 Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor on 30 January 1933 and sought to gain international respectability and to remove internal opposition by representatives of the Church and the Catholic Centre Party . He sent his vice chancellor Franz von Papen , a Catholic nobleman and member of the Centre Party , to Rome to offer negotiations about a Reichskonkordat . On behalf of Pacelli , Prelate Ludwig Kaas , the outgoing chairman of the Centre Party , negotiated first drafts of the terms with Papen . The concordat was finally signed , by Pacelli for the Vatican and von Papen for Germany , on 20 July and ratified on 10 September 1933 . Father Franziscus Stratman , senior Catholic chaplain at Berlin University wrote " The souls of well @-@ disposed people are in a turmoil as a result of the tyranny of the National Socialists , and I am merely stating a fact when I say that the authority of the bishops among innumerable Catholics and non @-@ Catholics has been shaken by the quasi @-@ approval of the National Socialist movement " . Bishop Preysing cautioned against compromise with the new regime , against those who saw the Nazi persecution of the church as an aberration that Hitler would correct . 
