Catholic resistance to Nazism was a component of German resistance to Nazism and of Resistance during World War II. The Church in Germany opposed the rise of Nazism, but attempted compromise when Hitler won power. From the outset of Nazi rule in 1933, issues emerged which brought the Church into conflict with the regime and persecution of the Church led Pope Pius XI to denounce the policies of the Nazi Government in the 1937 papal encyclical ‘’Mit brennender Sorge’’. His successor Pius XII faced the war years and provided intelligence to the Allies. Though Catholics fought on both sides in World War Two and neither the Catholic nor Protestent churches as institutions were prepared to openly oppose the Nazi State, the churches provided the earliest and most enduring centres of systematic op