Editing Mit brennender Sorge (section)

=== Claimed attacks on Hitler ===
There is no mention of Hitler by name in the encyclical but the "mad prophet" described in the text may be a veiled reference to him. The Catholic writer [[Anthony Rhodes]]<ref>{{Cite news |date=August 25, 2004 |title=Anthony Rhodes - Cosmopolitan travel writer, biographer, novelist and memoirist |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/anthony-rhodes-550343.html}}</ref><ref>"Anthony Rhodes: Cosmopolitan and well-connected man of letters who write a deeply researched three-volume history of the Vatican", Obituary, The Times, 8 September 2004 [http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article479642.ece]{{dead link|date=September 2024|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}}</ref> wrote in ''The Vatican in the Age of the Dictators:'' "Nor was the Führer himself spared [in the encyclical], for his 'aspirations to divinity', 'placing himself on the same level as Christ'; 'a mad prophet possessed of repulsive arrogance".<ref>The Vatican in the Age of the Dictators, pp 204–205</ref> Subsequent works have repeated Rhodes' characterization that Hitler is described as a "mad prophet" in the encyclical.<ref>e.g see Bokenkotter, pp. 389–392</ref>

Historian [[John Connelly (historian)|John Connelly]] writes:

<blockquote>Some accounts exaggerate the directness of the pope's criticism of Hitler. Contrary to what Anthony Rhodes in ''The Vatican in the Age of the Dictators'' writes, there were oblique references to Hitler. It was not the case that Pius failed to "spare the Führer," or called him a "mad prophet possessed of repulsive arrogance." The text limits its critique of arrogance to unnamed Nazi "reformers".<ref>John Connelly, Harvard University Press, 2012, "From Enemy to Brother: The Revolution in Catholic Teaching on the Jews, 1933–1965", p. 315, fn 52</ref></blockquote>

Historian [[Michael Phayer]] wrote that the encyclical does not condemn Hitler or National Socialism, "as some have erroneously asserted".<ref>Phyaer, 2002, p. 2</ref> Historian [[Michael Burleigh]] sees the passage as pinpointing "the tendency of the Führer-cult to elevate a man into god."

The relevant passage in the English version of the encyclical is:
<blockquote>17. …{{nbsp}}Should any man dare, in sacrilegious disregard of the essential differences between God and His creature, between the God-man and the children of man, to place a mortal, were he the greatest of all times, by the side of, or over, or against, Christ, he would deserve to be called prophet of nothingness, to whom the terrifying words of Scripture would be applicable: "He that dwelleth in heaven shall laugh at them" (Psalms ii. 3).<ref>Burleigh, p. 191-192</ref></blockquote>
(The German text uses the term "{{italics correction|''ein Wahnprophet''}}", in which the component ''[[wikt:Wahn|Wahn]]'' can mean "illusion" or "delusion", while the Italian text uses "''un profeta di chimere''" (a prophet of chimeras; that is, a prophet as the product of the imagination).)

Historian [[Susan Zuccotti]] sees the above passage as an unmistakable jibe at Hitler.<ref>Under His Very Windows, p. 22</ref>