English Translation

Security Service RF Prag=Bubentich, 15.12.1943. SD-Leitsabteilung Prag Srenee Ferniprecher 77444 - III C 2 - SA 62 Sch./Sch. Mini Elng.: 18 DEC 1943 To the personal speakers of the -Obergruppenführer Minister of StateK.H.Frank 4-StandartenführER Ministerialrat Dr. G i e s Prag lreyen iebrake) Betr.: Payments to the churches in the Protectorate. Heckel and Ministerialrat Krüger, party chancellor. Anl.: 2 Heckel, in his support of the maintenance and a slow gradual reduction of payments to the churches based on legal obligations, without doubt assumes that a divide et impera in church politics is in the interests of the Reich. Such a view is without a doubt correct if the smaller churches and sects are institutions which are dogmatic in church - organizational and denominational - with, one or more large churches in dispute. But since the small churches and sects present in the area of Bohemia and Moravia try to make "politics", which extends far beyond internal church and inner denominational questions (see e.g. the Protestant church in the Protectorate), so they are not to be judged under the church-political motto "parts and lords", but from the location of political - defensive considerations. From here, therefore, the cessation of further payments to these churches and sects is advocated, that this would lead to a strengthening and enlargement of the Catholic Church, as Heckel believes, is not accepted from here, for which the opposition of the small churches to the big ones is too great, to the opinion of Heckel on the attitude of the Czechs on the religious question in Bohemia and Moravia at all the following can be said from here: Heckel falls on a three-quarter side flat-rate assessments - which are not only superficial, but even false. The sentence: St.M. 0-163 a/43