[OLD REGGIE]

You know perfectly well that a political entity is not a political party. (There is a little difference between the United States and the Democratic Party).

Yes I know and if you wish to make this distinction on purely technical terms I am forced to say you are correct. Happy?

The CCP was independent of the Vatican.

Baloney! Directly, or indirectly, the CCP, a Political Party, took it's marching orders from the Vatican, a Political entity.

[AnAmericanMother]

If you're going to make an allegation like that, you're going to have to produce more evidence than stamping your foot and saying, "It is SO true!"

I studied German for 10 years and I've read the original documents as well as an awful lot of background material IN German.

Orthodox (little o) Catholics tended to join the CCP, naturally, since after Hitler got through with the German political landscape there wasn't really any other place for them to go. But the idea that it "took its marching orders from the Vatican" is an anti-Catholic fantasy, along the lines of the conspiratorial thinking that Al Smith and John F. Kennedy took THEIR marching orders from the Vatican. And part and parcel of the party line of slanderers that will say just about anything in order to tie the Catholic Church to the Nazis.