Nuremberg Opening Speech Highlights Nazi Persecution of Catholic Church

By Terrence McKeegan, J.D. | November 23, 2010

Yesterday marked the 65th anniversary of the famous opening speech delivered by the Chief Prosecutor for the United States at the Nuremberg Trials. Justice Robert Jackson had the overwhelming task of not only presenting a comprehensive case against the Nazi war criminals, but also of justifying the authority of the tribunal itself. Key to this justification was a reliance upon the concepts of both universal law and natural law:

This Tribunal, while it is novel and experimental, is not the product of abstract speculations nor is it created to vindicate legalistic theories. This inquest represents the practical effort of four of the most mighty of nations, with the support of 17 more, to utilize international law to meet the greatest menace of our times-aggressive war. The common sense of mankind demands that law shall not stop with the punishment of petty crimes by little people. It must also reach men who possess themselves of great power and make deliberate and concerted use of it to set in motion evils which. leave no home in the world untouched. It is a cause of that magnitude that the United Nations will lay before Your Honors.

Regarding the defendants, Justice Jackson focused on their oppression of three groups: Jews, Catholics, and “free labor”:

They took from the German people all those dignities and freedoms that we hold natural and inalienable rights in every human being. The people were compensated by inflaming and gratifying hatreds towards those who were marked as “scapegoats”. Against their opponents, including Jews, Catholics, and free labor, the Nazis directed such a campaign of arrogance, brutality, and annihilation as the world has not witnessed since the pre-Christian ages.

In a major section of the speech, labeled as “The Battle Against the Churches”, Justice Jackson was unequivocal about the anti-Christian ideology of the Nazis, and how the Nazi attempts to eliminate the Christian churches were a critical necessity to implementing their plan of complete domination and control:

The Nazi Party always was predominantly anti-Christian in its ideology. But we who believe in freedom of conscience and of religion base no charge of criminality on anybody’s ideology. It is not because the Nazi themselves were irreligious or pagan, but because they persecuted others of the Christian faith that they become guilty of crime, and it is because the persecution was a step in the preparation for aggressive warfare that the offense becomes one of international consequence. To remove every moderating influence among the German people and to put its population on a total war footing, the conspirators devised and carried out a systematic and relentless repression of all Christian sects and churches.

Jackson cited a secret decree issued by defendant Martin Bormann as one example of the Nazi effort to separate Germans from their pastors and churches:

More and more the people must be separated from the churches and their organs, the pastors. Of course, the churches must and will, seen from their viewpoint, defend themselves against this loss of power. But never again must an influence on leadership of the people be yielded to the churches. This (influence) must be broken completely and finally.

The sacking of Bishop Sproll’s residence in Rottenburg and his banishment was also recounted by Jackson, who quoted a Nazi communique of the incident:

The Party on 23 July 1939 from 2100 on carried out the third demonstration against Bishop Sproll. Participants about 2500-3000 were brought in from outside by bus, etc. The Rottenburg populace again did not participate in the demonstration. This town took rather a hostile attitude to the demonstrations. The action got completely out of hand of the Party member responsible for it. The demonstrators stormed the palace, beat in the gates and doors. About 150 to 200 people forced their way into the palace, searched the rooms, threw files out of the windows and rummaged through the beds in the rooms of the palace. One bed was ignited. Before the fire got to the other objects of equipment in the rooms and the palace, the flaming bed could be thrown from the window and the fire extinguished. The Bishop was with Archbishop Groeber of Freiburg and the ladies and gentlemen of his menage in the chapel at prayer. About 25 to 30 people pressed into this chapel and molested those present. Bishop Groeber was taken for Bishop Sproll. He was grabbed by the robe and dragged back and forth.

The full transcript of Justice Jackson’s opening speech can be found here.

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