10 Germany, the Vatican and Hitler

The history of contemporary political Catholicism in German began, roughly speaking, during the formation and consolidation of the First German Empire. A glance at the behavior of the Vatican at that critical period demonstrates the consistency of the fundamental policy of the Catholic Church in general and illuminates what appears to be its political somersaults. They were part of her method for reaching her goal and for the formation of the Catholic Party, the Centre Party, which played such an important role in German life.

That a Protestant State like Prussia should dominate the political life of the numerous German Catholic States roused the greatest hostility in the Catholic Church, and caused Bismark, while establishing the German Empire, to reorganize that the power centered in the Vatican was a most subtle enemy to his plans. Statesmen before and after Bismark had faced this same problem, but Bismarck put it with truly Bismarckian brutality…”Is this great body, namely the German Roman Catholic, one-third of the entire German population, to obey, in civil matters, laws made by the German Parliament or mandates issued by a knot of Italian priests? ”

There was no doubt about the Vatican answer. It extended from Rome to the German bishops, and from the bishops to their lower clergy and laity. The whole machinery which the Catholic Church possesses was set in motion. From the pulpit denunciations were thundered which were more apt for political platforms; and in the Parliament there appeared the Catholic Party, devoted to the interests of the Vatican. It was headed by the formidable statesman Windthorst. Before the incorporation of Hanover into Prussia, this statesman had a commanding place in the Hanoverian Cabinet. He was known for his ambition, his great powers as a parliamentary leader, and for his hatred of the new order of things.

The two men became symbols of the two opposing forces. Since the power of the Vatican had been enhanced by the formula of infallibility, the supposition was that it would try to carry to its logical conclusion the claim of the Catholic Church on the life of a State and on the shape of society. The result was a long struggle into which were drawn almost all of the German Hierarchy. The most notorious were the Bishops of Ermeland and Paderborn, and the Archbishops of Cologne and Posen. The appearance of the Jesuits soon followed. They had been very active against Germany during her Austrian and French wars, and had not only stirred up religious differences, but also political and racial hatreds, especially in Poland and Alsace-Lorraine. As time went on, their activities increased and the struggle became still more bitter; not only owing to the interference of the Jesuits, but through the efforts of the Hierarchy. Every means was employed to drive out of the pulpits and professional chairs all who had not accepted the infallibility dogma; and, as the men thus ostracized were paid by the State, the civil authorities resisted. This led to such violence in preaching that it caused the enactment of the “Pulpit Laws.”

Bismarck nominated a strong man as Minister of Worship―by name, Falk; and at the same time it was proposed by Bismarck that a German Ambassador should be sent to the Vatican. This proposal was rejected.

In 1872 the whole body of Jesuits were expelled from Germany. This was very significant, as the Jesuits, even when they had been expelled from all the nations of Europe, and even from Rome by the Pope himself, had been left undisturbed in the Prussian dominions. The Vatican ordered the Catholics in Germany to denounce Bismarck and the State: and this the archbishops and bishops did in the most violent language. The Pope himself threatened Bismarck with the vengeance of God, which, he said, would overtake him.

Reprisals followed quickly. The German diplomatic representative, who in the meantime had been sent to the Vatican, was withdrawn, and what came to be known as the “Falk Laws” or “May Laws” were passed.

The struggle at its worst phase lasted more than five years.

The Vatican replied by ordering the German clergy to launch anathemas against the civil authorities and against all those who refused to recognize the Pope as the only infallible bearer of truth. The religious authority, it was declared, must be above all civil ones. From the churches it was preached that the education of the clergy was a matter for the Vatican and not for the State; and that no Catholic had the right to―or could―separate himself from the Catholic Church: once a Catholic, always a Catholic.

According to Canon Law, marriage was a Sacrament and only the Church could officiate at a marriage ceremony. This, they claimed, was not within the right of the State. They not only stirred up religious and racial hatred in Poland and Alsace-Lorraine, but, by using provincial jealousies in Catholic States like Bavaria and the Rhine Provinces, they increased these jealousies, and, led by the clergy, the Catholics became rebellious. Through religious questions and moral issues they created a social, civil, and political disorder and unrest, all of which was directed from Rome.

The Government replied by the expulsion of priests from their pulpits, and of professors and bishops, with fines and imprisonment scattered widely. Numerous religious Orders were driven from the Kingdom. As the conflict grew more bitter, bishops and archbishops were thrown into prison, the Archbishop of Posen for more than two years.

The struggle did not confine itself to Germany. It spread throughout various European countries. Fervent Catholics began to plot and plan in order to harm the State and its representatives. A Catholic youth who had been educated in a clerical school tried to assassinate Bismarck by firing upon him on the promenade at Kissingen, and he almost succeeded. The bullet grazed Bismarck’s hand as he lifted it to his forehead in the act of returning a salute.

The Government replied with even more severe measures. Numerous Catholic Members of Parliament were arrested and civil marriage was extended over the Empire.

The conflict did not end here. The Pope himself again entered the fray. Another encyclical was issued by Pius IX. It declared the detested laws void and their makers Godless, thus renewing the incitement to civil disobedience and civil war, and the struggle entered an even more acrid phase. The Catholic Hierarchy, the Catholic laity, and the Catholic politicians were bent on fostering this. The Catholic Church left nothing undone to secure her ends. The political instrument of the Vatican in Germany, the Centre Party, were given instructions, if instructions were needed, to show no mercy to the Government. Throughout the whole of this period, led by Windthorst, the Centre Party, numbering one-fourth of the Parliament, fought all Bismarck’s measures indiscriminately, no matter how far removed they were from religious interests.

But in 1878 Pius IX died. The new Pope was Leo XIII. Both he and Bismarck tried to reach some kind of compromise. Bismarck began to confer with Windthorst and with the Papal representative Jacobini, and the basis for an understanding was laid down. A new Minister, Schlozer, was transferred to the Vatican, and the Government used great discretion in administrating the Falk Laws. This rapprochement continued with such success that the Pope asked for Bismarck’s portrait; after which, Bismarck asked the Pope to act as mediator between Germany and Spain regarding the claims of the two nations to be the Caroline Islands. Further measures lessening the severe orders on both sides continued until Bismarck found himself relying on the German Catholic Party’s support for the main measures of his new financial and economic policy.

The worst of the struggle was over and a modus vivendi was established. It was in no way extraordinary that the State should abate its claims on the Church and decide to respect and even support some of the Church’s claims; or that the Vatican should develop a close friendship with the authoritarian Chancellor, as both hated and feared democratic and Liberal principles. Once the religious questions had been settled, they became intimate partners and fought, indiscriminately, the principles and ideas which they believed to be dangerous to religious absolutism in the Church and political absolutism in the State.

It is very significant that the Vatican, through the Centre Party, in more than one instance, first was hostile to some form of government, or statesman, and then became its ally. These changes, which may appear inconsistent, are quite the contrary; for however inconsistent the Vatican may be in its methods, it never loses sight of its ultimate goal which to further the interests of the Catholic Church; and this same procedure was followed several times in Germany as well as throughout Europe in subsequent years.

In the case of Bismarck’s Germany, when the Vatican at first was hostile to the idea that a Protestant Prussia should rule Catholic States and Catholic subjects, it was hostile because Bismarck, paradoxically, wanted to bring about Liberal reforms. Although, to our modern conception, these reforms were not sensational, they were then―and, in their present form, are still―anathema to the Catholic Church.

Bismarck was no lover of democracy, even when he sponsored Liberal reforms; he was no lover of democracy when he fought the Vatican; nor was he when it became his friend―quite the contrary. And the Vatican realized this; which explains why it ultimately became his close friend. Once the Church had been reassured that her interests would be respected and her cause maintained in resisting the dangerous ideals of Secularism, Liberalism, and, above all, Socialism, her course was clear. She knew that, besides gaining important advantages through the strong, authoritarian will of Bismarck, in him she had a bulwark on which she could rely.

The Vatican always has had, and still has, a predilection for strong men. When it felt that it could not rely on Bismarck, the Kaiser, and finally Hitler, it gave them its support. In the Centre Party and the German Hierarchy it had two strong instruments to achieve its political ends; and it is enlightening to go through the vicissitudes of the German Catholic Party. From the beginning its membership was very mixed. It included workers and employers, rich landowners and peasants, aristocrats and scholars, officials and artisans. Unlike the Austrian Catholic Party, progressive and reactionary elements were represented in the ranks of the German Party, and its fundamental characteristic was the its basis was not political but religious. Owing to its peculiar nature, the Centre Party did not confine itself to domestic problems, and after its creation it gave a typical instance of this.

In 1870 the troops of the United Italy occupied Rome and abolished the Papal States. Immediately the Catholic Centre demanded that Bismarck should intervene in favor of the Pope. Bismarck answered that “the days of interference in the lives of other peoples are at an end.” The Centre Party went farther, and asked for German military intervention in Italy. It spoke of a “Crusade across the Alps.” Bismarck lodged a protest with the Vatican, knowing well from where the Party drew its inspiration. The reply given was the Vatican was unable to cast any reproach upon the Centre Party.

During the ten years of struggle against Bismarck the Party greatly increased its membership, and when, finally, an understanding between the Vatican and the Government was reached, in the beginning of the nineties, the Catholic Centre Party capitulated to the Hohenzollern’s Reich and accepted its protective domination. That was the beginning of a path which, had it not been followed by the Catholic Party, would perhaps have changed the history of Germany. In view of the historical composition and prevailing conditions in Germany then, a Catholic Party might “have become a reservoir of real and important opposition… the opposition of West and South Germany to the military State under Prussian hegemony, ” as a famous German author rightly says.

How did the capitulation come about? Was it a mere error, or was it a calculated policy?

Although the main supporters of the Catholic Party were the masses of peasants and Catholic workers, up to the middle of the First World War its autocratic leadership was in complete control of Conservative aristocrats and the upper grades of the Catholic Hierarchy. It was this leadership which, having common interests and fearing the same enemies as those which were feared by the non-Catholic Conservatives and aristocrats of Germany, brought the Party into an alliance with the Imperial Reich. It was the joint hostility of Prussian militarism and of Catholicism toward certain social, political, and economic formulas which ultimately made close allies of these two deadly enemies. These formulas were embodied in the doctrines and principles of Liberalism, in the economic, social, and political spheres. The Catholic Party began a most violent campaign against what it described as “The anti-Christian, Jewish, Liberal Capitalism, ” thriving on continuous invectives, like those which had become so familiar during the Nazi regime… the “Godless Manchester School! ” the “Jewish Usury Capital! ” the “Liberal Money Moloch! ” etc.

If the anathemas launched against the Liberal principles and the Liberal State by the various Popes are recalled, it is not difficult to understand the hostility of Catholicism to Liberalism and its resultant alliance with reactionary Prussian militarism. It was a natural consequence of the condemnation of the Vatican against Liberalism in any form―a consequence which, from religious and moral grounds, had been translated into social-political issues. Less clear, perhaps, might seem the reason which induced Catholicism to be so markedly anti-Semitic. This peculiar anti- Semitism was almost the only common characteristic of both the German and Austrian political Catholicism. This anti-Semitic spirit and phraseology were carefully nurtured by both German and Austrian Catholicism in order to counter-blast the principal political enemy―namely, the Socialist movements.

The Socialist movements were preaching economic, social, and political democracy.

They were inviting men into their ranks, irrespective of their religion, race, or color. The Popes, and the whole spirit which animates the Catholic Church, were fundamentally hostile to democratic ideas, Socialism, and equality, whether educational, economic, or social; in fact, they were against any reforms backed by new political ideas or methods. They fostered in the minds of the Catholic Church members a contempt and hatred for the democratic spirit, and a desire for, and attachment to, Authoritarianism; this attitude their members carried with them into the Catholic Party. With the passing years their teaching penetrated deeply, and thus imperceptibly prepared the masses, ideologically, to accept the idea of dictatorship. That is what happened with the German Centre Party.

There was also another cause for the political behavior of the Centre Party, one which influenced them greatly and helped to develop their increased activity. This arose from the rivalry and consequent hostility shown by the Catholic Church against the Orthodox Church, especially the Russian (see Chapter 17, Russia and the Vatican)―another automatic result. As this religious hostility was instilled into all Catholics, including the Germans, when it was translated into political issues it developed into active political hostility against Orthodoxy, which, to Germans, was represented by Russia; and the attitude thus created was in complete harmony with the expansionist policy of the Kaiser―an additional bond between Catholicism and German imperialism. This was carried to such an extent that, during the Russo- Turkish War, the most Catholic Windthorst declared, among other things of a like nature, that in the last resort it was a question of “whether the Slav or German element should dominate the world.” The hostility against the Slav and Orthodox Russia shown by the Catholic Party reached such a degree that it brought a rebuke from Bishop von Ketteler “for its excessive Germanic self-confidence.”

This was the ideology which prompted the Party to call its official organ Germania―a paper which, later, was bought by a chamberlain of the Pope, von Papen.

When Communism, an even greater and more determined enemy of the Catholic Church, and of the economic and social systems she supported, came into power in Russia, the Church’s hostility grew a hundredfold in the ideology as well as in the active political field. The Centre Party seldom took any important step without first consulting the Papal Nuncio, for many years Cardinal Pacelli, who supported any policy or any man who would oppose and fight Soviet Russia. In view of this it is in no way astonishing that the Catholic Party accepted with such alacrity and satisfaction the “Crusade against Bolshevism” preached in Rome by the Pope, and in Berlin by Hitler.

During the quarter of a century which led to the outbreak of the First World War the Catholic Party, with the exception of a short period of conflict with Prince Buelow, was the strongest group in the German Reichstag; and was the most important single ally of all the German Reich Chancellors from Hohenlohe to Bethmann-Hollweg, and also one of the chief supporters of German imperialism. That support was well expressed by the first leader of the Party, Windthorst, when dealing with that great question of German politics regarding the attitude to be adopted toward the German Army. He declared in the Reichstag: “I recognize that the Army is the most important institution in our country, and that without it the pillars of society would collapse.”

Windthorst was succeeded by Ernst Lieber, who followed in the steps of his predecessor. He was an enthusiastic supporter of German colonial aspirations and a great advocate of the Kaiser’s Big Navy Policy; so much so, that von Tirpitz thanked him in his Memoirs. Lieber was a constant influential sponsor of the catastrophic policy pursued by the Kaiser, and advocated a bigger Army, a bigger Navy, expansionist policy abroad and dear bread at home. This policy would not have been possible without the wholehearted cooperation of the Centre Party which he led. During the First World War they stood firm in a united front of all German political parties who were in favor of war. According to B. Menne, the Centre Party was one of the most vociferous supporters of a “Greater Germany, ” and they staunchly advocated the rather unChristian demand for a “ruthless prosecution of the war.” They were also an important prop of the dictatorship established by the generals.

The Centre Party supported the most unreasonable demands of the German imperialism, such as annexations in the East as well as in the West. Its leader, at this period Peter Spahn, defined the views of the Party on what would be the “New Order in Europe” after the Kaiser victory. Addressing the Reichstag in the spring of 1916, he said: “Peace aims must be power aims. We must change Germany’s frontiers according to our own judgment… Belgium must remain in German hands politically, militarily, and economically.” The Party went even farther and were in the forefront of the most fanatical German imperialists. The Catholic paper, Hochland, demanded the annexation of Belfort…”with old frontiers of Lorraine and Burgundy, ” and finally the Channel coasts.

This was not all. When, in 1915, von Tirpitz demanded that all merchant vessels entering the war zones should be sunk without warning by German submarines, the Catholic Party supported this most enthusiastically and declared themselves for unrestricted submarine warfare, which was sponsored by generals, industrialists, Pan-Germans, etc. Hertling, the Bavarian Prime Minister and one of the leaders of the Catholic Party, was an intimate friend of von Tirpitz. Still more noteworthy, the campaign was sponsored by the Catholic Hierarchy itself. Proof of this is to be found in the actions of the Cardinal of Munich, Bettinger, who mobilized the rural clergy in favor of unrestricted submarine warfare. This went so far that the Cardinal himself went to the villages agitating among the Catholic Bavarian peasantry. In reply to many protests the Cardinal made the statement that “it would be an irresponsible crime on Germany’s part if she failed to wage unrestricted submarine warfare.” The German Catholic episcopate echoed these words and followed the campaign, speaking for the leading Catholic dignitaries on the question of unrestricted submarine warfare and the violation of Belgian neutrality. Sufficient to quote Michael Faulhaber, later Cardinal Archbishop of Munich, and then a prominent Army chaplain. He made the characteristic remark: “In my opinion this campaign will go down in history of military ethics as the perfect example of a just war.”

Finally, the Reichstag group of the Centre Party took a really sensational step (October 16, 1916). In a carefully drafted document it told the Reich Chancellor that, although he was formally responsible for Germany’s war policy, he must obey the orders of the Supreme Command; and that whatever the decree issued by them, the Reichstag was prepared to support it. The significance of this declaration “extended far beyond the immediate dispute concerning unrestricted submarine warfare; it was, in fact, the first formal recognition of the dictatorship of the German Army leaders, not only in the military, but also in political affairs, and the subordination of the Reich’s Government and the Reichstag to that dictatorship.” (B. Menne, The Case of Dr. Bruening.)

The date of the declaration is also significant. There was no longer a weak- willed man like von Moltke the younger at the head of the Supreme Command, but, from August 1916 onwards, General Ludendorff.

“He was the first of the modern dictators, and in the name of the Grand General Staff he was determined to rule supreme in Germany, and it was not long before he succeeded.

The charge that the party of Political Catholicism was the first in Germany to pronounce the solemn capitulation of Germany to the dictatorship of General Ludendorff may sound improbable, and even malicious, but it is nevertheless, as we have just seen, an historical fact.” (B. Menne, The Case of Dr. Bruening.)

In the third year of the war the Catholic Party was led by a trinity of groups characteristic of all Catholic parties, and formed of Catholic aristocrats, high State officials, and leading Church dignitaries. They were mostly nationalist and reactionary, and created discontent among the Catholic peasants and workers. This was caused especially by the way they administered the so- called “civil truce, ” and the refusal to introduce a general and equal franchise in Prussia.

An opposition was formed gradually by the Catholic trade unions of the Rhineland, whose mouthpiece was Erzberger. Before and during the First World War he had played a doubtful political part as one of the directors of the Catholic industrialist Thyseen; at the Reichstag; and when he called for the annexation of the French iron-deposit of Briey. He was on very good terms with von Tirpitz, and, as leader of German propaganda, helped General Ludendorff to power.

In 1917 Erzberger cut himself away from all this. He received certain information which convinced him that Germany had no chance of winning the war. General Hoffman, the Commander of the German armies in the East, and Count Czernin, Austrian Foreign Minister, told him that Germany was in a hopeless situation.

But the main impulse came from the Vatican itself. Pope Benedict XV saw, with anxiety, that the position of the Central Powers was rapidly deteriorating. There is no reason to believe that he desired their victory; but at least it is clear that he was anxious to prevent their defeat. Austria was the one great Catholic Power left in the world, and the position of the Catholics in Germany was one of which great hopes were justified. In the circumstances it is understandable that the Pope sought a solution not unfavorable to the two countries, and to this end he set himself to spin the first thread of mediation between London and Berlin. The preliminary requirement was a declaration from Germany concerning her aims in the West. This was where Erzberger’s task began.

The Pope sent one of his young diplomatic priests, a very capable young man, named Eugenio Pacelli (afterwards Papal Nuncio and Pope Pius XII), to Munich to establish relations with the coming man in German political Catholic circles, Erzberger. Shocked at the revelation made to him of Germany’s unfavorable position, Erzberger gladly supported the action of the Pope. A speech delivered by him on July 6, 1917, made a deep impression on the Reichstag and had a very sobering effect generally. That was only the beginning, and Erzberger worked tirelessly to provide the Pope with the declaration he needed as a preliminary to his intervention. It was, in fact, largely thanks to Erzberger that on July 19, 1917, a majority of the Reichstag, consisting of Catholics, Socialists, and Liberals, adopted a resolution in favor of “peace without annexations and indemnities.” Even the Kaiser was satisfied with the adoption of such a useful formula, although he did make one little reservation: the renunciation of a decision by force of arms was not to apply to Germany.

The situation was quickly reversed when Russia collapsed, in September 1917. Germany forgot the Peace Resolution, the Socialist and Catholic guarantee formula against a complete defeat, and German generals dictated the peace treaties of Brest-Litovsk and Bucharest.

But when, in November 1918, Germany collapsed, Erzberger, the initiator of the famous Peace Resolution, was chosen as the man to negotiate the Armistice, Field-Marshal von Hindenburg asked Erzberger to accept the heavy task.”With tears in his eyes, and clasping Erzberger’s hands between his own, Hindenburg besought him to undertake the terrible task for the sacred cause of his country.”

This scene was repeated exactly ten years later, when the Field-Marshal, once again “deeply moved and in tears, ” held the hands of another leader of the German Catholic Party.

Erzberger, as Chairman of the German Armistice Commission, signed the Armistice.

Apart from having become a convinced democrat, after the war Erzberger became convinced that the militarists were the chief enemies of a peaceful, progressive Germany. However, that did not mean that the Catholic Party had changed. With the exception of Erzberger and his followers, the Party, as a whole, was still wholeheartedly on the side of the past Empire. Only two days after the collapse of Germany the Catholic Party in Cologne passed a resolution in favor of the retention of the Monarchy. Later, the leader of the Party protested publicly against the overthrow of the Kaiser, and in this he was supported especially by the young generation of Catholic officers in the Army.

The Catholic Church, besides its nationalism, was the chief instigator of this feeling and fostered the demands for the return of the Kaiser. Within the Catholic Party, and among the Catholics throughout Germany, the whole question was put very clearly by one of her principal German hierarchical pillars, Cardinal Faulhaber. Addressing the Munich Catholic Congress, he declared: “The revolution was perjury and high treason, and will go down in history branded for ever with the mark of Cain.”

“The mark of Cain” was but a Biblical expression for what in more direct words the Nationalists called “the stab in the back.” At the same time, and at the same place, Munich, Hitler was preaching the same thing!

Although the Catholic Party damned the Revolution and hated the Reds, nevertheless, it took its part in the Republican Government. As a Catholic, put it, “taking its stand on the basis of the given facts.” That did not mean there was a change of heart in the Party. It merely meant that it had to adapt itself to a new situation in order to attain the same ends. When dealing with Catholic parties, one must remember that they are but the instruments with which the Catholic Church aims at reaching certain religious moral goals; thus political Catholicism, even if not changing an iota of its programme, can adapt itself to new situations by very easily making tactical moves which would be very difficult to other parties whose principles are only political or social, and which, to them, would be a matter of deeper principle.

Under the Kaiser, the Centre Party was a staunch monarchic and imperialistic party. Under the Weimer Republic it appeared as though it had become republican and democratic. What had actually happened was that it had adapted itself to the new circumstances in order the better to pursue its way toward its goals; and it remained what it had always been―namely, a Catholic Party.

This is not a question of mere opinion; the facts speak for themselves. The Centre Party changed its tactics, even made alliances, though always provisional, with the hated Reds and Left-wing parties, but it never changed its determined course. If we compare the various moves of the Centre Party during the first ten years of the Republic, from 1919 to 1929, it will be seen that a move to the Left, which in turn was followed again by a move to the Right. One step forward, two steps back, was in fact their policy throughout the existence of the Republic. At one time the development of a Left wing had seemed possible, chiefly owing to the effects of defeat in the last war; but the probating of the democratic ideas among Catholic workers, even among middle-class citizens, including journalists, professors, etc., proved to be but a temporary outburst. This was confirmed when the leader of the Catholic democratic wing of the Centre Party, Erzberger, was assassinated in the autumn of 1921 by two members of the secret military organization who were harbored by Catholic Bavaria. After Erzberger’s assassination, the tendency to follow his policy grew weaker, until finally it disappeared.

When Erzberger was assassinated, Dr. Marx, a Conservative Prussian Judge and President of the Legal Senate, was the official leader of the Centre Party. His policy was to maintain the equilibrium between Right and Left. It is well to note that from 1924, the Centre Party suddenly rejected the “Weimar Coalition, ” which was a coalition of Catholics, Left-wing Liberals, and Social Democrats. This the Catholic Party did in order to enter into a coalition with the German National Party. A Government under such a combination was formed, the Chancellorship being assigned to the Catholic Dr. Marx. This meant that the Catholic Party, in spite of its great support from the Catholic working class, went over completely to the heavy industrialists, the Junkers, the super-nationalists, and the militant elements which guided Germany into the Second World War.

Once again this sudden change must be attributed to the spirit and the moral doctrines of the Catholic Church as a religious authority.

The chief cause of Dr. Marx’s change of policy and altered tactics was due to what were called the School Laws. The Weimar Constitution had not made clear what type of school should predominate in the Republic. The dispute was centered on the issue whether the Church, be it Protestant or Catholic, should have the main say in educational matters, or whether the State, disregarding the Church, should give a Secular-Liberal education.

In pursuance of their aims the German Catholics, beginning with the German Hierarchy, advocated that the schools should be supervised by the clergy, and that the “confessional school” should be adopted; this, to the detriment of the secular schools. The German episcopate in particular was very militant in its demands―a militancy which was increased by the encouragement given it by Cardinal Pacelli, the Papal Nuncio, who had been in Berlin since 1920.

The desire of the Catholic Church to have Catholic schools, in order to educate German Catholics, was natural, and it would not have become a great national political issue if it had confined itself to the religious sphere. But it did not do this. The religious issues were transformed into political issues, and vice versa. The Vatican, seeing that it could not obtain its aims by mobilizing its hierarchical machinery, put pressure on its political instrument, the Catholic Party. The Party took up the cause of the Catholic Church and approached the German National party, who were very accommodating on the school problem. Meanwhile, the heavy hand of the Vatican pressed on the social internal policy of the Centre Party. The result of this was that the Party leadership began to stifle the political social opposition of the Left wing of the Party itself. They attempted to weaken it and to rally the Left wing elements to the support of the reactionary policy of the Centre by appealing to their religious principles and to the fundamental principles of the Church on this educational problem.

In this way the alliance between the Catholic Party and the potential totalitarian German National Party was concluded. This coalition between Catholic and Nationalist was a pact of mutual guarantees. The Nationalists promised school laws which would have introduced confessional schools under the supervision of the churches; and the Catholics promised to support industrial subsidies, post-war import duties, and to vote, significantly enough, in favor of cutting down social expenditure. Twice an agreement on these lines was concluded, but in both cases the agreement broke down. The first School Bill of 1925 did not come before the Reichstag at all, and that of 1927 caused a most violent dispute within the coalition itself. The Party of Stresemann, in the end, caused it to be rejected. Both disputants wanted to have complete control of the education and formation of youth. It was the same dispute which, later, broke out between Hitler and the Catholic Church.

The School Bill was the cause of the breakdown of the coalition, which finally occurred in the spring of 1928. In May, there were elections which resulted in a sensational swing to the Left―actually the biggest since 1918. The result was that in the Reichstag the Social Democratic Party had the strongest parliamentary groups in the House.

Besides this swing-over of the German masses to the Social Democrats, another shock to the Catholic Church was that the Catholic Party was among those who lost adherents. But a greater shock was to come. Other parties, especially the Social Democrats, had broken into the Catholic electorate, taking with them numerous votes. This was a thing which the Catholic Church and the Centre Party had thought would never happen; previously, it never had happened. The discovery greatly alarmed the Vatican authorities as well as the leader of the German Catholic Party. In the Vatican the decision about the Centre Party, which had been hesitatingly postponed, began to take shape; and the Centre Party, hoping to regain its lost ground, left the Nationalists and returned penitently to the coalition with the Social Democrats. The Social Democrat, Hermann Mueller, became Reich Chancellor.

That was in 1928. Anyone would have prophesied that Germany was going to have a Socialist rule at last, and so embark on cooperation with the other European nations. But the promise of this was not borne out. In 1929, in spite of all appearances, three men were in the key commands of the strategic position of the German Republic. The combination, HindenburgGroener- Schleicher, was working behind the scenes with the intention of liquidating the Republic. It is interesting to remember that they were the last Army Command of the Kaiser at the time of the Armistice negotiated in 1918. They began to intrigue in the military and, above all, in the political field, meaning to do away with the “irksome intermediate Reich, ” as they looked upon the German Republic, and this was only a preliminary to other important moves.

In 1929 Hindenburg, pressed by his friends, began a more active reactionary policy in the Reich. As soon as the negotiations which were then being conducted were concluded, his first move was to dismiss the Social Democratic Chancellor, Mueller, and his Foreign Minister Stresemann. The General was already planning to abolish the principle that the Reich Chancellor must have the support of Parliament. A man should be put in his place who would have the “confidence of the Army.” It was agreed that such a man should rule through Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution, which gave dictatorial powers; and if Parliament protested it, it would be dissolved.

The conspirators discussed which party offered possibilities for their support toward the final liquidation of the Republic; and which man would be suitable for the preliminary steps to the creation of a dictatorship that would eventually prepare the path for the real one. The Centre Party was the choice; and one of its leaders, the devout Catholic Dr. Bruening, was the candidate who should rule, not with the consent of the Parliament, but by grace of the Reichwehr. The Chancellorship was offered to Dr. Bruening under the condition that, if he accepted with those aims in view, he should rule by means of Article 48, and on the instructions of the Reichswehr.