We are Voting for Hitler!

[wm]

My point is that any narration based on:

"This was the first international agreement signed by the Nazis in power and added greatly to their credibility"

is not true. Nobody even for a second regarded the Nazis as non-credible, the "Open Mind Toward Reich" article demonstrates that perfectly.

The Reichskonkordat was no-news when it was signed. The NYT reported it on page five in two small articles, and the first page was dominated by the Jewish boycott of the Reich.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi wm,

Naughty, naughty!

I did not just post ".....added greatly to their credibility," did I?

I actually wrote ".....added greatly to their credibility, especially among Catholics nationally and internationally."

The Papacy had a moral authority that Nazism did not. Unless you are claiming that the actions of the Papacy have no influence on even observant Catholics, then it necessarily must have added to the Nazis' credibility among Catholics, because only 8 months before, as your maps show, they had been distinctly anti-Nazi. Now the Holy Father was doing deals with them. Why would he have had the Catholic Centre Party dissolved unless he had some confidence in the word and policies of the Nazis? The Pope had moral authority among Catholics and the Reichskonkordat ensured that a little of it rubbed off on the Nazis, at least briefly.

Cheers,

Sid.

[wm]

Although "added greatly to their credibility" isn't modified by the later part, the unproven assumption is merely followed by another "especially among" one.

especially that you wrote:

So, the Vatican and Germany's Catholics were not only the first to help the Nazis consolidate power once in office but were primary beneficiaries of Nazi, irredentist, territorial, expansionist policies throughout the 1930s and early war years.

They didn't help the Nazis to consolidate power and weren't beneficiaries as Catholics, although probably were as Germans.

[gebhk]

Hi guys

Aren't we straying somewhat off the point here - which was whether the maps are real. I think the consensus is that the correlation was real. The question, I am assuming, is whether the maps are real or a fanciful illustration?

I seem to recall the whole issue of the attitude of Catholics and the Catholic Church to Nazism was vigorously debated in the Poland section of the Forum?

[wm]

The maps are 100% real and then some.
Their authors even statistically proved their "truthfulness."
A feat, I suppose, 99 percent of historians and the majority of scientists are incapable of.

From the same source:

Protestants were always at least two and a half - often three or four times as likely to vote for the Nazis as their Catholic counterparts.

Why were Catholics so much more likely to vote for the Zentrum than for any other party? Why did Catholics remain relatively loyal to the Zentrum, while Protestants abandoned their traditional parties in much greater numbers and flocked toward the Nazis? Why were there important
religious differences in Nazi vote shares|even very early o |but no differences in support for the Communists?

In this last part of the paper, we argue that the influence of the Catholic Church and its dignitaries provides the most parsimonious answer to all of these questions.

The Church and the Pope merely conformed to realities, as they do today in totalitarian China - a country with its human rights record worse than pre-war Nazi Germany ever been.

[jerry brazil]

Good Man,

You have seen the light! Now turn it off and hide. They are coming for you!!!

[wm]

were primary beneficiaries of Nazi, irredentist, territorial, expansionist policies throughout the 1930s

although Hitler disagrees with that:

I have shown myself unresponsive to the attempts of the Vatican towards extension of the provisions of the Concordat to embrace the newly acquired territories of the Reich.
The Saar, Sudetenland, Bohemia and Moravia, the Reichsgau Danzig-East Prussia, the Warthegau, a large part of Silesia and Alsace-Lorraine have, in fact, no relations with the Roman Catholic Church which are supported by formal international agreement.

In these territories, therefore, Church affairs must be settled locally. If the Papal Nuncio seeks audience of the Foreign Office and tries through this channel to gain some say in religious developments in the new territories, his advances must be rejected.

He must be told clearly that, in the absence of any particular Concordat, the settlement of Church affairs in these territories is a matter to be settled exclusively between the relevant State representative—that is, the Reichsstatthalter—and the head of the local ecclesiastical body.
...
as regards future relations between State and Church, it is very satisfactory from our point of view that in nearly half the Reich negotiations can now be conducted by the appropriate Reichsstatthalter, unfettered by the clauses of the central Concordat.
4 July 1942, at dinner. Hitler's Table Talk

[ljadw]

Hi wm,

Naughty, naughty!

I did not just post ".....added greatly to their credibility," did I?

I actually wrote ".....added greatly to their credibility, especially among Catholics nationally and internationally."

The Papacy had a moral authority that Nazism did not. Unless you are claiming that the actions of the Papacy have no influence on even observant Catholics, then it necessarily must have added to the Nazis' credibility among Catholics, because only 8 months before, as your maps show, they had been distinctly anti-Nazi. Now the Holy Father was doing deals with them. Why would he have had the Catholic Centre Party dissolved unless he had some confidence in the word and policies of the Nazis? The Pope had moral authority among Catholics and the Reichskonkordat ensured that a little of it rubbed off on the Nazis, at least briefly.

Cheers,

Sid.

1 There was NO such thing as a catholic vote
2 The influence of the moral authority of the pope on Catholics was a myth.See : Casti Connubii and Mit Brennender Sorge
3 Catholics in Spain, France, Austria, Italy !!, Belgium, Germany, did not vote as the church was telling them to do .
4 That the Centre party was dissolved did not mean that the Vatican had any confidence in the word and policies of the Nazis : the Centre part dissolved itself because it would otherwise have been dissolved by the Nazis .
5 A Reichskonkordat with the Nazis was better than no Reichskonkordat:the Nazis were ruling Germany, maybe for decades . Realism dictated that the Vatican would recognize this .
6 The Vatican did not interfere in German domestic issues, because of the Kulturkampf lessons .
7 Til 1952 the Vatican had also diplomatic relations with Tito . This did not mean that Pius XII was a communist .

[wm]

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Guys,

I see no particular reason to question the maps.

It seems clear that prior to 1933 German Roman Catholics tended to vote for parties other than the Nazis.

But once in power, within barely half a year, the Papal hierarchy ensured that no such maps could again be compiled because Catholics would no longer have the option of voting for anybody but the Nazis, as there were no more parliamentary elections. If you tried to compile similar maps for any of the plebiscites Hitler later conducted, you would find it very difficult to do so, because the Catholic vote could no longer easily be differentiated from any other vote.

In pursuit of the Reichskonkordat, the Papacy had the Catholic Centre Party vote in favour of the Enabling Act, which gave Hitler dictatorial powers and then dissolve itself, depriving Catholics of any independent political outlet.

The Papacy had done almost the same thing in Italy a decade earlier when it had had the Catholic PPI dissolved in order to prepare the ground for the Lateran Treaty of 1929 with Mussolini's Italy.

In some significant ways the Papacy was complicit in the creation of Italy and Germany as one-party, Fascist and Nazi states.

Pius XI clearly later had regrets that the Nazis, having banked the kudos from the Reichskonkordat, very soon resumed their efforts to dismantle organised Roman Catholicism in Germany. As I posted above, "To his credit, he belatedly realised the nature of the Nazis. On Palm Sunday, 12 March 1937, he had a papal encyclical, titled With Deep Anxiety, read from every Roman Catholic pulpit in Germany that reproved all these moves. Regarding the Reichskonkordat he stated, “….anyone must acknowledge, not without surprise and reprobation, how the other contracting party emasculated the terms of the treaty, distorted their meaning, and eventually considered its more or less official violation as a normal policy.” This infuriated Hitler, who was angry that the Catholic Church's pulpits still provided an avenue outside his control by which anti-Nazi positions could be widely disseminated to tens of millions of Germans.

In 1938 Pius XI was preparing to attack not just the Nazis' anti-Catholicism, but their wider racism in a new encyclical, Unity of the Human Race (Humani generis unitas), that extended his criticism to their treatment of Jews. There were even whispers of him excommunicating Hitler, who had been born a Roman Catholic. However, Pius XI died on 10 February 1939 and his successor, Eugenio Pacelli, as Pius XII, withheld the encyclical’s contents for the twenty years of his own Papacy.

This is not a period in which the Roman Catholic Church's upper hierarchy covered itself with glory!

Why did it do these thing? Partly though the fear that Communism was a greater threat to it, and partly because it was still reluctant for Catholic political parties to take part in organised democratic politics at all.

Either way, the Papacy chose to sup with the Devil without having equipped itself with a sufficiently long spoon!

Cheers,

Sid.

[wm]

"Papacy had the Catholic Centre Party vote in favour of the Enabling Act" needs to be proven and many other opinions expressed above too.

"The Papal hierarchy ensured ... [that] Catholics would no longer have the option of voting for anybody but the Nazis" is a smear.

You are attributing later, unforeseen consequences as goals of Papal hierarchy and that's wrong.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi wm,

No smear.

Still being naughty through selective editing of quotations, I see!

What I actually, wrote in full was, "But once in power, within barely half a year, the Papal hierarchy ensured that no such maps could again be compiled because Catholics would no longer have the option of voting for anybody but the Nazis, as there were no more parliamentary elections. If you tried to compile similar maps for any of the plebiscites Hitler later conducted, you would find it very difficult to do so, because the Catholic vote could no longer easily be differentiated from any other vote."

Nowhere did I say that this was the goal of the Papacy, because it wasn't. The Papacy was duped by an unprincipled Hitler. Pius XI came to realize this.

If you disagree with what I posted, you will have to produce evidence that Roman Catholics voted significantly differently from other Germans in the post-1933 plebiscites.

I would suggest that you won't be able to, but I am adaptable and willing to learn.

Well?

Cheers,

Sid.

[wm]

The Papacy wasn't duped by an unprincipled Hitler. The Reichskonkordat was real and provided the German Catholics with some protection against the Nazis. Hitler himself acknowledged that.

"the Papal hierarchy ensured that no such maps could again be compiled because Catholics would no longer have the option of voting for anybody but the Nazis"
Ensured by doing what? It was the Nazis that ensured that not the Papal hierarchy.

"Papacy had the Catholic Centre Party vote in favour of the Enabling Act" needs still to be proven.

"In some significant ways the Papacy was complicit in the creation of Italy and Germany as one-party, Fascist and Nazi states" needs to be proven too. At that time The New York Times wrote that the Reichskonkordat amounted to Hitler's capitulation.

The point is there was nothing wrong with the Reichskonkordat, it was the right thing to do.
It provided the German Catholics with some protection against the Nazis. Hitler himself acknowledged that.

[wm]

You post, "The Vatican could have signed any treaty with Germany it wanted, it could have sold tanks to the Germans with impunity - without breaching the Treaty." True, but Germany would be breaching the Treaty if it bought tanks off anyone. In that case, as with the secret supplement on future German conscription, the Vatican would be complicit in a breach of the Treaty.

That's not true, only its signatories were bound by the treaty as its preamble clearly stated.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi wm,

You post, "The Papacy wasn't duped by an unprincipled Hitler." Well, if that is so, it was instead presumably a fully conscious accomplice of a principled Hitler. Is that your position?

You post, "The Reichskonkordat was real and provided the German Catholics with some protection against the Nazis. Hitler himself acknowledged that." and "At that time The New York Times wrote that the Reichskonkordat amounted to Hitler's capitulation." May I remind you for a third time what Pius XII had read from pulpits throughout Germany on Palm Sunday, 12 March 1937, in his encyclical titled With Deep Anxiety: “….anyone must acknowledge, not without surprise and reprobation, how the other contracting party emasculated the terms of the treaty, distorted their meaning, and eventually considered its more or less official violation as a normal policy.” You are not arguing with me. You are arguing with Pope Pius XII!

For the third (or fourth?) time, at no point have I said that the Papacy breached the Versailles Treaty, because, as you rightly point out, it wasn't a party to it. So I don't have to defend that.

But that needn't stop it being complicit in advance to a breach of the Versailles Treaty by Germany. How else does one explain a secret clause in Article 27 of the Reichskonkordat reading “In case of a change in the present German armed forces in the sense of the introduction of universal conscription….”. Article 173 of the Versailles Treaty says, "Universal compulsory military service shall be abolished in Germany." The Vatican negotiators could hardly have been unaware of that fact.

Cheers,

Sid.