Religion: Me und Gott

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Last week the Nazi leaders, conscious of a need to bring otherworldly comfort to their blitzed home front, were rapidly converting from heathen Wotan worship to Christianity. Some notable conversions:

¶The Hamburger Fremdenblatt, which in a Christmas editorial exhorted bombed-out Germans to forget their "sorrow over the loss of goods and chattels," by meditating upon "indestructible things," suggested that religion "has again become modern."

¶Gestapo Chief Heinrich Himmler and Chief Storm Trooper Wilhelm Schepmann, who ordered their men to attend church services on Christmas Day.

¶Most staggering conversion was that of hitherto fiercely anti-Christian Dr. Alfred Rosenberg (whose pagan activities were condemned by the late Pope Pius XI). Nazidom's No. 1 heathen preached a stirring Christian sermon: "Never before have millions upon millions faced death as now. What is life? ... Is it a mirage, only existing in our minds? . . . Is it a theater in which we appear as puppets, playing dramas and comedies to amuse? We do not know whom: God or Satan? Two thousand years ago a miracle occurred and Christ gave us an answer. Even those who did not believe in Christ must admit that His coming was the birth of a new era, establishing contact between our earthly life and eternity."