What did the Nazis want to conserve, exactly?

The NAZI Party originally sought to conserve the right of white Germany (they didn't view Jewish people as white) and their Roman Catholic religious power. Prussia was part of the Holy Roman Empire and the NAZI Party in part wanted to bring that back in their early days. Popes Pius XI (1922–1939) and Pius XII (1939–1958) led the Catholic Church during the rise and fall of Nazi Germany while the Catholic-aligned Centre Party voted for the Enabling Act of 1933, which gave Adolf Hitler additional domestic powers to suppress political opponents as Chancellor of Germany. Hitler and several other key Nazis had been raised as Catholics though they became more hostile to the Church in their adulthood. Article 24 of the National Socialist Program called for conditional toleration of Christian denominations and the 1933 Reichskonkordat treaty with the Vatican guaranteed religious freedom for Catholics.

Eventually, the alliance fell apart and Nazis sought to suppress the power of the Catholic Church in Germany. Catholic press, schools, and youth organizations were closed, property was confiscated, and about one-third of its clergy faced reprisals from authorities; Catholic lay leaders were among those murdered during the Night of the Long Knives.

Anti-Semitism was present in both German Catholicism, and anti-Semitic acts and attitudes were infrequent in Catholic areas. After the alliance's failure, Catholic priests went on to play a major role in rescuing Jews. The Catholic church rescued thousands of Jews by issuing false documents to them, lobbying Axis officials, and hiding Jews in monasteries, convents, schools, the Vatican, and the papal residence at Castel Gandolfo. The Reich Security Main Office called the Pope a "mouthpiece" for the Jews and in his first encyclical (Summi Pontificatus), he called the invasion of Poland an "hour of darkness". In his 1942 Christmas address, the Pope denounced race murders, and in his 1943 encyclical Mystici corporis Christi, the Pope denounced the murder of disabled people.

Even so, in the post-war period, false identification documents were given to many German war criminals by Catholic priests such as Alois Hudal, frequently facilitating their escape to South America. Catholic clergy routinely provided Persilschein or "soap certificates" to former Nazis in order to remove the "Nazi taint"; but at no time was such aid an institutional effort. According to Catholic historian Michael Hesemann, the Vatican itself was outraged by such efforts, and Pope Pius XII demanded the removal of involved clergy such as Hudal.