With the 1938 merging of Austria with Hitler’s Germany came the Nazi coercion of Austrian Christianity. One of the first clerics to rebel against the Nazi bullying was Cardinal Theodor Innitzer (1875 – 1955) of Vienna who made clear his outrage in a series of open letters criticizing the various Nazi restrictions on marriage and the removal of nuns from teaching positions.
“Reprisal was swift. Next evening, in what looked to foreign newspapermen like a pre-arranged attack, a mob of 5,000 suddenly converged on the Cardinal’s palace adjoining St. Stephen’s screaming “Out with the priests!” A barrage of stones smashed every window in the building… Rioters battered down the palace door and invaded the building.”
Click here to read about the Nazi efforts to change the German churches into fascist tools.
Seventy five years after the collapse of the Nazi regime, the Vatican issued a 23 page report saying that the German Catholic church was largely submissive to the will of the Reich – click here to read more about this subject.
