page_title: Catholic Church and Nazi Germany during World War II
section_title: Eastern Europe
hierarchical_section_title: Catholic Church and Nazi Germany during World War II / Catholic Church in the Nazi Empire / Eastern Europe
caption_attribution_description: Cardinal Adam Stefan Sapieha (1897-1951)Русский: Кардинал-священник Адам Стефан Сапега с титулом церкви Санта-Франческа-Романа.
context_page_description: Several Catholic countries and populations fell under Nazi domination during the period of the Second World War, and ordinary Catholics fought on both sides of the conflict. Despite efforts to protect its rights within Germany under a 1933 Reichskonkordat treaty, the Church in Germany had faced persecution in the years since Adolf Hitler had seized power, and Pope Pius XI accused the Nazi government of sowing 'fundamental hostility to Christ and his Church'. Pius XII became Pope on the eve of war and lobbied world leaders to prevent the outbreak of conflict. His first encyclical, Summi Pontificatus, called the invasion of Poland an "hour of darkness". He affirmed the policy of Vatican neutrality, but maintained links to the German Resistance. Despite being the only world leader to publicly and specifically denounce Nazi crimes against Jews in his 1942 Christmas Address, controversy surrounding his apparent reluctance to speak frequently and in even more explicit terms about Nazi crimes continues. He used diplomacy to aid war victims, lobbied for peace, shared intelligence with the Allies, and employed Vatican Radio and other media to speak out against atrocities like race murders.
context_section_description: Poland
  Kerhsaw wrote that Hitler's scheme for the Germanization of Eastern Europe, "There would, he made clear, be no place in this utopia for the Christian Churches". The invasion of predominantly Catholic Poland by Nazi Germany in 1939 ignited the Second World War. The Nazi plan for Poland entailed the destruction of the Polish nation, which necessarily required attacking the Polish Church, particularly, in those areas annexed to Germany.
  In Nazi ideological terms, Poland was inhabited by a mixture of Slavs and Jews, both of which were classed as Untermenschen, or subhumans occupying German Lebensraum, living space. The Nazis instigated a policy of genocide against Poland's Jewish minority and murdering or suppressing the ethnic Polish elites. Historically, the church was a leading force in Polish nationalism against foreign domination, thus the Nazis targeted clergy, monks and nuns in their terror campaigns—both for their resistance activity and their cultural importance. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, 1811 Polish priests died in Nazi concentration camps. Special death squads of SS and police accompanied the invasion and arrested or executed those considered capable of resisting the occupation: including professionals, clergymen and government officials. The following summer, the A-B Aktion round up of several thousand Polish intelligentsia by the SS saw many priests shot in the General Government sector. In September 1939 Security Police Chief Heydrich and General Eduard Wagner agreed upon a "cleanup once and for all of Jews, intelligentsia, clergy, nobility". Of the brief period of military control from 1 September 1939 to 25 October 1939, Davies wrote: "according to one source, 714 mass executions were carried out, and 6,376 people, mainly Catholics, were shot. Others put the death toll in one town alone at 20,000. It was a taste of things to come."
  Poland was divided into two parts by the Nazis: the Reich directly annexed Polish territories along Germany's eastern border, while and second part came under the administration of the so-called Generalgouvernement (General Government)—a "police run mini-state" under SS control and the rule of Nazi lawyer Hans Frank, which, wrote Davies, "became the lawless laboratory of Nazi racial ideology" and in due course the base for the main Nazi concentration camps. Yet here, Nazi policy toward the Church was less severe than in the annexed regions. The annexed areas were all to be "Germanized", and the Polish Church within them was to be thoroughly eradicated—though German Catholics could remain or settle there. In the annexed regions, the Nazis set about systematically dismantling the Church—arresting its leaders, exiling its clergymen, closing its churches, monasteries and convents. Many clergymen were murdered. Eighty per cent of the Catholic clergy and five bishops of Warthegau were sent to concentration camps in 1939; 108 of them are regarded as blessed martyrs. In a report to Pius XII regarding the dire situation, the Primate of Poland, Cardinal Hlond wrote that "Hitlerism aims at the systematic and total destruction of the Catholic Church in the ... territories of Poland which have been incorporated into the Reich ...":
  Following the surrender of Warsaw and Hel Fortified Area, the Polish Underground and the Armia Krajowa (Home Army) resisted the Nazi occupation. The Home Army was conscious of the link between morale and religious practice and the Catholic religion was integral to much Polish resistance, particularly during the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. Adam Sapieha, Archbishop of Kraków became the de facto head of the Polish church following the invasion and openly criticised Nazi terror. A principal figure of the Polish Resistance, Sapieha opened a clandestine seminary in an act of cultural resistance. Among the seminarians was Karol Wojtyla, the future Pope John Paul II. Among the most revered Polish martyrs was the Franciscan, Saint Maximilian Kolbe, who died at Auschwitz-Birkenau, having offered his own life to save a fellow prisoner who had been condemned 
caption: Bishop Sapieha, 1942.
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