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Internet letter to the city council of Herxheim am Berg, Germany


The Netherlands,
Wednesday, 9th May 2018


Dear Madam, Dear Sirs,

Please let me introduce myself. My name is Richard Schoot, I am a Dutchman and I am trying to be a follower of Jesus Christ. I am a political activist; on my website www.ibcpp.org.uk, I am writing about politics, religion and the media, hoping that this will once contribute to the origination of Christian Patriotic parties in the Western countries.

My command of the German language is too bad to even give it a try, so that's the main reason why I am addressing you in English.

The subject I am hoping to get your attention for, is a matter that has a great symbolical value, in my opinion.

Some of the information on the basis of which I wrote this internet letter, is coming from an article on Spiegel.de of February the 26th. It has the headline: "Hitler-Glocke" bleibt hängen ("Hitler bell" will remain hanging)

The article was about the decision of your council, ten votes for, three votes against, to keep the church bell in the Jakobskirche in place. That church bell was a gift of the then leader of Germany, in 1934, and it has the inscription 'Alles für's Vaterland - Adolf Hitler' ('Everything for the Fatherland'). The church bell also has a swastika on it.

I have no knowledge of the arguments of the three council members who voted against. I don't know the arguments of the ten who voted for either. Yet, with all due respect, I want to say that I find it a bad decision. I hope you are willing to take notice why I find that, and that you will reconsider your decision.

Your council wants people to regard the church bell as an impetus for reconciliation. I would like to put forward that that is exactly the best argument not to let that church bell hang there. Precisely by distancing herself from that gift, your town would convincingly show it sees itself as a part of the Germany that has seeked and found reconciliation, that therefore looks back at 1933-1945 and says to itself and to the world: 'That was once but never again'.

Then, there is your wish to make St. Jacob's church a warning reminder against violence and injustice. I would again argue that simply replacing the swastika bell would be the best fulfillment of your wish, as any Christian church is already a warning reminder against violence and injustice in its own right.

The departure of the bell from the church tower would also be consistent with the removal of the National Socialist paraphernalia throughout the whole of Germany after the Second World War.

The Spiegel article I was referring to, mentioned an expert advice that was presented by your town's mayor, Mr Welker. That advice stated that the Hitler bell should be considered a memorial and that it, as such, should be kept in a museum or remain in the church tower. The report also stated that getting rid of the bell would be a flight from a commensurate and clarified remembrance culture.

I fail to see how the bell in and of itself can be considered a memorial. When I think of a memorial, I think of the little places where people lay down wreaths every year to remember those who fell in war time, for example the remembrance spot at the Parallelweg in my town of birth, Den Haag. When I think of a memorial, I also think of the famous centres of attention that remind a whole nation of those who fell, like, if I limit myself to Germany, the solemnly sober space in the Neue Wache at Under den Linden in Berlin, or the multitude of big black blocks near the Brandenburg Gate, to commemorate the six million Israelite victims of Hitler's genocide.

Surely, that church bell can never be a memorial on its own. It's an object a memorial should be made for, if one would decide not to demolish it. Only the combination of the object with an explanatory text, with photos or other audiovisual support, could serve as such, perhaps indeed in a museum setting. Melt the whole thing and recast it into a proper bell is a better idea still, I think.

Then, there is the expert's argument that getting rid of the bell would be a flight from a remembrance culture. Now, I think there are more than enough Germans who find that the remembrance of the Nazi period should never be fled from. I think there are more than enough Germans who, thinking of the Second World War and the genocide, find that the country should forever teach its youth, its students, its every new generation, what Germany was once capable of misdoing, in an extraordinary era.

That said, I don't think that getting rid of the Hitler bell in a church in Herxheim would be such a flight from the duty to remember. You can't tenably argue that keeping the bell in that particular tower is a necessity for that purpose. Because, if it is a necessity in Herxheim, it's a necessity in every church tower in Germany, if one would follow on that logic. One should then have to make tens of thousands of replicas of the bell and hang them in every church tower in Germany. After all, the tens of thousands of church towers in Germany are now chafingly lacking such unmissable memorials of the National Socialist years, forgive me the irony. Compensating for that gap is something only the generous donor of eighty years ago would have found a good idea, I suppose.

So, a remembrance culture, sustained by schoolbooks and other media, by memorials, expositions, commemoration days, street names and guest speakers in the Bundestag? Yes, by all means - but not for the purpose of psyching-down the Germans, not for making them feel solely responsible and guilty for everything that went wrong in the past, not for making them eternally accept the shortsightedness, the formidable errors, the inconsistencies and the backhandedness of today's socalled 'mainstream' political parties, no, not for any of that.

No, Germany must forever remember what it was once capable of misdoing for the sake of learning that the country can't ever afford to become a dark power again, and for the sake of learning that if the German people in the future may have to resist unjust rulers, tyranny, either overt or camouflaged tyranny, there are limits God Himself is setting that you cannot trespass. Only then, you will find Him on your side, and only if you have Him on your side, you have a chance to dispel the tyranny, or the generation after you otherwise.

Even and especially in the most confusing of times, keeping Christ's teachings in mind is always a good idea; I am thinking of His teachings about treating others like you want them to treat you, about the preference of suffering injustice over practicing it, about remaining firm and resolute in a non-violent way.

The arguments against the bell gain in strength, when you reflect on the situation as it is now. The remembrance sign on the church building will only be read by the local church-goers once and by the odd tourist. It will virtually have no impact whatsoever. By its sound however, the bell will constantly remind people of its existence for kilometers around many times a day. People who don't believe in God will feel annoyed and blame a Christian church for allowing Adolf Hitler to make still a lot of noise, even more than seven decades after his death. People who do believe in God, will be annoyed to realize that the chiming that calls them to go to church comes from a defiled bell.

How could a Christian not consider that church bell an offensive object? One realizes that is only a rhetorical question, if one reflects on how Hitler related to Christianity. A two-sided attitude becomes then visible, in my opinion. Firstly, Hitler was opportunistic enough to tap into the concerns of Christian Germans if that suited his purposes. As long as Christian Germans agreed with him on certain issues, it was fine with him, but for opportunistic reasons only. If, for instance, Christian Germans admitted to themselves his policies were helping the empoverished country with its six million unemployed people out of the crisis, caused by the 1929 Wall Street greed crisis, that was fine with him. If Christian Germans felt appreciation for his undoing of the most humiliating dictates of the 1919 Versailles Treaty, it suited him well. If Christian Germans welcomed the stability he brought to Germany, after one cabinet had succeeded the other during the Weimar Republic at an embarrassing pace, it was okay with him. If Christian Germans, who were against Communism for good reasons, supported Hitler for his anti-Communist stance, that was, again, fine with him.

And later on, when the Second World War saw Germany put in the defensive, when the prospect loomed that Stalin's armies might occupy Europe, that must have filled many Christians inside and outside Germany with revulsion and fear, and wellmeaning Christians may then have been susceptible for the Nazi propaganda that depicted the Third Reich as the only force that could protect Europe and its Christian civilisation from the Communist danger.

So the opportunism is one side of Hitler's attitude towards Christianity. Yet, as for the second side, Hitler certainly didn't want the Germans to be Christians. Hitler looked down upon Christianity. He viewed it as a Jewish phantasy, designed to console people who were troubled by a slave-like mentality. That other Jewish faith, Torahism, filled him with such intense hate, that it blinded him to think about its origin, that he either wouldn't or couldn't reflect on its earliest beginnings, on the first Jewish ideas that eventually led Moses to write the Torah, and subsequently, Hitler came to see all Jews as destructive 'elements' that had to be destroyed, instead of seeing Torahist Jews for what they truely are: fellow human beings whose minds are filled with hostile and supremacist ideas against their will. Hitler was either unable or unwilling to understand that it is the unvoluntary, inescapable indoctrination of Jewish children through which the Torahist fixation has kept many Jews under its spell to the present day.

Hating Torahism and contempting Christianity, Hitler wanted to create a religion of his own: the worship of the German fatherland. What God is to Christians, is what in Hitler's view the fatherland should be for the Germans: everything. For Christian Germans and non-Christian Germans alike. In the name of that Fatherland, the Germans were being indoctrinated and drilled into becoming fanatical National Socialists, into becoming a 'Herrenvolk', a people of masters, rulers without mercy, a predator nation that, utterly godless, shouldn't hesitate to exterminate tens of millions of non-Germans, if that was necessary for building a Germanic Empire next to Britain's one, if not replacing it, and that Germanic Empire could perhaps even acquire world domination, for at least a thousand years to come.

That madman's vision ended in the 1945 ruins of Europe and Russia. Hitler, who had been dreaming to become an architect, thus became the 'archtitect' of history's biggest monument of failed megalomania so far, if you leave the unimaginable human cost aside.

But eleven years before that, Hitler was the man of supreme power in Germany, 1934 was the year in which he, as the country's chancellor, crowned himself Germany's head of state as well, 1934 was also the year in which he, treacherously and bloodily, turned against his own Stormtroopers to win the sympathy of the army, and in that same year, he gave the town of Herxheim am Berg a church bell with a slogan, a swastika and his name on it.

Let's reflect on the slogan for a moment: 'Everything for the Fatherland'. Everything. So that also means: ignore your faith in God, if the Fatherland demands that. Ignore your conscience. Be fanatical, so ignore the tempering influence of the people who love you. Destroy other people's fatherlands, if the Fatherland demands that. Destroy other people.

Let's think about the sign on the bell. It's not the cross, the sign of self-sacrifice, the noblest of human deeds, so that others will live. It's not the cross on which Christ died to pay for our sins, to let the sins no longer be an obstacle between God and those who ask God to forgive them for their sins. It's a swastika, in German: a 'Hakenkreuz', a cross of hooks. A symbol the ancient Asian origin of which has become an unimportant story, as the view of it now immediately reminds the world of fanaticism, of oppression, of war and genocide.

So that church bell was not a gift from one Christian to other Christians. It was not a gift to express some sort of spiritual communion of the NSDAP with Christian Germany. It was certainly not a gift to show Hitler felt humble towards God, nothing of the sort. This socalled gift was meant to intimidate Germans who might still feel reservations about the rulers in Berlin. It was rather an order of the leader than a gift, it was a 'Führerbefehl' cast in bronze. If you would judge Hitler on this gift alone, purely for theory's sake, you'd already understand that that gift in and of itself shows that National Socialism was an anti-Christian ideology.

I am not idealizing the role of Christianity in the Third Reich. Recently, I heard someone on Radio Maria tell that as from 1938, Christian Jews were denied access to Germany's churches. Her remark reminded me of a picture I once saw of a group of German clergymen, parading and bringing the Hitler salute. Their robes had a sign that was a combination of the swastika and the cross; a repulsive sight. I considered it a result of the politics of the 'Gleichschaltung' by the Nazis, their totalitarian drive to streamline all manners by which people can unite themselves, interest groups, sports clubs, institutions, churches, into organizations loyal to 'der Führer', by intimidation and force if necessary. Making life increasingly a misery for the Jews by isolating measures, was one of his orders, and so these churches followed suit.

Yet, I also think there were a number of German clergymen, in leading positions too, who indeed saw a Godsend in Hitler, given the positive things he achieved for Germany, and who therefore were prepared to conform to the new rulers in their black and brown uniforms. It's complex. On German TV, I have seen historians with solid anti-Nazi credentials argue that if Hitler had died in 1938, he would have gone down in history as a great statesman. If you go back in time five years further, to 1933, and forget about all your hindsight knowledge for a moment, you realize that in Germany's relatively new parliamentary democracy, the NSDAP candidate Adolf Hitler had the unique 'advantage' there had never been a Hitler before. People simply couldn't imagine what demons he would unleash.

Out of concern over the wellknown Evil A, people may fail to see the still unknown Evil B for what it truely is, if it can convince them it will protect them from Evil A.

I believe that too much pandering to immoral rule has always been a risk, a sloping hill for church leaders, throughout the entire history of Christianity. I believe it's happening in our times too.

Having said that, it should also be highlighted that the Christian faith was what motivated many brave people who throughout occupied Europe, helped to rescue Jews and resisted the Nazis, together with resistance people from other backgrounds. In my country, there was Corrie ten Boom, a woman in Haarlem, and her family who rescued many Jews. In Germany itself, there was a bishop who publicly protested against National Socialism's 'euthanasia' programme that targeted the mentally handicapped. These two examples are only what I know, I think there are thousands of positive stories that can be told about Christians during WW2.

1,500 years older than Christianity is Torahism. It is a 3,500-year-old reality. The fact that Hitler turned against it in an unprecedented and diabolical way, doesn't detract anything from that reality. Torahism has however become the West's biggest taboo. Once the necessary breakthrough of that taboo has taken place, feelings will run high, in Germany too, obviously. In that Germany, Herxheim am Berg shouldn't be a place then, where the chiming of a church bell gets the almost triumphant ring of a Hitler who posthumously wants to see himself vindicated.

I read in the Spiegel article that the Evangelical Church of the Pfalz land has offered you to pay for the removal and the replacement of the bell, and I hope that your council, on further consideration, will accept its offer.

I will publish your reaction, for which I would be most grateful, on my website.

Yours respectfully and sincerely,

Richard Schoot


P.S.: I'll send you this letter by mail. I published it on my website on May the 9th and made some corrections on May the 14th. The part in italics below is the standard text by which I usually close my internet letters and website articles.


I haven't received a reaction. (25th June 2018)




The Western countries are in very big trouble, in my opinion, as there are solid reasons to assume they’ve turned into Torahist dictatorships. It’s very important to know what Torahism is. Please read my main text at www.ibcpp.org.uk

If you come to agree with my views, please remember that the only way out is a patient and peaceful way. Not a single person can be held solely responsible for the present situation. It looks like we are ruled by people who actually can’t help themselves they are misleaders, and we are letting them mislead us on and on.

Avoid confrontations that can easily turn overheated. Don't react to provocations. Please don't view the avoiding as cowardice. It isn't. Be strong, be calm and calm down others, before their anger causes them to do foolish things.

Our countries urgently need new political parties, Christian Patriotic parties, and so the more people will get to know about this initiative, the greater the chance some true, constructive change in politics will ever come about.

So your drawing this website to other people’s attention would be very welcome, but now a warning is due. Since the 2013 revelations about the secret surveillance of our e-mails, phonecalls and internet surfing, sending an e-mail or calling someone up has become something you should think twice about. That’s the bitter and disgusting reality the Western world descended into, in the past half of a century, despite the sacrifice of nearly a hundred million lives in two world wars, and despite the huge defence costs it took to hold our own against Communism.

So I am a bit between a rock and a hard place here. On the one hand, I don’t want to see people land in trouble, and resisting malevolent rule has always been a very short road to trouble for people’s personal lives.

Yet on the other hand my initiative needs people to spread the word about this website, because the old media ignore it, and not for noble reasons, I fear.

If you are in a dilemma, my best advice to you would be to pray, and to ask God to help you choose between passivity and activism.

In my article Suppose, the reversal takes place next week. Then what?, as well as in the main text, I am exploring how the political change can be brought about, once the nations have become aware of Torahism.

Torahism is the forgotten evil in politics. It is forgotten because the Nazis were terribly aware of it, and Hitler’s crimes against the Jewish people were abysmal enough to make everyone with a heart ignore Torahism, let alone criticize it. That however created a unique window of opportunity for Torahism, and it is most probably exploiting that to the full, from the 1960s to the present day.

I sent my digital book to the academic world of Great Britain instead of my own country, for the reasons I put forward in the text ‘It is time to introduce myself’, 9th June 2005, on the initial page.

I am trying to conduct this initiative in the spirit of the Jew I am mentioning in the first line of this website.

Long live the Jews, down with Torahism.


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