section_path: Industrial age/Dictatorships/Austria and Nazi Germany
section_name: Austria and Nazi Germany
paragraph_text: Austria and Nazi Germany
  
  The Vatican supported the right-wing Christian Socialists in Austria, a country with a majority Catholic population but a powerful secular element. Pope Pius XI favored the regime of Engelbert Dollfuss (1932–34), who wanted to remold society based on papal encyclicals. Dollfuss suppressed the anti-clerical elements and the socialists, but was assassinated by the Austrian Nazis in 1934. His successor Kurt von Schuschnigg (1934–38) was also pro-Catholic and received Vatican support. Germany annexed Austria in 1938 and imposed its own policies.
  
  Pius XI was prepared to negotiate concordats with any country that was willing to do so, thinking that written treaties were the best way to protect the Church's rights against governments increasingly inclined to interfere in such matters. Twelve concordats were signed during his reign with various types of governments, including some German state governments. When Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933 and asked for a concordat, Pius XI accepted. The Concordat of 1933 included guarantees of liberty for the Church in Nazi Germany, independence for Catholic organisations and youth groups, and religious teaching in schools.
  
  Nazi ideology was spearheaded by Heinrich Himmler and the SS. In the struggle for total control over German minds and bodies, the SS developed an anti-religious agenda. No Catholic or Protestant chaplains were allowed in its units (although they were allowed in the regular army). Himmler established a special unit to identify and eliminate Catholic influences. The SS decided the German Catholic Church was a serious threat to its hegemony and while it was too strong to be abolished it was partly stripped of its influence, for example by closing its youth clubs and publications.
  
  After repeated violations of the Concordat, Pope Pius XI issued the 1937 encyclical Mit brennender Sorge which publicly condemned the Nazis' persecution of the Church and their ideology of neopaganism and racial superiority.