Letter of Protest to Hitler

On behalf of the conference of church leaders, an association of leaders of regional churches who were not German Christians, Wurm approached Hitler in December of 1941 directly. Fulfilling the office of a guardian, he reminded the Führer and Reich Chancellor of the great sacrifices that the clergy had made in the war so far and complained about the simultaneous suppression of the church by the Nazi state.

He recalled various petitions already made over the past years and drew attention to the radical and incomprehensible measures against the church’s parish press, against Christian religion class, against church work and church property, against church educational and reform institutions, against individual pastors and the church as a whole.

Although more than 95 percent of the Germans were members of a church, extreme propaganda was being unleashed against Christianity and church. Wurm also denounced the action to eliminate the mentally ill and the escalating severity in the treatment of the non-Aryans, even those who professed belief in the Christian faith and entreated the head of the Reich to halt this quite ominous development for the sake of the nation and justice.

With this letter, Wurm formulated a fundamental protest against a wide variety of the Nazi state’s measures, addressing not only ecclesiastical affairs but also the killing of the mentally ill and the persecution of “non-Aryans”. He called upon Hitler to change the party and state’s ecclesio-political course and to give the church protection under the law again.