The Church’s Condemnation of Nazism Was Clear

The Church’s Condemnation of Nazism Was Clear

Some have accused the local German Church of a certain coexistence with the Nazi regime. They perhaps do not know that the most famous condemnation of this ideology—the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge—came from an initiative of the German episcopate and that on Sunday, March 21, 1937, this document was read in all German Catholic churches—more than 11,000 of them—which reveals absolute unanimity. Moreover, the balancing act the Holy See had to perform—on the one hand, denouncing the abuses of Hitler without endangering the lives of Catholics in occupied countries—was of enormous merit. Pius XII, who was aware of Nazi outrages during the war, never ceased to combat that situation, but his hands were tied, because whenever he denounced a Nazi crime, the reprisal was worse.

On January 28, 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed German Chancellor. His party, the National Socialist party, was in the minority, and Hitler took only three days to call new elections. On March 5 the ballot boxes gave him 288 seats, which did not amount to an absolute majority in a parliament of 647 deputies, but he took advantage of the Reichstag fire, attributed to the Communists but in reality organized by the Nazis, to declare the Communist Party illegal. With the 81 Communist deputies thus eliminated, the Nazis obtained an absolute majority by a narrow margin—10 seats—with which they passed an enabling act granting full powers.

A year later, on August 2, 1934, the German president, Marshal Hindenburg, died. Just one hour later it was announced that the offices of president and chancellor were being unified in the person of Hitler. A plebiscite was called to ratify this measure, and, with the propaganda machine firmly in the hands of the Nazi Goebbels, on the 19th of that same month the German people voted affirmatively by an overwhelming majority. Thus Adolf Hitler became the absolute master of Germany until its crushing defeat in 1945.

From his appearance on the public scene, the true nature and ideas of the Nazis did not go unnoticed by the German Catholic hierarchy, especially since Pope Pius XI, in view of the social convulsions with which the 1930s began, had already publicly warned of the consequences that would follow from the prevalence of “a harsh nationalism, that is, hatred and envy in place of mutual desire for the good” (Christmas address of 1930). The bishops, as happens today, drafted pastoral letters when elections took place, recalling the moral criteria regarding voting and the ideas that were unacceptable for a Catholic, although without naming names. Of particular importance were the pastorals of Cardinal Faulhaber, since he was the Archbishop of Munich, the cradle of Nazism.

Unlike other periods, it cannot be said that Catholic faithful failed to understand the message or received it with indifference. The meteoric rise in parliamentary representation of the National Socialist party was due to the massive vote of Protestant areas, above all Prussia, while Catholics chose mainly the old “Zentrum”—born in the time of Bismarck and a decisive instrument in putting an end to his “Kulturkampf”—and, in Bavaria—a Catholic region and at the same time one with a considerable nationalist inclination and where the Nazi party was formed—this was joined by the Bavarian People’s Party, which won 19 seats in 1933.

Shortly after the Nazi victory of 1933, the German bishops met in the traditional place, Fulda. They examined the situation, and their concerns were set down in a collective letter of the episcopate. It was not an explicit condemnation, but it certainly did not lack clarity. In examining the doctrines being imposed, there were phrases that left no room for doubt, such as the following: “the exclusive affirmation of the principles of blood and race leads to injustices that gravely wound the Christian conscience.”

It could be seen that the bishops’ principal fears were twofold. On the one hand, that the new totalitarian state would put an end to Catholic organizations, especially educational ones. And, on the other, that the new regime would try to create a kind of national church and seek to gather everyone into it, Catholics included. Firmly and quickly confronting what seemed to be the prolegomena of a new “Kulturkampf,” the German bishops also sent an unwritten message, of which the Nazis took careful note: the confirmation of their unity, practically without fissures. It did not look promising to attempt to sow discord among the episcopate. For the Hitlerites, a better way to attack the Church seemed to be to try to open a breach between the German bishops and the Holy See. This was one of the reasons why Hitler looked favorably on the possibility of signing a concordat with the Holy See.

THE CONCORDAT

In reality, the initiative for a concordat between the Third Reich and the Holy See came neither from the Nazis nor from the Church, but from a Catholic politician of the Centre Party, Franz von Papen, whom Hitler, wishing to maintain a respectable appearance while Hindenburg lived, had in his government as vice-chancellor. As a Catholic and a member of the government, he believed that an agreement would serve to resolve the possible frictions that were already beginning to appear. To this end, von Papen appeared in Rome in April 1933.

In Rome, the two main figures with whom he had to meet were Pope Pius XI and his Secretary of State, Pacelli. Both were favorable to signing a concordat, and thought that, however few the advantages might turn out to be, it was always advisable to try to reach an understanding with different regimes, even if they were hostile to the Church, as had been shown, for example, with the Spanish Republic.

The concordat did not require lengthy negotiations. Basically, it reproduced the content of the recent concordats with several German Länder—Bavaria, Prussia and Baden—which had been negotiated by the then nuncio Pacelli. There was only one controversial point. Pius XI, who had placed so many hopes in confessional organizations, wanted it firmly secured that they would preserve their independence, especially the youth organizations. The Italian experience showed him that this was a point of friction. In the end an agreement was reached by both parties, and the signing was proclaimed as a success by both.

There was no naivety in the matter of the concordat, except perhaps on the part of von Papen. Hitler, from the very beginning, was not acting in good faith. The Church had no illusions about this, but considered that the concordat would serve as a reference point for denouncing the foreseeable abuses that the authorities would commit, and perhaps thereby for mitigating them. It is difficult to gauge to what extent it served to achieve this latter objective, but it may be ventured that it had some usefulness. As for the instrument itself, its content does not seem at all mistaken if one takes into account that that 1933 concordat is still in force today.

THE ENCYCLICAL MIT BRENNENDER SORGE

The Nazi government began to violate the concordat from the very first moment. And from the very first moment denunciations began to pour in from the German bishops. The Church was harassed in various ways, not excluding the imprisonment of ecclesiastics. From Rome the local hierarchy was supported, and Pacelli sent several memoranda of protest to the German authorities; Pius XI himself also took advantage of several pilgrimages of Germans to voice his complaints publicly. From 1935 onward, Nazi propaganda launched a campaign to discredit the Catholic Church, staging several rigged trials of ecclesiastics accused of fraud.

In January 1937, with the greatest possible discretion, the principal representatives of the German episcopate arrived in Rome: Cardinals Bertram (the Primate of Breslau, a city now Polish under the name Wroclaw), Faulhaber (Munich) and Schulte (Cologne), and Bishops Preysing (Berlin) and von Galen (Münster). In view of the harassment suffered by the German Catholic Church, they came with the purpose of requesting a pontifical intervention condemning Nazism. From this would be born the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge, which, contrary to what is often thought, arose from an initiative of the German episcopate, not of the Holy See.

In Rome they met with Pius XI and with Cardinal Pacelli. The former, while giving them his full support, was somewhat reserved. But Pacelli endorsed the initiative without reservations and asked Cardinal Faulhaber for a draft. Four days later he passed it to the Secretary of State, and Pacelli, who had command of German, gave it its final form. The denunciation of Nazi ideology and conduct was absolutely clear: racism, divinization of the system, the description of the construction of a national church as apostasy, and so on.

There was no lack of references to what today is called the “cult of personality”: “Should any man dare, in sacrilegious disregard of the essential differences between God and His creature, between the God-man and the children of man, to place a mortal, were he the greatest of all times, by the side of, or over, or against, Christ, he would deserve to be called prophet of nothingness, to whom the terrifying words of Scripture would be applicable: ‘He that dwelleth in heaven shall laugh at them.’” For much less than this Adolf Hitler would have taken it personally. But Pius XI did not hesitate to sign the encyclical.

It was a general surprise—for faithful, authorities and police alike—when the encyclical was read on Sunday, March 21, 1937, in all German Catholic churches, which numbered more than 11,000. The unanimity was absolute. And, in the entire brief history of the Third Reich, it never received in Germany an opposition that came close to the one produced by Mit brennender Sorge.

As was to be expected, the next day the official Nazi organ, Völkischer Beobachter, published a first reply to the encyclical. But, surprisingly, it was also the last. The German minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, was intelligent and perceptive enough to realize the force that this declaration had had. And, with the total control of press and radio that he already had by then, he decided that the most convenient thing for the regime was to ignore the encyclical completely.

THE “ANSCHLUSS”: THE UNION OF AUSTRIA WITH THE REICH

A year later, in March 1938, the German army entered Austria, summoned by a Nazi chancellor whom Hitler had imposed with threats. In general, the annexation—the “Anschluss”—was well received, because of the instability Austria was suffering and because of the image of the German regime created by active Nazi propaganda. A plebiscite was called, by which Austria became the “Ostmark,” the “Eastern March” of the German Reich.

There was an atmosphere of euphoria. If for humiliated Austria it was the recovery of lost pride, for more than one ecclesiastic it was the distancing of the Communist danger. They still did not know with whom they had joined themselves. In that atmosphere, when Hitler—Austrian by birth—arrived in Vienna, he met with Cardinal Innitzer. Believing that he was being well received, Innitzer issued guidelines asking that the annexation be welcomed with goodwill, and included, as the Führer had requested, that youth organizations prepare to join those of the German Reich. A few days later he headed a declaration of the Austrian episcopate welcoming and praising German National Socialism. Innitzer soon saw that the limits of prudence had been exceeded, and added a clarifying note stating that everything said above was conditional upon the rights of God and of the Church being guaranteed. As was to be expected, Nazi propaganda publicized the declaration, but omitted any reference to this final note.

This conduct was very badly received in Rome, especially since it included that imprudent declaration about Catholic youth organizations. Innitzer was immediately summoned to Rome. Pacelli was waiting for him there, and held a tense conversation with him. As a result, L’Osservatore Romano published on April 7 a declaration by Innitzer that amounted to a correction of what had preceded it, in which he vindicated the rights established in the Austrian concordat, the independence of Catholic youth organizations and the rights of the Christian faithful. Only then did Pius XI receive the Austrian cardinal; until then he had not wanted to do so.

The Nazi press ignored the correction. And the new government abolished at one stroke the Catholic youth organizations, religious education and, a little later, even the theological faculty of Innsbruck. Innitzer’s archiepiscopal palace was assaulted and devastated by the “Hitler-Jugend,” the Hitler Youth.

SEPTEMBER 1939: THE WORLD WAR.

With the outbreak of the world war, quite a few things would change. The Church’s relations with the Third Reich would no longer refer only to what happened within German borders, but to a broader and constantly changing geography. For the purposes that concern us, what matters is only when a territory was under direct German domination, and not whether it was aligned with the Axis. Italy, for example, fell under German control only when Mussolini was overthrown in September 1943, and only the part not occupied by the Allies; there would be German paratroopers—and more discreetly, the Gestapo—watching the edges of Vatican City, but only for half a year, since the Americans would enter Rome at the beginning of June 1944. The fact that more and more countries entered the war, and how critical its situation would become from 1943 onward, would cause the Nazi regime to radicalize.

The great massacres of Jews—the “final solution”—began in the second half of 1942. In that situation, the efforts of the Holy See would be directed rather toward Germany’s allies, certainly less inhuman than Germany itself, with the intention that they resist Nazi pressure to carry out deportations. Each country is a story of its own, and there is no room here to detail what happened in each one.

On the part of the Holy See, the main novelty was the death of Pius XI shortly before the beginning of the war, in February 1939. But his successor was the until-then Secretary of State, Pacelli, who took the name Pius XII. He appointed Cardinal Luigi Maglione Secretary of State. As for Germany, there were no important changes in the hierarchy. Because of their firmness in denouncing abuses, which were not lacking, they managed to ensure that anti-Catholic repression was not as strong as in other places, although there were arrests and internments in concentration camps.

Moreover, when the war broke out many German Jews had already emigrated, and the worst Nazi outrages took place outside Germany’s borders, where the German bishops could do little.

THE HOLY SEE’S DILEMMA

In a war, isolated actions can be hidden and proper names concealed in anonymity, but atrocities such as those committed by the Nazis in Europe cannot be hidden for very long. Documentary evidence is now appearing that the Allied governments were perfectly aware of the planned extermination of the Jews. If they did not denounce it publicly, it was because no one wanted to receive a wave of Jewish refugees. They probably also knew that the Nazis, before deciding on the “final solution,” had considered other possible alternatives that included forced exile.

The Holy See had different channels of information, but it had them, and the truth is that it was very well informed about Nazi outrages. Should it have issued public and explicit condemnations?

First of all, the delicacy of the situation must not be lost from sight. Unlike other governments, the Holy See was not speaking “from outside”: the very survival of the Church in many countries was at stake. And in the first years of the war it seemed clear that some measures could be counterproductive, since they could lead the then victorious Nazis to radicalize their positions even further. The nuncio in Berlin, Orsenigo, had already heard from some officials that interceding for a person only served to worsen that person’s situation.

And it could be verified that this was true: when the Catholic hierarchy of Amsterdam publicly complained in 1942 about the treatment given to the Jews, the German response was to cleanse Amsterdam of Jews, who were sent to concentration camps and later to extermination.

Furthermore, the diplomatic praxis of the Holy See had as a rule, in wartime, to avoid manifestos that could be used by the propaganda of any of the belligerents and place the Church as a partisan. For this reason, at first, protest was preferred, and it was as intense as possible. Pius XII himself, when receiving the German Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop in 1941, presented him with a detailed list of complaints over two days (Ribbentrop, who made the visit for propaganda purposes, declared that its result was “satisfactory,” but it was not).

When the invasion of the USSR occurred, Germany wanted the Vatican to call it a “crusade against Bolshevism,” and the Vatican’s answer, with its refusal, was another list of grievances, added to the one just formulated by the German episcopate after its meeting in Fulda.

At the same time, the Holy See was considering the possibility of formulating a public condemnation. At first, it decided to feint. For a time, unfortunately a brief one, it seemed to have an effect. Later, Germany no longer cared, and in the Vatican the conclusion was reached that it would serve no purpose.

In the final period of the war the Church’s efforts were directed toward trying to save persons, and to influence Hitler’s satellites so that they would prevent the German SS from having a free hand in their territory. This was considered the most practical course, and a retrospective view seems to confirm it; many thousands of Hebrews were thus saved—an exact figure cannot be given, but it would have to be six digits.

PERSECUTION OF THE CHURCH IN POLAND

During most of the war the Holy See’s principal concern was Poland. Conquered in the first month of the war, it would remain in German hands until the autumn of 1944, almost the end. It had all the ingredients to become a hell: occupied for five years, a Catholic country, of the Slavic race despised by the Nazis, and with more than three million Jews, almost ten times more than Germany before Nazism, and the highest proportion in Europe—slightly over 10%. And that is what it became: a hell.

A triple division resulted from the occupation. The eastern strip was taken by the Soviets, who harshly persecuted the Catholic Church. The central part came to be called the “General Government of Poland,” under German control. The western strip was annexed to the Reich, which thus recovered its eastern border from before the First World War, and became a district known as the “Warthegau.”

The Germans did not accept a representative of the Holy See for a country that, for them, had ceased to exist, but at the same time they systematically rejected any reference by the nuncio in Berlin, Msgr. Orsenigo, to Polish affairs, alleging that his competence was recognized only for what happened in the Reich. Also, in this bitter hour, the Polish Church was left without the head who could have given it the cohesion it needed. The invasion caught Cardinal Hlond, Archbishop of Warsaw and Polish primate, on pilgrimage in Lourdes, and he could not move from there until the war was over.

The Nazis did not only want to subdue Poland, but to suppress it as a nation, stripping it of its identity. Therefore they soon began the arrests of what they rightly considered one of the main marks of Polish identity: the Catholic Church.

PERSECUTORY MEASURES. Seminaries were closed; priests and seminarians, even several bishops, were arrested. The Germans tried to isolate Poland and prevent news of what was happening from reaching the outside world. But it arrived. Protests from the Holy See began to pour in. Little was achieved; mainly, that the detained ecclesiastics should be sent to the same place. But possibly this measure also suited the Nazis, and the place was the unenviable concentration camp of Dachau, where many died, because of the harsh living conditions and also because of the “medical experiments”—many were injected with typhus—that had them as victims.

In the “Warthegau,” Hitler took advantage of the situation to carry out a kind of “pilot test” and impose at once what he intended would eventually be the regime of his “Greater Germany.” To this end he appointed a Gauleiter, with special powers.

It was soon seen that these included the mass arrest of ecclesiastics, both Polish-speaking and German-speaking. A good part of the German clergy who ended up in Dachau came from this province. With the experience of the Warthegau, the true intentions of Hitler are perfectly understood, as is what would have happened in the rest of Germany if the ecclesiastical hierarchy had not given an example of cohesion and firmness. J. V.

Results could be achieved in Italy, where many Jews were saved through the protection of ecclesiastics—in Rome, Pius XII personally participated in this work—and other Catholic faithful, and to a lesser extent in France. Also in Romania, thanks to the fact that little time elapsed between the fall of Antonescu—which placed the country in German hands—and the entry of the Russians; but in that short time they could have caused more devastation had it not been for the efforts, among others, of Msgr. Roncalli, the future John XXIII and then apostolic delegate in Turkey.

END OF THE WAR

In May 1945, the nightmare of the war in Europe ended. The Holy See’s relief would not last long, for it would soon see the communist nightmare arise in Eastern Europe.

From the very first moment, the Church tried to halt the neo-pagan and racist Nazi avalanche. It could not achieve very much, except in some places such as France and Italy, but it is equally true that it tried with all the means at its disposal and that, when the conflict ended, among the few to whom Jewish organizations could express their gratitude were the Holy See and a number of personalities and institutions of the Catholic Church, beginning with Pius XII.

Author: Julio de la Vega-Hazas