‘Lord God! Bless Our Fuehrer!’
Excerpts translated by the Associated Press from “Gruess Gott und Heil Hitler” (“Hail God and Heil Hitler”), a book by Stefan Moritz documenting the role of Austria’s Roman Catholic Church and clergy under the Nazis:
“Lord God! Guide our Fuehrer!
Lord God! Bless our Fuehrer!
Lord God! Bless our beloved homeland, and the great German Reich!”
Prelate Johann Moerzinger, chief editor of the Vienna Church Newspaper, March 1938
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“The Catholic Church is grateful to the German Reich that it has acted against the mockery and dissolution of marriage and family by Jewish and other authors ....”
Church document, 1938
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“Adherents of Aryan thought ... should see God’s word in Adolf Hitler’s historic mission ... the Jewish question has remained unresolved in history. Now, it is being resolved by our Fuehrer ....”
Father Sigismund Brettle, head of the Catholic Action movement, April 1938
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“Fiftieth birthday of Der Fuehrer -- agreement on: sounding of the bells every quarter of an hour on the preceding Sunday, and a sermon with prayer for Fatherland and Fuehrer .... “
Protocol of the Austrian Bishops’ Conference,
March 20-21, 1939
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“I consider the idea of having our Catholic province flooded with 300 Jewish doctors untenable ....Our Catholic population, particularly in the countryside, will not accept without protest the forcing upon them of 300 doctors of the Jewish faith “
Bishop Ferdinand Pawlikowski, draft letter protesting Allied plans
to arrest 300 Nazi physicians in Styria province and replace them with Austrian Jewish doctors who fled to Britain, 1946
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