International importance to the study….

Documenting Nazi persecution of the Christian churches in pre-War Germany: a new resource in the Record Office. The Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland is delighted to announce the donation of 23 original Newsletters dating from 1937-9 which document the persecution of the Christian Church in Nazi Germany.  The ‘Kulturkampf’ Newsletters have a local significance because they were published in Hinckley, Leicestershire by a Catholic printing house, Samuel Walker and Sons.

It is extraordinary to find a resource of such international importance to the study of Hitler’s dictatorship in a local record office in Leicestershire. The Newsletters cast light on a part of the Third Reich’s activities which are almost unknown – the creation of a new State church apparatus to replace traditional Christian Churches and brutal attacks on Christians in the years leading up to the outbreak of World War II.

The Newsletters were compiled by Karl Spiecker, head of the German Freedom Party, a formidable critic of Hitler, translated into English and printed in Hinckley.  The circulation of 2,500 copies went to English newspapers and magazines, in the hope that they would publish details of Hitler’s persecution of both Catholics and Protestants.  But the British Government’s policy of appeasement meant that the Newsletters did not have the impact Hitler’s opponents hoped for.

The Newsletters are available to researchers at the Record Office, along with a collection of related research materials and the definitive English-language edition of all the extant ‘Kulturkampf’ Newsletters (there were in addition French and German versions of the Newsletters): Confronting the Nazi War on Christianity: The Kulturkampf Newsletters, 1936-1939, edited and translated by Richard Bonney.

For further details please contact : Margaret Bonney at the Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland, Long Street, Wigston Magna, Leicester LE8 8AZ [tel. 0116 2571080]

For more details about the Record Office and its range of resources please go to :  www.leics.gov.uk/recordoffice or http://twitter.com/RecordOffice

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