Le illusioni di Pio XI di fronte alla rivoluzione nazista (1933-1934)
abstract
The attitude of Pius XI to the shaping of the National Socialist Totalitarianism between 1933 and 1934 was, in a certain way, the continuation of the policy adopted towards the Weimar Republic. The relationship maintained by the Holy See with the latter can be explained as an attempt to rebuild a Christian Reich that had to be very similar to the one established in the Medieval Christianity. This was surely one of the aims of the Reichskonkordat that became a special mean to achieve this purpose. However, it was in the summer of 1934, after the episode of the Night of the Long Knives (30th June) and the dead of the last President of Weimar Republic, von Hindenburg (2nd August), that the Pope began to understand the impracticality of the Christian restoration in the Third Reich.
Keywords: Concordat • Consalvism • Third Reich