Catholic Church and Nazi Germany

Two Popes served through the rise and fall of Nazi Germany - Pius XI (1922–39) and Pius XII (1939–58). In January 1933, the nominally functioning Weimar Republic and its aging President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler as Chancellor and Franz von Papen Vice-Chancellor of the Reichstag. In July 1933, the Vatican reached a Concordat (treaty) with Germany. This treaty remains in force, but was routinely violated by Hitler, particularly, after the Nazis achieved a totalitarian dictatorship following the August 1934 death of Paul von Hindenburg. Hitler and Nazi ideology were, in many respects, hostile to Catholicism. Nazi philosopher Alfred Rosenberg identified Catholicism as an enemy of Nazism. He and Hitler advocated "Positive Christianity" derived from the, "Deutsche Christens" (an apostate sect), which attempted to align Protestants with an Aryan theology that denounced the Jewishness of the Old Testament and invented an "Aryan Jesus" as a transition to a new Nazi faith. Vatican objections to Nazi ideology and "Positive Christianity" were outlined in Pius XI's 1937 Mit brennender Sorge encyclical.

Polish prisoners toast their liberation from Dachau. The Nazi persecution of the Catholic Church in Poland saw around 3,000 clergy killed - 787 died in Dachau.

The Vatican diplomat posted to Nazi Germany, Apostolic Nuncio Cesare Orsenigo with Von Ribbentrop and Hitler, in January 1939.

Pius XII, a cautious diplomat, was pope for the duration of World War Two, and pursued a policy of Vatican neutrality, while employing diplomacy to aid the victims of the conflict. His 1939 Summi Pontificatus encyclical responded to the Nazi/Soviet invasion of Poland. It expressed dismay at the outbreak of war, reiterated Catholic teaching against racism, called for compassion for victims of the war and expressed hope for the resurrection of Poland. Pius instructed local hierarchies to assess and respond to their local situations under the Nazis, and local Catholic responses to the Nazis varied accordingly. Although his personal interventions are credited with saving many Jews from the Holocaust, his overall caution became a focus of scholarly and theological debate and some controversy.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Catholic leaders made a number of forthright criticisms of Nazism. Hitler courted Catholic support during his negotiations for power, and was often cautious in his approach to the German Churches, but following the Nazi takeover, the overall Nazi policy of Gleichschaltung sought to establish control and coordination of all aspects of German society and the Catholic Church in Germany faced constant harassment and persecutions. The Concordat restricted the Church to ecclesiastical affairs, the Catholic Centre Party - solely a political entity - was dissolved, while critics of the government faced harsh punishment. The German Catholic Church was divided on how to respond to Hitler, with bishops protesting policies like Nazi eugenics and Nazi euthanasia, but not speaking against other policies. Joachim Fest, wrote that, while the Church was initially quite hostile, and bishops denounced Nazi "false doctrines", opposition weakened after the Concordat: "Cardinal Bertram developed an ineffectual protest system [-] Resistance remained largely a matter of individual conscience. In general they [both churches i.e. Catholic and Protestant] attempted merely to assert their own rights and only rarely issued pastoral letters or declarations indicating any fundamental objection to Nazi ideology." The Church was brutally suppressed in Poland under Nazi occupation, and thousands of clergy and religious from across the Nazi Empire died in concentration camps - but nationalist Nazi puppet regimes in Slovakia and Croatia sought to associate themselves with the Church. The actions of the church in relation to Nazism were complex and remain a matter of scholarly debate and investigation.

Background

Main article: Roman Catholicism in Germany

Although the majority of Germans proclaimed to be Christian either Protestant [67%] or Catholic [33%] in 1933, Adolf Hitler and senior lieutenants including Martin Bormann and Alfred Rosenberg were hostile to Christianity, and ultimately intended to eradicate the churches under a Nazi future.

As the Holy See had done during the pontificate of Benedict XV (1914 - 1922) during World War One, the Vatican under, Pius XII (Feb. 1939 - Sept. 1958), pursued a policy of diplomatic neutrality through World War Two - Pius XII, like Benedict XV, described the position as "impartiality", rather than "neutrality. The Catholic Church sought to preserve its position in Germany by signing a Concordat in 1933. Despite various Nazi violations of the Concordat, the Church was among the very few institutions in Germany which retained a measure of independence from the state. The Vatican issued two encyclicals opposing the policies of Mussolini and Hitler: Non Abbiamo Bisogno in 1931 and Mit Brennender Sorge in 1937, respectively. Mit Brennender Sorge was written partially in response to the Nuremburg Laws and included criticisms of Nazism and racism. The Pope advocated for peace and spoke against racism, selfish nationalism, atrocities in Poland, the bombardment of civilians and other issues.

Pius XII's relations with the Axis and Allied forces may have been impartial, and his policies tinged with uncompromising anti-communism, but early in the war he shared intelligence with the Allies about the German Resistance and planned invasion of the Low Countries and lobbied Mussolini to stay neutral. With Poland overrun, but France and the Low Countries yet to be attacked, Pius continued to hope for a negotiated peace to prevent the spread of the conflict. The similarly minded US President Franklin D. Roosevelt re-established American diplomatic relations with the Vatican after a seventy year hiatus by dispatching Myron C. Taylor as his personal representative. Pius warmly welcomed Roosevelt's envoy. Taylor urged Pius XII to explicitly condemn Nazi atrocities. Instead, Pius XII spoke against the "evils of modern warfare", but did not go further. This may have been so for fear of Nazi retaliation experienced previously with the issuance of the encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge in 1937. Pius XII allowed national hierarchies to assess and respond to their local situations and utilized Vatican Radio to promote aid to thousands of war refugees, and saved further thousands of lives by instructing the church to provide discreet aid to Jews. To confidantes, Hitler scorned Pius XII as a blackmailer on his back, whom he believed constricted his ally Mussolini and leaked confidential German correspondence to the world. For opposition from the Church he vowed "retribution to the last farthing" after the conclusion of the war.

Around one third of Germans were Catholic when Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party began to take control of Germany in 1933. Through this period, the Catholic Center Party had competed against the Nazis in German elections until it self-dissolved to comply with the Reichskoncordat of July 1933, and Catholic leaders had been among the major opponents of Nazism. By 1930, the Nazis and the German Communists controlled over 50% of the German Parliament. Both (the Nazi and Communist Parties) opposed parliamentary democracy leading Germany into an extended constitutional crisis. On February 27, 1933, just prior to the March 1933 federal elections, the Reichstag building was destroyed by arson. The crime was blamed on the Communist - though this remains unclear. Some suggest this was staged by the Nazi Party. Nevertheless, Hitler convinced the President, Hindenburg, to support legislation called the Reichstag Fire Decree that greatly restricted civil liberties, such as, freedom of assembly. This led to the exclusion of the Communist Party from the Reichstag at the behest of Hitler just before the elections were to take place. Following the German federal election, March 1933 no single party secured a majority. Through a mixture of negotiation, and intimidation via Hitler's paramilitary (private army) known as the Sturmabteilung threatening civil war, the Nazi Party convinced the Catholic Centre Party, led by Ludwig Kaas, and all other parties in the Reichstag, save the Social Democrats, to vote with the Nazis for the Enabling Act on 24 March 1933. The Act granted Hitler "temporary" limited "dictatorial' powers. By the end of July 1933, Hitler had maneuvered to ban all other political parties in Germany, save the Centre Party's self-dissolution, and commenced a wide program of persecutions.

The Reichskonkordat was signed on July 20, 1933, and is still in force. Under the Concordat, the church was promised autonomy of ecclesiastical institutions and their religious activities but had to cease political activism (political Catholicism). Article 16 required the Bishops of Germany to take an oath of loyalty to the German Reich i.e., the constitutional government of Germany. Hitler welcomed the agreement, but it was the first of many international treaties he would violate, and proceeded to repress the activities of the Church along with all other non-Nazi institutions.

Though both Catholics and Protestants were subject to oppression under the Nazis, and notable figures notwithstanding, it has been argued (by some) that they largely conformed to the regime's demands Joachim Fest, a noted biographer of Adolf Hitler, wrote that; "At first the Church was quite hostile and its bishops energetically denounced the "false doctrines" of the Nazis. Its opposition weakened considerably in the following years [after the Concordat] [-] Cardinal Bertram developed an ineffectual protest system [-] Resistance remained largely a matter of individual conscience. In general they [both churches] attempted merely to assert their own rights and only rarely issued pastoral letters or declarations indicating any fundamental objection to Nazi ideology."

Hitler, had contempt for the central teachings of Catholicism, but was impressed by its organisational power and position. The official Nazi philosopher Alfred Rosenberg strongly opposed Christianity. With German conservatives - notably the army officer corps - holding the churches in high regard however, in office, Hitler restrained the full force of his anti-clericalism out of political considerations. The Nazis nevertheless arrested thousands of members of the German Catholic Centre Party, as well as Catholic clergymen and closed Catholic schools and institutions. The German bishops were divided on how to respond to Hitler: Cardinal Bertram, favoured a policy of concessions, whilst Bishop Preysing of Berlin called for more concerted opposition, including public protests. The Bishop of Munster led condemnations of euthanasia in Nazi Germany.

Though Catholics fought on both sides through the war, the Catholic Church and many of its members protested Nazi ideology and policy in various ways. Among the many thousands of Catholic religious sent to the Nazi death camps were Saints Edith Stein and Maximillian Kolbe, who died at Auchwitz. The Polish church suffered mass persecution with around 3000 clergy killed. Around 0.5% of German clerics are believed to have been so-called "brown priests" (Nazi collaborators) - around 138 of 42,000. Some 447 German priests were sent to the Priest Barracks of Dachau Concentration Camp. In 2000 the Catholic Church acknowledged its use of some forced labour mainly in hospitals, homes and monastery gardens in the Nazi era and Cardinal Karl Lehmann stated, "It should not be concealed that the Catholic Church was blind for too long to the fate and suffering of men, women and children from the whole of Europe who were carted off to Germany as forced laborers".

Political Catholicism

Main article: Political Catholicism

In the 1930s, the Catholic Church and the Catholic Centre Party, were major social and political forces in Protestant dominated Germany. The Centre Party was created in response to Otto von Bismark's Kulturkampf policies (1871–78) to reduce the social and political influence of the Catholic Church in Germany. The Centre Party was challenged and weakened by the subsequent rise of socialism, communism and National Socialism. The Bavarian region, the Rhineland and Westphalia as well as parts in south-west Germany were predominantly Catholic, and the church had previously enjoyed a degree of privilege there. North Germany was heavily Protestant, and Catholics had suffered some discrimination. The Kulturkampf failed in its attempt to eliminate Catholic institutions in Germany, or at least their strong connections outside of Germany. The revolution of 1918 and the Weimar constitution of 1919 had thoroughly reformed the former relationship between state and churches.

Through the period of the Weimar Republic, (1919-33/34) the Catholic aligned Catholic Centre Party and the Social Democrat Party had maintained the centre ground against the rise of extremist parties of the left and right. With the collapse of Germany's post-World War One Economic recovery, and the stain of defeat laying heavily on the German psyche, political and economic extremism ultimately won out against the centre, through a combination of shrewd politics and terror tactics. By law, the German churches (Protestant and Catholic) received tax supported subsidies based on church census data, therefore, were dependent on the state support causing them to be vulnerable to Government influence and the political atmosphere of Germany.

With this background, Catholic officials pursued a concordat strongly guaranteeing the church's freedoms. In 1929, Eugenio Pacelli's brother, Francesco, had successfully negotiated a concordat with Mussolini as part of an agreement known as the Lateran Treaty. A precondition of the these Italian negotiations involved the dissolution of the parliamentary Catholic Italian People's Party. The Holy See represented in Germany by Nuncio Eugenio Pacelli, the future Pope Pius XII, made unsuccessful attempts to obtain an agreement with the federal government of Germany for such a treaty. Between 1930 and 1933 he attempted to initiate negotiations with representatives of successive German governments with limited success. He secured several state level concordats, however, a federal treaty proved elusive . Catholic politicians from the Centre Party repeatedly pushed for a concordat with the new German Republic. In February 1930 Eugenio Pacelli became the Vatican's Secretary of State, and thus responsible for the Church's foreign policy, and in this position continued to work towards this 'great goal' of securing a treaty with the federal government.

Catholic opposition to Communism

The Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow during its 1931 demolition by the Communist regime.

The Catholic Church held grave fears as to the consequences of Communist conquest or revolution in Europe. German Christians were alarmed by the aggressive spread of militant atheism in Russia. The ambivalent views held by 19th century German sociologist Karl Marx on religion had pitted Communist movements against religious organisations like the Catholic Church. In Bavaria in 1919, Communists briefly seized power. Papal Nuncio Eugenio Pacelli (later Pope Pius XII) was harassed, threatened at gunpoint and his residence sprayed with machine gun fire by revolutionaries.

Militant Marxist‒Leninist atheism took hold in Russia following the 1917 Communist Revolution, which was followed by a systematic effort to eradicate Christianity: with lootings, lynchings, executions, the banning of church rites and orchestrated mockery of priests, popes and rabbis. Seminaries were closed and teaching the faith to the young was criminalized. In 1922, the Bolsheviks arrested the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church. The Soviet leaders Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin energetically pursued the persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church through the 1920s and 1930s. Lenin wrote:

Every religious idea, every idea of God... is unutterable vileness...of the most dangerous kind, 'contagion' of the most abominable kind. Millions of sins, filthy deeds, acts of violence and physical contagions... are less dangerous than the subtle, spiritual idea of God decked out in the smartest 'ideological' costumes.

— Vladimir Lenin.

Hitler was able to win some support from some German Christians in the belief that he would be a bulwark against Communism.

Rise of Nazism

See also: Adolf Hitler's rise to power

With Germany deep in financial crisis, the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazis) and German Communist parties made great gains at the 1930 German Election. Both sides were pledged to eliminate German democracy, but between them had obtained over 50% of seats in the Reichstag, requiring the Social Democrats and Catholic Centre Party to consider negotiations with non-democrats. The Centre Party had been an important player in Weimar democracy, aligned with both the Social Democrats and the leftist German Democratic Party against right wing parties like the Nazis.

At the July 1932 German Elections, the Nazis became the largest party in the Reichstag, though their vote declined at the November 1932 Election. The conservative President Paul von Hindenburg appointed the Catholic monarchist Franz von Papen Chancellor in June 1932, and sacked him in December. Papen returned to office in Coalition with the Nazis in January 1933 - falsely believing he could tame Hitler by stacking the Cabinet with fellow non-Nazi nationalists. Initially, Papen did speak out against some Nazi excesses, and only narrowly escaped death in the night of the long knives, whereafter he ceased to criticize the regime.

Hitler was appointed chancellor by the President of the Weimar Republic, Paul von Hindenburg, on January 30, 1933. Still requiring the vote of the Centre Party and conservatives in the Reichstag to obtain the powers he desired, in an address to the Reichstag on March 23 he said that Positive Christianity belief was the "unshakeable foundation of the moral and ethical life of our people". On March 24, 1933, with Nazi paramilitary (private army) encircling the building, and threatening civil war if his demands weren't met, Hitler was granted (quasi) dictatorial powers "temporarily" by the Reichstag, through the Enabling Act. He would not achieve full dictatorial power until the death of the President, Paul von Hindenburg, on August 2, 1934 Nazi Germany.

Michael von Faulhaber - archbishop , archdiocese Munich-Freising 1917-1952 - To Father Alois Wurm who asked why the Church did not condemn racist persecution in straightforward terms Faulhaber responded that the German episcopacy was "concerned with questions about Catholic schools, organizations and sterilization which are more important for the Church in Germany than the Jews - the Jews can help themselves - why should the Jews expect help from the Church?"

Hitler promised not to threaten institutions like the churches (Catholic and Protestant) if granted the powers, He promised to honour the previously negotiated concordats of the Holy See with individual German states, to maintain government support for church-related schools, uphold religious education in the public schools and promised he would secure a good working relationship with the papacy. After Hitler's speech he was given temporary and quasi dictatorial powers through an Enabling Act. It was passed by all parties in the Reichstag except the Social Democrats and Communists (whose deputies had already been arrested). The Enabling Act of 1933 did not infringe the on the powers of the President, Paul von Hindenburg, who remained the Commander and Chief of the military and the sole principle of foreign affairs and treaties after the Enabling Act became law and until his death in August 1934.

Hitler had obtained the votes of the Centre Party, led by Prelate Ludwig Kaas, by intimidation and offering oral guarantees of the party's continued existence and the autonomy of the Church and her educational institutions. Chairman Kaas advocated supporting the bill in parliament in return for government guarantees. These mainly included respecting the Church's liberty, its involvement in the fields of culture, schools and education, the concordats previously signed by German states, and the continued existence of the Centre Party itself. Kaas was aware of the doubtful nature of such guarantees, but when the Centre Party assembled on 23 March to decide on their vote, Kaas advised his fellow party members to support the bill, given the "precarious state of the party". He described his reasons as follows: "On the one hand we must preserve our soul, but on the other hand a rejection of the Enabling Act would result in unpleasant consequences for faction and party. What is left is only to guard us against the worst. Were a two-thirds majority not obtained, the government's plans would be carried through by other means. The President has acquiesced in the Enabling Act. From the DNVP no attempt of relieving the situation is to be expected."

A number of Centre Party parliamentarians opposed the chairman's course, among these former Chancellors Heinrich Brüning, Joseph Wirth and former minister Adam Stegerwald. Brüning called the Act the "most monstrous resolution ever demanded of a parliament", and was sceptical about Kaas' efforts: "The party has difficult years ahead, no matter how it would decide. Sureties for the government fulfilling its promises have not been given. Without a doubt, the future of the Centre Party is in danger and once it is destroyed it cannot be revived again." The Catholic Centre Party party was disbanded and thousands of its members rounded up. Several of the leaders of the Party were murdered in the 1934 Night of the Long Knives. The bishops' decision opened the way for a Reichskonkordat between the Holy See and Hitler's government. According to the historian Alan Bullock, in Weimar Germany, the Catholic Centre Party had been "notoriously a Party whose first concern was to make accommodation with any government in power in order to secure the protection of its particular interests", and, having obtained promises of non-interference in religion, joined conservatives in the Reichstag vote giving Hitler dictatorial powers.

Catholic opposition to rise of Nazi Party

During the 1920s and 1930s, Catholic leaders made a number of forthright attacks on Nazi ideology and the main Christian opposition to Nazism in Germany had come from the Catholic Church. Before Hitler came to power, German bishops warned Catholics against Nazi racism and some dioceses banned membership of the Nazi Party. The Catholic press condemned Nazism. John Cornwell wrote of the early Nazi period that:

Into the early 1930s the German Centre Party, the German Catholic bishops, and the Catholic media had been mainly solid in their rejection of National Socialism. They denied Nazis the sacraments and church burials, and Catholic journalists excoriated National Socialism daily in Germany's 400 Catholic newspapers. The hierarchy instructed priests to combat National Socialism at a local level whenever it attacked Christianity.

Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber was appalled by the totalitarianism, neopaganism, and racism of the Nazi movement and, as Archbishop of Munich and Freising, contributed to the failure of the Nazi Munich Putsch of 1923. At a basic philosophical level, Catholic theology clashed in various respects with key tenets of Nazism. The Nazi philosopher Alfred Rosenberg's Myth of the Twentieth Century outlines some of these clashes from the Nazi point of view and Pope Pius XI's Mit brennender Sorge encyclical (1937) and the unpublished encyclical, Humani generis unitas ("The Unity of the Human Race"), addressed various clashes from the Catholic point of view.

Catholicism's internationalism, was at odds with Nazism's uber-nationalism. The position of reverence given by the Church to the Jewish patriarchs and Old Testament contradicted Nazism's racial ideology which classed Jews as sub-human. The Nazi glorification of war and the "survival of the fittest" clashed sharply with the Beatitudes of Jesus that "blessed are the peacemakers". While Catholicism preached of the primacy of conscience, Hitler denounced conscience as a contemptible "Jewish invention". Thus Hitler intended ultimately to eradicate the Christian Churches. Throughout the Nazi period Catholic institutions continued to preach the Beatitudes - in cultural opposition to Nazism.

At the beginning of 1931, the Cologne Bishops Conference condemned National Socialism, and were followed by the bishops of Paderborn and Freiburg. With ongoing hostility to the Nazis from the Catholic press and the Catholic Center Party, few German Catholics voted Nazi in the elections preceding the Nazi takeover in 1933. Nevertheless, in Catholicism, as in other German churches, there were clergy and lay people who openly supported the Nazi regime.

Nazi opposition to Catholicism

To Alfred Rosenberg, the official Nazi Philosopher, Catholicism was one of Nazism's chief enemies.

Unlike some Fascist movements of the era, Nazi ideology was hostile to Christianity and clashed with Christian beliefs in many respects. Nazism saw Christian ideals of meekness and conscience as obstacles to the violent instincts required to defeat other races. Aggressive anti-Church radicals like Joseph Goebbels and Martin Bormann saw the conflict with the Churches as a priority concern, and anti-church and anti-clerical sentiments were strong among grassroots party activists. The attitude of the Nazi party membership to the Catholic Church ranged from tolerance to near total renunciation. The Nazi party had decidedly pagan elements. According to biographer Alan Bullock, once the war was over, Hitler wanted to root out and destroy the influence of the churches:.

In Hitler's eyes, Christianity was a religion fit only for slaves; he detested its ethics in particular. Its teaching, he declared, was a rebellion against the natural law of selection by struggle and the survival of the fittest.

— Extract from Hitler: a Study in Tyranny, by Alan Bullock

Bullock wrote that that Hitler "believed neither in God nor in conscience". Raised Catholic, he retained some regard for the organisational power of Catholicism, but had utter contempt for its central teachings, which he said, if taken to their conclusion, "would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure". Hitler ultimately believed "one is either a Christian or a German" - to be both was impossible. However, important German conservative elements, such as the officer corps, opposed Nazi persecution of the churches and, in office, Hitler restrained his anticlerical instincts out of political considerations.

The Nazi propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, among the most aggressive anti-Church Nazis, wrote that there was "an insoluble opposition between the Christian and a heroic-German world view".

Martin Bormann, Hitler's "deputy" from 1941, also saw Nazism and Christianity as "incompatible" and had a particular loathing for the Semitic origins of Christianity.

Joseph Goebbels, the Minister for Propaganda, was among the most aggressive anti-Church Nazi radicals. Goebbels led the Nazi persecution of the German clergy and, as the war progressed, on the "Church Question", he wrote "after the war it has to be generally solved... There is, namely, an insoluble opposition between the Christian and a heroic-German world view".

Hitler's chosen deputy and private secretary, Martin Bormann, was a rigid guardian of National Socialist orthodoxy and saw Christianity and Nazism as "incompatible" (mainly because of its Jewish origins), as did the official Nazi philosopher, Alfred Rosenberg. In his "Myth of the Twentieth Century" (1930), Rosenberg wrote that the main enemies of the Germans were the "Russian Tartars" and "Semites" - with "Semites" including Christians, especially the Catholic Church. Rosenberg and Bormann actively collaborated in the Nazi program to eliminate Church influence - a program which included the abolition of religious services in schools; the confiscation of religious property; ciculating anti-religious material to soldiers; and the closing of theological faculties.

John Cornwell wrote that Hitler was continually preoccupied by "the fact that German Catholics, politically united by the Centre Party, had defeated Bismarck's Kulturkampf -- the "culture struggle" against the Catholic Church in the 1870s". Hitler was convinced that his movement could succeed only if political Catholicism and its democratic networks were eliminated. Hitler and Mussolini were anticlerical, but both were wary of beginning their Kulturkampfs prematurely - preferring to postpone such a clash, while dealing with other enemies. One position is that the Church and fascism could never have a lasting connection because both are a "holistic Weltanschauung" claiming the whole of the person.

The 1920 Nazi Party Platform had promised to support freedom of religions with the caveat: "insofar as they do not jeopardize the state's existence or conflict with the moral sentiments of the Germanic race". It further proposed a definition of a "positive Christianity" which could combat the "Jewish-materialistic spirit". But German Catholics met the Nazi takeover with apprehension, as leading clergymen had been warning against Nazism. A threatening, though initially mainly sporadic persecution of the Catholic Church in Germany commenced. However, amidst a backlash of the failures of the Weimar Republic, widespread anti-Semitism, strong anti-Communist sentiment, surging nationalism, and ongoing resentment at the terms of the Treaty of Versailles and Germany's loss of World War One - many German Christians welcomed or accepted the arrival of the Nazis in power in 1933.

Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg

Alfred Rosenberg was the original draftsman and spokesman of the Nazi Party program and official ideologist of the Nazi Party. He was a rabid anti-Semite and anti-Catholic who described Catholicism as a promoter of "prodigious, conscious and unconscious falsifications". In his "Myth of the Twentieth Century" (1930), Rosenberg wrote that Germans were entitled to dominate Europe and that their enemies were Russian Tartars and Semites. Semites included Jews, Latins, and Christianity - especially the Catholic Church. Rosenberg proposed to replace traditional Christianity with the neo-pagan "myth of the blood"

We now realize that the central supreme values of the Roman and the Protestant Churches, being a negative Christianity, do not respond to our soul, that they hinder the organic powers of the peoples determined by their Nordic race, that they must give way to them, that they will have to be remodeled to conform to a Germanic Christendom. Therein lies the meaning of the present religious search.

— The Myth of the 20th Century, Alfred Rosenberg, 1930.

On January 24, 1934 Hitler appointed Alfred Rosenberg as the state's official philosopher. Church officials were perturbed - the indication was that Hitler was officially espousing the anti-Jewish, anti-Christian, and neopagan ideas presented in Rosenberg's Myth of the Twentieth Century.

Pius XI and Cardinal Pacelli directed the Holy Office to place Rosenberg's Myth of the Twentieth Century on the Index of Forbidden books on February 7, 1934. Cologne's Cardinal Schulte met with Hitler, and protested at Rosenberg's role in the government. Ignored by Hitler, Schulte decided that the church needed to respond and appointed the Reverend Josef Teusch to direct a defence against the Nazi anti-Christian propaganda. Teusch eventually produced 20 booklets against Nazism - Catechism Truths alone sold seven milion copies. Later in 1934 Studien zum Mythus des XX, a pamphlet of essays attacking Rosenberg's Myth of the Twentieth Century, was released, in Bishop Clemens von Galen's name. "Studien was a defence of the church. A concern for the preservation of Catholicism had apparently eclipsed a commitment to the protection of human rights in general."

Nazis take power

In January 1933, Hitler and the Nazi Party began the Machtergreifung seizure of power in Germany. Hitler was appointed chancellor of a coalition government of the NSDAP-DNVP Party by the President of the Weimar Republic Paul von Hindenburg. The Nazis began to suspend civil liberties and eliminate political opposition. Within a few months, a one-party dictatorship had been installed in Germany. German Catholics met the Nazi takeover with apprehension, as leading clergymen had been warning against Nazism for years. A threatening, though initially mainly sporadic persecution of the Catholic Church in Germany commenced.

Hitler moved quickly to eliminate Political Catholicism. In February 1933, Hermann Goering banned Catholic newspapers in Cologne, on the basis that political Catholicism would not be tolerated (after protests, the ban was lifted) and the SA began breaking up meetings of the Centre Party and Christian trade unions. By June, thousands of Centre Party members would be incarcerated in concentration camps. In this threatening atmosphere, Hitler publicly called for a reorganization of Church and State relations of both Catholic and Protestant Churches. Two thousand functionaries of the Bavarian People's Party were rounded up by police in late June 1933, and it, along with the national Catholic Centre Party, ceased to exist in early July.

Reichskonkordat

Cardinal Pacelli (seated, center) at the signing of the Reichskonkordat on 20 July 1933 in Rome with (from left to right): German prelate Ludwig Kaas, German Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen, Secretary of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs Giuseppe Pizzardo, Alfredo Ottaviani, and Reich minister Rudolf Buttmann

Kershaw wrote that the Vatican was anxious to reach agreement with the new government, despite "continuing molestation of Catholic clergy, and other outrages committed by Nazi radicals against the Church and its organisations". The non-Nazi Vice Chancellor, Franz von Papen was chosen by the new government to negotiate for a Reich Concordat with the Vatican.

The bishops announced on April 6 that negotiations toward a concordat between the Holy See and Germany would soon begin in Rome. On April 10, Francis Stratmann O.P., who was a chaplain to students in Berlin wrote to Cardinal Faulhaber, "The souls of the well-intentioned are deflated by the National Socialist seizure of power - the bishops' authority is weakened among countless Catholics and non-Catholics because of their quasi-approbation of the National Socialist movement." Some Catholic critics of the Nazis soon chose to emigrate - among them Waldemar Gurian, Dietrich von Hildebrand, and Hans A. Reinhold. Hitler began enacting laws restricting movement of funds (making it impossible for German Catholics to send money to missionaries, for instance), restricting religious institutions and education, and mandating attendance at Hitler Youth functions (held on Sunday mornings to interfere with Church attendance).

On April 8 Vice Chancellor Papen, went to Rome. Von Papen, a Catholic nobleman, had formerly been a member of the right-wing of the Catholic Centre Party. On behalf of Cardinal Pacelli, Ludwig Kaas, the out-going chairman of the Centre Party, negotiated the draft of the terms with Papen. Throughout the years of the Weimar Republic, Protestants, Socialists, and the National Socialists had been a staunch opponents of such an agreement. The Centre Party's chairman Kaas had arrived in Rome shortly before Papen; because of his expertise in Church-State relations, he was authorized by Cardinal Pacelli to negotiate terms with Papen, but pressure by the German government forced him to withdraw from visibly participating in the negotiations. He met the representative of the German Bishops’ Conference, Bishop Wilhelm Berning of Osnabrück, -who held favourable views of Hitler- on April 26. At the meeting, Hitler declared to Bishop Berning:

I have been attacked because of my handling of the Jewish question. The Catholic Church considered the Jews pestilent for fifteen hundred years, put them in ghettos, etc., because it recognized the Jews for what they were. In the epoch of liberalism the danger was no longer recognized. I am moving back toward the time in which a fifteen-hundred-year-long tradition was implemented. I do not set race over religion, but I recognize the representatives of this race as pestilent for the state and for the Church, and perhaps I am thereby doing Christianity a great service by pushing them out of schools and public functions.

The notes of the meeting do not record any response by Bishop Berning. In the opinion of the Opus Dei priest of Jewish descent Martin Rhonheimer; "This is hardly surprising: for a Catholic Bishop in 1933 there was really nothing terribly objectionable in this historically correct reminder. And on this occasion, as always, Hitler was concealing his true intentions." The issue of the concordat prolonged Kaas' stay in Rome, leaving the party without a chairman, and on 5 May Kaas finally resigned from his post. The party now elected Heinrich Brüning as chairman. At that time, the Centre party was subject to increasing pressure in the wake of the process of Gleichschaltung and after all the other parties had dissolved, or were banned by the NSDAP, and the Centre Party dissolved itself on 6 July.

The bishops saw a draft of the Reich Concordat on May 30, 1933 when they assembled for a joint meeting of the Fulda bishops conference, (led by Breslau's Cardinal Bertram), and the Bavarian bishops' conference, (whose president was Munich's Michael von Faulhaber). Bishop Wilhelm Berning of Osnabruck, and Archbishop Conrad Grober of Freiburg presented the document to the bishops. The strongest critics of the concordat were Cologne's Cardinal Karl Schulte and Eichstatt's Bishop Konrad von Preysing who pointed out that since the Enabling Act had established a quasi dictatorship, the church lacked legal recourse if Hitler decided to disregard the concordat. Notwithsatnding, the bishops approved the draft and delegated Grober, a friend of Cardinal Pacelli and Monsignor Kaas, to present the episcopacy's concerns to Pacelli and Kaas. On June 3, the bishops issued a statement, drafted by Grober, that announced their support for the concordat.

Though the Vatican tried to hold back the exclusion of Catholic clergy and organizations from politics during the negotiations, which had been one of Hitler's foremost reasons for seeking the Concordat, Cardinal Pacelli had acquiesced in the party's dissolution but was nonetheless dismayed that it occurred before the negotiations had been concluded. The day after, the government issued a law banning the founding of new political parties, thus turning the NSDAP into the party of the German state. On 14 July 1933 the Weimar government accepted the Concordat, which was signed a week later by President Hindenburg and the Vice Chancellor Papen. Shortly before signing the Reichskonkordat on 20 July, Germany signed similar agreements with the major Protestant churches in Germany. The concordat was finally signed, by Pacelli for the Vatican and von Papen for Germany, on 20 July. The Reichskonkordat was ratified on September 10, 1933. Article 16 required bishops to make an oath of loyalty to the state. Article 31 acknowledged that while the church would continue to sponsor charitable organisations, it would not support political organisations or political causes. Article 31 was supposed to be supplemented by a list of protected catholic agencies but this list was never agreed upon. Article 32 excluded clergy and the members of religious orders from political activities. Members of the clergy could join or remain in the NSDAP however without transgressing church discipline, - the ordinance of the Holy See forbidding priests to be members of a political party was never issued - and the Nazis declared that "the movement sustaining the state cannot be equated with the political parties of the parliamentary multi-party state in the sense of Article 32."

Effects of the concordat

Most historians consider the Reichskonkordat an important step toward the international acceptance of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime. Guenter Lewy, political scientist and author of The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany, wrote:

There is general agreement that the Concordat increased substantially the prestige of Hitler's regime around the world. As Cardinal Faulhaber put it in a sermon delivered in 1937: "At a time when the heads of the major nations in the world faced the new Germany with cool reserve and considerable suspicion, the Catholic Church, the greatest moral power on earth, through the Concordat expressed its confidence in the new German government. This was a deed of immeasurable significance for the reputation of the new government abroad.

The Catholic Church was not alone in signing treaties with the Nazi regime at this point. The concordat was preceded by the Four-Power Pact Hitler had signed in June 1933. After the signing of the treaty on 14 July, the Cabinet minutes record Hitler as saying that the concordat had created an atmosphere of confidence that would be "especially significant in the struggle against international Jewry." Controversial author John Cornwell offered this assessment of the dissolution of the Catholic Centre Party:

The fact that the party voluntarily disbanded itself, rather than go down fighting, had a profound psychological effect, depriving Germany of the last democratic focus of potential noncompliance and resistance: In the political vacuum created by its surrender, Catholics in the millions joined the Nazi Party, believing that it had the support of the Pope. The German bishops capitulated to Pacelli's policy of centralization, and German Catholic democrats found themselves politically leaderless.

— John Cornwell

In the Reichskonkordat, the German government achieved a complete proscription of all clerical interference in the political field (articles 16 and 32). It also ensured the bishops' loyalty to the state by an oath and required all priests to be Germans and subject to German superiors. Restrictions were also placed on the Catholic organizations. In a two-page article in the L'Osservatore Romano on 26 July and 27 July, Cardinal Pacelli said that the purpose of the Reichskonkordat was:"not only the official recognition (by the Reich) of the legislation of the Church (its Code of Canon Law), but the adoption of many provisions of this legislation and the protection of all Church legislation." Pacelli told an English representative that the Holy See had only made the agreement to preserve the Catholic Church in Germany; he also expressed his aversion to anti-Semitism.

Violations

According to John Jay Hughes, church leaders were realistic about the Concordat’s supposed protections. Cardinal Faulhaber is reported to have said: "With the concordat we are hanged, without the concordat we are hanged, drawn and quartered." In Rome the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Pacelli (later Pius XII), told the British minister to the Holy See that he had signed the treaty with a pistol at his head. Hitler was sure to violate the agreement, Pacelli said — adding with gallows humor that he would probably not violate all its provisions at once.

When the Nazi government violated the concordat (in particular article 31), German bishops and the Holy See protested against these violations. Between September 1933 and March 1937 Pacelli issued over seventy notes and memoranda protesting such violations. When Nazi violations of the Reichskonkordat escalated to include physical violence, Pope Pius XI issued the 1937 encyclical Mit brennender Sorge. quotation "Violence had been used against a Catholic leader as early as June 1934, in the 'Night of the Long Knives' ... by the end of 1936 physical violence was being used openly and blatantly against the Catholic Church.

Impact of the Spanish Civil War on Nazi-Catholic relations

The Spanish Civil War (1936–39) saw Nationalists (aided by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany) and Republicans (aided by the Soviet Union, Mexico - as well as International Brigades of volunteers, most of whom were under the command of the Comintern). The Republican president, Manuel Azaña, was anticlerical, while the Nationlist Generalissimo Francisco Franco, established a longstanding Fascist dictatorship which restored some privileges to the Church. According to Hitler's Table Talk, Hitler believed that Franco's accommodation of the church was an error: "one makes a great mistake if one thinks that one can make a collaborator of the Church by accepting a compromise. The whole international outlook and political interest of the Catholic Church in Spain render inevitable conflict between the Church and Franco regime".

The Nazis portrayed the war as a contest between civilization and Bolshevism. According to historian, Beth Griech-Polelle, many church leaders "implicitly embraced the idea that behind the Republican forces stood a vast Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy intent on destroying Christian civilization." Joseph Goebbels' Ministry of Propaganda served as the main source of German domestic coverage of the war. Goebbels, like Hitler, frequently mentioned the so-called link between jewishness and communism. Goebbels instructed the press to call the Republican side simply Bolsheviks - and not to mention German military involvement. Bolshevism was pathological criminal nonsense, demonstrably thought up by Jews. In Salamanca, Willi Kohn, German propaganda attaché, played up the war as a crusade to sweep away Judeo-Bolshevism.

Against this backdrop, in August 1936, the German bishops met for their annual conference at Fulda. The bishops produced a joint pastoral letter regarding the Spanish Civil War: "Therefore, German unity should not be sacrificed to religious antagonism, quarrels, contempt, and struggles. Rather our national power of resistance must be increased and strengthened so that not only may Europe be freed from Bolshevism by us, but also that the whole civilized world may be indebted to us." Nuncio Cesare Orsenigo arranged for Cardinal Faulhaber to have a private meeting with Hitler. On November 4, 1936, over three hours Hitler told Faulhaber that religion was critical for the state, that his goal was to protect the German people from congenitally afflicted criminals such as now wreak havoc in Spain. Faulhaber replied that the Church would "not refuse the state the right to keep these pests away from the national community within the framework of moral law." Kershaw cites the meeting as an example of Hitler's ability to "pull the wool over the eyes even of hardened critics" for "Faulhaber - a man of sharp acumen, who had often courageously criticized the Nazi attacks on the Catholic Church - went away convinced that Hitler was deeply religious".

On November 18, Faulhaber met with leading members of the German hierarchy of cardinals to ask them to remind parishioners of the errors of communism outlined in Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum. On November 19, Pius XI announced that communism had moved to the head of the list of "errors" and that a clear statement was needed. On November 25 Faulhaber told the Bavarian bishops that he had promised Hitler the bishops would issue a new pastoral letter in which they condemned "Bolshevism which represents the greatest danger for the peace of Europe and the Christian civilization of our country". In addition, he stated, the pastoral letter "will once again affirm our loyalty and positive attitude, demanded by the Fourth Commandment, toward todays form of government and the Fuhrer. "

On December 24, 1936 the German joint hierarchy ordered its priests to read the pastoral letter, entitled On the Defense against Bolshevism, from all their pulpits on January 7, 1937. The letter included the statement : "the fateful hour has come for our nation and for the Christian culture of the western world - the Fuhrer and Chancellor Adolf Hitler saw the march of Bolshevism from afar and turned his mind and energies towards averting this enormous danger from the German people and the whole western world. The German bishops consider it their duty to do their utmost to support the leader of the Reich with every available means in this defense." Hitler's promise to Faulhaber, to clear up small problems between the Catholic Church and the Nazi state, never did materialize. Faulhaber, Galen, and Pius XI, continued to oppose Communism throughout their tenure as anxieties reached a highpoint in the 1930's with what the Vatican termed the 'red triangle', formed by the USSR, Republican Spain and revolutionary Mexico. They followed a series of encyclicals - Bona sana (1920), Miserentissimus redemtor (1928), Caritate Christi compusli (1932) and most importantly Divini redemptoris (1937) - all of which condemned communism.

Deteriorating relationship with the Nazi regime

Anti-Nazi sentiment grew in Catholic circles as the Nazi government increased its repressive measures against their activities. Appearing before 250,000 pilgrims at Lourdes in April 1935, Cardinal Pacelli said:

[The Nazis] are in reality only miserable plagiarists who dress up old errors with new tinsel. It does not make any difference whether they flock to the banners of the social revolution, whether they are guided by a false conception of the world and of life, or whether they are possessed by the superstition of a race and blood cult.

In 1936, Archbishop Cesare Orsenigo, Papal Nuncio to Germany, asked Cardinal Pacelli, then Vatican Secretary of State, for instructions regarding an invitation from Hitler to attend a Nazi Party meeting in Nuremberg, along with the entire diplomatic corps. Pacelli replied, ”The Holy Father thinks it is preferable that your Excellency abstain, taking a few days’ vacation.” In 1937, Orsenigo was invited along with the diplomatic corps to a reception for Hitler’s birthday. Orsenigo again asked the Vatican if he should attend. Pacelli’s reply was, “The Holy Father thinks not. Also because of the position of this Embassy, the Holy Father believes it is preferable in the present situation if your Excellency abstains from taking part in manifestations of homage toward the Lord Chancellor." During Hitler’s visit to Rome in 1938, Pius XI and Pacelli avoided meeting with him by leaving Rome a month early for the papal summer residence of Castel Gandolfo. The Vatican was closed, and the priests and religious brothers and sisters left in Rome were told not to participate in the festivities and celebrations surrounding Hitler’s Visit. On the Feast of the Holy Cross, Pius XI said from Castel Gandolfo, “It saddens me to think that today in Rome the cross that is worshipped is not the Cross of our Saviour.”

Persecution of German Catholics

File:Survivors liberation dachau.jpg

Surviving prisoners at Dachau concentration camp wave on liberation day. Of the 2700 ministers who were ultimately imprisoned there during World War II, over 2600 were Roman Catholic priests, 2000 were ultimately put to death.

German Catholics met the Nazi takeover with apprehension, as leading clergymen had been warning against Nazism for years. A threatening, though initially mainly sporadic persecution of the Catholic Church in Germany commenced. "By the latter part of the decade of the Thirties", wrote Phayer, "church officials were well aware that the ultimate aim of Hitler and other Nazis was the total elimination of Catholicism and of the Christian religion. Since the overwhelming majority of Germans were either Catholic or Protestant this goal had to be a long-term rather than a short-term Nazi objective".

Hitler moved quickly to eliminate Political Catholicism. The Nazis arrested thousands of members of the German Catholic Centre Party, as well as Catholic clergymen and closed Catholic schools and institutions. 2000 functionaries of the Bavarian People's Party were rounded up by police in late June 1933, and it, along with the national Catholic Centre Party, ceased to exist in early July. Vice Chancellor Papen meanwhile negotiated a Reich Concordat with the Vatican, which prohibited clergy from participating in politics. Kershaw wrote that the Vatican was anxious to reach agreement with the new government, despite "continuing molestation of Catholic clergy, and other outrages committed by Nazi radicals against the Church and its organisations".

In Hitler's bloody night of the long knives purge of 1934, Erich Klausener, the head of Catholic Action, was assassinated by the Gestapo. The Nazi Government closed down Catholic publications, dissolved the Catholic Youth League and charged thousands of priests, nuns and lay leaders on trumped up charges. The Gestapo violated the sanctity of the confessional to obtain information. Church kindergartens were closed, crucifixes were removed from schools, the Catholic press was closed down and Catholic welfare programs were restricted on the basis they assisted the "racially unfit". Parents were coerced into removing their children from Catholic schools. In Bavaria, teaching positions formerly allotted to nuns were awarded to secular teachers and denominational schools transformed into "Community schools".

Once Hitler had obtained full power, he 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.

1935-6 was the height of the "immorality" trials against priests, monks, lay-brothers and nuns. In the United States, protests were organised in response to the sham trials, including a June 1936, petition signed by 48 clergymen, including rabbis and Protestant pastors: "We lodge a solemn protest against the almost unique brutality of the attacks launched by the German government charging Catholic clergy with gross immorality... in the hope that the ultimate suppression of all Jewish and Christian beliefs by the totalitarian state can be effected."

Intimidation of clergy was widespread. Cardinal Faulhaber was shot at. Cardinal Innitzer had his Vienna residence ransacked in October 1938 and Bishop Sproll of Rottenburg was jostled and his home vandalised. In 1937, the New York Times reported that Christmas would see "several thousand Catholic clergymen in prison." Propaganda satirized the clergy, including Anderl Kern's play The Last Peasant.

Many German clergy were sent to the concentration camps for voicing opposition to the Nazi regime, or in some regions simply because of their faith; these included the pastor of Berlin's Catholic Cathedral Bernhard Lichtenberg and the seminarian Karl Leisner. Many Catholic laypeople also paid for their opposition with their life, including the mostly Catholic members of the Munich resistance group White Rose around Hans and Sophie Scholl.

In 1941 the Nazi authorities decreed the dissolution of all monasteries and abbeys in the German Reich, many of them effectively being occupied and secularized by the Allgemeine SS under Himmler. However, on July 30, 1941 the Aktion Klostersturm (Operation Monastery) was put to an end by a decree of Hitler, who feared the increasing protests by the Catholic part of German population might result in passive rebellions and thereby harm the Nazi war effort at the eastern front. Over 300 monasteries and other institutions were expropriated by the SS.

Catholic opposition inside Germany: 1933-1945

In the Nazi police state, the ability of the Church and its members to oppose Nazi policy was severely restricted. Following intimidation and thousands of arrests, the Bavarian People's Party and the Catholic Centre Party had ceased to exist by early July. Amidst widespread harassment of the clergy and Catholic organisations, the new government negotiated the Concordat with the Vatican, which prohibited clergy from participating in politics. In 1935, when Protestant pastors read a protest statement from the pulpits of the small but growing Confessing churches, the Nazi authorities briefly arrested over 700 pastors. In 1937, the Gestapo confiscated copies of anti-Nazi papal encyclical Mit brennender Sorge from the Catholic diocesan offices throughout Germany.

Bishop von Galen of Munster. A conservative nationalist, who believed in the Dolchstosslegende theory, he became a critic of some policies of the regime, protesting such aspects as the lawlessness of the Gestapo, the confiscations of church properties and euthanasia.

The position of open Catholic opposition to the Nazis decreased following the Concordat and Hitler's emergence as dictator of Germany. Following the Treaty, Catholics were free to join the Nazi Party, which many did. The Nazis arrested thousands of members of the German Catholic Centre Party, as well as Catholic clergymen and closed Catholic schools and institutions.

Alan Bullock wrote that the Churches and the army were the only two institutions to retain some independence in Nazi Germany and "among the most courageous demonstrations of opposition during the war were the sermons preached by the Catholic Bishop of Munster and the Protestant Pastor, Dr Niemoller..." but that "Neither the Catholic Church nor the Evangelical Church, however, as institutions, felt it possible to take up an attitude of open opposition to the regime". Bishop von Galen of Munster was among the German conservatives who had criticised Weimar Germany, and initially hoped the Nazi government might restore German prestige. According to Griech-Polelle, he believed the Dolchstosslegende explained the German army's defeat in 1918. But Galen quickly became disenchanted with the anti-Catholicism and racism of the Hitler regime, and emerged as an outspoken critic of Nazi racism and totalitarianism. From Easter 1934, he began publicly criticizing the Nazi government. He complained directly to Hitler of breaches of the Concordat and his protest against the removal of crucifixes from classrooms was followed by public demonstrations. In 1941, he denounced the lawlessness of the Gestapo, the confiscations of church properties and euthanasia in Nazi Germany. His defiant sermons included this 1941 denunciation of the Gestapo:

Many times, and again quite recently, we have seen the Gestapo arresting blameless and highly respected German men and women without the judgment of any court or any opportunity for defense, depriving them of their freedom, taking them away from their homes interning them somewhere. In recent weeks even two members of my closest council, the chapter of our cathedral, have been suddenly seized from their homes by the Gestapo, removed from Munster and banished to distant places. -- Bishop August von Galen, homily, 1941

— Bishop August von Galen, homily, 1941

Documents suggest the Nazis intended to hang von Galen at the end of the war. His speeches angered Hitler, who, according to Hitler's Table Talk, told confidantes in 1942: "The fact that I remain silent in public over Church affairs is not in the least misunderstood by the sly foxes of the Catholic Church, and I am quite sure that a man like Bishop von Galen knows full well that after the war I shall extract retribution to the last farthing".

Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber had been a longstanding critic of Nazism. Following the Nazi takeover, he delivered three Advent sermons in 1933 that condemned the anti-Semitic propaganda of the Nazis. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, "Throughout his sermons until the collapse (1945) of the Third Reich, Faulhaber vigorously criticized Nazism, despite governmental opposition. Attempts on his life were made in 1934 and in 1938. He worked with American occupation forces after the war, and he received the West German Republic’s highest award, the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit. Erich Klausener, the President of Catholic Action in Germany, delivered a speech to the Catholic Congress in June 1934, criticizing the regime. He was shot dead in his office on the Kristalnacht of June 30. His entire staff was sent to concentration camps. Klausener had assisted former Catholic Centre Party member Franz von Papen (by now Hitler's non-Nazi Vice Chancellor) draft his 17 June Marburg speech which had denounced Nazi terror and the suppression of the free press and the church. Papen's staff were murdered in the purge, but he himself escaped execution:

The 1937 papal encyclical Mit brennender Sorge was part drafted by the German Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber, a critic of Nazism. The encyclical accused the Nazi government of "systematic hostility leveled at the Church", and criticised a range of Nazi actions and beliefs - notably racism. Despite the efforts of the Gestapo to block its distribution, the church distributed thousands to the parishes of Germany. Hundreds were arrested for handing out copies, and Goebells increased anti-Catholic propaganda including a show trial of 170 Franciscans at Koblenz.

Following the outbreak of war, conscientious objectors were executed for treason, as with the Blessed Franz Jagerstatter. The Kreisau Circle was one of the few clandestine German opposition groups operating inside Nazi Germany, among its number were 2 Jesuit priests. The Bavarian Catholic Count Claus Von Stauffenberg, was moved to oppose the regime in part by its oppression of the Church. In 1944, he led the 20 July plot (Operation Valkyrie) to assassinate Hitler . The Church clashed with the Nazi regime over the implementation of a programme of euthanasia in Nazi Germany in the name of "racial hygiene". Prominent clergymen, including the Bishop of Munster, Clemens August Graf von Galen and Cardinal Bertram vocally denounced the policy.

"Euthanasia"

Hitler was in favour of killing those whom he judged to be "unworthy of life"From 1939, the regime began its program of euthanasia in Nazi Germany, which included the killing of children, and under which those deemed "racially unfit" were to be "euthanased". The mentally handicapped were taken from hospitals and homes and taken to gas chambers to be killed. August von Galen, the Bishop of Munster accused the government of breaking the law and publicly condemned the policy - saying that it was the duty of all Christians to oppose the taking of human life even it meant losing their own. Fr Bernhard Lichtenberg protested the policy to the Nazis chief medical officer. The regime took the program underground.

Mit brennender Sorge

Main article: Mit brennender Sorge

The Catholic Church officially condemned the Nazi theory of racism in Germany in 1937 with the Encyclical "Mit Brennender Sorge", signed by Pope Pius XI. Smuggled into Germany to avoid prior censorship and read from the pulpits of all German Catholic churches, it condemned Nazi ideology as "insane and arrogant". It denounced the Nazi myth of "blood and soil", decried neopaganism of Nazism, its war of annihilation against the Church, and even described the Führer himself as a 'mad prophet possessed of repulsive arrogance.' Although there is some difference of opinion as to the impact of the document, it is generally recognized as the "first ... official public document to criticize Nazism".

Impact and consequences

According to Eamon Duffy "The impact of the encyclical was immense, and it dispelled at once all suspicion of a Fascist Pope." quotation "In a triumphant security operation, the encyclical was smuggled into Germany, locally printed, and read from Catholic pulpits on Palm Sunday 1937. Mit Brennender Sorge ('With Burning Anxiety') denounced both specific government actions against the Church in breach of the concordat and Nazi racial theory more generally. There was a striking and deliberate emphasis on the permanent validity of the Jewish scriptures, and the Pope denounced the 'idolatrous cult' which replaced belief in the true God with a 'national religion' and the 'myth of race and blood'. He contrasted this perverted ideology with the teaching of the Church in which there was a home 'for all peoples and all nations'. The impact of the encyclical was immense, and it dispelled at once all suspicion of a Fascist Pope. While the world was still reacting, however, Pius issued five days later another encyclical, Divini Redemptoris denouncing Communism, declaring its principles 'intrinsically hostile to religion in any form whatever', detailing the attacks on the Church which had followed the establishment of Communist regimes in Russia, Mexico and Spain, and calling for the implementation of Catholic social teaching to offset both Communism and 'amoral liberalism'. The language of Divini Redemptoris was stronger than that of Mit Brennender Sorge, its condemnation of Communism even more absolute than the attack on Nazism. The difference in tone undoubtedly reflected the Pope's own loathing of Communism as the ultimate enemy. The last year of his life, however, left no one any doubt of his total repudiation of the right-wing tyrannies in Germany and, despite his instinctive sympathy with some aspects of Fascism, increasingly in Italy also. His speeches and conversations were blunt, filled with phrases like 'stupid racialism', 'barbaric Hitlerism'."

The "infuriated" Nazis increased their persecution of Catholics and the Church by initiating a "long series" of persecution of clergy and other measures. Gerald Fogarty asserts that "in the end, the encyclical had little positive effect, and if anything only exacerbated the crisis." The American ambassador reported that it “had helped the Catholic Church in Germany very little but on the contrary has provoked the Nazi state...to continue its oblique assault upon Catholic institutions.”

Nazi retaliation

Frank J. Coppa asserts that the encyclical was viewed by the Nazis as "a call to battle against the Reich" and that Hitler was furious and "vowed revenge against the Church". Thomas Bokenkotter writes that, "the Nazis were infuriated, and in retaliation closed and sealed all the presses that had printed it and took numerous vindictive measures against the Church, including staging a long series of immorality trials of the Catholic clergy."

The German police confiscated as many copies as they could and called it “high treason.” The Gestapo confiscated 12 printing presses that had printed the encyclical for distribution and the editors were arrested. According to Owen Chadwick, the "infuriated" Nazis increased their persecution of Catholics and the Church. According to John Vidmar, Nazi reprisals against the Church in Germany followed thereafter, including "staged prosecutions of monks for homosexuality, with the maximum of publicity". Shirer reports that, "[d]uring the next years, thousands of Catholic priests, nuns and lay leaders were arrested, many of them on trumped-up charges of 'immorality' or 'smuggling foreign currency'."

The "Conspiracy of Silence"

While numerous German Catholics, who participated in the secret printing and distribution of Mit brennender Sorge, went to jail and concentration camps, the Western democracies remained silent, which Pope Pius XI labeled bitterly as "a conspiracy of silence".

German Catholics and the Holocaust

Catholic bishops in Nazi Germany differed in their responses to the rise of Nazi Germany, World War II, and the Holocaust. In relations with the Nazi regime, figures like Cardinal Bertram, favoured a policy of concessions, while figures like Bishop Preysing of Berlin called for more concerted opposition. According to Dr Harry Schnitker, Kevin Spicer's 2007 book Hitler's Priests found that around 0.5% of German priests (138 of 42,000) might be considered "brown priests" (Nazis). One such priest was Karl Eschweiler, an opponent of the Weimar Republic, who was suspended from priestly duties by Cardinal Pacelli (the future Pope Pius XII) for writing Nazi pamphlets in support of eugenics.

Cardinal Adolf Bertram, ex officio head of the German church from 1920-1945

Archbishop Konrad Gröber of Freiburg was known as the “Brown Bishop” because he was such an enthusiastic supporter of the Nazis. In 1933, he became a “sponsoring member” of the SS. In 1943, Grober expressed the opinion that bishops should remain loyal to the "beloved folk and Fatherland", despite abuses of the Reichskonkordat. After the war, however, he claimed to have been such an opponent of the Nazis that they had planned to crucify him on the door for the Freiburg Cathedral. Bishop Wilhlem Berning of Osnabrück sat with the Protestant Deutsche Christen Reichsbishop in the Prussian State Council from 1933 to 1945, a clear signal of support for the Nazi regime. Cardinal Adolf Bertram ex officio head of the German episcopate also had some affinity for the Nazis. In 1933, for example, he refused to intervene on behalf of Jewish merchants who were the targets of Nazi boycotts, saying that they were a group “which has no very close bond with the church.” Bertram sent Hitler birthday greetings in 1939 in the name of all German Catholic bishops, an act that angered bishop Konrad von Preysing. Bertram was the leading advocate of accommodation as well as the leader of the German church, a combination that reigned in other would-be opponents of Nazism. Bishop Buchberger of Regensburg called Nazi racism directed at Jews “justified self-defense” in the face of “overly powerful Jewish capital.” Bishop Hilfrich of Limburg said that the true Christian religion “made its way not from the Jews but in spite of them.” Bishops von Preysing and Frings were the most public in the statements against genocide.

According to Phayer, "no other German bishops spoke as pointedly as Preysing and Frings" against the regime. In 1935, Pope Pius XI appointed Konrad von Preysing as Bishop of Berlin, the German capital. Von Preysing was a noted critic of Nazism. Like all other German bishops, including the nationalist Cardinal Bertram, Preysing openly denounced Nazi eugenics. Von Preysing's cathedral administrator, Bernard Lichtenberg, a priest recognised as Righteous among the Nations, was provost of the Cathedral of St Hedwig during Kristallnacht. After this notorious pogrom, Lichtenberg began to close each evening mass with a prayer for "the Jews and the other poor prisoners in the concentration camps" and protesting other Nazi policies. Sentenced to Dacau concentration Camp, he died en route. The two men established the Hilfswerke beim Bischöflichen Ordinariat Berlin as an aid organization and through this assisted Jews. Preysing also assisted in drafting the anti-Nazi encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge and, together with Cologne’s Archbishop, Josef Frings, sought to have the German Bishops conference speak out against the Nazi death camps. Preysing even infrequently attended meetings of the Kreisau Circle German resistance movement. The Kreisau Circle was one of the few clandestine German opposition groups operating inside Nazi Germany, among its number were 2 Jesuit priests.

Memorial stone to Cardinal Faulhaber in the Munich Frauenkirche. Faulhaber was a prominent opponent of Nazism.

Cardinal Faulhaber became a prominent opponent of Nazism. He delivered three Advent sermons in 1933 that condemned the anti-Semitic propaganda of the Nazis. Entitled Judaism, Christianity, and Germany, the sermons affirmed the Jewish origins of the Christian religion, the continuity of the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, and the importance of the Christian tradition to Germany.

Bishop von Galen of Munster, a conservative German nationalist, quickly became disenchanted with the Nazi government for its racism and anti-Catholicism and emerged as a strong critic of the regime. He denounced the lawlessness of the Gestapo.

In East Prussia, the Bishop of Ermland, Maximilian Kaller denounced Nazi eugenics and racism, pursued a policy of ethnic equality for his German, Polish and Lithuanian flock, and protected his Polish clergy and laypeople. Threatened by the Nazis, he applied for a transfer to be chaplain to a concentration camp. His request was denied by Cesare Orsenigo, a Papal Nuncio with some Fascist sympathies.

During the war, the Fulda Conference of Bishops met annually in Fulda. The issue of whether the bishops should speak out against the persecution of the Jews was debated at a 1942 meeting in Fulda. The consensus was to "give up heroic action in favor of small successes". A draft letter proposed by Margarete Sommer was rejected, because it was viewed as a violation of the Reichskonkordat to speak out on issues not directly related to the church.

Knowledge of the Holocaust

According to historians David Bankier and Hans Mommsen a thorough knowledge of the Holocaust was well within the reach of the German bishops, if they wanted to find out. According to historian Michael Phayer, "a number of bishops did want to know, and they succeeded very early on in discovering what their government was doing to the Jews in occupied Poland". Wilhelm Berning, for example, knew about the systematic nature of the Holocaust as early as February 1942, only one month after the Wannsee Conference. Most German Church historians believe that the church leaders knew of the Holocaust by the end of 1942, knowing more than any other church leaders outside the Vatican.

US Envoy Myron C. Taylor passed a US Government memorandum to Pius XII on 26 September 1942, outlining intelligence received from the Jewish Agency for Palestine which said that Jews from across the Nazi Empire were being systematically "butchered". Taylor asked if the Vatican might have any information which might tend to "confirm the reports", and if so, what the Pope might be able to do to influence public opinion against the "barbarities". Cardinal Maglione handed Harold Tittman a response to a letter from Taylor regarding the mistreatment of Jews on 10 October. The note thanked Washington for passing on the intelligence, and confirmed that reports of severe measures against the Jews had reached the Vatican from other sources, though it had not been possible to "verify their accuracy". Nevertheless, "every opportunity is being taken by the Holy See, however, to mitigate the suffering of these unfortunate people". The Pope raised race murders in his 1942 Christmas Radio Address. However, after the war, some bishops, including Adolf Bertram and Conrad Grober claimed that they had not been aware of the extent and details of the Holocaust, and were unsure of the veracity of the information that was brought to their attention.

Papal Condemnations of anti-Semitism

Pius XI asserted to a group of pilgrims that antisemitism is incompatible with Christianity:

"Mark well that in the Catholic Mass, Abraham is our Patriarch and forefather. Anti-Semitism is incompatible with the lofty thought which that fact expresses. It is a movement with which we Christians can have nothing to do. No, no, I say to you it is impossible for a Christian to take part in anti-Semitism. It is inadmissible. Through Christ and in Christ we are the spiritual progeny of Abraham. Spiritually, we are all Semites.

Catholic Church in the Nazi Empire

Czechoslovakia

The Catholic Church had had a strong institutional presence in Czechoslovakia through the years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. To Slovaks it was associated with their own nationalism, but to Czechs it had been associated with the domination of Austria's Germanic Hapsburgs. The Nazis first split the Sudetenland Germans from the rest of the country in 1938 and then invaded the remainder in 1939. The Czech church was active in resistance, 109 Czechoslovak clergy were sent to Dachau alone (mostly of Czech ethnicity). The Slovak Church also had resistors, but had a number of active collaborators and Nazi sympathizers - led by the war criminal Mgr. Josef Tiso and the nationalist Slovak People's Party, who instigated a persecution of Jews, sparking a rift with the Vatican and the Papal Nuncio in Budapest, Mgr. Angelo Rotta (who sheltered Jews) and Apostolic Delegate in Bratislava, Mgr. Burzio.

Monsignor Jozef Tiso the priest-president of the Nazi puppet state of Slovakia, meeting Hitler

Slovakia existed briefly from 1939–45 as a Nazi puppet state, formed by Hitler when Germany annexed the western half of federated Czechoslovakia. The Slovak People's Party, founded and dominated by Catholic clergymen, used antisemitism to win favour and antisemitism characterized the Catholicism of the Slovak people in the interwar period. An American diplomat, George F.Kennan witnessed the antisemitic terror practised by the party's vigilante wing, the Hlinka Guard. The guard discontinued participation in deportation after the Vatican representative in Slovakia denounced them. After the 1944 Slovak National Uprising, the SS took over the guard, and used it for its own purposes. With the People's Party ruling Slovakia, Monsignor Jozef Tiso, the president, promulgated the first antisemitic legislation in 1939 and 1940.

The Vatican, pleased to see a new Catholic state in eastern Europe was less pleased with the Codex Judaicum, (antisemitic laws) passed in September 1941, based largely on the Nuremberg Laws, by which the legal rights of Jews were ended. According to the historian, Michael Phayer, the Vatican's concern was for the rights of Jewish converts. The Slovakian bishops told Tiso that , through persecution of people on the basis of their race, he acted against the principles of religion and the Vatican demoted Tiso.

The fascist government of Slovakia , under its priest-president Tiso and prime minister Bela Tuka, a daily communicant, had power over 90000 Jews. Pius XII was especially concerned to save the 20000 of them who had converted to Christianity. According to Raul Hilberg, Catholic Slovakia, wanting to serve its two masters, Berlin and Rome, gave up its Mosaic Jews- a journey by train to Auschwitz required one hour - to please Hitler, while holding back its 20000 Christian Jews to please the Holy See. Although the Vatican did not react to reports in October 1941 of mass shootings of Jews, it did react in March 1942. It had been alerted by Giuseppe Burzio, the Vatican's chargé d'affaires in Slovakia, of deportations to Poland -"equivalent to condemning a great part of them to death" in Burzio's estimation. The protests, not made in public, were ineffectual and 'resettlements' continued in the summer and autumn of 1942 - 57,000 by the end of 1942. In 1943, the Vatican ordered the episcopate to denounce the anti-Jewish policies of the Slovak government.

Poland

Main article: Nazi persecution of the Catholic Church in Poland

The Polish Franciscan St Maximillian Kolbe died at Auchwitz.

The invasion of predominantly Catholic Poland by Nazi Germany in 1939 ignited the Second World War. Hitler's objective of creating Lebensraum, living space for the German master race implied the end of Catholic Poland. 'Primitive Poles', in the Nazi ideological terms, would be a workforce living on starvation wages and the elite would be liquidated or imprisoned. Kerhsaw wrote that, in Hitler's scheme for the Germanization of Eastern Europe, "There would, he made clear, be no place in this utopia for the Christian Churches". Poland was divided into two parts by the Nazis-one part annexed outright by the Reich and the second part, called the General Government set aside for dispossessed Poles and as a ghetto area for Jews. In the regions of Poland annexed to Greater Germany, the Nazis set about systematically dismantling the Church - arresting its leaders, exiling its clergymen, closing its churches, monasteries and convents. Many clergymen were murdered.

The Polish Church faced persecution under the Nazi occupation. Bishop Sapieha (pictured), the senior cleric in Poland, openly opposed Nazi terror and asked Pius XII to condemn Nazi attrocities.

Nazi ideology viewed ethnic "Poles" - the mainly Catholic ethnic majority of Poland - as "sub-humans". Following their 1939 invasion of West Poland, the Nazis instigated a policy of genocide against Poland's Jewish minority and of murdering or suppressing the ethnic Polish elites: including religious leaders. In 1940, Hitler proclaimed: "Poles may have only one master – a German. Two masters cannot exist side by side, and this is why all members of the Polish intelligentsia must be killed." In September 1939 Security Police Chief Heydrich and General Eduard Wagner agreed upon a "cleanup once and for all of Jews, intelligentsia, clergy, nobility". Clergy were targeted both for their resistance activity and their cultural importance. Between 1939 and 1945, an estimated 3,000 members (18%) of the Polish clergy, were murdered; of these, 1,992 died in concentration camps (the Encyclopedia Britannica cites 1811 Polish priests died in Nazi concentration camps).

During the 1939 invasion, special death squads of SS and police arrested or executed those considered capable of resisting the occupation: including professionals, clergymen and government officials. The following summer, the A-B Aktion (Extraordinary Pacification Operation) further round up of several thousand Polish intelligentsia by the SS saw many priests shot in the General Government sector.

In response to the Nazi/Soviet invasion, Pope Pius XII's first encyclical Summi Pontificatus wrote of an "hour of darkness" and the deaths of "countless human beings, even noncombatants". "Dear Poland", he said, deserved "the generous and brotherly sympathy of the whole world, while it awaits... the hour of a resurrection in harmony with the principles of justice and true peace". In April 1940, the Holy See advised the United States government that all its efforts to deliver humanitarian aid to the "stricken people of Poland" had been blocked by the Germans and that it was therefore seeking to channel assistance through indirect routes like the American "Commission for Polish Relief".

Memorial to Pope John Paul II, in Krakow, Poland. As a young man, John Paul II had participated in the Polish cultural resistance to the Nazi occupation of Poland.

Historically, the church had been a leading force in Polish nationalism against foreign domination, thus the Nazis targeted clergy, monks and nuns in their terror campaigns. In the annexed regions the majority of priests were either murdered, imprisoned or deported. Seminaries and convents were closed. Eighty per cent of the Catholic clergy and five bishops of Warthegau were sent to concentration camps in 1939; 108 of them are regarded as blessed martyrs. Adam Sapieha, Archbishop of Lvov, became the defacto head of the Polish church following the invasion and openly criticised Nazi terror. A principle figures of the Polish Resistance, Sapieha opened a clandestine seminary in an act of cultural resistance. Among the seminarians was Karol Wojtyla, the future Pope John Paul II.

According to Norman Davies, the Nazi terror was "much fiercer and more protracted in Poland than anywhere in Europe." Phayer wrote of two phases of Nazi policy in Poland - before Stalingrad, when Poles were suppressed, and after the battles of Stalingrad and Kursk, when Germany sought to use the church to bring the Polish people into the war effort against Russia. When Cardinal Hlond was captured in 1943 the Germans promised to free him if he would seek to inspire the Polish people against the common enemy, Bolshevist Russia. Around 1.5 million Poles were transported to work as forced labor in Germany. Treated as racially inferior, they had to wear purple P's sewn in to their clothing - sexual relations with Poles was punishable by death. Beyond the genocide of the Polish Jews, it is estimated that 1.8 to 1.9 million Polish civilians were killed during the German Occupation and the war.

Poland had its own tradition of anti-Semitism, but Polish literature asserts that hundreds of clergymen and nuns were involved in aiding Poland's Jews during the war, though precise numbers are difficult to confirm. Karol Niemira, the Bishop of Pinsk, co-operated with the underground maintaining ties with the Jewish ghetto and sheltered Jews in the Archbishop's residence. In late 1942 the Zegota (codename for the Council to Aid Jews - Rada Pomocy Żydom) was established in co-operation with church groups. Instigated by the writer Zofia Kossak-Szczucka and Catholic democrat activists, it saved thousands, often placing Jewish children in church orphanages and convents. Oscar Schindler, a German Catholic businessman came to Poland, initially to profit from the German invasion. He went on to save many Jews, as dramatised in the film Schindler's List. Among the most revered Polish martyrs was the Franciscan, Saint Maximillian Kolbe, who died at Auschwitz-Birkenau, having offered his own life to save a fellow prisoner who had been condemned to death. During the War he provided shelter to refugees, including 2,000 Jews whom he hid in his friary in Niepokalanów. Under the Papacy of the Polish born Pope John Paul II, the Polish Church asked for forgiveness for failings during the war, saying that, while noble efforts had been made to save Jews during World War II, there had also been indifference or enmity among Polish Catholics.

From 1939-1941 there was a determined appeal for papal intercession in Poland, but the Holy See argued that intervention would only worsen the situation. It was not a popular position. According to Phayer, Pius did not condemn the German invasion and when the French urged him to condemn Germany's aggression he declined "out of consideration for repercussions on Roman Catholics of the Reich." August Hlond and the General of the Jesuits Wladimir Ledochowski met with Pius on September 30, 1940 and were left disappointed when he did not condemn Russia and Germany for destroying Poland. The Vatican did use its press and radio to tell the world in January 1940 of terrorization of the Polish people, a reference to the Warthegau area Poles and the Poles of the Polish corridor who had been dispossessed and driven into the General Government region. A further broadcast in November lacked the detail of January communications. "Thereafter", wrote Phayer, "Vatican radio fell silent regarding Poland and the decimation of its populace." In November 1941 Bishop Sapieha requested explicitly that Pius XII speak out against Nazi atrocities. According to Lucas, the pope's "silence" led some Polish Catholics to conclude that the Vatican was unconcerned and there was even talk of cutting off allegiance to Rome. Pius alluded vaguely to atrocities at Easter 1941 and Cardinal Secretry of State Luigi Maglione explained to the Polish ambassador to the Holy See that Pius spoke in veiled words, but had Poland in mind. The policy was intended to spare Poles from greater atrocities. Word came later from Poland objecting to this, but it would be used again, during the Holocaust itself.

Low Countries

Saint Edith Stein, was arrested at a Netherlands convent and gassed at Auchwitz. The Dutch church suffered serious reprisals following a protest by Dutch bishops against the abduction of Jews.

During the Nazi Occupation of the Netherlands, on July 11, 1942, the Dutch bishops, joined all Christian denominations in sending a letter to the Nazi General Friedrich Christiansen in protest against the treatment of Jews. The letter was read in all Catholic churches against German opposition:

Ours is a time of great tribulations of which two are foremost: the sad destiny of the Jews and the plight of those deported for forced labor. … All of us must be aware of the terrible sufferings which both of them have to undergo, due to no guilt of their own. We have learned with deep pain of the new dispositions which impose upon innocent Jewish men, women and children the deportation into foreign lands. … The incredible suffering which these measures cause to more than 10,000 people is in absolute opposition to the divine precepts of justice and charity. … Let us pray to God and for the intercession of Mary … that he may lend his strength to the people of Israel, so severely tried in anguish and persecution

— Protest of the Dutch Bishops, 1942

The Nazis retaliated with a series of repressive measures. Deportations of Jews only increased - including Catholic converts. Among the Catholics of Holland abducted in this way was Saint Edith Stein who died at Auchwitz. Another Dutch Catholic dissident was the Carmelite priest and philosopher, the Blessed Titus Brandsma. Brandsma was a journalist and a founder of Holland's Catholic Univeristy, who publicly campaigned against Nazism from the mid 1930s. Chosen by the Dutch Bishops as spokesmen in the defence of freedom of the press, he was arrested by the Nazi authorities in January 1942. He was later transferred to Dachau Concentration camp, where he was the subject of Nazi medical experiments and was issued with a lethal injection on 26 July 1942.

France

Charles de Gaulle's Free French chose the Catholic symbolism of Joan of Arc's standard, the red Cross of Lorraine as the symbol of their cause.

In France, Marshal Philippe Pétain, the leader of Nazi aligned Vichy France had no religious convictions, but courted Catholic support. His great rival, and leader of the Free French, General Charles de Gaulle was a devout Catholic. De Gaulle's Free French chose the Catholic symbolism of Saint Joan of Arc's standard, the Cross of Lorraine as the symbol of Free France. The French bishops were initially cautious in speaking out against mistreatment of Jews. In 1997, the French church issued a Declaration of Repentance for this approach. Following the 1944 Liberation of France, General de Gaulle demanded the replacement of Papal Nuncio Mgr Valerio Valeri for having been too close to Petain.

Soon after Pacelli became pope, Vichy France put forward antisemitic decrees. Vichy's ambassador to the Vatican, Léon Bérard, reported to his government that having spoken to competent authorities the Holy See had no insurmountable difficulties with this and did not intend to become involved.

During the War, Cardinal Tisserant, called on the Vatican to forcefully condemn Nazism by name. Following the Velodrom d’Hiver roundup of Jews of July 15, 1942, the Northern assembly of cardinals and archbishops sent a protest letter to Petain, and following round ups of Jews in Vichy France in 1942, several Bishops - Archboshop Saliège of Toulouse, Bishop Théas of Montauban, Bishop Delay of Marseille, Cardinal Gerlier (Archbishop of Lyon), Monseigneur Vanstenberghe of Bayonne and Monseigneur Moussaron of Albi - denounced the roundups from the pulpit and through parish distributions, in defiance of the Vichy regime. The move sparked greater Catholic resistance and thousands of priests, nuns and lay people acted to assist French Jews. Catholics protected large numbers in convents, boarding schools, presbyteries and families. According to the New York Times, "The defiant attitude of those churchmen after 1942 contributed to the fact that that three-quarters of France's Jewish population survived, many of them protected by French Catholics". Catholic religious among the Righteous among the Nations include: the Capuchin friar Père Marie-Benoît, Cardinal Gerlier, the Archbishop of Toulouse Jules-Géraud Saliège and Bishop of Montauban Pierre Marie Théas.

Croatia

Nazi Germany dismembered Yugoslavia in the spring of 1941. Most of the former country fell to the new state of Croatia - a victory for Ante Pavelic's Ustase. Unlike Hitler, Pavelic was pro-Catholic , but their ideologies overlapped sufficiently for easy co-operation. Pavelic wanted Vatican recognition for his fascist state and Croatian church leaders favoured an alliance with the Ustase because it seemed to hold out the promise of an anti-Communist, Catholic state. Bishop Stepinac, wanted the replacement of a religiously and ethnically diverse Yugoslav state the jail of the Croatian nation. In May 1941 Stepinac arranged an audience with Pius XII for Pavelic. Pius and Stepinac both saw communism as the greaest mencace facing Christianity. The Vatican stopped short of formal recognition but Pius sent a Benedictine abbot, Giuseppe Ramiro Marcone, as his apostolic visitor. This suited Pavelic well enough and Stepinac felt the Vatican had de facto recognised the new state.

Aloysius Stepinac (far right), initially a supporter of the Ustaše government, he distanced himself-but the Vatican preferred diplomatic pressure to public denunciations of the immorality of genocide. And Stepinac,like Pius XII wanted to see a Catholic state succeed in Croatia.

In April and May 1941 thousands of Serbs were murdered and Nazi copycat laws eliminated Jewish citizenship and compelled the wearing of the Star of David. The German army pulled out of Croatia in June 1941. Stepinac was a supporter of the Ustashi initially, but as the terror continued he began, from May 41, to begin a distancing process; in July he wrote to Pavelic objecting to the condition of deportation of Jews and Serbs and then, realizing that conversion could save Serbs he instructed clergy to baptise people upon demand without the usual waiting and instruction. Summer and autumn of 1941 Ustasha murders increased - but Stepinac was not yet prepared to break with the Ustase regime totally. Some bishops and priests collaborated openly with Pavelic and even served in Pavelic's body guard, Ivan Guberina, the leader of Catholic Action,among them. Notorious examples of collaboration included Bishop Ivan Šarić and the Franciscan Miroslav Filipovic-Majstorovic, 'the devil of the Jasenovac'.

Giovanni Battista Montini , later Paul VI, kept Pius informed of matters in Croatia - and Domenico Tardini interviewed Pavelic's representative to Pius; he let the Croat know the Vatican would be indulgent - "Croatia is a young state - Youngsters often err because of their age. It is therefore not surprising that Croatia has also erred." In 1943 after the German military became active once again in Croatia 6-7000 Jews were deported to Auschwitz, and others murdered in gas vans in Croatia. Rather than jeopardize the Ustase government of Croatia by diplomatic wrangling the Vatican chose to help Jews privately - but the chaos of the country meant this was little. Historian John Morley has called the Vatican record particularly shameful in Croatia because it was a state that proudly proclaimed its Catholic tradition and whose leaders depicted themselves as loyal to the Church and to the Pope. Diplomatic pressure was preferred to public challenges on the immorality of genocide and Pavelic's diplomatic emissaries to the Holy See were merely scolded by Tardini and Montini. At the war's end leaders of the Ustasha including its clericals supporters such as Saric fled, taking gold looted from massacred Jews and Serbs with them.

Hungary

Cardinal Justinian Seredi. As a member of Hungary's Parliament he voted in favour of antisemitic legislation in 1938. Later he spoke against Nazi mistreatment of the Jews.

Hungary joined the Axis Powers in 1940. It's leader, Admiral Horthy later wavered in support for the Nazi alliance. The Nazis occupied Hungary in March 1944, soon after Horthy, under significant pressure from the church and diplomatic community, had halted the deportations of Hungarian Jews. In October, they installed a pro-Nazi Arrow Cross Dictatorship.

After Germany's 1935 Nuremberg Laws were promulgated, copycat legislation had followed in much of Europe. Catholic priests and bishops in western Europe were not active in parliaments that established antisemitic legislation, but in eastern Europe they were. The Arrow Cross, Hungary's far-right antisemitic political organisation, was supported by individual priests, and bishops, such as Jozsef Grosz, who was promoted in 1943 by Pius XII to the bishopric of Kalocsa. Cardinal Justinian Seredi and Bishop Gyula Glattfelder who served in Hungary's Upper Chamber of Parliament, voted in favour of antisemitic legislation first passed in 1938. Seredi later spoke out against the Nazi persecution of Hungary's Jews. The anti-semitic laws placed economic and social restrictions on Jews; during World War II they evolved into initiatives to expel Jews from Hungary. Margit Slachta, a nun and Hungary's first woman Member of Parliament, spoke against the anti-semitic laws. Following the October 1944 Arrow Cross takeover, Bishop Vilmos Apor (who had been an active protester against the mistreatment of the Jews), together with other senior clergy including József Mindszenty, drafted a memorandum of protest against the Arrow Cross government.

Memorial plaque to Papal Nuncio Angelo Rotta. Honoured as a Righteous Gentile, he was active in saving Hungarian Jews.

Margit Slachta sheltered the persecuted, protested forced labour and antisemitism and went to Rome in 1943 to encourage papal action against the Jewish persecutions. Angelo Rotta, Papal Nuncio from 1930, actively protested Hungary's mistreatment of the Jews, and helped persuade Pope Pius XII to lobby the Hungarian leader Admiral Horthy to stop their deportation. Rotta became a leader of diplomatic actions to protect Hungarian Jews. With the help of the Hungarian Holy Cross Association, he issued protective passports for Jews and 15,000 safe conduct passes - the nunciature sheltered some 3000 jews in safe houses. An “International Ghetto” was established, including more than 40 safe houses marked by the Vatican and other national emblems. 25,000 Jews found refuge in these safe houses. Elsewhere in the city, Catholic institutions hid several thousand more Jewish people. Other leading church figures involved in the 1944 rescue of Hungarian Jews included Bishops Vilmos Apor, Endre Hamvas and Áron Márton. Primate József Mindszenty issued public and private protests and was arrested on 27 October 1944.

Romania

Angelo Roncalli (later Pope John XXIII) advised Pope Pius XII of the plight of Jews being kept in concentration camps in Romanian-occupied Transnistria. The Pope interceded with the Romanian government, and authorized for money to be sent to the camps. Andrea Cassulo, the papal nuncio to Bucharest has been honoured as Righteous among the Nations by Yad Vashem. In 1944, the Chief Rabbi of Bucharest praised the work of Cassulo on behalf of Romania's Jews: "the generous assistance of the Holy See… was decisive and salutary. It is not easy for us to find the right words to express the warmth and consolation we experienced because of the concern of the supreme Pontiff, who offered a large sum to relieve the sufferings of deported Jews — sufferings which had been pointed out to him by you after your visit to Transnistria. The Jews of Romania will never forget these facts of historic importance."

Priests of Dachau

In Dachau concentration camp alone, 2,600 Catholic priests from 24 different countries were killed. The Clergy Barracks of Dachau was occupied mainly by Polish priests.

Among the Catholic clerics sent to Dachau were: Father Jean Bernard of Luxembourg; the Dutch Carmelite Titus Brandsma (d.1942), Frs Stefan Wincenty Frelichowski (d.1945), Hilary Paweł Januszewski (d.1945), Lawrence Wnuk, Ignacy Jeż and Adam Kozłowiecki of Poland; Frs Karl Leisner (d.1945), Josef Lenzel, Bernhard Lichtenberg (died en route, 1943) and August Froehlich of Germany.

The Clergy Barracks of Dachau : Statistics by Nationality

Nationality	Total number	Released	Transferred elsewhere	Liberated 29/4/45	Deceased
Belgium	46	1	3	33	9
Germany	447	208	100	45	94
France	156	5	4	137	10
Netherlands	63	10	0	36	17
Italy	28	0	1	26	1
Poland	1780	78	4	830	868
Yugoslavia	50	2	6	38	4
Czechoslovakia	109	1	10	74	24
Total	2720	314	132	1240	1034

The statistics reflect documents found at the camp. Austrians are counted as German. Catholic 2579, Protestant, 109, Orthodox Greeks 22

Historical evaluation

Some German bishops have been praised for their wartime actions. According to Phayer, "several bishops did speak out". Heinrich Wienken (a post-war bishop) very likely personally hid Jews in Berlin during the war. Clemens August Graf von Galen was a well-known public opponent of the Nazi "euthanasia" program. Professor Robert Krieg has argued the Church's model of itself "as a hierarchical institution intent on preserving itself so that God's grace would be immediately available to its members" prevailed over other models, such as the model of mystical communion, or moral advocate.

Phayer asserts that the German episcopate—as opposed to other bishops—could have done more to save Jews. According to Phayer, "had the German bishops confronted the Holocaust publicly and nationally, the possibilities of undermining Hitler's death apparatus might have existed. Admittedly, it is speculative to assert this, but it is certain that many more German Catholics would have sought to save Jews by hiding them if their church leaders had spoken out". In this regard, Phayer places the responsibility with the Vatican, asserting that "a strong papal assertion would have enabled the bishops to overcome their disinclinations" and that "Bishop Preysing's only hope to spur his colleagues into action lay in Pope Pius XII".

Papacy of Pius XII

Main article: Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust

Further information: Pope Pius XII and Judaism

Pius XII assumed the papacy in 1939. In the build up to war he sought to act as a peace broker. Following the outbreak of war, Pius pursued a policy of neutrality - as the Vatican had done in World War One under Benedict XV, and in previous European concflicts. A cautious diplomat, he did not name the Nazis in his wartime condemnations of racism and genocide, but intervened to save the lives of thousands of Jews through sheltering them in church institutions and ordering his church to offer discreet aid. Upon his death in 1958, he was praised by world leaders and Jewish groups for his actions during World War Two, but his refusal to specifically condemn the Nazi Holocaust during the course of the war has become a matter of controversy.

Election

Dr. Joseph Lichten wrote: "Pacelli had obviously established his position clearly, for the Fascist governments of both Italy and Germany spoke out vigorously against the possibility of his election to succeed Pius XI in March 1939, though the cardinal secretary of state had served as papal nuncio in Germany from 1917 to 1929."

The day after Pacelli's election, the Berlin Morgenpost said: ‘The election of cardinal Pacelli is not accepted with favor in Germany because he was always opposed to Nazism and practically determined the policies of the Vatican under his predecessor.’ Der Angriff, the Nazi party organ, warned that Pius' policies would lead to a “crusade against the totalitarian states”.

According to Karol Jozef Gajewski, Heinrich Himmler's Das Schwarze Korps ('The Black Corps'), house newspaper of the SS, had formerly labelled Pacelli a "co-conspirator with Jews and Communists against Nazism" and decried his election as "the "Chief Rabbi of the Christians, boss of the firm of Judah-Rome."

Hidden encyclical

Some historians have argued that Pacelli, as Cardinal Secretary of State, dissuaded Pope Pius XI — who was nearing death at the time — from condemning Kristallnacht in November 1938, when he was informed of it by the papal nuncio in Berlin. Likewise the prepared encyclical Humani Generis Unitas ("On the Unity of Human Society"), which was ready in September 1938 but, according to the two publishers of the encyclical and other sources, not forwarded to the Vatican by the Jesuit General Wlodimir Ledochowski. On January 28, 1939, eleven days before the death of Pope Pius XI, a disappointed Gundlach informed author La Farge,."It cannot continue like this" The text has not been forwarded to the Vatican. He had talked to the American assistant to Father General, who promised to look into the matter in December 1938, but did not report back.

It contained an open and clear condemnation of colonialism, racism and antisemitism. Some historians have argued that Pacelli learned about its existence only after the death of Pius XI and did not promulgate it as Pope. He did however use parts of it in his inaugural encyclical Summi Pontificatus, which he titled "On the Unity of Human Society."

Outbreak of war: Summi Pontificatus

Main articles: Pope Pius XII and Poland and Reorganization of dioceses during World War II

Summi Pontificatus ("On the Limitations of the Authority of the State"), issued 20 October 1939, was the first papal encyclical issued by Pope Pius XII, and established some of the themes of his papacy. During the drafting of the letter, the Second World War commenced with the Nazi/Soviet invasion of Catholic Poland. Couched in diplomatic language, Pius endorses Catholic resistance, and states his disapproval of the war, racism, anti-semitism, the Nazi/Soviet invasion of Poland and the persecutions of the Church.

With Italy not yet an ally of Hitler in the war, Italians were called upon to remain faithful to the Church. Pius avoided naming the belligerent allies Hitler and Stalin as the evildoers, establishing the "impartial" public tone which critics have used against him in later assessments of his pontificate: "A full statement of the doctrinal stand to be taken in face of the errors of today, if necessary, can be put off to another time unless there is disturbance by calamitous external events; for the moment We limit Ourselves to some fundamental observations."

Resistance

The Pope wrote of "anti-Christian movements" bringing forth a crop "poignant disasters" and called for love, mercy and compassion against the "deluge of discord". Following themes addressed in Non abbiamo bisogno (1931); Mit brennender Sorge (1937) and Divini redemptoris (1937), Pius wrote of a need to bring back to the Church those who were following "a false standard... misled by error, passion, temptation and prejudice, [who] have strayed away from faith in the true God". He wrote of "Christians unfortunately more in name than in fact" having showed "cowardice" in the face of persecution by these creeds, and endorsed resistance:

Who among "the Soldiers of Christ" - ecclesiastic or layman - does not feel himself incited and spurred on to a greater vigilance, to a more determined resistance, by the sight of the ever-increasing host of Christ's enemies; as he perceives the spokesmen of these tendencies deny or in practice neglect the vivifying truths and the values inherent in belief in God and in Christ; as he perceives them wantonly break the Tables of God's Commandments to substitute other tables and other standards stripped of the ethical content of the Revelation on Sinai, standards in which the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount and of the Cross has no place?

— Summi Pontificatus 7 - Pope Pius XII, Oct. 1939

Racism

In a further rejection of Nazi ideology, Pius reiterated Catholic opposition to racism and anti-Semitism:

In accordance with these principles of equality, the Church devotes her care to forming cultured native clergy and gradually increasing the number of native Bishops. And in order to give external expression to these, Our intentions, We have chosen the forthcoming Feast of Christ the King to raise to the Episcopal dignity at the Tomb of the Apostles twelve representatives of widely different peoples and races. In the midst of the disruptive contrasts which divide the human family, may this solemn act proclaim to all Our sons, scattered over the world, that the spirit, the teaching and the work of the Church can never be other than that which the Apostle of the Gentiles preached: "putting on the new, (man) him who is renewed unto knowledge, according to the image of him that created him. Where there is neither Gentile nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian nor Scythian, bond nor free. But Christ is all and in all" (Colossians iii. 10, 11).

— Summi Pontificatus 48 - Pope Pius XII, Oct. 1939.

Invasion of Poland

Pius wrote of a persecuted Church and a time requiring "charity" for victims who had a a "right" to compassion. Against the invasion of Poland and killing of civilians he wrote:

A monument to Fr. Maximilian Kolbe, among the estimated 3,000 members (18%) of the Polish clergy who were killed by the Nazis; of these, 1,992 died in concentration camps.

The blood of countless human beings, even noncombatants, raises a piteous dirge over a nation such as Our dear Poland, which, for its fidelity to the Church, for its services in the defense of Christian civilization, written in indelible characters in the annals of history, has a right to the generous and brotherly sympathy of the whole world, while it awaits, relying on the powerful intercession of Mary, Help of Christians, the hour of a resurrection in harmony with the principles of justice and true peace.

— Summi Pontificatus 106 - Pope Pius XII, Oct. 1939

In Poland, the Nazis murdered over 2,500 monks and priests and even more were imprisoned.

Invasion of Low Countries

Pius advised the British in 1940 of the readiness of certain German generals to overthrow Hitler if they could be assured of an honourable peace and warned the Allies of the planned German invasion of the Low Countries in 1940. In Rome in 1942, US envoy Myron C. Taylor, thanked the Holy See for the "forthright and heroic expressions of indignation made by Pope Pius XII when Germany invaded the Low countries".

Attempt to keep Italy neutral

Unsuccessfully, Pius attempted to dissuade the Italian Dictator Benito Mussolini from joining Nazi Germany in the war.

Protest of Dutch bishops

The Archbishop of Utrecht was warned by the Nazis not to protest the deportation of Dutch Jews. In defiance, he published a letter on April 19, 1942, which was read in every Catholic church in the country. The bishops of Holland jointly denounced "the unmerciful and unjust treatment meted out to Jews by those in power in our country." The Nazis responded by revoking the exception that had been given to Jews who had been baptized and a round up was ordered. The Gestapo made a special effort to round up every monk, nun and priest who had even a drop of Jewish blood. Some 300 victims were deported to Auschwitz and immediately sent to the gas chambers. Among them was Saint Edith Stein. According to John Vidmar, "The brutality of the retaliation made an enormous impression on Pius XII." Henceforth, he avoided open, confrontational denunciations of the Nazis.

Dr. Peter Gumpel writes:

The action of the Dutch bishops had important repercussions. Pius XII had already prepared the text of a public protest against the persecution of the Jews. Shortly before this text was sent to L’Osservatore Romano, news reached him of the disastrous consequences of the Dutch bishops’ initiative. He concluded that public protests, far from alleviating the fate of the Jews, aggravated their persecution and he decided that he could not take the responsibility of his own intervention having similar and probably even much more serious consequences. Therefore he burnt the text he had prepared. The International Red Cross, the nascent World Council of Churches and other Christian Churches were fully aware of such consequences of vehement public protests and, like Pius XII, they wisely avoided them.

When Myron C. Taylor, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt's personal representative to the Vatican, urged him to condemn Nazi atrocities - Pius "obliquely referred to the evils of modern warfare", fearing that to go further would provoke Hitler into brutal action, as occurred following the 1942 protest by Dutch Bishops against the deportation of Jews.

Aid to Jews during Holocaust

Main article: Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust

Following Kristalnacht (1938), the Vatican took steps to find refuge for Jews and at the outbreak of the war, local bishops were instructed to assist those in need. Catholic institutions across Europe were opened as shelter for Jews during the Nazi Holocaust, and the institutions of the Vatican itself were employed in this purpose. Pius XII allowed the national hierarchies of the Church to assess and respond to their local situation under Nazi rule, but himself established the Vatican Information Service to provide aid to, and information about, war refugees and saved thousands of Jewish lives by directing the church to discreetly provide aid to Jews. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, Pius chose to "use diplomacy to aid the persecuted" and upon his death was "praised effusively by world leaders and especially by Jewish groups for his actions during World War II on behalf of the persecuted".

In response to Mussolini's anti-Jewish legislation, Pius appointed several Jewish scholars who had been sacked under Italy's discriminatory laws to position at the Vatican. In his first encyclical, Pius XII rejected Nazi racism by affirming scripture, that in the eyes of the Church “there is neither Gentile nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision.”

When in 1940, the Nazi Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop led the only senior Nazi delegation permitted an audience with Pius XII and asked why the Pope had sided with the Allies, Pius replied with a list of recent Nazi atrocities and religious persecutions committed against Christians and Jews, in Germany, and in Poland, leading the New York Times to headline its report "Jews Rights Defended" and write of "burning words he spoke to Herr Ribbentrop about religious persecution".

The Israeli historian Pinchas Lapide interviewed war survivors and concluded that Pius XII "was instrumental in saving at least 700,000, but probably as many as 860,000 Jews from certain death at Nazi hands". Most historians dispute this estimate while Rabbi David Dalin called Pinchas Lapide's work "the definitive work by a Jewish scholar" on the holocaust.

Cardinal Secretary of State Luigi Maglione received a request from Chief Rabbi of Palestine Isaac Herzog in the Spring of 1940 to intercede on behalf of Lithuanian Jews about to be deported to Germany. Pius called Ribbentrop on March 11, repeatedly protesting against the treatment of Jews. In his 1940 encyclical Summi Pontificatus, Pius rejected anti-semitism, stating that in the Catholic Church there is "neither Gentile nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision."

On January 2, 1940, the United Jewish Appeal for Refugees and Overseas Needs in Chicago sent the Pope a contribution of $125,000 toward the Vatican's efforts to save "all those persecuted because of religion or race." The Pope kept in place an emigration program established by his predecessor, Pius XI, which helped Jews gain admittance to Brazil. Between 1939 and 1941, 3,000 Jews reached safety in South America.

Giovanni Ferrofino is credited with saving 10,000 Jews. Acting on secret orders from Pope Pius XII, Ferrofino obtained visas from the Portuguese Government and the Dominican Republic to secure their escape from Europe and sanctuary in the Americas.

Between 1939 and 1944, Pius XII supplied passports, money, tickets and letters of recommendation to foreign governments so Jewish refugees could receive visas. Through these actions, another 4,000-6,000 Jews reached safety.

1942 Christmas address

In 1942, Pius XII delivered a Christmas message over Vatican Radio Address which expressed sympathy for the victims of the Nazis' genocidal policies. From May 1942, the Nazis had commenced their industrialized slaughter of the Jews of Europe - the Final Solution. Gypsies and others were also marked for extermination. The Pope addressed the racial persecutions in the following terms:"Humanity owes this vow to those hundreds of thousands who, without any fault on their part, sometimes only because of their nationality or race, have been consigned to death or to a slow decline" [also translated: "marked down for death or gradual extinction"] The New York Times called Pius "a lonely voice crying out of the silence of a continent."

The speech was made in the context of the near total domination of Europe by the armies of Nazi Germany at a time were the war had not yet turned in favour of the Allies. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, Pius refused to say more "fearing that public papal denunciations might provoke the Hitler regime to brutalize further those subject to Nazi terror — as it had when Dutch bishops publicly protested earlier in the year—while jeopardizing the future of the church". Holocaust historian, Sir Martin Gilbert, assesses the response of the Reich Security Main Office calling Pius a "mouthpiece" of the Jews in response to his Christmas address, as clear evidence that all sides knew that Pius was one who was raising his voice for the victims of Nazi terror.

Direct papal interventions

Pius protested the deportations of Slovakian Jews to the Bratislava government from 1942. In 1943 he protested that "The Holy See would fail in its Divine Mandate if it did not deplore these measures, which gravely damage man in his natural right, mainly for the reason that these people belong to a certain race."

Following the Nazi occupation of Italy, when news of the 15 October 1943 round-up of Roman Jews reached the Pope, he instructed Cardinal Maglione to protest to the German Ambassador to "save these innocent people". The Pope then ordered Rome's Catholic institutions to open themselves to the Jews, sheltering 4715 of the 5715 listed for deportation by the Nazis were sheltered in 150 institutions - 477 in the Vatican itself. As German round-ups continued in Northern Italy, the Pope opened his summer residence, Castel Gandolfo, to take in thousands of Jews and authorised institutions across the north to do the same.

From 1943, Pius instructed his Bulgarian representative to take "all necessary steps" to support Bulgarian Jews facing deportation and his Turkish nuncio, Angelo Roncalli (later Pope John XXIII) arranged for the transfer of thousands of children out of Bulgaria to Palestine. Roncalli also advised the Pope of Jewish concentration camps in Romanian occupied Transnistria. The Pope protested to the Romanian government and authorised for funds to be sent to the camps. In 1944 Pius appealed directly to the Hungarian government to halt the deportation of the Jews of Hungary and his nuncio, Angelo Rotta, led a city wide rescue scheme in Budapest.

Assessing Pius' role as a protector of Jews during the war, David Klinghoffer wrote for the Jewish Journal in 2005 that "I'm not sure it's true, as Dalin argues, that Pius saved more Jews than any other Righteous Gentile in World War II. But it seems fairly certain that he was, overall, a strenuous defender of Jews who saved tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands. While 80 percent of European Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, 85 percent of Italian Jews survived, thanks in large part to the Vatican's efforts." In August 1944, Pius met British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who was visiting Rome. During the meeting, and with the war ongoing, the Pope acknowledged the justice of punishing war criminals, but expressed a hope that the people of Italy would not be punished, preferring that they be made "full allies".

Criticism of Pius XII

Assessments of Pius's role during World War Two were initially mostly positive. However, following his death, some authors have subsequently been more critical. The Soviets were keen to discredit Pius in the eyes of the Catholics of the Eastern Bloc they controlled following the Nazi surrender. Some historians have argued the Pope did not "do enough" to prevent the Holocaust. Some commentators have said he was "silent" in the face of the Holocaust. Some commentators have accused the Church and Pius of antisemitism. These accusations are strongly contested. According to ecclesiastical historian William Doino (author of The Pius War: Responses to the Critics of Pius XII), Pius XII was "emphatically not 'silent', and did in fact condemn the Nazis' horrific crimes–through Vatican Radio, his first encyclical, Summi Pontificatus, his major addresses (especially his Christmas allocutions), and the L’Osservatore Romano" and he "intervened, time and time again, for persecuted Jews, particularly during the German occupation of Rome, and was cited and hailed by the Catholic rescuers themselves as their leader and director.

David Kertzer accuses Church of "encouraging centuries of antisemitism", and Pope Pius XII of not doing enough to stop Nazi atrocities. Many scholars dispute Kertzer. Jose Sanchez, of St. Louis University criticized Kertzer's work as polemical and exaggerating the papacy's role in anti-Semitism. Scholar of Jewish-Christian relations Rabbi David G. Dalin criticized Kertzer for using evidence selectively to support his thesis. Ronald J. Rychlak, lawyer and author of Hitler, the War, and the Pope, also decried Kertzer's work for omitting strong evidence that the Church was not anti-Semitic. Many others including prominent members of the Jewish community have refuted criticisms and written highly of Pius' efforts to protect Jews.

Among the prominent Jews to praise Pius after the war was Rabbi Isaac Herzog. Other prominent members of the Jewish community have also defended Pius. Lichten, Lapide, and other Jewish historians report that the Catholic Church provided funds totalling in the millions of dollars to assist Jews during World War II.

In 1999, British writer John Cornwell published the highly controversial Hitler's Pope, which charged that Pius had assisted the legitimization of the Nazi regime by agreeing the 1933 Reichskonkordat. The book was critical of Pius' conduct during the war, arguing that he did not "do enough", or "speak out enough", against the Holocaust. Cornwell wrote that Pius' entire career as the nuncio to Germany, cardinal secretary of state, and pope was characterized by a desire to increase and centralize the power of the Papacy, and that he subordinated opposition to the Nazis to that goal. He further argued that Pius was anti-Semitic and that this stance prevented him from caring about the European Jews. The Encyclopedia Britannica assesses Cornwell's depiction of Pius as anti-Semitic and indifferent to the Holocaust as lacking "credible substantiation". Various commentators have subsequently characterized his book as having been "debunked"., Cornwell, himself, has since retracted his accusations in substantial part, saying that it is "impossible to judge the motives" of the Pope. but that "Nevertheless, due to his ineffectual and diplomatic language in respect of the Nazis and the Jews, I still believe that it was incumbent on him to explain his failure to speak out after the war. This he never did." Historian John Toland noted: “The Church, under the Pope’s guidance…saved the lives of more Jews than all other churches, religious institutions and rescue organizations combined…the British and Americans, despite lofty pronouncements, had not only avoided taking any meaningful action but gave sanctuary to few persecuted Jews.”

Reasons for Pius' caution

Catholic clergy, religious orders and laity, especially converted Jews, all suffered persecution under the Nazi regime. Many were deported to concentration camps and were either murdered or died from hardship and privation. Such Nazi brutality made an enormous impression on Pius XII. In an 30 April 1943 letter to Bishop von Preysing of Berlin, Pius referred to the Nazi retribution in Holland as one reason why he offered only muted criticism in his public statements:

"We give to the pastors who are working on the local level the duty of determining if and to what degree the danger of reprisals and of various forms of oppression occasioned by episcopal declarations... ad maiora mala vitanda (to avoid worse)... seem to advise caution. Here lies one of the reasons, why We impose self-restraint on Ourselves in our speeches; the experience, that we made in 1942 with papal addresses, which We authorized to be forwarded to the Believers, justifies our opinion, as far as We see.... The Holy See has done whatever was in its power, with charitable, financial and moral assistance. To say nothing of the substantial sums which we spent in American money for the fares of immigrants."

— Pius XII, letter to Bishop von Presying of Berlin, 1943.

In a conversation with Archbishop Giovanni Battista Montini (later Pope Paul VI), Pius said, "We would like to utter words of fire against such actions; and the only thing restraining Us from speaking is the fear of making the plight of the victims worse"

Polish prisoners in Dachau toast their liberation from the camp. Poles constituted the largest ethnic group in the camp and the largest proportion of those interred in the Priest Barracks of Dachau.

Another reason proffered for Pius' caution was a perceived need for firm proof that would be sustainable in any diplomatic exchanges or in the court of world opinion; unproven (and demonstrably false accusations) had been made regarding atrocities allegedly committed by German troops during World War I. Furthermore, without being even-handed and condemning Stalin’s atrocities against Soviet and Polish citizens, the Pope would be vulnerable to accusations of bias; which could have seriously undermined the influence the Vatican might have in Germany. The Allies were exceedingly anxious to prevent a Papal condemnation of Stalin, which would have hurt the Allied effort.

According to Piotrowski, Pius XII also never publicly condemned the Nazi massacre of 1.8 - 1.9 million mainly Catholic Poles (including 2,935 members of the Catholic Clergy), nor did he ever publicly condemn the Soviet Union for the deaths of 1,000,000 mainly Catholic Polish citizens including an untold number of clergy.

In December 1942, when Tittman asked Cardinal Secretary of State Maglione if Pius would issue a proclamation similar to the Allied declaration "German Policy of Extermination of the Jewish Race", Maglione replied that the Vatican was "unable to denounce publicly particular atrocities." However, in his 1942 Christmas address, the Pope proceeded to voice concerns for the “hundreds of thousands who, through no fault of their own, and solely because of their nation or race, have been condemned to death or progressive extinction.”

A month later Ribbentrop wrote to the Germany's Vatican ambassador: “there are signs that the Vatican is likely to renounce its traditional neutral attitude and take up a political position against Germany. You are to inform him (the Pope) that in that event Germany does not lack physical means of retaliation.” The Ambassador reported that Pius indicated that “he did not care what happened to himself, but that a struggle between Church and State could have only one outcome – the defeat of the State. I replied that I was of the contrary opinion... an open battle could bring some very unpleasant surprises for the Church.... Pacelli (Pius XII) is no more sensible to threats than we are. In event of an open breach with us, he now calculates that some German Catholics will leave the Church but he is convinced that the majority will remain true to their Faith. And that the German Catholic clergy will screw up its courage, prepared for the greatest sacrifices.”

Conversions of Jews to Catholicism

The conversion of Jews to Catholicism during the Holocaust is one of the most controversial aspects of the record of Pope Pius XII during that period.

According to Roth and Ritner, "this is a key point because, in debates about Pius XII, his defenders regularly point to denunciations of racism and defense of Jewish converts as evidence of opposition to antisemitism of all sorts. The Holocaust is one of the most acute examples of the "recurrent and acutely painful issue in the Catholic-Jewish dialogue", namely "Christian efforts to convert Jews".

Alleged "antisemitism"

In the summer of 1942, Pius explained to his college of Cardinals the reasons for the great gulf that existed between Jews and Christians at the theological level: "Jerusalem has responded to His call and to His grace with the same rigid blindness and stubborn ingratitude that has led it along the path of guilt to the murder of God." Historian Guido Knopp describes these comments of Pius as being "incomprehensible" at a time when "Jerusalem was being murdered by the million".

In 1963, The Deputy, a fictional play by German playwright Rolf Hochhuth contained an unhistorical depiction of the Pope as indifferent to the Nazi genocide. In 1999 the highly controversial Hitler's Pope by John Cornwell, depicted the Pope as an anti-Semite. In the assessment of the Encyclopedia Britannica: "Both depictions, however, lack credible substantiation" and "though Pius's wartime public condemnations of racism and genocide were cloaked in generalities, he did not turn a blind eye to the suffering but chose to use diplomacy to aid the persecuted. It is impossible to know if a more forthright condemnation of the Holocaust would have proved more effective in saving lives, though it probably would have better assured his reputation."

The Ratlines: Helping Nazis to flee

Main article: Ratlines (history)

At the end of the war, top Catholic officers organized the so-called ratlines that allowed Nazi war criminals to flee towards South America and other destinations via Francoist Spain. Bishop Alois Hudal and Cardinals Luigi Maglione, Eugene Tisserant and Antonio Caggiano, as well as the seminary in San Girolamo degli Illirici of Father Krunoslav Draganović were specially active in this task. Thousands of presumed European Catholic immigrants, actually Nazis in disguise, were able to escape from Europe using these networks.

Post war attitudes to Nazi Germany

Since the end of the Second World War, the Catholic Church has moved to honour Catholic resistors and victims of Nazism through canonisation of saints, beatification of the virtuous and recognition of martyrs. The Church has also issued statements of repentance for its failings and the failings of its membership during the Nazi period. Of the post-war popes, the Italian Popes John XXIII and Pope Paul VI had been actively involved in the protection of Jews during the war and Pope John Paul II had suffered through the Nazi occupation of Poland, and was involved in the Polish cultural resistance and joined a clandestine seminary during the war. Pope Benedict XVI had been a boy in Nazi Germany, forced to join the Hitler youth, drafted into the anti-aircraft corps and trained as a child soldier - later to desert, he was briefly held as a POW at the end of the war.

Apology of Pope John Paul II

In 2000 Pope John Paul II on behalf of all people, apologized to Jews by inserting a prayer at the Western Wall that read "We're deeply saddened by the behavior of those in the course of history who have caused the children of God to suffer, and asking your forgiveness, we wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood with the people of the Covenant." This papal apology, one of many issued by Pope John Paul II for past human and Church failings throughout history, was especially significant because John Paul II emphasized Church guilt for, and the Second Vatican Council's condemnation of, anti-Semitism. The papal letter We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah, urged Catholics to repent "of past errors and infidelities" and "renew the awareness of the Hebrew roots of their faith."

Sources

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• Courtois, Stephane (1999). The Black Book of Communism. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-07608-2. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Duffy, Eamon (1997). Saints and Sinners, a History of the Popes. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-07332-1.
• Falconi, Carlo (1967). The Popes in the Twentieth Century. Feltrinelli Editore. 68-14744.
• McGonigle (1996). A History of the Christian Tradition: From its Jewish roots to the Reformation. Paulist Press. ISBN 978-0-8091-3648-3.
• Norman, Edward (2007). The Roman Catholic Church, An Illustrated History. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-25251-6.
• Pham, John Peter (2006). Heirs of the Fisherman: Behind the Scenes of Papal Death and Succession. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-517834-3.
• Phayer, Michael (2000). The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930-1965. Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-21471-8.
• Rhodes, Anthony (1973). The Vatican in the Age of the Dictators (1922-1945). Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
• Shirer, William L. (1990). The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-0-671-72868-7.
• Vidmar, John (2005). The Catholic Church Through the Ages. Paulist Press. ISBN 0-8091-4234-1.
• Ericksen, Robert (2012). Complicity in the Holocaust:Churches and Universities in Nazi Germany. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 1107663334.
• Hitler's Table Talk 1941-1944; Enigma Books 2000

External links

• German Historic Museum: Das Reichskonkordat Template:De icon
• The Vatican Concordat With Hitler's Reich by Robert.E. Krieg