In 1939, the autocratic Angelo Pacelli, Pope Pius XII, blamed the worlds troubles entirely on its

failure to acknowledge the infallible Papacy, washing his hands of any responsibility, except to
watch safely from within the walls of the Vatican.
His predecessor, Pius XI, had signed the Lateran Treaty with fascist dictator Mussolini in 1929,
giving Italy back to God.
The Catholic churchs preferred governance was Catholic monarchs, but found right-wing
authoritarians the preferred second choice. Most of the hierarchy considered Hitler a wellintentioned good Christian, possibly with some evil associates. Most of the hierarchy, being
monarchists, hated liberalism and democracy far more than Hitler. They inclined Catholics to
support Hitler.
Once Hitler was in power after 1933, Catholic advocacy for Hitler became open. Rome, advised by
Pacelli, made it clear there would be no Vatican support for opposition to Hitler.
The Concordat signed that summer signaled to Catholics that they should accept the Nazi regime
to the full. The Catholic Church, in a voluntary stroke, dissolved almost all of its community
organizations, in favor of Nazi replacements.
Hitler was delighted that the Vatican has abandoned the Christian labor unions, and as a
reward for Pius XIIs capitulation, delayed publication of the sterilization laws until after the
Concordat was actually signed on July 20, 1933, to avoid embarrassing the Pope.
Hitler had said to Hermann Raushnig of the church leaders, They will betray anything for the
sake of their miserable little jobs and incomes.
Neither the Catholic no the Evangelical churches ever condemned the Nazi regime. At no point
did Rome or the national hierarchy relax the moral obligation of the people to obey the legitimate
authority of their Nazi rulers, as imposed on them by the directives of the Concordant of 1933.
The bishops never told the people the regime was evil nor even mistaken.
Both Catholic and Protestant churches, moreover, were on the Nazi payroll, benefiting from
taxes. After the State, they were the largest landowners. The Nazis provided subsidies which rose
from 130 million marks in 1933, to 500 million in 1938, then to a trillion during the war.
Both Catholic and Lutheran churches massively supported the Hitler regime, with many outright
declarations of support, unconditional loyalty to the Third Reich and the Fuhrer.
Pius XII, writing a friendly letter to Hitler in 1939, practically congratulated Hitler for his
conquest of Czechoslovakia, terming it one of the historic processes, in which, from the political
point of view, the Church is not interested. Catholic churches rang their bells in celebration of
Hitlers birthday. The hierarchy told the people to obey Hitler, whom Pius saw as the
indispensable bastion against socialism. Hitler, on his part, with his extermination policies
against the Jews, claimed to be just carrying on with the same policy which the Catholic Church
had adopted for 1500 years. A Catholic Encyclopedia of 1930 had already called political
antisemitism permissible.

Only when Hitler was safely dead and Nazi Germany defeated, after the war, did Pius XII publicly
condemn
Nazism.