Christianity." He believed the stab-in-the-back myth, which held that the German Army hadn't been defeated in battle but by being undermined by defeatist elements on the home front and, as did most Germans, considered the Treaty of Versailles unjust. Throughout the Weimar years he remained on the right of German politics. He often criticized the Centre Party for being too left-wing. Galen openly supported the Protestant Paul von Hindenburg against the Centre Party's candidate, Wilhelm Marx, in the presidential elections of 1925. Galen was known as a fierce anti-Communist (he later supported the battle by the Axis powers on the Eastern Front against Joseph Stalin's regime in the Soviet Union). His views on Communism were largely formed as a consequence of the Stalinization and relentless persecution of Christians within the Soviet Union after 1918, during which virtually all Catholic bishops were either killed or forced underground. He also expressed his opposition to modernity in his 1932 publication, Die Pest des Laizismus und ihre Erscheinungsformen (The Plague of Laicism and its Forms of Expression). Münster Galen became the pastor of St Lambert's Church, Münster, where he initially upset some parishioners with his political conservatism. At a meeting in Münster of the Association of Catholic Academicians in June 1933, Galen spoke against those scholars who had criticised the Nazi government and called for "a just and objective evaluation of [Hitler's] new political movement". In 1933, Galen was elected bishop of Münster, although he was not the popular candidate to succeed the previous bishop, Johannes Poggenburg, and was selected only after other candidates had declined to be nominated and despite a protest from the Papal Nuncio Cesare Orsenigo, who reported that Galen was bossy and paternalistic in his public utterances. In October 1933, Galen wrote approvingly of the Nazis' efforts to "eradicate" the "open propaganda for godlessness and immorality". Galen was named bishop by Pope Pius XI on 5 September 1933. On 28 October, he was consecrated as bishop in Münster's cathedral by Cardinal Karl Joseph Schulte. He chose as his motto "Nec laudibus nec timore", a phrase from the liturgy used for a bishop's consecration when the consecrating bishop prays that the new bishop be overcome "neither by flattery nor by fear". As bishop, Galen campaigned against the totalitarian approach of the Nazi Party in national education, appealing to parents to insist on Catholic teaching in schools. Citing the recently agreed-upon Reichskonkordat