In his sermon on 3 August, Bishop Galen again pilloried the Gestapo for its attacks on Catholic religious orders. Then he came to the ‘euthanasia action’. ‘There is a general suspicion verging on certainty,’ the Bishop stated, ‘that these numerous deaths of mentally ill people do not occur of themselves but are deliberately brought about, that the doctrine is being followed, according to which one may destroy so-called “worthless life”, that is kill innocent people if one considers that their lives are of no further value for the nation and the state.’ In emotional terms, Galen pointed out the implications. People who had become invalids through labour and war, and the soldier risking his life at the front, would all be at risk. ‘Some commission can put us on the list of the “unproductive”, who in their opinion have become worthless life. And no police force will protect us and no court will investigate our murder and give the murderer the punishment he deserves. Who will be able to trust his doctor any more? He may report his patient as “unproductive” and receive instructions to kill him. It is impossible to imagine the degree of moral depravity, of general mistrust that would then spread even through families if this dreadful doctrine is tolerated, accepted, and followed.’186
Even before Galen delivered his sermon, Hitler had been sufficiently concerned about morale and popular unrest at such a critical juncture of the war that he had issued orders to Gauleiter to cease until further notice all seizures of Church and monastic property. Under no circumstances were independent actions by Gauleiter permissible. Similar instructions went to the Gestapo.187 According to Papen, Hitler attributed all the blame to the hotheads in the Party. He had told Bormann that the ‘nonsense’ had to stop, and that he would tolerate no conflict, given the internal situation.188 It was simply a tactical move. Hitler sympathized with the radicals, but acted pragmatically.189 As his comments a few months later made plain, he fully approved of the closure of the monasteries.190 Only the need for peace in relations with the Churches to avoid deteriorating morale on the home front determined his stance. Events in the Warthegau (where by 1941 94 per cent of churches and chapels in the Posen-Gnesen diocese were closed, 11 per cent of the clergy murdered, and most of the remainder thrust into prisons and concentration camps) showed the face of the future.191 A victorious end to the war would unquestionably have brought a renewed, even more savage onslaught on the Churches. But in the context of such widespread unrest, Hitler had to take seriously the impact of Galen’s sermon on the killing of asylum patients, a copy of which had been brought to him by Lammers.192 Moreover, with that sermon, reproduced in thousands of clandestine copies and circulated from hand to hand, the secrecy surrounding the ‘euthanasia action’ had been broken.193
The Nazi leadership realized that it was helpless in the circumstances to take strong action against Galen. It was suggested to Bormann that Galen should be hanged. Bormann answered that, while the death penalty was certainly warranted, ‘considering the war circumstances the Führer would scarcely decree this measure’. Goebbels acknowledged that if anything were undertaken against the Bishop, support from the population of Münster and Westphalia could be written off during the war.194 He hoped that a favourable turn in the eastern campaign would provide the opportunity to deal with him.195 Not surprisingly, since he was aware of Hitler’s concern about the decline in morale in the wake of the Church conflict, Goebbels spoke against arousing public discussion over ‘euthanasia’ at precisely that time. ‘Such a debate,’ noted Goebbels, ‘would only inflame feelings anew. In a critical period of the war, that is extraordinarily inexpedient. All inflammatory matters should be kept away from the people at present. People are so occupied with the problems of the war that other problems only arouse and irritate them.’196 Goebbels’s comments on popular opinion during his visit to Führer Headquarters on 18 August must have reinforced Hitler’s view that the time had come to calm the unrest at home. On 24 August, Hitler stopped the T4 ‘euthanasia action’ as secretly as he had started it two years earlier.197
