The German Reich
Father Herr's registration, University of Bonn 1938-1939
During his period of studies in Europe in the late 1930s, Herr experienced restrictions and persecution due to his religious faith. He left Germany and returned to the USA immediately after completing his Ph.D. in Bonn in the summer of 1939. For many years afterwards, Herr wrote and spoke about these experiences. He revisited Germany several times after World War II.
Father Herr's photograph of a bombed out church taken on a visit to Europe in 1952
Herr explained his views about Nazi Germany in a letter to the Reverend Father Provincial dated the Feast of Corpus Christi (May 23), 1940. About one of his public lectures on this, Herr wrote: "I took for my topic of discussion the paganism of the doctrines of national socialism, attempting to show their evil influences and consequences both from the stand-point of psychological science and of revealed religion. I had no difficulty in showing the unreasonableness of the racial theory, and the fact that many Germans understood this to be true. I also stressed the evil effect of taking little children away from the home...and substituting in their tender minds the pernicious and captious doctrines of race hatred, love of material pleasure, hero worship, exaggerated nationalism and militarism."