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Today we are joined from Germany by Constantine Mollitor who gives the real story of the persecution of the Catholic Church by the Third Reich. In great detail, Constantine dispels the myth of “Hitler’s Pope” and other assorted nonsense with the real details of the Church’s resistance to, as well as persecution by the Nazi regime. Apart from the political and historical details of how the Nazi state broke up Catholic life in Germany, Constantine also shares the many stories of German priests sent to Dachau or other labor camps for upholding the Catholic Faith.

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Books

The Kings Depart: The Tragedy of Germany, Versailles and the German Revolution

Hitler’s War by David Irving (NB: Constantine did not recommend this book, but I did because of its erudition. You can ignore that Irving is a famous holocaust denier [though he was walked some of that back], because none of that is taken up in the book which was written before he went down that path and is only based on primary sources).

The Myth of Hitler’s Pope by Rabbi David Dahlan

Priestblock 25487: A Memoir of Dachau

German Books:

Kreuz und Hakenkreuz by Fr. Neuhaeusler

Erich Klausner (by Walter Adolph)

Geheime Aufzeichnungen (by Walter Adolph)

References

NB: Some links are to wikipedia, which is provided as a basis for research and acquiring more info, not as an end all and be all source of information, usually because it was one of the only pages available in English.

Jewish Groups oppose the Beatification and Canonization of Pius XII

860,000 Jews saved by Pius XII

Rosa Luxemburg

Karl Liebknecht

Freikorps

Bolshevik takeover

Dietrich Eckart – Thule Society

Munich Putsch, 9 November 1923/ Beer Hall Putsch

Reichskonkordat

Quote from Mit Brennender Sorge:

“When, in 1933, We consented, Venerable Brethren, to open negotiations for a concordat, which the Reich Government proposed on the basis of a scheme of several years’ standing; and when, to your unanimous satisfaction, We concluded the negotiations by a solemn treaty, We were prompted by the desire, as it behooved Us, to secure for Germany the freedom of the Church’s beneficent mission and the salvation of the souls in her care, as well as by the sincere wish to render the German people a service essential for its peaceful development and prosperity. Hence, despite many and grave misgivings, We then decided not to withhold Our consent for We wished to spare the Faithful of Germany, as far as it was humanly possible, the trials and difficulties they would have had to face, given the circumstances, had the negotiations fallen through. It was by acts that We wished to make it plain, Christ’s interests being Our sole object, that the pacific and maternal hand of the Church would be extended to anyone who did not actually refuse it.

If, then, the tree of peace, which we planted on German soil with the purest intention, has not brought forth the fruit, which in the interest of your people, We had fondly hoped, no one in the world who has eyes to see and ears to hear will be able to lay the blame on the Church and on her Head. The experiences of these last years have fixed responsibilities and laid bare intrigues, which from the outset only aimed at a war of extermination. In the furrows, where We tried to sow the seed of a sincere peace, other men — the “enemy” of Holy Scripture — oversowed the cockle of distrust, unrest, hatred, defamation, of a determined hostility overt or veiled, fed from many sources and wielding many tools, against Christ and His Church. They, and they alone with their accomplices, silent or vociferous, are today responsible, should the storm of religious war, instead of the rainbow of peace, blacken the German skies.” nos. 3-4

Cardinal Schulte, Bishop Klein, Archbishop Bertram condemned Nazi brutality in 1933

Cardinal Bertram (German, but readable with Google Translate)

Cardinal Faulhalber Archbishop of Munich-Freising, asked Hitler to release political prisoners in Dachau.

Catholic priests in Dachau.

SS members required to defend their honor in a duel

Nazi harassment of the Church: forbidding sermons, restricting processions, restriction of Masses

Anti-Catholic propaganda in SS Weekly newspaper Das Schwarze Korps

Der Stürmer, published by Julius Streicher.

Alleged alliance of Jews, Jesuits and Freemasons



Anti-Pacelli (Pius XII) political cartoons



Push for pan-denominational secular schools by the Nazis

Nazis eliminated Catholic schools by decree

Expropriations of Religious Houses

Nazi destruction of the Catholic press in Germany

Mitt Brennender Sorge

Nazi reaction to the encyclical

Maronite Catholic filmmaker jailed for making movie critical of Islam (in the US)

Nazis always hostile to Cardinal Pacelli

Praise for Pius XII by Jewish groups immediately following his election

Dutch Bishops condemned persecution of the Jews in Holland, and Nazis responded by deporting more Jews as well as Catholics of Jewish decent.

SS paratroopers planned to kidnap Pius XII in 1945.

Erich Klausner, killed for being a political Catholic

Blessed Jakob Gapp, Priest tricked by Nazis pretending to be Jews in need sent to concentration camp

Fr. Neururer martyr for marriage; warned a woman from marrying a local Nazi boss in Tyrol because he was divorced with no annulment. Died at Buchenwald: German; English

Fr. Häfner priest in Bavaria, made a Nazi party member publicly condemn his own divorce

Ordination of Blessed Karl Leisner in Dachau.

Carmelite convent removed from Auschwitz after protest from Israel

St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross

Bl. Titus Brandsma (pg. 3 of the document)

Other Jewish-Catholic Martyrs of the concentration camps

Beatified martyrs of the Communist persecution in Spain (in Spanish)

Lubeck Martyrs (Lutheran pastor was not beatified).

St. Maximillian Kolbe

St. Maximillian Kolbe accused of Anti-semitism for preaching Catholic teaching on Jewish conversion

The Play the “Deputy” shaped the negative perception of Pius XII, supported by the Soviets.