Search & Research, Lectures and Papers 27: “May Your Holiness Act in the Interest of Protecting those who Remain Morally Thinking People” - Vatican Responses to Antisemitism, 1933

The first of April, 1933, marked the initiation of state-sponsored, centrally-directed Nazi persecution of the Jewish population following the seizure of power by the National Socialists. How did the Catholics respond? Vatican Secret Archive materials were opened to researchers in Rome in 2003 and in 2006. Based on the records of the Vatican nunciature in Munich and Berlin during the tenure of Pope Pius XI (1922–1939), this publication offers a glimpse of the pressures faced by the German episcopate and, in turn, the Holy See in Rome as growing numbers of German Catholics hoped to find a way to be both good Nazis and good Catholics.