German Leadership

Shaking hands with the Devil ...

Bundesarchiv.

Hitler's Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen (second from left) signs the "Reichskonkordat" - Treaty of arrangement between the new German Reich and the Vatican - with Vatican Secretary of State and future Pope Pius XII, Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli (third from right), 20 July, 1933. The Concordat regulated the relations between the Roman Catholic Church and the regime in Germany. It purported to guarantee a range of important freedoms to the Church, but also made the fundamentals of Church management subject to the scrutiny, and effictive control, of Third Reich authorities. Also, events showed that the Nazis were perfectly willing to distort or ignore the guarantees of the Concordat when it suited them. The Church would have presented the Concordat both as a necessary accommodation with the inherrently anti-Catholic Nazi regime and as a diplomatic triumph of sorts. Perhaps. However, it also underlined the weakness of the official Catholic Church in the face of the German regime, and undermined the resistance which many Catholics might otherwise have offered (albeit passively for the most part) to the more poisonous aspects of Naziism. Best regards, JR.