7th April 1942, at dinner
If the slightest attempt at a riot were to break out at this moment anywhere in the whole Reich, I’d take immediate measures against it. Here’s what I’d do: (a) on the same day, all the leaders of the opposition, including the leaders of the Catholic party, would be arrested and executed; (b) all the occupants of the concentration camps would be shot within three days; (c) all the criminals on our lists—and it would make little difference whether they were in prison or at liberty—would be shot within the same period.
The extermination of these few hundreds or thousands of men would make other measures superfluous, for the riot would be aborted for lack of ringleaders and accomplices. As for the justification of these summary executions, I’ve only to think of the German idealists who are risking their lives in front of the enemy or showing their devotion in a war factory, whatever their job may be, and employing all their efforts for the victory of the fatherland.
It’s a real scandal that we must give the German Churches such extraordinarily high subsidies. It isn’t like that anywhere else, even in the most fundamentally Catholic countries, with the exception of Spain. Unless I’m mistaken, our Churches are still at present receiving nine hundred million marks a year. Now, the priests’ chief activity consists in undermining National Socialist policy. The habit of exploiting the State goes back a long way. In periods of national tension, the Catholic Church always tried to occupy positions of temporal power, and always at the expense of the German community.
The difficulties of our emperors never provided the priests with a chance to prove their German feelings. On the contrary, it’s a tradition amongst them to profit by every circumstance to indulge in their egoistic activities. Thus one can never regret too much that such a powerful personality as Luther found only feeble successors.
Otherwise it would never have been possible, in Germany, to restore the Catholic Church on a sufficiently solid foundation to enable it to last until the present.