Reichskonkordat


The Reichskonkordat is a treaty negotiated between the Vatican and the emergent Nazi Germany. It was signed on 20 July 1933 by Cardinal Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli, who later became Pope Pius XII, on behalf of Pope Pius XI and Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen on behalf of President Paul von Hindenburg and the German government. It was ratified 10 September 1933 and it has been in force from that date onward. The treaty guarantees the rights of the Roman Catholic Church in Germany. When bishops take office Article 16 states they are required to take an oath of loyalty to the Governor or President of the German Reich established according to the constitution. The treaty also requires all clergy to abstain from working in and for political parties. Nazi breaches of the agreement began almost as soon as it had been signed and intensified afterwards leading to protest from the Church including in the 1937 Mit brennender Sorge encyclical of Pope Pius XI. The Nazis planned to eliminate the Church's influence by restricting its organizations to purely religious activities.
The Reichskonkordat is the most controversial of several concordats that the Vatican negotiated during the pontificate of Pius XI. It is frequently discussed in works that deal with the rise of Hitler in the early 1930s and the Holocaust. The concordat has been described by some as giving moral legitimacy to the Nazi regime soon after Hitler had acquired quasi-dictatorial powers through the Enabling Act of 1933, an Act itself facilitated through the support of the Catholic Centre Party.
The treaty places constraints on the political activity of German clergy of the Catholic Church. Following the passage of the 1935 Nuremberg Laws for example, a policy of nonintervention was followed. The majority of the German church hierarchy regarded the treaty as a symbol of peace between church and state. From a Roman Catholic church perspective it has been argued that the Concordat prevented even greater evils being unleashed against the Church. Though some German bishops were unenthusiastic, and the Allies at the end of World War II felt it inappropriate, Pope Pius XII successfully argued to keep the concordat in force. It is still in force today.

Background

The 'Reichskonkordat' between Germany and the Holy See was signed on 30 July 1933 and ratified in September of that year. The treaty was an extension of existing concordats already signed with Prussia and Bavaria Concordats have been used to create binding agreements to safeguard church interests and its freedom to act, particularly in countries that do not have strong jurisprudence guaranteeing government non-interference in religious matters or where the church seeks a privileged position under government patronage.
;Kulturkampf
became Chancellor of Germany in 1871 and launched the Kulturkampf Culture Struggle against the Roman Catholic Church in Germany.
Accounts of 20th-century diplomatic relations between Germany and the Vatican commonly take as their starting point the political scene in the late 19th century. German Chancellor Bismarck's Kulturkampf of 1871–78 saw an attempt to assert a Protestant vision of nationalism over the new German Empire, and fused anticlericalism with 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". Bismarck's Culture Struggle was largely a failure.
Bismarck sought to restrict the power of the Catholic Church in Germany. He regarded the Roman Church as "the enemy within". His Kulturkampf included the disbanding of Catholic organizations, confiscation of church property, banishment or imprisonment of clergy, and an ongoing feud with the Vatican. According to novelist James Carroll, the end of Kulturkampf signaled "that the Church had successfully resisted to his face the man who, according to an admiring Henry Kissinger, was 'outmaneuvered' by nobody." The Catholic Church's firm resistance to Bismarck and Kulturkampf, including passive resistance by the Church in general and the excommunication of collaborating priests, has been used as benchmark for assessing the Church's response to the Nazis from the early 1930s through World War II.
;End of World War I
A formal realignment of Church and state relationships was considered desirable in the aftermath of the political instability of 1918 and the adoption of the Weimar constitution for the Reich along with the new constitutions in the German states in 1919. Key issues that the Church hoped to resolve related to state subsidies to the Church, support for Catholic schools, the appointment of bishops and the legal position of the clergy. The Reich government, in turn, wished for reasons of foreign policy to have friendly relations with the Holy See. Also, Germany wanted to prevent new diocesan boundaries being established which would dilute Germany's ties to ceded German territories in the east such as Danzig and Upper Silesia.
Negotiations relating to specific points, rather than a general concordat, took place between 1919 and 1922. But even after subsequent feelers were put out between the two parties the negotiations failed, primarily because both the Reichstag and Reichsrat were dominated by non-Catholic majorities who, for a variety of reasons, did not want a formal pact with the Vatican. In the absence of an agreement relating to particular areas of concern with the Reich, the Holy See concluded more wide-ranging concordats with three German states where Catholics were concentrated: Bavaria, Prussia, and Baden.
;Pope Pius XI
Pius XI was elected Pope in 1922. His pontificate coincided with the early aftermath of the First World War. The old European monarchies had been largely swept away and a new and precarious order formed across the continent. In the East, the Soviet Union arose. In Italy, the Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini took power, while in Germany, the fragile Weimar Republic collapsed with the Nazi seizure of power. Pope Pius's major diplomatic approach was to make concordats. 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".
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. 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". Other major concordats included those signed with Germany, Austria, Yugoslavia, and Latvia. The concordats were generally observed by the countries involved, with the exception of Germany.
In October 1929, General Groener pushed the German Foreign Ministry to resolve an issue with the Vatican regarding military chaplains who lacked the ability to administer the sacraments of baptism or matrimony without first obtaining the permission of the local priest or bishop. Groener wanted the military to have their own bishop rather than rely on local ordinaries and it was this particular issue that was to mark an important step in the discussions that would ultimately be realized in the concordat with the Vatican. In March 1930, the new Papal Secretary of State, Cardinal Pacelli, gave indications that the Vatican would be interested in a concordat with the Reich in the event of any reforms of the Reich's constitution having an adverse effect on the validity of the concordats already agreed between the German states and the Vatican.
Discussions between the two parties took place between 1931 and 1932 and at one point representatives of the Reich pointed out that Italy had an army Archbishop with Cardinal Pacelli indicating that was because Italy had signed a comprehensive concordat with the Vatican. The German negotiators continued to discuss solely on the basis of particular points rather than a general concordat during 1931 but even these were felt to be unlikely to be passed by the Reichstag or the Reichsrat, no matter their political or theological leanings.

Nazi period

Nazis take power

In January 1933, Hitler became Chancellor. The passing of the Enabling Act on 23 March, in part, removed the Reichstag as an obstacle to concluding a concordat with the Vatican. Hitler offered the possibility of friendly co-operation, promising not to threaten the Reichstag, the President, the States or the Churches if granted the emergency powers. With Nazi paramilitary encircling the building, he said: "It is for you, gentlemen of the Reichstag to decide between war and peace." The Act allowed Hitler and his Cabinet to rule by emergency decree for four years, though Hindenberg remained President. German Catholics were wary of the new government:
In early 1933 Hitler told Hermann Rauschning that Bismarck had been stupid in starting a Kulturkampf and outlined his own strategy for dealing with the clergy which would be based initially on a policy of toleration:
We should trap the priests by their notorious greed and self-indulgence. We shall thus be able to settle everything with them in perfect peace and harmony. I shall give them a few years' reprieve. Why should we quarrel? They will swallow anything in order to keep their material advantages. Matters will never come to a head. They will recognise a firm will, and we need only show them once or twice who is the master. They will know which way the wind blows.

An initially mainly sporadic persecution of the Catholic Church in Germany followed the Nazi takeover. Hitler was hostile to the Catholic Church, but for political reasons was prepared to restrain his anticlericalism and did not allow himself to be drawn into attacking the Church publicly as other Nazis would have liked him to do. Kershaw wrote that, following the appointment of Hitler as Chancellor by President von Hindenberg, 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". In March 1933, the British Roman Catholic periodical The Tablet in an article titled "The Ides of March" asserted:
Dictatorship is a usurpation and his enforcement of it is a brutality. While we write these lines, with news of more arrests and repressions coming to us every hour, we remember that we have reached the Ides of March and the anniversary of a never-forgotten assassination. But Nazism's daggers cannot slay what is noblest and best in Germany. The Church, now that the Centre is no longer the key-group in German politics, may be persecuted; but HITLER will not succeed where BISMARCK failed.

Robert Ventresca wrote that because of increasing harassment of Catholics and Catholic clergy, Cardinal Pacelli sought a quick ratification of a treaty with the government, seeking in this way to protect the German Church. When Vice-Chancellor Papen and Ambassador to the Vatican Diego von Bergen met Pacelli in late June 1933, they found him "visibly influenced" by reports of actions being taken against German Catholic interests.
There were some thoughts that the Church was keen on coming to terms with Hitler as he represented a strong resistance against Communism. The Papal Nuncio in Berlin is reported to have been "jubilant" about Hitler's rise to power and thought that the new government would soon be offering the same concessions to the Church that Mussolini had made in Italy. Historian Michael Phayer balances Lewy and author and journalist John Cormwell stating:

Negotiations

The Catholic bishops in Germany had generally shown opposition to Hitler from the beginning of his rise to power. When the Nazi Party polled six million votes during the 14 September 1930 election, the Catholic hierarchy called on its people to examine their consciences. During the next two years, though there had been softening by some, the bishops continued to pronounce against unacceptable policies of the Nazi Party. When Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Chancellor on 30 January 1933, the bishops maintained support for the Catholic Centre Party, which in turn refused to assent to a proposal that would allow Hitler to assume full power. On 12 March 1933 Pope Pius XI received the German Cardinal Faulhaber in Rome. On his return Faulhaber reported:
After my recent experience in Rome in the highest circles, which I cannot reveal here, I must say that I found, despite everything, a greater tolerance with regard to the new government....Let us meditate on the words of the Holy Father, who in a consistory, without mentioning his name, indicated before the whole world in Adolf Hitler the statesman who first, after the Pope himself, has raised his voice against Bolshevism.

At a cabinet meeting on 20 March 1933 Hitler "confidently reported" that the Centre Party had now seen the necessity of the Enabling Act and that "the acceptance of the Enabling Act also by the Zentrum would signify a strengthening prestige with regard to foreign countries." Early in March 1933 the bishops recommended that Catholics vote for the Centre Party in the elections scheduled for 5 March 1933. However, two weeks later the Catholic hierarchy reversed its previous policy – the bishops now allowed the Centre Party and the Bavarian Catholic Party to vote for the Enabling Act which gave Hitler dictatorial powers on 23 March. German Catholic theologian Robert Grosche described the Enabling Act in terms of the 1870 decree on the infallibility of the Pope, and stated that the Church had "anticipated on a higher level, that historical decision which is made today on the political level: for the Pope and against the sovereignty of the Council; for the Fuhrer and against the Parliament." On 29 March 1933 Cardinal Pacelli sent word to the German bishops to the effect that they must now change their position with regard to National Socialism. On 28 March 1933, the bishops themselves took up a position favourable to Hitler. According to Falconi the about-turn came through the influence and instructions of the Vatican. Pope Pius XI indicated in Mit brennender Sorge that the Germans had asked for the concordat, and Pope Pius XII affirmed this in 1945.
Falconi viewed the Church's realignment as motivated by the desire to avoid being left alone in opposition and to avert reprisals. After the leader of the Centre Party, Monsignor Kaas, had persuaded the party members to vote for Hitler and the Enabling Act, he left immediately for Rome and on his return on 31 March he was received by Hitler. He returned to Rome accompanied by the Catholic Vice-chancellor von Papen on 7 April with a mandate from Hitler to sound out a concordat with the Vatican. On the day they set out for Rome to prepare the way for the concordat the first two anti-Semitic laws were issued in Germany, but this did not impede the discussions. Papen recorded in his memoirs that on his arrival in Rome, the Pope "greeted me with paternal affection, expressing his pleasure that at the head of the German State was a man like Hitler, on whose banner the uncompromising struggle against Communism and Nihilism was inscribed." In Falconi's opinion the concordat was the price paid by Hitler in order to obtain the support of the German episcopate and the Catholic parties. Ian Kershaw viewed the loss of political Catholicism as the sacrifice needed to protect the position of the Catholic Church in Germany. According to historian Michael Phayer, the view "that the Concordat was the result of a deal that delivered the parliamentary vote of the Catholic Center Party to Hitler, thereby giving him dictatorial power ... is historically inaccurate".
Cardinal Faulhaber wrote to Cardinal Pacelli on 10 April 1933 advising that defending the Jews would be wrong "because that would transform the attack on the Jews into an attack on the Church; and because the Jews are able to look after themselves" – the latter assertion based on the outcome of the April boycott, which was seen as a defeat for the Nazis.
On 22 April 1933 the British Minister to the Vatican recounted what the Vatican Under-Secretary of State had told him: "The Holy See is not interested in the Centre Party. We are more concerned with the mass of Catholic voters in Germany than in the Catholic deputies who represent them in the Reichstag." Previously, as part of the agreement surrounding the 1929 Lateran Treaty with the Fascist government in Italy, the Vatican had consented to the dissolution of the Catholic political Partito Popolare party which dissolved in 1926.
At a 26 April meeting with Bishop Wilhelm Berning of Osnabrück, representative of the German Bishops' Conference, Hitler declared: The notes of the meeting do not record any response by Berning. In the opinion of Martin Rhonheimer, who cites the above transcript, "This is hardly surprising: for a Catholic Bishop in 1933 there was really nothing terribly objectionable in this historically correct reminder. And on this occasion, as always, Hitler was concealing his true intentions." Saul Friedländer interpreted Hitler's comments as an attempt to "blunt possible Catholic criticism of his anti-Jewish policies and to shift the burden of the arguments onto the Church itself.
Edith Stein wrote a letter to Pius XI in April 1933 about the persecution of the Jews in Nazi Germany. The text of the letter is easily accessible on the internet. She never asked him to issue an encyclical on the matter, as some have contended. The letter was answered by Cardinal Pacelli. See William William, "Edith Stein's Letter," Inside the Vatican, March 2003, 22-31..
The issue of the concordat prolonged Kaas's stay in Rome, leaving the Centre Party without a chairman, and on 5 May Kaas finally resigned from his post. The party then elected Heinrich Brüning as its chairman. At that time, the Centre party was subject to increasing pressure in the wake of the process of Gleichschaltung and after all the other parties had dissolved. The Centre Party dissolved itself on 5 July 1933, as the concordat between the Vatican and the Nazis had dealt it a decisive blow by exchanging a ban on the political activities of priests for the continuation of Catholic education. Cardinal Pacelli and von Papen initialled the concordat in Rome three days later, with signing taking place on 20 July. On 2 July the Vatican daily newspaper L'Osservatore Romano insisted that the concordat wasn't an endorsement of Nazi teachings.
On 13 July a British minister had an interview with Cardinal Pacelli and reported: "His Eminence said that the Vatican really viewed with indifference the dissolution of the Centre Party."
At the 14 July cabinet meeting Hitler brushed aside any debate on the details of the concordat, expressing the view "that one should only consider it as a great achievement. The concordat gave Germany an opportunity and created an area of trust which was particularly significant in the developing struggle against international Jewry." Saul Friedländer speculates that Hitler may have countenanced in this "area of trust" what he perceived as the Christian Church's traditional theological antipathy towards Jews converging with Nazi aims. Hitler "underlined the triumph" that the Concordat meant for the Nazi regime. Only a short time earlier he had expressed doubts that "the church would be ready to commit the Bishops to this state. That this has happened, was without doubt an unreserved recognition of the present regime."
On 22 July 1933 von Papen attended a meeting of the Catholic Academic Union, during which he first made the connection between the dissolution of the Centre Party and the concordat. He said the Pope was particularly pleased at the promised destruction of Bolshevism and that Pius XI had agreed to the treaty "in the recognition that the new Germany had fought a decisive battle against Bolshevism and the atheist movement." Papen noted that there was "an undeniable inner connection between the dissolution of the German Center party that has just taken place and the conclusion of the Concordat" and ended his speech with a call for German Catholicism to put away former resentments and to help build the Third Reich. Abbot Herwegen told the meeting:
What the liturgical movement is to the religious realm, fascism is to the political realm. The German stands and acts under authority, under leadership – whoever does not follow endangers society. Let us say 'yes' wholeheartedly to the new form of the total State, which is analogous throughout to the incarnation of the Church. The Church stands in the world as Germany stands in politics today.

On 23 July a British minister met Cardinal Pacelli, who appeared "very satisfied" with the signing of the concordat. The cardinal expressed the view that, with the guarantees given relating to Catholic education, this concordat was an improvement over the 1929 agreement with Prussia. Cardinal Pacelli did sound a note of caution in that his satisfaction was based on the assumption that the German Government "remained true to its undertaking", but noted also that Hitler "was becoming increasingly moderate".
On 24 July Cardinal Faulhaber sent a handwritten letter to Hitler, noting that "For Germany's prestige in the East and the West and before the whole world, this handshake with the papacy, the greatest moral power in the history of the world, is a feat of immeasurable importance."
On 4 August 1933 the British Minister reported "in conversations I have had with Cardinal Pacelli and Monsignor Pizzardo, neither gave me the feeling of the slightest regret at the eclipse of the Centre , and its consequent loss of influence in German politics". On 19 August Ivone Kirkpatrick had a further discussion with Cardinal Pacelli in which he expressed his "disgust and abhorrence" at Hitler's reign of terror to the diplomat. Pacelli said "I had to choose between an agreement on their lines and the virtual elimination of the Catholic Church in the Reich." Pacelli also told Kirkpatrick that he deplored the persecution of the Jews, but a pistol had been held to his head and that he had no alternative, being given only one week to decide. Pinchas Lapide notes that whilst negotiations for the concordat were taking place, pressure had been put on the Vatican by the arrest of ninety-two priests, the searching of Catholic youth-club premises, and the closing down of nine Catholic publications. The Nazi newspaper Völkischer Beobachter wrote: "By her signature the Catholic Church has recognised National Socialism in the most solemn manner....This fact constitutes an enormous moral strengthening of our government and its prestige."
The concordat was ratified on 10 September 1933 and Cardinal Pacelli took the opportunity to send a note to the Germans raising the topic of the social and economic condition of Jews who had converted to Catholicism but of not Jews in general.
Meanwhile, although the Protestant churches, being local congregations, remained unaffected by restrictions on foreign support, Hitler's government negotiated other agreements with them which in essence put Nazi officials, most of whom were Catholics, into positions of influence or outright authority over Protestant churches. Foreseeing the potential for outright State control of their churches which these agreements portended, many Protestant church leaders simply reorganized their congregations out of the agreements, causing a schism within the Protestant Churches. These Protestant resisters attempted to rally Catholic prelates to the dangers portended by these agreements but were simply rebuffed when the Reichskonkordat was ratified. Many of the Protestant clergy who opposed the Nazi religious program later suffered imprisonment or execution.
Church leaders were realistic about the concordat's supposed protections. Cardinal Faulhaber is reported to have said: "With the concordat we are hanged, without the concordat we are hanged, drawn and quartered." After the signing of the concordat the papal nuncio exhorted the German bishops to support Hitler's régime. The bishops told their flocks to try to get along with the Nazi régime. According to Michael Phayer, the concordat prevented Pius XI from speaking out against the Nazi Nuremberg Laws in 1935, and though he did intend to speak out after the nationwide pogrom of 1938, Cardinal Pacelli dissuaded him from doing so.
On 20 August 1935 the Catholic Bishops conference at Fulda reminded Hitler that Pius XI had:
exchanged the handshake of trust with you through the concordat – the first foreign sovereign to do so....Pope Pius spoke high praise of you....Millions in foreign countries, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, have overcome their original mistrust because of this expression of papal trust, and have placed their trust in your regime.

In a sermon given in Munich during 1937 Cardinal Faulhaber declared:

At a time when the heads of the major nations in the world faced the new Germany with 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.

The concordat

The Treaty with Additional Protocol was signed 20 July 1933. It was ratified and in force starting 10 September 1933 and remains in force today. The text of the concordat was released 22 July 1933 and began with a preamble that set out the common desire of both parties for friendly relations set-out in a solemn agreement.
Preamble
His Holliness Pope Pius XI and the President of the German Reich , led by their common desire to consolidate and enhance the existing friendly relations between the Catholic Church and the state in the whole territory of the German Reich in a stable and satisfactory manner for both parties, have decided to conclude a solemn agreement which will supplement the concordats already concluded with some particular German States and secure for the others the principles of a uniform treatment of the questions involved.
His Holiness Pope Pius XI has appointed as his plenipotentiary His Eminence the Most Revered Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, His Holiness' Secretary of State; and the President of the German Reich has appointed as plenipotentiary the Vice-Chairman of the German Reich, Herr Franz von Papen; who, having exchanged their proper form have agreed to the following articles.
Additional Protocol
When the signing of the concordat concluded today between the Holy See and the German Reich, the undersigned, being duly empowered to do so, have formulated the following explanations which form an integral part of the concordat itself.
The vagueness of the article would later lead to contradictory interpretations.
Affirms the state concordats, Länderkonkordate, with Bavaria, Prussia, and Baden remain valid.
Confirms the Vatican having a Papal Nuncio in Berlin and the German government having an ambassador in Rome.
Article 4 assures the Holy See of full freedom to communicate with the German clergy and for the German bishops to communicate with the laity "in all matters of their pastoral office." The words of qualification in this clause would later be interpreted by the Nazis in its most narrow meaning to limit the Church communications to worship and ritual only.
Articles 5–10 dealt with the status of the clergy under German law. Priests were given protection against any interference in their spiritual activities as well as protection against malicious slander or misuse of clerical dress. Exemption from jury service, and like obligations, was guaranteed and the secrecy of the confessional guaranteed. Members of the clergy could only accept a state appointment so long as the bishop approved and this permission could be withdrawn at any time for important reasons.
Articles 11–12 specified that diocesan boundaries had to be made subject to government approval and that ecclesiastical offices could be established if no state funding was involved.
  • Article 13 Catholic parishes and diocesan associations, episcopal sees, bishoprics and chapters, religious orders and congregations, as well as institutions, foundations and property of the Catholic Church administered by ecclesiastical authorities, shall retain or acquire respectively juridical personality, recognized by the State according to the general provisions of civil law. They shall remain publicly recognized corporations as far as they have been such hitherto; the same rights may be granted to the others in accordance with the general law applicable to all.
Article 13 gave to parishes, Episcopal sees, religious orders, etc. juridical personality and granted the same rights as any other publicly recognised body "in accordance with the general law as applicable to all" which subjected the church's prerogatives to legal regulation under civil law. Guenter Lewy viewed this qualification as establishing "a pandora's box of troubles" when the law was effectively in the hands of a regime who wanted to control the church.
Article 14 specified appointments of a bishop by the Pope was subject to mutual agreement and communication with the regime that no political impediment existed, while affirming appointments may be made without any co-operation on the part of the state or civil corporations.
  • Article 15 Religious orders and congregations are not subject, on the part of the state, to any particular restrictions as far as their foundation, their various establishments, the number of their members and their qualifications, their pastoral or educational activity, their care of the sick and charitable work, the management of their affairs and the administration of their property are concerned. Superiors of religious orders who have their official residence within the German Reich must have German citizenship. Provincials and superiors whose official residence is situated outside the German territory have the right of visitation of their establishments in Germany, even if they have a foreign citizenship. The Holy See will see to it that the organization of the provinces of various religious orders, as regards their establishments in Germany, should be such as to avoid – so far as it can be done – the subordination of German establishments to foreign provincials. Exceptions therefrom may be admitted by mutual agreement with the Reich government, particularly in cases where the small number of establishments in Germany makes the formation of German province impracticable or where special reasons exist for the maintenance of a provincial organization rooted in history and working well in practice.
Article 15 guaranteed religious orders freedom for pastoral, charitable and educational work.
Article 16 specified Bishops must take an oath of loyalty and respect to either the Reich governor of the state concerned or to the President of the Reich as established by the constitution. When the treaty was signed and ratified the word Reich, or the phrase, German Reich, is not in reference to the Third Reich. It applies to the period of the Weimar Republic which did not officially and fully collapse until the death of President Paul von Hindenburg 2 August 1934 with the passing of a national referendum vote 19 August 1934 consolidating the Office of Chancellor and President, thereby, declaring Adolf Hitler Führer of Germany.
  • Article 17 The property and all other proprietary rights of the publicly recognized corporations, institutions, foundations and associations of the Catholic Church will be guaranteed according to the common law of the state. No building used for public worship can be demolished under any pretext or for any reason whatsoever, except if a mutual agreement has been reached beforehand with the competent ecclesiastical authority.
Article 17 guaranteed, according to the common law, the properties of the church.
  • Article 18 Should the state payments in kind or money, which are made to the Catholic Church, whether based on law, contract, or any other special legal title, be discontinued, the Holy See and the Reich will proceed in due time beforehand to set up amicable agreement the principles according to which the discontinuation is to be carried out. In this connection, a right derived from a legitimate traditional custom is to be considered as a special legal title. Such discontinuation, implying the cessation of a state payment or obligation, must be adequately compensated in favor of the claimant.
Article 18 assured the Church that it would be consulted should the Nazi regime try to discontinue its subsidies to the German Catholic church or other legal title without compensation as specified in Article 138 of the Weimar Constitution for all religious organizations.
Articles 19–25 gave protection to the Catholic educational system.
Article 26 allowed that a church wedding could precede a civil marriage ceremony in certain cases.
Article 27 regulated the appointment of military chaplains.
Article 28 assured the Church the right to pastoral care in hospitals, prisons and like institutions, which would be violated later by the Nazi regime when it refused the Church's request to carry out services in concentration camps.
Article 29 granted the same rights to national minorities, with respect to the use of the mother tongue in divine services, as were enjoyed by the German population in the corresponding foreign state.
Articles 31–32 relate to the issue of Catholic organizations "devoted exclusively to religious, cultural and charitable purposes" and empowered the Reich government and German episcopate to "determine, by mutual agreement, the organizations and associations which fall within the provisions of this article." Organizations that had any political aims no longer had any place in the new Germany; this went without saying and is not even mentioned. Article 32 gave to Hitler one of his principal objectives: the exclusion of the clergy from politics such that "the Holy See will issue ordinances by which the clergy and the religious will be forbidden to be members of political parties or to be active on their behalf." Catholic laity, however, were free to form, engage and propagate political parties and seek political office. The Additional Protocol provisions make clear this prohibition of clergy from political activism does not mean they can not preach on moral teachings and principles of the Church "as it is their duty to do."
Article 33 makes provision for settling any difficulties in interpretation of the concordat through "amicable solution by mutual agreement." Article 34 calls for the speedy ratification of the concordat. As the document states, It was not in force until its ratification 10 September 1933.'''
An additional secret protocol was added at its signing. When the concordat was ratified 10 September 1933 it granted Catholic clergy certain exemptions from any future universal army conscription call-ups. As Article 27 states, "A special and exempt ministry is conceded." As the Treaty of Versailles had forbidden Germany from raising a large army, this provision may have been seen by Hitler as the Vatican giving its tacit approval to German rearmament. Papen wrote to Hitler regarding this secret provision and concluded his brief with, "I hope this agreement will therefore be pleasing to you." The provisions of the annexe were inserted at the request of the German Bishops Fulda Conference and the contents were kept so secret that Ernst von Weizsacker, State Secretary in the Foreign Ministry from 1938, did not know of it until informed by the Papal Nuncio Orsenigo in 1939.

Reception

The British Roman Catholic periodical The Tablet reported the signing of the concordat:
Already it is being said that THE POPE OF ROME thinks of nobody save his own adherents and that he does not care how Lutherans are dragooned and how Jews are harried so long as Popish bishops, monastic orders, confessional schools, and Catholic associations are allowed full freedom. We beg our Protestant and Jewish friends to put away such suspicions. As we suggested at the outset of this brief article, the Catholic Church could have done little for other denominations in Germany if she had begun thrusting out wild hands to help them while her own feet were slipping under her. By patience and reasonableness she has succeeded in re-establishing herself, more firmly than before, on a Concordat which does not surrender one feather's weight of essential Catholic principle. She will straightway set about her sacred task, an important part of which will be the casting out of those devils which have been raging – and are raging still – in the Reich. But "this sort" of devil is not cast out save by prayer. Political action by the Church would drive matters from bad to worse. We are confident, however, that Catholics will abhor the idea of enjoying complete toleration while Protestants and Jews are under the harrow, and that, quietly but strongly, the Catholic influence will be exerted in the right direction. One German out of three is a Catholic ; and Catholic prestige is high in Germany's public life.

Criticism of the concordat was initially from those countries who viewed Germany as a potential threat. Le Temps wrote: "This is a triumph for the National Socialist government. It took Mussolini five years to achieve this; Germany has done it in a week." L'Ere Nouvelle wrote: "The contradiction of a system preaching universalism making an agreement with a highly nationalistic state has been repeated throughout Vatican history. The Church never attacks existing institutions, even if they are bad. It prefers to wait for their collapse, hoping for the emergence of a higher morality. The Polish newspaper Kurjer Poranny wrote on 19 July 1933: "Once again we see the methods of the Vatican – intransigent with the passive and amenable, but accommodating with the high-handed and ruthless. In the last century it rewarded its persecutor, Bismarck, with the highest Papal decoration, the Order of Christ....The Centre Party, which most courageously resisted the Nazis, has been disowned by the Vatican. Ex-Chancellor Bruning reported that 300 Protestant pastors who had been on the verge of joining the Catholic Church on account of the stand it had taken against the Nazis abandoned the plan after the signing of the concordat. On 24 July, the Nazi newspaper Völkischer Beobachter commented:
The provocative agitation which for years was conducted against the NSDAP because of its alleged hostility to religion has now been refuted by the Church itself. This fact signifies a tremendous moral strengthening of the National Socialist government of the Reich and its reputation.

On 26 and 27 July 1933, the Vatican daily newspaper L'Osservatore Romano stressed the advantages gained by the church through the concordat but also insisted that the church had not given up her traditional neutrality towards different forms of political government nor did it endorse a "specific trend of political doctrines or ideas." The Nazis replied through the German press on 30 July by correcting perceived false interpretations of the concordat and "reminding the Vatican" that the concordat had been signed with the German Reich which "as Rome should know, is completely dominated by the National Socialist trend" and therefore "the de facto and de jure recognition of the National Socialist government" was signaled by the concordat. The Vatican demanded that the German government dissociate itself from these remarks but agreed eventually to forget its complaints so long as the German press refrained from any further "harping on the great victory" achieved by Nazi Germany.

Violations

Nazi violations of the concordat commenced almost immediately after it was signed. The Nazis claimed jurisdiction over all collective and social activity, interfering with Catholic schooling, youth groups, workers' clubs and cultural societies. 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". Anton Gill wrote that "with his usual irresistible, bullying technique, Hitler then proceeded to take a mile where he had been given an inch" and closed all Catholic institutions whose functions weren't strictly religious:
Within the same month of signing the concordat, the Nazis promulgated their sterilization law – the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring – a policy the Catholic Church considered deeply offensive. Days later, moves began to dissolve the Catholic Youth League. Clergy, religious sisters, and lay leaders began to be targeted, leading to thousands of arrests over the ensuing years, often on trumped up charges of currency smuggling or "immorality". Priests were watched closely and frequently denounced, arrested and sent to concentration camps. From 1940, a dedicated Clergy Barracks had been established at Dachau concentration camp. Intimidation of clergy was widespread. Cardinal Faulhaber was shot at. Cardinal Innitzer had his Vienna residence ransacked in October 1938, and Bishop Sproll of Rottenburg was jostled and his home vandalised.
William Shirer wrote that the German people were not greatly aroused by the persecution of the churches by the Nazi Government. The great majority were not moved to face death or imprisonment for the sake of freedom of worship, being too impressed by Hitler's early foreign policy successes and the restoration of the German economy. Few, he wrote, "paused to reflect that 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."
Anti-Nazi sentiment grew in Catholic circles as the Nazi government increased its repressive measures against their activities. In his history of the German Resistance, Hoffmann writes that, from the beginning:
After constant confrontations, by late 1935, Bishop Clemens August von Galen of Münster was urging a joint pastoral letter protesting an "underground war" against the church. By early 1937, the church hierarchy in Germany, which had initially attempted to co-operate with the new government, had become highly disillusioned. In March, Pope Pius XI issued the Mit brennender Sorge encyclical – accusing the Nazi Government of violations of the 1933 concordat, and further that it was sowing the "tares of suspicion, discord, hatred, calumny, of secret and open fundamental hostility to Christ and His Church". The Nazis responded with an intensification of the Church Struggle, beginning around April.
When the Nazi government violated the concordat, the bishops and the Papacy protested against these violations. Pius XI considered terminating the concordat, but his secretary of state and members of the curia, who feared the impact upon German Catholics, dissuaded him, as they believed it would result in the loss of a protective shield. Cardinal Pacelli acknowledged his role in its retention after the war.
The flourishing Catholic press of Germany faced censorship and closure. Finally in March 1941, Goebbels banned all Church press, on the pretext of a "paper shortage". Catholic schools were a major battleground in the kirchenkampf campaign against the Church. When in 1933 the Nazi school superintendent of Münster issued a decree that religious instruction be combined with discussion of the "demoralising power" of the "people of Israel", Bishop Clemens August Graf von Galen of Münster refused, writing that such interference in curriculum was a breach of the concordat and that 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. Often Galen protested directly to Hitler over violations of the concordat. When in 1936, Nazis removed crucifixes in schools, protest by Galen led to public demonstrations. Church kindergartens were closed, crucifixes were removed from schools 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 sisters were awarded to secular teachers and denominational schools were transformed into "community schools". When in 1937 the authorities in Upper Bavaria attempted to replace Catholic schools with "common schools", Cardinal Faulhaber offered fierce resistance. By 1939 all Catholic denominational schools had been disbanded or converted to public facilities.

World War II

From 1940, the Gestapo launched an intense persecution of the monasteries, invading, searching and appropriating 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.
With the expansion of the war in the East from 1941, there came also an expansion of the regime's attack on the churches. Monasteries and convents were targeted and expropriation of Church properties surged. The Nazi authorities claimed that 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 another common cause given for the confiscations, and the action of a single member of a monastery could result in seizure of the whole. The Jesuits were especially targeted. 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.
Figures like Bishops Clemens August Graf von Galen and Konrad von Preysing attempted to protect German priests from arrest. In Galen's famous 1941 anti-euthanasia sermons, he denounced the confiscations of church properties. He attacked the Gestapo for converting church properties to their own purposes – including use as cinemas and brothels. He protested the mistreatment of Catholics in Germany: the arrests and imprisonment without legal process, the suppression of the monasteries, and the expulsion of religious orders.
On 22 March 1942, the German Bishops issued a pastoral letter on "The Struggle against Christianity and the Church". The letter launched a defence of human rights and 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 Catholic soldiers:
In July 1942, Hitler said 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 out of "military reasons connected with the war":
In fact the Operation Anthropoid commandos were besieged in the Orthodox Saints Cyril and Methodius Cathedral.

After World War II

Pius XII put a high priority on preserving the concordat from the Nazi era, although the bishops were unenthusiastic about it and the Allies considered the request inappropriate. After the war, the concordat remained in place and the Catholic church was restored to its previous position.
When Lower Saxony passed a new school law, the Holy See complained that it violated the terms of the concordat. The federal government called upon the Federal Constitutional Court for clarification. In its ruling of 26 March 1957, the court decided that the circumstances surrounding the conclusion of the concordat did not invalidate it.
Declaring its lack of jurisdiction in matters of public international law and considering the fact that the German constitution grants authority in school matters to the state governments, the Constitutional Court ruled that the federal government had no authority to intervene. So while the federal government was obligated by the concordat, the court could not enforce its application in all areas because said court lacks legal authority to do so.
Critics also say that the concordat undermined the separation of church and state. The Weimar constitution does not speak of a "separation", but rather rules out any state religion while protecting religious freedom, religious holidays and leaving open the possibility of cooperation. However, there was a continual conflict between article 18 of the concordat and article 138 of the Weimar constitution.

Assessment

regarded Hitler's desire for a concordat with the Vatican as being driven principally by the prestige and respectability it brought to his regime abroad whilst at the same time eliminating the opposition of the Centre Party. Rhodes took the view that if the survival of Catholic education and youth organisations was taken to be the principal aim of papal diplomacy during this period then the signing of the concordat to prevent greater evils was justified. Many of the Centre Party deputies were priests who had not been afraid to raise their voices in the past and would almost certainly have voted against Hitler's assumption of dictatorial powers. The voluntary dissolution of the Centre Party removed that obstacle and Hitler now had absolute power and brought respectability to the state: "Within six months of its birth, the Third Reich had been given full approval by the highest spiritual power on earth". Ian Kershaw considered the role of the Centre Party in Hitler's removal of almost all constitutional restraints as "particularly ignominious."
John Cornwell views Cardinal Pacelli as being an example of a "fellow traveller" of the Nazis who, through the concordat, was willing to accept the generosity of Hitler in the educational sphere, so long as the Church withdrew from the social and political sphere, at the same time as Jews were being dismissed from universities and Jewish student slots were being reduced. He argues that the Catholic Centre Party vote was decisive in the adoption of dictatorial powers by Hitler and that the party's subsequent dissolution was at Pacelli's prompting. Michael Phayer is of the opinion that the concordat conditioned German bishops to avoid speaking out against anything that was not strictly related to church matters, leading to a muted response to the attacks on Mosaic Jews. Carlo Falconi described the concordat as "The Devil's Pact with Hitler". Albert Einstein in private conversation relating to the concordat said "Since when can one make a pact with Christ and Satan at the same time?" Daniel Goldhagen recalled how Hitler had said: "To attain our aim we should stop at nothing even if we must join forces with the devil," and that, in Goldhagen's view, is what Hitler did in agreeing the concordat with the church. Gordon Zahn felt that though the signing of the concordat was distasteful for Cardinal Pacelli it had spared the church in Germany from greater hardship and persecution.