• The Infamous Harlot—Her Destruction
    The Watchtower—1989 | April 15

    • Hitler sent a delegation headed by von Papen to Rome to negotiate a concordat between the Nazi State and the Vatican. Pope Pius XI remarked to the German envoys how pleased he was that “the German Government now had at its head a man uncompromisingly opposed to Communism,” and on July 20, 1933, at an elaborate ceremony in the Vatican, Cardinal Pacelli (who was soon to become Pope Pius XII) signed the concordat.a

       3. (a) What did a historian write about the Concordat between the Nazi State and the Vatican? (b) During the celebrations at the Vatican, what honor was conferred on Franz von Papen? (c) What role did Franz von Papen play in the Nazi takeover of Austria?

      3 One historian writes: “The Concordat [with the Vatican] was a great victory for Hitler. It gave him the first moral support he had received from the outer world, and this from the most exalted source.”

  • The Infamous Harlot—Her Destruction
    The Watchtower—1989 | April 15

    • a For obvious reasons, two clauses of the Concordat were kept secret at the time, these dealing with a common front against the Soviet Union and the duties of Catholic priests conscripted in Hitler’s army. Such conscription was a violation of the Treaty of Versailles (1919) to which Germany was still bound; public knowledge of this clause could have disturbed other Versailles signatories.