruffy and humiliated, particularly those who had been generals or high officials.

Major Ludwig Freiherr (Baron) von Leonrod
German cavalry officer and devout Catholic aristocrat
martyred for the Faith in 1944

In these clips he finds Baron von Leonrod and Fr Wehrle, guilty of knowing of the 20 July 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler, and of following Catholic theology in considering themselves not bound to reveal their knowledge (clearly because of Hitler's tyranny).

He then condemns them to death, to be hanged by wire, suspended from meat hooks, in the cells of Ploetzensee prison as "enemies of the Reich" but, in reality and in the eyes of God, as deeply heroic Christian martyrs.

We salute their courage in standing firm before the odious treachery, heathen villainy and pagan devilishness of the National Socialist German Worker's Party and its atrocious, diabolical leadership who, with their symbol of a cross with arms broken, the satanic swastika, declared war on the old, royal, noble and Catholic Germany of men like Colonel Count Claus von Stauffenberg, Baron Ludwig von Leonrod and Fathers Delp and Wehrle.

See, in these clips, how these Catholic heroes had to explain their innermost thoughts to the brutal, insensitive Freisler who was wholly incapable of understanding the careful moral reasoning of men like Fr Wehrle.

He screams at them and then declares, in solemn tones: "Sie werden mit dem Tode bestraft", "they shall be punished with death!".

Freisler, who had been a Communist in his youth, had been sent to the Soviet Union to learn how they conducted their show trials of dissidents. He learned his evil trade well at the hands of the equally brutal Soviet prosecutors and judges.

Freisler himself was killed in a bombing raid not long after the 20 July plot trials when the court building was struck by a direct hit. He was found with a file in his hands about to persecute yet another victim of the "People's Court".

His victims are now commemorated in modern Germany as national heroes.

Yet there are still bigots like the "Reverend" Ray Dubuque and others who pretend that the Nazi leaders were really a "Catholic men's movement like the Knights of Columbus".

May we draw strength from the courageous stand against evil of these noble Catholic men. Consider what a singular honour it will be to spend eternity in heaven with men such as these. Are we worthy of the company of these gentle giants?

God give us the strength to learn from them and live as they did!

Christian martyrs of the old, once Catholic, Germany,
pray for us!

Maiorem hac dilectionem nemo habet ut animam suam quis ponat pro amicis suis.

Greater love than this no man hath, that he lay down his life for his friends.

John 15:13

...

Would the "Reverend" Ray rather slander Pius XII than save Jewish lives?

This is the face of a very ill-informed person calling himself the "Reverend" Ray Dubuque whose aim in life seems to be to slander the Catholic Church and particularly the late and saintly Pope Pius XII.

He asks what it was that Pope Pius XII saved the Jews from.

He then claims that numerous Nazi and extremist leaders in Europe were Roman Catholics, including Hitler himself.

He likens the Nazi inner circle to a Catholic men’s movement like the Knights of Columbus.

Yes, really! I am not making this up.

Let me spell it out for the "Reverend": according to Israeli diplomat and Jewish Rabbi, Dr Pinchas a Lapide, Pope Pius XII saved 860,000 Jews from the Nazi Death camps.

Let me repeat: 860,000 Jewish lives saved.

From a horrible death in the Nazi death camps.

Is that clear enough, now?

And Lapide says that this Pope did far and away more than all other agencies put together during World War II to save Jews.

That’s the Roman Catholic Pope saving all those Jewish lives – according to a Jewish Rabbi and Diplomat.

The Roman Catholic called Pope Pius XII.

Pope Pius XII - saviour of 860,000 Jews according to Jewish Diplomat and historian, Pinchas a Lapide.

I repeat.

Roman Catholic.

Pope.

Pius XII.

Saved 860,000 Jews from death.

Got that now, sir?

And I suspect that is rather more Jewish lives saved than ever the “Reverend” Mr Ray Dubuque saved!

And for this monumental act of humanity, the "Reverend" slanders this pope in the most vile, malignant and bigoted way imaginable by pretending he was a Nazi sympathiser and collaborator.

Yes, really! That is the extent of the Christian "charity" of this "Reverend" gentleman!

I doubt that the mendacious Mr Dubuque has ever even come close to being forced to live under a totalitarian regime. I suspect that he is pontificating, condemning and slandering the Pope from the complacent comfort of his armchair.

He clearly has no idea what an apostate is. It means one who has fallen away from the faith in which he was raised or chose.

Every one of the Nazis who was raised Catholic was an apostate and, in order to rise in the Nazi Party, openly repudiated their Catholicism in favour of the new "German" religion of the racist, Nazi state.

In short, they broke with the Roman Catholic Church utterly.

The 16th century Protestants also broke with the Roman Catholic Church but by the twisted illogicality of the “Reverend” he would also have to describe as “Roman Catholics” the following:

Martin Luther
John Calvin
John Wycliffe
Peter Waldo
Jan Hus
Huldrych Zwingli
Heinrich Bullinger
John Knox
Philipp Melancthon
Michael Servetus
Balthasar Hubmaier
King Henry VIII of England
Queen Elizabeth I of England

and everyone of the founders of Protestantism since they were all born, baptised and brought up Roman Catholics! Indeed, he would have to call half of them Roman Catholic clergy because that is what men like Luther, Calvin, Melancthon, Zwingli and Knox originally were!

Yes, folks! They were all Roman Catholic clerics. The very founders of the religion the “Reverend” Mr Dubuque claims to follow were nearly all Roman Catholic clergy.

Martin Luther in the garb of a Roman Catholic priest of the 16th Century. He repudiated the Catholic Church and started the Protestant Revolt. In later life, he published violently anti-Semitic works which, later still, were quoted, approvingly, by the Nazis. Most Protestants, however, now repudiate Luther's anti-Semitism.

But, by his own reasoning (if one can call it that), the "Reverend" would also have to describe the following Nazis as Protestants since that was the faith in which they were brought up:

Gunter d'Alquen – Chief Editor of the SS official newspaper, Das Schwarze Korps ("The Black Corps"), and commander of the SS-Standarte Kurt Eggers.

Ludolf von Alvensleben – SS-Gruppenfuehrer and Major-General of police in Crimea, commander of the Selbstschutz (self-defence) of the Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia and responsible for the mass murder of thousands of Roman Catholic Poles and Jews.

Max Amann – SS-Obergruppenfuehrer and Head of Nazi publishing house Eher-Verlag and later convicted as one of the leading guilty men.

Heinz Auerswald – Nazi Commissioner for the Jewish residential district in Warsaw from April 1941 to November 1942.

Hans Aumeier - Deputy Commandant at Auschwitz and mass-murderer who was later hanged.

Artur Axmann - Chief of the Social Office of the Reich Youth Leadership. Responsible for organization and activities of the Hitler Youth.

Herbert Backe - Minister of Food (appointed 1942) and Minister of Agriculture (appointed 1943) and responsible for the “Hunger Plan” to starve tens of millions of Slavs in order to ensure steady supplies to the German people and troops. He later hanged himself in his prison cell.

Richard Baer - Commander of the Auschwitz I concentration camp from May 1944 to February 1945.

Alfred Baeumler - Philosopher who interpreted the works of Friedrich Nietzsche in order to legitimize Nazism.

Gottlob Berger - Chief of Staff for military SS and head of the SS's main leadership office and responsible for the forced death marches of POWs.

Werner Best - Civilian administrator of Nazi occupied France and Denmark.

Hans Biebow - Chief of Administration of the Łódź Ghetto.

Paul Blobel - SS commander primarily responsible for the Babi Yar massacre at Kiev.

Werner von Blomberg - Generalfeldmarshall of the German army between 1936 and 1938 and one of Hitler’s most devoted followers.

Hans-Friedrich Blunck - Propagandist and head of the Reich Literature Chamber between 1933 and 1935.

Ernst Wilhelm Bohle - leader of the Foreign Organization of the German Nazi Party from 1933 until 1945.

Martin Bormann - Head of the Party Chancellery (Parteikanzlei) and private secretary to Adolf Hitler.

Viktor Brack - Organiser of the Euthanasia Programme, Operation T4 and one of the men responsible for the gassing of Jews in the extermination camps.

Otto Bradfisch - Commander of the Security Police in Łódź and Potsdam.

Karl Brandt - Personal physician of Adolf Hitler in August 1944 and head of the administration of the Nazi T-4 euthanasia program from 1939. Convicted at Nuremberg and hanged as one of the many Nazi doctors convicted in the “Doctors’ trial”.

Walther von Brauchitsch - Commander of the German Army during the invasion of the Soviet Union.

Walter Buch - Jurist and supreme magistrate of the Nazi party. He committed suicide after arrest.

Werner Catel - Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at the University of Leipzig, considered an expert on the programme of euthanasia for children and participated in the T-4 Program which was later exported to the East for the murder of Jews.

Carl Clauberg - Doctor who conducted medical experiments on human beings in Nazi concentration camps during World War II.

Kurt Daluege - Responsible for the personal protection of Hitler and other party leaders. Also commanded the Ordnungspolizei throughout World War II and served as the Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia following the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich. Hanged for war crimes.

Richard Walther Darré - Minister of Food and Agriculture from 1933 to 1942 and Nazi ideologist.

Otto Dietrich - Press Chief of the Third Reich. Later convicted of crimes against humanity.

Irmfried Eberl - Commandant of Treblinka, July to September 1942. Physician and mass-murderer who hanged himself after arrest.

Dietrich Eckart - Important early member of the National-Socialist German Workers' Party and a participant of the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch. Introduced Rosenberg to Hitler.

Theodor Eicke - Leading figure in the establishment of concentration camps.

Richard Euringer - Writer who selected 18,000 "unsuitable" books which did not conform to Nazi ideology and were publicly burned.

Roland Freisler - Becoming a fanatical Communist, he later did a "flip" and joined the Nazi Party becoming State Secretary of Adolf Hitler's Reich Ministry of Justice and President of the Volksgerichtshof where he brutally presided over the show trials of anti-Nazis, ranting and tormenting them before ordering them to be brutally executed.

Wilhelm Frick - Minister without Portfolio until August 1943, later appointed to the ceremonial post of Protector of Bohemia and Moravia. He formulated the Enabling Act, the Nuremberg Laws and controlled numerous concentration camps. He was hanged in 1946.

Hans Fritzsche - Senior official at the Ministry for Propaganda.

Walther Funk - Minister for Economic Affairs from 1937 to 1945. Tried at Nuremberg.

Karl Gebhardt - Personal physician of Heinrich Himmler and one of the main perpetrators of surgical experiments performed on inmates of the concentration camps at Ravensbrück and Auschwitz. Convicted at the Nuremberg "Doctors' trial" and hanged.

Achim Gercke - Expert of racial matters at the Ministry of the Interior. Devised the system of "racial prophylaxis" forbidding the intermarriage between Jews and Aryans.

Hermann Göring - Second in Command of the Third Reich and commander of the Luftwaffe. Convicted at Nuremberg but committed suicide.

Arthur Greiser - Chief of Civil Administration and Gauleiter in the military district of Greater Poland. A brutal and ardent Nazi, racist and "ethnic cleanser", he was convicted after the war and hanged.

Walter Groß - Head of the Racial Policy office ardent racist and contributor to the "Final Solution" i.e. the extermination of European Jewry.

Kurt Gruber - First chairman of the Hitler Youth (1926-1931) and Nazi Gauleiter.

Karl Hanke - Governor and Gauleiter of Lower Silesia from 1940 to 1945.

Fritz Hartjenstein - Concentration camp commandant at Birkenau, Natzweiler and Flossenbürg. Sentenced to death after the war.

Paul Hausser - Prominent leader of the Waffen-SS and lieutenant-general.

August Heißmeyer - SS-Gruppenfuehrer and in charge of numerous concentration camps.

Rudolf Hess - Hitler's deputy and an ardent Nazi.

Werner Heyde - Psychiatrist and one of the main organizers of the T-4 Euthanasia Program that was the model used later for the extermination of European Jews. Committed suicide before the start of his trial in 1964.

August Hirt - Chairman at the Reich University in Strasbourg during World War II and had victims gassed so that he could experiment on them.

Karl Jäger - SD-Einsatzkommando leader and SS member whose "Jäger Report" detailing his responsibility for organising the mass murder of the Jews in Lithuania between July and December 1941 became a by-word for Nazi atrocity.

Friedrich Jeckeln - Leader of one of the largest collection of Einsatzgruppen and personally responsible for ordering the deaths of over 100,000 Jews, Slavs, Roma, and other "undesirables".

Alfred Jodl - Chief of the Operations Staff of the Armed Forces High Command (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, or OKW) during World War II, acting as deputy to Wilhelm Keitel. Convicted at Nuremberg and hanged.

Hans Jüttner - Head of the SS Main Leadership Office and also an SS-Obergruppenführer.

Emil Kaschub - Doctor who conducted experiments on Nazi concentration camp prisoners.

Karl Kaufmann - Founding member of the Nazi party and Gauleiter of Hamburg.

Wilhelm Keitel - Field marshal (Generalfeldmarschall) and senior military leader during World War II. Convicted at Nuremberg and hanged.

Hanns Kerrl - Reichsminister of Church Affairs for the Third Reich who tried to marry the ideas of Protestant Christianity and Nazism.

Helmut Knochen - Senior commander of the Sicherheitspolizei (Security Police) in Paris during the Nazi occupation of France. Sentenced to death after the war.

Erich Koch - Gauleiter of the NSDAP in East Prussia from 1928 until 1945, and Reichskomissar in Ukraine from 1941 until 1944.

Ilse Koch - Wife of Karl Otto Koch and an overseer at Buchenwald. Infamous for her sadistic cruelty, for using the skin from murdered prisoners as souvenirs and keeping shrunken heads on her dinner table. She was dubbed "the Witch of Buchenwald". Committed suicide in prison.

Karl Otto Koch - Commandant of the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald (from 1937 to 1941), and later at Lublin (Majdanek camp). Married to Ilse Koch.

Bernhard Krüger - Leader of the VI F 4a Unit in the Reichssicherheitshauptamt responsible for, among other things, falsifying passports and documents.

Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach - Ran the Friedrich Krupp AG heavy industry conglomerate from 1909 until 1941 and was financier of the Nazi party.

Herbert Lange - SS officer and commandant of Chełmno extermination camp, where he was implicated in thousands of gassings. Also led the execution of 1,558 mental patients at the Soldau concentration camp.

Robert Ley - Head of the German Labour Front from 1933 to 1945. Sentenced to death but committed suicide.

Arthur Liebehenschel - Commandant of Auschwitz and Majdanek death camps during World War II.

Wilhelm Loeper - Gauleiter in the Gau of Magdeburg-Anhalt.

Hinrich Lohse - Gauleiter for Schleswig-Holstein and Reich Commissar for the Ostland.

Werner Lorenz - Waffen-SS general and a leader of the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle, an organization charged with settling ethnic Germans in the Reich from other parts of Europe.

Hanns Ludin - SA-Obergruppenfuehrer, diplomat and ambassador to Slovakia implicated in slave-labour deportations. Executed after the war.

Martin Luther - advisor to Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, and participant in the infamous Wannsee Conference on the "Final Solution" i.e. extermination of Jews.

Viktor Lutze - SA officer and important participant in the "Night of the Long Knives".

Alfred Meyer - Deputy Reichsminister in the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories.

Kurt Meyer - Waffen-SS officer noted for his command of various tank and artillery divisions but convicted of war crimes in shooting prisoners.

Wilhelm Mohnke - Founder member of the SS-Staff Guard and one of Hitler's last remaining SS-generals.

Hermann Muhs - SS-Oberfuehrer and Minister responsible for church and religious affairs.

Konstantin Freiherr von Neurath - Foreign Minister of Germany (1932-1938) and Reichsprotektor (Governor) of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (1939-1941). Convicted at Nuremberg.

Otto Ohlendorf - SS-Gruppenführer and head of the interior division of the SD. Sentenced to death for crimes against humanity and hanged.

Joachim Peiper - Senior Waffen-SS officer and personal adjutant to Heinrich Himmler from April 1938 to August 1941. Convicted in the Malmedy massacre trial.

Paul Pleiger - State adviser and Reich Commissioner for the Economy of the East which included the use of forced slave labour.

Oswald Pohl - Organizer and administrator of concentration camps.

Erich Priebke - Participant in the Ardeatine massacre in Rome on 24 March 1944.

Hans-Adolf Prützmann - Superior SS and Police Leader, and an SS-Obergruppenführer, who participated in the Holocaust in the Baltic States.

Joachim von Ribbentrop - Foreign Minister of Germany from 1938-1945. Convicted at Nuremberg and hanged.

Leni Riefenstahl - Film director, dancer and actress and documentary propagandist for the Nazi Party and favourite of Hitler.

Alfred Rosenberg - chief ideologist of the Nazi Party and a committed racist advocate of mass-murder. Convicted at Nuremberg and hanged.

Erwin Rösener - SS-Obergruppenführer, Higher SS and Police Leader, Commander SS Upper Division Alpenland (1941-1945) convicted at Nuremberg for ordering the execution of prisoners of war.

Ernst Rudin - pyschiatrist, social Darwinist, racist and one of the fathers of the Nazi race doctrines.

Baldur von Schirach - Nazi youth leader later convicted of being a war criminal. Schirach was the head of the Hitler-Jugend (HJ, Hitler Youth) and Gauleiter and Reichsstatthalter ("Reich Governor") of Vienna.

Franz Schlegelberger - State Secretary in the German Reich Ministry of Justice (RMJ) and served a while as Justice Minister during the Third Reich. He was the highest-ranking defendant at the Nuremberg Judges' Trial.

Albert Speer - architect, author and high-ranking Nazi German government official, sometimes called "the first architect of the Third Reich".

Jürgen Stroop - SS and police general who oversaw the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto during the Nazi occupation of Poland in World War II. After the war, he was convicted of war crimes and hanged.

Josef Terboven - Nazi leader, best known as the Reichskommissar (commissioner) during the German military occupation of Norway.

Fritz Todt - engineer and senior Nazi figure, the founder of Organisation Todt for forced labour.

Horst Wessel - posthumous hero of the Nazi movement following his violent death in 1930. He was the author of the lyrics to the song "Die Fahne hoch" ("The Flag on High"), usually known as Horst-Wessel-Lied ("the Horst Wessel Song"), which became the Nazi Party anthem, and which was also part of Germany's national anthem from 1933 to 1945.

Christian Wirth - senior SS officer during the program to exterminate the Jewish people of occupied Poland during the Second World War, known as Aktion Reinhard. He was a top aide of Odilo Globocnik, the overall director of Operation Reinhard, and his responsibility was scaling up the T-4 Euthanasia Program, in which disabled people were murdered by gassing or lethal injection, to the development of extermination camps for mass murder.

Karl Wolff - high-ranking member of the Nazi SS. He held the rank of SS-Obergruppenführer and General of the Waffen-SS and was convicted of deporting 300,000 Jews to Treblinka death camp.

Adolf Ziegler - tasked by the Nazi party to oversee the purging of Degenerate art by artists such as Franz Marc and Emil Nolde. He was the favoured painter of Hitler.


...and that is just a few of them!

Famously, it was a Protestant who agreed to be appointed by Hitler the Reich Bishop of the Nazi Reich, namely Ludwig Muller. You can see a picture of him in the previous post giving the Nazi salute.

The Roman Catholic Church, on the other hand, always opposed Hitler and the Nazis and some were brave enough openly to preach against him, like Bishop Count Clemens August von Galen, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Munster.

Count Clemens August von Galen, Bishop of Munster. He was called "the Lion of Munster" because of his outspoken criticism of the Nazi euthanasia policy. He knew that the Nazis would find it hard to arrest someone from so famous a family. Even so, his life was in constant danger.

Other priests were not so lucky. Many hundreds were arrested and sent to Dachau or executed like the Jesuits of Munich such as Fr Alfred Delp SJ.

Rev Alfred Delp SJ before the Nazi People's Court presided over by Protestant-born but Communist-turned-Nazi, Dr Roland Freisler, who sentenced Delp and other Catholic priests to a brutal death for daring to criticise Nazi brutality and murder of Jews.

The lesson that the unfortunate "Reverend" needs to learn is that it is in the interest of society that men remain true to historic Christianity and not abandon it for odious and murderous heathen creeds like Nazism.

The full absurdity of the views of the "Reverend" are revealed when one realises that he was, himself, raised a Roman Catholic so that, by his own classification, he is still one!

But is the "Reverend" listening?

Is he even thinking?

Over to you "Reverend"!

Those wanting to know more about the "Reverend" might care to try this:

http://www.patrioticthunder.com/whackjoboftheweek22.html

...

Defiance: it's powerful...

This is a still from the new film Defiance recently out and starring Daniel Craig as a Jewish partisan leader in Nazi-occupied Belarus.

The Bielski family were farmers in Nowogrodek, Belarus. After Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Nowogrodek became a Jewish ghetto, as the Nazis took over.

The three Bielski brothers, Tuvia, Alexander Zisel "Zus", and Asael, managed to flee to the nearby forest after their parents and other family members were killed in the ghetto in December 1941. Together with 13 neighbours from the ghetto, they formed the nucleus of a an independent fighting force.

The group's commander was the older brother, Tuvia Bielski (1906–1987), a Polish Army veteran. He recruited over a thousand to join the group in the Naliboki Forest.

They lived in underground dugouts but built a kitchen, a mill, a bakery, a bathhouse, a medical clinic for sick and wounded and a quarantine hut for those who suffered from infectious diseases such as typhus. Herds of cows supplied milk. They ran small factories and even made weapons. The camp's many children went to dugout school. The camp even had its own jail and a court of law.

Religion even flourished in the camp and many of the group were Hasids or fully Orthodox Jews. These authentic Jews believe the Old Testament fully. They are identifiable today by their dress - ringlets, beards, long coats, shawls, broad-brimmed hats and so on.

Today many of them are even anti-Zionist because they believe that there can be no State of Israel until the Moshiach (the Messiah) comes.

Catholics believe the same, the only difference being that we believe the Moshiach ("the anointed") has already come and His name is Y'shua (Jesus or Joshua) meaning "Saviour" and the current "Kingdom of Israel" is the Church. Catholics are the spiritual Jews.

Jews call this "replacement theology" and disparage it but that is only to be expected and - from their point of view - quite right and proper. If they did not think so then they would cease being Jews and become Catholics. So we ought not be unduly offended by the disparagement.

The past record of the Holy See should be our guide. The popes of the past - even at periods of persecution of Jews - have always taken the Jews under their special protection. No historian dare gainsay this truth because he or she will never find any evidence to the contrary, however much they may find evidence against bad Christian kings. The Jews was never expelled from the City of Rome - ever.

No-one - Catholic or non-Catholic - can have anything but the greatest anger and indignation at the disgraceful attempt to destroy defenceless men, women and children as this film again reminds happened even in once-civilised Europe. The twin evils of Nazism and Stalinism combined to make of the 20th century the bloodiest, dirtiest and most destructive of centruies in the history of mankind. How could man behave so unless he were first possessed of a legion of devils? What an appalling legacy it has left us!

The activities of the Bielski partisans were aimed at the Nazis and collaborators in the area. They also undertook sabotage. The Nazis sent out whole formations to track them down but they fled safely to a more remote part of the forest, still offering protection to the non-combatants among their band.

The real Bielski partisans

Several attempts by Soviet partisan commanders to absorb Bielski fighters into their units were resisted, so that the Jewish partisan group retained its integrity and remained under Tuvia Bielski's command. This allowed him to continue to protect Jewish lives whilst fighting.

In the summer of 1944, when the Soviet counter-offensive began in Belarus and the Germans withdrew, the Bielski partisans, numbering 1,230 men, women and children, emerged from the forest and marched into Nowogrodek.

Asael Bielski served in the Soviet Red Army but was killed at Königsberg in 1945.

Tuvia Bielski returned to Poland, then emigrated to Palestine in 1945 but he and his brother eventually settled in the United States.

Some of the acts of vengeance they undertook, and shown in the film are plainly immoral but they come to regret them and the effect of the whole is one of the triumph of courage and dignity over evil.

It is a powerful story - as is the film - of defiance, courage, horrifying, bloody murders and eventual escape from a most hellish episode in human history.

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