Examples of this dominance are the concordats, or agreements, that the Vatican signed with Nazi and Fascist rulers in this 20th century.

Germany’s Catholic bishops had opposed the Nazi philosophy prior to 1933. But as German author Klaus Scholder states in his book The Churches and the Third Reich, the bishops were commanded by the Vatican’s ambassador to Germany, Cardinal Pacelli, to revise their attitude toward National Socialism. What prompted this change? It was the prospect of the concordat between the Third Reich and the Vatican, which was concluded July 20, 1933.

Klaus Scholder reports: “At the election and plebiscite of 12 November [1933] Hitler reaped the fruits of the Reich concordat by surprisingly high ‘yes’ votes, above all in predominantly Catholic circles of the electorate.”