Our year 2023 is full of big anniversaries on both sides of the Atlantic – some get toasted, some get skipped. There are centennials like Henry Kissinger’s birthday, which gets toasted, at least by Henry Kissinger and fans of Realpolitik. Adolf Hitler’s botched beer hall putsch in Munich turns 100, which would get celebrated had it made toast of Hitler. The putsch happened towards the end of 1923 when young Kissinger, growing up not far from Munich, was just learning how to speak with a German accent.
And then there are this year’s 90th anniversaries. Among them is the New Deal and FDR’s whirlwind of progressive legislation in 1933. You’d think that earlier this year, at least a few clients of Silicon Valley Bank had reasons to uncork a bottle of California chardonnay and toast the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s 90th birthday.
It’s safe to assume that no Rieslings will be uncorked in Germany, at least not publicly, to toast political deals that turn 90 this year. This has a simple reason. In January 1933 the putschist from 10 years earlier was appointed chancellor and all deals after that bore his signature. In a breathtakingly short period of time, Hitler transformed his Nazi minority government into a full-blown personal dictatorship: not by having his Brownshirts stage another insurrection but by charming organized religion. It was the Catholic Centre Party that in March 1933 provided the biggest chunk of non-Nazi votes when the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act that gave Hitler unrestrained power.
That was shocking and unexpected. Protestants – not Catholics – were known to be hyper-patriotic Prussians and obedient subjects to autocrats like the former emperor. The Kaiser was also their head of church until he fled the country and made room for democracy and the Weimar Republic in 1918. Many Protestants were glad to see another strongman back in charge who would renew the alliance between altar and throne, even if the throne had a big swastika on it this time. For German Catholics the go-to strongman and protector was in Rome, not Berlin.
Yet, Pope Pius XI was just as much into Realpolitik as Henry Kissinger would be some 40 years later. In his dealings with dictatorial governments, he acted more like a shrewd politician than a good shepherd, true to his own encyclical fittingly issued in 1933:
“Universally known is the fact that the Catholic Church is never bound to one form of government more than to another…She does not find any difficulty in adapting herself to various civil institutions, be they monarchic or republican, aristocratic or democratic.”
He could have added “fascist” to that list. In 1929, the pope was able to regain territorial sovereignty over Vatican City by signing a concordat with the Italian state, which acknowledged Benito Mussolini’s government and gave the fascist movement a big reputational boost.
Unlike Mussolini, Hitler didn’t have real estate to give away, but just like Mussolini he was staunchly anti-communist, a sentiment Pius XI shared with both dictators. Beyond his anti-Marxist and pro-business credentials, Hitler had more things to offer that were of interest to Pius XI. Not surprisingly, money was one of them – German taxpayers’ money. The Catholic Church in Germany was promised generous state funding as long as it would not oppose Nazi politics and have its bishops swear a loyalty oath to the Reich. Even before the Reichskonkordat was signed, the pope let it be known that he had changed his mind about Hitler and thought he’d make a great ally in the fight against the godless Bolsheviks. The shepherd in Rome was willing to throw his German sheep, most of which were not big fans of Hitler, under the bus. That included the parliamentarians of the Catholic Centre Party who were told to vote in favor of the Enabling Act and Hitler’s totalitarian power grab.
The Reichskonkordat was the first agreement that gave international recognition to the Nazi regime. That it came from a moral authority like the Holy See changed Hitler’s image in the eyes of many from screaming gang leader to respectable statesman.
If you rummage through the dustbin of history where all the other Nazi legislation has gone, you won’t find the Reichskonkordat. The simple reason: it hasn’t been trashed yet. In fact, it’s still the law of the land. In Germany newly appointed bishops to this day swear loyalty to state and government (no longer to the Third Reich, luckily) and promise that their priests will be loyal too. In return, state governments make sure that every parishioner pays their mandatory dues to the church, which in 2022 added just shy of 7 billion euros to the bishops’ coffers. This cozy fiscal relationship with the state is one of the reasons why Rome has no problem keeping the concordat alive. Known for ruthless efficiency, the Nazis in 1934 streamlined the process, put a “religion” box on Third Reich W2s and had employers directly withhold church tax from every employee. Payroll deduction is still how it’s done today. As the religious landscape has become more diverse, non-Christian faith communities too are happily contracting with Germany’s version of the IRS to have their membership fees collected. That this service is being used by many Jewish congregations in today’s federal republic is a belated and well-deserved slap in the face of its brown-shirted inventors.
Henning Schroeder is a professor at the University of Minnesota and currently teaches in the Department of German, Nordic, Slavic & Dutch. His email address is schro601@umn.edu and his Twitter handle is @HenningSchroed1.
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