German SS leader Reinhard Heydrich advised Gestapo leaders to investigate reasons for arrests, as there were now more prisoners than the space available in concentration camps.
Hopes that the Rev. Martin Niemöller anti-Nazi Confessional (Evangelical Lutheran) pastor, would be released for Christmas from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp were shattered tonight. On the contrary, his jailers have forbidden him to do any writing for the next few months. The Rev. Mr. Niemöller, who was a submarine commander in the world war, has been in prison for eighteen months because of anti-Nazi utterances. Twelve other Protestant leaders held in Nazi prisons or camps will also remain in custody. Thirty Protestant pastors have been deprived of their salaries.
For the Nazis of greater Germany, the religious and joyous theme of Christmas is replaced by a stern pagan tribute to the winter solstice. The party leaders have minimized the story of Christ and substituted the symbolism of the old Norse mythology. “Winter solstice and Christmas are only two different figures of one and the same experience,” states the official Nazi party news service. “Just as, according to the beliefs of our ancestors, the sun was born anew in these days, so the birth of the child also is the symbol of life’s eternity. That is why the Christian churches have laid the birth of the Christ child at this time. This Christ child is nothing other than the old Germanic mother of heaven, Freya.”
Although the Nazi insistence upon stripping the season of its Christian significance has been increasing every year since the party has been in power, there still are millions of families in Germany which will celebrate Christmas in the traditional manner. In these households there will be gaily decorated trees, singing of folk songs and carols and distribution of gifts. The celebration is more like a real old time Christmas because the ground is blanketed with snow. It is Germany’s first white Christmas in many years. There is a shortage of geese in Germany, but the wealthier families will have such fowl on their tables. To break down the Christmas spirit, the powerful Nazi propaganda machine — press, radio, and hundreds of orators — worked at high pressure this year. Millions of members of the Hitler Youth organization listened to their leaders praise the old Germanic rites and mingle their winter solstice themes with a fierce nationalism.
German Architect Bruno Taut dies.
The French cabinet, in a meeting today, decided to be stern with Premier Mussolini of Italy. The decision was taken after it was reported that Il Duce planned to fling down the gauntlet to France next month. The cabinet met to discuss the Italian decision under which Rome has declared invalid the French-Italian colonial pact of 1935. Premier Edouard Daladier has urged taking a firm stand in face of the recent Italian clamor for French possessions-notably Tunisia in North Africa and the Island of Corsica. Today’s cabinet decision was an endorsement of this attitude. The cabinet agreed that as far as France is concerned, Italian renunciation of the 1935 pact means that Italy will lose — technically at least — about 50,000 square miles of African territory. This area was ceded to Italy by France under the 1935 pact.
Christmas eve services in Greek Orthodox and Lutheran and other Protestant churches in the Baltic states attracted unusually large crowds of worshippers this evening. The Christmas prayer of “peace on earth good will towards men” seemed to possess a especially poignant meaning this year for the mixed nationalities of the three Baltic countries. Even the Roman Catholic churches, which in the Baltic countries never have placed special emphasis on Christmas because they regard Easter as the major Christian holiday of the year, saw an especially large attendance. The Christmas shopping season proved both a surprise and a disappointment to the merchants of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Their sales were said to have been only half of last year’s.
This was not due to unemployment or poverty, for retail trade during the year showed more than usual annual increase, and the Baltic states do not have unemployment problems. Undispersed clouds of war, however, created a general feeling of apprehension which retarded Christmas buying. There are fears that a threatening conflict may materialize in the next twelve months.
[Ed: The Baltics will not know a Christmas free of fear and foreign domination for the next half-century.]
Pope Pius XI reveals that fascists have attacked the offices of Catholic Action in several Italian cities lately — news that has been suppressed by the Italian press. The Pope criticized Italian Fascists and German Nazis today in a Christmas Eve message in which he offered “our old life for the peace and prosperity of peoples.” The pontiff, who is 81 years old, with his breath coming with difficulty as he addressed the Sacred College of Cardinals, criticized high Fascist officials for encouraging policies that endangered the Lateran accord between the church and state. He deplored the Fascist racial program as transgressing principles of human dignity and liberty. Speaking of the acts of hostility of which Catholic Action associations are the objects the pope particularly mentioned some events, not known of before by the public in Rome, which happened in Venice, Turin, Bergamo, and Milano. It was known the Catholic Action association Bergamo was the target for a strong Fascist attack and that its seat had been invaded and devastated a couple of months ago. Although he spoke in complimentary terms of King Victor Emmanuel of Italy and Premier Mussolini, the pope deplored the fact that Nazi banners had been displayed in Rome during the visit of Reichsführer Hitler. He denounced the swastika as “a cross which is inimical to the cross of Christ.”
Peace and man’s enmities mingled in the Holy Land tonight, while Christmas was celebrated at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. Within the hallowed edifice built by Constantine the Great to enshrine the manger of the Christ child, peace reigned. But in other parts of Palestine there were reminders of the strife among rival claimants of Palestine — Jews and Arabs. Twenty thousand British soldiers, longing for Christmas at home but cast in the role of policemen, guarded the Holy Land from further bloodshed such as that which has persisted since last summer at the cost of hundreds of lives. The British have called it the Arab rebellion.
While the Latin patriarch, representing Catholics throughout the world, performed the solemn ceremony of carrying the effigy of the newborn King of Peace from the Convent of St. Catherine to the traditional site of the manger, British garrisons occupied the cloisters of the monasteries adjoining the Church of the Nativity as well as the big square in front. This grotesque mingling of warlike evidence with religion seemed almost sacrilegious. Bethlehem, the cradle of Christendom, had brilliant sunshine, cloudless skies and cold weather as the Saturday festivities started and the British troops arranged their celebrations so as not to conflict with their vigilant guard duties. Some continued their pursuit of Arab rebels, who during the past fortnight suffered a series of reverses.
Harry Hopkins is sworn in at the White House as the 8th U.S. Secretary of Commerce. Harry Hopkins got a Christmas present from Mrs. Roosevelt today — a big black Bible. He laid his hand on it, swore to uphold the Constitution, and thus became Secretary of Commerce in the Roosevelt Cabinet. When the ceremony ended in the President’s book-lined study on the second floor of a White house gay with poinsettias, wreaths and Christmas trees, the former W.P.A. administrator strode through covered passages to meet the press in the executive offices next door.
The new Secretary of Commerce had this Christmas message for the businessmen with whom he will work hereafter: “At the appropriate time, I will have some specific and definite things to say regarding the responsibilities which go with my new job. “As to the Business Advisory Council — most of whom are close personal friends of mine — of course, I will want them to continue.” The Business Advisory Council was set up by Hopkins’ predecessor, Daniel Roper, as an agency of contact between the administration and business leaders.
President Roosevelt lit Washington’s community Christmas tree tonight, wished the nation a merry Christmas, and expressed the hope that the boon of peace enjoyed by the new world will extend to all nations and all peoples during the coming year. Mr. Roosevelt held up to the world as an example of understanding among nations the conclusion of the continental solidarity peace pact in Lima, Peru. “In this setting I wish my fellow countrymen everywhere a Merry Christmas with peace, content, and friendly cheer to all,” he said. “I wish also to thank the thousands who have remembered me and my family this Christmas with individual greetings. We shall always treasure these friendly messages. At this time let us hope that the boon of peace which we in this country and in the whole western hemisphere enjoy under the providence of God may likewise be vouchsafed to all nations and all peoples. We desire peace. We shall work for peace. We covet neither the lands nor the possessions of any other nation or people.”
Rev. Allan Knight Chalmers releases correspondence proving that Alabama Governor Bibb Graves broke his word to pardon the Scottsboro defendants.
Melvyn Douglas brings movie stars and entertainers, including Gene Autry and Eddie Cantor, to a Christmas party for “Dust Bowl” children now living in the San Joaquin Valley in California.
The war film “The Dawn Patrol” starring Errol Flynn, Basil Rathbone and David Niven was released.
21 countries of the Americas met in Lima, Peru and adopted the Lima Declaration, affirming the sovereignty of Latin American states and the determination to resist foreign intervention — military, economic, cultural, or political.
President Pedro Aguirre Cerda is inaugurated in Chile.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 151.38 (-0.01).
Born:
Bobby Henrich, MLB pinch runner, shortstop, and outfielder (Cincinnati Reds), in Lawrence, Kansas.
Died:
Bruno Taut, 58, German architect.
History Diaries 