Woe to Wotan

One of the strange things about Germany in recent years has been the inability of Nazis and Catholics to get together. Adolf Hitler is a Catholic and has at his elbow a Papal Chamberlain in the person of Ambassador-on-Special-Mission Franz von Papen who as long ago as 1933 negotiated a Concordat for Der Fuehrer with Il Papa. Yet typical Nazi newsorgans have been stewing up hotter & hotter scandals about German Catholic dignitaries, lumping them all, by implication, as currency smugglers and sexual perverts. In a recent issue of Julius Streicher's Der Stuermer appeared the ultimate in double-barreled cartoons: on the left under the caption Sworn to Satan a leering Jew seducing a German maiden; on the right a priest and nun tagged Belonging to the Church; these two captions trailing into the screamer AND BOTH LOST TO THE COMMUNITY OF THE PEOPLE: UNFRUITFUL !

Suddenly last week Adolf Hitler in his rustic snuggery at Berchtesgaden halted all German cases pending against Catholics for smuggling or perversion. Ordering sweeping retrials the Realmleader intimated that hereafter the Church will have an opportunity to expel presumably guilty priests, nuns or friars from its ranks so that they can go to trial as lay persons. Such sudden action appeared to mean that Adolf Hitler, just now more attracted than ever by Nazi schemes of launching a war to wipe Bolshevism out of Russia, was prepared to take at something like face value overtures of aid made to Der Fuehrer last week by German cardinals and bishops meeting at Fulda with a legate from the Pope.

"Just at this time," they declared in a pastoral letter read in all German churches on Sunday, "Communism and Bolshevism attempt with devilish purposefulness and pertinacity to strike from the East [Russia] and from the West [Spain] against Germany, the heart of Europe, and thereby to take it into their fatal pincers . . . German solidarity must not be impaired by religious worry . . . Communism will not be struck in its deepest roots by military force but through the resurrection--in Jesus Christ--of Europe in general and our Fatherland in particular. . . . During the last few months within Germany's own border the Catholic Church, Pope, Bishops and Priests have been brought in slanderous connection with Bolshevism, and books, periodicals and newspapers have spoken of the brotherhood between Rome and Moscow. Spain has opened the eyes of those who can still see."

All this last week was preliminary to the Nazi Party's annual congress at Nuernberg early this month. It remained to be seen how many Nazi eyes would see with the Catholic Realmleader, how many with the "German Christians" and fire-dancing German worshippers of Wotan and the "Old Gods."

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