Was Hitler Justified To Break The Concordat Essay

On January 30th 1933, Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany. It was in this position that he transformed Germany into the Third Reich, in which the country was treated as an empire and was governed by the Nazi regime. On July 20th 1933, the Vatican – consisting of the head of the Catholic Church, Pope Pius XI, and his papal court- along with Cardinel Pacelli and the German bishops, signed the Reichskonkordat with Hitler. The Reichskonkordat was a treaty between the Vatican and the Third Reich that focused on Catholicism under the Nazi party’s rule. By signing this concordat, the holy symbols of the Catholic Church, and the Godliness that abounded from these symbols, were replaced with symbols of the Reich. Despite the fact that the concordat ensured the freedom of belief and public worship to the Catholic faith; the continued state support of Catholic schools and the exclusion of members of the faith from the war, the concordat did not abide by all of the ten commandments of Catholicism. It is therefore evident that despite the advantages the concordat gave the church, the Vatican was not justified in signing the Reichskonkordat as it broke the Ten Commandments by allowing the Godliness of the church to …show more content…
The possibility of this, “virtual elimination of the Catholic church in the Reich” [Source C], was due to the fact that many Catholics did not fully support Hitler and his ideals, and so the Church, and those within it, risked arrest and life in a concentration camp. As head of an institutional church, Pope Pius XI was responsible for the protection of the Catholic Church and the then 20 million German members. The need to protect the Catholic people from persecution was one of the main factors that caused Pope Pius XI, Cardinal Pacelli and the German bishops to sign the Reichskonkordat in