After the parties the next action was against the Catholic Church. Here, however, Himmler and Heydrich had to move more carefully, so strongly was Catholicism embedded in the region, and indeed throughout areas of Germany; moreover Hitler was negotiating a concordat with the Vatican. For the moment they admitted defeat, but it was precisely because of the strength of the opposition and the danger it represented to the new ideology that the retreat could only be tactical. After the priests it was the turn of the Jews. On 19 July it was announced that all Jewish organisations apart from
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