Responsibility for the Holocaust

==== Vatican City (Catholic Church) ====

==== Vatican City (Catholic Church) ====

{{main|Catholic Church and Nazi Germany during World War II}}

{{main|Catholic Church and Nazi Germany during World War II}}

The Vatican's movement from institutional opposition to effective accommodation in 1933—since German bishops had declared Nazi Party membership incompatible with Catholic teaching as recently as August 1931—unfolded with a speed that no postwar self-presentation of principled resistance could adequately explain.{{sfn|Ericksen|2012|p=51}} Likewise, the ''[[Reichskonkordat]]'' of 20 July 1933, whatever its defensive intent, projected an image of Vatican endorsement that the regime exploited immediately as legitimation—an effect the Holy See could not subsequently undo by remaining silent on the Nuremberg Racial Laws, on ''Reichskristallnacht'', or ultimately on the Nazi genocide of the Jews itself.{{sfn|Ericksen|2012|p=57}} Historian Michael Phayer's assessment remains the most measured verdict on the wartime record, having pointed out that while Pius XII could not have halted the Holocaust, the pontiff's anticommunist fixation warped his moral judgment to the point that the Church failed to disseminate relevant intelligence about the exterminations that the Holy See demonstrably possessed.{{sfn|Phayer|2000|pp=51–57}}

The Vatican's movement from institutional opposition to effective accommodation in 1933—German bishops had declared Nazi Party membership incompatible with Catholic teaching as recently as August 1931—unfolded with a speed that no postwar self-presentation of principled resistance could adequately explain.{{sfn|Ericksen|2012|p=51}} Likewise, the ''[[Reichskonkordat]]'' of 20 July 1933, whatever its defensive intent, projected an image of Vatican endorsement that the regime exploited immediately as legitimization; an effect the Holy See could not subsequently undo by remaining silent on the Nuremberg Racial Laws, on ''Reichskristallnacht'', or ultimately on the Nazi genocide of the Jews itself.{{sfn|Ericksen|2012|p=57}} Historian Michael Phayer's assessment remains the most measured verdict on the wartime record, having pointed out that while Pius XII could not have halted the Holocaust, the pontiff's anticommunist fixation warped his moral judgment to the point that the Church failed to disseminate relevant intelligence about the exterminations that the Holy See demonstrably possessed.{{sfn|Phayer|2000|pp=51–57}}

== Legal proceedings against Nazis ==

== Legal proceedings against Nazis ==