User:LakesideMiners/StuffIAmFixing/CCANDN

Catholics of the Nazi era

Erich Klausener Bishop Clemens August Graf von Galen of Münster Saint Edith Stein Nuncio Cesare Orsenigo Polish prisoners at Dachau Bishop Konrad von Preysing Joseph Tiso Alfred Delp SJ Jules-Géraud Saliège of Toulouse Irena Sendlerowa Pius XI

Popes

Pius XII. Adolf Hitler and several key Nazis had been raised Catholic, but became hostile to the Church in adulthood. While Article 24 of the NSDAP party platform called for conditional toleration of Christian denominations and the 1933 Reichskonkordat treaty with the Vatican purported to guarantee religious freedom for Catholics, the Nazis were essentially hostile to Catholicism. Catholic press, schools, and youth organizations were closed, property was confiscated, and around one third of Catholic clergy faced reprisals from authorities. Catholic lay leaders were targeted in the Night of the Long Knives purge. The Church hierarchy attempted to cooperate with the new government, but in 1937, the Papal Encyclical Mit brennender Sorge

accused the government of "fundamental hostility" to the church.

Among the most courageous demonstrations of opposition inside Germany were the 1941 sermons of Bishop August von Galen of Münster. Nevertheless, wrote Alan Bullock "[n]either the Catholic Church nor the Evangelical Church... as institutions, felt it possible to take up an attitude of open opposition to the regime".^[2] In every country under German occupation, priests played a major part in rescuing Jews, but Catholic resistance to mistreatment of Jews in Germany was generally limited to fragmented and largely individual efforts. Mary Fulbrook wrote that when politics encroached on the church, Catholics were prepared to resist, but that the record was otherwise patchy and uneven, and that, with notable exceptions, "it seems that, for many Germans, adherence to the Christian faith proved compatible with at least passive acquiescence in, if not active support for, the Nazi dictatorship".^[3]

Catholics fought on both sides in the Second World War. Hitler's invasion of predominantly Catholic Poland ignited the conflict in 1939. Here, especially in the

links to the German Resistance, Pope Pius XII warned the Allies of the planned Nazi invasion of the Low Countries in 1940. From that year, the Nazis gathered priest-dissidents in a dedicated clergy barracks at Dachau

, where 95 percent of its 2,720 inmates were Catholic (mostly Poles, with 411 Germans). 1,034 priests died there. Expropriation of church properties surged from 1941.

The Vatican, surrounded by Fascist Italy, was officially neutral during the war, but used diplomacy to aid victims and lobby for peace. Vatican Radio and other Catholic media spoke out against atrocities.

While Nazi antisemitism embraced modern pseudo-scientific racial principles, ancient antipathies between Christianity and Judaism contributed to European anti-Semitism. Despite this, the Church

Mystici corporis Christi encyclical (1943) denounced the murder of the handicapped.^[4]

Overview

In the 1930s,

referendum confirmed Hitler as sole Führer (leader) of Germany. A Nazi program known as Gleichschaltung sought control of all collective and social activity and interfered with Catholic schooling, youth groups, workers, and cultural groups. The church insisted on its loyalty to the nation, but resisted regimentation and oppression of church organizations and contraventions of doctrine such as the sterilization law

of 1933.

Hitler's ideologues

Nazi euthanasia and defence of human rights roused rare popular dissent. The German bishops denounced Nazi policy towards the church in pastoral letters, calling it "unjust oppression".^[19][20]

Pius XII, former

Axis officials, hiding them in monasteries, convents, schools and elsewhere; including the Vatican and Castel Gandolfo

.

In regions of Poland,

ratlines

" facilitating fugitive Nazis to flee Europe.

Background

Main article:

Roman Catholicism in Germany

Church background

Roman Catholicism in Germany dates back to the missionary work of

Catholicism. The south and west remained mainly Catholic, while north and east became mainly Protestant.^[24]

Bismarck's Kulturkampf ("Battle for Culture") of 1871–78 saw an attempt to assert a Protestant vision of nationalism over the new German Empire, and fused anticlericalism and suspicion of the Catholic population, whose loyalty was presumed to lie with Austria and France. The Catholic Centre Party had formed in 1870, initially to represent the religious interests of Catholics and Protestants, but was transformed by the Kulturkampf into the "political voice of Catholics".^[25] By the late 1870s, it was clear that the Kulturkampf was largely a failure, and many of its edicts were undone.^[26]

The Catholic Church enjoyed a degree of privilege in the Bavarian region, the Rhineland and Westphalia as well as parts of the south-west, while in the Protestant North, Catholics suffered some discrimination. In the 1930s, the

German Catholics comprised around one-third of the population, served by 20,000 priests.^[27] The revolution of 1918 and the Weimar Constitution of 1919 had thoroughly reformed the former relationship between state and churches.^[26] By law, Germany's Protestant and Catholic churches received tax-supported subsidies based on church census data, therefore, were dependent on state support, causing them to be vulnerable to government influence and the political atmosphere of Germany.^[26]

Political Catholicism in Germany

Main article:

Political Catholicism

Centre Party

) banner and supporters during the 1930 election campaign

Heinrich Bruning

. One of five Centre Party chancellors of the Weimar period, he led Germany through the Great Depression from 1930 to 1932, instigating rule by emergency decree.

The

Catholic Centre Party (Zentrum) was a social and political force in predominantly Protestant Germany. It assisted the framing of the Weimar constitution at the end of World War I and participated in various Coalition governments of the Weimar Republic (1919–33/34).^[28] It aligned with both Social Democrats and the leftist German Democratic Party, while maintaining the centre ground against the rise of extremist parties both left and right.^[26][29] Historically, the Centre Party had the strength to defy Bismarck's Kulturkampf and was a bulwark of the Republic. Yet, according to Bullock, from summer 1932, the Party became "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".^[30][31] It remained relatively moderate during the radicalisation of German politics with the onset of the Great Depression, but party deputies voted—with most other parties—for the Enabling Act of March 1933, offering Hitler plenary powers.^[28]

In the 1920s and 1930s, Catholic leaders made a number of forthright attacks on Nazi ideology, and the main Christian opposition to Nazism in Germany arose from the Catholic Church.[26] Prior to Hitler's rise, German bishops warned Catholics against Nazi racism. Some dioceses banned membership in the Nazi Party.^[32] and Catholic press condemned Nazism.^[32] 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.^[33]

Cardinal

Munich Putsch of 1923.^[34] In early 1931, the Cologne Bishops Conference condemned National Socialism, followed by the bishops of Paderborn and Freiburg. With ongoing hostility toward the Nazis by Catholic press and Centre Party, few Catholics voted Nazi in elections preceding the Nazi takeover in 1933.^[35] As in other German churches, there were some clergy and laypeople who openly supported the Nazi administration.^[29]

Five Centre Party politicians served as Chancellor of Weimar Germany:

Eugenio Pacelli was always nervous of Brüning's reliance on Social Democrats for political survival. A sentiment shared by Ludwig Kaas and many German Catholics. Ventresca wrote that Brüning never forgave Pacelli for what he saw as a betrayal of Catholic political tradition and his leadership.^[37]

Catholic opposition to Communism

Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church.^[38]

In 1919, Communists, initially led by the moderate

Divini redemptoris ("Divine Redeemer") against atheistic Communism in 1937.^[43]

Nazi views on Catholicism

Main articles: Nazi views on Catholicism and Religious views of Adolf Hitler

incomplete short citation] However, his repeated hostile statements against the church indicated to his subordinates that continuation of the Kirchenkampf (church struggle) would be tolerated and even encouraged.^[48]

Many Nazis suspected Catholics of insufficient patriotism, or even of disloyalty to the Fatherland, and of serving the interests of "sinister alien forces".[49] Shirer wrote that "under the leadership of Rosenberg, Bormann and Himmler—backed by Hitler—the Nazi regime intended to destroy Christianity in Germany, if it could, and substitute the old paganism of the early tribal Germanic gods and the new paganism of the Nazi extremists."^[50] Anti-church and anti-clerical sentiments were strong among grassroots party activists.^[51]

Hitler

Raised a Catholic, Hitler retained some regard for the organisational power of the Catholic church, 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".

Political Catholicism, and its democratic networks, were eliminated.^[33][53][54] Important conservative elements, such as the officer corps, opposed Nazi persecution of the churches.^[55][56]

Because of such political considerations, Hitler occasionally spoke of wanting to delay the church struggle and was prepared to restrain his

anticlericalism. But, his own inflammatory remarks to his inner circle encouraged underlings to continue their battle with the churches.^[51] He declared that science would destroy the last vestiges of superstition and that, in the long run, Nazism and religion could not co-exist. Germany couldn't tolerate intervention of foreign influences like the Vatican; and priests, he said, were "black bugs" and "abortions in black cassocks".^[57]

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

Goebbels

Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda, was among the most aggressive anti-Church radicals and saw the conflict with the churches as a priority concern.^[51] Born to a Catholic family, he became one of the government's most relentless Jew-baiters.^[58] 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".^[51] He led the persecution of Catholic clergy.^[51]

Himmler and Heydrich

Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich headed the Nazi security forces and were key architects of the Final Solution. Both believed Christian values were among the enemies of Nazism: the enemies were "eternally the same", wrote Heydrich: "the Jew, the Freemason, and the politically-oriented cleric." Modes of thinking like Christian and liberal individualism he considered the residue of inherited racial characteristics, biologically sourced to Jewry—who must, therefore, be exterminated.^[59] According to Himmler biographer Peter Longerich, Himmler was vehemently opposed to Christian sexual morality and the "principle of Christian mercy", both of which he saw as a dangerous obstacle to his plans to battle with "subhumans".^[60] In 1937 he wrote:^[61]

We live in an era of the ultimate conflict with Christianity. It is part of the mission of the SS to give the German people in the next half-century the non-Christian ideological foundations on which to lead and shape their lives. This task does not consist solely in overcoming an ideological opponent but must be accompanied at every step by a positive impetus: in this case, that means the reconstruction of the German heritage in the widest and most comprehensive sense.

— Heinrich Himmler, 1937

Himmler saw the main task of his Schutzstaffel (SS) organisation to be that of "acting as the vanguard in overcoming Christianity and restoring a 'Germanic' way of living" in order to prepare for the coming conflict between "humans and subhumans":^[60] Longerich wrote that, while the Nazi movement as a whole launched itself against Jews and Communists, "by linking de-Christianisation with re-Germanization, Himmler had provided the SS with a goal and purpose all of its own."^[60] He set about making his SS the focus of a "cult of the Teutons".^[62]

Bormann

Hitler's chosen deputy and private secretary from 1941,

incomplete short citation] When the Bishop of Munster led the public protest against Nazi euthanasia, Bormann called for him to be hanged.^[65] Strongly anti-Christian, he stated publicly in 1941 that "National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable."^[50]

Rosenberg

In January 1934, Hitler appointed

The Myth of the 20th Century

in 1930.

Church officials were perturbed by Hitler's appointment of Rosenberg as the state's official philosopher. The indication being, Hitler was endorsing his anti-Jewish, anti-Christian, and neo-pagan philosophy. The Vatican directed the Holy Office to place Rosenberg's Myth of the Twentieth Century on the Index of Forbidden books on February 7, 1934.^[72] Joachim Fest wrote of Rosenberg having little, or no, political influence in making government decisions, and thoroughly marginalized.^[73] Hitler called his book "derivative, pastiche, illogical rubbish!"^[74]

Kerrl

Following the failure of the pro-Nazi

Hans Kerrl Minister for Church Affairs in 1935. A relative moderate among Nazis, Kerrl confirmed Nazi hostility to the Catholic and Protestant creeds in a 1937 address during an intense phase of the Nazi Kirchenkampf:^[75]

The Party stands on the basis of

Hans Kerrl

, Nazi Minister for Church Affairs, 1937

After World War I, Hitler became involved with the fledgling Nazi Party. He set the violent tone of the movement early, forming the

Beerhall Putsch. He used the time to produce Mein Kampf, in which he claimed that an effeminate Jewish-Christian ethic was enfeebling Europe, and Germany needed a man of iron to restore itself to build an empire.^[77] He decided on the tactic of pursuing power through "legal" means.^[78]

Following the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the Nazis and Communists made great gains at the 1930 Election. Greatest gains for the Nazis came in the Protestant, rural towns of the North, while Catholic areas remained loyal to the Centre Party.^[79] Both Nazis and Communists pledged to eliminate democracy; between them, they secured over 50 percent of Reichstag seats.^[80] Germany's political system made it difficult for chancellors to govern with a stable parliamentary majority. Successive chancellors instead relied on the president's emergency powers to govern.^[81] From 1931–33, Nazis combined terror tactics with conventional campaigning. Hitler criss-crossed the nation by air, while SA troops paraded in the streets, beat up opponents, and broke up their meetings.^[78] A middle class liberal party strong enough to block the Nazis did not exist: the Social Democrats were essentially a conservative trade union party, with ineffectual leadership; the Centre Party maintained its voting block, but was preoccupied defending its own particular interests; and the Communists, meanwhile, were engaging in violent clashes with Nazis on the streets. Moscow had directed the Communist Party to prioritise destruction of the Social Democrats, seeing more danger in them as a rival. But it was the German Right who made Hitler their partner in a coalition government.^[82]

This coalition did not come about immediately: the Centre Party's Heinrich Brüning, Chancellor from 1930–32, was unable to reach terms with Hitler, and increasingly governed with the support of the President and Army over that of the parliament.^[83] With the backing of Kurt von Schleicher and Hitler's stated approval, the 84-year-old President von Hindenberg, a conservative monarchist, appointed the Catholic monarchist Franz von Papen to replace Brüning as Chancellor in June 1932.^[84][85] Papen was active in the resurgence of the Harzburg Front,^[86] and had fallen out with the Centre Party.^[87] He hoped, ultimately, to outmaneuver Hitler.^[88]

At the July 1932 elections, the Nazis became the largest party in the Reichstag. Hitler withdrew his support for Papen and demanded the chancellorship. Hindenberg refused. In return, the Nazis approached the Centre Party to sound out a coalition but no agreement was reached.^[89] Papen dissolved Parliament, and the Nazi vote declined in the November Election.^[90] Hindenberg appointed Schleicher as chancellor,^[91] whereupon the aggrieved Papen opened negotiations with Hitler, and came to an agreement.^[92] Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Chancellor on January 30, 1933, in a coalition arrangement between the Nazis and the Nationalist-Conservatives. Papen was to serve as Vice-Chancellor in a majority conservative Cabinets, falsely believing he could "tame" Hitler.^[85] Initially, Papen did speak out against some Nazi excesses and only narrowly escaped death in the Night of the Long Knives, where after he ceased to openly criticize the Hitler government. German Catholics met the Nazi takeover with apprehension, as leading clergy had been warning against Nazism for years.^[93] A threatening though at first sporadic persecution of the Catholic Church in Germany commenced.^[94]

Enabling Law

Following the

Through the winter/spring of 1933 Hitler ordered the wholesale dismissal of Catholic civil servants,[102] The leader of the Catholic Trade Unions was beaten by Brownshirts and a Catholic politician sought protection after S.A. troopers wounded a number of followers at a rally.^[103] In this threatening atmosphere, Hitler called for a reorganization of church and state relations of both Catholic and Protestant churches. By June, thousands of Centre Party members were incarcerated in concentration camps. Two thousand functionaries of the Bavarian People's Party were rounded up by police in late June 1933; along with the Centre Party it ceased to exist by early July.^[104][105] Lacking public ecclesial support, the Center Party voluntary dissolved on July 5.^[106] Non-Nazi parties were formally outlawed on 14 July, and the Reichstag abdicated its democratic responsibilities.^[98]

Reichskonkordat

Between 1930–33, the church initiated negotiations with successive German governments with limited success while a federal treaty proved elusive.[110] Catholic politicians of the Centre Party repeatedly pushed for a concordat with the German Republic.^[111] In February 1930, Pacelli became the Vatican's Secretary of State responsible for the Church's global foreign policy. In this position, he continued to work towards the 'great goal' of securing a treaty with Germany.^[110][112] 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 Nazis against the Church and its organisations".^[113] Biographer of Pius XII, Robert Ventresca, wrote, "because of increasing harassment of Catholics and Catholic clergy, Pacelli sought a quick ratification of a treaty, seeking, in this way, to protect the German Church." When Vice-Chancellor Papen and Ambassador Diego von Bergen met Pacelli in late June 1933, they found him "visibly influenced" by reports of actions being taken against German Catholic interests.^[114] Hitler wanted to end all Catholic political life. The church wanted protection of its schools and organisations, recognition of canon law regarding marriage and the right of the Pope to select bishops.^[115] The non-Nazi Vice Chancellor Papen was chosen by the new government to negotiate with the Vatican.^[105] The bishops announced on April 6 negotiations toward a concordat would begin in Rome.^[116] On April 10, Francis Stratmann O.P., 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.^[117] Hitler began enacting laws restricting movement of funds (making it impossible for German Catholics to send money to missionaries), restricting religious institutions, education, and mandating attendance at Hitler Youth functions (held on Sunday mornings).

On April 8 Vice Chancellor Von Papen, went to Rome. On behalf of Cardinal Pacelli,

On 14 July 1933, the Weimar government accepted the Reichskonkordat. It was signed by Pacelli for the Vatican and von Papen for Germany, 20 July; subsequently, President Hindenburg signed, and it was ratified in September. Article 16 required bishops to make an oath of loyalty to the state. Article 31 acknowledged 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 gave Hitler what he was seeking: exclusion of clergy and members of religious orders from politics. Yet, it was a gratuitous, according to Guenter Lewy's interpretation. In theory, Lewy reasons, members of the clergy could join or remain in the NSDAP without transgressing church discipline. "An ordinance of the Holy See forbidding priests to be members of a political party was never issued." states Lewy. The Nazis state allowed such membership reasoning, "the movement sustaining the state cannot be equated with the political parties of the parliamentary multi-party state in the sense of Article 32.",^[120][121] The day after, the government issued a law banning the founding of new political parties, thus turning Germany into a one party state.

Effects of the concordat

Most historians state it offered international acceptance of Adolf Hitler's government.^[122] 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."

Historian Robert Ventresca wrote that the Reichskonkordat left German Catholics with no "meaningful electoral opposition to the Nazis", while the "benefits and vaunted diplomatic entente [of the Reichskonkordat] with the German state were neither clear nor certain".^[106] 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."^{[citation needed]} Cardinal Faulhaber is reported to have said: "With the concordat we are hanged, without the concordat we are hanged, drawn and quartered."^{[citation needed]} According to Paul O'Shea, Hitler had a "blatant disregard" for the Concordat, and its signing was to him merely a first step in the "gradual suppression of the Catholic Church in Germany".^[123] In 1942, Hitler stated he viewed the Concordat as obsolete, and intended to abolish it after the war, and only hesitated to withdraw Germany's representative from the Vatican for "military reasons connected with the war": At the war's end we will put a swift end to the Concordat.^[124] When Nazi violations of the Reichskonkordat escalated to include physical violence, Pope Pius XI issued the 1937 encyclical Mit brennender Sorge,^[125][126]

Persecution of German Catholics

A threatening, initially sporadic, persecution of the Catholic Church in Germany followed the Nazi takeover.^[94] The Nazis claimed jurisdiction over all collective and social activity, interfering with Catholic schooling, youth groups, workers' clubs and cultural societies.^[17] "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 vast majority of Germans were either Catholic or Protestant this goal was a long-term rather than short-term Nazi objective".^[127] Hitler moved quickly to eliminate Political Catholicism. The Nazis arrested thousands of members of the German Centre Party.^[32] The Catholic Bavarian People's Party government had been overthrown in Bavaria by a Nazi coup on 9 March 1933.^[30] Two thousand functionaries of the Party were rounded up by police in late June. The national Centre Party, dissolved themselves in early July. The dissolution of the Centre Party left modern Germany without a Catholic Party for the first time^[30] and the Reich Concordat prohibited clergy from participating in politics.^[105] 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".^[113] Hitler had a "blatant disregard" for the Concordat, wrote Paul O'Shea, and its signing was to him merely a first step in the "gradual suppression of the Catholic Church in Germany".^[128] Anton Gill wrote that "with his usual irresistible, bullying technique, Hitler proceeded to "take a mile where he had been given an inch" and closed all Catholic institutions whose functions weren't strictly religious:^[129]

It quickly became clear that [Hitler] intended to imprison the Catholics, as it were, in their own churches. They could celebrate mass and retain their rituals as much as they liked, but they could have nothing at all to do with German society otherwise. Catholic schools and newspapers were closed, and a propaganda campaign against the Catholics was launched.

— Extract from An Honourable Defeat by Anton Gill

Immediately prior to the signing of the Concordat, the Nazis had promulgated the sterilization law—the

Since senior clerics could rely on a degree of popular support from the faithful the German government had to consider the possibility of nationwide protests.[141] While hundreds of ordinary priests and members of monastic orders were sent to concentration camps throughout the Nazi period, only one German Catholic bishop was briefly imprisoned in a concentration camp and another expelled from his diocese.^[142] From 1940, the Gestapo launched an intense persecution of the monasteries invading, searching and seizing them. The Provincial of the Dominican Province of Teutonia, Laurentius Siemer, a spiritual leader of the German Resistance was influential in the Committee for Matters Relating to the Orders, which formed in response to Nazi attacks against Catholic monasteries and aimed to encourage the bishops to intercede on behalf of the Orders and oppose the Nazi state more emphatically.^[143][144] Figures like Galen and Preysing attempted to protect German priests from arrest.^{[145][146][147]}

Suppression of Catholic press

The flourishing Catholic press of Germany faced censorship and closure. In March 1941, Goebbels banned all church press, on the pretext of a "paper shortage".

Catholic schools were a major battleground in the church struggle. In 1933, the Nazi school superintendent of Munster issued a decree religious instruction be combined with discussion of the "demoralising power" of the "people of Israel", Bishop Clemens von Galen of Münster refused, writing that such interference in curriculum was a breach of the Concordat and he feared children would be confused as to their "obligation to act with charity to all men" and as to the historical mission of the people of Israel.[155] Often Galen directly protested to Hitler over violations of the Concordat. In 1936, Nazis removed crucifixes in school. Protest by Galen led to public demonstration.^[156] Hitler sometimes allowed pressure to be placed on German parents to remove children from religious classes to be given ideological instruction in its place, while in elite Nazi schools, Christian prayers were replaced with Teutonic rituals and sun-worship.^[157] Church kindergartens were closed 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".^[139] In 1937, authorities in Upper Bavaria attempted to replace Catholic schools with "common schools". Cardinal Faulhaber offered fierce resistance.^[158] By 1939 all Catholic denominational schools had been disbanded or converted to public facilities.^[16]

"War on the Church"

After constant confrontations, by late 1935, Bishop Clemens August Graf von Galen of Münster was urging a joint pastoral letter protesting an "underground war" against the church.^[155] By early 1937, the church hierarchy in Germany, which had initially attempted to co-operate with the new government, became highly disillusioned. In March, Pope Pius XI issued the Mit brennender Sorge encyclical – accusing the Nazi Government of violations of the 1933 Concordat, and it was sowing the "tares of suspicion, discord, hatred, calumny, of secret and open fundamental hostility to Christ and His Church".^[130] The Nazis responded with an intensification of the church struggle beginning around April.^[51] Goebbels noted heightened verbal attacks on the clergy from Hitler in his diary and wrote that Hitler had approved the trumped up "immorality trials" against clergy and anti-church propaganda campaign. Goebbels' orchestrated attack included a staged "morality trial" of 37 Franciscans.^[51] At the outbreak of World War II, Goebbels' Ministry of Propaganda issued threats and applied intense pressure on the Churches to voice support for the war, and the Gestapo banned church meetings for a few weeks. In the first few months of the war, the German churches complied.^[159] No denunciations of the invasion of Poland, nor the Blitzkrieg were issued.^[160] The Catholic bishops stated, "We appeal to the faithful to join in ardent prayer that God's providence may lead this war to blessed success for Fatherland and people."^[159] Despite such protestation of loyalty to the Fatherland, the anti-church radical Reinhard Heydrich determined that support from church leaders could not be expected because of the nature of their doctrines and internationalism, and wanted to cripple the political activities of clergy. He devised measures to restrict the operation of the churches under cover of war time exigencies, such as reducing resources available to church presses on the basis of rationing, prohibiting pilgrimages and large church gatherings on the basis of transportation difficulties. Churches were closed for being "too far from bomb shelters". Bells were melted down and presses were closed.^[161]

With the expansion of the war in the East from 1941 came an expansion of Germany's attack on the churches. Monasteries and convents were targeted and expropriation of church properties surged. Nazi authorities claimed the properties were needed for wartime necessities such as hospitals, or accommodation for refugees or children, but in fact used them for their own purposes. "Hostility to the state" was a common cause given for the confiscations, and the action of a single member of a monastery could result in seizure. The Jesuits were especially targeted.^[162] The Papal Nuncio Cesare Orsenigo and Cardinal Bertram complained constantly to the authorities but were told to expect more requisitions owing to war-time needs.^[163] Over 300 monasteries and other institutions were expropriated by the SS.^[164] On 22 March 1942, the German Bishops issued a pastoral letter on "The Struggle against Christianity and the Church".^[19] The letter launched a defense of human rights, the rule of law and accused the Reich Government of "unjust oppression and hated struggle against Christianity and the Church", despite the loyalty of German Catholics to the Fatherland, and brave service of Catholics soldiers.^[20]

Long-term plans

In January 1934, Hitler had appointed neo-pagan and anti-Catholic

Catholic resistance

The 1933 Concordat between Germany and the Vatican prohibited clergy from participating in politics, weakening the opposition offered by German Catholic leaders.^[175] Still, the clergy were among the first major components of the German Resistance. "From the very beginning", wrote Hamerow, "some churchmen expressed, quite directly at times, their reservations about the new order. In fact, those reservations gradually came to form a coherent, systematic critique of many of the teachings of National Socialism."^[176] Later, the most trenchant public criticism of the Nazis came from some of Germany's religious leaders. The government was reluctant to move against them since they could claim to merely attend the spiritual welfare of their flocks, "what they had to say was at times so critical of the central doctrines of National Socialism that to say it required great boldness", and became resistors. Their resistance was directed not only against intrusions by the government into church governance, arrests of clergy, and expropriation of church property, but also, matters like euthanasia and eugenics, the fundamentals of human rights and justice as the foundation of a political system.^[177]

Neither the Catholic or Protestant churches were prepared to openly oppose the Nazi State. While offering, in the words of Kershaw, "something less than fundamental resistance to Nazism", the churches "engaged in a bitter war of attrition with the regime, receiving the demonstrative backing of millions of churchgoers. Applause for Church leaders whenever they appeared in public, swollen attendances at events such as Corpus Christi Day processions, and packed church services were outward signs of the struggle of ... especially of the Catholic Church—against Nazi oppression". While the Church ultimately failed to protect its youth organisations and schools, it did have some successes in mobilizing public opinion to alter government policies. As in the case of the attempt to remove crucifixes from classrooms.^[178] The churches did provide the earliest and most enduring centres of systematic opposition to Nazi policies. Christian morality and the anti-Church policies of the Nazis motivated many German resistors and provided impetus for the "moral revolt" of individuals in their efforts to overthrow Hitler.^[179] Institutionally, the Catholic Church in Germany offered organised, systematic and consistent resistance to government policies which infringed on ecclesiastical autonomy.^[180] In his history of the German Resistance, Hoffmann writes, from the beginning:^[181]

[The Catholic Church] could not silently accept the general persecution, regimentation or oppression, nor in particular the sterilization law of summer 1933. Over the years until the outbreak of war Catholic resistance stiffened until finally its most eminent spokesman was the Pope himself with his encyclical Mit brennender Sorge ... of 14 March 1937, read from all German Catholic pulpits. Clemens August Graf von Galen, Bishop of Münster, was typical of the many fearless Catholic speakers. In general terms, therefore, the churches were the only major organisations to offer comparatively early and open resistance: they remained so in later years.

— Extract from The History of the German Resistance 1933–1945 by Peter Hoffmann

Early political resistance

Political Catholicism was a target of the Hitler government. The formerly influential Centre Party and Bavarian People's Party were dissolved under terrorisation. Following "

Hitler decided to kill his chief political opponents in the Night of the Long Knives purge. It lasted two days over 30 June-1 July 1934.^[188] His leading rivals in the Nazi movement were murdered, along with over 100 opposition figures, including high-profile Catholics. Klausener became the first Catholic martyr, while Hitler personally ordered the arrest of Jung and his transfer to Gestapo headquarters, Berlin where he too was killed.^[189] The Church had resisted attempts by the new Government to close its youth organisations and Adalbert Probst, the national director of the Catholic Youth Sports Association, was also killed.^[133][133] The Catholic press was targeted too, with anti-Nazi journalist Fritz Gerlich among those murdered.^[150] On 2 August 1934, the aged President von Hindenberg died. The offices of President and Chancellor were combined, and Hitler ordered the Army to swear an oath directly to him. Hitler declared his "revolution" complete.^[190]

Clerical resistors

Historian of the

Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber gained an early reputation as a critic of the Nazi movement.

The

By early 1937, the church hierarchy in Germany, which had initially attempted to co-operate with the new government, became highly disillusioned. In March, Pius XI issued the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge ("With burning concern"). Smuggled into Germany to avoid censorship it was read from the pulpits of all German Catholic churches on Palm Sunday 1937.^[222] It condemned Nazi ideology and accused the Nazi government of violating the 1933 Concordat and promoting "suspicion, discord, hatred, calumny, of secret and open fundamental hostility to Christ and His Church".^[130] Although there is some difference of opinion as to its impact, it is generally recognized as the "first ... official public document to criticize Nazism".^[223] Bokenkotter describes it as "one of the greatest such condemnations ever issued by the Vatican."^[224] 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 Goebbels increased anti-Catholic propaganda, including a show trial of 170 Franciscans at Koblenz.^[35] The "infuriated" Nazis increased their persecution of Catholics and the Church. Gerald Fogarty asserts, "in the end, the encyclical had little positive effect, and if anything only exacerbated the crisis."^[225]

According to Frank J. Coppa the Nazis saw the encyclical as "a call to battle against the Reich". Hitler was furious and "vowed revenge against the Church".^[226] Thomas Bokenkotter writes, "the Nazis were infuriated. In retaliation they closed and sealed all the presses that printed it. They took numerous vindictive measures against the Church, including staging a long series of immorality trials of the Catholic clergy."^[224] The German police confiscated as many copies as they could, and the Gestapo confiscated twelve printing presses.^[136] According to Owen Chadwick,^[227] John Vidmar, and other scholars, Nazi reprisals against the Church in Germany followed thereafter, including "staged prosecutions of monks for homosexuality, with the maximum of publicity".^[228] Shirer reports that "during 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'."^[229]

Priests of Dachau

In an effort to counter the influence of spiritual resistance, Nazi security services monitored Catholic clergy closely. They instructed agents be placed in every diocese, the bishops' reports to the Vatican obtained and the bishops' areas of activity be found out. A "vast network" was established to monitor the activities of ordinary clergy: Nazi security agents wrote that "The importance of this enemy is such that inspectors of security police and of the security service will make this group of people and the questions discussed by them their special concern".

In December 1935, Wilhelm Braun, a Catholic theologian from Munich, became the first churchman imprisoned at Dachau. The annexation of Austria saw an increase in clerical inmates. Berben wrote: "The commandant at the time, Loritz, persecuted them with ferocious hatred, and unfortunately he found some prisoners to help the guards in their sinister work".^[233] Despite SS hostility to religious observance, the Vatican and German bishops successfully lobbied the government to concentrate clergy at one camp and obtained permission to build a chapel, for the priests to live communally and for time to be allotted to them for the religious and intellectual activity. From December 1940, priests were gathered in Blocks 26, 28 and 30, though only temporarily. 26 became the international block and 28 was reserved for Poles—the most numerous group.^[234] Conditions varied for prisoners in the camp. The Nazis introduced a racial hierarchy—keeping Poles in harsh conditions, while favouring German priests.^[235] Many Polish priests simply died of the cold, not given sufficient clothing. A large number were chosen for Nazi medical experiments. In November 1942, 20 were given phlegmons. 120 were used by Dr Schilling for malaria experiments between July 1942 and May 1944. Several Poles met their deaths via the "invalid trains" sent out from the camp, others were liquidated in the camp and given bogus death certificates. Some died of cruel punishment for misdemeanor, beaten to death or worked to exhaustion.^[236] Religious activity outside the chapel was totally forbidden,^[237] and priests would secretly take confessions and distribute the Eucharist among other prisoners.^[238]

Amid the Nazi persecution of the Tirolian Catholics, the Blessed

Catholics in the German Resistance

Old guard national-conservatives aligned to

Kershaw wrote that while "detestation of Nazism was overwhelming within the Catholic Church" it did not preclude church leaders approving of areas of government policy, particularly, where Nazism "blended into 'mainstream' national aspirations"—like support for "patriotic" foreign policy, or war aims, obedience to state authority (where this did not contravene divine law); and destruction of atheistic Marxism and Soviet Bolshevism. Traditional Christian anti-Judaism was "no bulwark" against Nazi biological antisemitism. On these issues "the churches as institutions fell on uncertain grounds", and opposition was generally left to fragmented and largely individual efforts.^[279] According to Shirer, the Catholic hierarchy in Germany first tried to co-operate with the Nazi Government, but by 1937 had become highly disillusioned. The Vatican therefore issued Mit brennender Sorge outlining Nazi transgressions.^[229] Few ordinary Germans, wrote Shirer, paused to reflect on the Nazis' intention to destroy Christianity in Germany.^[50]

According to Dr Harry Schnitker, Kevin Spicer's Hitler's Priests found around 0.5% of German priests (138 of 42,000—including Austrian) might be considered Nazis. One such priest was Karl Eschweiler, an opponent of the Weimar Republic, was suspended from priestly duties by Cardinal Pacelli (the future Pius XII) for writing Nazi pamphlets in support of eugenics.^[280]

In 1943, Grober expressed the opinion bishops should remain loyal to the "beloved folk and Fatherland", despite abuses of the Reichskonkordat.^[281] Yet, Gröber was among those in the hierarchy in Germany who came to articulate and support resistance to the Nazis.^[191] He protested the religious persecution of Catholics in Germany.^[282] He supported German resistance worker Gertrud Luckner's "Office for Religious War Relief" (Kirchliche Kriegshilfsstelle) under the auspices of the Catholic aid agency, Caritas. The office became the instrument through which Freiburg Catholics helped racially persecuted "non-Aryans" (both Jews and Christians).^[283] Luckner used funds received from the archbishop to help Jews.^[283][284] After the war, Gröber said opposed the Nazis to the point that they planned to crucify him.^[285] Mary Fulbrook wrote that when politics encroached on the church, Catholics were prepared to resist, but the record was otherwise patchy and uneven with notable exceptions, "it seems that, for many Germans, adherence to the Christian faith proved compatible with at least passive acquiescence in, if not active support for, the Nazi dictatorship".^[286]

Hamerow characterised the resistance approach of senior Catholic clergy like August von Galen of Münster as "trying to influence the Third Reich from within". While some clergymen refused ever to feign support for the government in the Church's conflict with the state over ecclesiastical autonomy, the Catholic hierarchy adopted a strategy of "seeming acceptance of the Third Reich", by couching their criticisms as motivated merely by a desire to "point out mistakes that some of its overzealous followers committed" in order to strengthen the government.^[206] Griech-Polelle wrote Galen had argued^[when?] that good Catholics could support a government whose aim was to destroy a 'Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy^[205] When Galen delivered his famous 1941 denunciations of Nazi euthanasia and the lawlessness of the Gestapo, he also said that the church had never sought the overthrow of the government.^[247]

Second World War

Papacy and Nazi Germany

Papacy of Pius XI

The pontificate of

Pius's major diplomatic approach was to make Concordats. He concluded eighteen such treaties during the course of his pontificate. However, wrote Hebblethwaite, these Concordats did not prove "durable or creditable" and "wholly failed in their aim of safeguarding the institutional rights of the Church" for "Europe was entering a period in which such agreements were regarded as mere scraps of paper".^[107] In 1929, Pius signed the Lateran Treaty and a concordat with Italy, confirming the existence of an independent Vatican City state, in return for recognition of the Kingdom of Italy and an undertaking for the papacy to be neutral in world conflicts.^[43] In Article 24 of the Concordat, the papacy undertook "to remain outside temporal conflicts unless the parties concerned jointly appealed for the pacifying mission of the Holy See".^[287]

In 1933, Pius signed the

From the earliest days of the Nazi takeover in Germany, the Vatican was taking diplomatic action to attempt to defend the Jews of Germany. In the spring of 1933, Pope Pius XI urged Mussolini to ask Hitler to restrain the antisemitic actions taking place in Germany.[292] Pius XI asserted to a group of pilgrims that antisemitism is incompatible with Christianity:^[293]

Mark well that in the Catholic Mass, Abraham is our Patriarch and forefather. Antisemitism 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 antisemitism. It is inadmissible. Through Christ and in Christ we are the spiritual progeny of Abraham. Spiritually, we are all Semites.

— Pope Pius XI, 1933

As the newly installed Nazi Government began to instigate its program of anti-semitism, Pope Pius XI, through Pacelli, ordered the Papal Nuncio in Berlin, Cesare Orsenigo, to "look into whether and how it may be possible to become involved" in their aid. Orsenigo proved a poor instrument in this regard, concerned more with the anti-church policies of the Nazis and how these might effect German Catholics, than with taking action to help German Jews. Cardinal Innitzer called him timid and ineffectual with respect to the worsening situation for German Jewry.^[294] Appearing before 250,000 pilgrims at Lourdes in April 1935, Cardinal Pacelli said:^[295]

[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.

— Cardinal Secretary of State

Eugenio Pacelli

, Lourdes, April 1935

Papacy of Pius XII

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.[299]

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

Pius 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.^[157] To confidantes, Hitler scorned Pius XII as a blackmailer on his back,^[304] who constricted his ally Mussolini and leaked confidential German correspondence to the world.^[305] For opposition from the Church he vowed "retribution to the last farthing" after the conclusion of the war.^[217]

Early pontificate

Nazi opposition to election of Pacelli

The Nazi authorities disapproved of Pacelli's election as Pope. Historian of the Holocaust Martin Gilbert wrote: "So outspoken were Pacelli's criticisms that Hitler's government lobbied against him, trying to prevent his becoming the successor to Pius XI. When he did become Pope, as Pius XII, in March 1939, Nazi Germany was the only government not to send a representative to his coronation."^[306] Goebbels noted in his diary on 4 March 1939 that Hitler was considering whether to abrogate the Concordat with Rome in light of Pacelli's election as Pope, adding "This will surely happen when Pacelli undertakes his first hostile act".^[307]

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."^[308] 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."^[136]

Early Diplomatic efforts

Pius selected Cardinal

Pope Pius XII lobbied world leaders to prevent the outbreak of World War II, up to the very last day of peace. On 24 August 1939, he made a public broadcast appealing for peace, and on 31 August, the last day before the war, the Pope wrote to the German, Polish, Italian, British and French governments saying that he was unwilling to abandon hope that pending negotiations might lead to "a just pacific solution" and beseeching the Germans and Polish "in the name of God" to avoid "any incident" and for the British, French and Italians to support his appeal. The "pending negotiations" turned out to be a mere Nazi propaganda trick. The following day, Hitler invaded Poland.[320]

Summi Pontificatus ("On the Limitations of the Authority of the State"), issued 20 October 1939, was the first papal encyclical issued by Pius, and established some of the themes of his papacy.^[321] Couched in diplomatic language, Pius endorses Catholic resistance and states his disapproval of the war, racism, anti-Semitism, the invasion of Poland, and the persecutions of the Church.^[322] With Italy not yet an ally of Hitler in the war, Italians were called upon to remain faithful to the Church. Pius avoided accusing Hitler and Stalin, 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."^[323]

Pius 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

In a further rejection of Nazi ideology, Pius reiterated Catholic opposition to racism and anti-Semitism, saying that man "is neither Gentile nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian nor Scythian, bond nor free. But Christ is all and in all"[325]

Pius commented on the invasion of Poland as well: "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^[322] In Poland, the Nazis murdered over 2,500 monks and priests and even more were imprisoned.^[227]

Assistance to German Resistance and Allies

With war underway, the focus of Holy See policy became the prevention of Mussolini from bringing Italy into the war.^[326] In April 1940, the Italian Foreign Minister, Count Ciano, officially complained to Cardinal Secretary of State Maglione, that so many churches were offering "sermons about peace and peace demonstrations, perhaps inspired by the Vatican", and the Italian Ambassador to the Holy See complained that L'Osservatore Romano was too favourable to the democracies.^[327]

With Poland overrun but France and the Low Countries yet to be attacked, the German Resistance sought the Pope's assistance in preparations for a coup to oust Hitler. 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, offered assistance to the German resistance in the event of a coup and warned the Allies of the planned German invasion of the Low Countries in 1940.^{[248][250][328]}

Colonel

After Mussolini was rescued by the Nazis and installed as leader in Northern Italy, the Vatican feared a Communist takeover, but refused to recognise Mussolini's new state. As Italy lurched towards civil war, the Vatican urged moderation. At Easter 1944, Italian bishops were directed to "stigmatise every form of hatred, of vendetta, reprisal and violence, from wherever it comes". 191 priests were killed by fascists and 125 by the Germans, while 109 were killed by partisans. Though some joined pro-fascist bands, the Vatican backed the so-called anti-Fascist 'partisan chaplains' and 'red priests', hoping that they would provide religious guidance to partisans being exposed to Communist propaganda.[339]

Pius XII and the Holocaust

Aid to Jews

At the close of his predecessor's pontificate, Pacelli received word from nuncios of increasing persecution of the Jews in Nazi Germany. According to Gordon Thomas, he already conceived of a strategy to work behind the scenes to help the Jews, because he believed "any form of denunciation in the name of the Vatican would inevitably provoke further reprisals against the Jews".^[340] During his pontificate Pius XII, Catholic institutions across Europe were opened as shelter for Jews, and the institutions of the Vatican itself were employed in this purpose.^[341] Pius 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 by directing the church to discreetly provide aid.^[342] According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, Pius chose to "use diplomacy to aid the persecuted". Upon his death he was "praised effusively by world leaders especially by Jewish groups for his actions during World War II on behalf of the persecuted".^[298] The Israeli historian Pinchas Lapide interviewed war survivors 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". Deák writes that most historians dispute this estimate^[343] while Rabbi David Dalin called Pinchas Lapide's work "the definitive work by a Jewish scholar" on the holocaust.^[344]

Prelude to Holocaust

According to

Giovanni Ferrofino is credited with saving 10,000 Jews. Acting on secret orders from Pius XII, Ferrofino obtained visas from the Portuguese Government and the Dominican Republic to secure their escape from Europe and sanctuary in the Americas.^[347] In response to Mussolini's anti-Jewish legislation, Pacelli arranged for Jewish friends and eminent Jewish doctors, scholars and scientists to emigrate safely to Palestine and the Americas. Twenty-three were appointed to positions in Vatican educational institutions.^[288][348] At the outbreak of the war, local bishops were instructed to assist those in need.^[341] In his first encyclical, Summi Pontificatus, Pius XII rejected anti-semitism, stating that in the Catholic Church there is "neither Gentile nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision."^[288][349]

In 1940, the Nazi Foreign Minister

In 1942, Pius XII delivered a Christmas message over Vatican Radio which expressed sympathy for the victims of the Nazis' genocidal policies.^[350] From May 1942, the Nazis had commenced their industrialized slaughter of the Jews of Europe—the Final Solution.^[350] 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"^[351] [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 Encyclopædia 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".^[342] 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.^[352] 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."^[288]

Nazi occupation of Italy

Following the capitulation of Italy in September 1943, the Nazis occupied Rome. Pius held a secret meeting to plan how to save the Jews of the city and the many Allied PoWs then taking refuge in Rome. Msgr. Angelo Dell'Acqua acted as liaison with relief groups.^[353] When news of the 15 October 1943 round-up of Roman Jews reached the Pope, he instructed the Holy See's Secretary of State, Cardinal Maglione to protest to the German Ambassador to "save these innocent people".^[288][342] 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.^[288]

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".^[354]

Diplomatic activities (1942–1945)

In Croatia, the Vatican used a Benedictine abbot, Giuseppe Marcone, as its Apostolic Visitor—together with Archbishop Aloysius Stepinac of Zagreb—to pressure its leader Pavelić to cease its facilitation of race murders.^[355]

In the newly formed

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.[364]

In Poland, the Nazis murdered over 2,500 monks and priests and even more were imprisoned.^[227] In a 30 April 1943 letter to Bishop von Preysing of Berlin, Pius referred to the Nazi retribution in the Netherlands as one reason for 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.^[365]

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),^[366][367] nor did he ever publicly condemn the Soviet Union for the deaths of 1 million mainly Catholic Polish citizens including an untold number of clergy.^[368] 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."^[369] 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 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.^{[citation needed]}

Criticism

Assessments of Pius's role during World War II were initially positive; however, following his death, some have been more critical. Early on the Soviets were keen to discredit Pius in the eyes of Catholics in the Eastern Bloc. Some historians argue the Pope did not "do enough" to prevent the Holocaust. Commentators said he was "silent" in the face of the Holocaust. Others have accused the Church and Pius of antisemitism. These accusations are strongly contested. According to historian William Doino (author of The Pius War: Responses to the Critics of Pius XII), Pius XII was "emphatically not 'silent', and did condemn the Nazis' horrific crimes through Vatican Radio, his first encyclical, Summi Pontificatus, major addresses (especially his Christmas allocutions), the L'Osservatore Romano" and he "intervened, time and time again, for persecuted Jews, particularly, during the German occupation of Rome. He was cited and hailed by the Catholic rescuers as their leader and director.^[370]

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. John Cornwell also depicted the Pope as an anti-Semite. In an assessment by the Encyclopædia 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."^[298]

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 Pius XII. 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.^[386] 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".^[387] In his study of the rescuers of the Jews, Martin Gilbert noted the heavy involvement of the Christian Churches, and wrote that many of the rescued eventually converted to Christianity, and were absorbed into the faith and a "sense of belonging to the religion of the rescuers. It was the price – the penalty, from a strictly Orthodox Jewish perspective – that was paid hundreds, even thousands, of times for the gift of life."^[388]

"Ratlines": Helping Nazis to flee

Bishop Alois Hudal, the former rector of the pan-Germanic college in Rome training German priests, was secretly a member of the Nazi Party and informant for German Intelligence.^[353] Gerald Steinacher wrote that Hudal enjoyed close personal relations with Pius XII for many years prior and was an influential figure in the process of escape. The Vatican Refugee Committees for Croats, Slovenes, Ukrainians and Hungarians aided former fascists and Nazi collaborators to escape those countries.^[392]

Rome had been advised the new

Pope John Paul II had suffered through the Nazi occupation of Poland, was involved in the Polish cultural resistance and joined a clandestine seminary during the war.^[399] In 1979, soon after his election, John Paul II visited Auschwitz concentration camp, in homage to those who had died there.^[400] In 1998, the Vatican published We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah.^[400] The Pope said he hoped it would "help heal the wounds of past misunderstandings and injustices" and described the wartime sufferings of the Jews as a "crime" and "indelible stain" on history.^[401][402] We Remember spoke of a "duty of remembrance" that the "inhumanity with which the Jews were persecuted and massacred during this century is beyond the capacity of words to convey". The document repudiated persecution and condemned genocide. It acknowledged a negative history of "long-standing sentiments of mistrust and hostility that we call anti-Judaism" from many Christians towards Jews, but distinguished these from the racial antisemitism of the Nazis:^[403]

[T]heories began to appear which denied the unity of the human race, affirming an original diversity of races. In the 20th century, National Socialism in Germany used these ideas as a pseudo-scientific basis for a distinction between so called Nordic-Aryan races and supposedly inferior races. Furthermore, an extremist form of nationalism was heightened in Germany by the defeat of 1918 and the demanding conditions imposed by the victors, with the consequence that many saw in National Socialism a solution to their country's problems and cooperated politically with this movement. The Church in Germany replied by condemning racism.

— From We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah (1998)

On the roots of the Nazi Holocaust, We Remember said:^[403]

The Shoah was the work of a thoroughly modern neo-pagan regime. Its anti-Semitism had its roots outside of Christianity and, in pursuing its aims, it did not hesitate to oppose the Church and persecute her members also.

— From We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah (1998)

But on the question of the response of the church and individual Catholics to the Nazi Holocaust, We Remember acknowledged both success and failure, concluding with a call for penitence:

Those who did help to save Jewish lives as much as was in their power, even to the point of placing their own lives in danger, must not be forgotten. During and after the war, Jewish communities and Jewish leaders expressed their thanks for all that had been done for them, including what Pope Pius XII did personally or through his representatives to save hundreds of thousands of Jewish lives. Many Catholic bishops, priests, religious and laity have been honoured for this reason by the State of Israel. Nevertheless ... the spiritual resistance and concrete action of other Christians was not that which might have been expected from Christ's followers. We cannot know how many Christians in countries occupied or ruled by the Nazi powers or their allies were horrified at the disappearance of their Jewish neighbours and yet were not strong enough to raise their voices in protest. For Christians, this heavy burden of conscience of their brothers and sisters during the Second World War must be a call to penitence

— From We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah (1998)

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."^[404] 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.^[401] The Church acknowledged its use of some forced labour in the Nazi era; 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".^[405]

Pope Francis

In June 2018, Pope urged the Catholic Church to never forget the "Shoah," the Hebrew translation for "Holocaust", stating that “the memory of the Shoah and its atrocious violence must never be forgotten.”^[406] The Pope further stated that “It should be a constant warning for all of us of an obligation to reconciliation, of reciprocal comprehension and love toward our ‘elder brothers,’ the Jews.”^[406] In March 2019, Pope Francis agreed to open the Holocaust-era Vatican Archives.^[407] In August 2019, Pope Francis argued in an interview with the Italian newspaper La Stampa that isolationism and populism lead to war.^[408] The Pope expressed concern about what he terms as “sovereignism” which he describes as an attitude of isolation.^[408] While “sovereignism” involves closing in upon oneself, sovereignty is not, the Pope explains.^[408] The Pope stated that sovereignty must be defended and relations with other countries, with the European Community, must also be protected and promoted.^[408] When asked about recent speeches promoting isolationism and nationalism, the Pope stated "that Europe needs to respect identities of peoples without closing itself in" and "I am worried because you hear speeches that resemble those by Hitler in 1934."^[408][409] He previously denounced populism for leading the rise of Hitler as well.^[410]

See Also

• Raphael's Verein

Notes

References