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The first step was the “liberation of Church services and confessional matter from everything un-Germanic,” including the Old Testament with its “Jewish profit morality” and its “stories of livestock traders and pimps.” Having picked up a head of steam, Krause went on to insist that the New Testament be cleansed of “all obviously distorted and superstitious anecdotes” and that the faithful reject “the whole scapegoat and inferiority theology of the rabbi Paul.”
“We reject the false teaching that the Church can and must acknowledge, beyond the word of God, other events and powers, figures and truths as God’s revelation.”
“Either nationalism and religion will triumph together, or they will both be destroyed.”
“We do not want to battle against Christianity—on the contrary, we have to declare ourselves to be the only true Christians,”
rapidly pursuing anti-Jewish persecution does no harm to the system, and that unleashing the anti-Semitic instincts in the ranks of their members and tolerating open pogroms do not cause any economic difficulties
Once again, administrative measures “from above” and violence “from below” combined to hasten radicalisation.
A catalogue encompassing seventy-six points described in detail how officers could put pressure on the defamed minority in daily life without exceeding the limits of the discriminatory laws already in place.
Once again it was Hitler who gave the decisive signal for Germans to give free rein to their hatred and destructive desires.
“Hardly anyone said anything, and only a few people laughed. You could see pity and horror in many people’s faces.”
A line had been crossed: Germany had left the community of civilised nations.
As a rule, people expressed sympathy with the victims and outrage at the perpetrators only in private.
the National Socialists now knew that they could do whatever they wanted to Jews, and no one would stop them.
At the end of the conference, during which conservative ministers and ministerial civil servants uttered not a single word of disapproval or moderation, Göring summed up the results: “This will work. These swine won’t be so quick to commit a second murder. And I have to say it again. I would not want to be a Jew in Germany.”
Hitler’s laughter always had an undertone of mockery and sarcasm, betraying traces of past disappointment and suppressed ambition.
the situation less dramatically, cracking jokes that played on the similarities between the word Duce and Dusche, the German word for shower.
“Fritsch has been unmasked as a 175er,”
It was particularly difficult for them to accept the idea of Seyss-Inquart as interior minister, which would have put him in charge of the police.
It is no wonder, then, that he became ever more convinced of his own greatness and began losing touch with reality.
His sense of self-importance, which had already been greatly bolstered by his successful gamble in remilitarising the Rhineland in 1936, began increasingly to take on a nearly pathological character.
“They have faith, while the army commanders do not.”
