of the totalitarian character of Nazism this
Pastoral observes:

"...It is not surprising that National Socialism has the power to become the
religion of the masses, and its assemblies to take the form of a kind of
popular worship in which a great deal of latent religious emotion is
released.... In carrying out its ministry the Church must therefore make
its work in this connection even more definite in character, and must tell
its members very clearly and resolutely that what is at stake here is the
first commandment: Thou shalt have no other gods besides me...!" [4]
<III>
This pseudo-religious and pseudo-messianic character of Nazism was by no
means accidental or the product of mass hysteria induced by some skilful
propagandists. It was rather an ideological structure that was consciously
given definite patterns and developed within a conceptual system in accordance
with its own laws of logic. In this development the traditional theological
concepts of Christianity were retained but given an altogether different
meaning. Values that had previously been regarded as relative in the culture
of Christianity and of the West now became absolute; and values that had
formerly been considered absolute, being interpreted as metaphorical or
visionary, became relative. Phenomena with an imminent historical essence
were lifted to a meta-historical plane. Means were converted to ends, and
ends were endowed with absolute authority in so far as they sanctified
the means.
In this manner the fundamental concepts of religion were not invalidated
nor the integrative functions served by these concepts impaired, such as
those cohesive factors that hold together the social structure and ensure
its normal functioning. The Nazis retained these concepts and their functions
as a legitimate part of their racial theory and, after depriving them of
their authentic historical content, turned them into political expedients
to be used in their attack against humanism, religion and Christian values.
Basic theological concepts such as God, redemption, sin and revelation were
now used as anthropological and political concepts. God became man, but not
in the theological Christian sense of the incarnation of the Word:
"...and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us..." (John 1. 14) or in
the Pauline conception of the incarnation of God in Christ in whom "the
whole fullness of deity