Catholic Church and Nazi Germany
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Bishop August von Galen of Münster
Saint Edith Stein
Claus von Stauffenberg
Nuncio Cesare Orsenigo
Polish prisoners at Dachau
Bishop Konrad von Preysing
Joseph Tiso
Alfred Delp SJ
Jules-Géraud Saliège of Toulouse
Popes Pius XI (1922–39) and Pius XII (1939–58) led the Roman Catholic Church through the rise and fall of Nazi Germany. Around a third of Germans were Catholic in the 1930s. The Church in Germany had spoken against the rise of Nazism, but the Catholic aligned Centre Party capitulated in 1933 and was banned. Adolf Hitler and several key Nazis had been raised Catholic, but became hostile to the Church in adulthood. While Article 24 of the NSDAP party platform called for conditional toleration of Christian denominations and the 1933 Reichskonkordat treaty with the Vatican purported to guarantee religious freedom for Catholics, the Nazis were essentially hostile to Christianity and the Catholic Church faced persecution in Nazi Germany. Its press, schools and youth organisations were closed, much property confiscated and around one third of its clergy faced reprisals from authorities. Catholic lay leaders were targeted in the Night of the Long Knives purge. The Church hierarchy attempted to co-operate with the new government, but in 1937, the Papal Encyclical ‘’Mit brennender Sorge’’ accused the government of "fundamental hostility" to the church.
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