nazi criminal

Hitler's Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen (second from left) signs the "Reichskonkordat" - Treaty of arrangement between the new German Reich and the Vatican - with Vatican Secretary of State and future Pope Pius XII, Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli (third from right), 20 July, 1933.  The Concordat regulated the relations between the Roman Catholic Church and the regime in Germany.  It purported to guarantee a range of important freedoms to the Church, but also made the fundamentals of Church management subject to the scrutiny, and effictive control, of Third Reich authorities.  Also, events showed that the Nazis were perfectly willing to distort or ignore the guarantees of the Concordat when it suited them.  The Church would have presented the Concordat both as a necessary accommodation with the inherrently anti-Catholic Nazi regime and as a diplomatic triumph of sorts.  Perhaps.  However, it also underlined the weakness of the official Catholic Church in the face of the German regime, and undermined the resistance which many Catholics might otherwise have offered (albeit passively for the most part) to the more poisonous aspects of Naziism.  Best regards, JR.

Shaking hands with the Devil ...

Gertraud Junge (born Humps) photographed at the Berghof - probably by Heinrich Hoffmann or Eva Braun.  Traudl Junge was the youngest of Hitler's private secretaries in the period leading up to the collapse of the Third Reich - she joined his suite in December, 1942, aged 22.  She took dictation of the Fuhrer's private and political testament in the Fuhrerbunker.  She survived the war (and months of most unpleasant interrogation by the Soviet intelligence services), eventually reaching Munich.  After years in the shadows, she came to public attention in later years through her contributions to a number of film documentaries, including ITV's "World at War" series, and through the publication of her authobiography.  She died in 2002, in Munich, aged 81.  Best regards, JR.