Goering: Church and Reich
1946 Nuremberg Tribunal: On day 81, Hermann Goering testifies on his own behalf, answering a series of leading questions posed by his defense counsel. Goering: As to the attitude towards the Church--the Fuehrer's attitude was a generous one, at the beginning absolutely generous. I should not like to say that it was positive in the sense that he himself was a positive or convinced adherent of any one confession, but it was generous and positive in the sense that he recognized the necessity of the Church. Although he himself was a Catholic, he wished the Protestant Church to have a stronger position in Germany, since Germany was two-thirds Protestant. The Protestant Church, however, was divided into provincial churches, and there were various small differences that the dogmatists took very seriously. For that reason they once in the past, as we know, fought each other for 30 years; but these differences did not seem so important to us. There were the Reformed, the United, and the pure Lutherans--I myself am not an expert in this field. Constitutionally, as Prussian Prime Minister, I was, to be sure, in a certain sense the highest dignitary of the Prussian Church, but I did not concern myself with these matters very much. The Fuehrer wanted to achieve the unification of the Protestant Evangelical Churches by appointing a Reich Bishop, so that there would be a high Protestant church dignitary as well as a high Catholic Church dignitary. To begin with, he left the choice to the Evangelical churches, but they could not come to an agreement. Finally they brought forward one name, exactly the one which was not acceptable to us. Then a man was made Reich Bishop who had the Fuehrer's confidence to a higher degree than any of the other provincial bishops. With the Catholic Church the Fuehrer ordered a concordat to be concluded by Herr [Franz] von Papen (above, with cane). Shortly before Herr von Papen concluded that agreement I visited the Pope myself. I had numerous connections with the higher Catholic clergy because of my Catholic mother, and thus--I am myself a Protestant--I had a view of both camps. One thing, of course, the Fuehrer and all of us, I, too, stood for was to remove politics from the Church as far as was possible. I did not consider it right, I must frankly say, that on one day the priest in church should humbly concern himself with the spiritual welfare of his flock and then on the following day make a more or less belligerent speech in parliament.The Nuremberg Tribunal Biographies
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