The following article is an excerpt from Professor Gerhard Ritter s contribution to a Symposium on the origins and methods of National Socialism. This Symposium, whose publication in English translation is forthcoming, was organised under the auspices of the International Council for Philosophy and Humanistic Studies.

The International Council for Philosophy and Humanistic Studies has assured complete freedom of expression to all participants while obviously not endorsing any of the opinions expressed in the Symposium.

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As early as November 1943, in conversations with German refugees at Istanbul, I encountered again and again the question, asked with amazement: how was it possible in Hitler's Germany for me to publish such independent views on historical-political questions, as I had expressed in my writings and addresses, without suffering political persecution? After I was released from prison by the Russians at the end of April 1945, foreigners frequently asked me the same question. I shall attempt to give an answer, based simply on my own personal experience.

In November, 1944, I had been arrested by the Gestapo, not because of any statement I had made in my addresses, university lectures, or writings, but because of my friendship with Dr. Gördeler and my participation in conferences about a political-theological memoir dealing with the future reorganization of German and European politics. The Gestapo officials who arrested me all wore an SD (Security Service) on the sleeves of their uniforms.

At the end of the Middle Ages, the moral prestige of the old papal church was severely shaken in all the countries of Europe. Open criticism of its moral shortcomings and its organizational defects had been going on for centuries. To the diverse splinter-movements of heretical sects (which were never wholly suppressed) had been recently added the great reform movements of the Wyclifites and the Hussites. But even they had brought about no lasting and widespread upheaval. Ultimately the old hierarchy had always prevailed. Why then did the Germans, a people slow to be aroused, fond of order, and faithful to the church, take it upon themselves to carry out the most prodigious revolution in the church? And why did only their revolt against the papal church have such vast and enduring consequences?