Nazi persecution of the Catholic Church

The Roman Catholic Church suffered persecution in Nazi Germany. As a totalitarian ideology, the Nazis claimed jurisdiction over all collective and social activity, interfering with Catholic schooling, youth groups, workers' clubs and cultural societies.Nazi ideology could not accept an autonomous establishment, whose legitimacy did not spring from the government. It desired the subordination of the church to the state. The Nazi leadership hoped to dechristianise Germany in the long term. Aggressive anti-Church radicals like Propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler and Hitler's "deputy" Martin Bormann saw the kirchenkampf campaign against the Churches as a priority concern, and anti-church and anticlerical sentiments were strong among grassroots party activists. Hitler himself also held radical instincts on the Church Question, but was prepared to restrain his anticlericalism out of political considerations, seeing dangers in strengthening the church through persecution.

A threatening, if initially mainly sporadic persecution of the Church followed the Nazi takeover. Hitler moved quickly to eliminate Political Catholicism, and thousands were arrested. Despite continuing molestation of Catholic clergy, and organisations following the appointment of Hitler as Chancellor by President von Hindenburg, the Vatican was anxious to reach a legal agreement with the new government, in order to protect the rights of the Church in Germany. The resulting Reich concordat was violated almost immediately. The Nazis moved to dissolve the Catholic youth leagues and clergy, nuns 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". Catholic aligned political parties in Germany, along with all other parties, were outlawed in 1933, and Catholic lay leaders were targeted in Hitler's 1934 Night of the Long Knives purge. By 1937, Pope Pius XI's Mit brennender Sorge encyclical was accusing the regime of sowing "fundamental hostility to Christ and his Church".

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