instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith." However, as Hitler consolidated his power, schools became a major battleground in the Nazi campaign against the churches. In 1937, the Nazis banned any member of the Hitler Youth from simultaneously belonging to a religious youth movement. Religious education was not permitted in the Hitler Youth and by 1939, clergymen teachers had been removed from virtually all state schools. Hitler sometimes allowed pressure to be placed on German parents to remove children from religious classes to be given ideological instruction in its place, while in elite Nazi schools, Christian prayers were replaced with Teutonic rituals and sun-worship. By 1939 all Catholic denominational schools had been disbanded or converted to public facilities. The propaganda of the Nazi party actively promoted Hitler as a saviour of Christianity and Nazi propaganda supported the German Christians in their formation of a single national church that could be controlled and manipulated. Hitler on mysticism and occultism According to Bullock, as an adolescent in Vienna, Hitler read widely, including books on occultism, hypnotism, and astrology. However, his interest in these subjects was fleeting, and there is no evidence that he ever subscribed to any of these schools of thought. Bullock found "no evidence to support the once popular belief that Hitler resorted to astrology" and wrote that Hitler ridiculed those like Himmler in his own party who wanted to re-establish pagan mythology, and Hess who believed in Astrology. Albert Speer wrote that Hitler had a negative view toward Himmler and Rosenberg's mystical notions. Speer quotes Hitler as having said of Himmler's attempt to mythologize the SS: In a speech he made in Nuremberg on September 6, 1938, Hitler said that Christian mysticism creates dark forces, that there are no places of worship - but places of national anthem - that there are no cult places, there are national places, besides, he rejected mysticism and occultism: Corroborating to the Nuremberg speech on September 6, 1938, about Hitler's view on Church's architecture which according to Hitler was inspired from Christian mysticism, which produced "dark forces", we find a similar thought, Hitler expressed to Goebbels, about the "gloomy Cathedral", where he prefers the ancient Greek and Roman temples which according to Hiler was "light, airy" in contrast to the "gloomy" Gothic Cathedrals. It is