"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" They will swallow anything in order to keep their material advantages."
The Hitler who grew up in the church knew exactly what he was talking about, Pacelli and company would walk right into his trap.
Franz von Papen was not a Nazi, but he was hard right German nationalist and devout papist Catholic who did not disobey Rome who reviled democracy and often worked with Pacelli. Early in WW I Papen was the military attachà © to the German embassy in the US, he was expelled when he was caught organizing a successful sabotage campaign against the Allied war effort. After his own inept grab at power at the top failed, it was he who made Hitler chancellor in an attempt to gain a degree of control over the author of Mein Kampf (you can see the well known video of the happy event at http://www.youtube.com/watch?V=rYYcN6pwFMK, the fool at the front right chatting it up with the proud and thrilled to actually be running Deutschland Hitler and Goering is Papen). German Catholic bishops with the agreement of Rome and Pacelli issued a statement that explicitly dropped their prior opposition to Hitler, shocking and dismaying some Catholics as others flocked to the party now that they were freed by their "moral" leaders to do so.
The Catholic Centre Party or Zentrum was run by Father Kaas, a head over heels papist who along with his sometimes opponent Papen and close ally Pacelli was willing to trade the existence of the political party for the greater goal of a Catholic friendly autocrat ordained by God. After the Reichstag fire Hitler demanded the Enabling Act to give him "temporary" dictatorial power. Because the Nazis were a minority they needed the votes of compliant political blocs, otherwise it would have been impossible for Hitler to execute his plan to take over Germany. Both fearing the consequences of failing to support the thuggish Nazis, and hoping to exploit the situation, the entire Zentrum voted for the Enabling Act. It cannot be overemphasized that the vote for Adolf could not have occurred if Rome objected. Had the church that claims to represent the perfect and morally pure Christian God had the basic decency and common-sense to order the party to bravely vote no, then the Holocaust that only Hitler could have brought would never have happened, and the next world war might have been avoided. Instead the Roman Church, whose secretary of state Cardinal Pacelli was actively involved, played the critical political role in bringing these events to pass.
The church, with seeing-his-chance-to-finally-get-that-splendid-concordat Cardinal Pacelli in direct charge of the events under the higher aegis of Pious XI, sprung to action. In an extraordinary exhibition of they-just-did-not-care-that-it-was-unethical-conflict-of-interest, the believing Catholics von Papen and Kaas representing fellow church member Hitler traveled to Rome to negotiate the Concordat with their church, the Pacelli who had spent years trying to get the Germans to sign on to a concordat being in charge at the Roman end of the talks. Up in Germany Hitler frequently involved himself in the negotiations. In a birthday message to his boss Hitler Kaas offered the following.
"Sincere good wishes for today and assurances of unswerving collaboration in the great work of the creation of a Germany united within, socially at peace, and outwardly free."
Hitler was cynically delighted not only with the above message, but an agreement with Rome would give him the infamous fascist corporal the same badly needed international creds it had given to his inspiration, Mussolini. The Pacelli that Rome now wants to make a saint signed the finished document for Rome while Papen did so for Hitler, you can see the photo at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-R24391,_Konkordatsunterzeichnung_inRom.jpg (with Papen again at the scene of the calumny). Here is the opening of the agreement that Cardinal Pacelli signed.
"His Holiness Pope Pious XI and the President of the German Reich, moved by a common desire to consolidate and enhance the friendly relations existing between the Holy See and the German Reich.....have agreed to the following articles."
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