Cardinal Faulhaber meets with Hitler at Hitler’s retreat in the Bavarian Alps, on the slopes of the Obersalzberg mountain overlooking the town of Berchtesgaden - Nov. 4, 1936, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Source: Timeline
Nov. 4, 1936, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Cardinal Faulhaber meets with Hitler at Hitler’s retreat in the Bavarian Alps, on the slopes of the Obersalzberg mountain overlooking the town of Berchtesgaden.
English translation of Faulhaber’s report to Pacelli
Papen meets again with Hitler this day about Hudal’s book, with Bormann and Goebbels in attendance. Source: Goebbels’ Diary.
Nov. 4, 1936 Cardinal Faulhaber’s report to Cardinal Pacelli:
Dated: Nov. 4/5, 1936
Re: Strictly confidential report about the discussion with Herr Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler at the Obersalzburg on November 4, 1936, 11:00 to 14:00 hours.
The visit with the Führer was, in the final phase, prepared by Herr Apostolic Nuncio Orsenigo and Herr State Secretary Lammers, who, after the telephonic arrangements made the day before, and my three hour trip on the Reich Autobahn, was waiting for me at the foot of the Obersalzberg, and brought me in his car up the steep road to the Führer’s remote retreat. The discussion, for which only Herr Reich Minister Rudolf Hess was present as a third party, lasted three hours: For the first hour only the Führer spoke, frankly, confidentially, agreeably, sometimes temperamentally. For the second hour I could answer the Führer’s train of thought almost without interruption and bring up my own points; in the third hour there was an increasingly tense dialogue. The discussion closed with a half-hour luncheon in a niche of the dining room, with a view of the snow-covered Alps, which today, after a long period of rain, broke out in bright sunshine.
Herr Reich Chancellor began: Many of his statements would not meet with my agreement, but it must be said with complete openness how things are, and a resolution must be arrived at, “positive or negative.” The first theme was the foreign policy danger of Bolshevism. If the fall of Madrid does not succeed in giving the Reds in Catalonia a devastating blow (I must handle some aspects of this question confidentially), then each success of Bolshevism will bring further violent movements; first in France, where everything has been prepared by the policy of Léon Blum, then in Czechoslovakia, in Poland and other states. This is not pessimism. He has already often been a prophet. The Catholic Church may not deceive itself about this: If National Socialism does not become the lord over Bolshevism, then Christianity and the Church are finished in Europe. Bolshevism is just as much the mortal enemy of the Church as of Fascism. Unfortunately the Center Party committed the crime and tangled up everything. The Volk must have thought things were not so bad with Communism if the Center Party priests went along with it. He had good information about how the subhumans, egged on by Jews, are wreaking havoc like beasts in Spain ... [ellipsis by L. Volk] He will not let the historic hour pass by.
For the sake of summarizing, I am placing here the answer I later gave him to these basic thoughts: That does not come off to me as pessimism, Herr Reich Chancellor, that was all said in a deeply moving way, only without the details, in your great speech at the Party Congress in Nuremberg, in part openly, in part between the lines. Pope Pius XI, in his speech of February 1930 and this year in the speech to the Spanish refugees, identified Bolshevism as the mortal enemy of all Christian civilization, and the Fulda Bishops Conference expressed themselves likewise in their pastoral letter this year and in previous proclamations. While the Führer’s speech at Nuremberg set forth the general cultural and economic effects of Bolshevism with an impressive cadence of thoughts (it can only tear down, it is led by Jews, it destroys the economy of every people), the Holy Father’s speech, given on the same day, identified atheism, Godlessness, and hostility to God as the root and innermost essence of Bolshevism. It is a pity that the Pope’s speech and the proclamations of the Bishops were not allowed to be disseminated in German newspapers or in the form of brochures.
(footnotes by L. Volk, ed.: Pius XI’s referenced “speeches” were a letter of Feb. 2, 1930 to the Vicar General of Rome, AAS 22 (1930), pp. 89-93, and an address at Castel Gandolfo on Sept. 14, 1936, AAS 28 (1936), pp. 373-381.)
I was an auricular witness when Pope Pius XI, in an open Consistory in 1933, openly called the Reich Chancellor of the German Reich the first statesman who candidly and in line with Him, the Pope, had recognized the Bolshevik peril. (I was able to give specific citations, because I had naturally prepared on this point).
You can imagine, Herr Reich Chancellor, how painful it must have been for us Catholics to hear and read the untruths that are still being disseminated today in German newspapers and talks at schools: “The Pope is still standing in league with Moscow, he is even thinking of concluding a Concordat with Moscow, that is why he remained silent at first about the atrocities in Spain, and they are still hoping that Bolshevism will annihilate the Third Reich.” In my Pontifical address in 1936, I cited Osservatore Romano, that is, an official statement, to identify this fairy tale about a Concordat with Moscow being in the works as the “height of unscrupulous inventive artifice.” Nonetheless the Schwarze Korps [Blackshirt Corps: SS newspaper] recycled these lies with reference to a newspaper article in Prague entitled: “Herr Cardinal - who is lying.” I looked into the matter and established: The writer of the article in the Deutschen Presse [German Press] in Prague, with the pseudonym of Roland, was an emigrant and, as he himself declared, a fanatical opponent of National Socialism, who based on the Moscow-friendly mindset in Prague had expressed as a private view the opinion that hatred of religion is no longer so bad today as it was in the beginning, and the Schwarze Korps was prepared to throw up this falsification by an emigrant as against the official statement of the Vatican newspaper.
for myself, I confirm the fact that at the Catholic Congress in Salzburg in 1921 I spoke these words: “The peoples die with Bolshevism,” which is “the deepest mortal wound of our era.” On the same occasion I repulsed the frightful phrase: “Better Bolshevism than Catholicism.” In 1922 I identified the Marxist Revolution of 1918 and 1919 as “perjury and high treason,” and despite all threats did not take back these words. Shortly after that, there appeared the first posters of the early Nazis with the appeal “Against the November Criminals.” In February 1930 I gave a special sermon about the “Struggle of Bolshevism against God and all Religion.” All of this is not backdated to the years 1921, 1922, 1930; it can be read in my books. (For the first time here in this report I will add: Rufenden Stimmen, pp. 14-25, 378, 383, 470). Even if somewhere a priest in the west of the Reich or a priest in Bohemia or, as Herr Reich Chancellor says, priests in Catalonia, say conciliatory things about Bolshevism - there will always be some going off the tracks - I can assure you, Herr Reich Chancellor, that all the German Bishops and all officials in the Church are convinced that Bolshevism can only bring chaos and ruin to religious life, and that all of them are ready, with ecclesiastical means, without getting mixed up in politics, to fight against it.
The second theme of the Führer was National Socialism and the Church. In that the Führer spoke only of the Catholic Church. He said things have changed in the Church over time: the question whether the world was created in 6 days or 6 million years, whether the sun orbits around the earth, the invasion by the Huns, the Reformation, the French Revolution ... [ellipsis by L. Volk, ed.] So the Church must give up its struggle against our racial legislation, “which concerns absolutely scientific research.” These laws are still being preached against constantly from the pulpit. He has files on his desk about 380 (370?) complaints against clergy who have made hostile statements against the new State. The Center Party priests cannot get over the fact that Nazism has succeeded and has accomplished such a great deal. Christianity was inextricably bound to our Volk and western civilization by a thousand year history. Not everything can be called good of the what came to pass in these 1900 years, as in the history of the German Kaisers with the Popes, but Christianity thereby became a great power. If the Church now continues a hostile stance toward Nazism and carries on the struggle, then Nazism would have to finish things without the Church. They tell him: We can do what we want, the Church cannot be reconciled with, it struggled against us before our seizure of power and still does it today despite the danger that widespread elements will turn away from the Church. If the Church would only just give up the struggle out of tactical considerations! In comparison to the great goal that the Führer has gotten behind, to smash down Bolshevism and make the German Volk auspicious, everything else is really a small and laughable bagatelle.
My answer: Herr Reich Chancellor, I am shocked that you are talking of a “struggle” by the Church against Nazism and of an “irreconcilable” position of the Church. The German Bishops, from the time of your first speech to the Reichstag, in which you spoke of Concordat-peace with the Church, have withdrawn their previous warnings and declared themselves in a solemn joint declaration (I did not have the precise date in my mind) to be ready for peaceful cooperation with the New Reich, and time and again the German Bishops have warned their clergy to refrain from all political escapades and to keep their tongues under control even in private discussions. They keep bringing up the warnings of the Church before the seizure of power. The warnings from that time had to do with utterances and events that were incompatible with Church dogma and Christian moral teaching, and as to those the Bishops had a duty to speak. But I can confirm that according to an official survey in Bavaria, not one single person was denied a Church burial in those years for reason of being a National Socialist. Herr Reich Chancellor spoke of the “eternal changes” in the Church. The dogmas of the Church have not changed. Herr Reich Chancellor spoke of a peace “out of tactical considerations.” For us there is nothing tactical in this question, but rather dogmatic moral considerations. You, as the sovereign of the German Reich, are for us the God-given authority, the rightful authority, to whom we owe, in conscience, respect and obedience. Herr Reich Chancellor has so clearly said that disrespect of governmental authority shakes up respect for all authority. I believe that the concept of authority is not emphasized in any other religious society as strongly as it is in the Catholic Church. Frankly, if your administrative authorities or laws violate dogma or the moral law, that is, violate our consciences, then we must be allowed to speak out as the responsible heralds of the moral law. We respect the great goals of your policy, but the disturbances of the peace between State and Church still do not involve just trivialities and bagatelles. Might I be allowed to point out three matters that are increasingly disturbing the peace, or, as you say, increasingly signifying struggle against the State:
1. The German Faith Movement of Stuttgart. The Führer waved that off with a forceful gesture: “The Party has nothing to do with that.”...
A second disturbance of the peace is the ways and means that the struggle about the schools is being waged: The denominational school is being sidelined by the use of pressure ...
A third disturbance of domestic political peace is the prohibition of double membership in the workers associations, the youth associations, and in most recent times also for the women teachers associations and even for the religious teaching orders...
Over and again Herr Reich Chancellor turned the discussion back with raised voice to the “Struggle of the Church against the racial laws of the Third Reich.” ... he stated: We want to protect the German Volk from such hereditarily disposed criminals as are wreaking havoc in Spain. “I perceive that to be the will of God.” The healthy want to have only a few children, and so should the sick have a heap of children? The operation is really simple and does not make people incapable of work and marriage, and now the Church is leaving us in the lurch...
As a sign of his readiness to “put the past behind” and make peace, the Führer twice raised the matter of the trials of the members of religious orders. “I have given instructions,” he said with emphasis, “that the news reports about these trials will be discontinued.”...
The Führer: “Without faith in God people cannot exist. The soldier who lies under artillery bombardment for 3 or 4 days needs a religious foothold. Godlessness is emptiness.” I responded: “The glorious acknowledgement of God that the Führer set forth on various occasions and precisely in solemn speeches, just this summer in the concluding speech at the Party Congress in Nuremberg and on the Bückeberg, avowals that one seeks in vain to find from the mouth of a Léon Blum, as in his spiritually vacuous answer to the Nuremberg speech, or from other statesmen, have certainly made a deep impression in the world. Exactly in this question of faith in God and religion, the Church can help the State and support souls based on primordial powers... The Führer with rising voice: The thousand-year Christian past cannot simply be erased from the history of the German Volk. He had separated himself from Ludendorff because his wife thought Nazism should found a new religion. “I have always and again told my Party leaders, I do not want to play the role of religious reformer. I do not want to do it and I will not do it.” For the same reason he had separated himself from Artur Dinter and von Reventlow.
In the middle of this the Führer began to speak about the Myth by Alfred Rosenberg. A faith in the hearts of the Volk cannot be overcome just by a myth. If he had only chosen a different title! It was only when the Bavarian Bishops Conference warned about the book and then finally the Church placed the book on the Index, that editions of the book began to multiply rapidly so that the book was selling in the hundreds of thousands. Even with that, there aren’t 10,000 people in Germany who understand this book. This opinion stands in contrast to the facts that even before the Church’s prohibition, Rosenberg’s Myth was made a foundation of the entire school curriculum and that, as Herr Bishop of Berlin already said to Herr Reich Chancellor, the Myth was already disseminated in huge numbers among the people before the condemnation via the Index.
In some connection or other, I don’t know any more exactly what, I remarked: An institution like the Catholic Church that has 1900 years of history behind it naturally has more time for human shortsightedness and weakness to come to the fore among its officials than an ideology that has only been around for a few years. In another connection I asked whether the priests who struggle against Bolshevism together with the State authorities are not also mixing in politics and thus should be considered to be violating the Concordat. Of that Herr Reich Chancellor may be certain. Even if he has 380 cases of irresponsible or misunderstood turns of phrase by priests in his files, the clergy as a whole know that if Bolshevism becomes lord over our people, Church life also, like all fields of life, would be thrown into complete chaos.
Toward the end of the third hour, Herr Reich Chancellor summed it all up: “Consider, Herr Cardinal, and talk with the other ‘Leaders of the Church,’ about the way in which you will support the great mission of Nazism to not let Bolshevism become lord, and how you want to come into a peaceful relationship with the State. Either Nazism and the Church will triumph together or they will both perish. I tell you: I will remove from the table all the little things that disturb peaceful cooperation, like the trials against the monks, or the German Faith Movement. I do not want to engage in any horse trading. You know that I am the enemy of compromises, but this will be a final effort.” The Bishops will thus have to make certain offers, be it in the form of a new pastoral letter or in the form of a new speech, before Bishop Hudal comes to be named court theologian of the Party. I did not say any word that could restrict the German Bishops in their freedom of decision.
During the exchange, the Führer conducted himself with an imposing confidence as he also does in his major speeches, among the ranks of statesmen, and that gives him the advantage that, as soon as an issue is brought up, he can be done with it in a word: “That is really just a triviality.” Even to the Party leaders he is always saying: “Just stick to the major objectives and do not work for the present day, but for the future.” The Führer has command of the diplomatic and social forms more like a born sovereign has command of them. He does not let matters take their course as governments did in the time of parliamentary debating; he stands up to them. He develops his thoughts emotionally and yet noticeably with self-control. At the same time he can become totally solemn and almost soft, as in these words: “The individual is nothing. The individual will die. Cardinal Faulhaber will die, Alfred Rosenberg will die, Adolf Hitler will die. That is why one becomes interiorly humble before God.” The Reich Chancellor lives undoubtedly in faith in God. He recognizes Christianity as the master builder of western civilization (rather than Chamberlain as such). Less clear is the picture of the Catholic Church in his mind as divine foundation, with its independent divine mission alongside the State, with its immutable dogmas, with its historical and cultural greatness.
At the beginning of the discussion a thunderstorm was gathering, as if severe weather was about to be unleashed. Although the discussion went very noisily several times, in the second and even more in the third hour it arrived increasingly at a peaceful terminus. Just as in the 28th Psalm: First a storm over Lebanon, then at the conclusion: Dominus benedicet populo suo in pace. [God blesses his people with peace] At the table there was conversation about the economic condition of the people, in which the Führer possessed astonishing command of details and at which I was allowed to make some suggestions. Naturally I have recounted my own words in more detail in this report than the words of the Führer. Yet I believe I have not left out any essential concepts from what he said.
M. Cardinal Faulhaber
Source: L. Volk, Faulhaber Papers, vol. 2, pp. 184-194, reprinting a German typed carbon copy from folder no. 8203 of Nachlass Faulhaber at the Munich Archdiocesan Archive.