ABSTRACT
The campaign against all religions, especially the Christian faith, and the substitution of the hollow and shabby word "Providence" for the concept of God showed beyond doubt that National Socialism was engaged in a battle against God. An early and courageous opponent of Adolf Hitler from Germany's political Left, Ernst Niekisch was condemned to life imprisonment in 1937. There can be no doubt that the German resistance against Hitler had a mission, through which the battle against him turned into a crusade—a crusade against the swastika and everything it had come to stand for. In 1933, Sigismund Lauter, Rudolf Smend, and Eduard Spranger, representing the teaching college of the University, went to have a talk with Franz von Papen, who at the time was Vice Chancellor under Hitler. State Secretary von Bismarck, the author's superior in 1933, added to the records of the Interior Ministry the cases which Niekisch had brought to his attention, thus making them official.
