![]() ![]() The expropriation of church properties surged after 1941. The Nazis gathered dissident priests that year in a dedicated barracks at Dachau, where 95 percent of its 2,720 inmates were Catholic (mostly Poles, with 411 Germans) over 1,000 priests died there. Through his links to the German Resistance, Pope Pius XII warned the Allies about the planned Nazi invasion of the Low Countries in 1940. In the Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, as in the annexed regions of Slovenia and Austria, Nazi persecution of the church was intense many Polish clergy were targeted for extermination. Catholics fought on both sides during the Second World War, and Hitler's invasion of predominantly-Catholic Poland ignited the conflict in 1939. The Church hierarchy (in Germany) tried to work with the new government, but Pius XI's 1937 encyclical, Mit brennender Sorge, accused the government of hostility to the church. Catholic press, schools, and youth organizations were closed, property was confiscated, and about one-third of its clergy faced reprisals from authorities Catholic lay leaders were among those murdered during the Night of the Long Knives.ĭuring the rule of the regime, the Church frequently found itself in a difficult position. Hitler and several other key Nazis had been raised as Catholics but they became hostile to the Church in their adulthood Article 24 of the National Socialist Program called for conditional toleration of Christian denominations and the 1933 Reichskonkordat treaty with the Vatican guaranteed religious freedom for Catholics, but the Nazis sought to suppress the power of the Catholic Church in Germany. President Paul Von Hindenburg continued to serve as Commander and Chief and he also continued to be responsible for the negotiation of international treaties until his death on 2 August 1934. Nevertheless, the Catholic-aligned Centre Party voted for the Enabling Act of 1933, which gave Adolf Hitler additional domestic powers to suppress political opponents as Chancellor of Germany. The Catholic Church in Germany opposed the Nazi Party, and in the 1933 elections, the proportion of Catholics who voted for the Nazi Party was lower than the national average. Around a third of Germans were Catholic in the 1930s, most of them lived in Southern Germany Protestants dominated the north. Popes Pius XI (1922–1939) and Pius XII (1939–1958) led the Catholic Church during the rise and fall of Nazi Germany. ![]()
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