FIFTY-EIGHT: HITLER AND WORLD WAR II
Let's back up to the end of World War I. The Hapsburg Dynasty has crumbled. Rome is worried about its future prospects. Protestant areas of Czechoslovakia, Orthodox portions of Yugoslavia, Orthodox Russia, all are European threats to the Roman block of security. Can the Hapsburgs revive?
In July of 1917, the Great War ended, Austria Hungary sees nothing but negative in its future, and tries for a separate peace with the Allies. Emperor Charles sends a letter of "filial obedience" to Pope Benedict XV, in which he leaves to "his august authority" the decision of the "sacrifices which the Austria-Hungary Empire had to make to obtain a quick peace. "
It doesn't work, but we see here again the involvement of the Papacy in this war.
Charles is defeated but refuses to abdicate, and takes refuge in Switzerland. He is supported by Hungarians who begin the formation of an army. He invades Hungary and almost wins it back. But no, not this time. He is captured, dethroned, and deported to the island of Madeira.
Before he left, Charles had planned a confederation of Catholic States, over which he would reign: In Yugoslavia, Croatia; in Czechoslovakia, Slovakia ; in Germany, Bavaria and Alsace-Lorraine; and all of Austria and Hungary. Some day, he dreams, his son Otto will reign. Otto is in fact trained for the job.
In June of 1936, he is quoted as saying, " The time for taking a decisive action has come," and "I am ready to enter the country at any time." (Manhattan, op. cit.) Supported by Mussolini and the reigning Pope, Pius XI, he is as good as "in" when another rising star sets him aside temporarily. Rome decides that Hitler may serve its purposes just as well...
Adolf Hitler is born April 20, 1889, in Catholic Austria. He moves to a Catholic part of Germany at age three. At ten, he "temporarily thought of becoming a monk, but the mood passed quickly." (Adolf Hitler, p.61, by Bradley Smith)
His father and mother are essentially cousins and need permission from the Pope to marry. Mother in particular is a faithful Catholic, completely devoted to the faith and teachings of Rome. As to Adolf,
"he was skeptical about the church from an early date and persistently annoyed his religious instructor in the Realschule. His father had long been suspicious of the church." (Smith, op. cit., p.85)
None of these negatives keep him from being confirmed at the age of fifteen. The process had no effect on him, but there can be no question as to the intent of his mother to make young Adolf into a good Catholic.
The closest thing to religious enthusiasm Hitler experiences is his devotion to (anti-Semitic) Richard Wagner's music. Parsifal, the Wagnerian opera which tells of a mythical Christian youth who through many struggles does the noble deed he has set out to do, is Hitler's favorite. He even says, "Out of Parsifal I make a religion."
One night, after he has seen another such Wagnerian epic, based on the life of a Roman commoner who became a dictator, and sought to restore the ancient greatness of Rome, Hitler
"burst into rapturous eloquence. His eyes were feverish with excitement. He spoke in a transported way of a future day when he would be entrusted with a 'special mission' " (Hitler,the Path to Power, Charles Flood, p.8)
After the difficulties and rejections through which all world figures pass, Hitler begins his rise to power. During these years he has read much about anti-Semitism. I don't need to tell my readers the prime source of anti-Jewish feeling for a young Catholic boy of that day...
Racism is not merely tolerated in the pre-Hitler era; by many it is promoted as something godly. When Houston Stewart Chamberlain writes The Foundations of the 19th Century, a purely racist view of history, Kaiser Wilhelm II tells him, "It was God who sent your book to the German people."
And rising Adolf Hitler, who sees in Chamberlain a hero of heroes since Chamberlain has married the daughter of his great god Wagner, is given the greatest of acceptances when Chamberlain passes on the compliment:
"My belief in the Germans has always been strong...although it had ebbed...you have changed the state of my soul. That Germany can give birth to a Hitler in a time of direst need is proof of her vitality. May God protect you."
So God is involved in this Hitler thing? The Roman Church seems to have thought so. Though for a short time she opposes Naziism,
"after Hitler came to power, all this was changed. The bishops revised their attitude. A concordat was signed with the Holy See." (July 3, 1933)
Are we talking about the same Hitler? How can the Lord and His Church be in any way implicated in the Nazi movement? Hitler gives a partial answer in his famous Mein Kampf, p. 118:
"By warding off the Jews, I am fighting for the Lord's work."
Spiritual sentiments from one like Hitler seem unimaginable, but in fact this tyrant did believe he was doing God a service. The world's greatest Jew hater says:
"We must see to it that God's will is not simply talked about, but that God's will is also fulfilled."
My feelings exactly! Sounds very Christian to me. Oh Church, are you listening? Out of the mouth of the great deceiver of Germany comes Gospel truth! Beware!
Rome agreed with the Hitler philosophies, too. And Rome is eloquently silent during much of the massacre we have labeled the Holocaust (burnt offering).
DeRosa, op.cit., pp 196 ff:
"When Mussolini began putting pressure on the Jewish community, Pius initiated his habit of saying nothing. On 4 June 1940, Italy entered the war on Hitler's side. By the end of 1941, three-quarters of Italian Jews had lost their livelihood. The scene was set for what many, Catholics included, consider the most shameful of all papal encyclicals...It was the one that was never written...Jews were being systematically victimized, and in many well known cases, killed. Not one unequivocal word of condemnation issued from the Vatican. This silence, many say, was worse than any heresy.
"The mass exterminations of Jews were now common knowledge...the Archbishop of Canterbury..said, 'It is a horror beyond what imagination can grasp.' There was one man in the world whose witness Hitler feared, since many in his armies were Catholics. That one man did not speak. In the face of what Winston Churchill was to call ' probably the greatest and most horrible single crime ever committed in the whole history of the world,' he chose to stay neutral.
"head of the German church in Rome, recognizing that the round-up of Jews in Rome was a key moment, informed the German command that the arrests must stop. Otherwise the pope would have to make an open stand 'which will serve the anti-German propaganda as a weapon against us.'...Jews were being snatched practically under the pope's window...he..would have no alternative but to protest...These fears proved groundless. Pius XII said nothing at all."
"Could not His Holiness, who declared infallibly in 1950 that a Jewess was taken up body and soul into heaven, have said authoritatively in 1942 that her race was not to be annihilated for being Jewish?"
Thus they continued, by this silence, their undying, unabated hatred of the modern-day children of Israel. Many individual Catholics were opposed to the Nazis, but the system kept its distance, many of the insiders privately rejoicing in the victory over their ancient enemy.
Where does Adolf Hitler get his money? In part, from the Vatican's other ally, Italy. From Who Financed Hitler?, Pool, we read:
"Covert funding to sponsor international fascism was an essential policy of Mussolini's government...The numerous reliable sources which have cited that the Nazis received financial support from Mussolini are more than enough evidence for a sound conclusion."
One big happy family. The Vatican supports Italy. Italy supports Germany. Together it's back to the Age when Rome via Germany ruled the world, i. e.,The Holy Roman Empire.
Too severe a conclusion? Listen to The Voice of the Nazarene, of Finleyville, PA, as it adds other supporting evidence that Rome is once more tied in to a World War:
"The first government that Hitler constituted was two thirds Catholic. In Czechoslovakia, it was Catholic Slovakia that played Hitler's game. The Austrian Cardinal literally threw himself at Hitler's feet...Von Papen, Privy Chamberlain to His Holiness John XXIII(good old John, they called him), was former vice-chancellor of the Reich, and condemned to eight years hard labor at Nuremberg...escaped death by intervention of the Pope...The Nazi foreign minister was a Catholic...The chief propagandist for the Nazis was Goebbels, also a Catholic...The principal leaders of the Nazi Party were Himmler, Heydrich, Mueller, and Frank. All were Roman Catholic. Frank, the 'Butcher of Poland,' like VonPapen, had an intercessor, this time Pope Pius. But without success. Nuremberg found him guilty and punished him."
The evidence that the fascism of the day was linked to Rome is overwhelming. Italian, German, Spanish, Croatian...When a nation begins to think of itself as the nation, and its religion happens to be Catholic, the world should tremble.
In 1937 the Pope explains in one of his encyclicals that his connection to Hitler is made merely to "preserve the church." Indeed. The Vatican was told that it must give total allegiance to the Regime in order to have a functioning diocese in Germany.
Now the Pope expresses regret. Maybe it was a mistake after all. Hitler isn't what he had expected. He (the Pope) is sorry.
That's one way of explaining it. But in 1936, Cardinal Faulhaber, in Munich, is saying, "...all the civilized world, but especially the Catholic nations, must unite into a holy crusade against atheist Russia..."
Poor usage of words in the light of the Crusades of an uncivilized time perpetrated by the same group.
And the Bishop of Munster, 1936: "It is the duty of every Catholic, and of every civilized nation, to defeat and crush Godless communism."
And to do it, we will use Godless Naziism?
In 1942, the German bishops are saying,
"...a victory over Bolshevism would be equivalent to the triumphs of the teachings of Jesus over that of the infidels." (all bishops' quotes from Vatican in World Politics by Avro Manhattan.)
Do late 20th-century Americans realize that a Holy War was being fought in the 30's and 40's? Politics was wedded, as always, but deeply religious issues were at the heart of it all. So the eventual outcome of the War means more than we ever dreamed!
As you may know, more than Germany and Italy are in this drama. The third mighty member of the Axis trio is Japan. And how strange the connection between that nation and the Vatican, as H.G. Wells points out in his Crux Ansata:
"Having tied himself irrevocably to the Axis, (Pius XII) had to accept, and he accepted all too readily, the assimilation for mutual assistance of Shintoism and Catholicism.
"How far that assimilation has gone let this passage from Professor Karl Adams' The Spirit of Catholicism bear witness:
" ' We Catholics acknowledge readily, without any shame, nay with pride, that Catholicism cannot be identified simply and wholly with primitive Christianity , nor even with the Gospel of Christ in the same way that the great oak cannot be identified with the tiny acorn.
"There is no mechanical identity, but an organic identity. And we go further and say that thousands of years hence Catholicism will probably be even richer, more luxuriant, more manifold in dogma, morals, law, and worship, than the Catholicism of the present day. A religious historian of the fifth millennium A.D. will without difficulty discover in Catholicism conceptions and forms and practices which will derive from India, China, and Japan, and he will have to recognize a far more obvious complex of opposites.
"It is quite true Catholicism is a union of contraries. But contraries are not contradictions...The Gospel of Christ would have been no living Gospel, and the seed which He scattered no living seed, if it had remained ever the tiny seed of A.D. 33, and not struck root, and had not assimilated foreign matter, and had not by the help of this foreign matter grown up into a tree, so that the birds of the air dwell in its branches.' "
Wells points out,
"It is interesting to consider these conceptions, forms and practices that the Roman Catholic Church is now incorporating...the great assimilation has begun. The crude early Christians, still in the acorn phase, preferred martyrdom to burning a pinch of incense to the Roman God-Emperors, but the Roman Catholic Church of today has already established friendly relations with the Shinto faith, and the Japanese Catholic bows in the Shinto temples in acquiescence to the local supremacy of the Emperor-Divinity over the Vatican..."
Those are the words of one we call an infidel, one who doubted God all his days. His vision of the church was a Roman one, and he refused it. How the name Christian has suffered at the hands of Babylon!
But his point is well taken. In the name of expediency, in the name of anti-communism, in the name of assimilation, and through the logic of men like the above-quoted professor, the church and its Christ are made to join hands with Satan's tools all over the earth.
Before leaving this War, it is important to take another trip to old Yugoslavia, where World War I began, you will recall. The place that is making headlines yet today [1990's]...and for the same reasons? The extermination of heretics, world control?
In 1941, Yugoslavia is a neutral player in the war efforts of Hitler et al. The country is a blend of cultures and religions. The religions are represented by Roman Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Islam, and Judaism.
One section of Yugoslavia, Croatia, quite Catholic, welcomes the German invasion and, with the Germans, begins to turn on its fellow-countrymen.
Archbishop Stepinac is Vicar General of the Army in Croatia, an army which begins to slaughter mercilessly all enemies of the faith (as you know from modern headlines, this is called ethnic cleansing). Hear Adrian Pigott in Freedom's Foe, the Vatican, p. 44:
"A favorite method was to drive the Serbs inside an Orthodox Church, bolt the doors and then set the building on fire...hundreds of thousands of Croatia's Serbs, Moslems, Jews, and bewildered gypsies were rounded up and condemned to death, torture, or mutilation. Orthodox churches were burnt down; in some cases sons were compelled to assault their own mothers before the altars. In winter, victims were driven onto the frozen rivers and were plunged to death through holes made in the ice. Expectant mothers had their bodies ripped open by Romanist daggers.
"At a place called Nevisinje, a Serb family of father, mother, and four children were captured...The mother and children were kept together and starved for a week, and then a savoury dish of roast meat was brought in to them; naturally they ate ravenously enough - and then they were callously informed that they had just eaten some of their husband and father.
"Peter Brzica, a law student, who had attended a Franciscan college, was a member of the Catholic Order of Crusaders. He was one of the Quislings in control of the concentration camp at Jasenovac...
"Bets were made as to who could kill the largest number of inmates; and with a specially sharp butcher's knife, Brzica cut the throats of no fewer than 1,360 Yugo-Slav prisoners - his own countrymen.
"Having been proclaimed the prize-winner of the competition, he was elected to be 'King of the Cut-throats'...
"These are some of the actions which the agents of the 'Holy Catholic Church' use in their 20th-century efforts to stamp out its rivals...even the Germans and Italians were often nauseated by what the Croats did..."
Politically, Croatia has its roots in Hungary, where for eight centuries it was controlled but legally independent.
Then came the Ottoman rule (1526), Turk rule(until 1699) and the Hapsburgs (until 1868).Then it was back to Hungary, and then in 1918 Croatia joined with the Serbs and Slovenes. Later this amalgamation was known as Yugoslavia.
In April of 1941, through the workings of the Vatican at a most opportune time, Croatia took advantage of the situation and declared itself an independent state. It was immediately recognized by Germany and Italy.
Its leader was Ante Pavelic, the head of a fascist terrorist organization called Ustasa. Extreme brutality, violence, and priestly involvement were the trademarks of this group.
In 1945, Croatia was joined with Yugoslavia as a "people's" republic, Communist style, under Tito. From then until 1980 it was relatively stable. Then the vacuum of power created by Tito's death led to the predicament we 1990-ers now read about daily.
Colliers of September 1943 paints the picture of Pavelic as a guilty war criminal. Indeed he was, and he fled when Naziism and Fascism collapsed. First he ran to Catholic Argentina, then to Catholic Paraguay. From there he went to Catholic Spain. He lived and died a loyal Roman Catholic. And because of this one man, 700,000 men, women and children lost their lives.
Pavelic was aided by Archbishop Stepinac, also accused as a war criminal. On April 28, 1941, Stepinac writes a personal letter asking the Croatian clergy to support and defend Pavelic's Croatia. When, later, Pavelic is running for his life, Stepinac takes charge of the government himself.
The ethnic cleansing syndrome of the 40's in Croatia is made clear by a statement made by Catholic Minister of Justice Zanitch on June 2, 1941:
"This state, our country, is only for the Croats. There are no ways and means which we will not us to make our country truly ours and to clean it of all Orthodox Serbs."
The ways and means:
• Bury people alive.
• Concentration camps run by clergy.
• Terrorist raids.
• Starvation.
• Deprivation.
• Public hangings.
• Crucifixions...
When you shock a Nazi, you're pretty shocking. The Nazis were aghast.
Any sign of shame over these incidents at the time? No. In fact, the resurrection of Croatia is said to be equal to that of Christ: And,
"The great son of the Croatian people returned and gave them their liberty and ancient rights. This is the work of God. The Lord did it all...
"Christ and the Ustachi and Christ and the Croatians march together through history...our Holy Saviour will help us in the future as He has done until now. That is why the new Ustachi Croatia will be Christ's, ours, and no one else's!"
The Catholic Croatians, allied to Adolf Hitler, are represented by this priestly voice:
"Until now, God spoke through papal encyclicals - and? They closed their ears. Now God has decided to use other methods...led by Hitler. The sermons will be heard with the help of cannons, machine guns, tanks and bombers."
Catholic Croatia did not die at the end of World War II. It reappears in terrorist groups all over the world, awaiting its chance to resurface. But the old religious hatreds that resurfaced in our decade are not what Croatia had expected. More later.
We are now left with a painful but familiar question. What can we expect of Catholic power in the future? Are there Catholic minorities in many lands, waiting their chance to take power?
Is the Catholic Church, in this 20th century, still willing to be coercive, and force itself on the populations it inhabits? Has it learned from its former conquests that people eventually will not be forced?
In partial answer, I offer the words of one of Britain's all-time greats of Romanism, Msgr. Ronald Knox, author, Biblical scholar (d. 1957). Knox was especially strong in Roman ways as he had converted from Anglicanism. I quote from The Belief of Catholics:
"Is it just, since thought is free, to penalize in any way differences of speculative outlook? Ought not every church, however powerful, to act as a body corporate within the state, exercising no form of coercion except that of exclusion from its own spiritual privileges? It is very plain that this has not been the Catholic theory in times past. There has been, in Catholic nations, a definite alliance between the secular and the spiritual power. So, to be sure, has there been among Protestant nations. But may it be understood that in our enlightened age Catholics would repudiate the notion of any such alliance in the future?
"It must be freely admitted that this is not so. You cannot bind over the Catholic Church, as the price of your adhesion to her doctrines, to waive all right of invoking the secular arm in defense of her own principles. The circumstances in which such a possibility could be realized are indeed sufficiently remote. You have to assume, for practical purposes, a country with a very strong Catholic majority, the overwhelming body of the nation. Probably (though not certainly) you would have to assume that the non-Catholic minority are innovators, newly in revolt against the Catholic system, with no ancestral traditions, no vested interests to be respected. Given such circumstances, is it certain that the Catholic government of the nation would have no right to insist on Catholic education being universal (which is a form of coercion), and even to deport or imprison those who unsettle the minds of its subjects with new doctrines?
"It is certain that the Church would claim that right for the Catholic Government, even if considerations of prudence forbade its exercise in fact. The Catholic Church will not be one amongst the philosophies. Her children believe, not that her doctrines may be true, but that they are true, and consequently part of the normal make-up of a man's mind; not even a parent can legitimately refuse such education to his child. They recognize, however, that such truths (unlike the mathematical axioms) can be argued against; that simple minds can easily be seduced by the sophistries of plausible error; they recognize, further, that the divorce between speculative belief and practical conduct is a divorce in thought, not in fact; that the unchecked development of false theories in ethical aberrations -Anabaptism yesterday, Bolshevism today- which are a menace even to the social order. And for these reasons a body of Catholic patriots, entrusted with the government of a Catholic State, will not shrink even from repressive measures in order to perpetuate the secure domination of Catholic principles among their fellow-countrymen.
"It is frequently argued that if Catholics have at the back of their system such notions of ' toleration,' it is unreasonable in them to complain when a modern state restricts, in its turn, the political or educational liberty which they themselves wish to enjoy. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. The contention is ill-conceived. For when we demand liberty in the modern state, we are appealing to its own principles, not to ours."
The heart sinks to know that this 20th-century scholar of Rome unabashedly proclaims, Malcolm-X style, that Rome is willing to gain power and keep power by any means necessary. That Rome equates the great saints of the Anabaptist movement with the Communist menaces. That neither parents or educators would be able to keep a Catholic-dominated nation from forcing its children to learn the Catholic ways in the schools of the land. That to be a Catholic is to have normal thinking processes. All other thinking is sub-normal. That all Catholic talk about democracy and liberty is geared only toward the eventual emancipation of Catholicism, after which time all democracy and liberty will cease.
I must sound naive. Of course Rome believes this. The planet is dotted with countries where this very state of affairs exists. Oh believers in Jesus, awaken! Come out of her! Do not share in her program lest you share in her eventual condemnation!
Knox's book was criticized in some quarters, but never banned from Catholic thinking. It stands as a warning to us all.
The great wars are over for the moment, but the battle is far from won. Rome continues to meddle in the affairs of states great and small, one of the smallest -yet one of the greatest to a true believer- being Israel. Next time, let's see what is going on there.
This is the conclusion of part four. In the final historical section, part five, we'll trace the Babylonian/Roman Institution from the late 40's through its "transformation" in the 60's to its present state. In later parts I'll give my own experiences among the Romanists, and comment about Romanist influence among Protestants.
