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Division, declaimed: "The new mythology cannot be downed! The personifications of this mythology are the World War heroes, and the new German movement shows that uncounted millions are beginning to understand our 2,000,000 martyrs as a new living mythology and as a new religion."
The meeting adopted principles:
"God has created me a German. Germanism is a gift from God. God wants me to fight for my Germanism.
"Service in war is not a violation of Christian conscience but is obedience to God. . . ."
Nazi Christianity produced the first open criticism of Hitlerism in the German Press in months. Dr. Friedrich Dibelius. General Superintendent of the Evangelical Church, protested openly and was charged with "high treason" by Nazi newspapers.
"What does this mean?" wrote the Monarchist Kreuz Zeitung. "Is it that only Dr. Dibelius is to be dismissed, or the Pope also?"
In Rome, Vice Chancellor von Papen tried earnestly to explain.
On foreign exchange the German mark fell 37 points last week. From Paris, Lorraine steel mills announced happily that Soviet anger at Hitlerism had just won them an 18,000-ton steel order formerly given to Germany, allowed them to reopen two blast furnaces closed for months.