The Nazi Party Before Adolf Hitler

"Hitler is a good Catholic." — Rudolf Hess, May 17, 1921

Adolf Hitler became "Party Comrade No. 55" in the fall of 1919 in the city of Munich in province of Bavaria in Germany. The Armistice that had ended World War I had been signed on November 11, 1918, while Hitler was in a hospital, recovering from poison gas used by the Allies against German soldiers. If you no anything about history at all, you probably know that Hitler went on to become the Chancellor of Germany and is generally considered the baddest of bad guys of the 20th century.

The party that Hitler joined, and quickly became the leader of, was not yet known as the Nazi Party. It was the German Workers Party (Deutsche Arbeiter Partei or DAP). At that time its members were all in Munich. The DAP was part of a broader trend of mostly small parties and clubs that were trying to combine nationalism with socialism. This trend was a spontaneous response to the combination of national sentiment with socialist thinking that was global in scope. The main line of development that led to the DAP originated in Austria, which was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire before the empire broke up at the end of World War I.

In Austria Roman Catholicism was the only legal religion. "In the face of the dual threat posed by socialism and capitalism, the Christian Social Party succeeded in attracting workers, shopkeepers, and white collar workers with national-social and anti-semitic catchphrases." [Bracher p. 51]

By origin Adolf Hitler was Austrian, not German. Yet the dividing line between Austria and Germany was an artificial consequence of politics. Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889 in Braunau am Inn, on the Bavarian-Austrian border. The Austrian Empire had many ethnic groups, but the key rivalry that led to national socialist ideology was between ethnic Germans and ethnic Czechs. Despite the Marxist idea that class divisions were more important than ethnic divisions, within the Empire many labor unions ending up splitting along ethnic lines. Union workers wanted a party that fought the capitalist bosses, but they did not want to work with other ethnic groups.

The Roman Catholic Church contributed three critical components to the national socialist mix: anti-Semitism, the leadership principle, and corporatism. It should be noted that is was not the only source of these practices. Leninism, in particular, contributed strongly to the idea that an authoritarian party organization was necessary to seize power.

People and ideas moved freely from the German ethnic areas of the Austrian Empire to Bavaria. The first German Workers Party had been founded in Bohemia in 1904, but was centered in Linz, where Adolf Hitler went to school. As a young adult Hitler lived in Vienna (painting postcards but mostly living off money sent by his family) and read pamphlets written by German nationalist-socialist and Catholic anti-semitic groups, but did not join any.

The Bavarian version of the German Workers Party, or DAP, was founded at a conference held between January 2 and 5, 1919, at the Furstenfelder Hof. The founders were Anton Drexler and twenty-five of his coworkers from his railroad shop. At the time Munich had just passed through an attempted seizure of power by leftists that had been put down by the German military, police, and their right-wing allies. The DAP was just one of many such groups and conspiracies.

Hitler was in the employ of the military when he first contacted the DAP. Essentially, he was their military liaison. He was 30 years old. He already was anti-semitic, a German nationalist, and anti-capitalist, though he had never been a worker receiving a wage from a capitalist boss. As an soldier he was angry at Germany's loss of the war. The signing of the peace treaty at Versailles on June 28, 1919 gave a strong impetus to all right-wing groups in Germany. It was grossly unfair to Germany and did not keep the promises U.S. President Woodrow Wilson made to induce Germany to stop fighting. [Wilson tried to keep his promises, but was overruled by the British and French Empires.]

Within a few months Hitler became the most important person in the DAP, mainly because he devoted himself to it full time, whereas Drexler continued to work at the railroad shop. Hitler focused his recruiting on former soldiers, rather than the factory workers the DAP had been founded on.

On February 24, 1920, the Party had its first mass meeting. There Hitler introduced a new name, the National Socialist German Workers Party, or NSDAP, which connected it ideologically to nationalist socialist groups in Austria. He also introduced the revised party program of 25 points.

When thinking about the Nazis and World War II, there is a critical point that is always left out of the American and Vatican propaganda versions of Nazi history. It is best to just quote the point, number 24: "The Party as such advocates the standpoint of positive Christianity without binding itself confessionally to any one denomination."

Apologists for the Catholic Church later tried to (and still try to) use the adjective "positive" to deny that the Nazi party, like the Italian, French, Austrian, Polish and Spanish fascist parties, was aligned with the Roman Catholic Church. Hitler, an astute politician, talked almost constantly. By selecting carefully, a propagandist can make him sound like an atheist, a good Roman Catholic, or a pagan.

It was ultimately the Pope and the German military that together selected Hitler to be Chancellor of Germany. The explicitly Roman Catholic parliamentary party in Germany confirmed that selection.

Hitler was not just the head of the National Socialists in Germany. The National Socialists of Austria quickly accepted him as their leader as well. The Austrian national socialists were almost exclusively good Roman Catholics. The Austrian Roman Catholic Church was particularly anti-semitic.

The most reasonable interpretation of the phrase "without binding itself confessionally to any one denomination" was to leave room to recruit Lutherans, not just Catholics. In Bavaria almost everyone (except leftist atheists) was a Catholic. But Hitler wanted to rule Germany, which was majority Lutheran. Not a particular problem for Hitler, since Lutherans had been anti-semitic going back to Martin Luther himself.

Woman in Gold and Austrian Catholics

I was dreading seeing another Holocaust movie, but I thought Woman in Gold (starring Helen Mirren, Ryan Reynolds, and my favorite up-and-coming Tatiana Maslany) was pretty good.

People forget, and Woman in Gold jogs the memory. But it also avoids some issues.

Maria Altmann (played by Mirren) is an Austrian who fled the country shortly after the Nazi takeover. She decides to try to obtain a picture of her aunt that is hanging in an Austrian museum. As portrayed in the movie neither she nor her family were religious.

The movie, in flashback scenes, makes a point that the Austrians, for the most part, welcomed Hitler and the German takeover. But it does not explain why. And why is very important, if you really want to understand history, instead of just thinking Austrians were just a bunch of vicious thugs.

There were three main components to the why: (1) the aftermath of World War I (2) pan-German nationalism (3) the domination of Austria by the Roman Catholic Church.

Before World War I Austria had been part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. World War I was largely a battle between imperialist countries for world domination, and the Empire ended up on the losing side. The victors broke it up into the states of Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and portions of other states. Austria had the core of the German speaking population.

Despite Woodrow Wilson's chatter about "national self-determination," the Austrians were forbidden from becoming part of Germany. Many were not happy about that.

Pan-German nationalism then came into play. Hitler himself was Austrian, though he had become a German citizen. Many Austrians did not feel they were being invaded by the Nazis: they felt they were being liberated. The Nazis were by no means the only extremist nationalist group in Austria in the 1930s.

When the Protestant Revolution had shaken up the world, it had left the German-speaking population of Europe divided mainly between two religions: Lutheranism mostly in the north, and Roman Catholicism mostly in the south.

The Roman Catholic Church has always been officially anti-Jewish, but in the religious sense, not the racial sense. Jewish converts to Catholicism were welcome, if somewhat suspect. The Roman Catholic Church in Austria had a tradition of being particularly anti-Jewish, and most of the people who joined the Austrian branch of the Nazi Party had been raised anti-semitic Catholics.

Adolf Hitler himself was Roman Catholic, which made his storm troopers easy to welcome in Austria. Surprised? Most modern Catholics are, because the Church colluded with the U.S. government (particularly the Democratic Party) to rewrite history after Germany was defeated.

So when you see Austrians abusing Jews in Woman in Gold, you can bet that they are Roman Catholics.

The other funny thing about the movie is the hypocritical propaganda about private property. In the courts and in major motion pictures we are constantly reminded about how European Jews, in addition to losing their lives in the Holocaust, also lost their private property. The message is constant: Jewish private property should be returned to Jews.

But don't think about Palestine. Because American Jews, and ex-European Jews that are now Israeli Palestinians, don't want you to think about the private property rights of non-Jewish Palestinians.

If stolen property is to be returned, should not the land and other property stolen from Palestinians during the creation of the State of Israel be returned to the rightful owners?

Don't hold your breath waiting for a major motion picture bringing up that issue. Or a court ruling in favor of the Palestinians.

The Hitler Honeymoon of 1933

When Allied troops starting liberating German concentration camps at the end of World War II, the world was shocked. Rumors that Jews and other people Hitler considered undesirable had been being systematically exterminated turned out to be true. By then the U.S. and the British Empire had embraced the idea of total war: the destruction of civilian populations in Germany and Japan by fire bombing, later to be capped by the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Germans were just plain bad.

In 1945 most Americans re-wrote German history in their minds, even more than they had in 1941. Many Americans had expressed an admiration for Benito Mussolini starting in the 1920s, or for Hitler in the 1930s. Once the United States officially entered World War II (we had already been fighting the Japanese in China and the Germans in the Atlantic), public opinion became vigorously patriotic, nationalist, and solidly against the opposing nations and their political leaders.

Even today it is hard to talk objectively about how the Nazi Party came to power, or what governance was like in Germany aside from the Holocaust and decision to invade Poland.

Hitler wanted power, and he wanted it badly, and behaved not unlike such politicians of all races and throughout the ages. He emphasized bright and shining ideas, while dimming the ideas that were less popular with voters. Only once he made himself dictator, in 1934, did he begin to behave, from our point of view, really badly.

Hitler was appointed to the most powerful office in Germany, Chancellor, on January 30, 1933, after the dismissal of General Schleicher. His Nazi Party, in the recent election, had won 195 seats, making it the largest in a multi-party Reichstag (congress). As a compromise his cabinet contained only 4 Nazi ministers, the others being mostly technocrats. His Vice-Chancellor, Franz von Papen, had been the leader of the right-wing of the Catholic Center Party (Zentrum).

To win the election Hitler had declared he was for peace [sound familiar?], for Christianity (he himself was Roman Catholic, as were many Nazis), and ready to get the economy going again (it was in the Great Depression). He even toned down his anti-jewish rants.

Hitler had his own problems. The Nazi Party was huge, it largely consisted of fiefdoms, and any of several of its war lords thought themselves every bit as fit to become dictator as Hitler. Adolf needed leverage against the more radical and disloyal members of his own party, and for that he courted German conservatives, moderates, Roman Catholics, military men and business men. He did maintain his anti-communist stand. Pope Pius XI "remarked how pleased he was that the German Government now had at its head a man [Adolph Hitler] uncompromisingly opposed to Communism and Russian nihilism." [Franz von Papen Memoirs, page 279]

The economic program consisted of some deregulation of industry, combined with an employment program. The largest component sent young people to work on farms, where there had been a labor shortage. The Autobahn (equivalent to our Interstate Highway System started in the 1950s) was begun. There was some increased military spending (Germany had a very tiny army as a result of treaty limitations). Disputes between labor and capitalists were settled, generally in favor of the workers. Hitler declared on May 10, 1933, "The new State will no longer represent the sectional interests of a group or a class, but will be the trustee of the nation as a whole." The tourist industry was even revived by giving workers paid holiday tours. [Franz von Papen Memoirs, page 284]

Sound like the New Deal? That is because it was, only done more quickly and effectively. The main difference is that, because there was almost no business regulation in the U.S. in 1933, but German business was highly regulated, the New Deal program included a lot of new regulation of business. Also, the U.S. Supreme Court stopped President Roosevelt's most fascistic programs, notably the NRA (National Recovery Administration).

Of course most honeymoons come to an end. During this period fanatical Nazis beat up Jews and Communists. Opposition political parties were dissolved. Opposition to Hitler within the Nazi party was liquidated in the Night of the Long Knives. When President Hindenburg died on August 2, 1934, Hitler absorbed his powers and filled his cabinet with members of his own party. Many Germans, even former communists and social democrats, had joined the ranks of the Nazis; there was no effective opposition. Hitler was popular because he had restarted the economy. Instead of being happy with that he began preparing for the glory of war and the extermination of Jews and other perceived enemies of his new Third Reich.

Nazi Pope Blasts Islam, False Gods

The man called Benedict XVI, legal A.K.A. Joseph Alois Ratzinger, continues to prove he is the third in a line of fascist, and more specifically Nazi, Popes. According to accounts in the the Associated Press dated October 11, 2010, Pope Benedict recently "denounced terrorist ideologies that spur violence in God's name," adding that "these ideologies are based on false gods." [See Pope Denounces Terrorist Ideas]

Wow. Of course, Roman Catholics have been self-selecting and inbreeding for gullibility for 17 centuries now. The Catholic Church so cultivates ignorance of history and religion that it discourages its communicants from reading the Bible. Sadly, because of the nature of politics, even many Protestant Americans don't know we had to fight the Catholics in World War II because of the first two fascist popes, Pius XI and Pius XII. They used their servants Benito Mussolini, Philippe Petain, General Francisco Franco and, most useful servant of all, Adolf Hitler, to try to eliminate all rival religions from the earth. In the process they murdered roughly 20 million atheists, 6 million Jews, and about 1 million Protestant Christians between 1936 and their defeat in 1945.

Joseph Alois Ratzinger was just a child then, but he became a member of Hitler Youth. Later, trying to clean up his resume a bit, he claimed he was forced into Nazi Youth and actually opposed Hitler. But we know what happened to even middle class Catholic Germans who opposed Hitler, or failed to attend Hitler Youth meetings. They were put in concentration camps. So the opposing Hitler bit is just a bald lie.

The Catholic Church's idea that its God is the true god and all other Gods are false goes back to pre-Catholic Christianity. Christians essentially invented the idea of there being only one God, and that has brought the world untold grief. Recounting how many non-Catholics have been murdered over the centuries by Catholics in their God's name would take an encyclopedia. Even Google would pale at the thought of the cost of building a datacenter to hold all the data of the victims of the Catholic Church.

Islam is the original Protestant sect. There were lots of non-Catholic sects before Islam, but the Catholics wiped them out. Mohammed and his Moslem followers were the first to put forward a different theology and live to tell about it. In fact, they beat the Catholics at their own game of "conversion or death" for about a millenia. The Catholic Church looked ready for total defeat around 1500 A.D., but the discovery of America, and the working of Mexican and Peruvian natives to death in gold and silver mines, allowed the Catholics, led by Spain, to turn the tide. Catholic mercenary armies inspired not so much be faith as by payment in silver stopped and then turned back the advance of the Turkish, Islamic empire in Europe.

This weakness of the Catholic Church around 1500 also enabled the survival of what we now no as Protestant Christian churches. There were christian protestants before Martin Luther. Martin Luther was the just the first to call out the Popes on their bull and live to tell about. This allowed,over time, ever larger numbers of people to engage in rational thought, religous choice, and ethical behavior, a process that I hope will continue to grow.

The internal stuggles of the Catholic Church during the past 2 decades look like war preparations to me. Tolerant, pro-democracy persons within the Church have been systematically deprived of power. The Church's assaults on women's rights have become stident, including the recent announcement that it is heresy punishable by excommunication to even think about making women priests. The Church has become a right-wing dictatorship, just as it did before it engineered the rise of the fascist dictators to power during the 1930s.

Affirming its intent to restore fascist governments wherever possible, and ultimately make a bid for global domination again, is Benedict XVI's ongoing efforts to make saints of thousands of General Franco's supporters [See fascist saints]. General Franco was the Catholic dictator of Spain, highly praised and blessed by Pope Pius XII, who murdered millions of non-Catholics in Spain during his reign of terror, which lasted until his death in 1975.

False Gods indeed. The idea of One True God would seem to me to imply that the worst mistake a person could make is getting a poor signal from God. Like God is AT&T, and has never quite figured out how to make cell phones work right.

I denounce the use of violence to spread religion or philosophy of any kind. I admit to being anti-religion, preferring my Natural Liberation Philosophy. But the way to convert people is by example and argument, not force. Both Catholicism and Islam have also used, at time, economic policy to encourage conversions. Right now the Catholic Church is bankrupt. It's main weapon against Islam is the United States government, which it influences through Catholic voter blocks and lobbying. Americans should not allow the Pope to use our tax dollars to further his agenda of ignorance, superstition, and centralised dictorial governance.

Further reading:
Hitler's Pope: Pius XII by John Cornwell

The Vatican in World Politics by Avro Manhattan

Pope Pius XII and the Hitler Enabling Act

I think I first learned about the Nazis as a child from old movies and the TV serial Combat!. In my simple child world, Americans were good and Germans, at least Nazi Germans, were evil. Apparently the world shares my fascination with these paragons of evil because they are the bad guys, a half century after their demise, in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

Growing up in the 1960s I eventually heard the good guys, Americans, and in particular President Richard Nixon, called Nazi by leftist agitators. Although I was far better at math and science than at languages and human relations, in college I majored in Political Science because I did not like science being used to do evil, like dropping bombs on Vietnamese peasants. A considerable amount of my course work covered the Adolf Hitler's German National Socialist (Nazi) regime. Since that time I have read and even written a fair amount about the Nazis, trying to understand their particular brand of evil, and how it relates to evil in general. Most notably I have focused on how the National Socialist Party came to power. And I have related that to another major area of interest, the Catholic Church. I am the only modern writer I know of who emphasizes the fact that Adolf Hitler was born a Catholic, was a member of the Catholic Church in good standing throughout his lifetime, and died a Catholic [See Hitler's Catholicism]. Although factually true, this is considered heresy in the United States where the Catholic Church remains powerful enough within the Democratic Party and where that Party has dominated American society since 1932.

And yet today I learned something new and revealing. I will start with what I knew yesterday, that Adolf Hitler came to have dictatorial powers even though the National Socialists were not elected to hold a majority in the Reichstag (German equivalent of the U.S. House of Representatives). The Reichstag voted to give away its powers to the Chancellor, who happened to be Hitler. This happened on March 23, 1933.[Coincidently, President Franklin Roosevelt became President of the United States (later President for Life) on March 4, 1933.] You can find this in the most standard of works on Nazi Germany, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer on page 199:

"Monsignor Kaas, the [Catholic Center Party] leader, had demanded a written promise from Hitler that he would respect the President's power of veto. But though promised before the voting, it was never given. Nevertheless the Center leader rose to announce that his party would vote for the bill. Bruening remained silent. The vote was soon taken: 441 for, and 84 (all Social Democrats) against. The Nazi deputies sprang to their feet shouting and stamping deliriously ..."

So the Enabling Act passed, and Adolf Hitler became dictator of Germany. Recall that this was in the midst of the Great Depression.

Given that you now know that Hitler was Catholic, and that the crucial votes that made him dictator came from the Catholic Center Party, you might think that you now understand what happened. But the Catholic Center Party was not actually fond of Hitler. There were more conservative, smaller Catholic parties in Germany that did like Hitler, but the Center Party actually believed in the democratic process. They were in their own struggle with the Vatican during this period. They were influenced by modern ideas. And a series of popes, up to then pope Pius XI, hated modern ideas, hated democracy, and in particular hated any grass roots control, or even bishop level control, of the Catholic Church.

Pius XI's man on the spot was Eugenio Pacelli, who would later become Pope Pius XII. He had been the Vatican's ambassador to Germany, or papal nuncio, from shortly after World War I until 1930, when he became Pius XI's Secretary of State. He had always been in charge of negotiating a treaty, or concordat, between the Roman Catholic Church and the German State. For the Popes the concordat was about imposing the relatively novel idea that the Pope had dictatorial powers within the Church, including appointing all bishops, but reaching down even to the parish level. Because Germany had been the center of the Holy Roman Empire, the Church in Germany was used to a great deal of autonomy, and still remembered when it had the right to appoint Popes.

Pacelli made a deal with Hitler on behalf of the Pope. Hitler would be allowed to become the political dictator of Germany, if Hitler would allow the Pope to become the spiritual dictator of Germany, or at least of Catholics in Germany (Hitler and the Pope planned to merge the Lutheran Church into the Catholic Church).

So the Pope, through Pacelli, ordered the Center Party to vote for the Nazi dictatorship. This would in effect dissolve the Center Party, which was something the Vatican had been seeking since at least 1920. The Center Party itself probably would not have signed the concordat without revisions, because it thought the church should have a more democratic internal structure than was being advocated by Pacelli and Pius XI.

The negotiation of the Nazi concordat is a major theme of John Cornwell's Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII. The Enabling Act specifically is covered on pages 92 and 133-137.

Books cited (used copies of these are usually cheap):

Helen Thomas

Just to say that Helen Thomas should not have been fired from the White House Press Corps for saying that a solution to the illegal occupation of Palestine by Israel is to send back Israelis to their nations of origin. Outrageously anti-Palestinian remarks are made by U.S. politicians and public opinionators all the time; they enhance careers. Helen's remark was quite reasonable.

Large numbers of Jews lived in Palestine before the terrorists began fighting to create the State of Israel. I consider them natives of Palestine along with the various other religious and ethnic sub-groups that were there before 1945. The best solution would be a peace plan that would accomodate all. But as long as the Israelis act like Nazis, I have to support the natives against the terrorist invaders.

I wrote to the White House demanding that Helen Thomas be kept in the Press Corps. Regardless of whether she has a big-time employer. You can do this (or for that matter, diagree with me and demand that she be shot like a Palestinian child who has thrown a pebble at an Isreali tank) quickly and easily at the White House contact page. Tell Barack Obama what you think.

Or add a comment here.

Israel, Pope Pius XII, and the Holocaust

There is currently a controversy, or renewal of a controversy, about the role of Pope Pius XII and the Jews in during World War II. It is usually posed by mainstream accounts as: did Pius XII do all he could to save the Jews from the Holocaust? Since the current Pope, Benedict XVI, was a member of the Nazi youth organization and is trying to get Pius XII qualified as a saint, now is a good time to get the facts about Pius XII.

"Politics makes strange bedfellows." Here I find myself siding with the State of Israel, whereas I am usually pro-Palestinian (the Palestinians have nothing to do with this particular controversy). Israel, and doubtless many Jewish organizations, don't want Pius XII canonized.

Pius XII, before he became Pope, was the Vatican Secretary of State. Born Eugenio Pacelli, as Cardinal Pacelli he was the right-hand man to Pius XI. To understand Pius XII you have to understand Pius XI, who chose to promote Pacelli to the second highest rank in the Roman Catholic Church.

I think it is fair to say that Pius XI, who became pope in 1922, was the architect of fascism. Of course this is a controversial hypothesis, and can be argued against on a number of fronts. Benito Mussolini would be the other candidate for the title. But it was Pius XI who made anti-Communism the first priority of the Catholic Church. Under the banner of Anti-Communism (and the Church was also openly against democratic forms of socialism, and even capitalist forms of democratic government), Pius helped first Mussolini, then other fascist leaders come to power. I know that is a shocking assertion to most people, but it is not difficult to paint that picture once the facts are at hand. First, however, I want to relate this to antisemitism and thus the Holocaust.

Adolf Hitler is usually portrayed as the architect of the Holocaust. His own antisemitism, in the consensus histories, is attributed to anti-semitic cults that he encountered as a young man living in Vienna. However, this does not hold up under analysis.

Hitler was born a Catholic (See Hitler's Catholicism) and was raised as a Catholic in a Catholic state, the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Antisemitism in Austria was rooted in the Catholic Church. There was a close alliance between the Hapsburg emperors and the Church, which ran the education system under the tender mercies of the Jesuits. When modern ideas began to penetrate the empire in the 19th century and some representative government was allowed, an Austrian Catholic Party (Later the Christian Social Party) was formed, with the Church's blessing. Because the Church itself was be abandoned by so many citizens in the empire, the party's leader, Karl Lueger, hit upon antisemitism as the primary selling point.

The antisemitism of the Holocaust grew out of the antisemitism promoted by the Catholic Church throughout its history. It became enshrined as a principle of fascist government because the Church wanted its prejudices to be backed by the power of the state.

To consider the idea that Pius XI was the architect of modern fascism, see the following essays (they are in linear order):

Pius XI and the Rise of Benito Mussolini
Pius XI and the Rise of Adolph Hitler
Pius XI and the Rise of General Franco
Pius XI, the Rise of Petain, and Fascist Vichy France

Pius XI and his Secretary of State were deeply involved in promoting fascism in other nations, notably Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Austria as well.

So when Cardinal Pacelli became Pope on March 2, 1939, he had been part of setting up a series of fascist regimes in Europe. Fascist movements, mostly but not exclusively Catholic, existed in many more nations of the world, including in the United States. He was a gung-ho anti-communist who believed that fascist dictators were the best bulwark against atheist communism, and against all rival creeds. Better still, except for Hitler, who had a large Protestant Christian population to deal with, all the dictators made the Catholic Church their exclusive religious partner. Cardinal Pacelli had never spoken out against anti-Semitism. He did not even speak out against mass-murder of non-Catholics, which had just been carried out by the Spanish fascists under General Francisco Franco. Here's what he said:

"With great joy we address you, dearest sons of Catholic Spain, to express our paternal congratulations for the gift of peace and victory, with which God has chosen to crown the Christian heroism of your faith and charity ... As a pledge of the bountiful grace which you will receive from the Immaculate Virgin and the Apostle James, patrons of Spain ... we give to you, our dear sons of Catholic Spain, to the Head of State and his illustrious Government, to the zealous Episcopate and its self-denying clergy, to the heroic combatants and to all the faithful, our apostolic benediction."

That said, I don't think that Pius XII agreed with the technical details of Hitler's extermination of the Jews. Hitler saw the Jews as not just a religion, but as a race of people. Pius XII and the Catholic Church had a long history of giving Jews (and other non-Catholics) the choice of conversion or death. I believe that if Pius XII had run Hitler's concentration camps for Jews he would have gone to great lengths to convert them to Catholicism. Hitler did not give the Jews that opportunity.

You might say that Pius XII does not sound like much of a saint, but you are using your own definition of a Saint, not that of the Roman Catholic Church. There are many Saints who were mass murderers. As long as they killed non-Catholics, with the idea in mind of converting the survivors to Catholicism, they are considered to be heroes of the church.

Catholicism Uber Alles

The Pope announced today that non-Catholic variations on Christianity are inferior to Catholicism. Leaders of other Christian sects announced they were shocked and also announced that they had the only true version of Christianity and that all other Christian sects are inferior.

Well, it may be a small step backwards towards intollerance, but Pope Benedict's current position is still very liberal compared to the Catholic Church of, say, 1400 which declared any deviation at all to be a form of atheism and devil worship. Back then the Inquisition made a sincere effort to torture people back to the True Faith and only burned you at the stake if you failed to confess your sins and kiss the Pope's feet.

Pope Benedict XVI (that's number 16, for you Latin feebs), formerly Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger ("The Rat"), was a member of the Hitler Youth when he was a child. He claims he did not really like Adolf Hitler even back then. So that is a bit of a fib. We know what happened to all of Hitler's opponents. They were killed. So Pope Benedict XVI was a get-along, go-along type of kid back then. Only as he grew powerful did he feel that he should bend other people to his will.

Hitler was Catholic. Most American's don't know that. Neither the American govenment nor the American Catholic Church wanted Americans to know that. Hitler was born Catholic and Hitler died Catholic. Most of the early Nazis, in Bavaria, were Catholic, though it was not a requirement for joining the party.

Of course Hitler was a bad Catholic. He did not give primacy to the Church. If he had been a good Catholic he would have given Jews the option of converting to Catholicism rather than being roasted. If he had been a good Catholic he would have made Catholicism the sole religion of Germany. If you look at history, that is where most Catholic nations come from. At some point some ruler made everyone convert to Catholicism, and killed those that resisted. That is how Mexico and Latin America became Catholic. In the 1930s Hitler's fellow Catholic, General Franco, killed people in Spain for not being Catholic. This is why Franco is considered to be a Good Catholic, but Hitler was a Bad Catholic.

Catholicism Uber Alles is the new keynote of the Catholic Church. The only reason to tolerate non-Catholics is to get them to knuckle under and pay their union dues to the Pope. I am sure Ratzinger wishes he had an army, like the Pope's did until a couple of centuries ago, to further what he now must try to accomplish by diplomacy.

More data:

Vatican propaganda site
The Vatican Rag