The Pope's Dilemma: Pius XII Faces Atrocities and Genocide in the Second World War 9781442622579

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THE POPE’S DILEMMA Pius XII Faces Atrocities and Genocide in the Second World War

Pope Pius XII presided over the Catholic Church during one of the most challenging moments in its history. Elected in early 1939, Pius XII spoke out against war and destruction, but his refusal to condemn Nazi Germany and its allies for mass atrocities and genocide remains controversial almost seventy years after the end of the Second World War. Scholars have blamed Pius’s inaction on anti-communism, antisemitism, a special emotional bond with Germany, or a preference for fascist authoritarianism. Delving deep into Catholic theology and ecclesiology, Jacques Kornberg argues instead that what drove Pius XII was the belief that his highest priority must be to preserve the authority of the church and the access to salvation that it provided. In The Pope’s Dilemma, Kornberg uses the examples of Pius XII’s immediate predecessors, Benedict XV and the Armenian genocide and Pius XI and Fascist Italy, as well as case studies of Pius XII’s wartime policies towards five Catholic countries (Croatia, France, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia), to demonstrate the consistency with which Pius XII and the Vatican avoided confronting the perpetrators of atrocities and strove to keep Catholics within the church. By this measure, Pius XII did not betray, but fulfilled his papal role. A meticulous and careful analysis of the career of the twentieth century’s most controversial pope, The Pope’s Dilemma is an important contribution to the ongoing debate about the Catholic Church’s wartime legacy. (German and European Studies) JACQUES KORNBERG is Professor Emeritus in the Department of History at the University of Toronto.

GERMAN AND EUROPEAN STUDIES General Editor: Rebecca Wittmann

The Pope’s Dilemma Pius XII Faces Atrocities and Genocide in the Second World War

JACQUES KORNBERG

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

© University of Toronto Press 2015 Toronto Buffalo London www.utppublishing.com Printed in the U.S.A. ISBN 978-1-4426-5021-3 (cloth) ISBN 978-1-4426-2828-1 (paper)

Printed on acid-free, 100% post-consumer recycled paper with vegetable-based inks. German and European Studies ______________________________________________________________________________ Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Kornberg, Jacques, author   The pope’s dilemma : Pius XII faces atrocities and genocide in the Second World War / Jacques Kornberg. (German and European studies) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4426-5021-3 (bound).   ISBN 978-1-4426-2828-1 (pbk.)   1.  Pius XII, Pope, 1876–1958.  2.  World War, 1939–1945 – Religious aspects – Catholic Church.  3.  World War, 1939–1945 – Atrocities.  4.  Holocaust, Jewish (1939–1945).  I.  Title.  II.  Series: German and European studies BX1378.K67 2015  282.092  C2015-900630-9 ______________________________________________________________________________ This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario.

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for its publishing activities.

This book is for Mona Silver Kornberg

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Contents

Acknowledgments  ix Introduction:  An Approach to the Controversy  3 1  The Demolition of Pope Pius XII’s Reputation  11 2  The Vatican and Nazi Germany: The 1933 Concordat  46 3  Pius XII and the Second World War: The Catholic Belligerent States  75 4  Pius XII and the Second World War: Poland 141 5  Catholic Anti-Jewish Attitudes: Achille Ratti, Eugenio Pacelli, and Others  156 6  Pope Pius XII and His Predecessors: Different Popes, Similar Policies  185 7  The Debate over Pius XII’s Priorities  234 Conclusion:  Religious Good Trumps Moral Good  265 Notes  303 Bibliography  357 Index  383

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Acknowledgments

As a person of faith, I have been preoccupied by the question of how organized religion works in the world. Depending upon time and place, or the individual, religion can be a force for good or evil, or something in between these polarities. The career of Pope Pius XII, which has evoked so much controversy, is an ideal place to pose these questions. I have long wrestled with this issue. This book is the outcome. Family members, friends, colleagues, and graduate students largely at the University of Toronto helped see me through the years I was engaged in research and writing. I’ve had the good fortune to find highly talented and skilled scholars who helped with translations. In the case of Italian, Sarah Rolfe Prodan, research fellow, Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, and Kathleen Gaudet in Italian Studies, translated a great many documents for me, so precisely it seemed to be their mother tongue. In the case of French and German, Katie Edwards and Martina Cucchiara, respectively, checked my translations and helped add nuance to my versions. My gratitude to the Reverend Daniel Donovan, professor emeritus of theology at the University of St Michael’s College in the University of Toronto, is vast, almost immeasurable. He has been my mentor as I furthered my knowledge of the extraordinarily rich field of Catholic theology. I thank him for his generosity in sharing with me a lifetime’s knowledge and wisdom. He is by no means responsible for my shortcomings on the subject. Friends and colleagues have read draft chapters of this work and made shrewd and sometimes highly challenging comments. This made for a much better book. I owe a great deal of thanks to long-time friends and colleagues Professor Emeritus Cranford Pratt, Professor Emeritus

x Acknowledgments

Harvey Dyck, both of the University of Toronto, and Professor Emeritus Robert Melson of Purdue University for their astute and exacting advice. Friends and colleagues were immensely supportive in hearing me out and commenting on the themes in my book, which boosted my confidence in the project. I know them as prominent in their field and not disposed to idle flattery. Here I count Professor Doris Bergen of the University of Toronto, Professor Kevin Spicer of Stonehill College, and Visiting Professor Bernard Avishai, at Dartmouth College. A special word of gratitude to the anonymous readers of my manuscript, one of whom in particular was admirably rigorous and meticulous. I’m thankful for his or her generous display of tough love, which spurred me to write a better book. I am deeply grateful to the University of Toronto, the History Department, and New College for forty years of extremely rewarding teaching and scholarship, in an atmosphere of collegiality and civility. I am especially thankful to Beth McAuley and her Editing Company for having transformed my untidy text, endnotes, and bibliography into a highly polished final draft. My editor at the University of Toronto Press, Richard Ratzlaff, has put me through the paces, for which, by now, I am extremely grateful. He has been gracious, warm, and rigorous, a winning combination which disposed me to listen carefully and follow his advice. I thank him and the three anonymous readers he wisely selected to read and comment on my manuscript. The book is far better for it. I want to thank my three adult offspring, Micah, Nicole, and Joshua, who taught me about life far more than they know. My tongue stumbles as I express my gratitude to my spouse Mona Silver Kornberg. My gratefulness to her is boundless. She is the wisest and most caring person I know. What did she not do, from patiently enduring my self-preoccupation with this project, to sustaining me with her love, to her rigorous reading and comments on the manuscript, to her time spent on the computer which eased my burden. This book is dedicated to her.

A centuries-old institution like the Holy See can demand that its conceptions and motivations ... be taken seriously. Instead the Holy See is often judged by [political] standards that are not its own ... The papacy during wartime ... must talk about peace when all governments want is war; it must preach reconciliation when peoples are mortally hostile toward one another ... It must be above the parties to be an oasis of peace, when neutrality is a despised word ... It must express itself in moderate terms when the tendency is to publicize and to exacerbate passions. And in all of this it must face misunderstandings ... when not only truth is the first victim, but God himself is the first conscript. Robert Graham, SJ, “Alla origina degli, ‘Actes et Documents du Saint Siège.’”

The Church’s Pastorate in particular, stands today repeatedly in the cross-fire of questions and criticism. Has the Church forgotten “You Shall”? Has the Church forgotten the Commandments? Or is she silent because she is convinced of the futility of her plain and severe preaching? Has the impudence of John the Baptist died out, and has the Church forgotten man and his basic rights? How will the Church save Christians when it abandons the creature who wants to be a genuine Christian? Alfred Delp, SJ, “Vertrauen zur Kirche,” in Gesammelte Schriften vol. 1.

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Introduction

An Approach to the Controversy

In the end, men choose between ultimate values; they choose as they do, because their life and thought are determined by fundamental moral categories and concepts that are … over long stretches of time and space, a part of their being and thought and sense of their own identity. Isaiah Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty”

The Pope and his advisors do not consider and resolve a problem solely in the light of its temporary and obviously apparent elements. Their approach and survey are by habit and tradition unlimited in space and time so that, for example, they can regard the Savoy dynasty as an interlude, and the Fascist era as an incident, in the history of Rome and of Italy. They reckon in centuries and plan for eternity, and this inevitably renders their policy inscrutable, confusing, and on occasion reprehensible to practical and time-conditioned minds. Sir D’Arcy Osborne, British Minister to the Holy See (1936–47), quoted in Owen Chadwick, Britain and the Vatican

Pope Pius XII’s refusal during the Second World War to publicly condemn Nazi Germany and its allies for carrying out mass atrocities and genocide, or to denounce Catholic perpetrators, remains, seventy years later, a matter of controversy. To put the question plainly: why was the pope unable to deal with radical evil? Opinions on this issue are often impassioned, for the debate extends far beyond Pius XII to the nature of the papacy and of the Roman Catholic Church itself. Unfortunately, it is the most polemical and sensationalist critics of the church – a John Cornwell (Hitler’s Pope) or a Daniel Goldhagen (A Moral Reckoning) – that catch the public eye.1 On the other side of the barricades is a

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The Pope’s Dilemma

move to canonize Pius XII. Pope Paul VI (1963–78), initiated the move, and every pope since has implicitly or explicitly approved of his canonization, including the current Pope Francis I. Still, no pope has taken the final steps to proclaiming Pius XII a saint, for the move would create a storm, even among many Catholics, who are split between those proud and those ashamed of the pope’s wartime record. The controversy remains current, and hot. But while the dispute has a fierce edge, and polemics abound, we shall see that a good deal of the scholarship on the issue is not one-dimensional but rigorous, open-minded, and painstakingly documented, providing an abundance of reliable knowledge about papal policies and a sound foundation on which to proceed. My approach to the controversy is to try to understand the mind of Pius XII in the climate of his times. Many are suspicious of this approach, convinced that the next step to understanding is excusing. But understanding is different from sympathy, whose definition is “feeling compassion.” My approach is closer to empathy, which means “readily comprehend.” Understanding alone is not enough. Historians must also pass judgment, but at the same time avoid going too far in one direction or the other, too much understanding or too much finger pointing. I have tried to find this balance by seeing Pius XII as three-dimensional, deeply spiritual and morally anguished, struggling with difficult choices among relative evils. At the same time, I conclude that his stance during the Nazi era was a moral failure. I would, however, judge Pius XII a good pope, for he fulfilled his role as defined in the mainline Catholic ecclesiology (theology of the church) of the times, with its heavy stress on hierarchy and authoritarianism. Pius XII was no anomaly, no atypical pope. I will argue that his predecessors Pius XI (1922–39) Benedict XV (1914–22) acted just as he did in the face of mass atrocities; in Benedict’s case, the genocide of the Armenians during the First World War. None betrayed the Catholic Church. All fulfilled their role as pope in exemplary fashion. In the period under study, Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli rose from apostolic nuncio (Vatican ambassador) to Bavaria in 1917 and then to Germany in 1920, to Cardinal in 1929, Vatican secretary of state in 1930, and finally pope in March 1939. All this time he was serving a two-thousand-year old institution, the church. Pius XII’s understanding of his spiritual role as head of the Roman Church ruled his actions. Catholics less highly placed had more elbow room to make their own decisions, for they were risking just themselves, while the pope carried the burden of the whole institutional church.

Introduction 5

Two prominent historians of Pope Pius XII, Michael Phayer and Michael Marrus, have drawn a distinction between the pope’s spiritual concerns and his political concerns. Phayer rightly calls this divergence “two sides of the same coin.” He notes that documents in the national archives in the United States, Great Britain, and other countries are evidence of the pope’s concern with political and diplomatic, or “this-worldly affairs.” But, he goes further, while noting the wealth of literature on one side of the coin, the “this-worldly” or political and diplomatic side, he calls our attention to the sparseness of literature on the “otherworldly,” or spiritual side. In Phayer’s words, “We are still waiting for an inquiry into the spiritual world of the Vatican’s popes during the first half of the twentieth century.” This is a valuable point, increasingly recognized by those who work on the record of Pope XII. Marrus has stated that the papal documents in the eleven-volume Actes et Documents du Saint Siège relatifs à la Seconde Guerre mondiale (Records and Documents of the Holy See Relative to the Second World War), published by the Vatican between 1965 and 1981, accent the pope’s “otherwordly concerns”; I will draw on these documents at length. Lately, historians have come to appreciate the importance of Pius XII’s theology in shaping his decisions; Emma Fattorini, writing on his predecessor Pius XI, criticizes those who “separate the diplomatic side from his spiritual life.” Paul O’Shea puts his emphasis on “the power of Catholic culture, theology and religious practices” in shaping papal decisions. I have gained greatly by reading these authors.2 In addition, two articles are essential reading on the pope’s spiritual priorities. Kevin Spicer sees the church’s pastoral priorities as the source of its moral failure: “Such a [pre–Vatican II] teaching limited the ‘religious activity’ of the church to a purely parochial form of salvation, one that overcharged private salvation over ministerial service, one that put its particular institutional privilege and personal survival above the call to serve all people.” And, in a fascinating article published in 1988, Thomas Breuer put sacraments and salvation at the centre of papal policies.3 Giving chief importance to the spiritual factor in papal decisions has major implications. Much of the literature sees Pope Pius XII betraying Catholic doctrine for reasons of expediency. Hubert Wolf, in Pope and Devil, speaks of the many cases in which Pacelli “placed diplomacy ahead of dogma.” By diplomacy, Wolf means putting practicality and opportunism first. But in these cases, my question is: did Pius XII betray Catholic dogmas, or uphold them? I would argue, for example,

6

The Pope’s Dilemma

that Pius XII’s understanding of mainline Catholic teaching at the time led him to abdicate moral responsibility when genocide was afoot, in favour of his spiritual role as pope.4 Explanations of Pius XII’s decisions often stay at the political level such as that he was first and foremost an anti-Communist, that he viewed Nazi Germany as a bulwark against Communism, that he wished to enhance papal power by acting as a diplomatic mediator in wartime, or that he was chiefly interested in the institutional self-preservation of the church. Was Pius XII a political opportunist? Indeed, going too far in this direction dovetails with the trend to see religion solely as a place where high ideals are masks for power, prejudice, fanaticism, and hypocrisy. I do not disagree with these judgments. Religious institutions are run by human beings, and often these human beings are self-righteous, power-hungry, imperious, and suspicious of outsiders. Much of modern thought has promoted the view that religion is an epiphenomenon, or a secondary symptom of a more basic, more “real,” reality. Sigmund Freud, in The Future of an Illusion, elaborated on his belief that religion is a by-product of psychological need. Karl Marx saw religion as a by-product of human distress. Émile Durkheim considered religion a by-product of social authority, binding individuals together under a common moral code. None of them discussed religion as an encounter with a transcendent divine reality. Human motives are multiple, not simple. To say Pius XII wanted to maintain and expand personal and institutional power is a moot point: so, for instance, did Stalin, Hitler, Martin Luther King, Jr, and Florence Nightingale. The question is power for what, which is a question of world view, ideology, theology. It is not possible to understand a pope without factoring in theology, which means taking his religious beliefs at face value. To say the pope was concerned with institutional selfpreservation is fine, if one makes clear that in organized religion the institutional and the spiritual are intertwined. The Roman Catholic Church prior to the Second World War was not a secular, human rights organization. The issue at stake in the controversy over Pope Pius XII is his dedication to the eternal salvation of souls, as he understood it, and an egregious absence of dedication to universal human rights. Different authors focus on different aspects of the papal story. I look for any commonalities between Pope Pius XII and his predecessors with regard to their responses to mass atrocities and genocide. I am interested in Benedict XV’s stance on German atrocities in Belgium and

Introduction 7

on the genocide of the Armenians during the First World War and in Pius XI’s position on Italian atrocities in Ethiopia and the Italian racial laws in the 1930s. I look for patterns in Pius XII’s stance during the Second World War towards Catholic countries that (except for Poland) were Germany’s allies or collaborators, and all of them complicit in genocide. Pius XII was a theological conservative. He was able to see the “barque of Peter,” the church, safely to harbour through a huge and lengthy crisis that posed enormous dangers to the unity and autonomy of the church. This was no small feat. Pope Pius XII is to be seen as the spiritual head of the church, believed to be divinely founded, instituted by Christ as the channel for His redeeming love. In the Roman Catholic view, God is both transcendent and mediated by visible and tangible things. Through the sacraments, the church carries Christ into the world. The Eucharist, for example, re-enacts Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross, carrying the promise of God’s grace and salvation for the believer. Moreover, the Roman Church has not aspired to be a sect, but to be universal, to encompass and extend love and charity to all peoples. This has had its own implications. Finally, in a church stressing authority and hierarchy, a church of shepherds overseeing their flocks, the eternal salvation of the faithful is a primary pastoral responsibility. I end with a question that I will take up in the final chapter. Was the pope’s failure to address atrocities directly a sign of his personal lack of Christian virtues, or was it a sign of his qualification for sainthood? Was, then, the wartime stance taken by Pope Pius XII inherent in church doctrine itself? I have called Eugenio Pacelli’s record during the 1930s as Vatican secretary of state, then during the 1940s as pope, a moral failure. What does that mean? What was the degree of his guilt? Was he complicit in atrocities, a collaborator in the policies of Hitler and Mussolini, an antisemite? Did he in some way encourage Catholics who committed atrocities, or permit them to do so? I have consulted two authors who offer fine-tuned definitions of complicity: Robert Ericksen, in Complicity in the Holocaust: Churches and Universities in Nazi Germany, and Victoria Barnett, Bystanders: Conscience and Complicity during the Holocaust. Ericksen documents the extent to which many Germans willingly supported Hitler and approved of his policies. These were not wild-eyed fanatics although such existed but, in Christopher Browning’s striking phrase, mostly “ordinary men.” As for churches and universities, leading German institutions, aside

8

The Pope’s Dilemma

from some requesting exceptions or having misgivings over some Nazi ­policies, did not thwart Nazi policies, and as such were understood by Germans to “permit” support for these policies. Notwithstanding this judgment, Ericksen acknowledges many “ambiguous examples of culpability.” How many supported Hitler or were silently passive out of fear, or out of a variety of needs: making a living, caring for family, stricken by illness, etc.? Victoria Barnett explores the meaning of complicity, and she does this by analysing bystander responses to atrocities. She gives the example of a farming village in the neighbourhood of the Austrian concentration camp Mauthausen. These villagers were bystanders according to Barnett, that is, neither perpetrators nor victims, but rather “[the] lookeron, spectator, beholder, observer.” But as the SS (Schutzstaffel) running the camp kept no secrets, villagers became aware that Mauthausen was a place of torture and murder. Most of the locals remained indifferent. One protestor subsequently suffered eight months in Buchenwald. Some became perpetrators, farmers who helped the SS hunt down and murder escapees from the camp. Some worked as camp staff. Most villagers chose to look the other way, to be uninvolved, indifferent, telling themselves that “nothing could be done,” rationalizing that they were not the torturers and murders and therefore “felt no personal responsibility” for what was happening before their very eyes. Reading Barnett, we see a finely shaded continuum, ranging from protest, fear, indifference, to active participation in the work of Mauthausen. Furthermore, a variety of motives, for example, fear or bigotry, coloured each response.5 Ericksen and Barnett teach us that “moral failure,” the words I use to describe Pius XII’s actions during the Nazi period, is a vague, manyshaded term. Was the pope complicit in crimes, was he an indifferent bystander? Furthermore, can we untangle the consequences of the pope’s policies from his own intentions, constricted by real dilemmas and agonizing choices? I have chosen to describe the moral failure of Pius XII as a matter of “calculated acquiescence.” My dictionary defines “acquiescence” as “raise no objections” or “accept an arrangement,” whereas “complicity” is defined as “partnership in a crime or wrongdoing” and “accomplice.” The refusal of Pius XII to explicitly condemn either Germany for mass murder and the extermination of the Jews of Europe or Catholic perpetrators of mass atrocities among Germany’s allies and satellites means that the pope allowed these crimes to happen because of his own priorities and responsibilities as head of

Introduction 9

the Roman Catholic Church, but he was in no sense an accomplice to policies he deplored. I leave it to the reader to judge whether I make a persuasive case for “calculated acquiescence.”6 Historical writing is a conversation held among the generations: authors add a brick at a time to a larger structure. Some bricks may eventually crumble, others are of more solid construction. Meanwhile, the controversy around Pope Pius XII goes on. While the documents available when writing this book were already staggering in number, including many long-released but underused ones, new caches of documents regularly become available, and will be made available long after this book appears. Indeed, the wartime archives of Pius XII are still not open to scholars, though the Vatican has published eleven volumes of these documents in the Actes et Documents du Saint Siège relatifs à la Seconde Guerre mondiale (hereafter, ADSS). We don’t know what unpublished documents are still to be found in the Vatican archives for the Second World War. Everything must be read with this limitation in mind. Indeed, covering all aspects of an archive takes years and years. By 2006 the Vatican had opened the archives for the pontificate of Pius XI (1922–39). According to Hubert Wolf, these archives comprise hundreds of thousands of boxes and individual files, some running to a thousand pages. So far five thousand of Pacelli’s written reports have been counted just from the time he was nuncio to Bavaria, then nuncio to Berlin. Even with the vast documentation already available, further research will yield important new knowledge, opening up new trends, new angles, new insights. But such vast documentation can only be absorbed piecemeal. By now a number of valuable monographs have been published based upon the new documentation, which allow us partial views, but not yet what anyone would call a comprehensive view of Pius XII’s pontificate. These monographs have, however, filled out many spaces in the total picture; they deepen and widen our knowledge, and alter it at key points.7 In every generation scholars kick against the received wisdom of an earlier time and find its weak spots. This is especially true when we are dealing with moral judgments, which change over time. This will be evident in chapter 1, where I discuss how Pope Pius XII’s reputation plummeted almost twenty years after the Second World War ended. The pope’s view of his mission as head of the church was not shared by later generations, which explains why the controversy over his policies

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The Pope’s Dilemma

has gone on and on some seventy years after the end of the war. Tentativeness, not certainty, is the condition of historical writing. We must not, however, surrender to historical relativism. The empty spaces of history are enormous, but much that has been written on Pope Pius XII is solidly evidence-based, and stands the test of time, or at least for one generation of time. A final note: in accordance with recent practice, I spell antisemitism like this, rather than as anti-Semitism. This is because there is no such thing as Semitism, but there is such a thing as antisemitism. In accordance with an antiquated though still common practice, I use the familiar terms Old Testament and New Testament, though these terms smack of Christian supercessionism. The interfaith dialogue movement has adopted a different wording, First Testament and Second Testament, which is more even-handed.

Chapter One

The Demolition of Pope Pius XII’s Reputation

The theologian may indulge the pleasing task of describing religion as she descended from Heaven, arrayed in her native purity. A more melancholy duty is imposed on the historian. He must discover the inevitable mixture of error and corruption which she contracted in a long residence upon earth, among a weak and degenerate race of beings. Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

There is no wrong men have not been ready to commit when they thought it could serve religious purposes. John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, First Baron Acton, “Religion,”Selected Writings of Lord Acton

1958: A Pope Widely Revered Respect for Pope Pius XII as a moral authority plummeted in the 1960s. This chapter is about change in the theological and political climate at the time, which led many to change their view of the pope. The rise of a more progressive and democratic Catholic theology challenged the conservative theology that had prevailed before and throughout the Second World War, of which Pius XII had become an icon. This debate within Catholicism spurred disputes about the role of the papacy and of the church, debates that continue to this day. The decline in Pius XII’s reputation was drastic, a spectacular example of the volatility of reputations. When on 9 October 1958 the pope died, he was mourned worldwide. Both Protestants and Jews honoured him as a universal figure who had served all humanity. Many saw

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The Pope’s Dilemma

the Holy Father as an advocate for democracy, for having spoken out against the all-powerful totalitarian state, both fascist and communist. Dag Hammerskjold, then UN Secretary-General, pronounced Pius XII one of the “noblest sons and greatest leaders” for all humanity. “ALL OF WORLD’S ILLS WERE HIS CONCERN,” was the heading to his obituary in the New York Times; the subheading read, “Pius called ‘Pope of Peace.’” The obituary cited the pope’s efforts to avert the Second World War and his post-war warning that nuclear weapons had made war unthinkable. The record of Pius XII during the Second World War was widely praised. The New York Times did not view Vatican political impartiality during the war as fence-sitting, but claimed it had freed the pope for acts of benevolence and relief such as the Vatican information service for the families of prisoners of war and displaced persons. The paper also insisted that Vatican political neutrality during the war had not inhibited the pope’s anti-Nazi stance, as shown by his messages of sympathy to the Queen of the Netherlands and the King of Belgium when their countries were invaded by Germany and by his denunciation of “statism” in his October 1939 encyclical Summi Pontificatus (On the Unity of Human Society). Finally, the New York Times considered the 1933 concordat, or Vatican treaty with Nazi Germany, nothing less than a “diplomatic victory” for the future pope, who at the time was Cardinal Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli.1 What is more, in the 1940s and 1950s Jewish gratitude to Pius XII was emphatic and widespread. On the first visit of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra to Italy in May 1955, for example, the conductor requested permission for the orchestra to play for the pope in a private audience, “as a gesture of gratitude for the help his church had given to all those persecuted by Nazi Fascism.” To the pope’s great pleasure the orchestra played the second movement of the Second Symphony by Beethoven, one of his favourite pieces.2 It was no surprise, then, that spokespersons for Jewish organizations lamented the death of Pius XII. The Synagogue Council of America, made up of rabbinic and congregational organizations from all streams of Judaism, spoke of “the profound regard in which his Eminence was held by the Jewish community ... for the succour and refuge he gave to refugees of all races during World War II.” The Orthodox Rabbi Emanuel Rackman, president of the Rabbinical Council of America, said Pius XII had earned “a permanent place in the history of mankind” as “a passionate defender of peace and human dignity.” When news came of the pope’s death, Leonard Bernstein, conductor of the



The Demolition of Pope Pius XII’s Reputation 13

New York Philharmonic, put down his baton and asked his audience to stand for a moment of silence “for the passing of a very great man, Pope Pius XII.”3 On the other side of the world, an obituary in the Israeli Englishlanguage daily the Jerusalem Post maintained that Hitler and Mussolini resented the pope’s political neutrality during the Second World War, for neutrality had made it possible for Vatican intermediaries to work for peace. The paper ran an effusive tribute to Pius XII by Israeli Foreign Minister Golda Meir. She, too, noted that all humanity grieved the pope’s death, for he was “a great servant of peace” and had forcefully reminded the world of “the great moral truths above the tumult of daily conflict.” She went on to declare, “When fearful martyrdom came to our people in the decade of Nazi terror, the voice of the Pope was raised in compassion for the victims.”4 During the 1940s and 1950s it was widely believed that the Vatican had played a central role in Jewish rescue during the war. One example of Jewish gratitude was a gift of 2 million Italian lire (US $20,000) to Vatican charities, presented by the secretary of the World Jewish Congress as nominal recompense for the outlays incurred by the Vatican in providing refuge for Italian Jews. Wherever Jews were hidden: in Catholic orphanages, schools, monasteries or convents, whether in France, Belgium, Italy, or the Netherlands, credit was given to the pope. Léon Poliakov, a pioneering French-Jewish Holocaust scholar, certainly assumed that the many rescue efforts by Catholics all over Europe were ordered by the Vatican: “There is no doubt that secret instructions went out from the Vatican urging the national churches to intervene in favour of the Jews, by every possible means.” In the United States, the Jewish Labor Committee praised the pope’s “wartime activities in saving Jewish children from the hands of the Fascist and Nazi butchers.”5 It is also remarkable how lavish Protestants were in their praise of the head of the Roman Catholic Church, in view of the centuriesold animosity between the two faiths. The widely respected German Catholic monthly, Herder-Korrespondenz insisted that Pius XII was the first pope “since time immemorial” to have gained the esteem of nonCatholics, who praised his work for peace, his advocacy on behalf of the oppressed, and his opposition to tyranny. The journal quoted the American non-denominational Protestant weekly the Christian Century, which claimed that the sorrow of Protestants and Orthodox Christians at the pope’s passing was as “deeply felt” as that of Catholics: “In his humanity and fatherly concern for all sorts and conditions of men,

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Pope Pius XII came closer to establishing the reality of the church universal than had any of his modern predecessors through other means.” Pope Pius XII deserved this praise because he had preached “political, civic and social tolerance” towards other denominations, and Catholic cooperation with other Christians. The Herder-Korrespondenz went on to quote leading German Protestants, praising Pius XII for expanding areas of cooperation between Catholics and other Christians. The journal cited the German Protestant publication Kirche und Mann (Church and Man), which noted that for the first time in history, Evangelical (Lutheran) bishops had publicly grieved the death of a pope. Finally, the Herder-Korrespondenz cited Dr Willem Visser’t Hooft, general secretary of the World Council of Churches, who credited Pius XII for recent strides in “ecumenical consciousness.”6 1963: A Pope Widely Reviled Rolf Hochhuth’s The Deputy This practically unanimous judgment about Pope Pius XII was shattered just five years later by Rolf Hochhuth’s play Der Stellvertreter (The Deputy), which condemned the pope’s public silence during the wartime destruction of Europe’s Jews. The play began its run on the Berlin stage on 20 February 1963; the text was simultaneously released by Rowohlt Verlag, which gained the rights to the book after its original publisher withdrew, fearing trouble. The play was a sensation, attracting packed audiences, while the book was near the top of the bestseller list in the German newsweekly Der Spiegel (The Mirrror) for the whole of 1963. By October, 100,000 copies had been sold, by the end of 1964, 210,000 copies, and over the next decade and a half, almost 500,000 copies. In the post-war years in Germany, no text attracted so much public attention. One writer compared it to the 1930 film of the bestselling anti-war novel All Quiet on the Western Front, the target of Nazi provocations and harassment at movie theatres.7 No doubt the 1961 trial in Israel of Adolf Eichmann was on many people’s minds. The trial was historic. It was the first to concentrate on the Holocaust and to feature the horrifying testimony of Jewish survivors. Accounts of the Europewide deportation of Jews to be gassed in the death camps stunned many, and awakened them to the monstrosity of this genocide. Nevertheless, the impact of Der Stellvertreter cannot be overemphasized. In Berlin two public debates on the play quickly



The Demolition of Pope Pius XII’s Reputation 15

followed, each with an audience of about a thousand. By September 1963 articles on the play along with government and church declarations, plus a flood of letters to the editor, were gathered in a book with the title Summa iniuria oder, Durfte der Papst schweigen? Hochhuth’s “Stellvertreter” in der öffentlichen Kritik (The Height of Injustice, or Should the Pope Have Remained Silent? The Public Debate over Hochhuth’s The Deputy). The selection was drawn from an astounding three thousand reviews, commentaries, and letters to the editor that appeared just up to the end of June 1963. Print runs in September were for sixty thousand copies. By year’s end, in Basel yet another collection of articles on the play was published.8 Because it was so controversial, many German theatres were unwilling to produce the play, and Hochhuth complained about the sparseness of productions particularly in Catholic southern Germany and the Rhineland. However, the play was produced in Frankfurt, Hamburg, Düsseldorf, and a half-dozen other German cities. In addition, the play was widely translated and performed outside of Germany: in Stockholm, Basel, London, Odense, Helsinki, Paris, Berne, Vienna, Athens, Aarhus, New York, and Rotterdam in 1963 and 1964 alone. Productions were often in first-run theatres, the Royal Shakespeare Company in London, the Volkstheater in Vienna, and the Brooks Atkinson Theatre in New York. Translations of the text appeared in Great Britain, the United States, Denmark, Finland, France, Holland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Norway, and Sweden.9 The play was either praised or execrated; few judgments were neutral. Israel was the only exception, where according to the Jerusalem Post of 19 June 1964, “The audience’s reception of the play was restrained.” Performances in Essen and Bochum were met with demonstrations, as were performances in Stuttgart, where twenty-five hundred gathered in protest when the Berlin troupe arrived. The play was subjected to organized boos and jeers in Vienna. In Paris members of the audience charged the stage and attacked the actor playing Pius XII, while demonstrators howled at the stage from the vestibule. The performance at Basel’s Stadttheater brought ten thousand demonstrators and counter-demonstrators to the streets. Spain, Brazil, and Italy banned the play. Hochhuth had launched a public controversy on an issue, which up to then had only been disputed among small circles. The play’s impact was so shattering that one commentator declared Hochhuth had helped stop Pius XII from going down in history as one of the great popes.10

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The Play in Brief The play wove a tale not heard before by the wide public. The story hinges on the pope’s public silence during the destruction of European Jewry. Hochhuth began the written version of the play with quotes that quickly set the tone. One was the devastating comment by the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard on the projected canonization of the Danish Bishop Jakob Peter Mynster. Canonization, for Kierkegaard, was reserved for those who court martyrdom by being a “witness to the truth”: “scourged, beaten, dragged from one prison to another ... until at last he is crucified or beheaded or burned.” Bishop Mynster, pillar of the church establishment, comfortable and prosperous, was no martyr material. The quote was Hochhuth’s way of saying that Pius XII was equally remote from sainthood. But Hochhuth’s indictment of Pius XII was far more damning than that, for Hochhuth made the extravagant claim that “perhaps never before in history have so many human beings paid with their lives for the passivity of a single statesman.”11 The Deputy opens with SS Lieutenant Kurt Gerstein, an anti-Nazi who had joined the SS to ferret out its crimes, frantically seeking an audience with Cesare Orsenigo, the papal nuncio in Berlin. The date is August 1942, and Gerstein had just witnessed a gassing in the death camp Belzec. He is determined to inform Archbishop Orsenigo of the diabolical systematic murder of Jews in gas chambers, “factories for killing,” and he presses him to pass on the information to the pope. The pope, says Gerstein, “must speak for the world’s conscience.” But the nuncio cuts him off and departs. To Hochhuth the scene is meant to be a bellwether of the Vatican’s non-response.12 Father Riccardo Fontana is a Jesuit priest attached to the Vatican Secretariat of State, and he witnesses Gerstein’s futile appeal to Orsenigo. He resolves that he himself will bring the message to the pope. It is now September 1943. During Father Fontana’s encounter with Pius XII it becomes clear that the pope’s silence is in the name of “reasons of state.” He concludes that the pope wishes to preserve his potential role as mediator in a peace settlement, more important, that he sees ­Germany as a bulwark against Soviet Communism. The Red Army is at the gates of Europe, so Pius XII will do nothing to weaken Nazi Germany. Though the pope fully realizes that Hitler is an enemy of the church, his fondest hope is that the Allies pursue a negotiated peace with Germany, which will keep her militarily strong against the Soviet Union, if necessary with – though preferably without – Hitler.13



The Demolition of Pope Pius XII’s Reputation 17

In a later scene, Father Fontana brands Pope Pius XII a criminal for permitting “reasons of state to seal his lips” on the deportation of the Jews. He resolves to act himself. As the pope is the deputy of Christ, Riccardo Fontana will make himself the deputy of the pope, to atone for the guilt his silence imposes upon the church.14 Father Fontana takes out a yellow star of David and pins it onto his cassock; he intends to share the fate of the Jews as penance for the Vatican’s silence. Through his martyrdom, Riccardo Fontana is determined to vindicate the spiritual mission of the papacy, which has been occupied, he says, by a pope who is nothing more than another Alexander VI (1492–1503), the notorious Rodrigo Borgia with his succession of mistresses, and children, on whom he bestowed titles and money. Pope Pius XII is shaken by Father Fontana’s actions. Fontana then accompanies the Jews deported from Rome in 1943, and dies a martyr in Auschwitz.15 Pope Pius XII Caricatured Hochhuth’s portrait of Pius XII is a caricature. The pope is depicted as an unfeeling diplomat, egocentric, remote, cold, cynical, and calculating, totally deficient in spirituality. He does show “burning concern,” though not for Hitler’s victims, but for the Allied destruction of Italian factories, for the shares held by the Jesuits in Italian industry, for the Vatican securities in the Hungarian railroads, and for the protection of church libraries from Allied bombings. Hochhuth underscores Pius XII’s cynicism by having him assure Riccardo Fontana that he will publicly condemn the deportation of the Jews. The pope then drafts a foggy statement full of rhetorical generalities. Father Fontana upbraids Pius, who proceeds to wash his hands in a basin. The symbolic act conjures up Pontius Pilate’s demonstrative hand washing, absolving himself for the death of Jesus.16 German productions of the play concentrated upon the conflict between Father Fontana and the pope. The full play, at six hours, was much too long to be staged, so Erwin Piscator, director of the original production in Berlin, concentrated on the papal drama. Other German productions, and foreign ones, too, followed this lead. They did not stray far from Hochhuth’s intentions, for the play was called The Deputy, and the pope was “Vicar [or deputy] of Christ.”17 If the clash of personalities made for gripping theatre, Hochhuth was also out for other game, revealing his anti-Catholic bias. The play saw

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The Pope’s Dilemma

moral equivalents between the Catholic Church and the Nazis. For one, Hochhuth has Gerstein claim that Himmler was a great admirer of the Jesuits and modelled the SS on the rule of Saint Ignatius Loyola. Next, a cardinal appears in the play, portrayed by Hochhuth as “a suave, even ruthless diplomat” and a womanizer to boot. Hitler’s success, the cardinal claims, comes from his understanding of the mob’s need for bread and circuses. This bluntly cynical cleric then poses the rhetorical question: “where would the church be ... if it had not ignited faggots for the mob during the Middle Ages?” The moral equation of the church with the Nazis reaches its height later, when the Auschwitz doctor modelled on Dr Josef Mengele, proclaims, “We are the Dominicans of the technological age. It is no accident that so many of my kind, the leaders, come from good Catholic homes.” Cited are Hitler, Goebbels, Bormann, Kaltenbrunner, Himmler, and Höss. Indeed, the precedent for Auschwitz was to be found in the Spanish Inquisition: “Your church was the first to show that you can burn men just like coke.”18 Such remarks by Hochhuth were not merely hyperbole but gross caricatures stirring hatred. Protestant anti-Catholicism created an imaginary Catholic uniquely fanatical and superstitious. Anti-Catholic stereotypes were concocted out of what Michael Gross has called “fantastic convent atrocity stories.” Using the example of Germany, Gross goes on to say that in the popular imagination “there is hardly a monastery in which monks or nuns were not buried alive and cruelly martyred.” Books and newspapers retailed lurid stories: “Unsuspecting young women were lured into convents, where they were subjected to sexual exploitation that led invariably to madness, suicide, or murder.” Cartoons depicted monks as reptiles and “life-destroying parasitic worms.” Prussian newspapers claimed that German Catholics were ordered by their priests not to fire at Austrian soldiers during the Austro-Prussian war of 1866, for they were mostly Catholics. Hochhuth was heir to these anti-Catholic fabrications. Not only his biting realism, but his caricatures as well sometimes led to mob violence in cities where his play was performed.19 Hochhuth on the Enormity of the Holocaust Rolf Hochhuth certainly traded in sensationalism and anti-Catholic prejudices, but that by itself does not explain the wide-ranging attention paid to his play. The playwright hit a nerve by his timely and vivid portrayal of the enormity of the Holocaust, as a world where right and



The Demolition of Pope Pius XII’s Reputation 19

wrong had been turned upside down. The German officials in the play casually discuss the pros and cons of different methods of mass killing. Not even lip service was paid to age-old moral values, neither to the sacredness of life nor to compassion for the weak and afflicted. Only a few Germans saw the moral contradiction between the murder of a people and the church looking the other way, going on as before. Father Riccardo Fontana, shaken to the core, describes a round-up of Jews and Poles and their murder by gas. He exclaims, “[While] the greatest manhunt which the world has ever seen” is taking place, church bells ring and ring in Rome “as though the world were Paradise.” Gerstein plays on this theme in a devastating speech: “Where the steeples of his [the pope’s] churches rise / Hitler’s chimneys pour forth their ghastly smoke! / That where on Sundays the church bells ring / on weekdays the flesh of men is burned. / That is the Christian West today!”20 The final act of The Deputy takes place in the death factory, Auschwitz. We are taken into the interior of a freight car; people are dragged from it, and herded to the gas chambers. The pall of smoke and fire is everywhere. The scene reeks of the smell of burning bodies. A woman who learns her family has been gassed utters a scream so raw, distancing by the audience becomes impossible. At the same time the Auschwitz scene is dreamlike, evocative of an uncanny reality. The nihilistic speeches of the perpetrators come closest to capturing this reality. The doctor, modelled on Mengele, calls Auschwitz “the boldest experiment that man has ever undertaken.” Hochhuth was pointing out that in Auschwitz the state murdered on the assembly line, not for the usual goals of land and power, but to set itself up like a God-Creator, and replace humanity with a new Master Race. The diabolical doctor in Auschwitz blasphemes God and pronounces himself “the lord of life and death in this place.” Hochhuth had captured the fiendish utopia of a racial state launching mass sterilization, mass euthanasia, enslavement, and genocide in order to “improve” humanity. Evil towards “inferiors” was no longer seen as a harsh necessity but good for the race, and empathy and humanity towards “inferiors” was evil. In short, Hochhuth grasped the daemonic reversal of values in Nazism, its rebellion against God.21 A Challenge to German Denial The crimes of the Third Reich were daemonic, but according to Hochhuth, evil did not reside outside of history. The crimes of the Third Reich were the responsibility of the German people. This, too, by the

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The Pope’s Dilemma

1960s, was a judgment just brewing below the surface. Against the apologists of the 1940s and 1950s, Hochhuth claimed Nazism was no external force imposed upon – and victimizing – Germans; indeed, “the Germans bear the greatest guilt.” The majority of Germans were Hitler’s supporters, and if most were not perpetrators of atrocities, they were usually passively or even actively complicit. At the very least, their indifference to the victims made atrocities possible. “We see them daily,” Hochhuth writes, “in our own bathroom mirror.” That is why Gerstein exclaims in the play, “The traitors [during the Nazi era], they alone, today are saving Germany’s honour.” But since the war, protests Hochhuth, there has been no squaring of accounts. The Federal Republic of Germany is now a vast haven for perpetrators and accessories to murder: the Krupp industries that paid the SS for slave labour; the Army that cooperated with the SS in the mass shootings of Jews; the University of Strassbourg Medical School that conducted medical research on prisoners; the officials, major and minor, who made the deportation trains run on time. They were now government officials, judges, and business executives in the new Germany.22 The Deputy: Sensationalism Spurs Serious Historical Research As a piece of theatre, even with its share of powerful moments, The Deputy is deeply flawed. One otherwise sympathetic reviewer called the play “Kitsch.” The play is a melodrama, with heroes of unparalleled purity and unfeeling villains, all uttering set speeches, all mouthpieces for Hochhuth’s message. The diabolical doctor exults in his murderous deeds, and equally delights in sex with a Jewish woman whose children – unknown to her – he has just murdered. The pope lacks any spiritual dimension; he is a cynic pure and simple. Father Riccardo Fontana is an unflagging hysteric. Ostensibly, he represents the true face of the church, one of those priests “who set love for neighbour above all utilitarian considerations.” But Hochhuth’s portrayal of him is not credible. He has Ricardo Fontana criticize the pope, for he hears that the pope is considering proclaiming a dogma: the Assumption of Mary, that she was taken body and soul to heaven at the end of her life. “Does he have nothing else to do?” the priest Fontana asserts of these supposed trivialities. (This measure had been long talked about in church circles. Pius XII proclaimed the dogma in 1950, to the nearly unanimous approval of the church’s bishops.) Later, Fontana proposes seizing Vatican Radio to urge Catholics in all of Europe to act on behalf of the Jews.



The Demolition of Pope Pius XII’s Reputation 21

In order to rally Catholics against the Nazis, he wishes the pope would be assassinated and the crime blamed on the SS. Perhaps this is God’s will, Riccardo Fontana reflects, “to save him [Pius XII] from – complete perdition.” Catholic piety, according to Father Fontana, calls for the assassination of the pope.23 At the same time, however, the play’s sweeping judgments touched a nerve: both acclaim and denunciation followed. The play helped spur wide scholarly engagement on issues still debated today. In the “Sidelights on History,” Hochhuth’s long appendix to his play, he marshalls evidence for his accusations from memoirs, diaries, and the Nuremberg trial proceedings. He was picking and choosing from the initial research of the mid-1940s and 1950s. Later scholarship would reject his arguments. I will cite just one example. Hochhuth’s sensational charge against the pope reads, “Perhaps never before in history have so many human beings paid with their lives for the passivity of a single statesman.” Hochhuth was obviousely assuming that a papal protest would have saved millions of lives. This was because he believed that German Catholics would have welcomed a papal condemnation of their government, and that Hitler wished to avoid a confrontation with the Roman Church. In Hochhuth’s words, “Would they [the Nazis] have set themselves against thirty-five million Germans, members of a church which would have become ‘hostile to the state’?” Hochhuth submits they would not have.24 In support of his claim, Hochhuth argues that other protests and interventions by high church officials had been successful, without bringing retaliation down on anyone’s head. He cites Bishop Clemens August Graf von Galen’s wartime public protest against the “euthanasia” program of the Nazi regime: in plain words, the murder of mentally and physically handicapped Germans. Not only was Galen not arrested, but his protest led Hitler to call a halt to the program. Hochhuth’s source was Gerald Reitlinger’s The Final Solution, which was published in 1953 and concluded, “On no question was Hitler’s personal dictatorship more severely challenged than this one … In the end public opinion won, and Hitler had to be content with his 50,000 or 60,000 German victims.” Hochhuth piles on the examples. He mentions the pope’s 25 June 1944 telegram to Regent of Hungary Miklós Horthy, appealing to him to stop the deportation of Hungarian Jewry. Hochhuth claims the telegram led to Horthy’s promise to exempt baptized Jews from deportation. But not only that. Citing Reitlinger again, Hochhuth writes, “The

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Pope’s letter was only the beginning of a worldwide bombardment of the Regent’s conscience.” Reitlinger was saying that the pope’s letter to Horthy preceded other appeals in time, but from this Hochhuth concludes that the pope actually inspired the worldwide campaign. Hochhuth declared, “This proves again how high the Pope’s credit stood.” We shall see later that neither of these claims proved to be true.25 The Deputy was a first play by an unknown author, just thirty-one years old. At another time or place, it could just as easily have fallen flat. The play is an extraordinary instance of perfect timing; the public mood was disposed to respond to the play, despite the play’s indulgence in caricature. One could almost say the times made the play, the need made the play. The “New Liberalism” in Germany What was it about the 1960s that accounted for the wide debate unleashed by The Deputy and by its denigration of Pope Pius XII? Many Germans in the 1960s had begun to face the issue of large-scale German responsibility for National Socialism. Before that, in the 1940s and 1950s, apologetics prevailed, rationalizations and euphemisms veiled realities. The Nazis were seen as a gang of thugs who had seduced and misled the German people. Wartime crimes were attributed to SS psychopaths. Others – the army and officialdom – were believed to have made every effort to mitigate Nazi policies. Issues of guilt and responsibility were deflected by citing Allied bombings of German civilian centres or the mass expulsion of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe at the war’s end. Jews, murdered because they were Jews, were included in a non-denominational category of victims of “totalitarianism,” which included Germans as well. Left unmentioned was that German aggression had started the war. Now, many first came to appreciate the enormity of the destruction of Jewry and its centrality in the National Socialist program. For the first time rescuers of Jews were officially honoured instead of being quietly shunned. Günther Grass’ Die Blechtrommel (1959; The Tin Drum), a bestseller, exposed the widespread Nazi Party support among ordinary Germans and the post-war amnesia about this. In films, like the 1959 Die Brücke (The Bridge), the net of responsibility was cast wide, to include petty officials and ordinary Germans. In 1961 Fritz Fischer published his groundbreaking Griff nach der Weltmacht (The Reach for World Power; the title of the English edition is Germany’s Aims in the



The Demolition of Pope Pius XII’s Reputation 23

First World War), an indictment of the imperialist path Germany had taken from 1871, the year of national unification. The Auschwitz trial, which took place from 1963 to 1965 in Frankfurt, of mid- and lowerlevel SS officials at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, garnered wide public interest. Over twenty thousand people visited the trial. Peter Weiss’ 1965 play about the trial, The Investigation (Die Ermittlung), was performed widely in Germany. Among the demands of the student revolution of 1968 in Germany was that the Nazi era be taught in universities, and that professors tainted by Nazism be dismissed.26 Other changes underlay this reappraisal of the Nazi years. Historians speak of the strides made by the “new liberalism,” and indeed, during the 1960s authoritarian attitudes weakened in Germany. There were many signs of this, from growing impatience with Chancellor Konrad Adenauer’s “autocratic leadership style” to developments within the two major political parties. The Christian-Democratic Union (CDU) and the German Socialist Party (SPD) had become less ideological and more flexible and pragmatic, accommodating internal debate and dissent. In the “new liberalism” the rights of the individual were considered prior to the authority of society and the state. This shift in values was evident in the Spiegel affair of 1963. Weighing in on the German debate about nuclear armament, the weekly newsmagazine published an article that raised suspicions that the magazine had obtained top secret classified information. Bypassing the Constitution, the government had the Spiegel’s offices searched and both editor and associate editor arrested. By the early 1960s such arbitrary use of state power was unacceptable to many Germans, and the Defence Minister, FranzJosef Strauss, was forced to resign. More Germans were now willing to question authority and traditional institutions, and assert the priority of individual rights, thus creating a fertile and receptive field for the message of The Deputy.27 Parallel with these developments came changes to German Catholicism. Historians have pointed out that in the Bonn Republic after the Second World War and well into the 1950s, many Catholics thought of their fledgling democracy in neo-Thomist terms, which placed a premium on the authority and directing force of both church and state, and on the unanimity and loyalty of citizens. Liberalism and individualism were seen as atomizing and fragmenting forces, the “poisonous fruits of the Reformation.” Little value was laid on the independence and vitality of civil society or on civic responsibility and individual freedom, values essential to a liberal democracy. Lay Catholics followed

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the political direction of the church hierarchy pretty much through the 1950s. Pastoral letters supporting the Christian Democratic Union routinely appeared at election time. As Frederic Spotts put it, “Politics was about ultimate values and divine mandates.” But political parties were becoming less ideological, for example, the Social Democrats abandoned principled anticlericalism to attract Catholic voters. By the 1960s many Catholics saw the political process as one of parties alternating between government and opposition, rather than as a combat between the forces of God and godlessness. Right after the war, the church hierarchy had envisaged a “lay apostolate,” a successor to the Catholic Action movement of the 1920s and 1930s, which had fostered lay engagement in politics and society as an arm of the clergy. Julius Cardinal Döpfner, archbishop of Munich, observed by the 1960s that the church hierarchy was showing more deference to the laity on political issues. The traditional Catholic view of modern liberal society as disordered and confused, breeding religious indifference, was giving way to an appreciation of pluralism. After over a decade of democracy and economic prosperity, old attitudes and loyalties were on the wane.28 A new generational cohort had appeared, those born between 1930 and 1940, not yet adults during the Nazi era and untainted by its crimes, and now less authoritarian and more inclined to question traditional institutions. Catholic youth were clearly more receptive to the Hochhuth play than their parents, less inclined to dismiss the issues it raises because of its indictment of Pius XII. Indeed, historians have pointed to a process of “delegitimation” taking place in the 1960s, evidenced in growing Catholic alienation from the Amtskirche, that is, the official church.29 The Catholic Church’s Counterattack But if a lot of people were receptive to The Deputy this was hardly true of all Catholics. For many, the attack on the pope was viewed as undermining the papacy, the German church hierarchy, and Catholicism in general. Hochhuth was subjected to personal attacks. He was called a “servant of [Walter] Ulbricht,” the East German Communist Party chief, and his childhood membership in the Jungvolk, the branch of the Hitler Youth for ten- to fourteen-year-olds, was dredged up.30 Catholic officialdom was especially alarmed, for if the Vatican came to be seen as an accessory to genocide, the moral authority of the church would be sapped. Just two weeks after the play opened, German bishops



The Demolition of Pope Pius XII’s Reputation 25

met in an extraordinary plenary session to forge a common stand on the work of the fledgling playwright. Their declaration was a ringing defence of Pope Pius XII, who “deserved the gratitude of humanity” for raising “his voice against dreadful inhumanity, especially against the oppression and annihilation of persons and whole peoples, as it took place during and after the war.” The bishops emphasized the special gratitude Germans owed the pope, for the “helpfulness and sense of justice” he demonstrated to them after the “lost war,” which was why it was “particularly shameful” that his memory was being “desecrated” by Germans. In defending the pope’s response to atrocities, the bishops chose not to single out – as Hochhuth did – the genocide of European Jewry, but to group all atrocities together, including the post-war expulsion of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe. Branding criticism of the pope by Germans as ingratitude and a desecration, the bishops tried to close off debate on the pope’s actions. Concurrently, Karl Fürst zu Loewenstein, president of the Central Committee of German Catholics, declared that “we, as Germans” – implying Hochhuth and his supporters were somehow un-German – are outraged that a pope whom we think of with the “greatest love and reverence” is “being slandered in a most loathsome manner.”31 Going even further, the papal nuncio in Bonn, Bishop Corrado Bafile, wanted to pursue criminal charges against Hochhuth. He sought advice from the authorities as to whether the playwright could be charged with defaming a Christian institution or, alternatively, with defaming the memory of the dead. Laws on the books covered such cases, with prison sentences of up to two or three years, but Bishop Bafile was advised that in the current climate critics of the church had to be allowed a certain leeway.32 Finally, the Vatican pressed the ruling Christian Democrats for an official condemnation of the play. Following Bundestag rules of procedure, the Adenauer government set up a formal interpellation by nineteen CDU deputies, to which Foreign Minister Gerhard Schröder responded with uncommon speed. The deputies had repeated the conventional wisdom that Pius XII had actively aided Jews in the Nazi period, and again denounced German criticism of the pope, who had “stood especially close” to the German people. The government statement reiterated these points, stressing Pius XII’s leading post-war role in helping reconcile Germany and its former enemies and condemned “degradation” of the pope’s memory by Germans as “incomprehensible and regrettable.”33

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It is easy to understand the views of the Vatican nuncio, the bishops, and the German Catholic leadership. Hochhuth had condemned Pius XII for his record during the Nazi era, but in addition, he was also denouncing the pope’s post-war actions. By charging the German people with responsibility for the atrocities of their government, and by condemning the Federal Republic of Germany as a preserve for former Nazis, Hochhuth was driving a stake through Pius XII’s relationship with the German people. The pope had advocated tirelessly for Germans after the war: for speeding the return home of German prisoners of war, for ending the occupation of Germany by the four Allied powers, and against the charge of wide German responsibility for the crimes of the regime. The pope had spoken out against the expulsion of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe, which he labelled a violation of the Four Freedoms of the Atlantic Charter. At the investiture of new German cardinals in February 1946 Pope Pius XII had insisted, “It is meddling in the prerogatives of God to attribute collective guilt to a whole people and try to treat it accordingly.” Is it any wonder the pope enjoyed enormous regard in Germany after the war?34 Pope Pius XII had insisted German Catholics were untarnished by National Socialism. Even more, he claimed Catholics stood firm and resisted the Nazis. In a letter to Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber of Munich, the pope praised him for resisting the doctrines and practices of National Socialism, claiming that in doing so Faulhaber had had “the better part of your people on your side.” Pius XII called German Catholics martyrs and resisters, blurring the distinction between real martyrs, that is, those incarcerated or put to death for opposing measures of the regime, and “the millions of brave Catholics” who, in his view, remained faithful to the Roman Church.35 In the view of alarmed Catholic officialdom, Pius XII’s efforts to bolster the German church were now being threatened. Vatican policy in post-war Germany had been driven by political calculation. The papal interest lay in rehabilitating Germany to serve as a bulwark against Communism, and in strengthening conservative forces in Germany against Socialist anticlericals. A thorough purge of former Nazis would have weakened conservative forces in Germany and strengthened the left. Purges and trials would also have sparked a nationalist reaction, leaving former Nazis and other far-right elements unreconciled to the nascent Federal Republic under the Christian Democrats. But now, in the 1960s, when more Germans were intent on questioning their past,



The Demolition of Pope Pius XII’s Reputation 27

The Deputy was stirring up reminders that made papal policy look evasive, dishonest, and opportunistic.36 The church’s campaign against The Deputy went far beyond the borders of Germany. Shortly before the conclave that elected him Pope Paul VI in June 1963, Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Cardinal Montini wrote a long letter to the English Catholic weekly, the Tablet. Montini judged The Deputy to be an utter distortion of historical reality. He insisted that Pius XII would have replied with a clear conscience, and he said, “No effort on our part was lacking, nothing that anxious solicitude could suggest was left untried to prevent the horrors of mass deportation and exile.” During the war, Montini had been Vatican undersecretary of state. Pius XII had chosen not to take a public stance condemning Hitler for the destruction of Europe’s Jews, but according to Montini this hardly meant that the pope was complicit in their murder, or even indifferent. A public protest would have risked Nazi retaliation and “still greater calamities involving innumerable innocent victims.” Cardinal Montini did not let the matter rest with this letter. During his historic pilgrimage to the Holy Land in January 1964, as Pope Paul VI, he inserted a defence of Pius XII at a farewell ceremony at the Mandelbaum Gate in Jerusalem. Responding to a speech by the president of Israel, the pope insisted that the church harbours “only feelings of good will towards ... all peoples. The Church loves them all equally.” As for his “great predecessor ... everybody knows what he did for the defence and the rescue of all those caught in its [Second World War] tribulations, without distinction.” He then alluded to The Deputy, calling the accusations against Pius XII a “slight against such a venerated memory.” Fully two hundred and fifty reporters were gathered at the farewell ceremony: the pope had chosen an occasion that afforded him maximum exposure to a world audience. Even more, defending Pius XII before a respectful gathering of Jews gave added credibility to his words.37 Pope Paul VI’s interventions, almost one year after The Deputy was first performed in Berlin, show how much Hochhuth’s play had shaken the official church. The issue would not go away. The prominent American Jesuit scholar Robert Graham dismissed the play as “character assassination,” but such peremptory dismissal could no longer withstand the tide of approval for the play. The Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of the play opened in London in March 1964; that same month the play opened on Broadway. The New York production

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was another cause célèbre, with sold-out performances, noisy demonstrations, and the theatre scoured for bombs.38 Hochhuth was hastening a trend deeply critical of the Roman Catholic Church, one already stirring in the world of scholarship. By 1964 an impressive scholarly literature exposing Catholic equivocations during the Nazi period was making its way into print. For example, Saul Friedländer argued that the Vatican sought a rapprochement between the Allies and Nazi Germany in 1943, to combat the Soviet Union and the spread of Communism; if such a rapprochement allowed Germany a free hand to continue genocide, so be it. The historian Guenter Lewy agreed, and also insisted that during the war Christian antisemitism had stifled “moral outrage” over anti-Jewish atrocities. Alfred Kazin’s review of The Deputy in the New York Review of Books perfectly expressed the new view. Kazin believed the play exposed the widespread moral rot in European states and societies and in the church that had acted “as if it were permitted to shovel the Jews out like so much dirt.” And who best exemplified this rot but Pope Pius XII, “the one leader, whose Realpolitik symbolizes more than any other’s the moral failure of Europe during the war.” For Kazin, Pius XII symbolized it so well because his actions were in such immense contrast to the church’s self-avowed, self-glorifying pretension to uphold the moral law. Kazin shrewdly observed that those who believed “God is present in history, and that He once came to earth as man” should have done all in their power to protest the genocide of European Jewry, not out of love for the Jews, but in defence of Christianity.39 It did no harm to the acclaim for the play’s message that the post-war integration of former Nazis into the German government was now considered by many to be morally repugnant, rather than politically shrewd. The issue was stirred up again when the play appeared in New York, for it had just come out that a key minister in Chancellor Ludwig Erhard’s CDU government (1963–66), Dr Hans Krüger, had been a Nazi judge in Poland. Even worse, while the chancellor was on a December 1963 visit to US President Lyndon Johnson’s ranch, it came out that the head of his security detail, Ewald Peters, who had accompanied the chancellor on this and other state visits, was accused and soon after arrested for his wartime membership in a squad assigned to open-air mass shootings of civilians in the Soviet Union. Peters committed suicide in prison. The church could no longer afford to meet The Deputy with the silence of disdain, nor with moral intimidation or sanctimonious polemics. These responses no longer stemmed the tide of criticism.40



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Pope Paul VI then decided to take the high road; the play would be challenged on the basis of the documentary evidence. Perhaps the Vatican’s most constructive response to the impact of Rolf Hochhuth’s play was the pope’s directive to publish a broad selection of documents from the archives of the Holy See covering the period of the Second World War. The decision went far ahead of the customary delay in making papal documents available. Thus the Actes et Documents du SaintSiège relatifs à la Seconde Guerre mondiale (Records and Documents of the Holy See Relating to the Second World War; hereafter ADSS) came into being. The documents for the ADSS were selected and edited by four Jesuit scholars, and appeared in eleven volumes published between 1965 and 1981. This collection quickly became an essential resource for research on the Vatican’s response to the war. I shall discuss it at length in chapter 3. The Defence of Pius XII Undermined by Vatican Council II German society was changing, becoming more liberal, democratic, and individualistic: this partially explains the timeliness of The Deputy, the passions it aroused, and the far-flung debate about Pius XII unleashed by the play. In line with these changes were the new expectations of the church spurred by the pontificate of Pius XII’s successor, Pope John XXIII (1958–63), when he convoked Vatican Council II. John’s pontificate seemed at the time to usher in a virtual revolution in the church, which then altered retrospective judgments about the pontificate of Pius XII. The promise of spectacular reforms put Pius XII’s papacy in the shade, and helped sink his reputation. These seemingly radical changes must be discussed before we judge how they affected opinion about Pius XII. The Council was to be genuinely ecumenical, bringing together Catholic bishops from all over the world, all countries and cultures. In all, twenty-six hundred Catholic bishops attended the assembly, which met in four separate sessions from 1962 to 1965. Pope John summoned the Council in December 1961, to begin meeting in the fall of the following year. Calling for the Council, John issued an apostolic constitution, Humanae Salutis (Of Human Salvation) that went to the heart of the changing face of the church in the 1960s. In this document the pope gave a progressive reading of the biblical verse about discerning the “signs of the times” (Matt. 16:4) by pointing to the work of the Holy Spirit in contemporary history: in scientific progress, in the wider sense

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of a common human destiny exemplified by the United Nations, and in social and economic progress. The explanation of this pronouncement by Peter Hebblethwaite, Pope John XXIII’s biographer, deserves to be quoted in full: “John broke down the false dichotomies between the Church (holy) and the world (sinful), between grace and nature, between eternal salvation and temporal commitment. One may distinguish between them, but they are different aspects of one reality.” The Roman Church was not to stand apart self-protectively from the struggles of humanity, for the struggle to enhance human rights and human emancipation, making the temporal world “more human,” also favoured the work of saving souls.41 Pope John’s opening speech to the Council chastised “those prophets of gloom” who “can see nothing but prevarication and ruin” in the modern world. The term used by Pope John to encapsulate what Vatican II stood for was “Aggiornamento,” or updating, modernization, adaptation. Catholics were to abandon their fortress mentality, their tendency to dig in their heels, and to stress their alienation from the modern world, which had been the stance of the church since the nineteenth century. The Second Vatican Council’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes (Joy and Hope), promulgated on 7 December 1965, speaks of the need for the faithful to “live in very close union with the men of their time.” In the words of Avery Dulles, an American Jesuit theologian, Gaudium et Spes expressed “great respect for the truth and goodness that had been brought into the world through modernization.” This optimistic embrace of the modern world included an affirmation of the rights of the individual and freedom of conscience as well as an emphasis on the Roman Church’s role in promoting social justice. Values such as freedom, tolerance, and democracy were no alien scourge, but the work of a benevolent God. Accenting these themes awakened the promise of a church engaged in the universal struggles of humanity and in the defence of human rights.42 Pope John’s encyclical of 15 May 1961, Mater et Magistra (Church as Mother and Teacher), saw humanity’s increasing interdependence on a global scale through technology as in accord with Catholic teaching about human interdependence and universality. The encyclical’s social theory endorsed the modern welfare state and agencies of the United Nations such as the International Labour Organization and the Food and Agricultural Organization. Perhaps most important about the encyclical was its tone. Well-known nineteenth- and twentieth-century



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encyclicals, such as Pius IX’s 1864 Quanta Cura (Condemning Current Errors), which accompanied his notorious Syllabus of Errors, or the 1907 Pascendi (On the Doctrine of the Modernists) of Pius X, all reflected a siege mentality towards the modern world and its secularism, liberalism, and individualism. In Timothy ­McCarthy’s words, the shift heralded by Pope John XXIII was from a notion of the Roman Church as a “fortress of truth in an alien world” to one emphasizing “solidarity between the Church and the whole human race.”43 A second encyclical by Pope John XXIII, the April 1963 Pacem in Terris (Peace on Earth – On Establishing Universal Peace in Truth, Justice, Charity and Liberty), welcomed contemporary developments, which promised an expansion of human rights. It upheld the right of religious worship in accordance with conscience, the rights of minorities and refugees, and it strongly endorsed democracy as a guarantor of those rights. The encyclical welcomed progressive trends in the modern world: the improved social and economic conditions of working people, women’s participation in public affairs, and the end of European imperialism.44 Vatican Council II and the Reappraisal of Catholic Anti-Judaism In line with all these changes, John XXIII’s pontificate promised a new attitude to Judaism and the Jews. The promise began with a dramatic gesture in 1959, when the pope interrupted the liturgy during the Good Friday prayer for the conversion of the Jews, and ordered the word perfidi removed. A Catholic scholar has explained the significance of this gesture. The Latin Good Friday prayer consisted of nine petitions, one of which, to quote and paraphrase Kathryn Sullivan’s lucid analysis was “for the turning to Christ of the children of Israel.” The original Latin text referring to the Jews used the words “perfidia” and “perfidus” which mean “unbelief” and “unbelieving.” When the prayer was later translated into the vernacular, it appeared in English as “‘unfaithful,’ ‘faithless,’ or even ‘perfidious’; in French perfide; in German treulos or untreu,” all terms of vilification. In the new post-war spirit of Catholic reform, a number of scholars went back to the sources, claiming perfidia meant nothing more than “unbelief.” Along these lines Sullivan cites the church historian Monsignor Charles Jouret who insisted that Jewish unbelief is blameless, a veil covering their eyes that God’s love will eventually lift. Sullivan’s analysis reflects the spirit of Catholic reform. But how significant was the prayer in times gone by?

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Good Friday was part of Holy Week, which commemorated Christ’s Passion, the last week of his life culminating in his crucifixion. In medieval times the authorities ordered Jews to stay in their homes during Holy Week, to avoid being attacked by Christians. There were such attacks, often with stones or beatings, usually if Jews were caught on the street. Graphic processions of the bleeding corpse of Christ spurred these attacks. Norman Roth has cited incidents when Jews were protected from attacks by the authorities, and when the perpetrators were punished. Far more lethal were developments beginning in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when Jews were accused of murdering Christian children to use their blood to bake unleavened bread (matzah) for Passover, or desecrating the Host, or poisoning the wells to bring on the Black Death. In all these ways Jews, mortal enemies of Christianity, children of the devil and the anti-Christ, were forever re-enacting the murder of God. These accusations provided the justification for mass expulsions, torture, burnings at the stake, and the murder of thousands of Jews in France, Spain, and Germany. Nevertheless, whatever the comparative degree of anti-Jewish violence, Catholic reformers now aimed for a new beginning in Catholic-Jewish relations. Of the nine petitions of intercession in the Good Friday prayer, the one for the Jews was the only one in which the genuflection (bending the knee) was omitted, ostensibly because Jews had bent the knee derisively before Christ. After the Second World War, organizations promoting Christian-Jewish reconciliation, which included prominent French Catholics, had submitted their objections to Pope Pius XII over these anti-Jewish insults. The pope turned the matter over to the Vatican’s Sacred Congregation of Rites, which agreed to introduce the genuflection into the prayer for the Jews, but insisted on letting the text of the prayer stand, proposing that new translations of the term perfidi should be used, such as “infidelity” and “infidel in matters of faith.” These were stingy concessions. Pius XII apparently did not believe the church had a need to re-examine its teachings on Judaism and the Jews after the Holocaust. Pope John XIII, on the other hand, did.45 An equally dramatic gesture followed in October 1960, when John met with a delegation of American Jews. Recalling the biblical Joseph’s words when his estranged brothers appeared before him in Egypt and failed to recognize him, the pope uttered the poignant phrase: “I am Joseph, your brother,” using his own name Giuseppe, the Italian for Joseph. A Catholic journal commented, “In saying, ‘Son’io, Giuseppe, il



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Fratello vostro,’ the Holy Father was … for an instant, divesting himself of the glory of his office.” In this gesture of “affection,” the pope was placing himself on the same footing with his Jewish visitors. More than enough blood had been spilled over the differences in Catholic and Jewish belief, and John XXIII wished to celebrate “the brotherhood that comes from common origin.” His simple statement, not revolutionary in substance, indeed with pedigree in Catholic doctrine, heralded important changes. Uttered with disarming simplicity by a personality of exceptional warmth and charm, its impact was magnified. In another precedent-setting act, in March 1962 Pope John XXIII blessed a group of Jews leaving the Rome synagogue. His automobile was passing just as services had come to a close, and he had the car’s roof raised to greet them. This has been judged the first time in history that a pope extended blessings to Jews.46 These were issues to which Pius XII had shown himself tone deaf. In a 1945 audience with a group of seventy Jewish displaced persons, Pius indulged in the usual self-congratulation. He declared Jewish rescue the great achievement of the church in the Second World War, for the Roman Church stood above “the narrow and arbitrary limits created by human egoism and racial passions.” The pope certainly acknowledged that Jews had been victims of “fanatic antisemitism” during the war, but all this had nothing to do with the church. Indeed, after the delegation thanked the pope for his “generosity’ to persecuted Jews during the war and sought his support for a Jewish state in Palestine, he pointedly reminded them that God’s grace is offered to those “of all languages and races … who seek the Lord in spirit and in truth.” Not surprisingly, an authorized edition of his speeches, declarations, and encyclicals published in 1955, contains not a word about antisemitism or Jewish victimization in the Second World War. There is no indication Pius XII ever thought the church’s passive stance during the destruction of European Jewry required a change in its view of Jewry or Judaism. After the war, the Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain, French ambassador to the Vatican from 1944 to 1948, pressed Pius to issue an encyclical on Judaism and the Jews, while French clerics urged the pope to revise schoolbooks and catechisms, which portrayed the Jews as deicides. All their efforts came to nothing.47 On the other hand, Jules Isaac, French Jewish historian and author of Jésus et Israël, meeting with Pope John XXIII in 1960, persuaded the pope to form a commission that would issue a statement on the Jews. The end result after five years was Nostra Aetate (In Our Time) or

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“Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions.” John’s initiatives culminated in the precedent-setting statement on the Jews in the Vatican II declaration, issued in October 1965. Three key statements will illustrate the radical change in the Catholic Church’s view of Jews and Judaism that followed: (1)“The Jews should not be presented as repudiated or accursed by God, as if such views followed from the Holy Scriptures.” (2) “God holds the Jews most dear for the sake of their Fathers.” (3) “The Church … decries hatred, persecution, displays of anti-Semitism directed against Jews at any time and by anyone.” In this view, Jews were no longer commanded by God to wander the world in a marginalized condition, repudiated as Christ killers. The story of this decree has been told with great skill and discernment by John Connelly in From Enemy to Brother: The Revolution in Catholic Teachings on the Jews, 1933–1965. Connelly shows how the initiative behind the decree came from small groups of Catholics, a number of them of Jewish and Protestant origin. They were not the first, for small groups of Catholics going back to the 1920s had made efforts to revise Catholic views on Judaism, often on the grounds that Catholic hostility to Judaism was not helpful to the mission of converting Jews. Connelly concludes that beyond these small groups, few Catholics were interested in revisiting Judaism in the post-war years. These small groups had to establish a theological justification for a favourable view of Judaism, and they found it in the New Testament in “The Letter of Paul to the Romans,” chapter 11. For example, “as regards election they [Israel] are beloved, for the sake of their ancestors; for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.” Similar passages exist, all pointing to the end goal of the conversion of the Jews, yet these passages do not picture Jews as cursed, punished by God, or as Christ killers. However, the Vatican II decree omitted any mention of the conversion of the Jews. Even with its theological grounding, the decree largely depended upon the efforts of Pope John XXIII and Augustin Cardinal Bea, who took the decree out of the hands of the intractable Roman Curia (the Vatican departments through which the pope rules) and turned it over to a handpicked subcommittee. In this sense the decree was imposed from above, a great advantage of an authoritarian church. Nevertheless, the decree passed the Council by a one-sided majority of 221 to 88. The favourable vote was in part, perhaps in large part, due to the long reach of Hochhuth’s play. One of the Vatican’s appointed expert theological advisers (peritus) worried that a weak draft would lead to a “new Hochhuth affair,” and Connelly finds mention of the Hochhuth play repeatedly in the



The Demolition of Pope Pius XII’s Reputation 35

transcripts of the Council. It may be that the overwhelmingly favourable vote for the decree resulted from a fear of scandal or adverse backlash on the part of the bishops of the Council. Nevertheless, as Connelly notes, the decree was now “authoritative Church teaching.”48 Pope Pius XII and Pope John XXIII Compared Vatican Council II held its first session in October 1962, just five months prior to the Berlin production of The Deputy. While the play savaged Pope Pius XII’s reputation, the Council promised a new era for the church. One historian has spoken of the “council euphoria” of that era, the heady feeling that a new epoch was dawning in the church. In the new climate, it was inevitable that Pius XII’s reputation would sink like a stone.49 Pius XII’s reputation sank so low in the eyes of many that the contrasts between his and Pope John XXIII’s pontificates were overdrawn. Pius XII was not exactly the obscurantist he was made out to be. W.A. Purdy has pointed to his pragmatic, though not principled, acceptance of state policies of religious pluralism, his qualified endorsement of democracy in his Christmas address of 1944, his early and consistent championing of the idea of world community, and his call for ending material want. These were small steps forward, but they were steps forward all the same. Sometimes timing is all. There is nothing in Pope John XXIII’s 1963 encyclical Pacem in Terris (Peace on Earth) on the suicidal futility of war in a nuclear age or the need for disarmament treaties that Pius XII had not already said over the years. Purdy concluded that the difference between their utterances was that John’s encyclical received far more attention because it came after the apocalyptic panic of the Cuban missile crisis and the beginning of test ban treaty negotiations. On doctrinal issues, too, Pius XII can be credited with some openness in adapting Catholicism to modern discoveries and developments. The September 1943 encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu (On Sacred Scripture) approved the use of the modern historical and literary disciplines – history, archaeology, ethnology, and philology – in the study of the Bible. Richard McBrien has called the encyclical the “Magna Carta of Catholic biblical scholarship.” The 1947 encyclical Mediator Dei (On the Sacred Liturgy) gave approval to the liturgical movement by allowing the increased use of native languages in the liturgy, which meant an enlarged role for the laity in worship. The movement was a reaction to worship in Latin voiced solely by the clergy on behalf of passive

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lay subjects, and a step in the direction of a laity less subordinate to clerical direction. John Mahoney has described modest steps that Pius took in the 1943 encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi (The Mystical Body of Christ, the Church) to expand the circle of possible salvation beyond the Catholic faithful. In a speech on the twenty-fifth anniversary of Pius XII’s papacy, Julius Cardinal Döpfner, archbishop of Munich-Freising, insisted that Mystici Corporis Christi brought “new life to the image of the Church, which up to then had been predominately legalistic.” Archibishop Döpfner even credited Pius with “the preparatory move towards the liberal new beginnings” of Vatican Council II. As a last point here, in 1949, in a move that shocked some Catholic theologians, Pius XII allowed Catholics to participate in ecumenical discussions with other Christians and to engage in shared prayer at the beginning or end of these meetings. Surprisingly, this was after a 1948 Monitum of the Holy Office warned that such meetings encouraged religious relativism and that what divided Catholics from other Christians was more important than what united them.50 But this side of the pontificate of Pius XII, still noted at the time of his death, was later eclipsed by the far bolder achievements of his successor. For all their convergence of views, there were important differences between Pius XII and John XXIII, both in tone and in substance. Purdy shows how Pius’ recognition of the need for change was always highly cautious and circumscribed. Even Döpfner spoke of “a certain reserve” in Pius’ steps forward. Purdy speaks of a “note of concession” hanging over his more progressive pronouncements, implying that the pope understood the need for change intellectually, though not emotionally. One example was Pius XII’s endorsement of democracy in a 1944 Christmas radio message, where he made sure to remind his listeners that essential to democracy were wise leaders “of solid Christian convictions” who would keep people from going “astray.” Such reservations prompted Purdy to comment that Pius’ tone is that “democracy is allowed.”51 Even worse, Eamon Duffy calls the forward-looking encyclicals a “false dawn,” for Pius XII later feared he had unleashed forces speeding out of control. The 1950 encyclical Humani Generis (On Human Origin) warned against trends that reframed dogmas in modern theological terms, and against the potential dangers of ecumenism. Instead of endorsing Catholic theological pluralism in areas outside basic doctrine, Pius XII called for a return to neo-Thomism as the official Catholic theology and philosophy. Consequently, distinguished progressive



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theologians such as the French Dominicans Yves Congar and MarieDominique Chenu were forbidden to teach or publish. That same year Pius proclaimed the dogma of the Assumption of Mary, the ascension of her body and soul directly into heaven upon her death. Although he had canvassed bishops beforehand and found a wide consensus, Pius XII pointedly made this proclamation without benefit of a church council. As such, he was the second pope after Pius IX to use the powers of papal primacy decreed in 1871 by the First Vatican Council, which allowed the pope to establish a dogma without benefit of a formal church council. This move undermined ecumenism as well, since nonCatholic Christian churches were unsympathetic to the cult of Mary and to the pope unilaterally defining dogma. Continuing in this direction, in 1954, Pius XII canonized Pope Pius X (1903–14), famous for launching a root-and-branch campaign against what he saw as theological modernism, imposing a special oath on clergy renouncing modernism, a term that became a broad and undiscriminating catch-all label. The repressive climate fostered by Pius X encouraged what Frank Coppa, a church historian, calls an “anti-modernist witchhunt.”52 By contrast, Pope John XXIII embraced change. Under his pontificate a new image of the Catholic Church emerged, one no longer defensively confronting the secular world and its dangers, or concentrated on maintaining church rights and privileges. Instead, this was a church unafraid of adapting the great achievements of secularism, liberalism, and humanism and harmonizing them with Catholic teaching. This church saw in democracy, liberty, pluralism, human rights, and an end to material want values in accord with the Gospel. This church addressed “all men of good will” in a universal language. Finally, Purdy observes that John “pitched papal authority to a lower key.” Pope John XXIII seemed instinctively attuned to the mood of his time, with its democratic suspicion of authority.53 The Pope Is the Church I will put what may seem a disingenuous question. As Rolf Hochhuth had concentrated blame on the person of Pope Pius XII for his actions during the Second World War, why did Catholic Church leaders react so vehemently? Surely they could endure a flawed pope without endless efforts at apologetics. After all, the doctrine of papal primacy referred to infallible pronouncements on “faith and morals” and to papal governance of the church. Papal political stances were not considered infallible.

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Moreover, the church had survived flawed popes in the past: Alexander VI, the notorious Rodrigo Borgia, bribed his way into the papacy and showed open contempt for his vow of celibacy by using the papal office to benefit his children. The church had also lived with condemnations of individual popes: in his Catholic epic The Divine Comedy, Dante had placed Pope Celestine V in hell. What is more, the papacy had in the past engaged in self-criticism. In 1522 Pope Hadrian (or Adrian) VI sent a delegate to Germany to try to heal the split in Christianity brought on by Martin Luther; the delegate was instructed to acknowledge abuses in the church reaching up to the Holy See, where “many abominations have taken place.” And he was to promise they would be corrected. By contrast, church apologists for Pius XII insisted his character was noble and his judgments flawless, and that criticism of his wartime stance was tantamount to blasphemy. Timothy McCarthy answers this question about the differential treatment of popes by commenting that the hierarchy had been so identified with the church that the laity often referred to the church as “they.” Progressive Catholics were critical of this trend, seeing in it an excessive assertion of papal centralization, diminishing the role of bishops and the laity. For church apologists, Pius XII’s reputation had to be defended at all costs because the pope was the church. Attacks on Pius were now seen as attacks on the Catholic Church as a whole.54 In the appendix to his play, “Sidelights on History,” Hochhuth targets the revered pope, no doubt aware there could be no greater provocation. He certainly understood what was at stake. Hochhuth has the priest Riccardo Fontana insist, “The silence of the Pope ... imposes a guilt upon the Church for which we must atone.” The silence must be atoned for, because “the concept of the Papacy must be preserved pure for all eternity.” For Hochhuth, it was less important that Riccardo Fontana, a simple priest, do something; it was essential that the pope do something, for the pope was the church. Certainly, the official church considered Hochhuth’s condemnation of Pius XII as an attack on the heart of Catholicism. As the papacy gained in importance in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the pope and Catholicism had come to be seen as interchangeable.55 How did the pope become so closely identified with Catholicism? There were historical reasons for this. During the nineteenth century, popes sought greater power within the church. With the proclamation of papal primacy or primacy of jurisdiction at Vatican Council I (1869–70), popes used their enhanced prestige to claim the exclusive right to



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select bishops, to discourage synods of bishops, and to not only define essential dogmas, but also control Catholic intellectual and academic life. Papal centralization was a matter of self-defence. Popes had actually claimed these exclusive rights even before Vatican Council I in order to check the trend to state churches controlled by absolute monarchs. These states wished to dominate or at least veto clerical appointments, regulate clerical orders, and grant or refuse permission to publicize pastoral letters or to hold pilgrimages. For example, necessities of state led Prussia in the early nineteenth century to require priests to bless mixed marriages of Protestants and Catholics. Papal authority over national churches was meant to provide a necessary counterweight to state control over religious life. In addition, papal power guaranteed the international character of the church, for without it rulers would appoint bishops whose first loyalty was to them, and Catholicism would end up a loose association of national churches, lacking unity, and subject to schism – making a mockery of its claims as a world church. Later on, advancing liberalism and anticlericalism brought the separation of church and state, which reduced the state’s jurisdiction over religion, but also the church’s former influence in society and public life. Secular ideologies like liberalism and socialism thus accelerated the trend to centralization in the church. In the modern age the church lacked the direct or indirect use of the instruments of temporal power, which once allowed it recourse to civil penalties, imprisonment, even burning those considered heretics; papal centralization now seemed to provide self-defence. As a result the more democratic states became, the more monarchical the papacy became.56 To shore up papal power, the dogma of Papal Infallibility was approved in 1870 by the First Vatican Council. Although the notion of papal infallibility went back to medieval times, no pope took it upon himself to singly proclaim a dogma until 1854 when Pius IX proclaimed the Immaculate Conception of Mary: that she was born free from original sin. In pronouncing on Catholic doctrine, infallibility had been traditionally believed to reside in the church as a whole, arrived at by agreement after wide discussion, and represented by a consensus of bishops and the pope. Now it seemed to be possessed separately by the pope and to become a kind of “personal infallibility.” Most important, popes stretched their enhanced authority to cover papal encyclicals on morals, doctrine, and matters of discipline, and, as well, decrees of Vatican councils. These pronouncements were not

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dogmas or fundamental truths of the faith guaranteed by papal infallibility. Rather, they were called non-definitive teachings, which at some future time might be shown to be in error. Nevertheless, Pius XII claimed, “Nor must it be thought that what is expounded in Encyclical Letters does not of itself demand consent, since in writing such Letters the Popes do not exercise the supreme power of their Teaching Authority. For these matters are taught with the ordinary teaching authority, of which it is true to say: ‘He who heareth you, heareth me’ (Luke 10:16) … But if the Supreme Pontiffs in their official documents purposely pass judgment on a matter up to that time under dispute, it is obvious that that matter, according to the mind and will of the same Pontiffs, cannot be any longer considered a question open to discussion among theologians.” To the prominent church historian Roger Aubert, Pius XII saw himself as “the universal doctor, implying that the rest of the Church had only to receive his teaching and pass it on.”57 In addition to the centralization of power, personal devotion to the pope reached new heights in modern times. The trend was initiated by Pius IX (1846–78), or Pio Nono, who broke with the tradition that isolated popes from the people, walked among the Roman faithful, and held mass audiences. A personality cult flourished around him, displayed in jubilee celebrations, the revival of Peter’s pence, pilgrimages to Rome, and mass-produced images of the pope. The German historian Werner Blessing has credited this papal cult with having “an integration and identification function” unprecedented in the history of the papacy. Pius XII continued on this path, bolstering devotion to the pope by holding court frequently with public personalities, holding mass audiences, issuing public pronouncements on a gamut of subjects, and staging great spectacles like Holy Year 1950, when millions of pilgrims descended on Rome. Giuseppe Alberigo writes that devotion to Pius XII “reached summits.” In Thomas Bokenkotter’s view, Pius XII “carried to new heights the almost mythical exaltation of the monarchical papacy.”58 Pope Pius XII, Pope John XXIII, and the Conservative-Progressive Divide The deliberations of Vatican II promised a new direction for the Catholic Church in keeping with the post–Second World War triumph of liberal democracy. But behind the scenes the manoeuvres during Council deliberations were more complicated. Vatican II was a reformist coup,



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in which a progressive majority of bishops triumphed over a traditionalist minority. But the minority was not without influence, and many Council documents were loosely worded, usually the results of compromises between progressives and traditionalists. As is often the case, reformers justified their new agenda not by repudiating the past, but by citing pedigree in the past. For example, Christus Dominus (Christ the Lord), the Decree on the Pastoral Office of Bishops in the Church, of 28 October 1965, acknowledged the supreme authority of the pope over the church, while calling for a more collegial relationship between the pope and the church’s bishops. Although the Council stressed the key importance of working for social justice, there was room for traditionalists to emphasize the catechism, the sacraments, and the liturgy as the cornerstone of salvation. The compromise passage reads: “Christ, to be sure, gave his Church no proper mission in the political, economic, or social order. The purpose, which He set before her, was a religious one. But out of this religious mission itself came a function, a light and an energy which can serve to structure and consolidate the human community according to the divine law.” To show pedigree in the past, Gaudium et Spes (Joy and Hope), the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, cited a 1936 statement by Pius XI: “It is necessary never to lose sight of the fact that the objective of the Church is to evangelize, not to civilize. If it civilizes, it is for the sake of evangelization.” To this was added a 1956 statement by Pius XII: “The Church can never lose sight of the strictly religious, supernatural goal. The meaning of all its activities … can only cooperate directly or indirectly in this goal.” The wording was a compromise between progressives and traditionalists.59 In the encyclicals of the 1940s, Pius XII had moved cautiously to accommodate to new religious trends, to very guardedly endorse his vision of democracy and to accept the reality of religious pluralism, though only pragmatically, not on principle. But if Pius took some positions foreshadowing those of John, what stood out were the differences between them. Not Pius, but John convoked the Vatican Council. Pius relied on the entrenched Roman Curia, the Vatican bureaucracy based in Rome, to lead the church. By calling the Council, John bypassed the Curia and put the agenda in the hands of an ecumenical council of bishops from the four corners of the globe. The Council could not be tightly controlled. Convoking it was the drastic and confident act of a bold reformer. Progressives triumphed over conservatives, and the Council concluded in an atmosphere of euphoria.60

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One year after the Council opened, Julius Cardinal Döpfner of Munich-Freising, who voted with the progressives, reflected that at his death Pius XII “was esteemed and revered by the whole world.” Many thought “he had brought the line of great popes to an acme,” and wondered whether his greatness would ever be matched. Now, a brief five years after his death, Döpfner went on, “not a few regard Pius XII and his pontificate as the end of a bygone, conservative, even reactionary epoch in the history of the Church.” In the cardinal’s view, Pius XII was being diminished by unfair comparisons to his successor. Such contrasts highlighted the pope’s ultra-conservative phase in the 1950s, which overshadowed his more forward-looking accomplishments.61 It was at Vatican Council II that the reputations of Pius XII and John XXIII first became frozen in mutual opposition, the merits of John highlighting the defects of Pius. John died in June 1963. That October churchmen in the Council’s reformist camp proposed that John be canonized by acclamation of the Council, which was the way the ancient church had once proclaimed saints. The canonization would strengthen the hand of the reformist camp, which feared the new pope, Paul VI, would lose heart for reform when faced with the sharp divisions in the Council. Traditionalists in the Council saw this proposal as an effort to downgrade the revered Pius XII. This suspicion was not far-fetched, for theologians silenced by Pius were now an influential force in the Council. Thus, a counter-proposal emerged, that Pius XII be declared a saint by the Council instead. Not wanting to deepen divisions, Pope Paul VI responded in November 1965 with a compromise: neither proposal for canonization would be decided by acclamation of the Council, but both would go to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, to be decided by established procedures. The cause of Pius and John was now intertwined with the cause of traditionalism and reform in the Catholic Church. As Kenneth Woodward has written, “The conflict between progressives and conservatives within the council became crystallized around the contrasting figures of John XXIII and Pius XII. They in turn symbolized two different conceptions of the church, especially in its relations with the outside world.” Unquestionably, they differed widely in style and policies. During the 1960s John’s reign had made Pius appear, in retrospect, as the last in a line of retrograde, absolutist popes. Woodward observes that given Pius XII’s faded reputation, he would not have been proposed for canonization in the 1960s, if not for the traditionalist-reformist rivalry in the Council.62



The Demolition of Pope Pius XII’s Reputation 43

The Mission of the Catholic Church The progressive direction set by Vatican II helped spur a vast literature of controversy around Pope Pius XII’s role during the Nazi era. Much of the controversy revolved around the nature and mission of the Catholic Church, just the issue that had preoccupied the Council. Martin Greschat has provided a striking example of this sort of dispute from the Protestant Church, centring on the Lutheran (Evangelical) pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer who was executed by the Nazis in 1945 for his involvement in the 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler. In the 1950s Bonhoeffer was revered and eulogized for his unconquerable piety. He was seen as a suffering Christian witness and martyr with unyielding trust in God, thus primarily as a defender of the Christian faith. The measurement for heroism was different by the 1970s: the accent now lay on Bonhoeffer’s political activism and participation in the 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler. The issue had shifted from the churches’ struggles to preserve their autonomy under National Socialism to their contribution to the general struggle against Nazism. In that perspective such events as the Catholic protest against the removal of crucifixes from schools in 1936, and the public reading of Pope Pius XI’s encyclical Mit brennender Sorge in churches on Palm Sunday 1937, though certainly brave, now fell under the heading of religious self-preservation, judged by itself an inadequate response to National Socialism. Greschat put this starkly: it had become a question, “not only of the rights of the church but of all human beings.” Greschat captured a new trend. Such distinction has since been formulated by others. Michael Geyer has evaluated resisters by their ability to build alliances with other persecuted groups. Claudia Koonz has spoken of “single-issue dissent,” or opposition to specific Nazi policies, but not to others. Both make a distinction between, on the one hand, opposition to Nazi policies when specific church interests were involved, while asserting overall loyalty to the Nazi state, and, on the other hand, opposition to the Nazi state. Kevin Spicer has used the term Resistenz, coined by the prominent German historian Martin Broszat, in contrast to Widerstand, which signified political opposition to the Nazi state. Spicer provides an example of the former: German priests adapted to the Nazi state, and “limited their criticism to situations that either directly affected their sacramental ministry or threatened the promulgation of Church doctrine and teaching.” To the same end, Beth Griech-Polelle uses the term “selective opposition.”63

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The issue of self-preservation of the institutional church versus the defence of universal human rights was played out in the pages of the Catholic intellectual journal, Herder-Korrespondenz, in its May 1963 issue. An unsigned article on The Deputy claimed the pope did speak out in his Christmas message of 1942. His language was indirect, the word “Jews” and the word “Germany” were never uttered: for example, the pope spoke of “the hundreds of thousands of persons who, without any fault on their part, sometimes only because of their nationality or race, have been consigned to death or to a slow decline.” The pope went no further, the article contended, because Pius XII had feared that unvarnished and specific protest would have been like a red flag to a bull, a direct challenge to the authority of the German state that Hitler could not afford to let pass, and that could well bring massive and brutal retaliation against the Roman Church and the Jews. Contrary to Hochhuth, these were the limited alternatives Pius XII was forced to consider. Silence was a difficult, even agonizing choice for him, one between lesser evils. To cap its argument, the Herder-Korrespondenz cited a report by an Italian journalist who had spoken with Pacelli in the 1920s when he was papal nuncio to Germany, about the violent persecution of the Catholic clergy in Mexico. The journalist had asked him, “Can the Holy See not make a forceful pronouncement?” To which Pacelli had replied that the Holy See had done all it could and that “a spectacular act would possibly do more harm than good.” Pacelli had responded to the persecution of the Catholic Church in Mexico the same way he was later to respond to the destruction of European Jewry, by weighing the consequences of acting.64 After defending the pope with this argument, the Herder-­Korrespondenz turned full circle and asked whether weighing consequences was the role of the church. Echoing the discussions at Vatican II, the author insisted the church was “moral guardian” to the world, particularly when fundamental human rights were under attack. The anonymous author wished to go beyond “sanctuary Christianity,” to reach out to the world, to present the universalistic face of the church to non-Catholics.65 Views on church goals could clash. Discussion at Vatican II centred around what priority to give the mission of “apostolate of peace and social justice” within the church’s mission of proclaiming Christ as Saviour and providing the instruments of eternal salvation to the faithful. Without denying the priority of the latter mission, the Herder-Korrespondenz article placed great weight on peace and justice. The article claimed that one could not calculate consequences, as the pope had done, and



The Demolition of Pope Pius XII’s Reputation 45

at the same time uphold moral absolutes that derived from the Gospels and Catholic teaching on natural law. This was all the more true in the case of the horrifying crime of genocide. In the debate on Pius XII, the sides were often joined around the issue of the mission of the Catholic Church: was it upholding the moral law or was it first of all, pastoral, that is, keeping the churches open, providing the sacraments to the faithful, and keeping the faithful within the fold of the church? Or was it both, and what was the balance between them?66 Historians usually do not deal explicitly with theological issues such as the proper mission of the church. However, they do hold at least implicit moral assumptions. For example, many historians – certainly in English-speaking countries – consider Eugenio Pacelli’s role in the interwar period and beyond to be one of moral failure. This will become clear when we examine the evidence uncovered since the 1960s. But perhaps there is some rush to judgment on the part of historians who share the liberal and humanitarian moral values of a later age. No doubt the historian’s task is to render judgment, but first he or she must provide historical context, the particular circumstances within which historical agents make their choices. Pius XII and John XXIII reigned in different eras. John’s five-year pontificate (1958–63) came well after the Second World War, which had set Catholics against Catholics, well after the Nazi persecution of the church had ended, after the high point of Communist oppression of the church had passed, and most important, after the triumph of pluralistic democracy in Western Europe. John XXIII could dispense with the cautious strategies of institutional self-defence that marked the nineteenyear pontificate of Pius XII who confronted grave threats in fascism, war, and atheistic communism. Differing levels of threat influenced their responses to events. The questions for historians are what were Eugenio Pacelli’s options during the interwar period and then during the Second World War and what choices did he make and why, both as Vatican secretary of state under Pope Pius XI and later as pope himself? The next chapter will examine the debate on the concordat, or treaty, signed by the Vatican and the German government during the first year of Nazi rule, 1933, and offer some conclusions about Eugenio Pacelli’s options and choices.

Chapter Two

The Vatican and Nazi Germany: The 1933 Concordat

The concordats secure the free practice of Catholicism to all the Catholic subjects of the various powers. They secure a legal existence for the religious orders and for the various lay societies through which Catholicism is corporatively active. They guarantee to the State the loyalty of its Catholic subjects as a religious duty and … they eliminate all chance that a Catholic shall ever be torn between his religious duty and the will of the temporal ruler. Philip Hughes, “Pius the Eleventh”

So where are your bishops? In the old days when a stage play was given that didn’t suit them, they were always there. But now, when thousands of people are being murdered, no one gets in the pulpit and breathes even a word … You’ll see that the bishops want to make a concordat so they are protected and we can all go to hell together. A young Communist to the Bavarian nobleman Erwin von Aretin in summer 1933, in the Stadelheim prison where bothwere being held.In Klaus Scholder, The Churches and the Third Reich

Cardinal Secretary of State Pacelli: Gravedigger of German Democracy? During the 1960s many came to believe Pope Pius XII had squandered the moral authority of the papacy and, by extension, of the Roman Catholic Church. His faults were many: a single-minded devotion to institutional self-preservation coupled with little commitment to the rights and lives of the non-Catholic rest of humanity; official neutrality during the Second World War , which was a war of defence against Nazi



The 1933 Concordat 47

aggression and racist atrocities; an understanding attitude towards Catholic antisemitism; and, finally, his advocacy of papal centralization and authoritarian control of all aspects of the church. By contrast, Pope John XXIII stood for all that was considered right about the papacy: an identification with the rights of all humanity; a desire to give voice to both the faithful and the clergy as constituent elements in the church; the repudiation of antisemitism; the principled commitment to separation of church and state; and devotion to political freedom and democracy. For many, Pius was the bad pope, and John was the good one. This polarity carried over into the debate on the concordat, the treaty Cardinal Pacelli, then Vatican secretary of state under Pius XI, concluded with Nazi Germany just six months after Hitler came to power. One side in the debate argued that the treaty played into Hitler’s strategic pose as a friend of the churches. As such, the concordat was a boost for Hitler in the crucial first year of his regime: it recognized the legality of his regime and helped put the seal on Hitler’s respectability among conservative non-Nazi Germans. Rolf Hochhuth, the playwright, argues along these lines, claiming that Vatican opposition to the Hitler regime would have been an effective blow to the then new National Socialist government. He concludes that the Vatican secretary of state had simply “fallen into Hitler’s trap.” In view of Pius XII’s falling reputation, some supposed that Pope John XXIII, in a similar situation, would never have entered into such an agreement. I will conclude that this would have been highly unlikely.1 Hochhuth’s simplifications were enormously productive, for they helped spur research by scholars who produced meticulous works on the concordat. Why did Cardinal Pacelli favour a concordat in the early days of the new regime? Was it affinity with the regime; a shared antiCommunism; a shared hostility to Weimar democracy and a wish to deliver it a final death blow; finally, did it stem from a resolve to safeguard a now-embattled church? The literature has taken up these questions. We now have the benefit of knowing far more about historical context. We need not rush to judgment. The Controversy Begins To weigh these issues we have to go back to a controversy that first broke out in the 1960s and 1970s. The controversy involved two main scholarly advocates, Klaus Scholder and Konrad Repgen – the first a critic of Pacelli, the second a defender. There is good reason to go so far

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back in time in the scholarly literature. As often happens in historical research, access to new archival documents leads to new discoveries that supplant older ideas, or a new generation adopts new assumptions about the past. In this case, ideas formulated by Scholder and Repgen have stood their ground, and this notwithstanding scholarly access to the Private Vatican Archives (Archivio Segreto Vaticano) for 1922–39, which were opened in 2003 and 2006. The dates coincide with the pontificate of Pius XI when Eugenio Pacelli was papal nuncio to Germany and then later, as the pope’s cardinal secretary of state, negotiated the concordat with Nazi Germany. Recent research, which I discuss later in this chapter, stays on the track of the earlier controversy. We can speak of the Scholder-Repgen dispute, continuing to this day. Accordingly, this chapter as I frame it will be necessarily historiographic, that is, heavily weighted to the voices of others rather than my own. Nevertheless, I will eventually take sides in the debate. To begin with, it must be said that contrary to the wide impression that the concordat was a deplorable precedent, the first treaty negotiated with the new Hitler regime, the first was actually the Four Power Pact signed by Germany, Great Britain, France, and Italy, reaffirming their obligations to the Covenant of the League of Nations, the Locarno Treaties, and the Briand-Kellogg Pact. Nevertheless, the concordat, too, boosted Hitler’s international standing and certainly firmed up German Catholic support for the new regime. Under its terms bishops were to take a loyalty oath to the government, and Catholic religious instruction was to foster patriotism and loyalty to the state. In return the concordat provided generous terms to the church including the right to have denominational schools, to offer religious instruction in state schools, to maintain Catholic lay organizations on condition they were apolitical, to enjoy free communication between Rome and the German church hierarchy, and to maintain religious orders governed by canon law. Finally, the state was to be consulted but would have no right of veto over the appointment of bishops.2 Condemnation of the church’s role in the concordat actually surfaced in the 1950s, though the controversy became a storm only later. The occasion was a 1956 hearing before the German Federal Constitutional Court on the legal validity of the 1933 concordat in post-war Germany. Testimony came from Karl Dietrich Bracher, then a thirty-four-year-old university lecturer and later a leading political scientist and historian of the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich. Bracher bluntly stated that the Vatican had inflicted a “stab in the back” to German democracy



The 1933 Concordat 49

in order to gain the concordat with Hitler. The metaphor was deliberate: in the post–First World War era the German far right insisted Germany could have won the war, but for the anti-war agitation of the pacifistic left, which the right branded a “stab in the back.” Bracher was pointedly accusing the Vatican of treachery. He called the concordat a “sham treaty” lacking legal force, made with a dictator who promised the Catholic Church the moon because he had no intention of keeping his word. Bracher’s charge was relatively novel in the 1950s, when the church was still seen as a valiant victim of Nazi persecution, but the accusation would become far more frequent later.3 Bracher built his case on the Centre Party (Deutsche Zentrumspartei, or just Zentrum) vote for the Enabling Act (23 March 1933), which gave legal sanction to the regime’s assumption of dictatorial powers. Bracher had no “smoking gun,” but he made a strong case for the probability that the vote and the course of subsequent events were the result of a tradeoff arranged by the Vatican: the regime’s concession of a concordat in exchange for the Centre’s approval of the Enabling Act. His argument was circumstantial, based upon timing.4 But how else to explain the way events unfolded in March, April, and May of 1933? Hitler needed to lull German Catholics while he centralized state power and merged autonomous German organizations into National Socialist ones. In early May the free trade unions were closed down, their leaders arrested, and their memberships absorbed into the Nazi-led German Labour Front. Earlier, on 7 April, civil service tenure was abolished and German officialdom purged. That same day a law authorized Reich governors appointed by Hitler to take over the elected Länder (federated states) governments. By mid-June Hitler had set his sights on the dissolution of all political parties but his own. Why were the Centre and the bishops so acquiescent during this swift centralization of power? After all, in the 5 March Reichstag elections the Centre Party – together with its sister Bavarian People’s Party (Bayerische Volkspartei) – still held 14.4 per cent of the vote (compared with 15.7% the previous November), and the German bishops’ ban on Catholic membership in National Socialist organizations was still in force. Catholic Germany was still a formidable force in March 1933; the Centre could have opposed the Enabling Act, and German bishops could have persisted in their stance against National Socialism. Hitler might have been stopped if Catholics had stood their ground; indeed, they made up one-third of the population of Germany. But instead, a little over two weeks after the election, the Centre Party voted for the

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Enabling Act, which conceded to the new regime the right to govern and legislate for a period of four years without the Reichstag. Five days later the German bishops issued a declaration that cancelled sanctions against Catholic membership in Nazi organizations. In a final act of submission, on 5 July, the Centre Party dissolved itself, vanishing from the political scene. For Bracher the explanation for Catholic capitulation lay in the overriding Vatican pursuit of a concordat.5 The Vatican seized the opportunity. The Hitler dictatorship could deliver a concordat while the Weimar Republic never could, due to socialist, liberal, and Protestant parliamentary opposition, and because jurisdiction over religion and education had formerly lain with the Länder rather than the central state. Hitler was offering guarantees for a confessional school system and Catholic religious instruction in the state schools. But negotiating with the regime meant that the Vatican was not just accepting the death of political Catholicism but bringing it about. Bracher insisted upon the Vatican’s “readiness to abandon the Centre Party” as early as mid-March 1933 and maintained that in May “to further the conclusion of a concordat, the church leadership itself began to work towards the dissolution of the Centre.” By the time the Centre Party tried to reinvigorate itself by electing former chancellor Heinrich Brüning party chairman, on 6 May, it was already doomed . for the following three reasons: the Enabling Act had stripped it of bargaining power as a potential coalition partner; the Reichstag no longer counted anyway; and the Centre had been left adrift by the concordat negotiations.6 While Bracher directed his accusation at the Vatican as a whole, later authors would single out Cardinal Secretary of State Pacelli as the villain. The most widely read account blaming Pacelli for subverting German democracy was Rolf Hochhuth’s The Deputy. His evidence was meagre and third-hand, consisting of nothing more than citing Count Harry Kessler’s memoirs, published in 1961, mentioning what Brüning had said to Kessler in 1935. Hochhuth quoted Kessler: Brüning had said that “behind the agreement with Hitler stood not the Pope, but the Vatican bureaucracy and its leader Pacelli,” who saw the “authoritarian state” as a natural ally of the “authoritarian Church.” The concordat was their “eternal league.” Further, Brüning insisted that Pope Pius XI did not share Pacelli’s and the Curia’s ideological affinity for fascism, so the latter were the sole villains. Brüning was, of course, an interested party, an ex-chancellor of Germany (1930–32) and sometimes blamed for Weimar’s slide into authoritarian government. He also nursed a well-known animus against Pacelli. Neither was Kessler disinterested. Known as the



The 1933 Concordat 51

“Red Count,” he was a pacifist and internationalist, forced into exile by Hitler’s rise to power. Nevertheless, the accusation stuck to Pacelli.7 Brüning denounced Pacelli in a memoir published in 1970, the year of his death. His memoir carried weight, coming as it did from a former German chancellor who had had dealings with the key players of the day. He mentioned a meeting with the Vatican secretary of state in August 1931, when Pacelli had demanded that Brüning form a Centre Party coalition with the right, including the National Socialists, with the understanding that such a coalition would push through a concordat. Brüning described a heated exchange during which he had bluntly told Pacelli that on principle he would resist any attempt by the Vatican to influence his political decisions. In any case, according to Brüning, what Pacelli had demanded would only have upset the delicate balance of forces preserving his government, for Brüning lacked a parliamentary majority and was ruling under emergency decrees signed by Reich President Paul von Hindenburg, with the Reichstag parties acquiescing in the arrangement. What was worse, the Communist Party had made gains in the 1930 elections (10.6% of the vote in the 1928 election, but 13.1% in 1930), while the National Socialist vote had grown spectacularly (2.6% of the vote in 1928, but 18.3% in 1930). This was no time to create needless conflict with the Socialists, the German Nationalists, and the Conservatives by pressing for a concordat. To Brüning, Pacelli had been totally fixated on a concordat and equally indifferent to its effects on German politics. Brüning also described his audience with Pius XI after the confrontation with Pacelli: “I could not believe my ears,” when Pope Pius XI praised German bishops for their condemnation of National Socialism. According to Brüning, Pacelli’s willingness to accommodate to the new regime was clearly not shared by the pope. Brüning revealed even more in a passage omitted from the published version of his memoirs: Pacelli despised democracy and parliamentary systems and believed only concordats with “rigid governments [and systems of] rigid centralization” could ensure Catholic interests.8 The Brüning version of events had a long shelf life, as we will soon see, even though his account was untrustworthy. Later, a sympathetic biographer wrote that the memoirs “damaged Brüning’s reputation badly,” for they were a transparent exercise in self-vindication. Stung by charges that he had prepared the way for dictatorship, Brüning rewrote history. For example, Brüning’s claim that Pacelli and Pius XI were at cross-purposes on a concordat with the regime, or that Pacelli’s view prevailed over that of the pope, can be easily dismissed. Pope Pius XI was

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well known as a domineering micro-manager, not one who delegated authority. He yielded to nobody in his pursuit of concordats; indeed, he was famously criticized for his concordat “mania.” More recently, Michael Feldkamp has questioned Brüning’s account of the meeting with Pacelli. German Foreign Minister Julius Curtius had accompanied Brüning and also met with Pacelli, though he was not present during Brüning’s interview with the Vatican secretary of state. Feldkamp insists Brüning would have mentioned a confrontation with Pacelli to his foreign minister, but Curtius never alluded to such an incident. Furthermore, neither spoke of it when reporting the visit to cabinet, nor did Brüning mention it to the Centre Party parliamentary group.9 Cardinal Pacelli had proposed that the National Socialists be brought into a coalition government, but Brüning omitted to say he himself had considered this after the September 1930 elections, when the Nazis became the second-largest party in the Reichstag. Brüning’s aim had been to gain a parliamentary majority and end rule by presidential decree, which had made him dependent on Hindenburg and his advisers. Bringing in the National Socialists was seen as a lesser evil for it was thought government responsibility would domesticate the Nazis or, if not, they would discredit themselves and lose their popular appeal. When Franz von Papen was chancellor in 1932, Brüning had even advocated a Centre Party and National Socialist coalition, with Hitler as chancellor. Brüning, no less than Pacelli, underestimated the National Socialist menace. Pacelli’s proposal would not have seemed outlandish at the time, though it would seem so to those reading Brüning’s memoirs in 1970, after Nazism had become an abomination in the eyes of the entire world.10 Brüning, seeking vindication, pinned the blame on Pacelli for sinking the Weimar Republic. Though Brüning’s evidence does not hold up, this did not stop others from citing him, for so great was the Pacelli myth, which assumed his superhuman control over events, his hypnotic hold over Catholics, and his desire to snuff out democracy and crush all centres of Catholic political power for the sake of a Vatican agenda. The myth had roots in anti-Catholic stereotypes and prejudices. How else to account for such an extravagant belief based on such flimsy evidence? Klaus Scholder: Cardinal Pacelli’s Leading Critic Bracher’s and Brüning’s critiques found their most authoritative scholarly voice in Klaus Scholder’s The Churches and the Third Reich, which first appeared in German in 1977. Scholder (1930–1985) was an



The 1933 Concordat 53

Evangelical (Lutheran) pastor, theologian, and church historian. A professor at the University of Tübingen, he wrote the first comprehensive history of the German churches during the Third Reich. In his book, Scholder launched what still is the most methodical and thoroughly documented denunciation of Cardinal Pacelli for undermining Catholic opposition to Nazism by his single-minded pursuit of a concordat. Scholder reminds his readers of Pacelli’s long-standing association with Germany, first as papal nuncio to Bavaria from 1917 and to the Reich from 1920, then as Vatican secretary of state from 1930. Scholder emphasizes Pacelli’s tie with Germany, pointing out that Pacelli persevered for more than a decade in efforts to conclude a concordat with the Weimar Republic. It would have weakened his argument to highlight that during the same period the Vatican had sought to negotiate concordats with a variety of states whether democratic, liberal, fascist, or communist. By the twentieth century Catholics were subject to multiple and competing loyalties, to democracy, liberalism, fascism, or communism, not to speak of rampant nationalism. Concordats between states and the Vatican reinforced the move to a more centralized monarchical church, in an effort to enhance Rome’s influence over Catholics worldwide. A giant step in this direction was the recently standardized Code of Canon Law, completed in 1917 by the Papal Commission on Codification, of which Pacelli had been secretary. Canon 218 stated that the pope has “the supreme and most complete jurisdiction throughout the church both in matters of faith and morals and in those which affect discipline and church government throughout the world.” Concordats were treaties with the Vatican, involving state recognition of the canon law governing the church, whose first principle was juridical autonomy for the church and papal authority over national churches.11 Scholder depicts Nuncio Pacelli as a tough negotiator earlier for a concordat with Prussia just after the First World War. As a bargaining chip, Pacelli had threatened to leave the episcopal see of Trier empty during the French occupation of the Saar in 1921, just when Prussia needed it to be filled by a strong German nationalist who would support the German government’s opposition to the occupation. Pacelli tied the issue of the Trier appointment to his demand that Prussia guarantee Catholic confessional schools under church control, something to which the coalition government in Prussia could not agree without splitting apart. German bishops saw Pacelli’s move as a high-risk and potentially counterproductive strategy bound to create resentment among Germans. Scholder argues that Pacelli brought the same priorities to negotiations for the 1933 concordat: single-minded determination

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to gain a concordat, with a cavalier disregard for its effect on German politics, neglect of the views of German bishops, and “reckless exploitation” of any situation to gain his ends.12 Scholder insists that even though the Nazi–German Nationalist Peoples Party (Deutschnationale Volkspartei) coalition won an absolute majority in the Reichstag in March 1933 (51.9% of the vote), the Catholic “united front” against the National Socialists still stood firm, and the bishops’ sanctions against Nazi membership by Catholics were still in place. The Vatican then subverted the Catholic stance by laying the groundwork for a concordat with Hitler.13 For Scholder, March 1933 was the fateful month. The government had used the Reichstag fire of 27 February as a pretext for an emergency decree suspending civil liberties, so as to obstruct electioneering by the other parties. In spite of this, only 1.3 per cent of Centre Party voters in the November 1932 elections abandoned the Centre in the 5 March elections: together with the Bavarian People’s Party, the Catholic vote held at 14.4 per cent. Nevertheless, the Vatican and the Nazi regime both put out feelers indicating interest in a concordat. The trade-off for the offer of a concordat was to be a Centre Party vote for the Enabling Act on 23 March, which would allow Hitler to rule by decree for four years. With his parliamentary majority, Hitler could have ruled without the Centre, but he needed its vote for a two-thirds majority to pass the Enabling Act if his dictatorial powers were to be legally conferred. The Vatican hastened to oblige. In this view, Father Ludwig Kaas, the priest and canon lawyer who was chairman of the Centre Party, played a key role in the trade-off. He had been a close and long-time collaborator of Cardinal Pacelli in negotiating concordats with Bavaria (1924) and Prussia (1929), and in the campaign for one with the Reich. Monsignor Kaas delivered the Centre Party vote for the Enabling Act, and in April went on to negotiate on behalf of the Vatican for a concordat with Germany. Scholder maintains that Kass’ major initiatives were taken either with Pacelli’s implicit or explicit approval.14 “Things were settled by March,” Scholder insists. Preliminaries for this deal were feelers from the regime on one side and Kaas and the Vatican on the other. Examples of these contacts were a meeting on 6 March between Kaas and Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen (later the chief negotiator for Germany on the concordat), during which Kaas offered the new regime the cooperation of his party; favourable remarks by Pope Pius XI alluding to Hitler’s anti-Communism; and favourable



The 1933 Concordat 55

remarks about the regime’s anti-Communism from the office of the Vatican secretary of state conveyed to the German ambassador to the Vatican. Evidence that a concordat was in the works came in a letter of 23 March to President Hindenburg from the highly placed Hermann Kapler, president of the German Evangelical Church Union, saying that he had learned the regime was considering a concordat with the Vatican and that he wanted the interests of Protestants safeguarded. More evidence came from Kaas’ writings: in an article of November 1932, he had praised the 1929 concordat with Fascist Italy, stating that “the authoritarian Church ought to understand the authoritarian state better than others.” For evidence of the regime’s intentions, Scholder cites Hitler’s conciliatory stance towards the churches after his 5 March electoral victory, when he declared on 23 March that his government set “the highest store” on “further cultivating and strengthening friendly relations with the Holy See.” These happened to be the exact words Pacelli had used to refer to his pursuit of a concordat when presenting his credentials in 1920 as nuncio to the Reich.15 By March 1933, Scholder argues, the future of Catholicism in G ­ ermany “was decided almost solely in Rome.” At the time of the 5 March elections, the German bishops’ ban on Catholic membership in the National Socialist Party was still in place. Before the month was over, however, German bishops issued a joint pastoral letter withdrawing their condemnation of Catholic membership in, and support for, the Nazi Party. By then, according to Scholder, the ground had been cut out from under their opposition to National Socialism. They no longer believed “Rome stood behind them,” so they had to follow suit. Opposition to the Nazi regime on the part of some still-resistant bishops was sabotaged by the negotiations for a concordat, for such opposition would have spelled defiance of Rome.16 For Scholder, the Vatican still held a strong hand in March; after that it reaped the whirlwind. The balance of forces had swiftly changed through the Vatican’s own doing, and the concordat came to be seen by the German Catholic leadership, lay and clerical, as a necessary defence against the Nazi regime. The Vatican had weakened the German Catholic Church and the Centre Party in pursuit of a concordat. Its meddling now made the concordat a necessity. The regime quickly gathered the reins of dictatorial power in its hands, helped along by Vatican scheming, according to Scholder. The regime stepped up its harassment and intimidation of political Catholics. Demoralized, Catholic organizations were bleeding support after

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the March elections. Matters came to a head when the Bavarian secret political police (Geheime Staatspolizei, Gestapo) under Heinrich Himmler banned a June rally in Munich of the Catholic Apprentices Association, when some twenty to twenty-five thousand participants were expected to descend upon the city in a show of Catholic solidarity. The ban was rescinded, but under the condition that no distinctive clothing be worn, no banners unfurled, and no closed-group marching take place. Ultimately, the Brownshirts (Sturmabteilung, SA) broke up the rally, beating participants. Fearing this foreshadowed a government ban on Catholic organizations, Michael Cardinal von Faulhaber of Munich told his clergy not to engage in public criticism of the regime. By the latter half of June, the regime was ready to cripple political Catholicism by more drastic means. Police arrested almost two thousand supporters, officials, and deputies of the Bavarian People’s Party. Regime terror prompted large-scale departures from the Centre; even Catholic Bavarian Landtag deputies were seeking entry into the Nazi Party. Hitler, with strong popular approval, was well on the way to creating a one-party state.17 By June a desperate Pacelli, having set the wheels of Catholic political self-destruction in motion, saw the concordat “as a line of defence” rather than a way to consolidate Vatican control over the German church. Pacelli now saw that a concordat afforded the only possibility of freeing Catholic politicians from prison and sparing Catholic organizations from dissolution. In view of the regime’s efforts to place the German Evangelical Church, and indeed all professional, cultural, sports, and social organizations under the control of National Socialists, the concordat now seemed a “windfall.” As such, it was greeted with “almost unanimous enthusiasm” by the German church and by Catholic associations. The Concordat between the Holy See and the German Reich, signed on 20 July 1933, sealed the Vatican’s accommodation to National Socialism. The crimes of the regime were to be passed over in silence, except as they directly affected the church and violated provisions of the concordat.18 This was Scholder’s conclusion. He had gathered an impressive store of evidence, but it was all circumstantial; there was no “smoking gun.” His claims were often conditional such as Kaas “probably acted as the key go-between” (between the Vatican and the regime); Kaas “may well have” decided to vote for the Enabling Act contingent on a Hitler promise of a concordat; and finally, “if we keep the overall situation in mind, then all the signs are that this is a credible picture, even if all the details



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cannot be proved.” What is striking is how many people afterwards overlooked Klaus Scholder’s tentativeness and considered his book the last word on the issue.19 Scholder’s Wide Influence With Eugenio Pacelli’s diminished reputation, many were inclined to favour Scholder’s condemnation of the man, although Scholder attributed incredibly phenomenal powers to the cardinal secretary of state in overriding German Catholic politicians, clergy, and laity. In more recent times, the most widely read book on the controversy about Pius XII has been John Cornwell’s provocatively titled 1999 New York Times bestseller, Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII. Though not well thought of by scholars, as a bestseller the book has been widely read. His account of the concordat will be familiar from reading Scholder. Cornwell concludes that Cardinal Pacelli not only delivered the German church “into the hands of Hitler,” but also bore “the principle blame” for the self-dissolution of the Catholic Centre Party. Pacelli did this out of a desire to impose papal control over the German church. According to Cornwell, the Vatican treaty with Hitler was “the supreme act of two authoritarians,” who for different reasons shared an antagonism to a “self-determining” German Catholic Church. Cornwell points to Pacelli’s work as secretary of the papal commission for the new edition of the Code of Canon Law, completed in 1917. The Code promoted the trend to papal centralization in the church by authorizing current practices, such as broadening the teaching authority of the papacy when making pronouncements that were not “infallibly proposed” dogma. Moreover, prior to the separation of church and state a variety of arrangements had ruled the appointment of bishops, with the state, local churches, and the papacy all playing a role. Now that the church was free to manage its own affairs, the Code of Canon Law boosted papal centralization by asserting the universal and exclusive right of the pope to appoint bishops. Cornwell insists that Pacelli believed “with almost messianic conviction” that the very survival and unity of the church depended upon papal centralization. The Reichskonkordat with Hitler was the culmination of his campaign to impose “top-down,” or “pyramidal” rule upon the German church. In that light, German Catholic institutional life – trade unions; social, professional, and youth organizations; and above all Catholic political parties – were considered dispensable. According to Cornwell, Pacelli sabotaged the possibilities

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of an “organic, self-determining, pluralist [German] Catholicism acting as a rallying point for an interconfessional Christian democracy.” James Carroll in his far more imposing and engaging book, Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews, also credits Scholder’s thesis. This book, too, has been widely read. Carroll blames the collapse of Catholic opposition to the Nazis on “the Vatican’s eagerness to deal with the Führer.” In his widely read History of Modern Germany, the eminent German historian Hajo Holborn notes, “The Center leaders in Germany had to recognize that the Vatican was ready to sacrifice the existence of the Catholic party in Germany for the guarantee of the basic rights of the Roman Catholic Church.”20 Cornwell’s rendition of Scholder overlooks the German scholar’s sometimes provisional tone. Accusations sail skyward into hyperbole as Cornwell ascribes virtually uncanny power and efficacy to Pacelli. When Monsignor Kaas, chairman of the Centre Party, pushed for approval of the Enabling Act, he was acting as Pacelli’s “unofficial representative.” The Centre “was now being run at the whim of Pacelli,” who bore “the principle blame” for the party’s voluntary dissolution, for he was antagonistic to a Catholic political party independent of the Vatican. When the bishops’ declaration of 28 March rescinded the ban on Catholic membership in Nazi organizations, the Catholic laity reacted with a sense of “betrayal,” but pressure from Rome prevailed. Pacelli’s views on papal supremacy effectively “deliver[ed] … the Catholic Church in Germany into the arms of Hitler.” He was effecting a master plan: the “full implementation” of the new canon law on German Catholics. German bishops, the Centre Party, and the Catholic laity, all bent to his will. Pacelli, in Cornwell’s account, emerges as a conspiratorial and domineering puppet master endowed with irresistible powers.21 Defending Cardinal Pacelli: Konrad Repgen Now let us consider the other side of the argument. Scholder’s leading adversary was the distinguished and influential German Catholic historian Konrad Repgen of the University of Bonn. Repgen reached the age of ninety in 2013; most of his writings on the concordat ranged from the late 1960s to the 1980s. While Scholder insists that Pacelli helped undermine Weimar democracy, Repgen sees the Vatican secretary of state as engaged in what amounts to a salvage operation on behalf of the German church.



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Repgen takes more notice than Scholder does of historical context, the situation on the ground in Germany in 1933; this, I believe, strengthens his argument. Attributing great power to Pacelli to influence events ignores the narrow options created by the situation in Germany as events spun out of control. In the interest of understanding Pacelli, before absolving or condemning him, it must be said that all of the alternatives before him carried harsh consequences. Repgen takes us back to both the July and November 1932 parliamentary electionsin Germany, when political parties determined to scrap parliamentary democracy gained more than half of all votes. When Hitler was appointed chancellor on 30 January 1933, his government was short of a parliamentary majority with which to dismantle the Weimar system with a show of legality. Yet opposition was minimal after the Reichstag fire when President Hindenburg authorized the government’s so-called temporary emergency decrees under Article 48 of the Constitution. These decrees suspended basic constitutional rights, such as habeas corpus and freedom of speech and assembly, and drove a nail into federalism by allowing the central government to take over rule of the Länder. Thus, weeks before the vote on the Enabling Act, the national regime already controlled the state apparatus of all Länder governments, including their police forces. On this basis, Repgen argues, the 28 February emergency decrees – which were never suspended – were far more important than the Enabling Act in granting the government dictatorial powers. The 5 March elections, with the emergency decrees in force, gave the National Socialists along with their German Nationalist allies a parliamentary majority. Hitler could no longer be challenged by an opposition alliance in the Reichstag.22 Even though the Centre Party vote held in the 5 March elections, its political clout was gone. Hitler had become unassailable. “All is in vain – the decisive battle is lost” was the mood in the Catholic camp. In Repgen’s vivid metaphor, “The avalanche was rolling towards the valley.” As to the vote on the Enabling Act, the Centre faced a harsh choice: oppose a ruthless dictatorship and invite repression or seek a modus vivendi with the regime to protect organized Catholicism. Repgen points out that the Centre vote for the Enabling Act was not a betrayal of freedom and the rule of law in exchange for a concordat, for freedom and the rule of law no longer existed in Germany by 23 March, when the vote was taken. If the Centre Party had not voted for the Enabling Act, Hitler would have found another way to concentrate

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legislative power in his hands. It is true that Centre opposition would have deprived Hitler of the two-thirds vote needed to put a pseudoconstitutional gloss on his dictatorship, but the benefit of doing so was hard to calculate in the long term, whereas the immediate adverse consequences for the Centre were very tangible. The Centre followed a policy of accommodation, but so did others: the Social Democratic trade unions, for example, in order to survive, were ready to cut their ties with the Social Democratic Party and accept a Nazi-appointed commissar for them. Undeniably, the Centre Party displayed a failure of nerve in helping smooth Hitler’s way to total power, but excruciatingly tough choices were involved.23 In voting for the Enabling Act, Centre deputies were convinced they reflected the will of their voters. There is no evidence they were responding to initiatives by Cardinal Pacelli. By the same token, there is no evidence that pursuit of a concordat played a role in the German bishops’ declaration of 28 March. Repgen reverses the sequence of events as laid out by Scholder: Vatican pressure did not influence the Centre Party vote for the Enabling Act or the bishops’ declaration lifting sanctions off Catholic membership in Nazi organizations. Instead, the Centre vote and the bishops’ declaration made it necessary for the Vatican to accept the German government’s offer in April to negotiate a concordat, for by then a concordat was the only means of defence against a dictatorship no longer inhibited by parliament and the constitution. As Ludwig Volk has underlined, Centre Party approval of the Enabling Act was no grand bargain for a concordat, but a disaster for the German Church. The Enabling Act made a concordat an urgent matter of self-preservation. With the Enabling Act, the church no longer enjoyed the protection of the Weimar Constitution, which had secured its confessional schools, its youth, workers, and cultural associations, as well as the Weimar concordats with Prussia, Bavaria, and Baden. The Nazi dictatorship was now centralizing power (Gleichschaltung, bringing into line) by abolishing the diets of all federal states and appointing Nazi-controlled assemblies (31 March), then placing Reich governors (Reichsstaathalter) in charge of the federal states (7 April). On 3 May trade unions were dissolved and incorporated into the German Labour Front (Deutsche Arbeitsfront). Cardinal Bertram expressed the general fear that lacking the protection of a treaty, the church’s influence would be limited to providing Sunday and Holy Day masses only. All these issues were raised in concordat negotiations, and the Vatican held out as much as it could.24



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By the 1970s, Repgen had available a large collection of documents published by the Kommission für Zeitgeschichte (Commission for Contemporary History), a research institute covering nineteenth- and twentieth-century German Catholicism. These were multivolume works documenting relations between the Catholic Church and the German state, including memos and letters from the Holy See; the same from and within the German church hierarchy; and the same from and within the Centre Party. He made use of them to refute the view proclaimed by Karl Dietrich Bracher in 1956 with abundant self-assurance, that the concordat was “a stab in the Centre party’s back,” which Repgen considered a “one-sided catchy formula.”25 According to these sources, far from throwing the Centre Party to the wolves, the Vatican tried to protect it by dragging its feet on the regime’s demand for a ban on political party activity by clergy. As the situation worsened for the church in April, May, and June, the Vatican temporized by making step-by-step concessions. On 20 April the Holy See’s position was that it would extend the requirement that clergy seek their bishop’s permission to engage in political activity to include requests to become political party officials as well as Reichstag candidates and deputies, but this would apply to secular clergy only (parish clergy, not those in religious orders or regular clergy), and only after the regime’s guarantees on confessional schools and Catholic organizations were realized in practice. When Vice-Chancellor Papen, negotiating for the regime, called this unacceptable, Ludwig Kaas proposed, on 11 May, that the Holy See would see to it that permission to engage in political activity was seldom granted. German bishops did not like the “seldom granted’ wording and wanted the proposal to read that permission would be granted in “individual” cases. This, too, the regime rejected, so Kaas retreated further and on 20 June conceded a ban on running for parliament and holding party offices for all clergy, including those in religious orders. However, special dispensations would still be possible, though the guidelines for this would have to be agreed to by the regime and the Vatican. Berlin remained adamant on an absolute ban.26 But by then the Vatican had no bargaining chips left, and any further concession meant offering what had already been lost. The regime’s campaign to transform Germany into a one-party dictatorship had met with little opposition. By 1 July Cardinal Secretary of State Pacelli had agreed to the total ban on political activity by clergy. The Catholic Church now needed the concordat more than the regime needed it. The church was so cornered that Pacelli’s confidant and adviser, Robert

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Leiber, SJ, argued that the ban on party activity by priests was no longer a disadvantage but actually a benefit to the church, as it would hinder attempts to recruit priests into the Nazi Party. Repgen quotes Ludwig Volk in stating, “The clause on depoliticizing [the clergy], pushed open doors already ajar.”27 Pacelli certainly showed he was in no hurry by holding out till early July before conceding the ban on all party political activity by priests, to the point where Hitler was almost ready to scrap the treaty. The mass arrests of Catholics and harassment of Catholic organizations had pushed Pacelli to conclude negotiations. On the plus side, a concordat would strengthen the Catholic will to resist in what was seen as an inevitable conflict with National Socialism, and Cardinal Pacelli and Pope Pius XI calculated that it would put world opinion on the side of the church by demonstrating that it had made every effort to live in peace with the regime.28 Defending Cardinal Pacelli: Ludwig Volk, SJ Another prominent Catholic scholar who bristled at Scholder’s view was Ludwig Volk, SJ (1926–1984), a church historian who wrote extensively on the Catholic Church and the Third Reich. His works are models of disciplined, scrupulously researched argument. His Das Reichskonkordat vom 20 Juli, 1933, published in 1972, underlined the emergency situation the church faced when Hitler came to power. For Volk, Pacelli did not have the option of choosing between an authoritarian or parliamentary regime, the church or political freedom, concordats or the Centre Party. By early March 1933 the Centre was without influence on the new majority government of Nazis and German Nationalists. German bishops, too, were cornered by events. They had lifted their ban on Catholic membership in Nazi organizations on 28 March. But by then, Catholic National Socialists had forced the issue, challenging the bishops’ sanctions against entering church services in the paramilitary SA (Sturmabteilung, Storm Detachment or Assault Division) uniform, and against bringing swastika flags to funerals. Moreover, some SA units had been deputized as auxiliary police and as such could not be refused participation in the Mass. At first some bishops merely made exceptions to the ban to avoid confrontations, fearing the accusation of being divisive by denying the faithful the ministrations of the church on political grounds, something the regime’s propaganda would have exploited to the full. It now seemed, in the words of one



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vicar, “pastorally imprudent” to retain the anti-Nazi ban. One bishop feared that unless the Catholic Church made peace with the regime, the faithful “would slip out of our hands.” With the regime now National Socialist, the bishops’ ban, in effect, was advocating disloyalty to the state and breaking national solidarity at a time when most Germans sought strict national unanimity. The German church had consistently advocated loyalty to the state and, from a pastoral point of view, it was irresponsible to suddenly test the faithful with a conflict of loyalties. In fact, the later provisions of the oath of loyalty by bishops to the state, and their prayers for the state agreed to in the concordat, added nothing new to the church’s attitude to the state, which called for loyalty to regimes attaining power legally. A continued ban would have backfired, probably ending in mass disobedience to the church authorities, especially after Hitler had twice extended his hand to the church in ceremonies at Potsdam inaugurating the new government and in the regime’s Reichstag declaration of 23 March.29 Volk concluded that bishops were bending to bottom-up, not topdown, pressures – to the mood of the faithful in Germany, not to Vatican wishes for a concordat. Indeed, those in the church hierarchy were not marching as one to a Vatican drummer, but were divided over the timing and wording of their joint declaration. Bishop of Regensburg Michael Buchberger wanted it held back until the regime stopped hounding Catholic Centre loyalists out of the public service; Bishop of Eichstätt Konrad von Preysing wanted the declaration to stipulate the regime’s assurances to the church, with accommodation conditional on fulfilling them. On the other hand, Adolf Cardinal Bertram of Breslau, chairman of the Fulda Conference of German Bishops, thought a speedy positive response to Hitler’s promises would enhance the church’s bargaining power with the regime. Cardinal Faulhaber of Munich thought the church no longer had any choice since the new regime was a legal one, and loyalty was owed to it. Bishops knew they were beating a retreat, and this led to self-reproach at their next meeting in Fulda, in May 1933. The bishops worried that they had squandered their trust with the faithful, backing away just when those most loyal to Catholic interests had been dismissed from government posts and arrested and beaten in the waves of terror before and after the 5 March elections.30 Volk points out that the German ambassador to the Holy See, Diego von Bergen, reported to his Foreign Office that far from the bishops obeying Vatican directives, “rather the Holy See deferred to the selfdetermination of the individual bishops in these world-view-political

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boundary issues.” Indeed, Pacelli was unhappy with the speed of the bishops’ reversal. He would have waited longer to see whether Hitler was trustworthy in his reassurances to Catholics. Later, he sought the advice of German bishops on whether to conclude the concordat while Catholics were being held in jail. Archbishop Conrad Gröber of Freiburg im Breisgau, in a letter of 3 July, agreed that the concordat would not guarantee permanent security for the church, but he thought the absence of one would guarantee the destruction of the Catholic Church in Germany. Not signing would alienate German Catholics, for when facing repression by the regime they would say that the Vatican had had an opportunity to protect them and did not. Predictably, the government would publish its generous offer allowing for confessional schools and even Catholic education in the state schools and blame the breakdown of negotiations on the Vatican; German Catholics would then regard the Vatican’s refusal to negotiate as an abandonment of the German church. Moreover, Gröber thought that concluding the concordat, a treaty abominated by Nazi radicals, would strengthen the moderate elements in the regime. But the bishop insisted the regime first had to commit itself to revoking the repressive measures of late June. With such a commitment, it would be worth trading the ban on political activity by priests for the survival of Catholic associations and the release of hundreds of Catholic officials from so-called protective custody; the Vatican would gain the undying gratitude of their families.31 Volk was convinced Gröber’s arguments clinched the issue for Pacelli, and he found support for this in the Kirkpatrick memo of 19 August 1933, the record of a conversation between the British ambassador to the Vatican, D’Arcy Osborne, and Cardinal Pacelli. According to Ivone Kirkpatrick, then chargé d’affaires at the British embassy in the Vatican, Cardinal Secretary of State Pacelli declared he did not believe the responsibility of power would moderate Hitler and was even pessimistic about whether the regime would adhere to the concordat. But Pacelli said that he had been placed on the horns of a dilemma, having to choose between a concordat and “the virtual elimination of the Catholic Church in the Reich.” Apparently Cardinal Pacelli did not believe German Catholics would or could withstand a campaign against the church if the Vatican did not accommodate to the new regime. Pastoral responsibilities required that he not put them to the test, not divide them among themselves, nor alienate them from the Holy See. His “only consideration” was “the spiritual welfare of 20 million Catholic



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souls in Germany.” Pacelli chose his moves only after taking the pulse of German Catholics.32 The Collapse of the Centre Party What about the Centre Party and its turnaround from opposition to accommodation to the new regime? Was it betrayed by the Vatican? Scholder charges that in voting for the Enabling Act, the Centre did the bidding of its leader, Monsignor Kaas, who was working hand in glove with Cardinal Pacelli. Detailed studies on the Centre Party have drawn a different picture. According to Rudolf Morsey, Germany’s most prominent historian of political Catholicism before and after the Second World War, “The Centre tower crumbled to pieces from external pressure and inner weakness.”33 The Centre Party was founded in 1870 as a confessional party responding to Bismarck’s attempt to regulate some major aspects of the activities of the Catholic Church. This was the Kulturkampf (the battle for civilization) so-called by German Liberals. Ronald Ross summarizes its most important measures: pulpit sermons for political ends were banned; religious orders were abolished; and the education and appointment of clergy was put under state jurisdiction. Standing for constitutionalism and minority rights, the Centre fought these policies, while Catholic clergy refused to comply with these regulations As a consequence, Ross recounts, by the end of the 1870s more that half of Prussia’s bishops were in exile or in prison, and a quarter of parishes had no priests. Other measures included purging Catholic civil servants and harassing the Catholic press. As a consequence of Catholic resistance, all of these measures were rescinded in the 1880s.34 Let us move swiftly to the period after the First World War, and Rudolf Morsey’s account. As a denominational party, the Centre brought together members of the political left, centre, and right united in the defence of Catholicism. With the freedoms granted by the Weimar Constitution and the church no longer under siege, underlying divisions intensified. What held the party together was its role as linchpin in Weimar coalition governments, as its wide political range allowed it to form temporary alliances with either the left or the right. Participation in Weimar governments gave the Centre far more influence than its numbers warranted, and concealed its weaknesses. Thus by 1933 the Centre Party no longer had the weight of its nineteenthcentury heyday.35

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The National Socialist Party together with its coalition partner the German National People’s Party (Deutschnationale Volkspartei) had gained a parliamentary majority in the 5 March 1933 election. At the Reichstag’s opening session on 21 March, Hitler introduced the Enabling Act as an amendment to the Weimar Constitution, which would grant him the sole power to pass laws for four years without the participation of the Reichstag. In order to pass, the constitutional amendment required a two-thirds vote of the Reichstag. The amendment passed on 24 March and was approved by the Reichspresident Paul von Hindenburg that same day. On 22–3 March the Centre Party parliamentary group engaged in a discussion, marked by foreboding, on whether to vote for the amendment. Reading the minutes of these sessions is a painful exercise. Both fearful but wanting to preserve their integrity and honour, the Centre Party group attempted to rationalize their acceptance of the Enabling Act as, so it seems, all understood in their hearts that they would ultimately approve it. Among their consoling thoughts: they would seek to assure the right of the Reichspresident to limit the duration of Hitler’s dictatorial powers. They would obtain Hitler’s written guarantee, as he promised them verbally, that Catholic confessional schools and the Catholic Church would remain in place; that judges would remain irremovable; that government officials who were Centre Party members would stay in place; and finally, that a working committee headed by Monsignor Kaas and Chancellor Hitler would pass on Hitler’s decrees. Such a guarantee would vindicate the Centre Party stance in the eyes of their voters. Needless to say, a regime commitment in writing covering Hitler’s promises never came. Former Chancellor Heinrich Brüning summed up the stakes for the Centre: “We are up against it … hard times lie ahead no matter how we decide.” He emphasized the harsh reality: it was clear by now that Hindenburg was no longer guarantor or trustee of the constitution. What mattered now was no longer in the Centre Party’s hands but depended upon which circles in the Nazi Party would hold power, the radical or more conservative elements, or whether Hitler would gain in power or run aground. The course of events confirm the arguments of Repgen and Volk. Nothing in these discussions suggests a grand bargain of a concordat in exchange for Centre Party approval of the Enabling Act.36 Centre Party parliamentarians had no reason to doubt that if Hitler did not gain the semi-legitimacy of a two-thirds vote, he would simply gain dictatorial power by declaring a national emergency. As was



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anticipated, the brazen use of terror was evident during the vote when SA and SS men took up positions by the exits and on the very floor of the Reichstag. Former Chancellor Joseph Wirth (1921–2) told the Social Democrats that for his Centre Party colleagues, “the only question had been whether they should give Hitler the rope to hang them with.” Fortifying himself with gallows humour, Otto Wels, chairman of the Social Democratic Party (SPD, Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands), which had voted against the Enabling Act, thanked a Centre Party deputy for his vote for the bill, “Otherwise we would have not gotten out of that place.” SA and SS contingents in the Reichstag were yelling out to the Social Democrats, “Shut up! Traitors! You’ll be strung up today!” Wels carried a cyanide capsule with him should he be arrested after his speech opposing the bill.37 Lest I give the impression that the Centre Party decision was based on desperation and fear alone, it must be said that other factors were at play. There was the Centre tradition of national solidarity, of upholding the state, which under Weimar saw them in governing coalitions with the Social Democrats and the centre-right German People’s Party (Deutsche Volkspartei). In addition there was what one historian calls, “a late postscript to the Kulturkampf,” the desire not to be marginalized again as under Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who had branded Catholics “enemies of the state” (Staatsfeinde), while by now they had made great strides in becoming an integral part of the German political community. The Centre Party disbanded itself on 5 July 1933, the only party besides the National Socialists still standing. A refusal to disband the party would have led to a government ban and many more arrests. The Centre had held out even after all other parties including Hitler’s former coalition partner, the German Nationalist Peoples Party, had disappeared. New Sources on the Concordat So far I have examined the works of the pioneers in the controversy over Cardinal Pacelli’s role in the concordat with the Nazi regime: Klaus Scholder, Konrad Repgen, Ludwig Volk, and Rudolf Morsey, whose works go back decades. But sources on the Vatican and the concordat multiplied rapidly when in 2003 and 2006, Pope John Paul II and then Pope Benedict XVI ordered the archives for the pontificate of Pius XI (1922–39) to be opened to researchers. By now a number of valuable monographs have appeared based upon the newly available material,

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and we can look forward to more. These have weighed against the Scholder thesis and vindicated his opponents. How extensive are the new archival documents? The distinguished German church historian Hubert Wolf, author of one of the new monographs, has drawn up a list of the newly opened archives, which I will briefly review. From 2003 the archives of the nunciatures in Munich and Berlin were made available, as well as the archives of the Vatican Secretariat of State and of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs (the last dealt with political issues and Vatican relations with states). These covered the period when Cardinal Pacelli was Vatican nuncio in Munich and then Berlin, from 1917 to 1929, and later his tenure as cardinal secretary of state (1930–39). Included are his daily reports as nuncio to the Secretariat of State and instructions to him from the then Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Gasparri (1914–30). When in 1930 he succeeded Gasparri as cardinal secretary of state, it was then Pacelli’s turn to receive reports from his successor as apostolic nuncio to Germany, Archbishop Cesare Orsenigo, and to convey his or the pope’s instructions. More archives were opened in 2006. For our purposes the most important are Pacelli’s notes of his audiences with Pope Pius XI as they conferred over policy, his audiences with ambassadors to the Holy See, and reports from papal nuncios from all over the world, as well as instructions to them. Important, too, are the documents of the Holy Office for that period, whose mandate was to officially condemn departures from church doctrine and to oversee the Index of Prohibited Books. Punishment by the Holy Office could extend to excommunication from the church. Is all, or at least most of the evidence now in? A huge step forward would be opening the archives of the pontificate of Pope Pius XII. But even opening the archives is just a first step to sifting through the documents, selecting the relevant ones, taking notes, writing, then publishing. Wolf tells us that the Vatican archives that were opened in 2003 and 2006 contain one hundred thousand archival boxes and files, some up to a thousand pages in length. While there have been first-rate monographs published this past decade shedding valuable new light on key issues, we do not even yet have a full picture of the Catholic Church and the Third Reich.38 One thing is clear. Research on the newly opened archives should sober up those who believe the Vatican has been hiding some shockingly incriminating secret over its actions in 1933. The archival



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documents are internal memos, confidential records that should reveal a great deal. Yet, Gerhard Besier, a prominent scholar on the church has concluded, “The new documents [of 2003] offer no real ‘sensations,’ but include some surprises.” Hubert Wolf, speaking of the documents released in 2006, adds the proviso: “A general overview of the relationship between the church and National Socialism or even definitive biographies of Pius XI and Pius XII will take years, if not decades, of methodical and responsible research to develop an understanding that makes such works possible.” Thomas Brechenmacher, another trailblazer in this area, gives high marks to those who took part in the original Scholder-Repgen controversy decades ago. Indeed, Ludwig Volk, SJ, who played a major role in the controversy, had been granted access to the archives on the Reichskonkordat as early as the 1960s. Examinations of the archives after 2003 show that Volk’s defence of the Vatican rests on solid evidence. Brechenmacher concludes that the documents opened in 2003 add no “essential aspect” to the picture presented by Volk. In fact, the works of Volk and Morsey “constitute the foundation upon which every subsequent work on the history of the Reichskonkordat has to build.” Wolf as well claims that the new sources show that Volk’s and Repgen’s interpretations “retain their validity.”39 Many of the documents made available in 2003 and 2006 confirm what we already know. The regular reports of Orsenigo, apostolic nuncio to Germany, to the Vatican secretary of state, and the latter’s instructions to him point to the popularity of the Hitler regime among Catholics; signal the German bishops’ fears that if they maintained the ban on Catholic membership in Nazi organizations they would face mass disobedience; describe the regime’s terrorism against political Catholicism; and mention fears that Catholic associations would be coopted by the regime. The new evidence for the Centre’s decision to vote for the Enabling Act confirms Morsey’s conclusions about the weakness of the party. Orsenigo reported on the “avalanche of misfortune” bringing about the “disorganization” of the Centre including internal vacillation, the threat of National Socialist terror, and the mix of bewilderment and fascination over the regime’s dynamism.40 Most important, the documentation is explicit on the resolve of Pius XI and his secretary of state not to intervene in the decisions of the Centre Party or of the German bishops, nor do anything that might create the appearance of intervention. We now hear it out of their own mouths. Pius XI and Pacelli left it to the German church to make its own decisions, for by late March and early April 1933 they were well aware from

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Orsenigo’s reports that there was every chance Hitler would exploit signs of papal intervention to accuse German Catholics of following orders from a foreign power, boosting Nazi talk of creating a Rome-free native German Catholic Church.41 What is more, the new sources should lay to rest the sinister image of Pacelli leading Pope Pius XI by the nose, as Brüning claimed and so many others have presumed, in centring the story of the Reichskonkordat almost solely around the Vatican secretary of state. The focus on Pacelli was understandable, for Wolf points out that the pope for the most part left the German file in Pacelli’s hands, as the one more familiar with that country. Another recent work, Emma Fattorini’s Hitler, Mussolini and the Vatican, points out that Pius XI did not have to oversee Pacelli, for the latter “tended to anticipate the pope’s wishes.” If the pope took Pacelli’s advice on the German situation, it was because both were aligned over which policy to follow. Memos between the pope and his secretary of state, insists Hubert Wolf, show that “the pope made all the final decisions.”42 Steps taken by the Vatican and German Catholics were haphazard, lacking coordination, evidence that the Vatican had no control over moves made by German Catholics. Indeed, the German Catholic leadership, both political and pastoral, were the first to lose their nerve, while Pacelli took the tougher stance. What stands out is Pacelli’s and Orsenigo’s frustration over the action of the bishops in lifting the ban on Catholic membership in Nazi organizations. Orsenigo reported that he had tried to dissuade them, without success. Pacelli was surprised that the bishops had reversed their position without negotiating concrete concessions in return. The same applies to the Centre Party’s decision of 5 July to dissolve itself – fifteen days before the signing of concordat between the Vatican and the new regime. Besier quotes a long letter of Pacelli’s in mid-July to Monsignor Lorenzo Schioppa, his former assistant at the nunciature in Munich, now papal representative to the Netherlands. In the letter, Pacelli vented his surprise and frustration over the timing of the Centre Party’s decision, and continued, “They spontaneously (as I said) dissolved themselves – without informing the Holy See, which first learned of it in the newspapers.” We know that dissolution of the party was in the cards, but Pacelli had hoped the Centre would hold out longer, for the party was a crucial bargaining chip in negotiations for the concordat. The bargaining chip was the Vatican’s agreement to the so-called de-politicization clause, requiring that clerics not engage in political activity, in exchange for the regime



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agreeing to a specific list of Catholic non-political religious, cultural, and charitable associations and organizations to be protected under the concordat. Now, with a poor negotiating hand, Pacelli had to move quickly to gain at least a vague clause protecting non-political Catholic associations, leaving for the future a joint decision on which associations would be protected, at a time when the Vatican would have no negotiating clout left.43 The new sources strengthen the arguments of one side of the controversy, not Scholder’s, but those of Repgen,Volk, and Morsey, that Pacelli, in seeking a concordat with the new regime, was no gravedigger of the Weimar Republic, no puppet master pulling strings, but simply responding to the collapse of the republic, and to the lead of German Catholics, the German church hierarchy, and the Catholic German Centre Party. It was not the concordat that opened the gates to Catholic support for the new regime. By the time negotiations for the concordat began, the Centre Party and the German bishops had already swung the gates open. Conclusion The Scholder thesis carries a heavy burden of uncertainty, as it makes an argument for a Vatican conspiracy and presumes that no direct evidence of a conspiracy to accommodate Hitler over the wishes of the German bishops and Centre Party – or simply circumstantial evidence – is sufficient proof. Martin Menke has commented sarcastically that the covert agreement between Pacelli and the German Catholic leadership must have been “the best-kept secret of the Nazi era.” Hubert Wolf has ridiculed the Scholder thesis, pointing out that the German bishops were not “simply marionettes manipulated by a coldly calculating Eugenio Pacelli.” Aside from an absence of documents proving Scholder’s point, no post-war memoir from either a German official or a Centre Party deputy supports Scholder, except for Brüning’s suspect account.44 Belief in the power of papal political intervention in 1933 was based on just a grain of truth. The papacy had a record of political interference in Germany after the First World War, though such interventions were resented by German Catholics, and failed. Scholder pointed to a number of such cases, without drawing the lesson of their lack of success: in 1928 the Bavarian envoy to the Vatican reported that the pope objected to Centre coalitions with the Social Democrats. In a meeting with the

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pope at Easter 1931, Joseph Wirth, then Reich minister of the interior, was requested to dissolve the Centre coalition with the SPD in Prussia. After the July 1932 elections, in which the National Socialists gained over 37 per cent of the vote, the Bavarian ambassador to the Vatican reported that Cardinal Pacelli favoured attempts at a coalition with the Nazis. They were, after all, the largest party in the Reichstag, and alive to the dangers of Communism as well. But what is just as important: Centre politicians did not accede to the Vatican’s requests, and the Vatican did not make the issue one of obedience or disobedience. Certainly, after 1933, any Vatican attempt to dictate to German Catholics would have played into Hitler’s hand. More than anything, Scholder’s view played on anti-Catholic bias.45 There is another fatal weakness in Scholder’s thesis. When Scholder says Pacelli helped sabotage German democracy, he shuts his eyes to the German political context. Historians have emphasized how easily democracy yielded to its foes. A good example is Chancellor Papen’s coup of July 1932 against the socialist government in Prussia, which was ruling as a caretaker government in a coalition with the Centre. After its defeat in the April 1932 elections, the Prussian coalition no longer had a parliamentary majority. Political street fighting led Papen to proclaim a state of emergency and oust the government. He then proceeded to purge Prussian officialdom of all those with republican leanings. Observers have pointed out how the once powerful Social Democrats, who had ruled Prussia throughout the 1920s, melted away in the wake of Papen’s coup. For Ian Kershaw, the successful coup indicated that as early as 1932 “the Republic was dead”; the sole issue was what sort of authoritarian regime would replace it.46 Mark Mazower, in his magisterial survey of twentieth-century Europe, Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century, argues that Hitler did not come to power by destroying German democracy, instead it was democracy’s collapse from within that made Hitler’s ascent to power possible. The Weimar system of political parties was, in Mazower’s words, “magnifying rather than resolving the bitter social, national and economic tensions in society at large.” In the words of a contemporary observer, legislative paralysis “has produced the clamor for a dictator who is willing to do the things the nation wanted to be done, but who was not subject to the rule of economic groups or even of a majority.”47 The distinguished historian of the Nazi years Ian Kershaw has emphasized how little real opposition there was to Hitler’s rise to power and how deep his support was, or how unnerved and paralyzed his opposition was. The rapid transformation of Germany after Hitler



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became chancellor on 30 January 1933 “was astounding for contemporaries and is scarcely less astonishing in retrospect.” Gleichschaltung (bringing into line), the process by which political parties, trade unions, and a gamut of associations, professional, musical, sports, etc., were all absorbed within Nazi organizations, occurred by and large “voluntarily and with alacrity.” As early as March 1933, the trade unions distanced themselves from the Socialist Party of Germany (SPD), purging themselves of Socialist functionaries and offering a declaration of loyalty to the new regime. Both the forced and so-called voluntary dissolution of the political parties began in late June, when the SPD was banned. In little over a week, all the other parties, the Centre the last, fell like dominoes. In view of this, it is far more likely that Pacelli was responding to the breakdown of democracy in Germany, than helping to make it happen.48 German Catholics did not need Vatican prodding to turn to Hitler. Richard Evans reminds us that the Nazi platform in the early 1930s was deliberately vague, putting forward an “emotional appeal that emphasized little more than the Party’s youth and dynamism, its determination to destroy the Weimar Republic, the Communist Party and the Social Democrats, and its belief that only through the unity of all social classes could Germany be reborn.” Voters themselves filled in the specifics. Most Catholics were rallying to their own version of the National Revolution, which was conservative and authoritarian rather than totalitarian, more like Austrian and Italian fascism than National Socialism. In addition, Hitler’s explicit declaration that he valued Christian education in the schools and would continue to honour the concordats with Bavaria, Prussia, and Baden seemed to bear out this Catholic vision of the National Revolution. Papal power in the political realm was a fiction, the reality was papal powerlessness. Modern popes certainly projected power. They were venerated in regal and ancient ceremonials, crowned at their coronation with the tiara or triple crown, seated on a throne that would be the envy of a king, enjoying both state and spiritual sovereignty, assigning nuncios to far-flung foreign capitals, enveloped in a sacred – even divine – aura as vicar of Christ, speaking with solemn authority as the voice of the Church, and exercising papal primacy within the Church. However, to understand papal strategies, we need to draw aside the regal curtain and change the subject to papal weakness in the political realm.49 Reacting to state campaigns to suppress or at least weaken Catholic school networks, Pius XI famously said, “When it comes to saving souls, to preventing great evils capable of undoing them, We find the

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courage to deal directly even with the devil.” The pope was willing to accommodate to any regime, however criminal, as long as papal primacy and the church’s pastoral functions were safeguarded.50 Pope Pius XI and then Pope Pius XII chose such a policy of accommodation, over any alternative, because of how they perceived their papal obligation, which was to identify the spiritual mission of the Roman Catholic Church with the preservation of its institutional status quo, that is, papal primacy and clerical authority. They realized that Catholics worldwide had multiple loyalties, not only to the church, but to the nation, to a political party, to their socio-economic class, and to their family. In this situation, these popes wanted first of all to keep Catholics within the fold, since in their thinking divine grace and salvation came, in effect, through the church – hence, the need to concede to the temporal loyalties of ordinary Catholics. Though most Catholics strongly approved of the Hitler regime’s determination to crush Marxism, its revival of traditional morals after decades of public sexual indecency so called, and its determination to make Germany a power to be reckoned with again, official church policy would have been the same if the regime were socialist and pacifistic. After all, in the early years of the Soviet Union, efforts were made to forge an agreement with the Bolshevik regime, with its one million Catholic subjects. Hansjacob Stehle has documented secret negotiations in 1925 between the nuncio to Germany Pacelli and Soviet Ambassador to Germany Nikolai Krestinski, which broke down because the Soviets were not willing to allow religious instruction for Catholic youth and grant the Holy See control over the appointment of bishops. As a correspondent for the official Vatican newspaper the Osservatore Romano told Stehle, “Its [the Vatican’s] active anti-Communism was never an end in itself but a reaction to the situation.”51 By the same token, what counted in Germany was summed up by Pietro Cardinal Gasparri, former Vatican secretary of state, in a 30 June 1933 memo to the Roman Curia, when he wrote, “I am of the opinion that the Hitler party corresponds to the national feeling in Germany. Because of this, a political-religious battle in Germany around Hitlerism is to be avoided at all costs.” The concordat with Germany demonstrated that the Vatican’s priority was to insure its institutional continuity and the loyalty of Catholics, at the price of accommodating to the National Socialist regime. As a consequence, the concordat ensured Catholic loyalty both to a criminal regime and to the pope and the German Church.52

Chapter Three

Pius XII and the Second World War: The Catholic Belligerent States

A certain confidence, a certain absence of tension, a certain ease and generous breadth quite distinct from vagueness is ... the proper ornament of an infallible Church ... During the period defined above [pontificate of Pius XII], one senses its lack. To equate this with lack of charity is to personalize it in a way neither just nor illuminating ... In Rome it was an ambiance, a style, a recent inheritance, [to] which ... Pius more than once showed himself restless, but from which it was inevitably hard for him to act in complete independence ... There was too exclusive a preoccupation with the “disturbance of the simple faithful.” There was a lack of trust, a recoiling from the most legitimate risks, that was hardly compatible with the “confidence we have through Christ towards God.” It was the life of a people in a fortress. William Purdy, The Church on the Move

But unfortunately the moral leadership of the world is not … assured by the unapplied recital of the Commandments. Sir D’Arcy Osborne, British minister to the Vatican (1936– 47), quoted in Chadwick, Britain and the Vatican

The chief concern of Cardinal Secretary of State Pacelli at the time of the 1933 concordat with the Nazi regime was maintaining the pope’s spiritual authority over German Catholics. The existing structure of authority and guidance in the church had to be upheld for the good of souls, lest they be led astray. When he became pope, he followed the same line. To maintain his spiritual authority, and keep Catholics under the umbrella of salvation, Pope Pius XII did not let himself get too far ahead of his followers. This meant accommodating to the nationalist

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grievances and prejudices of Catholics. During the Second World War Pope Pius XII and his Cardinal Secretary of State Luigi Maglione (1939–44) saw themselves operating from a position of weakness, not strength. This chapter provides an overview and analysis of Pius XII’s wartime papacy, when massive killings became common. Cardinal Pacelli was elected pope on 2 March 1939, the eve of the Second World War. Less than two weeks later Hitler incorporated the rump of the Czech state into Germany in violation of the Munich Agreement, turning it into the Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia. The German and Soviet invasion and occupation of Poland followed in September. Denmark fell to the Germans in April 1940, the Netherlands and Belgium that May, France and Norway that June, and Yugoslavia and Greece in April 1941. Germany occupied her former ally Italy in September 1943, and her former ally Hungary in March 1944. Pope Pius XII confronted a Europe in the hands of a totalitarian state, committed to an anti-Christian pagan ideology. Research on the papacy during this period is extensive. Scholars have mined archives all over Europe and in the United States, vastly expanding our knowledge of the Vatican during the war. I will draw on these scholars’ analyses. There are the eleven volumes of Vatican diplomatic correspondence, Actes et Documents du Saint Siège relatifs à la Seconde Guerre mondiale (ADSS), published by the Vatican in stages from 1965 to 1981. These documents are in various languages but mostly in Italian, Latin, French, and German. As I pointed out in chapter 1, Pope Paul VI’s distress over the damage done the church by Rolf Hochhuth’s play The Deputy spurred this ambitious project. Just three months after the play opened in Berlin, the newly elected pope overrode the customary waiting period for the release of archival documents of a pope’s reign, which generally has been several generations after his death. He commissioned four Jesuit scholars to publish the documents of the Second World War. One of them, Pierre Blet, has provided an inventory of the published documents: speeches and messages from the pope; letters from the pope to governments and Catholic Church officials; notes and minutes within the Vatican Secretariat of State; private notes, particularly those of Monsignor Domenico Tardini, one of the two undersecretaries of state; and notes between the Secretariat of State and Vatican representatives in the capitals of the world.1 I will make extensive use of these documents, but must point out the reservations scholars share over the ADSS. For one, the documents



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provide less than a full picture. As Susan Zuccotti points out, we are not privy to conflicts within the Vatican, to precisely how policy was made, or to unguarded letters or memoirs disclosing the mind of the pope. What is more, the International Catholic-Jewish Historical Commission was set up to end doubts about the credibility of the ADSS and ease tensions between Catholics and Jews. The Commission, appointed in 1999 by the Vatican’s Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, to scrutinize the ADSS, noted that the published volumes contained just a portion of the archival documents. The Commission put forty-seven questions to the Vatican about gaps in the documents, and suspended its work in 2001 when no further documents were to be made available, and their questions remained unanswered. Then a separate problem loomed. By the 1990s one of its Jesuit editors, Pierre Blet, observed that the ADSS had been forgotten. It was certainly underused, perhaps because the documents require a reading of Latin, Italian, German, French, and English, or perhaps because of the belief that the documents presented a distorted picture. Suspicion is natural, as the archives were closed to all but the four Jesuits. To boost knowledge of the ADSS, Blet, in 1997, published a one-volume synthesis of the long introductory essays in the eleven volumes, all written in French. An English translation of Blet’s book followed in 1999, called Pius XII and the Second World War: According to the Archives of the Vatican. Blet was intent on allaying suspicion over the ADSS. His book is a useful introduction and certainly a strong defence of the pope. Australian historian Paul O’Shea has put the question: “Why have the Actes et Documents remained a largely unexplored resource?” His answer is that some historians were papal apologists, who would not examine the documents critically, while others went the other way, focusing on the political realm, leaving out the rich documentation on the Catholic Church’s religious mission and theology. That final point is key, one I share, and it will be my interpretative approach to the ADSS. Others have examined Vatican policy in nations occupied by Germany or its allies. Among them are the Reverend John Morley in Vatican Diplomacy and the Jews during the Holocaust, 1939–1943, and Michael Phayer in both The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930–1965 and Pius XII, the Holocaust and the Cold War. Where we differ is my emphasis on Pius XII’s guiding theology, rather than on his political priorities.2 Michael Phayer puts it best when he calls the ADSS “an indispensable yet vastly incomplete source.” But, despite some serious gaps, the eleven volumes cannot be called a whitewash of the pope. To take one

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example, the Italian authorities refused to turn over to the German or the Croatian authorities any Jews who found refuge in zones of Italian occupation in Croatia. All six thousand or so Jewish Croatians found such refuge. Cardinal Maglione credited the Vatican with saving them: “For those who found refuge in territory occupied by Italian troops, the [Vatican] Secretary of State has secured that they not be driven back to their country of origin.” The editors of the ADSS, in recounting these events, did not support Maglione’s conclusion that Vatican pressure played a role in the Italian decision. They wrote that it was Italian officials who decided not to expel the Croatian refugees: “The Holy See had only to confirm Italian officials and Mussolini himself in this policy.” Contrary to Pope Paul VI’s perhaps naive expectations, the ADSS volumes are grist for the mill for both defenders and critics of Pius XII. The historian George Mosse, in reviewing volume 8 of the ADSS, points to the large number of documents not published in full, but merely summed up in the notes. In the end, he found much in the volume to condemn the Vatican: “Resignation and caution is the prevelant tone of the documents. No heroism illuminates these pages.” The first major study in English based largely on the ADSS was the Reverend John Morley’s Vatican Diplomacy and the Jews during the Holocaust. Morley interviewed one of the ADSS editors, Robert Graham, S.J., in June 1976, and was assured that the volumes were “an accurate reflection of the total collection.” Morley tells us that at his request he was supplied with any document referred to in the text, but not published. Morley’s book was a devastating critique of the Vatican.3 From the Anti-Jewish Decrees to the Deportations I will examine here Pius XII’s response to events in the Catholic states of Europe: Slovakia, Croatia, France, Italy, and Hungary, and consider Poland in a separate chapter. These were states whose bishops, priests, and laity recognized the pope as their religious sovereign, revered him, and over whom ostensibly he had some influence. Presumably, the pope would have had an easier time intervening in Catholic states than in non-Catholic states. I restrict myself to these countries, leaving out some, including Belgium and Lithuania. Slovakia We move first to Catholic Slovakia, a German satellite. Statehood had come for Slovakia under German sponsorship during the final



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dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in March 1939. Much of the territory of Czechoslovakia had been borderlands with mixed ethnicities and were, as a result, disputed territories. These included not only the Sudentenland occupied by Germany, but Zaolzie (Trans-Olza) claimed by Poland, and Carpatho-Ukraine claimed by Hungary. Poland and Hungary occupied these regions after the Munich Agreement mutilated Czechslovakia. Germany now guaranteed Slovakia’s territorial integrity from further Hungarian exactions, and even promised the return of territories from Poland in the event of war. The extent of German power in Slovakia has been described as follows: German troops exercised control in a zone on the Slovak border, and a German general was put in command of the Slovak army. The Slovak National Bank was to finance industrial production for the German war effort; transportation and communications were placed under German supervision. In 1940 Germany forced a change in the Slovak cabinet to one ideologically closer to National Socialism. This did not, however, mean complete German control, for the Slovak governmental machinery remained intact, as did the Catholic Church. Michael Phayer thus rightly concludes that the initiative and machinery for the deportation of Jewish Slovaks came from the Slovak government, though German pressure was applied as well. Prime Minister Vojtěch Tuka and Interior Minister Alexander (Šaňo) Mach, both in the Slovak government because of German pressure, were responsible for initiating and executing the deportations and no significant opposition to the deportations materialized from other factions in the government. Later on, in 1943, the Slovak government successfully resisted German pressure to deport surviving Jews.4 The Slovak independence movement was founded and led by a Catholic priest, Father Andrej Hlinka, who was then succeeded by Monsignor Jozef Tiso, who served as president of Slovakia during the war. Many in the ruling party were far more taken by the authoritarian Catholic model in pre-Anschluss Austria, than by National Socialism. The German ambassador to Slovakia identified the different factions in the government comprising Tiso, who had the support of the Catholic establishment, and the pro-Germans Tuka and Mach. Tiso was no friend of the Germans, but in the face of German threats and intimidation, including the setting off of three explosive devices in the capital, Bratislava, he chose the lesser evil, for the alternative to his presidency was a pro-Nazi government installed by Germany, or a full occupation. In 1939 Tiso boasted to a Vatican emissary of his achievements, in pointing out that the school system now promoted Catholic education,

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Sunday was now an official day of rest, Freemasonry had been outlawed, and churches of the Czech (Hussite) religion had been closed down.5 On 5 September 1940 the apostolic delegate in Slovakia, Monsignor Giuseppe Burzio, reported to Vatican Secretary of State Luigi Maglione on the new state’s first anti-Jewish decree – which defined Jews by race. Later Burzio reported on measures meant to push Jews out of the Slovak economy, commenting, “Given the preponderant influence of Jews in Slovak business, some or all of these measures might have been justified, but they had become excessive.” By “excessive” Burzio may have meant defining Jews, including Catholics of Jewish descent, by race rather than by religion. This was certainly Maglione’s concern, reflected in a November 1941 letter to Karl Sidor, minister of Slovakia to the Holy See, after additions were made to the Jewish Code that September. These supplements had piled on more anti-Jewish measures including mandating the wearing of the Jewish Star of David, introducing labour service for Jews, restricting residence rights and careers in the professions, and ghettoizing Jewish children into a Jewish school system. Maglione objected to the catch-all racial definition of Jews, which included children of Catholic parents who were of Jewish descent and banned Catholics of Jewish descent from marrying those who were Catholics by birth. The government made a small concession, those who had converted prior to 30 October 1918 were to be classified as Christian.6 As for the position of the Slovak church hierarchy, on 7 October 1941 the Slovak bishops sent a memo to President Tiso, reminding him that the doctrine of race violated church teaching that all humans were descended from the same “Creator and Father ... all had the same supernatural destiny ... from which Christ’s universal work of redemption follows.” Racism subverted the Roman Church’s universal mission. The Slovak bishops were not demanding Tiso repeal the antiJewish decrees. Instead, they complained that the racial definition of the Jew extended to converts to Catholicism. The sacrament of baptism, a source of transforming divine grace, had to stand. Converts were Catholic no matter their descent, and as such, they must be exempt from the anti-Jewish decrees, which among other severe measures mentioned by Maglione to Sidor, required all Jews by race to wear the yellow star. Indeed, the bishops did not shake off their belief in an innate “Jewish character,” insisting that those “who joined the Church out of calculation would not have their former nature altered by divine grace. These



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the Church would not defend.” They were fair game for the anti-Jewish decrees. In taking this position, the Slovak bishops were conceding to their government’s accusation that some clerics were converting Jews to enable them to survive.7 The Vatican was following a line similar to that of the bishops. John Morley has translated the letter of November 1941 from Maglione to Sidor. Maglione was concerned over how the decrees affected the rights of the church. He singled out the provisions mentioned by the Slovak bishops as violating the “sanctifying mission” of the Roman Church, and pointed out that barring the children of Catholics of Jewish descent from Catholic schools could lead to these children abandoning their faith. Maglione appealed to the Slovak government to mitigate the application of the decrees, “to render them as least harmful as possible to the demands of the Catholic conscience.” These pangs of “Catholic conscience” did not, however, extend to the anti-Jewish decrees as such.8 Anti-Jewish decrees were opposed by the Catholic Church on narrow grounds, on whether the definition of Jews was racial or religious. Deportations were a graver matter for the church. On 9 March 1942 Apostolic Delegate Burzio informed Maglione that eighty thousand Slovak Jews were to be deported, and that this was “the equivalent of condemning a large number of them to certain death.” Burzio called it an “atrocious plan,” “inhumane and antichristian.” Moreover, appeals for Vatican intervention from Jewish leaders were transmitted by nuncios in Berne and Budapest and, as a result, five days later Maglione protested to Sidor, without singling out Catholics of Jewish descent as the special concern of the church. Maglione wrote that he “would prefer to hope that this news [of the deportations] does not correspond to reality. He could not believe that a country that purports to be inspired by Catholic principles could adopt a measure so grave and of such painful consequences for so many families.” This was as blunt as Maglione allowed himself to be; he did not repeat Burzio’s expressed fear of “certain death.”9 Although Cardinal Maglione protested, he also pulled his punches. He wanted to avoid offending and alienating the Slovak bishops, whose version of Catholicism was not as categorically universalist as was the Vatican’s, and was more bound to xenophobic nationalism. But Maglione also knew that Catholicism had sustained Slovak national identity. Tiso called both the church and the Slovak nation “the Lord’s creation.” Hence the motto, “For God and the nation.” Slovakia was 80 per cent

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Catholic, and most of these Catholics believed that their ethnic-religious majority “owned” the state. As with other ethnic nationalisms, Slovaks now saw themselves as masters in their own house after centuries of oppression by more powerful neighbours, first under Hungarian rule, during which the Slovak language was virtually stamped out, then under the Czechoslovak regime after the First World War, when Czechs discriminated against Slovaks. As so often in such cases, centuries of victimization had given rise to an insular and militant nationalism.10 In instructions to Burzio on 18 April 1942 Cardinal Secretary Maglione spoke of his “acute sorrow” over the deportations but left any Vatican response to the discretion of its apostolic delegate, writing to him, “I am sure you will continue to carry out the steps that you judge opportune in this matter.” At the same time, Maglione related to Burzio that he had taken “a strong stand” in protesting to Slovak Minister to the Holy See Karl Sidor about young Jewish-Slovak women being dispatched to brothels serving German soldiers, which was a “disgrace, especially for a Catholic country.” The story turned out to be untrue, but Maglione believed he could take a stronger stand on this issue when confronting fellow Catholics.11 The deportations of Jewish Slovaks began on 26 March 1942. Five days later Burzio reported that “public opinion,” including the episcopate, was disturbed by the deportations. Indeed, the bishops had sent a plea to the government “in order to deplore and condemn the planned measures agianst the Jews.” But the Slovak church hierarchy still spoke with an equivocal voice. On 26 April 1942 the country’s bishops spoke out publicly on the deportations in a joint declaration read out in churches throughout Slovakia. The statement was riddled with ambiguity including both contempt for Jewry, the view that Jews were a continuing threat to the nations that had offered them “hospitality,” and the injunction to treat Jews humanely. The bishops reminded their countrymen that Jews were a people punished by God, made to wander the earth as strangers, for the “Jewish nation … did not acknowledge the Saviour and caused his cruel and ignominious death on the cross.” The bishops’ statement went on to say that to our day the Jews remained “hostile to Christianity” and had “played a considerable part in the bloody persecutions of Christians in Russia and Spain.” The declaration observed that states that had emancipated Jews, for example, the Kingdom of Hungary in the nineteenth century, had been cautioned against doing so by the church, “fearing their [the Jews’] damaging influence on public life.”



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Many had then accused the church of being “reactionary,” but, said the bishops, it turned out the church was right. The bishops then described the “pernicious influence” of Slovakia’s Jewry on the economic, cultural, and moral life of Slovakia and concluded, “The Church has no objection when the State authority takes legal measures to render the pernicious influence of the Jews ineffective.” Then, highlighting their equivocation, the Slovak bishops proceeded to soften their declaration, stating, “Nations sometimes expressed their ... bitterness against Jews in an excessively severe and cruel manner, which stands in contradiction to Christian moral principles,” for “Jews are also men and are to be dealt with in a humane way.” According to state, divine, and natural law, Jewish lives and property were to be protected.12 The Slovak bishops’ declaration is a masterpiece of ambiguity. Are Jews a plague or also “men”? Clearly, the bishops lacked the courage to strongly oppose the deportations. Hanns Ludin, Germany’s minister to Slovakia, reported to Berlin that the deportations were “very unpopular.” This wide unpopularity did not, however, translate into strong episcopal or popular pressure on the government to halt them.13 Although cautious in its objections, the Vatican for its own reasons was nevertheless distressed over the deportations. Sixteen of the sixtythree members of the Slovak parliament, or fully one-quarter, were priests who had all voted for the authorizing decree. Burzio charged Interior Minister Mach with implicating the Catholic Church in the deportations, by falsely stating that “the ecclesiastical authorities are in accord with the proceedings of the government.” Burzio, without precise information, reported to Maglione that he believed that two bishops, members of the Council of State, had voted for, or at least not against the deportation decree. This action “would seriously prejudice the Church.” PresidentTiso himself was a priest, so the church would be implicated in his crimes. The deportations would stain the holy character of the Church. On 31 March 1942 Pavel Gojdič of Prešov, bishop of the Ruthenian Catholic Church of the Eastern Rite, insisted that the church needed to distance itself from the deportations; the Vatican must demand Tiso resign as head of state and defrock him if he refused to do so. Vatican Undersecretary of State Tardini was equally concerned about the reputation of the church. Tiso was exposing the feebleness of the Holy See. As Tardini bluntly put it, “The calamity is that the President of Slovakia is a priest. That the Holy See cannot bring Hitler to

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heel, everyone understands. But that they cannot keep a priest within bounds, who can comprehend?”14 Why did the pope not censure Tiso? Slovakia was a Catholic state with priests in government, and the pope had disciplinary powers over the clergy. In July 1923 his predecessor Pius XI had ordered the priest Don Luigi Sturzo to resign as leader of the Italian Populist Party (Partito Populare Italiano), because the Vatican wished to come to an understanding with Mussolini on church-state relations and on the Roman question. When Bismarck had tried to weaken the autonomy of the Catholic Church by placing the education of priests in the hands of the state, ban papal disciplinary authority over clerics, banish monastic orders, and imprison bishops, Pope Pius IX responded that any cleric who recognized the legality of these measures would be excommunicated. Why then did Pius XII not impose religious sanctions on Tiso or on Slovak priests who as parliamentary deputies had approved the deportations? Pope Pius XII chose the lesser evil. With Tiso as president, the Slovak church could exert pressure on the government. Tiso was popular with the Slovak public, far more so than the radical faction in the Slovak People’s Party. Leaders of the radical faction in cabinet were Prime Minister Tuka and Interior Minister Mach, both strongly pro-German and admirers of National Socialism as opposed to Tiso’s Catholic authoritarianism. As such, Tiso’s presence was a buffer, if a fitful one, against German plans and pressure. Burzio reported that Germany “must take due account” of Tiso’s popularity. The German proxies in the Slovak cabinet saw Tiso as a cover for their own policies, but they worried that he would escape their control. Tiso believed that by staying in office, he could prevent Nazi pressure from reaching “extreme consequences.” A condemnation from the Vatican would have only weakened Tiso’s position. So while Monsignor Tiso was implicating the church in mass crimes, there were reasons not to take action against him.15 We must remember that parliament had granted President Tiso the power to issue exemptions, which meant that Catholics of Jewish descent would come to no harm. Tiso also could exempt Jews from the deportations. Those who were granted such exemptions included approximately 4,000 Catholics of Jewish descent. Of that number, about 2,350 had converted between March 1939 and September 1942, which indicates, in accord with Slovak government suspicions, that many conversions were a bid for safety and survival and that there were clerics willing to baptize Jews on this basis. Others who received exemptions



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included almost 10,000 Jews considered vital to the economy and almost 1,000 Jews in mixed marriages. A large number of Jews had also been able to gain exeptions by paying bribes to officials; others lacked exemptions, but nonetheless had managed to evade the deportations.16 Deportations went on from March to June 1942, when they were halted, then resumed, finally subsiding in October that year. German Minister to Slovakia Ludin reported to Berlin that the standstill in June 1942 was brought about by “definite clerical pressures and because of the venality of certain officials.” But then deportations resumed. By October 1942, between 56,000and 60,000 of close to 90,000 Jews in Slovakia were deported and murdered by gas. Of the rest, 8,000 had fled to Hungary. Only about 30,000 Jews (racially so categorized) were left in Slovakia after October 1942. Although under intense German pressure to do so, the Slovak government did not resume deportations. In February 1943 Interior Minister Mach publicly announced that deportations would resume, but this time the balance of forces had changed, and deportations did not go ahead. Slovak bishops now spoke out forcefully and unambiguously in a pastoral letter of 8 March 1943, saying, “[With] resolve we must raise our determined and warning voices against these measures.” They went on, asserting, “Our attitude towards human beings must not be influenced by their linguistic, state, national or racial affiliation.” Collective punishment of a “racial minority” violates legality and divine law. Doing so “saps … the foundation of a state’s and nation’s existence.” Since crimes were committed by individuals, only individuals known to be guilty of crimes should be punished. Two weeks later, the pastoral letter was read out in all churches in Slovakia. This time there was a Catholic consensus in support of a policy to end deportations. John Conway cites a report of the German Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst) according to which Mach feared “that Tiso will not be able to withstand the pressure from the church and clerical circles” against deportations. This turned out to be true.17 With the Slovak consensus behind it, the Vatican now sought to stop the deportations before they resumed again. Maglione reminded Burzio on 6 March 1943 that of those threatened with deportation, fully half were estimated to be Catholics of Jewish descent. On 10 April Burzio responded to Maglione that he had followed his instructions to get the regime to stop all further deportations. Burzio reminded Tuka, who was both prime minister and foreign minister, of the “horrible fate” of Jews deported to Poland: “The whole world speaks of it.” More

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deportations, Burzio continued, would render Slovakia an outcast in the eyes of “world public opinion and the judgment of history.” But he got nowhere with Tuka, whom he considered a “lunatic.” Surprisingly, this time President Tiso apologized for Tuka’s behaviour. Then, on 5 May, Maglione confronted Sidor and told him in the name of the pope that deportations “violated the principles of natural law and positivedivine law” and to “stop them for now.” Burzio noted that the State Council of Ministers considered the intervention of the Holy See “an honour for Slovakia.”18 The Vatican played an active role in stopping the deportations from Slovakia. The reasons for the stoppage were many, among them timing was crucial. With German defeats in North Africa and at Stalingrad the tide of war had turned, and German pressures could end in the foreseeable future. Moreover, during the Slovak army’s participation in Germany’s anti-Bolshevik crusade, it had suffered heavy losses on the eastern front, and there were persistent calls to bring the troops home. In 1942 German power still looked formidable, but far less so in 1943. Yehuda Bauer has concluded that while the interventions of Monsignor Burzio and some members of the Slovak church hierarchy were important, bribes to Slovak officials by Jewish leaders and objections to the deportations by leading state officials were equally significant. It was not until Slovakia was fully occupied by Germany, in the fall of 1944, that German police seized a further fourteen thousand Jews and dispatched them to Auschwitz. Slovak semi-independence had saved the balance of Slovak Jewry, but only temporarily. As I concluded in chapter 2, the pope feared being too far ahead of his flock, and did not speak out over the heads of national bishoprics or the faithful. Pope Pius XII reacted rather than acted. The top-down model of papal leadership was in many ways a fiction. The pope’s main concern was not to alienate Catholics, not to lose them from the church, which would endanger their salvation. Pope Pius XII spoke out too late, always taking his lead from national bishoprics.19 Croatia In Slovakia the Vatican had proceeded from caution to active intervention when a Catholic consensus in Slovakia turned favourable in support of Vatican action. In Croatia the Vatican never proceeded beyond the first phase of caution. Croatia proclaimed independence in April



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1941 with the German conquest and break-up of Yugoslavia. The Independent State of Croatia, as it was called, had a population of approximately six million: among them were about three million Catholic Croats, two million Orthodox Serbs, and around 36,000 Jews. Croatia was a client state of Germany. The German government installed the leader or Poglavnik (chief, head) of the new state, Ante Pavelić, who led the fascist Ustasha movement, founded in 1929. The movement’s goal was to carve out a Greater Croatia on the ruins of German-occupied Yugoslavia. The dominant party in Croatia had been the Croat Peasant Party, but when its leader, Vladko Maček, refused to be a tool of the Germans, the Germans turned to Pavelić. Though leader of a minority movement he had the force of Germany behind him, and he ruled partly by terror and partly by achieving for Croats their own nation state. As with Slovakia, one would assume that the Vatican had great leverage in Croatia. Croats were fervent Catholics who treasured their link to the papacy, a tie that was celebrated on its thirteen-hundredth anniversary in 1941. But whether the Vatican had leverage in Croatia, it did not choose to exert it, and we will see why. In accord with the Vatican’s long-term diplomatic practice of not recognizing new states in wartime before they were legitimized by peace treaties, the pope did not send a nuncio or diplomat to Croatia as requested, but an apostolic visitor, the Abbot Giuseppe Marcone, who was to represent the Vatican to the Croatian Catholic Church, not to the government. The government ignored this nuance, bestowing a prominent place for Marcone at all official functions. Marcone went along with this subterfuge, which implied Vatican support for the new state. Michael Phayer observes that with the collapse of the AustroHungarian Empire after the First World War, and the rise of Yugoslavia dominated by Serbs, Catholic power waned in southeastern Europe. This would be a reason for the Vatican to get along with the fascist regime, for it promised to renew Catholicism in Croatia. At the same time Pavelić, installed by the Germans, needed the support of Catholics in Croatia as well as the Varican, to gain popular acceptance. In this way Pavelić and the pope needed each other.20 Phayer calls his chapter on Croatia “Genocide before the Holocaust” to underline that Pius XII’s response to genocide was well established prior to the annihilation of Europe’s Jews. As with many ethnic states, the Croats wanted possession of all the land, but not the Serbs or Jews living on it. Mass murder was the government’s first answer. In May

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and June 1941 the Ustasha went on a rampage of genocide and ethnic cleansing, murdering 350,000 Serbs and forcing 300,000 more to flee or deporting many to German-­occupied Serbia by arrangement with the German authorities. German pressure did not, however, play any role in the genocide of the Serbs. The genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Serbs of Croatia was a “final solution” made in Croatia. From September 1941 to early 1942 Croatian authorities shifted their priorities to a policy of forced conversion. As Mark Biondich has noted, German pressure compelled the Croatian authorities to tone down their policy, which was driving Serbs to join either the Communist or Serbian Royalist insurrectionary forces. The government then aimed for mass conversion of whole villages. To this end they made a mockery of the conversion process, requiring only a written application with no period of initiation and instruction in the faith. The policy ignited a dispute between Croatian bishops and the government, which was usurping the church’s jurisdiction over conversion procedures, in effect, asserting control over religious matters. The pope communicated to the Croatian church hierarchy his support for their fight with the government over who controlled the conversion process.21 Conversion itself, however, was considered a laudable goal by the Vatican and the Catholic hierarchy in Croatia. Orthodox Serbs were “schismatics,” in a state of sin because they had split off from the “one Body of Christ” and set themselves up as an alternative to the Roman Church. Catholic Croats saw themselves as “the rampart of Christianity,” holding back the Eastern Orthodox tide. The conversion of the Serbs would be a “return” to the true faith, for it was believed they had been forcibly converted to Orthodoxy under Byzantine rule centuries before. For this reason they were called “the Byzantine schismatics.” Aloysius Cardinal Stepinac, archbishop of Zagreb (the capital of Croatia), considered the “schism,” or Eastern Orthodoxy, “the greatest curse of Europe, almost greater than Protestantism.” Militant Catholicism was reinforced by grim memories of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when the country suffered huge human losses in battling against the Muslim Turks.22 Many Croats believed the conversion campaign was a righting of old wrongs. Croats and Serbs had long been engaged in rivalry with explosive potential, as religious and nationalistic zeal fed on each other, on both sides. In the interwar Kingdom of Yugoslavia, where Serbs were dominant, they had sought to “denationalize” Croats by denying jobs



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to Catholics in government and the armed forces, closing Catholic schools, promoting the dominance of the Serbian heritage, and confiscating monasteries and church property. The historian Jozo Tomasevich insists on the difference between Serb discrimination against Croats and the later lethal persecution of Serbs by Croats. In any case, up to two hundred thousand Croats converted to Eastern Orthodoxy in the interwar period. The government of Croatia could rightly claim it was now returning them to their former faith. By April 1942 the conversion campaign had ground to a halt. Pavelić had again retreated. More Serbs were joining the insurrection to avoid forced conversion and/or being murdered, for the Ustasha militia was out of control and continued to murder Serbs, converts to Catholicism or not. The government then formed a Croatian Orthodox Church as an alternative for Serbs, and recognized it as a state religion. This was a last-minute half-hearted effort at assimilating the Serbs, for as Biondich points out, the prevailing attitude of the Croatian government remained “exclusionist.”23 As for Jewish Croatians, the authorities proclaimed a series of antiJewish decrees, requiring Jews to register and wear the yellow Star of David, forcing them to abandon their homes for designated Jewish areas, banning them from hotels and restaurants, removing them from public life and the professions, and initiating the forced sale of Jewish enterprises. Apostolic Visitor Marcone had nothing against these anti-Jewish measures. In August 1941 he reported to Cardinal Maglione that the measures were bringing Jews to the doorsteps of the church, seeking baptism in order to escape persecution. In spite of their lack of true Christian conviction, Marcone saw their conversion as the working of divine Providence: “Supernatural motives and the silent action of divine grace cannot be a priori excluded from this. Our clergy facilitates their conversion, thinking that at least their children will be educated in Catholic schools and therefore be more sincerely Christian.” Apparently God worked in mysterious ways: persecution of the Jews would lead them or their children to shed the blindfolds from their eyes. Marcone drew on a mainstream Catholic tradition, the belief that the lowly status of the Jews marked them as a punished people and witnesses to the truth of the Christian faith they had rejected; this was now coming to fruition through divine agency operating through a fascist government.24 Archbishop Stepinac had serious reservations about the anti-Jewish decrees, though he supported some of their provisions. In a letter of

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22 May 1941 to the Croatian minister of the interior, Andrija Artuković, he agreed that “in a national state the sons of that nation rule and all harmful influences which infect the national organism must be checked.” Therefore, “antinational individuals” must be excluded from influence in the economy and public life. His proviso was that Jews not be reduced to penury by having all their property confiscated and that the order to wear the yellow star be repealed. He believed it wrong to indiscriminately brand a whole people criminal. Stepinac put in a special plea for both“assimilated” Jews, and “often good and enthusiastic Catholics” who were subject to the stigma of the yellow star under the racial definition of Jews. One week later, 30 May, he narrowed his plea to Catholics of Jewish descent whose children would be forced, according to the racial laws, into Jewish schools where they would be exposed to “scorn.” Stepinac pleaded that marriages between Catholics of Jewish descent and other Catholics not be jeopardized by legislation overriding the church’s canonical rules about the sacrament of marriage. He conceded, even more, that the government had the right to categorize as Jews those Catholics of Jewish descent who “have not, according to the legislation, sufficiently shown their Aryan qualities, either through their activities and conduct or their social positions.” One can only speculate why he retreated so far back. He seemed to be making a distinction between “good” Jewish Croatians and those whose influence was harmful to the nation. It was clear that for all his criticism, Archbishop Stepinac wanted no break with the government, and he demonstrated his public support of the regime to the end. He officiated at a Te Deum and solemn mass for Pavelić on his birthday every year to the end of his rule. At the opening ceremony of parliament on 23 February 1942, Pavelić and handpicked members of that institution entered the Church of St Mark to be welcomed by the archbishop. Stepinac exhorted the government to rule according to “God’s laws,” a term subject to varying interpretations, and called for God’s blessings for the government. In episcopal conference and under the signature of Archbishop Stepinac as president, Croat bishops sent a resolution of 18 November 1941 to Pavelić, concerned solely with Catholics of Jewish origin “who are treated as are the Jews who have not been converted from their religion.” The Croat bishops were defending the church’s understanding of – and jurisdiction over –conversion, which turned Jews into Catholics. Vatican Secretary of State Maglione wrote to Apostolic Visitor Marcone in a similar vein on 21 February 1942, praising the bishops’



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effort “to obtain humane treatment for the [Catholic] citizens of Jewish origin.” He was, in effect, commending them for asserting the rights of the church. When Pius XII received notice of the episcopal resolution, he praised the bishops for rejecting “the right of the civil power to give orders regarding religious conversion.”25 In the meantime, the regime had already moved to the mass murder of Jews. During the summer of 1941, most of Croatia’s 40,000 Jews were arrested and herded into Croatian concentration camps; two-thirds of them were in camps by the end of 1941. Most were murdered upon arrival. By the end of 1941 only 12,000 Jews had survived; 4,000 of them had managed to flee. Beginning in May 1942 Jews were dispatched to Auschwitz: 5,500 in August 1942, another 1,150 in May 1943. By the end of the war, 80 per cent or more than 30,000 Jewish Croatians had perished.26 How did the Catholic Church hierarchy in Croatia and the Vatican respond to the murder of Serbs and Jews in Croatia? In December 1941 the Croat bishops addressed a private letter to Pavelić calling for the “humane treatment of the Jews … inasmuch as this was possible given the presence of the Germans.” How far did “humane treatment” go? As head of the Catholic bishops’ conference in Croatia, Archbishop Stepinac protested vigorously to Pavelić and to Artuković, over atrocities against Serbs and Jews, though he did not make his interventions public. Stepinac wrote that arresting Jews and dispatching them to concentration camps was “solving the Jewish problem” in the “cruelest” way. Referring to the executions of Serbs and Jews, he forcefully declared that the church “demand full respect for the human personality without regard to sex, religion, nationality, or race.” In a February 1943 letter Stepinac branded the murder of three hundred Slovene priests expelled from Slovenia by the Germans “a crime that cries out for vengeance from heaven ... a disgrace to Croatia.” How successful were these protests? Tomasevich points out that Pavelić had utter contempt for the archbishop and treated him shabbily. Nevertheless, the protests disturbed the government, for Pavelić demanded the Vatican remove the archbishop from office at least three times. Only in May 1942 did Stepinac launch his first public condemnation of atrocities, and even then in rather abstract language, stating, “The true relation with our neighbour demands that we see in him a man, not a wild beast; a child of God, as we are ourselves; our brother whom we must love.” But later he escalated his protests. In a sermon on 14 March 1943 Stepinac spelled out what he meant by “our neighbour,” proclaiming, “Every man of whatever race or nation … carries

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equally on himself the stamp of God the Creator and possesses inalienable rights” including “the right of physical life.” In pointed words, he declared, “There is no place for open or disguised pressure on the cultural particularities or languages of national minorities.” On 25 October he named the victims when he said, “One cannot extinguish from the face of the earth Gypsies or Jews because one considers them inferior races.” He was now calling attention to the 26,000 to 28,000 Sinta and Roma murdered by the Ustasha during the Second World War. He continued, “No one has the right to kill or harm in any way those who belong to another race or another nation.” Michael Phayer has called Stepinac’s words “courageous and principled.” By contrast, the Catholic hierarchy as a whole did not protest publicly over the atrocities against Serbs until October 1943. As late as 8 May that year Marcone informed Maglione that “our Croatian episcopacy did not and does not have special motives for protesting publicly against the government in favour of the schismatics.” Croat bishops hesitated because they did not want to credit Serb charges about Croat atrocities, which the Serbs insisted were done with the connivance of the Catholic Church.27 Archbishop Stepinac himself was beyond such cares. His words were grist for Allied propaganda and selections from his sermons were broadcast by the BBC into German-controlled Europe. Nevertheless, one should not forget that Stepinac’s public protests came two years after the mass murder of Croatia’s Serbs, Jews, and Sinti and Roma – that is, after most of them were dead. Again, timing played a major role. During 1941 and 1942 there was every prospect that Germany would remain the new master of Europe. However, by early 1943 prospects had turned the other way, with Allied victories in North Africa and the crushing German defeat at Stalingrad. Indeed, by mid-August Stepinac believed Croats would have to prepare for a re-established Yugoslav state. How did the Vatican respond to mass atrocities committed by Catholics on the initiative of the Croatian government, rather than Nazi Germany? Certainly, the Vatican had no reason to fear that public protest would lead to retaliation against the victims, the primary reason the Vatican gave for its policy of non-intervention in Germany. It is hard to believe that the Croatian government, with a majority Catholic population and influential bishops, would bait and humiliate the pope, by a deliberate act of retaliation against non-Catholics. The explanation for the Vatican’s non-intervention lies elsewhere. Massacres of Serbs began in April 1941. Three months later, on 24 July, the Roman Catholic bishop of Belgrade (capital of Serbia), Josip Ujcic,



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appealed to the Vatican to intervene against the “violent persecution” of the Orthodox Serbs. The Vatican heard even more harrowing accounts from other sources. Yet in March the next year Nicola Rusinovic, one of the Croat representatives to the Vatican, reported that Vatican Undersecretary of State Giovanni Montini asked him, “What is happening in Croatia? Why such an uproar over it? Is it possible that so many crimes have been committed? Is it true that prisoners have been mistreated?” This was no way to get to the bottom of things. Rusinovic, of course, denied everything. In September 1941 Maglione was told that six thousand Jews had been conscripted to labour in Croatian salt mines under conditions of extreme deprivation. He advised Marcone that he should “recommend that moderation be employed in the treatment of the Jews.” That is, Marcone was not to condemn, or warn, or object. Moreover, this was to be done, “confidentially and always in a way so that an official character cannot be attributed to your steps.” As for treatment of the Serbs, Marcone was to act “with the prudence and tact required by the circumstances.” A full year later, on 6 October 1942, Maglione, speaking of the “painful situation in which the Jews of Croatia find themselves,” advised Marcone to raise the matter with the government on “a propitious occasion ... and with due tact.” By then over five thousand Jews had been deported from Croatia to Auschwitz. Three months had passed since Marcone had reported to Maglione that two million Jews had already been murdered by Germany, and that “within 6 months” that would be the fate of Croatia’s Jews. What the combined efforts of Archbishop Stepinac and Apostolic Visitor Marcone were able to get from the Croatian government were exemptions for Catholics of Jewish descent in marriages to other Catholics. That number was in the hundreds. What stands out is the belated and tepid response of Marcone to atrocities committed by Catholics, but these were Maglione’s instructions. Tepid response and all, Cardinal Secretary Maglione was concerned about the good name of the church. In April 1943 he complained to Marcone about “Serbian-Orthodox propaganda” accusing Croat bishops of not protesting the massacres of Serbs and even “conniving” in them. This would bring “problematic damage to the prestige of the Catholic name.” He asked why the Serbs did not equally mention the “excesses” of the Chetniks (Serbian nationalist paramilitary force). He instructed Marcone to urge Stepinac to speak to the “lack of foundation” of this propaganda. It is hard to believe Maglione had no knowledge of

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Catholic atrocities in Croatia, but the church for Maglione was of transcendent value, the divinely established channel of salvation. For this reason, Maglione needed to explain away and minimize atrocities committed by Catholics.28 Why did the Vatican walk on eggshells in Croatia? After all, the Croatian church and its hierarchy enjoyed a special position of prestige in the nation. The Pavelić government considered its “crusade” against Orthodox Serbs and Jews a special Catholic mission. The pope was widely revered in Croatia, and Pavelić counted heavily on the Vatican’s diplomatic recognition of the new state. The Vatican had leverage in Croatia where a tougher diplomatic line coming from the Holy See would not have met with retaliation against Catholics or Jews on the part of the government. But in keeping with his policy across Europe, Pope Pius XII left it to national episcopacies to speak out, or not. The pope did not want to proceed beyond the local Catholic consensus. Croat bishops supported their government, either actively or by their silence, and they would not have welcomed an intervention from the pope. Archbishop Stepinac reported to an emissary from Britain that Croat bishops were divided in their views of the government and “each went his own way.” Papal intervention would only have further divided the Croat bishops. More important, Stepinac had regular correspondence with the pope and, indeed, visited him at the Vatican. Stepinac’s message to the pope was clear: he did not request papal intervention for he did not want it. On 18 August 1941 the bishop of Mostar, Alojzije Mišić, reported to Stepinac about horrifying atrocities that had been visited upon Serb converts to Catholicism, who while attending Mass had been driven from the church and murdered: Serb “mothers together with their children were thrown alive off steep precipices.” Such atrocities were horrifying and strengthened the forces of the insurrection against the Pavelić government. Stepinac wrote to Pavelić that November condemning these atrocities and pleading with him to put an end to them, lest they imperil the position of both church and state. Stepinac mentioned nothing of this in his letter the next month to Pius XII, instead he assured him of the good prospects for the conversion of Orthodox Serbs. The message to the pope was that the position of the Catholic Church in Croatia was well in hand.29 When Pius XII intervened strongly in Slovakia he was following the lead of Slovak bishops. In abstaining from intervention in Croatia, he followed the lead of Stepinac and the Croatian church hierarchy. The



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pope’s priority was to maintain his spiritual and pastoral authority over Croatian Catholics. Admonishing the Catholics of Croatia would have alienated the population and certainly the church hierarchy. Too many Croat Catholics saw themselves as victims, nursing bitter memories of Serb oppression and – as they saw it – undue Jewish power. Furthermore, this was wartime. The pope was an Italian and Italy had annexed part of Croatia, while another part was under its military occupation. This by itself put anything the pope said touching on Croatia under suspicion. Protest and chastisement by Pius XII would not have been obeyed, leading to no change aside from eroding the pope’s spiritual authority, which in his mind was crucial for the eternal salvation of the laity’s souls. The message from Stepinac was not to weaken the Pavelić government, which whatever else it was, protected and even enhanced the Catholic presence in Croatia. So, in order to maintain his spiritual authority among Catholics, Pope Pius XII conceded to their particular blend of Croat Catholic nationalism and antisemitism. Before closing the Croatian story, I will add an addendum on the use of the term “schismatics” in reference to Eastern Orthodox Serbs who had separated from communion with the Roman Catholic Church. Richard McBrien tells us that the term “schismatic” means “tear,” for in Rome’s eyes the Eastern Orthodox were to blame for having torn church unity apart. Reflecting later sentiments in post-war democratic states and cultures, Vatican Council II issued a “Decree on Ecumenism” (Unitatis Redintegratio) describing other Christian churches quite differently: “all those justified by faith through baptism are incorporated into Christ. They therefore have the right to be known by the title of Christian, and are properly regarded as brothers in the Lord by the sons of the Catholic Church.” The Eastern Orthodox churches were no longer to be stigmatized. In the Council decree, The Dogmatic Constitution of the Church (Lumen gentium; Light of the Nations), other Christian religions were recognized as containing “many elements of sanctification and truth.” The Orthodox churches were addressed as “sister churches.” This was not Pope Pius XII’s view, for whom the survivial of the church was an absolute priority and for whom other religions were not potential allies but potential rivals – and their defence was no concern of the Vatican.30 France In some respects Vichy France resembled both Slovakia and Croatia in regard to its Jewish minority. All three were Catholic countries where

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native governments exercised some degree – sometimes considerable – of autonomy. Germany preferred this arrangement to outright occupation, for collaborator regimes seemed popular and stable. Having allies and collaborators meant less expenditure of German manpower and more foreign resources and manufactured products for the Reich. These states operated under German pressure, but had room to manoeuvre. France was defeated in June 1940. In exchange for collaboration with Germany, the Vichy government, so named for its new capital, was granted sovereignty over most of southern France, while Germany occupied northern France, the industrial heartland of the country. Vichy shared jurisdiction with Germany in the occupied zone, but could issue no decrees overriding German edicts. However, Vichy France was no pawn of Berlin. American historian Norman Rich has emphasized the bargaining power Vichy had with Germany and the instances in which Marshal Philippe Pétain, chief of the French state, backed by his considerable prestige and popularity in France, dug in his heels in the face of German demands. These included Hitler’s demand that France abandon its neutrality and join in the war against Britain, that military bases in France’s overseas empire be made available to Germany, and that the French fleet be enlisted in the German war effort. To this one can add other cards France could play: the need for France’s cooperation in producing for the German military, as well as the need for French police to enforce the deportations of 1942, because of Germany’s scarcity of military and police manpower.31 In 1940 the Jewish population of France was approximately 330,000, of these about 195,000 or 59 per cent were citizens, and about 135,000 or 41 per cent were immigrants and refugees who had come to France during the 1920s and 1930s, mostly from Eastern Europe and Germany. Of the total Jewish population, some 72,920 were deported and murdered; approximately 4,000 died in French internment camps, and 1,100 were executed in France, most as hostages shot in retaliation for attacks by the French Resistance on Germans. Of the deportees, about 2,800 survived. Of those who perished, 56,000 were immigrants and refugees, while 24,500 were French citizens; thus, about 30 per cent of those who perished were French citizens, and 70 per cent were non-citizens.32 German measures in the occupied zone followed a familiar pattern of excluding Jews from economic, cultural, and public life, ordering the “Aryanization” of Jewish property, a census of Jews, and the wearing of the yellow star. Vichy decrees in July 1940 reversed France’s



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liberal citizenship and asylum laws of the late 1920s and 1930s, stripping so-called undesirables of citizenship. Over 15,000 former citizens were denaturalized, including about 6,000 Jews. The law of 4 October 1940 authorized prefects (representatives of the state to local governments) to intern Jews who were without French citizenship. By 1941 French internment camps held 40,000 Jews. All Jews, citizens or not, were barred from the public service, elected bodies, the professions of law and medicine, teaching, and the media. Exceptions were made for Jews who had distinguished themselves in the First World War, or by exceptional service to the state. New statutes were issued beginning in June 1941, which Michael Marrus characterizes as a “massive purge of Jews from the liberal professions, commerce, the crafts, and industry.” Further statutes called for a census of Jews in the unoccupied zone, and the “Aryanization” or liquidation of Jewish property and businesses in that zone.33 The Jewish statutes stemmed from the National Revolution, the ideology of the French state emerging from the ashes of defeat in June 1940. The French drew what they believed were lessons from their stunning and unexpected rout by Germany. Most of the population concluded that France had been weakened by parliamentary paralysis and the political divisiveness of the Third Republic; by its liberal immigration and refugee policies, now seen as a liability with high unemployment following the Depression of the 1930s; by its secularism and its anticlericalism; and by its tolerance of hedonism and decadence. The French defeat was seen as both punishment and an opportunity for redemption, for the “National Revolution”: The answer lay in restoring France’s backbone with authoritarian government and promoting national and cultural unity, a return to France’s Catholic traditions, and a renewed nativism as a response to what many believed was the dilution of French culture and society by foreign elements. The Catholic Church was a leading beneficiary of the National Revolution. The state schools under the Third Republic had been strongholds of secularism and anticlericalism. Now time off was allowed for voluntary religious instruction, and the government provided a subsidy to the parochial school system. Members of religious orders were permitted to teach, and some church property seized during the separation of church and state in 1905 was returned to dioceses. These were cautious, not spectacular changes, for Prime Minister Pierre Laval feared sweeping measures would create a backlash among French secularists. But as Robert Paxton has observed, the important change was

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in “matters of tone”: cardinals and bishops were “cultivated” to induce them to champion Vichy, appear at state ceremonies, be photographed with Chief of State Pétain and Prime Minister Laval. Most important, the government promoted Catholic conservative values, encouraging large families and tightening laws on divorce and abortion. All these measures accorded with a genuine religious revival in France in the wake of the trauma of defeat. The Catholic Church supported Vichy for more mundane reasons as well. The regime would fend off the possibility of a complete takeover of France by the Germans or a German transfer of power to French pro-Nazi collaborators; thus, the church would never push Vichy so far as to undermine its collaboration with Germany. After all the French were concerned about other matters: making a living, unemployment, food shortages, and the million and a half French prisoners of war held by Germany. As for specific church interests, secular parties and organizations were suppressed, and Catholic organizations – the Catholic Scouts, the Young Christian Workers – enjoyed a relative monopoly in Vichy, and they set about being useful in the wake of food shortages and destruction from German bombings, giving aid to prisoners and even organizing solidarity meetings in the southern zones. In general, membership in Catholic youth organizations swelled from 100,000 in 1940 to 380,000 in 1942.34 The church hierarchy rallied around Marshal Pétain as the “saviour” of France. He was a reminder to the French of the glory days of the First World War: Pétain was the hero of the battle of Verdun, a highly successful and respected commander of troops, commander-in-chief of the French army in 1917, and later a marshal of France. As Vichy chief of state, Pétain revived a French tradition of personal authoritarian rule; in turn he was venerated as a father figure shielding the French people from disaster. Pétain fit into a certain Catholic narrative of the events of 1940: France had sinned and lost its religious and moral and patriotic backbone under republican regimes. As a sign of the times, in June 1940 the archbishop of Toulouse Jules-Gérard Saliège, asked pardon of God “for having chased God from the schools, the courts, the nation ... for having dispossessed our priests and nuns … for having despoiled the Church … for having tolerated pernicious literature.” The new regime would restore adherence to Catholic doctrines, the source of French solidarity, morale, and resolve. In a letter of January 1941 to Pius XII, the French church hierarchy assured the pope that the first concern of the church in France was the



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health of its institutions, that the churches had never been so full, and that Catholic organizations were doing well, as were Catholic schools: “Godless France” was gone. The bishops were emphasizing the benefits of collaboration and implying that the pope’s intervention was not needed. Papal activity in France concentrated on aiding the four thousand priests who were prisoners of war of the Germans, and sending funds to the French church to aid these priests to maintain religious life in German captivity. The church hierarchy of France spoke with one voice through the Assembly of Cardinals and Archbishops (ACA). That voice was mildly equivocal after the second of the anti-Jewish decrees was proclaimed in June 1941. On 24–25 July the ACA, with the support of bishops in both zones, declared its “veneration for the Chief of State” and called for the French to “unite in support of him.” The ACA called for “sincere and complete loyalty to the established power, without subordination.” The declaration then affirmed “respect for each human being” and rejected “all injustices and excesses” in keeping with “the love of Christ which extends to all men.” The bishops chose their words with an eye to ambiguity. They emphasized their independence of the regime by calling it the “established power,” rather than the “legitimate or legal power,” and by insisting on their “loyalty” but not their “subordination.” However, their plea of “respect for each human being” remained at the level of generality, and had little resonance. French historian Renée Bédarida has gone so far as to call the response “official silence” The declaration was an effort to square a circle: how do you rally around a regime and oppose its key policies?35 Apparently some private and discrete representations made to Pétain about the severity of the anti-Jewish decrees led him to solicit the Vatican’s attitude: could he count on its views or not? On 7 August 1941 Pétain asked Léon Bérard, France’s ambassador to the Holy See, to establish whether the Vatican objected to any of the anti-Jewish decrees. Bérard raised the issue with the two Vatican undersecretaries of state, Giovanni Montini and Domenico Tardini. He then responded, in a memo dated 2 September, assuring Pétain that the Vatican considered the decrees in accord with long-held Catholic teachings: The church, after all, had never considered Jews just members of a religion, but an ethnic group as well. Bérard cited precedents for this in the teachings of Saint Thomas Aquinas, who declared that Jews should not be in positions of authority over Christians and their influence in society should be restricted. It was also reasonable, Bérard stated, to set quotas on their

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numbers in university and in the liberal professions, but at the same time, Jews should be shielded from violence and allowed to worship according to their faith. Bérard then pointed to the church’s well-known opposition to racist theory, which was contrary to Catholic universalism, and materialistic and deterministic besides. There was only one point of potential conflict with the Vatican. The anti-Jewish decree of 2 June 1941 stipulated that a Christian of Jewish descent would still be considered Jewish if she or he had three grandparents of the Jewish race. However, an “authorized source” at the Vatican had told him they would not “dispute” the Jewish statute, as long as Vichy set no bar to marriage between Catholics where one of the parties was of Jewish descent. The Vatican also stressed the need for Vichy to keep within the “precepts of justice and charity,” referring to allowances to be made for Catholics of Jewish descent. The Vichy government made good use of the memo, circulating it among its officials to help them counter protests by French clerics. Armed with Bérard’s report, Marshal Pétain boasted to the nuncio to France, Archbishop Valerio Valeri, in the presence of the Brazilian and Spanish ambassadors, that the Vatican would not object to the anti-­ Jewish decrees. Valeri responded that the Holy See opposed decrees based on racial criteria. Two weeks later Pétain handed Valeri the Bérard memo, telling him triumphantly that he must be out of touch with his superiors in the church. After reading it, Valeri wrote to Pétain that the anti-Jewish decrees posed “serious difficulties that arise from the simple ‘religious’ point of view.” Maglione backed Valeri’s response, expressing the hope that “the prudent actions of your Excellency” would help “attenuate in practice the interpretation and rigid application of the harshest dispositions of the ill-omened law.” These were vague stipulations. One thing was clear: the Vatican did not want to be misused by Pétain citing the pope as a supporter of French policies. However, when the decree of October 1940 was issued barring Jews from the political, governmental, and cultural realms, Nuncio Valeri had explained to Vatican Secretary of State Maglione that Vichy was reacting, in part, because “the Jews have contributed what they could to the outbreak of the war.” Valeri fell in with the view that French Jews were unpatriotic, and enemies of France.36 The first major round-up of Jews for deportation in Vichy came in July 1942, implemented by the Vichy police. Young and old were trapped in this net; seven thousand Jews were crowded into the Velodrome d’Hiver, an indoor cycle track in Paris. In total Vichy arrested



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almost thirteen thousand Jews in July 1942, refugees and immigrants without French citizenship, and sent them to wretched transit camps to await deportation to Auschwitz. Marrus and Paxton describe the backlash the round-ups provoked among the French, not only because of their visibility and sheer brutality – many children were separated from their parents and dispatched to French internment camps – but also because the arrests made Vichy look like a puppet of the Germans. The act of shipping thousands of Jews in sealed boxcars – including women, children, and elderly men – to an unknown location in the east during wartime alerted large numbers of the French population to the fact that many of these people would surely die. Murder by gas chambers was not widely known, but it was obvious that many Jews would die a slow death from deprivation and maltreatment. One could no longer rationalize that deportations were simply a labour draft. Now Jewish victimization was of a different order than the Jewish statutes. At the end of July 1942 the cardinals and archbishops of the occupied zone sent a joint letter to Marshal Pétain expressing shame over the round-ups: We are profoundly stirred by reports of the massive arrests of Israelites that took place last week and the harsh treatment inflicted on them (in particular at the Velodrome d’Hiver) and cannot stifle our cry of conscience. In the name of humanity and Christian principles, we raise our voice in support of inalienable human rights. We also appeal for compassion for these immense sufferings, especially those of mothers and children. Marshal, we ask that you take this into consideration, so that the principles of justice and charity might be respected.

The letter was sent privately to Pétain, though it was also sent out to priests throughout France, and it became widely known. The letter was impassioned and deeply affecting, but what was it asking Pétain to do? – stop the deportations, manage them more humanely? For this reason Nuncio Valeri called the letter “a rather platonic protest.” He believed the churchmen held back for fear that the regime would close down Catholic Action in the occupied zone; it had been banned by the German authorities, but was tacitly tolerated. Catholic Action was a lay organization promoting Catholic values in society.37 This was not the end of the story. Throughout August 1942 the French police went on to systematically snatch Jews in the unoccupied zone for the freight trains. Horror and repulsion among many of the

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French now doubled because babies and young children were being crammed in boxcars in the heat of August, while at least five thousand children between the ages of two and sixteen years were left behind and interned in the transit camp, Drancy (near Paris), when their parents were deported east. Far stronger protests followed from a number of bishops, read publicly in the parish churches of their diocese. Archbishop Saliège was categorical and specific in a sermon of 30 August, read out in churches, when he said, “Our Lady [Mary] pray for France. Frightful scenes have taken place in the concentration camps of Noé and Récébédou in our diocese [in the Free Zone]. Jews are men, Jews are women, foreigners are men, foreigners are women. Not all is allowed against them. They are part of the human race. They are our brothers, like so many others. A Christian cannot forget this.” Others followed. Bishop of Montaubon Pierre-Marie Théas composed a pastoral letter that was read out in the churches of his diocese. He wrote, “In Paris tens of thousands of Jews have been treated with the most barbaric savagery … all men, Aryans or non-Aryans are brothers … the current antisemitic measures are in contempt of human dignity, a violation of the most sacred rights of the person and the family.” Bishop of Marseille Jean Delay added his voice when he spoke of “the painful cry of the Christian conscience ... at the measures taken and executed … against men, women, and children guilty only of belonging to the Jewish race and of being foreigners.” Delay recalled “the ideal to which the Marshal often summoned us … founded upon respect for the human person, devotion to the family, the city, the fatherland, upon love, justice, and humanity.” The bishops had become more blunt and specific. Although the protesters were few, six, or one-tenth of the French episcopate, and all from the unoccupied zone, their protests had an impact, precisely because the bishops were known as strong supporters of Marshal Pétain. In his protest sermon, Pierre-Marie Cardinal Gerlier, archbishop of Lyons, underscored his support of the Marshal; he pointed out that “the French authorities have a problem [the presence of Jewish immigrants and refugees] to solve,” and spoke of the “difficulties” the government had to confront. He appealed to “the sense of justice, in the benevolent union of spirits and hearts to which the great voice of the Marshal has invited us.” While their pastoral letters were impassioned, expressing deep shame over horrible crimes, the French bishops were not about to cut their ties to the marshal, the Vichy chief of state; neither was the Vatican. In



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October 1942 after deportations got underway and Vichy granted state subsidies to Catholic institutions of higher learning and tax advantages and other concessions to the French church, Nuncio Valeri responded by complimenting Pétain for building the new France on “spiritual values.” Nevertheless, public information about what was happening from authoritative sources, such as the bishops, played a large role in alerting Jews to the dangers of deportation, and alerting Catholics to their duty to aid Jews. The news also became part of Allied propaganda, broadcast on the BBC. Such public information at an early stage was all too rare in Europe. Vichy officials and others reported that Catholics in the unoccupied zone had become aware and highly disturbed by the fate of Jews. Archbishop Saliège played an active role in opening up Catholic convents, schools, orphanages, and private homes to Jews. This is not to diminish the role of others: the many associations and individuals – especially Jewish and Protestant – who played a role in rescue. About 50,000 Jews evaded deportation by crossing the borders into Switzerland and Spain, a dangerous venture. Rescue was a massive undertaking. American historian Susan Zuccotti’s figures indicate that 20,000 to 30,000 French Jews were placed by Jewish organizations with non-Jews, while about 140,000 to 150,000 evaded deportations by making their own arrangements, often with the aid of Catholics. As she points out, hiding Jews on this scale required the passive assent of neighbours and those in proximity. In short, those who acquiesced with the anti-Jewish decrees of 1940 and 1941, or those who were indifferent, preoccupied with their own situation or distress, became the rescuers of 1942–44. Marrus and Paxton emphasize that the outcry did not last long. Soon, as Valeri reported, the French became preoccupied with the dispatch of French skilled workers to Germany. Though most Jews found refuge by 1943, deportations continued into 1943 and 1944, and a substantial number of Jews, both French citizens and non-citizens, were seized by the French and the German police. Then another episode came to preoccupy the French, the decree of 4 September 1943 setting up forced labour service in Germany for young men. Marrus and Paxton put it vividly: for most of the French, this was “the real deportation.” At the same time French bishops reaffirmed their loyalty to the Marshal; they were not going to weaken Vichy, or their standing in the regime. Vichy awarded state subsidies to Catholic institutions of higher education, as well as other tax benefits and aid to diocesan associations. When deportations resumed in February 1943, no protests were uttered.38

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How did Pope Pius XII respond to events in Vichy? In his view France held an honoured place in Catholic history. When he was cardinal secretary of state, he had paid an official visit to the country in July 1937 as representative of Pope Pius XI. The occasion was the inauguration in Liseaux of a basilica in honour of St Theresa of Liseaux (1873–1897) or St Theresa of the Child-Jesus and the Holy Face, canonized by Pius XI in 1925. Speaking later at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, Cardinal Pacelli reminded the French people of their Catholic vocation. He called France the “eldest daughter of the Church”: Its deepest history was Catholic, stretching in a straight line from Clovis in the sixth century, the first Catholic King of the Franks, to Emperor Charlemagne, to King Louis IX of France, canonized as Saint Louis, to the great Catholic universities of the Middle Ages, to Bernard of Clairvaux, Saint Joan, and Saint Theresa of Liseaux, to the present. Calling the Cathedral of Notre-Dame “the very soul of France,” Pacelli pointed to those who would weaken the French church, and asked, “How many with the pretentious arrogance of their disbelief see in it [the responsive prayers uttered in the Cathedral] a provocation?” France had, of course, yet another heritage equally prized, an anticlerical one, stemming from the French Revolution. Anticlericalism had gained traction in the late nineteenth century. From that time onward through to Vichy, clerical and secular France were locked in confrontation. In 1904 religious orders were prohibited from teaching, which brought about the closure of one-third of all Catholic schools. Legislation enabled the government to ban religious orders. Appointments of bishops became a contested issue between the Vatican and the French government. In 1905 the French parliament decreed the separation of church and state, a move endorsed by a clear majority of the French people. The church no longer enjoyed an official and protected status in France. Republican ideology dominated the school system, and taught civic and secular rather than religious values. For Pope Pius XII, Vichy was now restoring France to its Catholic roots.39 A scant week after the Franco-German armistice was signed on 22 June 1940, Pius XII addressed a letter to the Catholic hierarchy of France. The pope grasped the mood running through French society pointing out that the trauma of unexpected defeat had spelled the death-knell of the Third Republic already plagued by the bitter political divisions of the 1930s. The French had suffered widespread disillusionment over their costly victory in the First World War, followed by population decline, and diminished French world power and influence. In this



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light, the pope considered military defeat providential, a God-given opportunity “to use this misfortune as a catalyist for a new spiritual ascent.” The defeat was an opportunity to restore the “Catholic soul,” from which the country had strayed for so long. Through the war years Pius XII continued in this vein. On 1 March 1941, in a letter to Cardinal Gerlier and archbishops in the unoccupied zone, he warmly endorsed “the spiritual and moral revival of your beloved Fatherland.” The pope called what was happening in France a “great work of moral redress.” He reminded the church hierarchy that their mission was exclusively religious, that is, “inner spiritual reform,” through the “concrete truths of the Faith.” Only thus would the French understand their suffering as “an instrument that will lift them towards God.” To Pope Pius XII, Vichy had made deepening of faith possible; its other policies he considered to be out of his jurisdiction. The pope’s response to Vichy Jewish policy was both indirect and tepid. The New York Times of 27 August 1942 reported that Apostolic Nuncio Valeri conveyed a papal “plea” for “moderation” to Vichy in its treatment of Jews. Valeri himself reported to Maglione that he had held discussions with prominent officials on the Jewish question in an attempt to change the policy, or at least obtain some modification in the deportation orders. At the same time Valeri reported that the ill and elderly were also deported, meaning “there is no plan to use them for work.” This should have aroused suspicion in the Vatican and stronger protests to the Vichy government, for the Germans referred to the deportations as “labour conscription.” Valeri also recounted to Maglione that in a meeting with Laval, the prime minister said he looked forward “to getting rid of them [the Jews].” Valeri countered acidly that “those who were harmful to France are not the ones in the concentration camps.” But, he concluded, “All arguments were useless.” But perhaps not all measures were tried: the pope could have intervened at this point to say something about the August and September 1942 pastoral letters of the six bishops, something not explosive, perhaps praising the virtues of compassion and charity exhibited in France as a spur to Catholics to help Jews evade the round-ups. But he did not. By July 1942 some clerics were already hiding Jewish children in religious institutions; a word by the pope could have given heart to such activities. If the pope worried that speaking out would alienate Catholics, he could not have spoken out at a more favourable time. Marrus and Paxton report that for the first time many French people who went

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along with – or even strongly supported – Vichy, were deeply disturbed by what the regime had done. Pétain’s charge to Bérard the year before, to seek out the Vatican’s view on the anti-Jewish decrees, shows that he valued papal opinion. The pope’s standard defence of his public silence was that he feared making matters worse for potential victims, but that rings hollow. A papal statement would not have met with Vichy retaliation against Catholics or Jews, for the regime wanted the pope’s tacit approval and certainly not his disapproval. Valeri reported in August 1942 that he had to explain the pope’s public silence to South American diplomats. In a convoluted apologetic revealing how defensive he felt about the issue, Valeri claimed the pope had actually made his position on Jewish persecution clear, then he defended the pope’s silence as the better part of prudence, making a far-fetched argument in saying that “it is not true that the Holy See has shut itself up in silence before such inhumane persecution, for on many occasions the Holy Father has made the very pointed reference to condemn it, while on the other hand the dangers of new rigors and of an extension of the draconian measures to other parts of Europe like Italy and Hungary can lead him toward prudent waiting and enlightened reserve.” In January 1943, Emmanuel Célestin Cardinal Suhard, archbishop of Paris, visited Rome for talks with Pius XII on the French bishops’ stance towards the regime. A leading figure among the bishops, Suhard was the soul of prudence, though a tough defender of Catholic Church interests. By this time the course of the war was turning, and neither Hitler’s thousand-year Reich nor the Vichy government seemed longlasting. But Pius sided with the bishops that there was no alternative to Vichy: only anarchy or a German crackdown. The pope agreed that the bishops were not to complicate the task of the Marshal, but at the same time they were not to taint the church by identifying too closely with the regime, a regime that by 1943 had disillusioned many.40 A sign of the regime’s new caution came in July and August 1943, when German officials were pressuring Laval to rescind the citizenship of Jews naturalized since 1927. Laval first agreed then cancelled the order. Zuccotti has analysed the reasons for Laval’s reversal, which chiefly amounted to the change in the fortunes of war when the Allies landed in Sicily in July, plus the military reverses for Germany on the Eastern front. In view of an eventual Allied victory, world reaction, especially in the United States, now had to be taken into account. Moreover, in November 1942 Germany had occupied the unoccupied zone, as a



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strategic response to the Allied conquest of North Africa; this was a blow to the partial sovereignty Vichy had possessed, lowering its prestige. Loss of citizenship clearly meant a major deportation, and this time Vichy feared a backlash on the part of the population and the church. Indeed, some German officials understood that not destabilizing Vichy was in the German interest. The Catholic Church had played a role in Prime Minister Laval’s reversal of the order. The auxiliary bishop of Paris, Henri Chapoulie, the liaison between the French church hierarchy and the regime, told Marshal Pétain that the church opposed the denaturalization measure. He then claimed that the pope was anxious over the salvation of the Marshal’s soul if new anti-Jewish measures were put in place. The pressure on Pétain and Laval to nullify denaturalization measures came out of a concern with shoring up the now fragile Vichy government. Nevertheless, smaller-scale arrests of Jews continued right through 1943, and included round-ups of Jews of French citizenship, mostly by the German police. In total seventeen thousand Jews were deported to death camps that year.41 A final public message from Pius XII was delivered by Bishop Théas at his home Cathedral in Montauban on 11 December 1944, after the collapse of Vichy and the liberation of France. Théas was one of the six bishops who had issued pastoral letters protesting the deportation of Jews. He was also active in Jewish rescue, and was later honoured as one of the Righteous among the Nations by Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Remembrance Authority in Israel. Théas had just returned from Rome and two long audiences with the pope, who had authorized the bishop to speak in his name. The pope’s message was revealing. Pius XII had expressed “his paternal sympathy and his tender compassion” for all those who had suffered during the occupation: among these he counted “families in mourning” “prisoners,” “especially political deportees,” “workers sent abroad,” “and all those separated from their loved ones.” Needless to say, one category of victims extremely hard hit was conspicuously missing. For the pope the fall of Vichy changed nothing. Liberated France was simply to continue its world mission as the “eldest daughter of the Church”: “Today the pope counts on liberated France to establish a truly Christian civilization in the world. France must lead the nations of the world … and teach other peoples to live as much as possible according to the principles of truth and love.” To this the pope had pointedly added, “I embrace the whole episcopacy of France.” Théas added context to the pope’s last statement by pointing out that at a time when certain people

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“wish to divide us by setting bishops against one another,” Pius was affirming “the inviolable solidarity of the French episcopate.” Was Catholic France during the Second World War a shining example to the world, a teacher to the nations? This is hardly the conclusion one would come to today, seven decades later. But in the immediate postwar period and beyond, many believed Vichy had prevented the worst, saved France from “Polandization,” that is, a far harsher or murderous occupation, and kept the number of Jews deported to one-fourth of the Jewish population of France. Only later would the French confront harsh truths: the Vichy police round-ups of Jews for the death camps, the immense aid French industry had provided the German war effort, the collaboration of Vichy in sending French forced labourers to Germany, and the high rate of mortality in the French internment camps. In that early post-war era Pope Pius XII had railed against those who condemned the actions of French bishops during Vichy. He declared, “We place all our supreme pontifical authority behind the defence of the authority of the bishops ... [and] submission to the bishops.” To him, loving obedience to the Catholic Church hierarchy was loving obedience to God. When the pope said, “I embrace the whole French episcopacy,” he was seeking to counteract any criticism of their actions during Vichy. Reinforcing the existing structures of the church was the pope’s priority. The consequence was that the administrative hierarchy of France could take refuge in the best hiding place of all, the sacred precincts of the church.42 Italy As with all countries Italy presented special circumstances. We have seen that Pope Pius XII’s approach was generally to defer to the church hierarchy in Catholic countries. But in the case of Italy, he was both pope and bishop of Rome, and in this way freer to set church policy. Moreover, he was a fellow Italian, which supposedly gave him more leverage in Italy than elsewhere. Did this make the pope more flexible, or did his view of the Catholic Church’s spiritual mission keep him to his usual path? What was the response of the Vatican to the Italian anti-Jewish decrees, which turned native Jews into pariahs in their country of birth? Soon after Pacelli became pope, his cardinal secretary of state, Luigi Maglione, objected to specific provisions in Italy’s November 1938 laws defining Jews by race, specifically, the provisions denying the validity



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of baptism of infants of mixed marriages and usurping the church’s right to marry Catholics of Jewish origin to other Catholics. According to the decree, baptized infants of mixed marriages were considered Jewish, and thus not Christian, if one of the parents was Jewish by birth, whether a Catholic convert or not. This was not insignificant: John Morley has pointed out that about 30 per cent of Italy’s Jews had married Gentiles during the 1930s. The Vatican did not, however, object to other provisions of the decrees. This was evident during the brief period of the Badoglio government from late July 1943. Pietro Tacchi Venturi, S.J., the pope’s liaison with the Italian government, conveyed a Vatican proposal to Interior Minister Umberto Ricci that August. He argued that some provisions of the anti-Jewish decrees violated the 1929 concordat and needed to be annulled, so that Catholics of Jewish origin in marriages to other Catholics would be categorized as “Aryan” by the state and that all catechumens (those undergoing instruction in preparation for baptism) with one parent of Jewish origin would be considered Catholic by the state, as they were by the church. The other provisions were considered “worthy of retention.” These included removing Jewish teachers and students from the education system, banning Jewish employment in financial and state institutions and from the professions, and closing down Jewish businesses large and small. In the Lateran Accords of 1929, one treaty of which established Vatican City as a sovereign state, the second a concordat. The latter allowed for Vatican intervention on issues of canon law such as the validity of baptism and the sacrament of marriage. The treaty also gave civil recognition to Catholic marriages performed according to canon law. There were jurisdictional grounds on which the Vatican could lodge a complaint; the Vatican did not, however, wish to go beyond these limits.43

The German Occupation War and German occupation came to the Italian peninsula in the summer of 1943. After a successful campaign in North Africa, the Allies invaded Sicily on the night of 9–10 July. Two weeks later, on 25 July the Fascist Grand Council deposed Mussolini, and King Victor Emmanuel II appointed the hero of the Ethiopian campaign, Marshal Pietro Badoglio, premier. Badoglio proceeded to secretly negotiate an armistice with the Allies. Allied troops reached mainland Italy on 3 September, the same day the armistice was signed. When the armistice was

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announced on 8 September, one hundred thousand German troops moved into northern and central Italy, occupying Rome on 10–11 September. That same month German Special Forces rescued Mussolini from his Italian captors and set him up as the figurehead ruler of the Italian Social Republic (Repubblica Sociale Italiana) in the north, a puppet state under German control. The Badoglio government, having fled to southern Italy, formally declared war on Germany on 13 October. In a long drawn-out campaign, the Allies entered Rome on 4–5 June 1944, after about nine months of German occupation. The key issue for us is the pope’s response to what was happening to the Jews of Rome. Until the German occupation, Mussolini had resisted calls from Hitler for the deportation of Jewish Italians. Now Germany was in control, and there were obvious indicators of what the German occupiers had in store for the Jews, for round-ups and deportations and the murder of Jewish Italians had begun in northern Italy on 15 September. A memo written two days later by Vatican Undersecretary of State Tardini began with the words “Feared measures against Jews in Italy.” Tardini indicated he had no detailed information, “however the fact remains that they [the Jews] are terrorized, and that there are very suspicious rumors about immanent measures, especially against the heads of Jewish families.” Much was known about the systematic massacres of Jews well before the autumn of 1943. Indeed, just that June, in speaking of the victims of war to the College of Cardinals, Pius made mention of “those who, because of their nationality or descent ... are subjected to measures that threaten them with extermination.” This was a tacit reference to European Jewry. The Vatican had known of the catastrophe visited upon Europe’s Jews for over a year. Information came from varied sources, though I will discuss only papal confidants and nuncios, sources that cannot be shrugged off. As early as October 1941 the Holy See’s apostolic delegate in Slovakia, Monsignor Giuseppe Burzio, had sent a memo to Maglione on the mass shootings of Jews by the Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units comprised primarily of German police and SS men) on the Soviet front. He specified that Ukrainian and White Russian prisoners of war were being sent back home, Russian prisoners were being sent to concentration camps, and “the Jews [prisoners] are certainly shot ... [and] civilians of the Jewish race are also systematically destroyed without distinction of sex or age.” The following March Burzio informed Maglione of an “atrocious plan” of the imminent deportations of



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Slovakian Jews, and he pointed out that “deporting 80,000 people to Poland ... is equivalent to condemning the majority of them to certain death.” On 12 May 1942 Pirro Scavizzi, an Italian military chaplain on a hospital train on the eastern front reported to the pope, “The slaughter of the Jews in Ukraine is now complete. They also want to carry it to completion in Poland and Germany with the system of killings en masse.” On 17 July, the Vatican’s Apostolic Visitor Giuseppe Marcone reported from Croatia that the chief of police had told him that all Jewish Croatians would soon be transferred to Germany where they would be killed, as two million Jews had been already. At the end of August the metropolitan (bishop) of Lviv, Andrey Szeptyckyj of the Ukrainian Greek Orthodox Catholic Church (Catholic Church of the Eastern Rite), wrote to the pope. Without diminishing atrocities against Ukrainians, he singled out Jews as the foremost victims of the German occupiers which he called “almost diabolical”: “The number of Jews killed in our small country certainly exceeds two hundred thousand.” He mentioned the massacres in Kiev that in a few days had taken 130,000 Jewish lives. He termed it all “systematic killing”: “all the small towns of Ukraine have witnessed analogous massacres, which have gone on now for a year,” that is, since the German occupation. The news continued into a third year. A Vatican Secretariat of State memo of 5 May 1943 reads: “Jews. A horrendous situation.” The memo notes that of 4,500,000 Jews in Poland before the war, only 100,000 were left, and of 650,000 Jews in Warsaw, 20,000 to 25,000 remained. Some may have been surviving elsewhere, but “most have been done away with.” There is mention of “special camps of death” and of gas chambers.44 Consequently, on 17 September, one week after the Germans occupied Rome, Pope Pius XII issued a papal directive “to study the question if it is advisable to make a recommendation in general terms to the German ambassador … in favour of the civilian population of every race, particularly the weakest, women, the elderly, children, the common people.” Preventative measures were taken by others prior to the anticipated round-ups. Phayer tells us that “Weizsäcker, German ambassador to the Vatican, sent hundreds of ‘letters of protection’” to Vatican properties around Rome, ensuring their extraterritoriality and thus diplomatic immunity to German intrusions. They would be potential refuges for Jews evading deportations. Clearly this was done with the knowledge of the pope.45 On 16 October, a little over a month after they occupied Rome, the SS seized 1,259 Jews. All but 252 were deported to Auschwitz two days

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later; and of the remaining 1,007 sent to their death, fifteen survived. Robert Katz tells us that German trucks carrying the victims passed through – and some temporarily parked – within sight of the windows in the pope’s study. Pope Pius XII was informed of the round-up just hours after it occurred, and he ordered Maglione to arrange a meeting at once with the German ambassador to the Vatican, Ernst von Weizsäcker. The meeting took place that same evening. Both the pope and Maglione agreed that Weizsäcker best knew how the German government worked, and how to influence events. Maglione did not confront the German ambassador, but both spoke in restrained language, in a spirit of mutual regard. Maglione described the pope’s dilemma. The deportations in Rome had occurred “under the eyes of the Common Father,” a situation that was “painful for the Holy Father, beyond words.” Weizsäcker asked, “What will the Holy See do if events continue?” Maglione responded, “The Holy See would not want to be faced with the need to express its disapproval.” He pointed out that so far the pope had restrained himself: “the Holy See ... has been very prudent, so as not to give to the German people the impression of having done or wished to do the slightest thing against Germany in this terrible war.” But the Vatican did have a breaking point and “it must not be placed in a position of having to protest.” Should it ever came to that, the pope would do so, and “trust in divine Providence.” Weizsäcker cautioned Maglione that deportation orders had “come from the highest level.” The German ambassador conveyed more of his strategic thinking in a letter to his mother of 20 October: Weizsäcker believed the measures against the Jews were not popular in Rome and in particular not popular at the Vatican. The latter concerned him particularly because the deportations occurred “so to speak, under the windows of the pope. If the [Roman] Curia took an official position [against it], it would provoke a backlash at home, and overturn the current situation – which is satisfactory, but naturally also very fragile – in a single blow.” Weizsäcker went on in this vein to a colleague: He had advised Vatican Undersecretary of State Montini that “any protest by the pope would only result in the deportations really being carried out in a thoroughgoing fashion. I know how our people react in these matters.” Leonidas Hill, who quotes this memo, explains that as first undersecretary in the German Foreign Office since 1938, Weizsäcker had full knowledge of the occasions Hitler and Foreign Secretary Joachim von Ribbentrop would give way to “a moment of rage.” The entire matter was extremely delicate, and Weizsäcker had asked Cardinal Maglione to allow him to use his discretion over whether to report their conversation



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to the Foreign Office. The Vatican secretary of state agreed to leave the matter in the experienced hands of the ambassador.46 As usual the pope’s concerns about the church crowded out other issues. In his eyes, action over the deportation of Jewish Romans clashed with Catholic Church interests. That is why Weizsäcker serving Germany, and Maglione the church, had the same priorities. Neither wanted events to spin out of control. Both wanted to preserve papal silence and avoid a conflict between the German government and the Holy See. Both were concerned with stability, which meant a smooth German occupation. Both saw the situation as potentially explosive. The deportation of the Jews of Rome was unpopular with Romans, and a papal objection might help spur a restive population to protest. That population comprised nearly two hundred thousand Italians, including soldiers faced with arrest as prisoners of war, those escaping forced labour service – most of them provided with false identity cards or labour service cards by the Italian underground – and all undercover in Rome. An armed resistance had formed during the Badoglio regime, the Committee of National Liberation (CNL), dominated by leftist political parties. In Charles Delzell’s account, the Communist Party (Partito Comunista Italiano, PCI) made up almost two-fifths of the CNL and the Action Party (Partito d’Azione, PdA), a socialist ally, made up about one-fourth. The pope feared that trouble in Rome would play into their hands. We know that the death or wounding of German soldiers led to harsh German reprisals, which many in the partisan forces saw as a way of inciting Italians to resistance – the last thing the pope wanted. A notorious case was to occur later, on 23 March 1944. Partisans killed or seriously wounded fifty-four German soldiers in a bomb and mortar attack on the Via Rasella. The Berlin order to retaliate the next day led to the murder of 320 Italian hostages in the caves near the Via Ardeatina, including fifty-seven Jews. Pius XII’s response appeared in the Osservatore Romano on 26 March, where he called upon Italians to refrain from “violent urges” and insisted the German authorities must not in any case engage in retaliation against the innocent. Retaliation by the Nazis was in no way unusual. In this light both Maglione and Weizsäcker wanted to forestall conflict and have a smooth occupation, with nothing unpredictable such as more deportations, with the Vatican forced to take a stand and Hitler responding, or an Italian uprising steered by leftist parties stoking Hitler’s rage and his brutal repressive measures, or eventually, with the Germans gone and the Allies not yet in control, the seizure of Rome by Italian Communists.

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The pope’s fears were realistic and widely shared. We know this now from intelligence documents released by the United States National Archives in 2000 of British decodes of radio dispatches between Colonel Herbert Kappler, SS chief in Rome, and his superiors in the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA, Reichssicherheitshauptamt) in Berlin. Surprising as it may seem, a reading of these radio messages and other sources shows that virtually all the German higher authorities in Rome, those in the army, German police, and German embassy staffs in Italy and the Vatican, were opposed to deporting the Jews of Rome, and regarded doing so as both a potential source of conflict with Italians and detrimental to German interests. In Richard Breitman’s estimate from the British decodes, Colonel Kappler received Himmler’s order to deport Jews around 24 September 1943, at the latest. Kappler delayed action because of German manpower shortages, till he could do so no longer: he had just 365 SS and police personnel, plus three companies assigned from the army, while the Jewish population of Rome stood then at about 7,700. He was not willing to recruit the Italian police, considering them undependable; added to that was his concern that Italians would resist the deportations. In the end he seized a relatively limited 1,259 Roman Jews, and explained why to his superiors in Berlin.47 Among those opposed to the deportations was Eitel Friedrich Möllhausen, acting as senior diplomat of the German embassy in Rome in the absence of the ambassador. Möllhausen addressed a message to Foreign Minister Ribbentrop on 6 October, proposing that Jews be recruited for forced labour in Italy instead. In a second message to Ribbentrop, Möllhausen informed him that Albert von Kesselring, commander-in-chief of German forces in Italy, had said he preferred forced labour for the Jews of Rome over deportations. Kesselring had no compunction about deportations in principal, just in practice; as former general field marshal of the German Air Force (Luftwaffe) he had distinguished himself in the invasions and bombings of Poland, Belgium, and the Netherlands. General Rainer Stahel, commander of German troops in Rome also told Möllhausen that the deportations were inadvisable. The opposition to deportations came from Germans on the ground, who faced a hostile Italian public and wanted a relatively untroubled occupation. Möllhausen conveyed all this to Ribbentrop, who responded angrily on 9 October that the deportations were a Führer order, and that German diplomats were not to interfere. Members of the German embassy staff both to Italy and the Vatican favoured either returning the Jews who had been seized and were



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now in detention or cutting short any further deportations, which they believed could well force the pope’s hand and lead to a confrontation with Hitler. To this end Weizsäcker, his second in command Albrecht von Kessel, and Gerhard Gumpert, legation secretary in the Rome embassy, set in motion a scheme the very day Jews were first being seized. The scheme was put before the pope, and he consented to it. Addressed to General Rainer Stahel, a letter was not to come from the Vatican, but was signed by Bishop Alois Hudal, who was the rector of the Austrian-German church in Rome, Santa Maria dell’Anima, and sympathetic to the Nazi regime. The letter, dated 16 October, stated that a high Vatican source close to the pope had told him (Bishop Hudal) that the arrests of Jews of Italian citizenship had begun that morning. Hudal wrote, “In the interests of the ‘peaceful understanding’ between the pope and Germany, I strongly implore you, Military Commander [Stahel] to order ... the arrests stopped immediately.” Such a measure is necessary “for the sake of Germany’s reputation abroad and also because of the danger that the pope will take a public position against [these arrests].” The talk of Germany’s reputation was to the point, for Allied propaganda pictured Pope Pius XII as a captive of the Germans, who were desecrating the Holy City. Such news could unsettle Catholics on the Axis side. Sending the letter to Stahel was a ruse, for the point of the letter was to warn Berlin of a threat of papal intervention, but without committing the pope to take action. Stahel duly forwarded the letter to Himmler and the Gestapo; Gumpert, of the Rome embassy forwarded a copy of the Hudal letter to the Foreign Office in Berlin. Most important, Ambassador Weizsäcker alerted the Foreign Office that evening, adding his own caution. He personally confirmed the accuracy of the Hudal letter, adding that the Roman Curia is “especially upset considering that the action took place, in a manner of speaking, under the Pope’s own windows.” Weizsäcker went on to point out that the pope was under pressure by anti-German elements to speak out publicly, by comparing him invidiously to French bishops and to Pius XI. A protest on Pius XII’s part would certainly bring the “friendly relations between the Curia and ourselves” to an abrupt end. Weizsäcker proposed instead that Jews be conscripted to labour service in Italy. Michael Phayer has drawn together the threads of this story. Behind the Hudal letter lay a shrewd scheme put together by German officials and the Vatican to thwart the deportations using the threat of a papal protest without directly involving the pope, thereby not provoking one

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of Hitler’s rages which could lead to an escalation of conflict between the German occupier and Italian Catholics. Cooler heads in the German diplomatic service considered that such an outcome would be a propaganda defeat for Germany. After the round-up in Rome, the Hudal letter marked the next stage in efforts to reverse the first deportation, or prevent further ones. In addition, Weizsäcker wrote more letters granting extraterritorial protection to buildings he falsely claimed were Vatican properties. In the meantime, the pope’s muted public response to the deportations of Jewish Italians appeared in a 25 October editorial quoting him in the Osservatore Romano. The editorial was cloaked in generalities: it spoke of “the increased suffering of so many unfortunate people.” In reaction to which the pope has become “ever more active … and knows no boundaries, neither of nationality, religion, nor descent.” The message gave no specific direction to Catholics, though perhaps those inclined to aid Jews understood and felt encouraged. Robert Katz informs us that Ambassador Weizsäcker sent the editorial from the Vatican daily to Berlin, dismissing it as a declaration of the pope’s “loving-kindness,” which few would assume referred to Jews.48 German forces did not follow up after the arrests of Jews on 16 October, though over the next eight months of occupation they deported another 657 Jewish Romans. There is, however, no evidence that the salvo of memos from Rome to Berlin was effective. Most likely the halt to the deportations was due to the lack of SS personnel, a result of manpower shortages at this stage in the war. Resuming deportations would be far more difficult as Roman Jews who evaded the deportation could no longer be located at their addresses, and subsequent raids would have needed personnel to deal with hostile Italians as well. The actions of Pius XII show that he wanted an untroubled occupation that would not escalate conflict between the Italian public and the occupier, which could serve as an opportunity for a Communist takeover of Rome. Indeed, just two days after the seizure of Jews on 16 October, the pope told D’Arcy Osborne, British ambassador to the Vatican, that he had complained to Weizsäcker that the Germans needed more police in Rome, lest a further measure spark a conflagration between occupied and occupier that would strengthen the Communist resistance. On 7 October the pope had received assurances from Foreign Minister Ribbentrop through Weizsäcker that the sovereignty of the Vatican would be respected. The quid pro quo was a statement of 30 October in the Osservatore Romana confirming that the German



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occupier had kept its promise to the Vatican. This was a propaganda win for Germany.49 After 16 October Jewish Romans sought false identity papers and places to evade capture. With over a thousand convents, monasteries, churches, Catholic schools and hospitals in Rome, some which were extraterritorial properties of the Holy See, the number of Jews who found refuge in these institutions certainly ran well into the thousands. Catholic institutions were engaged in mass rescue, not only of Jews, but of Italian soldiers, Allied prisoners of war, and Italian anti-Fascists. The undertaking was risky; some institutions were raided by the SS and the Koch band, an Italian-Fascist paramilitary force. The role that Pius XII played in the subsequent aid to Jews is a matter of controversy. Institutions usually made their own decision regarding an offer of refuge. Susan Zuccotti argues on the basis of meticulous research that the rescue effort was spontaneous and that the pope played no role in it. In short, the pope did not order church institutions – either in writing or orally – to become houses of refuge. I believe Zuccotti’s findings have to be qualified. The pope did prepare the ground by consenting to Weizsäcker’s use of the tactic of blanket extraterritoriality. Pius knew of the rescue efforts, and those involved believed they were acting in his spirit to extend charity to all victims. But the Vatican did exercise its usual caution. The pope was ever wary of the danger of potential confrontations between the occupier and the occupied. On 25 October Cardinal Secretary of State Maglione warned a number of institutions to exercise discretion in their rescue efforts. Later, in February 1944, the Koch band along with some Germans raided the Benedictine monastery of St Paul, which enjoyed Vatican extraterritoriality. They seized around sixty refugees in hiding. What followed was a Vatican order to send away refugees from some Vatican properties. Italian historian Giovanni Miccoli tells us that the Vatican may have feared the raid was the beginning of a systematic effort to seize refugees in hiding without regard for Vatican extraterritoriality. The Vatican policy on deportations entered a second phase from October to December 1943. Concerned over German round-ups of Jews in the Trieste area, Maglione complained to the German ambassador that Catholics of Jewish descent and Jews intermarried with Catholics were being included in the round-ups. In December 1943 the Fascist government in the north issued a decree confiscating Jewish property and consigning all Jews to concentration camps. The Vatican limited

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its expression of concern to the victimization of mixed families. As it turned out, they were exempt in any case.50

Rome: The “Eternal City” With the Allied conquest of North Africa and the invasion of Sicily, the issue for Pius XII was, above all, the preservation of Rome itself. After all, he was the bishop of Rome, its people were his parishioners. But the pope’s concern for Rome went beyond that, to him the “Eternal City” was the seat of the Roman Church and therefore of the papacy. Moreover, Rome was also the historic capital of Italy, reviving glories that went back to the Roman Empire. In seeking to spare Rome, Pius was demonstrating the Vatican’s importance to Italians of all persuasions. More important, preserving Rome would safeguard, even enhance, the authority and prestige of the papacy. How else to explain the pope’s concern for a smooth German occupation; his fear of Italian hostility to the occupation culminating in partisan activity and German reprisals; his public silence over the deportation of Jewish Romans; his public silence over the massacre in the Ardeatine caves; and finally, his campaign to have Rome declared an “open city,” a military-free zone? Some members of the German embassy staff in Rome believed that the pope might speak out on the deportations of Jewish Romans so as not to suffer a loss of prestige. Pope Pius XII thought otherwise, believing that his prestige was tied up with the preservation of Rome. Heavy bombing of Italy began from Allied North African bases in March 1943 and ceased temporarily on 14 August during secret negotiations between the Badoglio government and the Allies for an armistice. With the German occupation of Rome in early September, the pope was again preoccupied with the prospect of the Allies bombing Rome, and he petitioned both Germany and the Allies to have Rome declared an “open city” – not to be defended by German forces in face of an Allied advance and not to be an Allied strategic target subject to bombing or street-to-street combat. Giovanni Miccoli has observed that the pope’s diplomatic initiatives on the subject of bombing were more outspoken and stronger than they were on any other matter. Other scholars have been equally struck by the intensity and forcefulness of the pope’s campaign to save the city of Rome. The Vatican communicated on this issue with Myron Taylor, President Roosevelt’s personal emissary to the Holy See, as well as with Harold Tittmann, the US chargé d’affaires in the Vatican. Tittmann



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reports in his memoirs that Archbishop Amleto Cicognani, apostolic delegate to the United States, transmitted a message to Taylor in the summer of 1943 that the pope “would be constrained to express a vehement protest” if Rome were bombed by the Allies. In another memo to Taylor, Cicognani warned of “a solemn and public protest … by the Holy Father,” even if Rome was bombed for reasons of military necessity, even if the city contained genuine military targets. In essence, the pope was demanding that Rome be spared from Allied bombing even if this meant lengthening the war at the cost of many more Allied casualties. When Rome was bombed, Pope Pius XII’s personal response did not resemble one of a cautious diplomat, but of a man of intense passions. During one bombing by the US Air Force at military targets on19 July 1943, the Italian death toll reached fifteen hunded. Bombs struck the basilica church of San Lorenzo, dating from the fourth century, and dedicated to the Roman martyr Saint Lorenzo; over the centuries the basilica church had become a treasure trove of frescoes and sculptures. For the first time since he had been threatened by Fascist thugs in 1940, Pope Pius XII left Vatican City for Rome. The British historian Owen Chadwick describes the pope kneeling among the ruins of San Lorenzo, chanting the De profundis (Psalm 130), surrounded by anguished crowds. On 13 August bombs destroyed the church of Santa Maria dell’Orto, another Roman treasure. Chadwick tells us that “instantly the Pope was out with the sufferers ... his white cassock stained with blood as he blessed an injured person.” Allied diplomats were struck by what they saw as the pope’s hypocrisy. Myron Taylor commented on Pius’ silence when Germany had bombed Warsaw, Rotterdam, London, and Coventry, and when the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. While the pope wept over damaged Roman churches, his eyes were dry when Coventry Cathedral (Anglican) was destroyed by German bombs in November 1940. The British ambassador to the Vatican reproached Cardinal Maglione in December 1943: “I urged that the Vatican, instead of thinking of nothing but the bombing of Rome should consider their duties in respect of the unprecedented crime against humanity of Hitler’s campaign of the extermination of the Jews, in which I said that Italy was an accomplice as the partner and ally of Germany.”51 But the pope saw his priorities quite differently; his actions sprang from his conception of Rome as the light and centre of civilization, and his belief that the authority and prestige of the papacy was a dam

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against encroaching godlessness in the form of National Socialism, Communism, socialism, and secular liberalism. Pius XII and his nineteenth- and twentieth-century predecessors lamented a European civilization in decline, derailed by the eighteenth-century Enlightenment and the secular ideologies that thrived in its wake. According to tradition the church was founded in Rome by Peter, bishop of Rome and the first pope. Rome was the centre of Christendom and thus the centre of civilization, indeed, the centre of the world. Pope Pius XII’s priority, as he saw it, was not alerting or attempting to save Jews, but steering Rome safely through the war. Rome was the “Holy City,” the “Eternal City,” the seat of Christianity, of historic churches, of priceless sacred art, of the bones of venerated saints, of long dead and buried popes, of sites of mass pilgrimages. Rome was sacred, which was an ineffable and transcendent quality, placing the city in a realm beyond temporal issues, beyond even the price in human lives by prolonging the war. As Pius XII proclaimed on Vatican Radio, “Whosoever raises his hand against Rome will be guilty of matricide before the civilized world and the eternal judgment of God.” To President Roosevelt he described Rome as the “parent of Western civilization … [which] cannot be attacked without inflicting an incomparable loss on the patrimony of Religion and Civilization.” In a letter of 21 March 1944 the pope explained his stand on Rome to Bishop Preysing of Berlin. He denied not feeling distressed over the fate of other cities stricken by bombs, “whose terrible fate weighs heavily on my heart.” Still humanity had a unique debt to Rome: “For Us, solely responsible for the preservation of Rome, We have a duty of conscience to all Catholics to fight for the preservation of Rome in particular.” The pope went on, “Rome has been the centre-point of the Church of Jesus Christ since the beginnings of Christianity ... [This] distinction and mission confers on the city its uniqueness all the more today, since the Catholic Church, always and essentially a World Church according to its concept, is now ... a [World Church] in reality as well.” Humanity had a unique debt to Rome not only as the spiritual core of human civilization, but because of its continuing mission of bringing Christian civilization to the non-European world. The pope also explained to Bishop Preysing that the fortunes of the papacy were tied to preserving Rome: “Rome must be kept out of the war. Today, there is no more delicate task for the Holy See than to preserve the unconditional trust of Catholics all over the world to



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the common head of the Church, no matter what battle front they are on, for that trust is the best guarantee of Church unity.” Pius was convinced that the church would fragment if not for the enhanced prestige and unilateral authority of the pope. We must remember that Pius XII was active in an era of papal centralization, marked by decision making in the hands of the pope, seminaries based in Rome, religious orders answering to Rome, and a Roman liturgy. But there were self-imposed limits on how far the pope could go in his demands regarding Rome. He could not alienate either of the belligerents, for he had only his prestige as pope and his public neutrality behind him when he pleaded with Italy, then Germany, not to make the area a strategic military target, and when he pleaded with the Allies not to bomb Rome. Neither could he feed the German propaganda apparatus by condemning the Allies. On the other hand, the historic reputation of Rome was in his favour, for the Allies avoided bombing Rome’s central city as much as they could, let alone Vatican City, for both housed an enormous number of historic churches, great works of art, and religious monuments. Destroying them would risk alienating Catholics on both sides of the war. In the end, frequent bombings of strategic targets in Rome brought much loss of life, but Vatican City suffered only minor damage. Further, Rome did not become a battlefield, for the Germans retreated from the city just before the Allies reached it. Neither side bombed the bridges over the Tiber, for the Allies did not seek to entrap the German army and the Germans did not try to hinder the Allied advance. Pius XII had succeeded in making Rome a special case. Ambassador Weizsäcker observed, “During the last few months he has created an awe, which neither side felt before, about the venerable qualities of the city.” As a result, neither side wanted to wear the propaganda millstone of having visited destruction on Rome. The pope now enjoyed unprecedented popularity in Rome. During liberation and before, mass demonstrations greeted him in St Peter’s square. Olivier Logan has noted that the pope was hailed as ‘“Salvator Urbis’ (Saviour of the City) and ...‘Salvator Civitatis,’ saviour ... of the civilization that Rome represented.” This was the role Pope Pius XII wanted to play: armed solely with spiritual and moral power, he had moved mountains on the international scene. By his own lights, he did fulfil his mission as head of the Roman Catholic Church, and in this way did not fail but succeeded in his role as pope.52

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Hungary The last country under discussion in this chapter is Hungary, from which the deportations of Jews took place late in the war, after the German occupation of March 1944. By then information about the annihilation of European Jewry had long been available to the Vatican and highly placed Hungarians, the tide of battle had turned against Germany, and the Allies and neutral nations were becoming more active than before on behalf of Jewish rescue. Yet of approximately 825,000 Jews in Hungary, 618,000 were taken to the gas chambers, murdered in other ways, or simply died. How did the pope act in response to this unique and tragic chain of events? Prior to 1941 Roman Catholics made up approximately 55 per cent of the population of Hungary; Greek Catholics, 10 per cent; the Reformed Church (Calvinist), 19 per cent; the Evangelical Church (Lutheran), 5 per cent; the Orthodox churches, 3.8 per cent; and the Jews, 5 per cent. Catholics formed the largest part of the population, though other Chistian denominations almost half. Yet in the view of the Hungarian Catholic Church and the Holy See as well, Hungary was charged with a Catholic mission deeply rooted in its early national history and culture. As Pope Pius XI proclaimed during the 34th International Eucharistic Congress in Budapest in May 1938, the “memories and ... glories” connected with “her [Hungary’s] ancestral and active faith” have “revived.” Hungary was serving once again as a “sort of invisible rampart against the enemies of the Christian name and of European civilization,” meaning it was now defending Europe against Bolshevism and liberalism as it had once defended Christianity against the Muslim Ottoman Empire in the seventeenth century. The pope’s representative at the Congress, Cardinal Secretary of State Pacelli, recalled the on and off wars of Catholic Hungary against the “infidel” Turks, lasting from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century. Hungary was the “rampart of Christian Europe in those tragic times,” he said, and its historic mission stretched into today, as a bulwark of Christianity against the infidel forces of unbelief, Bolshevism, National Socialism, and secular liberalism. Pacelli was paying tribute to the Hungary of 1938, ruled by the conservative right, strongly supported by its Catholic hierarchy. As American historian of Hungary Paul Hanebrink has noted, speeches at the Eucharistic Congress were an impassioned response to immediate events, such as the Bolshevik mass atrocities against clerics during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), which paralleled the Soviet



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suppression of religion, and the spectacular advance of paganism and racism in the Nazi takeover of Catholic Austria, just two months before the Congress. The year 1938 was also of long-term significance for Catholics, for it marked the 900th anniversary of the death of Hungary’s patron saint and first Christian king, István(English: Saint Stephen). The Congress featured events centred on Christian Hungary’s founder. During the 1930s Hungarian interests gradually drew the country into the orbit of Nazi Germany. German war preparations boosted Hungarian manufactures and employment. Most important, however, German power in the region allowed Hungary, a major loser in the First World War, to reverse its territorial amputation set by the Treaty of Trianon of 1920. After the Munich Agreement, under German auspices Hungary regained land in southern Slovakia and Subcarpathian Ruthenia (or Carpathian-Ukraine) in November 1938, and the rest of Subcarpathian Ruthenia and eastern Slovakia with the German takeover of the Czech lands the next March. Hungary went on to gain northern Transylvania from Romania in September 1940 and a piece of northern Yugoslavia, called the Délvidék in Hungarian, in a joint invasion with Germany in April 1941. Accordingly, Hungary’s population increased from 8,688,312 in 1930 to 14,683,323 in 1941, while its territory doubled in size. In return for Germany’s help, Hungary signed the Tripartite Pact or German-Japanese-Italian military alliance in November 1940 and the Anti-Comintern Pact in June 1941, when it joined forces with Germany in the invasion of the Soviet Union. Hungary’s alliance with Germany was partly opportunistic, but it also arose out of common ideological trends such as antisemitism and racial thinking, especially among the growing Hungarian radical right, as well as from admiration for Nazi Germany for its sensational ascent to power. In the parliamentary elections of May 1939 the Hungarian fascist Arrow Cross Party reached its peak of 25 per cent of the vote.53 How did the church respond to the growing strength of the radical right in Hungary? Non-Jewish Hungary was a gentry-peasant society, still largely agricultural in the 1940s. Political power was in the hands of large landowners, including the Catholic Church, which was among the largest. Opposite this was a peasant class, comprised mostly of owners of dwarf holdings, sharecroppers, or agricultural day labourers, a smaller industrial working class, and a middle class made up mostly of Jewish Hungarians and German Hungarians. The political system was rigged in favour of the landowning magnates. The upper house of parliament was an appointed body of political and military notables

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including high clerics and aristocrats, and their approval was necessary for all legislation. The Catholic Church, certainly its officialdom, was an integral part of this conservative oligarchy, and the conservative right was increasingly challenged by a populist radical right. The radical right had gained strength during the interwar years. The reasons for this stretched back in time. Before the First World War, Hungary was a multi-ethnic kingdom encompassing Romanians, Serbs, Croats, Slovaks, Jews, and Germans, with the predominant group of Magyars short of a majority. The government had encouraged assimilation of non-Hungarians into the dominant Hungarian culture, and Jews were the first to assimilate. After the First World War Hungary changed drastically. With the loss of its borderlands and most of its minority populations, the inhabitants of Hungary were pretty much reduced to ethnically homogeneous Magyars, with Jewish and German minorities. The populist radical right built a racial ideology on this foundation, celebrating the distressed peasantry, tradespeople, and shopkeepers as of pure Magyar blood and keepers of an ethnic folk culture and tradition. The radical right was anti-capitalist, even revolutionary, in wanting to create an equitable economic and social structure – by dispossessing the landowning gentry and Jews. The Catholic episcopate, in contrast, stood for stability and the status quo. They were convinced that Hungarian staying power was rooted in its Catholic historical heritage. As Roman Catholics they also acknowledged Hungarian ties to a pan-European religion. The radical right, too, celebrated Hungary’s Christian heritage, but it also extolled the pre-Christian pagan and non-European Magyar past, and a gospel of blood and race. Hanebrink concludes that the church was positioning itself as the most reliable defender against threats to Hungary from both right and left extremism. These differences pointed to two different forms of anti-Jewish hostility. Both the church and the radical right shared an exclusivist and exclusionary ideology, viewing Jewish Hungarians as alien to the Magyar nation. However, the view of the church was that while Jewish influence subverted the Hungarian Catholic spirit, Jews who accepted baptism became authentic Hungarians; in the view of the radical right, only race mattered, and baptized Jews remained Jews nonetheless. Jewish Hungarians were caught in the vice of history, encouraged to assimilate in one era, resented in another.54 Though dominated by Magyars the kingdom of Hungary had been a multinational state, whose minorities – Slovaks, South Slavs,



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Romanians – were in the midst of their own national awakenings. Magyars encouraged Jewish integration, both to add to the Magyar fact and to pioneer economic modernization. Jews became acculturated Hungarians, and many even assimilated; in 1931–35, for example, almost 20 per cent of Jewish grooms married non-Jews. Randolph Braham counts a spectacular number of 100,000 Christians of Jewish descent in Hungary by 1941, at a time when around 725,000 or almost 5 per cent of the total population of Hungary was Jewish. As pioneers in economic modernization in a gentry-peasant society, Jews developed a top-heavy economic profile. Ezra Mendelsohn reports that 62 per cent of large commercial firms in Hungary employing at least twenty employees in 1930 were owned by Jews, as were 47 per cent of large industial firms and most banks; in the professions, in 1920, 51 per cent of lawyers, 60 per cent of doctors, 34 per cent of editors and journalists, and 30 per cent of engineers and chemists were Jews. The Jewish upper and middle classes were concentrated in Budapest. However, fully half of the Jewish population lived in towns in rural Hungary and made their more modest living as artisans and small merchants. In spite of Jewish assimilation and acculturation, during the interwar period Hungary turned itself into an ethnic state, and Jewish Hungarians both urban and rural sat uneasily in a society celebrating its Christian nationalism and common Magyar blood. Moreover, while Hungary was still largely a gentry-peasant society, Jews in Budapest were urban, capitalist, and westernized. Jews largely embraced Western liberal values. Some rebelling offspring of Jewish capitalists even played a prominent role in the Hungarian Communist Party. The cabinet ministers in the government of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, for example, which was led by Béla Kun (born Béla Kohn) and ruled Hungary for four and a half months in 1919, were mostly of Jewish descent. This played into the hands of those who wished to add Bolshevism to capitalism in the inventory of Jewish flaws.55 Threatened by the increasing popularity of the extreme right and its program of radical change favouring peasants, workers, and the Magyar middle class by expropriating the gentry and Jews, the strategy of the conservatives in Hungary was to take the wind out of the sails of the radicals by burnishing their own credentials on anti-Jewish policy. The Catholic Church, too, had solid anti-Jewish credentials and joined in this bidding war, promoting itself as the best defender of Christian Hungary. This was the context for the anti-Jewish policies pursued by

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the conservative nationalist government of Regent Miklós Horthy, who led the country from March 1920 to October 1944. In the 1930s a series of anti-Jewish measures were enacted. The First Anti-Jewish Law was proclaimed on 28 May 1938. It reduced to 20 per cent the proportion of Jews permitted in the professions and in large commercial, industrial, and financial firms. Exceptions were made for invalid military veterans and heroes of the Great War, and for Christians of Jewish descent if their parents or they themselves had converted before 1 August 1919. The law was to be implemented gradually, so that about three thousand Jewish professionals a year were to lose their livelihoods. Braham has wisely commented that although a 20 per cent quota seemed liberal as Jews formed about 5 per cent of the population, a dangerous precedent had been set: antisemitism was now legitimized by an official act of the government. Jews were no longer equal citizens. The right radical (fascist) Arrow Cross, however, regarded the new law as laughably insufficient, and called for more discriminatory measures. Faced with a growing Jewish population through the reacquisition of lost territories, and a barrage of propaganda coming from a newly powerful Germany, the Hungarian government announced the harsher Second Anti-Jewish Law on 5 May 1939. The law extended the list of anti-Jewish prohibitions to cover civil service positions, secondary and primary school teachers, judges and prosecutors, and positions in the media, including newspapers, film, and theatre. The 20 per cent quota was reduced to 6 per cent. Firms were limited in the number of Jews they could employ. Almost half of all Hungarian Jews were affected by the Second Anti-Jewish Law. The church was able to reduce somewhat the adoption of a purely racial definition of the Jew by gaining exemptions for converts, those baptized by their seventh birthday, or parents who had converted prior to 1 January 1939. Apostolic Nuncio Monsignor Angelo Rotta was the Vatican’s eyes and ears in Hungary, while Jusztinián Cardinal Serédi was prince primate of the Hungarian Church. Pope Pius XII, concerned about the limits set on converts, asked Rotta whether it was advisable for him to intervene. In March 1939 both Rotta and Serédi counselled the pope against it. Two weeks later, Rotta reported to Vatican Secretary of State Maglione that Serédi, who sat in the upper house of Hungary’s parliament, had declared that “in order to avoid a greater evil” he would not oppose the anti-Jewish bill. That is, the cardinal agreed to a bluntly antisemitic government policy, with exemptions for Catholics of Jewish descent.



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As the anti-Jewish laws became ever more severe, the convert issue, that is, how narrowly or widely to grant exemptions to Catholics of Jewish origin, was the chief pressing issue between the church and the Hungarian government. Government measures threatened the prior jurisdiction of the church over the sacraments of baptism and marriage. Maglione instructed Rotta to try to impede any harsh measure against converts. Rotta understood how crucial this issue was to the pope, one that would leave a “painful impression” on him if exemptions for Catholics of Jewish descent were not honoured. But this was not to be. The prime minister of Hungary, Lásló Bárdossy (April 1941 to March 1942), was pro-German and leaned to the radical right in his antisemitism. Under his leadership, Hungary had finally reaquired all its territories lost through the Treaty of Trianon – with ­Germany’s help. The government of Hungary moved closer to Nazi Germany, strengthening ties by participating in the invasion of Yugoslavia and then the Soviet Union, and by adopting Germany’s Nuremberg laws on race for its own Third Anti-Jewish law, in August 1941. The law banned intermarriage and sexual relations between Jews and non-Jews, a Jew being defined as anyone with a least two Jewish grandparents, except if she or he was born a Christian or her or his parents were both Christian. However, having more than two Jewish grandparents made him or her a Jew. This meant religious marriage between a Jew, defined by race and not religion, and a non-Jew was now outlawed. Hungarian clerics with Cardinal Serédi at their head publicly opposed the Third Law. At this point the pope authorized Nuncio Rotta to protest to the government in the name of the Holy See. As usual, the pope was following the lead of national bishoprics. Rotta commented that if Pope Pius XII had not followed the bishops, “the silence of the Holy See could have been interpreted badly.”56 Jews and other minorities became victims with the return of Hungary’s lost land. Hungarian nationalism had turned extremely parochial and exclusivist. Indeed, with the cover of wartime, Hungary turned to a policy of expulsion. With the occupation of a piece of Yugoslavia, for example, its million or so inhabitants who could not show documentary proof of Hungarian citizenship before 1918 received expulsion orders; some 150,000 Serbs were deported. There was a backlash against Jews in the newly reacquired territories and those who had fled to Hungary as refugees. From the 1920s there had been much talk of a “Galician invasion,” referring to the tens of thousands of Polish Jews who had fled the battle zones in the First

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World War and settled in Hungary. Moreover, since the start of the Second World War, refugees from Poland, the Soviet Union, and other countries had sought asylum in Hungary; among them were between 15,000 and 35,000 Jews. By July 1941 from 30,000 to 35,000 Jews were rounded up in the newly reacquired territories. Many of these so-called alien Jews were deported to German-occupied eastern Galicia, where almost 18,000 were massacred in Kamenets-Podolsk by the German SS on 27–28 August 1941. Among those murdered were Jewish citizens of Hungary who lacked the necessary documentation. Even those with citizenship papers, including Catholics of Jewish descent, were picked up at random. On 2 November 1941 Maglione wrote to Serédi asking if a memo he had received about the expulsion of Jewish Hungarians “is true.” If so, he reminded the cardinal of Hungary’s Catholic heritage “that unites people without distinction of race” and prodded him to speak to his government about ending these expulsions of “Hungarians of Jewish race.” But Maglione’s tone held little urgency. He asked Serédi for a confidential intervention with the government. He did not mention that expulsions had led to mass murder, nor was he aware that the expulsions had been stopped almost two months prior. For Serédi, too, the church’s fortunes were tied to the current conservative government, so his intervention was discreet. He responded to Maglione that he had spoken to the minister of the interior about his objection to the expulsion of Jews of Hungarian citizenship, especially Catholics of Jewish descent. The minister had assured Serédi that “only the Jews with origins in Galicia were expelled.” As to those without citizenship, Serédi requested that their expulsion be “humane,” a token statement, for it is hard to imagine what a “humane” expulsion would be like. To Maglione, Serédi left the massacre at Kamenets-Podolsk unmentioned.57 Regent Horthy now made a turnaround, finding Bárdossy too tied to the German alliance, which limited Hungary’s room for manoeuvre. Horthy was following the old diplomatic maxim that nations have no permanent friends or enemies, only interests. The German alliance could well prove to be counter to Hungary’s interests in the near future. In March 1942 Horthy dismissed Bárdossy and appointed Miklós ­Kállay as his next prime minister. Kállay was a member of the conservative gentry. He shared in the prevailing Hungarian antisemitism, but did resist relentless German pressure to deport the Jews of Hungary. What he did instead was initiate the expropration of Jewish landed property with partial compensation, barred Jews from the armed forces, and set



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up a draft of male Jews into labour companies serving on the front lines digging ditches and clearing mines. Soon Hungary did need room to manoeuvre. Ater the German army’s spectacular defeat at Stalingrad and in January–February 1943 the Hungarian army’s catastrophic defeat at Voronezh (a German staging base for the attack on Stalingrad), Kállay became convinced Germany would go down in defeat. He then tried to disentangle Hungary from the German alliance. He began by refusing German requests for additional Hungarian troops and called for the return of the Hungarian army from Voronezh. He then pursued contacts with the Allies in the hopes of thwarting either a potential German occupation or a Soviet one. To this end the Allies would have had to open a second front in the Balkans or approach Hungary from Italy, which the Allies had invaded in July 1943. None of this was to happen; the door to Hungary’s room for manoeuvre remained closed. In the meantime Hitler was exerting pressure on Horthy to deliver up the Jews of Hungary, and was brutally frank about German intentions to murder all the Jews they could get their hands on. In a personal encounter in Klessheim Castle, near Salzburg, on 17–18 April 1943 Horthy responded that he had restricted the Jews, but could not “knock their brains out.”58 Then, the next spring, with German intelligence fully aware of Horthy’s attempts to switch sides, and with the Red Army advancing to Romania, bordering Hungary, Hitler ordered Horthy to accept a German army of occupation. Hungary was in no position to resist, and the occupation proceeded on 19 March 1944. Horthy was ordered to appoint a pro-Nazi prime minister, and he chose Döme Sztójay, his ambassador to Berlin. The radical right now held power. László Baky and László Endre, eager to deport Jewish Hungarians, became state secretaries in the Ministry of the Interior. In line with German priorities Lieutenant-Colonel (Obersturmbannführer) Adolf Eichmann arrived the same day to organize the deportation of Hungarian Jewry. The Gestapo and Security Service equipped with arrest lists, accompanied the army. Those detained and dispatched to concentration camps included left-wingers, anti-Nazi conservatives and liberals, and antiGerman elements in the army. Ten days later, on 29 March 1944, Jews were ordered to display the yellow Star of David on their clothing. New prohibitions depriving Jews of employment followed, as did a ban on the possession of radios. From 16 April on Jews were concentrated and ghettoized.

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Concentration began in the regained territories of northern Transylvania and Carpathian-Ukraine, where Jews were different from the Jews of Budapest – less prosperous, less acculturated, and made up the ranks of Orthodox Judaism. Deportations to Auschwitz began on 14 May, at a daily rate of between 12,000 and 14,000 individuals. On 7 July Horthy ordered the deportations stopped, though Eichmann was able to dispatch two more trainloads later that month. Some 438,000 Jews had been shipped to Auschwitz by then from provinces and the regained territories, where about 394,000 were immediately murdered by gas. Nuncio Rotta’s initiatives during the Sztójay era (22 March to 24 August 1944) were far more forceful than those of his colleagues in Slovakia, Croatia, and France, more heartfelt, and more sensitive to the shame inaction was bringing to the church. Rotta was especially interested in protecting Catholics of Jewish descent, which also meant protecting the church’s prior jurisdiction in matters of conversion. It must be said, however, that there was another side to the church’s priority in protecting converts. Defending converts was in the Catholics Church’s interest, of course, but Hungarian clerics went beyond that, saving opportunistic converts, for after the First Anti-Jewish Law of May 1938, Jews converted mostly to evade such measures. According to Braham, in Hungary 2,260 Jews converted to Catholicism in 1940; 1,463 in 1941; 1,858 in 1942; and 994 by September of 1943. He notes that many of them, like the Marranos of Spain, remained secretly Jews. Hanebrink tells us that the church’s defence of converts brought on attacks by the racist radical right.59 With the occupation and deportations of 1944, Apostolic Nuncio Rotta emerged as a rare hero among those in the service of the Holy See. He was horrified by the regime’s treatment of Jews, and became increasingly critical of the church’s tepid stance on anti-Jewish policy. Rotta insisted to Maglione on 19 April that the new restrictions on Jews were “inhumane.” Blame lay both on German pressure and on the “anti-Jewish phobia” of the government. Later he referred to the Hungarian government’s “anti-Jewish obsession.” On 28 April Rotta berated the secretary-general in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, stating, “How inhumane and un-Christian is the manner and scale of the battle against the Jews.” The nuncio made a special plea on behalf of converts of Jewish descent, insisting they be exempt from all anti-Jewish decrees, but he also condemned the persecution of all Jews. In the name of the pope he expressed his disappointment in



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the Hungarian government “that until now took pride in being a Christian nation.” Rotta complained that Serédi remained publicly silent on the stepped-up persecution of Jews. He believed the prince primate was acting out of “excessive prudence” and that the church had greater leverage than the cardinal was willing to acknowledge. Increasingly disheartened by the passivity of the old Hungarian political class, Hungarian bishops, and the papacy, Rotta abandoned circuitous diplomatic language for blunt talk. On 15 May, the day the freight trains crammed with Jews began to leave Hungary for Auschwitz, Rotta sent a memo to the acting minister of foreign affairs, Mihály ArnóthyJungerth. He referred to the deportations “of hundreds of thousands of persons,” noting that “even if they are disguised [by being called labor service]. The whole world knows what the deportations mean in practise.” This was harsh non-diplomatic language, implicitly calling government disavowals lies. The same day Rotta sent a memo to Sztójay, insisting that both natural law and divine law required that the innocent not be arbitrarily killed. He hoped Hungary would not “sully its reputation by acts that will endure like a stain for centuries to come.” Rotta pointed out that Hungary’s enemies could well accuse the country of copying Bolshevik methods, which was a scathing remark about a country for whom Bolshevism was evil incarnate. Rotta also invoked the threat of a papal public protest. On 24 May Nuncio Rotta again complained about the passivity of the Hungarian bishops, and prodded Cardinal Secretary of State Maglione for “some direct step by the Holy See.” With deportations under way, the nuncio wrote to the minister of foreign affairs on 5 June, shredding the government’s lies. He wanted to know how the government could claim the deportations were for compulsory labour, when small children and the elderly were being seized. The government retorted that it was granting Jews the possibility of going as families. Rotta questioned why this was not voluntary and why the aged and ill were being sent without family members. Why were Hungarians working in Germany not permitted this “great favour” only granted to the Jews? All converts, Rotta again insisted, must be exempt from anti-Jewish measures, and all Jews must be accorded “justice and fundamental human rights.” The Hungarian people, he wrote, “would not want to sully its reputation by employing methods that cannot be approved of by the conscience of the Christian world, even if they were employed in the defense against Bolshevism; ... [these methods] eliminate all moral value from the

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campaign for the defense of Christian civilization.” The editors of the ADSS pointed to the rarity of such protests, both in general and on the part of nuncios or the Vatican: its “forcefulness is echoed in very few diplomatic exchanges.” On 18 June Rotta reported to Maglione that over three hundred thousand persons had already been deported. Reliable sources spoke of “camps of annihilation.” He noted that many die of “asphyxiation,” during transport. In the face of these atrocities, Rotta continued to complain about the tepidness of the Hungarian prince primate, who sent private memos to the government but failed to make any public protest against the deportation of the Jews: “result almost nothing,” the nuncio concluded. Rotta called, now even more urgently, for the “direct intervention of the Holy See [which] would be rather useful not to say necessary.” This was two full weeks after Rome had been liberated by the Allies (on 4 June) and almost two weeks since the D-Day invasion had established an Allied bridgehead in France (on 6 June). Cardinal Serédi did gain some small concessions on behalf of converts: Catholics of Jewish descent could wear the cross as long as they also wore the yellow star. Small concessions were made to those in mixed marriages, for they would be allowed to employ non-Jewish domestic servants. Clerics of Jewish descent were to be exempted from the anti-Jewish laws. Some economic concessions were made to Catholics whose parents were Jewish. But Catholics of Jewish descent continued to be rounded up by German police and Hungarian gendarmes for ghettoization first, and then deportation. Serèdi then simply asked that Catholics of Jewish descent be kept separate in the ghettoes, and that clergy be provided for them. On 24 June Rotta told Maglione that the “honour” of the Hungarian Catholic Church was by now “reasonably compromised.” Even many Catholic laymen and clerics were “scandalized by the submissive conduct of the episcopate dictated by excessive prudence.” Several bishops were urging Serédi as primate to issue a pastoral letter on the deportations to be read out in all Catholic churches. The next day Maglione instructed Rotta to prod the Hungarian bishops once again to take a public stance. Rotta did so, telling Serédi that the “compliance” of the Hungarian bishops with the anti-Jewish measures would one day do “great damage to themselves and to Hungarian Catholicism.” Randolph Braham refers to another confrontation between Rotta and Prime Minister Sztójay on 6 July, when the nuncio termed the antiJewish measures “abominable”and “dishonorable” for Hungary.60



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Bending to pressure Cardinal Serédi finally issued such a pastoral letter on 29 June. This was six weeks after the start of deportations. The cardinal called for the end of deportations and emphasized the church’s unmatched record of anti-Jewish vigilance. He first spoke against the principle of collective guilt, explaining that no one can be punished “without determination by valid judicial decree of individual acts of crime.” But then he widened the net of Jewish guilt saying, “A part of Jewry has had a guilty subversive influence on Hungarian economic, social, and moral life. It is also a fact that the others did not stand up against their correligionists in this respect.” Serédi referred to injustices against our “[Jewish] fellow citizens and believers [Catholics of Jewish descent]” four times. This pastoral letter points to Cardinal Serédi’s indifference to the deportations of Jews from the provinces and regained territories, the latter centres of Hasidism; both areas were inhabited by largely pious, Yiddish-speaking Jews of modest and poor means. However, Hungarian was their second language. These were seen as the “Galician Jews,” who supposedly had “flooded” Hungary after Jewish emancipation in 1867. Pál Teleki, prime minister of Hungary from February 1939 to April 1941, had stated, “There is a conflict between the Christian Magyars and the Oriental [i.e., Eastern European] Jews who came in great masses to our country in the last halfcentury, and the continual infiltration of which did not stop and does not stop … it is a problem of life and death for the Hungarian people.” Horthy shared this popular view. He is quoted as saying to Under-Secretary of the Interior László Baky, “They [the Germans] want to deport the Jews. I don’t mind. I hate the Galician Jews and the Communists. Out with them, out of the country! But … there are some Jews who are as good Hungarians as you and I … I can’t allow these to be taken away.” Accordingly, Horthy did not stop the deportations till it was the turn of the Jews of Budapest. Serédi’s pastoral letter was to be read out in all churches, and it clearly called for an end to deportations. This was a message not welcomed by the Hungarian government. István Antal, serving as minister of religion and education as well as minister of justice, then reached a deal with Serédi on 6 July. The cardinal would withdraw the pastoral letter, and, in exchange, the government would exempt Catholics of Jewish descent from the anti-Jewish laws and make every effort to bring back those Catholics of Jewish descent who had been deported. The next day Serédi instructed his bishops not to have the letter read in their churches. He was willing to settle for far less than an end to deportations.

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On 25 June 1944 Pope Pius XII intervened for the first and only time on the deportation of Jews. On that date the pope sent a telegram to the Hungarian head of state, Regent Miklós Horthy, pleading with him “to put everything in place so that this noble and chivalric nation not extend and aggravate the harsh suffering that a great number of unfortunates have already endured because of their nationality or race.” The pope continued, “We address Ourselves personally to Your Highness in an appeal to His noble sentiments ... in order to spare so many unfortunates further sorrows and suffering.” The pope employed diplomatic niceties, which was the papal style when it came to what was considered a non-church issue, not reproving but discreetly pointing out the right path. Horthy did order the deportations stopped on 7 July. Approximately 440,000 Jews had been deported from the provinces and regained territories, and most had already been murdered, while 150,000 to 160,000 Jews in Budapest were left alive, in addition to 150,000 working in Hungarian labour service companies. It is difficult to measure the effect of the pope’s telegram on Horthy. By the spring of 1944 there were many others involved in the rescue of Jews in Hungary. We know the reasons for this: The tide of battle had turned, for 1943 had seen both the German surrender at Stalingrad and the Axis powers swept out of North Africa. On D-day the Allies landed in Normandy; two days earlier Rome had been liberated. By this time the reality of the destruction of European Jewry was sinking in among neutrals and the Allies alike, and both pressed the Hungarian government on the deportations as no government had yet been pressed. In March 1944 President Roosevelt and the British Foreign Minister Anthony Eden had warned Hungarians that those involved in the deportation of Jews would face harsh punishment after the Allied victory. Roosevelt issued another warning on 26 June. Four days later the King of Sweden appealed to Horthy. As Michael Phayer has pointed out, Pius, who claimed to be – and was for many – a world moral force, probably felt he should do something, for he could not be left behind. It is possible, however, that Horthy may have interpreted a massive bombing raid on Budapest, on 2 July, as a warning by the Allies. Leaflets were dropped from planes threatening those participating in the deportation of the Jews with dire punishment after the war. Harold Tittmann, US chargé d’affaires to the Holy See, delivered a message to Vatican Secretary of State Maglione on 24 June from the newly created US government agency, the War Refugee Board, reminding the Holy



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See of the US warning to the Hungarian government of “the material consequences that the perpetuation of such inhuman acts of barbarism will entail.” This sounded like a threat of air raids. Tittmann was referring to the “mass slaughter both within Hungary and after deportation to [occupied] Poland” of the 800,000 Jews of Hungary, including the provinces and reacquired territories. To all of the above must be added the impact of the “Auschwitz Report” (also known as the “Auschwitz Protocol” or the “Vrba-Wetzler Report”), a detailed report on the schedule of gassings since April 1942, and on the expanded facilities at Auschwitz for the annihilation of the Jews of Hungary. The report was written by two Slovak prisoners, Rudolf Vrba (born Walter Rosenberg) and Alfred Wetzler, who had escaped from the death camp on 7 April 1944. The New York Times gave an account of the report on 3 and 6 July 1944, first stating, “The report came from two fugitives of the Slovak extermination campaign,” and then, “more than 1,715,000 Jewish refugees … were put to death there [Auschwitz] between April 15, 1942 and April 15, 1944.” The instrument of death was “cyanide gas.” The newspaper then gave a breakdown of countries of origin of those murdered at Auschwitz, and “to this total must now be added Hungary’s Jews,” of which “400,000 have been deported.” On 28 April the Jewish Council of Slovakia had dispatched German translations of the report to the Hungarian Jewish leadership, in mid-May to Cardinal Serédi, and by the end of May or early June to Horthy. It was not as if these circles first heard of the death camps in the spring of 1944, but they now knew that the world knew, a reason to think twice about the deportations. It is impossible to weigh in the balance precisely all of the elements that influenced Horthy’s decision to order the deportations stopped. Certainly, it is to the pope’s credit that he intervened, it was the right thing to do, and it certainly added to the other interventions at the time. But it was most probably Roosevelt’s warnings and the 2 July Allied bombing of Budapest that tipped the scales.61 At this point Horthy made another turnaround, more risky than deposing Prime Minister Bárdossy in March 1942. He deposed Sztójay in late August 1944, and installed General Geza Lakatos as prime minister with the express intention of seeking an armistice with the Soviet Union, to spare Hungary from becoming a pitched battleground between the Soviet and German armies. He had seen enough devastation in Italy, where German and Allied forces fought a war of attrition from September 1943 through to the summer of 1944. On 15 October

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Horthy announced an armistice and Hungary’s withdrawal from the war. He was immediately arrested, and the fascist Arrow Cross Party with its leader Ferenc Szálasi was installed by the Germans. Mass deportations became a real threat once again. During the period of Arrow Cross rule, from mid-October 1944 to mid-January 1945, Jews were subject to a triple-pronged assault, from the Eichmann Special Commando (Sonderkommando), the Hungarian fascist government, and out-of control Arrow Cross gangs. In November, twenty-five thousand Jews were conscripted to build defences around Vienna, and marched to the Hungarian border to be handed over to the German authorities. They went without food and shelter on a journey that Braham calls a “highway of death.” Others, conscripted by the Hungarian government to erect fortifications around Budapest, also worked without shelter or adequate food. Shooting sprees by Arrow Cross guards often targeted Jews indiscriminately, those who weakened were the first to be murdered. In December and January, with the Red Army encircling Budapest, and a total breakdown of order, gangs of Arrow Cross supporters prowled the capital, looting and murdering Jews. During this period Nuncio Rotta, as dean of the diplomatic corps in Budapest, led the other neutral delegations from Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, and Portugal in protests to the Hungarian government. Rotta understood the government’s Achilles heel − that it had been put in place by the Germans and that it needed to strengthen its own position by seeking international recognition. Thus, the Arrow Cross government agreed to honour the Swedish-issued protective passes (Schutzpasse), distributed to Jews by the neutral diplomats. The nunciature alone distributed thirteen thousand such blank letters of protection to aid organizations. All those with protective passes moved into protected houses, which came to be known as the “international ghetto.” The passes aided – but did not guarantee – survival, as the ghetto was subject to raids by Arrow Cross units using flimsy pretexts to loot and murder Jews. With the “death marches” in November, a priest from the nunciature armed with protective passes headed to the Hungarian border on the heels of the hounded Jews. Some Jews were able to escape the ordeal if a Hungarian official was willing – or could be bribed – to honour the passes. With Horthy overthrown, the Szálasi government in power, and the threat of deportations looming once more, Pope Pius XII now faced pleas from the US government for an appeal on Vatican Radio to the Hungarian people. The editors of the ADSS tell us that the pope “chose



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another way, which was to prove as effective as his telegram to Horthy had been.” What was this “efficacious way”? Rotta had informed the pope that on 29 October a collection for refugees would be taken up in all the Catholic churches of Hungary. Hearing of this, the pope sent a message to Cardinal Serédi, saying he had received appeals to intervene “for the defense of persons exposed to persecution and violence either because of their religious confession, their race, or their political convictions.” The pope expressed his solidarity with the appeal for charity, and offered his “prayers that the suffering in this formidable conflict, already so severe, does not become still harsher.” This, the ADSS editors understand, was an invitation to the episcopacy and faithful “to redouble their aid to all victims of the war, regardless of their race, in other words, Jews, baptized or not.” By then over 569,000 Hungarian Jews had been murdered. If his first intervention was regarded as successful (his telegram to Horthy), why did the pope not intervene a second time in Hungary with the change of government in October 1944? Rome had been liberated, so there was no longer any reason to fear that the Vatican would be occupied, or have its food supply, or water, or electricity cut off by an enraged Hitler. The Italian government of Marshal Badoglio was no longer part of the Axis, so condemning the policies of these nations was no longer a violation of the concordat with Fascist Italy. A papal statement on the dire fate of the deportees may have spurred more Hungarian Catholics to help save Jews. We know by now that Pope Pius XII followed the lead of national bishoprics, so at most he might have privately urged Serédi to take the lead. Well after the war, a Catholic priest declared that if bishops had denied sacraments to those active in the deportations, many would have relented, scared off their task. No national bishoprics ever resorted to this, not wishing to set themselves against the state on such an issue. In 1939 Serédi had declared that it was “very important to limit the activity of the Jews, and to remove the Jewish spirit from the public and economic domains, as well as from additional walks of life.” But limits were set by Catholic doctrine as to the means used to accomplish this, and murder was not among them. Five years later Catholic strictures against murder turned out not to be as important to Serédi as the popularity and strength of the Roman Church. The editors of the ADSS did not have to hedge in their portrayal of Apostolic Nuncio Rotta’s efforts in aid of Jews, nor hide their

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admiration. Rotta’s initiatives remained within the limits, or outer limits, of diplomacy, but he was far more forceful than his colleagues in Slovakia, Croatia, France, and Italy, more heartfelt, and far more sensitive to the shame inaction was bringing to the church. The mandate imposed on him must have frustrated this admirable man, who was later honoured by the Israeli Holocaust Memorial Centre, Yad Vashem, as one of the Righteous among the Nations.62 Conclusion What is to be learned by surveying and assessing church policies in Catholic European countries during the Second World War? The pope and his representatives were first of all concerned with the preservation of the church through a time of great crisis, and with upholding its good name. They were at all times guided by Catholic doctrine, as they saw it. This could lead to different outcomes. For one, in accord with widespread Catholic antisemitism, they generally approved of the anti-Jewish decrees, along with the campaign to make exceptions for Catholics of Jewish descent. For another, they generally objected to the deportations, in diplomatic statements, as violations of Catholic, natural, and divine law. Official representatives of the Vatican seem to have had a certain freedom of action, and Apostolic Delegate Monsignor Giuseppe Burzio in Slovakia and Apostolic Nuncio Monsignor Angelo Rotta in Hungary stand out for their passion and activism in opposing the deportations. We see the pope favouring regimes undergoing a Catholic revival: in Slovakia, Croatia, and France. At the same time the Vatican kept its distance from these regimes for fear of associating the church with wartime crimes. Above all, the pope did not want to alienate Catholics and lose them for the church, which he believed would endanger their eternal salvation. Therefore, Pope Pius XII never issued specific warnings to Catholics committing war crimes. In the case of Rome, concern over holy sites, central to the mystique of the papacy and therefore the unity of the church, trumped concern over human lives. Furthermore, the pope and his Secretariat of State followed the lead of national episcopates, and did nothing to cause divisions within or among them for fear of undermining their authority. Only in Hungary, finally, did Pius XII and his nuncio prod the national hierarchy to take a more activist stance against the deportations. Comparing papal policy over a range of countries, scholars have come to moral judgments, often contrasting ones. John Morley came



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to a harsh reckoning. He did not claim, as Rolf Hochhuth had, that a more aggressive policy would necessarily have saved Jews; there is no way of knowing this. Nevertheless, Morley believes such a stance was required of the church, which untiringly professed its commitment to uphold “justice and charity.” He considers churchmen “captives of a profession,” and like any profession, bent on perpetuating themselves. As far as Morley is concerned, they betrayed “human values” for “institutional values.” So much points in support of Morley. Most nuncios responding to the anti-Jewish decrees insisted they had merit and were a justified, if sometimes excessive response to Jewish wrongdoing. But in the case of reports of mass deaths, there was no such qualified response, no sense at all that Jews had it coming. On the contrary, clerics were sending startling reports of a terrible crime to the Vatican. There is no indication, however, that Vatican officials made it their business to dig deeper into the reports, to inform themselves more systematically. They believed that doing more than the minimum would risk the church’s real spiritual mission. Indeed, in October 1942, President Roosevelt’s personal envoy to the Vatican, Myron Taylor, sought to discuss the catastrophe of European Jewry with the pope. Vatican Undersecretary of State Montini responded with a note to Taylor stating that they, too, had received news of “the severe treatment against the Jews. It [the Vatican] has not, however, been able to verify the accuracy of all the news received.” We know that by that time the Vatican had received information about the Jewish catastrophe from a number of confidants, beginning in March 1942 and beyond. But the Vatican was clear about its holy priorities, and dissembled to evade pressure from the Allies. The ends, Vatican priorities, were holy; the means, dissembling, were sordid. In their introductory essays to the ADSS volumes the Jesuit editors of the ADSS weigh in against a condemnation of Pius XII. They make no grandiose claims about how many Jews the pope saved. Instead, they cite documents that emphasize the hurdles the pope was up against, which constrained his influence. Their essays dwell on the weakness of the papacy in a world ruled by brute force: “The Holy See harboured no illusions about the scope of its influence,” in spite of those who endow it with “limitless power.” For this reason the ADSS volumes insist that Vatican diplomacy, including all of the pope’s interventions, “obtained only limited results,” and conclude vaguely that the Holy See “in spite of all, saved a considerable number of human lives.” Jews were a part of this considerable number. The editors make no bones about the

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priorities of the Vatican during the period of the anti-Jewish decrees, which was to protest the inclusion of “non-Aryan” Catholics, considered by governments to be Jewish by race. The editors note that “the Church could assume a right to protest when it came to its own members, and in limiting itself in this way, it could still hope for a favourable result,” but in taking up the case of Jews, the Roman Church would be overreaching. To this the reader, with Morley, may say that papal policies were immoral. But the ADSS holds to a different view, shared by Pius XII, namely, that the pope had an obligation to provide the instruments of salvation to all who desired them and thus, first of all, to preserve the institutional church.63

Chapter Four

Pius XII and the Second World War: Poland

When Judas led the soldiers and the police provided by the chief priests to take Jesus, Simon Peter, who had a sword, drew it and struck the High Priest’s slave, cutting off his right ear. The name of the slave was Malchus. Jesus said to Peter, “Put your sword back in its place! Do you think that I will not drink the cup of suffering which my Father has given me?” Under the circumstances, the prudence of serpents and the mildness of doves was appropriate, rather than the hot-headed Peter cutting off the ear of Malchus. Paul Duclos’ comment on John 18:10–11, Le Vatican and la Seconde Guerre mondiale

Silence is the greatest [form of] persecution. The saints were never silent. Blaise Pascal, Pensées, Section xiv, no. 920

The Catholic countries we have looked at so far were Germany’s allies and collaborators. The caution and reserve of Pope Pius XII kept Catholics in Slovakia, Croatia, and Vichy France within the fold of the Roman Church, irrespective of their role in perpetrating – or being complicit with – deportations and murder. Poland, however, was another story, which Michael Phayer singles out as a case of “Genocide before the Holocaust: Poland 1939.” As Phayer points out, in the period 1939–41 more Polish Christians than Polish Jews were subjected “to arrest, deportation, and death.” Poland was the first wartime testing ground for Pope Pius XII, for how he would respond to Germany’s wartime atrocities. It was in Catholic Poland, ruled by Germany with extreme brutality, where the pope went furthest in dropping his caution and reserve, even

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referring specifically to Poland as a victim of aggression and occupation. Yet Poland was where he most bore the brunt of Catholic anger. Most Poles saw Catholicism as the essence of Polish national identity, so in their hour of torment they expected loyal and unmistakable papal support. Instead, the pope held back, navigating with care among his priorities. Poland illustrates Pius XII’s dilemma in wartime: it turned out that it was easier for him to appease Catholics engaged in war crimes by publicly saying nothing, than Catholic victims of war crimes, who demanded he say something.1 Pope Pius and the Poles began to go separate ways months before the outbreak of the Second World War. In the spring of 1939 Hitler began making territorial claims on Poland, demanding both Danzig and an extraterritorial German highway and railroad through the Polish Corridor, which split East Prussia off from the rest of Germany. Danzig had been a German port city on the Baltic Sea, which the Versailles Treaty turned over to the protection of the League of Nations to serve as a Polish port, Poland’s only access to the sea. . In March 1939 German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop unequivocally demanded the return of Danzig to Germany and extraterritorial rights through the Polish Corridor to East Prussia. In return Germany would sign a treaty guaranteeing Poland’s western border, in other words, trading concrete Polish territorial concessions in return for a German promise. Ribbentrop added scarcely veiled threats of war if German demands were not met. This meant peace could only be had at the cost of Polish territorial concessions to Hitler. The Polish authorities were convinced that Hitler’s demands for Danzig were a pretext “to carry out a war of extermination against Poland.” The Polish interest, therefore, lay in building its defences and recruiting allies to guarantee Poland’s independence. Pius XII could look back to the competing demands on Pope Benedict XV of Catholic belligerents during the First World War, the intense and unforgiving hatred that war gave rise to between Catholic belligerents, and the catastrophic outcomes of that war, such as the Bolshevik Revolution and the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He wanted to avoid war at almost any price. In a memorable utterance in a radio message of 24 August 1939, the pope declared, “Nothing is lost by peace. Everything can be lost by war.” Poland’s Foreign Minister Józef Beck, however, saw things differently: “We in Poland do not know the concept of peace at any price. There is only one thing in the life of men, nations and States which is above price – and that is honour.” Beck’s

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tone was chivalric and romantic, but also recognized that the Germans were demanding “one-sided concessions.” Britain and France had guaranteed Poland’s independence. Britain did so at the end of March 1939, approximately two weeks after Germany violated the Munich Agreement by occupying Prague. Now it seemed that only the threat of force could stop Hitler, not appeasement, not concessions. Poland stood firm, fortified by the French and British guarantees. The new pope, Pius XII, took a different line to Hitler’s threats, believing that Poland should negotiate with the Führer on the basis of his demands. Consequently, in the crisis months before the outbreak of the Second World War, papal priorities clashed with those of Poland. The papacy wished to prevent war between Germany and Poland, which could leap out of control like a raging fire. Britain and France played a double game. The British government warned Hitler that it would resist German aggression against Poland, while declaring itself open to a negotiated settlement between Germany and Poland. France, too, followed this double-track strategy, pledged to guarantee Polish independence, at the same time urging a peaceful settlement between Germany and Poland. Britain and France lent credibility to their commitment to meet German aggression with military force, while they encouraged Pius to take the lead in urging a negotiated settlement between Poland and Germany. Owen Chadwick has called their promotion of the pope to centre stage in peace efforts “their last desperate act of concealed appeasement.” The papal call for a peaceful, negotiated settlement inevitably meant putting pressure on Poland for concessions.2 Why was Pius XII’s plea to avoid war unbalanced, chiefly addressed only to Poland? Manfred Clauss reminds us that the church in Poland was long a stronghold of Polish nationalism and notes that the Catholic Church in interwar Poland was the “strongest spiritual force in the country.” Neal Pease has called Poland “Rome’s Most Faithful Daughter.” The pope surely would have had some influence on the GermanPolish conflict – but only on the Polish side. As Luigi Cardinal Maglione acknowledged, mutual antagonism between Germany and Poland meant the pope had zero influence on Hitler. Furthermore, when the Vatican turned to Mussolini to urge Hitler to “restrain himself, ” Mussolini replied that any intervention by him would be “useless” and that war was inevitable; nevertheless, in spite of his pessimism, Mussolini encouraged the pope to intervene in the conflict.

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In May 1939 the pope proposed mediation, ordering Maglione, his cardinal secretary of state , to instruct the Vatican’s nuncios in France, Germany, Britain, Italy, and Poland to sound out these governments on their interest in settling German-Polish frictions at a diplomatic conference. He also singled out Poland for a reminder, instructing Apostolic Nuncio Monsignor Filippo Cortesi in Warsaw to inform Foreign Minister Beck “that calm and moderate expression in his next speech could make a valuable contribution to the calming of minds.” The intervention went nowhere, as did the caution to Beck. Through the spring and summer of 1939 Poles and Germans engaged in mutual provocations. The pope continued to press Poland not to react to German provocations. For example, in the recurrent language wars between Poles and the German minority in Poland, Bishop of Katowice Stanislas Adamski had banned the use of German in the churches in his diocese. Hitler persisted in his claims on Poland while escalating press attacks that heated up tensions. Yet it was Poland not Germany that was forewarned by the Vatican. In June Nuncio to Poland Cortesi was instructed to tell the Poles that the Holy See has been informed by a “reliable source” that Germany did not intend to attack Poland, and hence Poles should do nothing to feed tensions. At the end of June the pope exerted influence on the Polish church hierarchy, and its primate, August Cardinal Hlond, urging them to discourage public antagonism and provocations among the Polish faithful. On 18 August Cortesi reported German troop concentrations at the Polish border, while the German press was playing up both real and non-existent Polish provocations. The response from the Vatican was to press Poland for concessions. On 31 August Poland’s Deputy Foreign Minister Jan Szembek reported a message from the Vatican via Nuncio Cortesi: the Vatican has learned from “highly reliable sources” that if Poland were to discuss ceding Danzig to the Reich, its commercial privileges there would be respected. Foreign Minister Beck rejected the proposal, convinced the pope was serving German interests. Beck noted that Germany was employing the same pressure tactics it had used against Czechoslovakia, which ended in the Munich surrender. Meanwhile, prior to sending the pope’s message to Warsaw, Vatican Undersecretary of State Monsignor Domenico Tardini had warned Cardinal Maglione of possible consequences stating, “It would appear that the Holy See has played into Hitler’s hands ... as if the Holy See had occasioned a new Munich.” The pattern was the same: “Hitler shouted,

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threatened and got what he wanted.” Tardini did not, however, suggest the message be scrapped, only that it be softened. Pius XII was to term ceding Danzig a huge sacrifice, both for the greater good, and for the good of Poland itself. Beck responded to the papal message with diplomatic understatement: if he did what the pope requested, “the Catholic feelings of the majority of our citizens would be offended.” Beck kept the Vatican demarche secret, not wishing to inflame Poles against the pope. European diplomats still counted on the pope’s moral authority to make a difference in conflicts among states. Both the French and Polish ambassadors to the Holy See urged the pope to condemn German aggression against Poland, in order to raise Polish morale and help mobilize Europeans in response to the German threat to peace. But both Vatican undersecretaries of state, Montini and Tardini, underscored the pope’s dilemma, his fear of alienating German Catholics, losing them to the church: “His Holiness says that this would be too much. We should not forget that in the Reich there are 40,000,000 Catholics” (now including Austria and the Czech lands).3 Having secured the Hitler-Stalin Pact on 23 August 1939, just over a week later, Germany from the west and, on 17 September, the Soviet Union from the east invaded and occupied Poland. The German-occupied parts of Poland (Danzig-West Prussia, Polish Upper Silesia, and West-Central Poland) were then incorporated into Greater Germany and renamed the Wartheland. These were territories of mixed populations and much of them had been part of Prussia since the time of the late eighteenth-century partitions of Poland to the end of the First World War, when they had reverted to the Republic of Poland. Before the Second World War, this area incorporated into the Reich had a population of 4.6 million, of which only 340,000 were ethnic Germans. The SS Reich Governor (Reichsstaathalter) Arthur Greiser now was given free rein to Germanize the area by engaging in what has since come to be called ethnic cleansing. Germany expelled over 300,000 Catholic and Jewish Poles in 1940 alone – tore them away from their homes and livelihoods and transferred them to other areas of Poland. By 1944 one million Polish Catholics and Jews had been expelled, while German settlers were pumped in, raising the ethnic German population to one million. German and Soviet policy was to blot out the Republic of Poland from the map of Europe. The rest of German-occupied Poland outside the Wartheland, which included Warsaw to the north, Kraków to the

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south, and Lublin to the east, became a German-administered entity, the General Government (Generalgouvernement für die besetzten polnischen Gebiete), ruled by Senior Group Leader (Obergruppenführer) Hans Frank of the SS. Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, bluntly stated Germany’s war aims: “We shall push the borders of our German race 500 kilometers to the East” and “all Poles will disappear from the world.” Germany intended to first cut off the head, the elite, of Polish society and turn the rest of the population into migrant labourers for German colonizers. In October 1939 the German occupiers murdered almost 20,000 Poles in a military reprisal designed to strike terror among the occupied. In August 1940 about 10,000 Poles, teachers, politicians, and clergy were transported to concentration camps, while another 3,500 of the Polish leadership cadre were executed. In total, around 75,000 Catholic Poles perished in Auschwitz, and of the three million Christian Poles who died during the occupation, 2.4 million were non-combatants. The Wartheland was annexed territory, subject to direct German rule, with no collaborationist intermediary. The Polish Catholic Church was a chief German target for it was a stronghold of Polish nationalism, with its special Catholic character, history, and heritage. German authorities proceeded to make a clean sweep of the Polish church. The Archdiocese of Posen, for example, had had 681 secular priests, and 147 in religious orders, making 828 prior to the occupation. By October 1941, of these, 74 had been executed or had died in concentration camps, 451 were in jail or concentration camps, and 120 had been deported to other parts of Poland, leaving 183 in the archdiocese. Of 441 churches in the archdiocese, 396 were sealed shut by the authorities or expropriated for other uses, leaving 30 churches for Poles to worship in and 15 for ethnic Germans. Church activity was limited to providing worship on Sundays between 9 and 11 a.m. Religious instruction in the schools, charitable works, Catholic associations, and Catholic newspapers were banned; monasteries and convents were expropriated, as were church homes and other institutions. By 1941 with respect to the whole of the Wartheland, five of its six bishops were in prison, and between seventy and eighty priests were left to serve 3.5 million Poles. From all of Poland, 2,800 priests were taken to Dachau, where 2,000 of them died. In total, 2,600 or 20 per cent of Polish clerics perished at the hands of the Germans.4 The invasion of Poland placed Pius XII in a predicament. From the beginning, Poles expected the pope would help rally the world against

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the barefaced and ruthless German aggressor. For many Poles, their nationalism and Catholicism were entwined. Many wondered how the pope could not see that Hitler’s war aims included wiping out the Polish church. United States chargé d’affaires at the Vatican, Harold Tittmann, caught the Polish mood, when he asked, “Why did he [the pope] not disapprove openly of the misdeeds of their enemies ‘who were also enemies of Christ’?” Despite appearances the pope went very far in singling out Poland as a victim of aggression. On 30 September 1939 he spoke from the heart to a Polish audience, which included political and clerical notables. He spoke in French, still the traditional language of diplomacy at that time. In the words of French Ambassador to the Vatican François CharlesRoux, Pius XII expressed “the most stirring affection, the most moving compassion, the firmest confidence in the rebirth of their fatherland ... and evoked all of the distress that the Poles had been subjected to.” Nevertheless, the Poles were deeply disappointed. What they wanted was a specific protest against the German aggressors. Charles-Roux observed that when the Polish complaints became public, the Osservatore Romano defended the pope, listing his actions on behalf of Poland, including the 30 September audience in Rome. Pope Pius XII made a public plea for Poland on 20 October 1939 in his first encyclical Summi Pontificatus (On the Unity of Human Society), in which he wrote, “Even now there reigns in thousands of families death and desolation, lamentation and misery. The blood of countless human beings, even non-combatants, raises a piteous dirge over a nation such as Our dear Poland, which, for its fidelity to the Church, for its services in the defense of Christian civilization … has a right to the generous and brotherly sympathy of the whole world, while it awaits, relying on the powerful intercession of Mary, Help of Christians, the hour of a resurrection in harmony with the principles of justice and true peace.” Although both German and Soviet aggressors had partitioned Poland between themselves, the German and Soviet governments were not mentioned by name, nor did the pope warn, let alone threaten German Catholics committing atrocities. Nor was the pope encouraging Poles to actively resist. Poland’s “hour of a resurrection,” was left to “Mary, Help of Christians.” Still, the pope’s plea was grist for Allied propaganda. Summing up the encyclical, the New York Times reported, “Racism, the violation of treaties, recourse to arms, the forcible transfer of populations, the destruction of Poland – these and many principles dear to fascism are condemned ... It is Germany that stands condemned

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above any country.” The pope’s words boosted the Allied depiction of Hitler Germany as a force for evil. In response the German government stopped distribution of the encyclical within Germany, while Cardinal Hlond, primate of the Polish Catholic Church now in exile, thanked the pope for his words in support of Poland.5 The pope also turned over the microphone of Vatican Radio to Cardinal Hlond, first on 28 September 1939, giving him the green light to denounce German aggression in Poland. Hlond spoke of “my martyred Poland ... Once again, faith will be the bulwark of your national spirit against this foreign intrusion ... you will be restored to glory, my beloved Poland.” Charles-Roux noted, “Never has such a cry of patriotic fervor, such a call to moral resistance of an oppressed nation come from the Vatican, made by a prince of the Church with the consent of the Sovereign Pontiff.” Cardinal Hlond spoke on Vatican Radio again. His broadcast on the night of 21–22 January 1940 was repeated in several languages. After five months of German occupation, he spoke of the “horror and inexcusable excesses committed upon a helpless ... people” and the “even more violent and persistent ... assault upon elementary justice and decency in that part of prostrate Poland that has fallen to German administration.” Allied and neutral newspapers reported this broadcast. The New York Times ran an article with the headline: “Weight of Papacy Put Behind Exposure of Nazi Excesses Committed in Poland.” The article described the imprisonment of priests in concentration camps, as well as deportations from the Wartheland, when Poles were dumped without resources into the General Government. German atrocities in Poland became a rallying cry in the Allied propaganda war. The German government rejected these denunciations on Vatican Radio, threatening “disagreeable repercussions” if continued, including a government-controlled propaganda campaign against the church and the Holy See. The Vatican then backed off. On 4 May 1940 German authorities announced that Catholic clergy would be banned from leaving Poland. Moreover, Archbishop Cesare Orsenigo, Vatican nuncio to the Reich, was denied jurisdiction in the Wartheland, as the pope would not recognize the German annexation short of a peace treaty.6 Although the pope spoke emotionally of “horrible things ... happening in Poland” to the Italian ambassador to the Holy See, Dino Alfieri, he resolved to maintain public silence in the face of German retaliation, while enduring a barrage of pleas from Polish bishops and the Polish government-in-exile. With Cardinal Hlond in exile, Archbishop Adam

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Sapieha of Kraków, now the senior cleric in Poland, reported to the Vatican about German terror against the church and beseeched the pope for “a voice of protest and of censure”: “The Catholic world awaits this defense of justice, even if it does not change the German government’s behaviour.” Almost three weeks later the priest Pirro Scavizzi, while passing Krakow on an Italian army hospital train headed west, reported to Maglione that Sapieha had informed him that the General-Government had outlawed the celebration of masses on religious holydays, only Sundays were excepted. With all this distressing news, Sapieha believed he could not communicate directly with the pope with any security. Hilarius Breitinger, apostolic administrator for German Catholics in the Warthegau, wrote to Pius on 23 November 1942, telling him that ethnic Germans in Poland wanted to know why the Holy See could not help, why the pope was silent about an issue central to the church, why he did not openly protest, or at the least take up the issue with the authorities. Breitinger concluded that the German authorities thought the pope a feeble opponent. As he put it, “One would like to sense an ideologically clear, public, and decisive stance. Confronted with enormous [German] propaganda conducted in the opposite direction, the lack of similar declarations is called in the country ‘the crime of silence.’” We know how much the pope’s heart lay with the Poles, but for many, inevitably, his silence was confirming German propaganda that he expected Poles to adapt to the new regime, and as a result, was estranging Poles from the Vicar of Christ. Others pointed out that Polish Communists were using the pope’s public silence for their propaganda. Pius XII’s standard defence was his plea throughout the war that speaking out “would render the condition of those unfortunate ones [Poles] even harsher.” In the meantime, Adolph Cardinal Bertram of Breslau pushed the pope from the other side, concerned that Germans were saying Pius was sympathetic to the Poles and hostile to Germany. He asked Apostolic Nuncio Orsenigo to urge the pope to speak to Germans of his impartiality, that he was only showing compassion for suffering, not attacking anyone. Bertram feared Pius was adding fuel to the arguments of those Germans who sought a Rome-free German national church. After all, most German Catholics saw the invasion of Poland as necessary and just, a war to regain lost territory and liberate ethnic Germans from the Polish yoke. All this reinforced the pope’s prudence and carefully understated words.7 In chapter 6 I will demonstrate that fear of retaliation if Pius spoke out was very much a reality in occupied Poland. A well-known incident

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vindicated the pope’s approach. We go back to Archbishop Sapieha’s letter of 3 November 1941. Pius responded to him on 6 December, with a word of encouragement and comfort, but made it clear he was unable to provide a condemnation of German crimes. Sapieha replied, in turn, paying homage to the pope and insisting that Pius, in his wisdom, knew best how and when to respond. Then at the end of February 1942 Archbishop Sapieha wrote again, describing German actions in Poland in horrifying detail and pleading for a papal response. He passed his letter on to the Italian military chaplain, Pirro Scavizzi, to hand deliver to the pope. Then, thinking himself too hasty and reckless, Sapieha panicked and fearful that the letter could fall into German hands, he dispatched a messenger to Scavizzi requesting he burn the letter. The messenger, who as it happens was none other than the rector of Lublin University, informed Scavizzi that the letter could prompt the Germans to “shoot all the bishops and perhaps others.” The Italian chaplain did burn the letter, but not before copying it while disguising the author’s identity. Scavizzi delivered the letter to Pius, who responded with words of support. On 28 October 1942 Sapieha thanked Pius for his reply, “encouraging the Polish faithful,” and explained to him why he could not publish and distribute it, as “it would provide a pretext for new persecutions.” Sapieha saw German retaliation ahead and the the pope was right in his concern about repercussions to Poles if he spoke out. There was more than one reason for Archbishop Sapieha’s fear of retaliation. His Kraków diocese was in the General Government, where conditions for the church were better than in the Wartheland. To be sure, German authorities had closed convents and monasteries in the General Government, expropriated church properties and restricted seminaries, but not all of them were closed as was the case in the Wartheland. Clerics suffered, hundreds perished, and more were under arrest, but dioceses were still intact, churches open, religious instruction permitted, and some diocesan newspapers still appeared. All this could be taken away. On 23 March 1943 Sapieha requested a message from the pope to Polish bishops in general, to be published this time in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis (Acts of the Apostolic See, AAS), the official gazette of the Holy See. The AAS would reach Polish bishops with authorization from ­German authorities and could be read in pulpits, so in this way, “we can avoid any suspicion or reproach against us [Polish bishops].” Pius had a better idea. He delivered an allocution to Poles on the feast day

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of his namesake Saint Eugene, 2 June, in which he stated that he prayed for the people of the Polish nation, who “in the silent heroism of her suffering have contributed for centuries to the development and preservation of a Christian Europe ... may ... enjoy a future in keeping with their legitimate aspirations.” These carefully chosen words avoided mentioning Germany, and simply described Poland as “subjected to the blows of fate and to the changing tides of the gigantic tragedy of war.” It is possible that Pius deliberately chose 2 June for his statement, for that April German soldiers had unearthed mass graves at a former NKVD (Soviet secret police) enclosure in Katyn Forest near Smolensk, containing 4,500 corpses. Although denied by the Soviet Union, it was widely assumed that the murdered Polish army officers had been captured by the Soviet army during its occupation of eastern Poland from September 1939 to June 1941. The pope’s words could thus be taken as intended for the Soviets, too, for he spoke of Poland as “surrounded by powerful nations.” Still, both Cardinal Hlond, in exile, and Archbishop Sapieha in Kraków expressed their gratitude to the pope. Sapieha wrote back on 15 June 1943, saying he would give the pope’s words “the greatest publicity possible, and we will even publish them if the [German] authorities allow it”; moreover, “the gratitude of the Polish people will never forget these noble and holy words.” This was important to counter “the poisonous effect of enemy propaganda.” Sapieha then mentioned that the church was asking the authorities to admit more students – potential priests – into the Catholic seminary and that the decision had been passed on to Berlin. Sapieha had to move cautiously, so as not to worsen the position of the Catholic Church. Archibishop Sapieha feared German retaliation for another reason. Bishops in the General Government urged the laity to abide by the decrees of the General Government to preserve the religious status quo by not infuriating the occupiers. German historian Klaus-Peter Friedrich reports that German decrees were read from the pulpit as required by the occupation authorities. Some bishops urged parishioners to volunteer for work in the Reich. Bishop Czeslaw Kaczmarek of Kielce warned Poles against oppositional activity, lest it endanger the leeway allowed the church. Archbishop Sapieha, however, refused to entreat parishioners to accommodate to the occupation. Friedrich calls him “the only noteworthy Polish opponent of the General Government,” and therefore “held in high repute among Poles.” In addition, Sapieha carried out an extensive exchange with Rome, though correspondence between the pope and Polish bishops was forbidden and had to go on

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surreptitiously, smuggled out by intermediaries, Italian priests and others. This, too, could be subject to German retaliation. Just prior to his late February 1942 letter to Pius, in which he described in detail the horrors of the German occupation, both Sapieha’s secretaries were arrested by the Gestapo and removed to a concentration camp. On 18 May 1942 Vatican Undersecretary of State Tardini described Sapieha as “a terrorized and discouraged man,” tailed by the Gestapo, surrounded by spies. Pope Pius XII had to tread carefully in Poland. He was blamed for not doing enough, but would be blamed for doing too much if he spoke out about German atrocities and reprisals followed.8 Poles confronted Pius with yet another dilemma. Two Polish vicars general (clerics appointed to an empty see, acting as deputies in the name of a bishop), Eduard van Blericq and Walenty Dymek, in the Wartheland dioceses of Gnesen (Gniezno) and Posen (Poznań), respectively, urged the pope to appoint German clerics for Germans in their dioceses, which he did. In effect, they were asking Pius to bend to the Nazi policy of segregating ethnic Germans and Poles. But there was seemingly no alternative, for as they noted, “Every attempt at non-adherence leads directly to the shut-down of churches still open, and to the imprisonment of priests still free, making any pastoral care simply impossible.” Pius XII’s actions put him in conflict with the Polish government-inexile. For one, he appointed Hilarius Breitinger as apostolic administrator to ethnic German churches in the Wartheland. Breitinger was a German Franciscan who had ministered to Poles of German ethnicity for about a decade. But Kazimierz (Casimir) Papée, Poland’s ambassador to the Holy See since June 1939, and then of the Polish government-in-exile, conveyed a message from his government stating that the appointment of Breitinger, and also of Bishop Walenty Dymek as administrator of the Catholic Church in Poland, was a high-handed move that overrode the Polish church hierarchy and violated the Vatican-Poland concordat of 1925. What is more, he asserted, the Vatican was “accepting or at least acknowledging” the illegal actions of the German occupier, which among other things had abolished the juridical autonomy of the church. Papée called upon the pope to issue a public protest against German moves to destroy the Polish church. Michael Phayer notes, “Betrayal was exactly what the Poles felt.” But Pius XII saw his own duty as providing pastoral care to ethnic Germans and to Poles, and blocking German plans for a German church independent of Rome.9 As if conflicts over the Polish church were not enough, Pius XII deeply disappointed some of the members of the Polish government-in-exile.

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Its president, Wadyslaw Raczkiewicz, wrote to the pope a week and a half into the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, of the Germans’ campaign “to destroy the Polish capital with unparalleled cruelty and to do their best to exterminate its population.” He called on the pope to “speak out for the protection of this population, the women and children of this martyred capital.” Pius XII did not speak out. Instead, he noted to Raczkiewicz that “he [the pope] had reminded the world of the principles that must govern the conduct of war.” Pius met with the Polish colony in Rome on 28 July and again on 15 November 1944 to express his solidarity with Poland. Raczkiwicz had asked for far more; he wanted a public protest against the German mass killing of non-combatants, but in the interest of good relations did thank the pope for what he had done. Other Poles were less forgiving. Bishop Karol Radonski of the diocese of Wloclawek, but now in exile in London, was embittered by Germany’s systematic destruction of the Catholic Church in the Wartheland and by what he regarded as the pope’s passivity. Radonski lashed out at Pius in an unprecedented personal attack. On 15 February 1942 he wrote to Cardinal Maglione in scathing tones: “Now children are being snatched away from their parents and deported to Germany en masse, and their mothers who try to protect them are immediately killed. When such crimes are committed, which demand vengeance from heaven, the inexplicable silence of the supreme head of the Church becomes a cause of spiritual ruin for the thousands who do not understand the reason for his silence.” Children snatched away referred to “Aryan”-looking children presumably of ethnic German descent kidnapped in Poland and taken to Germany to be raised as Germans. Radonski wrote to Maglione again some months later. On 14 September he wrote, “The faithful say: See, the churches are desecrated or closed, religion has been devastated, worship has been brought to a stop, bishops are driven out, hundreds of priests are murdered or thrown into prison, blessed Sisters of the Church are delivered up to the pleasures of depraved bandits, virtually every day innocent hostages are put to death under the eyes of children compelled to watch, and the people, deprived of everything, are dying of starvation, all the while the pope is silent as though he cares nothing for his sheep.” Radonski concluded that “simple and upright people will end up believing the maxim that he who does not say a word, consents.” The pope’s silence was incomprehensible to the bishop, who lamented, “For centuries we have been the shield of Christianity, we have freely spilled our blood for the faith ... But he [the pope] looks on with a dry eye at the

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death that carries away his sons.” Cardinal Secretary of State Maglione rightly replied, “It seems better in the Vatican to follow the same norms that the bishops [inside Poland] themselves observe.” With regard to Poland, Pius XII, as usual, was following the lead of local bishops, who feared retaliation. How do we explain Bishop Radonski’s unprecedented display of righteous anger? Or, for that matter, President Raczkiewicz’ appeal to the pope to publicly protest German atrocities? Radonski was a member of the Polish National Council, an advisory body to the Polish government–in-exile, which functioned as a parliament-in-being. Simply put, the agenda of the government-in-exile was different from the pope’s agenda. Its representatives in Poland known as the Delegatura, ran the Underground or Secret State, a vast administrative network consisting of an underground army, an underground press, and underground universities and classes for schoolchildren. Its military arm, the Home Army (Armia Krajowa) engaged in sabotage against the Germans, derailed trains, ambushed convoys, rescued prisoners, and increasingly by the fall of 1943 engaged in open combat with German units. Radonski and Raczkiewicz accepted German retaliation as a gruesome fact of life. Perhaps they calculated that open protest by the pope would strengthen Poland’s credibility among the Allies, and German retaliation would rally more Poles to the underground cause.10 Pope Pius XII, in contrast, believed he had wider responsibilities as the “common father” of all Catholics and feared that, as protector of Poland, he would have estranged himself from German Catholics. Furthermore, his priority in occupied Poland was not to endanger the pastoral care still available to parishioners. In a letter of 30 April 1943 to Konrad Preysing, bishop of Berlin, the pope explained. It must be said that Pius was without pretences to Preysing, with whom he had a long and close relationship and who was the German bishop most willing to confront the Nazi regime. In his letter the pope called the Catholic Church in the Wartheland the “hardest hit” of all. The reason he was not speaking out was “above all the fear of not endangering the remainder of pastoral care that still exists.” The same applied to the General Government, where pastoral care had more leeway. Cardinal Maglione said the same on 9 January 1943, in response to Bishop Radonski’s criticism of the pope for not speaking out: the pontiff’s “supreme law is the salvation of souls everywhere and at all times.” In Maglione’s understanding, the salvation of souls required pastoral care, the churches open, bishops in authority, priests available, and the sacraments at

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hand. In his note of 18 May 1942 Monsignor Tardini had spoken to the realities of German retaliation, first observing that a condemnation of German injustices in Poland was certainly within the mandate of the Holy See as “guardian of the natural law” and also noting that something must be done to “sustain Sapieha’s spirit ... with some words of comfort and relief.” However, he continued, a condemnation of German crimes would “further increase the persecution against Catholicism in Poland, and would impede in every way the Holy See from having contact with the Polish episcopacy.” Condemnation would also be “exploited for political ends” by the Allies, and “distorted” by the Germans, after which Germany would “aggravate” its persecution of Polish Catholics, or find new ways to hinder communication between the Holy See and Polish bishops. Vatican Undersecretary of State Tardini was acknowledging that the reprisals the pope feared most were those against Catholicism, or the church’s role in the care of souls.11

Chapter Five

Catholic Anti-Jewish Attitudes: Achille Ratti, Eugenio Pacelli, and Others

There is no question but that Christian antisemitism through the ages helped create the climate and mentality in which genocide … could be achieved with little or no opposition. But even if we grant that Christian teaching was a necessary cause leading to the Holocaust, it was surely not a sufficient one. Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, “Response to Rosemary Ruether”

The Germans are not qualified to punish the Jews for their crime against Christ. José Gotovitch, “Resistance Movements and the ‘Jewish Question,’” quote from La Belgique Indepéndante, a newspaper of the Resistance Movement

As Vatican secretary of state and then as pope Eugenio Pacelli was determined not to alienate Catholics, for this would weaken the pope’s spiritual authority over them, even lose Catholics to the church. For the same reason he observed a general policy of neutrality as between belligerents in wartime. Consequently, Pope Pius XII did not publicly condemn the perpetrators of the mass murder of Jews, Poles, Serbs, and others. But were all these cases the same to his mind? In one way “yes,” for all were met with public silence. Some have argued that anti-Jewish hostility was behind Pacelli’s response to German anti-Jewish measures in the 1930s, and to the wartime destruction of European Jewry. Guenter Lewy wrote in 1964, when the debate about Pius XII first took off, “The Pope and his advisers – influenced by the long tradition of moderate anti-Semitism so widely accepted in Vatican circles – did not view the plight of the Jews with a real sense of urgency and moral outrage.” This became a widely held view. Almost forty years later James Carroll spoke of Cardinal



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Secretary of State Pacelli’s “inability and refusal to see Jews except through the clouded lens of … religious hatred.” Daniel Goldhagen blames the Roman Church for the destruction of the Jews of Europe. After describing Catholic views of Jews as deicides and children of the devil, he writes, “This hatred … led Christians, over the course of almost two millennia, to commit many grave crimes and other injuries against Jews, including mass murder. The best-known and largest of these mass murders is the Holocaust.” Pacelli viewed Jews as all the same, as a homogeneous collective, and as a danger to Christian civilization. However, general hostility against Jews is not always a predictor of behaviour. For example, Nechama Tec has found some “overt anti-Semites” among the rescuers of Jews in Poland. Where was Pope Pius XII on this spectrum: innocent, passive, complicit?1 The Vatican and Historical Denial Preceding my analysis of Pacelli’s views on Jewry before and after he became Pope Pius XII, I wish to discuss how far the church has gone to burnish its record in the interwar and Second World War eras. In 1984 Pope John Paul II claimed, “The Catholic Church even before the Second Vatican Council condemned such ideology and practice … as opposed not only to the Christian profession [of faith] but also to the dignity of the human person created in the image of God.” By ideology and practice, he meant “discrimination and violence against Jews and Judaism ordinarily called anti-Semitism.” He cited two examples as proof of that opposition: a 3 March 1928 statement by the Congregation of the Holy Office and one made on 6 September 1938 by Pope Pius XI to an audience of Belgian Catholic radio journalists. These two examples actually demonstrate the opposite of what John Paul claimed.2 First a word about the Holy Office, the doctrinal tribunal of the Roman Catholic Church. The task of the Holy Office was to uphold true Catholic doctrine and condemn error, and to this end it could condemn deviations, discipline Catholics, and place books on the Index of Prohibited Books. Its declarations, endorsed by the pope, were authoritative. Under what circumstances did it oppose antisemitism?3 In 1928 the Holy Office ordered the dissolution of Amici Israel (Friends of Israel), an association of laypersons, priests, and bishops dedicated to the conversion of the Jews. Members included two thousand priests, two hundred archbishops, and eighteen cardinals. The Holy Office

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decree began by stating, “In spite of the continual blindness of this people, indeed, because of their blindness, the Catholic Church has indeed always prayed for the Jewish people, the beneficiary of divine promises until the time of Jesus Christ. With what charity has the Apostolic See protected this same people against unjust vexations. Because it rejects all hatreds and animosities among peoples, it utterly condemns hatred against the people formerly chosen by God, the hatred that today one is used to commonly designate by the word ‘Anti-Semitism.’”4 The Friends of Israel was dissolved, according to the Holy Office, because it had adopted “a manner of acting and thinking contrary to the sense and spirit of the Church.” Their deviation had amounted to nothing less than a request to eliminate the expression “perfidious Jews” from the Good Friday Latin liturgy. As German historian Hubert Wolf explains, the Latin word, perfidus originally meant “someone who breaks the faith now and again.” However, from the nineteenth century on, bilingual missals translated the term into vernacular languages: in English missals perfidus became “treacherous.” The Friends of Israel had argued that in order to promote conversion it was important to stress the kinship or common sources of Catholicism and Judaism, rather than the distance between them. Furthermore, they claimed, with reason, that the stigma of “perfidiousness” lent itself to “anti-Semitic interpretation.” In addition, the Friends of Israel insisted Jews not be referred to as deicides, that allegations of Jewish ritual murder were not worthy of discussion, and that God’s love for Israel be emphasized.5 Recent access to the archives of the Holy Office for the pontificate of Pius XI has opened up a more sordid side to the Friends of Israel affair. We now know that members of the Holy Office were scandalized by the association’s proposal. The secretary of the Holy Office, Rafael Cardinal Merry del Val, fumed that God had indeed cursed the Jews for having “shed the blood of the saint of saints.” The Friends of Israel proposals were all the more untimely in the 1920s, he insisted, when Jews were seeking “more than ever to reconstruct the kingdom of Israel in opposition to Christ and His Church.” To this end, according to the cardinal, Jews wished to lull Christians to sleep while secretly plotting with Freemasons to undermine Christian society. Merry del Val was not alone; all but one of the cardinals of the Holy Office agreed with him, as did Pope Pius XI. In condemning antisemitism, the Holy Office decree was merely highlighting the distinction between racial antisemitism, which it condemned, and Catholic anti-Jewish hostility, which it approved. Racial



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antisemitism contradicted Catholic Church doctrine, for it denied common descent from Adam and Eve, humanity’s common inheritance of original sin, and the efficacy of baptism in transforming Jews into Christians. Catholic anti-Jewish hostility claimed not to hate Jews for fixed traits in their “blood,” but only their actions, their plots, their lust for power. Indeed, Cardinal Merry del Val charged that “Jews … everywhere insinuate themselves into modern society and attempt by any and all means to dispel the memory of their history and to exploit the good faith of Christians.” He spoke about the Jewish people as one monolithic and conspiratorial entity. It is clear that the distinction between this hostility and racial antisemitism was not a fixed but pourous one.6 Hubert Wolf, who has explored the archives of the Pius XI era (1922– 39), newly opened in 2003 and 2006, has added much to our knowledge of the events of 1928. The qualified condemnation of antisemitism has its own dark side, for Wolf concludes most plausibly that Pope Pius XI and the Holy Office were concerned they would be accused of antisemitism for dissolving Amici Israel. They rewrote the decree dissolving the organization with this in mind, adding a condemnation of antisemitism. This was a semantic contrivance, a play on words meant to muddy the waters, to ward off denunciations of their stance. Wolf’s other important point is that Amici Israel was hardly a marginal organization. Many who joined in 1926 or 1927 may have viewed the organization as simply promoting the conversion of the Jews; however, the organization’s central committee issued a pamphlet in 1928, Pax super Israel (Peace Be upon Israel), which called for drastic reform of the official Catholic stance on Jews and Judaism. Differing views were expressed by clerics on Jews and Judaism: the spectrum ran from those acknowledging anti-Jewish hostility in the church and considering it a barrier to the conversion of the Jews, to those hostile to the Jews. So much for Pope John Paul II’s claim that the Holy Office condemned antisemitism.7 John Paul’s other example of the church’s condemnation of antisemitism, the statement by Pope Pius XI a decade later to a group of pilgrims from Belgian Catholic Radio, is equally erroneous, depending as it does on equating antisemitism solely with a racial concept. The papal audience on 6 September 1938 was private, but the pope directed the head of the delegation, Monsignor Louis Picard, to afterwards repeat what he had told them. Picard’s report appeared in the newspaper, La Libre Belgique, where he recounted that the Belgian delegation had presented the pope with

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a missal, and as Pius XI thumbed through the prayers for the Mass, he stopped at one and commented, with growing emotion, “We say this prayer at the most solemn moment in the mass, after the Consecration, when the divine Victim is actually offered.” The pope went on, explaining, “The sacrifice of Abel, sacrifice of Abraham, sacrifice of Melchisedech. In three strokes, in three lines, in three steps, the whole religious history of humanity. Sacrifice of Abel, the Adamite epoch; sacrifice of Abraham, the epoch of the prodigious history and religion of Israel. Sacrifice of Melchisedech, announces the Christian religion and epoch. (From the prayer ‘Sacrificium Patriarchae Nostri Abrahae.’) A grandiose text. Every time We read it, We are seized by an irresistible emotion. Notice that Abraham is called our Patriarch, our Ancestor.” Then, Pius XI said, “Anti-Semitism is not compatible with the thought and sublime reality expressed in this text. It is a repugnant movement, one in which we Christians can have no part.” At this point the pope could no longer contain his feelings: “While weeping he cited the passages from Saint Paul that brought to light our spiritual descent from Abraham.” The pope elaborated, “The promise was made to Abraham and his descendants … The promise is realized in Christ, and by Christ in us who are the members of His mystical Body. Through Christ and in Christ, we are spiritual descendants of Abraham. No, it is not possible for Christians to participate in Anti-Semitism. We recognize anyone’s right to self-defence, to take the means to protect themselves against whoever threatens their legitimate interests. But Anti-Semitism is inadmissible. We are spiritually Semites.”8 Pope Pius XI was pointing to the difference between racial antisemitism and Christian doctrine: antisemitism judged Jews evil by race and thereby subverted the Christian narrative that Christ’s sacrifice was prefigured and foretold in the Old Testament, that Jews were the repositories of a Christian revelation, and that Christians were the “spiritual descendants” of Abraham. Furthermore, the pope pointed out, God had not withdrawn his promise to the Jews: one day they will be redeemed in Christ, and herald the Second Coming. Racial antisemitism contradicted the doctrine that God had set aside a role for the Jews in his plan of redemption. Moreover, antisemitism denied the unity of the human race, which posited that all were tainted by original sin and that Christ offered salvation to all. The pope’s statement was doubled-edged, both condemning antisemitism and acknowledging Jews were a menace. The two ideas were paired: while Christians could not “participate” in antisemitism, they



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had every right to defend themselves against all those who threatened their interests. As we shall see, adding that rider to a condemnation of antisemitism was common in leading Catholic circles. Pius XI was making a distinction between racial antisemitism and justified defence against the perceived undue power and anti-Christian influence of Jewry. If we place Pope Pius XI’s statement in its historical context, its doubled-edged thrust is even more striking, for the pope uttered these remarks just one day after the Mussolini government announced the first of its racial anti-Jewish decrees. That decree led to Pius XI’s outburst, as it signalled that Italy was moving closer to Nazi racial ideology, with its anticlerical bias and persecution of the church. Indeed, the Fascist decree billed itself as a “defence of the race,” and defined Jews as those with “two parents of the Jewish race,” even if they were converts to Catholicism. The decree barred Jewish students from public elementary and secondary schools and from admission to university. Jewish teachers were dismissed. Pius XI was responding to Italy’s official adoption of racial antisemitism pointing out emphatically that it was in conflict with Catholic doctrine, but his rider sanctioning “the right to self-defence” could easily be taken as permission to discriminate against Jews.9 The pope directed Monsignor Picard, who was the head of Belgian Catholic Radio, to make his words known, though his statement had no official status. Indeed, the audience was reported on 9 September in the official Vatican daily, the Osservatore Romano, though with no mention of the pope’s comments on antisemitism. Karl Thieme, a Catholic academic, minimizes the pope’s remarks from another direction: “Impromptus on the occasion of receptions for pilgrims, no matter how much they are spoken from the heart, are no substitute for an authoritative word of doctrine.” Nevertheless, Pius XI’s comments have been proudly quoted in defence of the church’s stance on the persecution of Jews, often with the part about necessary self-defence omitted.10 Characteristically for the era of the 1930s, the issue of the journal Documentation catholique reporting on the papal audience featured a debate as to whether the Protocols of the Elders of Zion was a forgery or an accurate record of a Jewish plot for world domination. Apparently, it was understood that good Catholics could differ on this subject. One writer who considered the Protocols authentic, quoted several papal comments on Jews in support of his position. He included the words of Innocent III (1277–80), incorporated by Benedict XIV (1740–58) in his

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encyclical of 1751, A Quo Primum (On Jews and Christians Living in the Same Place): “Admitted out of pity to the company of Christians, they [the Jews] repay their hosts, as the proverb says, in the manner of a rat hidden in a bag, a snake in a lap, or a fire in the bosom.” The writer then dared his opponent to accuse these popes of antisemitic hatred.11 Anti-Jewish Xenophobia among Future Popes: Nuncio Achille Ratti Anti-Jewish hostility on the part of the Catholic Church leadership was mainstream by the 1920s and 1930s. One example is Pius XI, pope from 1922 to 1939. Ambrogio Damiano Achille Ratti was appointed apostolic visitor to the newly emerging state of Poland in April 1918, and on 3 July 1919 Benedict XV (1914–22) appointed him archbishop and on the same day made him apostolic nuncio to the Polish republic. Ratti was in Poland on the eve of the armistice ending the First World War, when political movements there were contending for influence and power. In a memo of October 1918 on the situation in Poland to Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Gasparri, Ratti identified those in “the extremist parties bent on disorder” as “socialist-anarchists, the Bolsheviks … and the Jews.” That December Gasparri telegrammed Ratti with a request: appeals had been made to Pope Benedict XV to say something about purported atrocities against Jews in Poland. The pope was weighing what to do, especially as the Vatican hoped for public support for a seat at the Versailles Peace Conference which was to open in Paris the following January. Could Ratti provide the pope with an accurate picture of events? Ratti’s fact-finding mission took several weeks. In the meantime he wrote Gasparri in early January 1919 of his fear that Catholic Poles may fall prey to “evil influences,” and ensuring his meaning was clear, he added, “perhaps the strongest and the most evil [influence], is that of the Jews.” In accord with Pope Benedict XV’s request, Ratti was collecting information on the November 1918 pogrom in Lwów (now Lviv, in Ukraine). One report found in Ratti’s file was by an eyewitness who wished to correct exaggerated accounts in the press. Fantastic numbers had appeared there, he complained; however, the truth, he pointed out, was that 73 Jews were murdered, 280 seriously injured, and 500 Jewish businesses destroyed, Jewish homes were burned, along with three synagogues and a hundred Torah scrolls; in a recent book Alexander Prusin estimates that 73–150 Jews were murdered and 453 were



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wounded. But a propaganda war was raging, with Jewish organizations exaggerating the scope of destruction and Polish sources accusing Jews of spying and sabotage in league with Poland’s wartime enemies. The pogrom became an international cause célèbre. Allied supporters of an independent Poland were now calling for economic sanctions, while the League of Nations pushed for a treaty to assure the rights of minorities in the new state. In mid-January Ratti sent Gasparri his assessment of the recent pogroms in Lwów and also Kielce. There had been disorders in Lwów, he reported, with “hundreds of dead,” but it was unclear who was at fault, he said. In Kielce “the Jews blame the Christians and the Christians blame the Jews.” In Ratti’s view blame was evenly distributed in a pogrom targeting Jews. Ratti’s mission to Poland ended in June 1921, when Pope Benedict XV created three new cardinals, including Achille Ratti, who was simultaneously appointed archbishop of Milan. Ratti then delegated his assistant, Monsignor Ermenegildo Pellegrinetti, to pore through his chief’s notes and the documents he had collected, for a summing up which was to be titled “The Final Report of Achille Ratti’s Mission in Poland.” Sent to Gasparri, the report expressed Ratti’s unexpurgated views. Ratti concluded that Jews were a danger to Poland for they had “a large part of Poland’s wealth in their hands,” were the “principle force” of Bolshevism in Poland, and “having the banks, the press, and many important offices in their hands, and backed by their international organization, they seek the formation of a Judaic Poland.”12 Ratti, who was born in Milan, saw the Jews in Poland from the perspective of a Polish Catholic xenophobic nationalist for whom Jews were an unwanted foreign element, disrupting Poland’s ethnic, cultural, and religious unity. The alternatives were clear, he announced, either “Poland for the Poles” or a “Judaic Poland.” Standard anti-Jewish stereotypes informed Ratti’s view. He submitted that Jews controlled the banks and the press, had undue influence, were wire-pullers, and the force of world Jewry was behind them (“their international organization”); in short, Jewry was a conspiratorial monolith and “world Jewry” worked together to achieve destructive ends. In some respects Ratti’s view held a smidgen of truth, which in his eyes confirmed his views. No doubt, Jews were conspicuous in the early years in the Polish Communist Party, as they tended to hold prominent positions, though they were a tiny number among the three million Jews of Poland. Jews did predominate in both small- and large-scale

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commerce, and as one-third of the urban population, they put their stamp on the cities of Poland. Furthermore, in western Poland, which had been part of Prussia and then the German Empire for over a century, Jews had favoured German culture, while in the border area to the Polish east, formerly part of the tsarist empire, Jews spoke Russian. In Vilna, now in Polish hands, many Jews favoured Lithuanian rule. In addition, Jewish organizations at the Paris Peace Conference had advocated for the Minorities Treaties that made concessions towards ensuring the rights of Jews as a minority in a country. All this was grist for Ratti’s mill, though others advocated for these treaties as well, most importantly the Allied powers. Moreover, these rights were to apply also to the Ukrainian, White Russian, Lithuanian, and German minorities in Poland. But postulating that Jews were the enemy of the Polish nation, Ratti would not have considered that they were the only Polish minority who had no kindred state nearby, and hence no state advocating for them and no state with an interest in territorial revision on their behalf. Ratti would also not have noticed the sharp splits within Jewry: the Polonizing/national minority rights divide, the secular/religious divide, the Zionist/anti-Zionist divide, and the radical/antiradical divide. Nor did Ratti note that the overwhelming majority of Polish Jews were Orthodox and lived in abject poverty. Jewish interest did conflict with that of Polish ethnic nationalists, certainly the right-wing National Democrats. For them, “Poland for the Poles” meant the new state was not owned by all its citizens, but by the ethnic Catholic majority. Jews were to be expropriated, replaced in commerce with a Polish Catholic middle class. In this view, Jews were not to be integrated into the new Poland, nor allowed minority rights including official recognition of their own education system and language. Ratti saw Jews as a negative presence in Poland, neither to be assimilated nor segregated. Ratti’s view made him an apologist for indiscriminate murder. When he reported on the 1918 pogrom in Lwów with its “hundreds of dead,” he concluded it was unclear who was to blame, For as he said when he reported on the pogrom in Kielce, “The Jews blame the Christians, and the Christians blame the Jews.” Ratti knew that the victims were Jews and that the perpetrators were non-Jews, but he was not ready to condemn the perpetrators. What he was saying was that Jews may have provoked the pogroms, perhaps by their stance on Polish nationalism, their Bolshevism, or their hold on commerce. In doing so, he was ignoring the fact that pogroms were indiscriminate, that death took the



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innocent first, babes in arms, mothers, the disabled, that women were raped. Pogroms, by definition, did not target the guilty. Ratti was not willing to condemn indiscriminate murder, even more, he was willing to excuse it in the interests of a cause with which he sympathized. In reality the circumstances surrounding the November pogrom in Lwów were clear enough to an unprejudiced observer. The city (formerly Lemberg), in eastern Galicia, was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until the First World War, when it became a battleground in the Ukrainian-Polish War of 1918–19. William Hagen estimates Ukrainians at 3.3 million, Poles at 1.35 million, and Jews at almost 900,000 in Galicia, with Ukrainians a majority in East Galicia and Poles a majority in West Galicia. On 1 November 1918, Ukrainians attacked and seized Lwów, a seat of Polish culture and administrative power, planning to turn it into the capital (Lviv) of a West Ukrainian People’s Republic in what was, after all, East Galicia, with its Ukrainian majority. Ukrainian forces were driven out by Polish fighters three weeks later, on 22 November. The pogrom began on that day, perpetrated by Polish criminals released from prisons, hooligan elements from the city’s underclass, and ordinary citizens and soldiers provided with arms by the Polish authorities and given a free pass to plunder and kill for two days, after which martial law was declared. Jews had officially declared themselves neutral during the conflict in an effort to ride out the storm. However, during the pogrom, a proclamation by the military authorities accused Jews not of neutrality, but of sniping at Polish troops and of sabotage and spying on behalf of Ukrainian forces. The Polish military was sanctioning a punitive expedition against Jews, which was meant to teach them a lesson. This was easy enough to do in the turmoil of wartime, a time of what Prusin calls “social paranoia,” of wild rumours, when hostility to Jews made them a natural target.13 Anti-Jewish Xenophobia among Future Popes: Eugenio Pacelli Eugenio Pacelli was a Vatican official during the tumultuous aftermath of the First World War. As apostolic nuncio to Bavaria he, too, had much to say about Jews, first in a report to Cardinal Secretary of State Gasparri. Amid civil chaos in Bavaria in April 1919, Communists seized power. They proceeded to requisition food and supplies, even embassy property, including automobiles. Pacelli sent his secretary, Monsignor Lorenzo Schioppa, to the headquarters of the Munich Soviet (in a

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former royal palace) to insist that the Vatican’s property was extraterritorial and off-limits. Pacelli reported to Gasparri on the ordeal of his secretary (uditore), describing a social order turned upside down: The said palace now presents an indescribable spectacle. The most chaotic confusion, the most nauseating filth, the continual coming and going of soldiers and of armed workers, the yelling, the obscenities, the blasphemies that resound there [all] render that which was the favourite residence of the King of Bavaria a real pit of hell. [There is] an army of employees who come, who go, who pass on orders, who propagate information, and among them [there is] a band of suspicious-looking young women with provocative airs and ambiguous smiles, Jews like the former, who are [to be found] in all the offices … At the head of this group of women is Levien’s lover; a young Russian Jewish divorcee, who commands as [a] chief. And [it is] to her [that] the nunciature had to unfortunately bow to be granted the note for free[dom] of passage. Levien is a young man about thirty or thirty-five years of age, [and] he too [is] Russian and Jewish. Pale, dirty, with expressionless eyes and a hoarse, grating voice; he is repulsive, yet with an intelligent and shrewd countenance. He scarcely deigned to receive Monsignor Uditore in a corridor, surrounded by an armed escort, among which [there was] a hunchback, his loyal guard [who was] also armed. With a hat on his head and smoking, he listened to what Monsignor Schioppa was telling him, protesting repeatedly and rudely that he was in a hurry [to attend to] more urgent matters.14

Pacelli himself underwent a hair-raising experience when revolutionaries later came to confiscate the nunciature car. He showed them the certificate of extraterritoriality Schioppa had obtained the day before, after which one of the armed men put a rifle to the nuncio’s chest, and ordered him to give up the car immediately. In the meantime the quickthinking nunciature chauffeur had disabled the automobile, and the next day Schioppa was able to prevent the requisition. Pacelli described the incident to Gasparri in a memo of 30 April. By then the German army and the right-wing Freikorps were battling an improvised “Red Army” for control of Munich, defeating them by early May. Mutual retaliation was fierce though wildly disproportionate. Lashing out in the face of defeat the Communists had shot ten hostages; in retaliation the forces of “order” killed hundreds in summary executions. Pacelli called this battle one “for the liberation of the capital of Bavaria, from a very harsh Jewish-Russian revolutionary tyranny.”15



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There was every reason for Pacelli to be horrified by the events of 1919. Europe was witnessing a sustained Communist revolutionary wave whose outcome was unpredictable, but no less threatening. After all, the Bolsheviks had been no more than a small group of professional revolutionaries when they seized power in the Russian Empire in 1917. The Communist momentum was Europe-wide: Bolsheviks briefly held power in Budapest in April 1919. In the Italian elections of November 1919, socialists – sympathetic to Bolshevism – emerged as the largest party in parliament. The months of April to June 1919 were a high point of Communist agitation in Austria. Communists had attempted to seize power in Berlin in January 1919. In the aftermath of the First World War and in face of collapsing empires, communism had emerged as a dynamic worldwide movement whose ultimate strength was a great unknown. It was a force that promised to turn the world upside down, eliminate private property, ban religion, bring the rule of the proletariat, and govern by terror. Like many others, Pacelli quickly concluded that all the revolutionaries were Jews. Admittedly, his report of 18 April 1919 was based on Schioppa’s account, but he would have assumed the same. Nevertheless, for one, Levien was not Jewish but of French Huguenot descent, the name originally was Lavigne. One description calls him “tall and fairhaired” and “more slavic than semitic.” Munich police records do not list him as Jewish; indeed, they identify his mother as Katarina L, née Kondratiewa. Other sources identify his father Johann Ludwig Levien as Lutheran, his mother as Greek Orthodox. In the phantom world of anti-Jewish prejudice, all the revolutionaries were Jews, including the “group of young women” in the offices of the Soviet. Were they? Pacelli’s equation of Communist rule in Bavaria with “Jewish-Russian revolutionary tyranny” signalled his anti-Jewish xenophobia. Certainly, Jews were overrepresented in the leadership of Bolshevik parties, and Eugen Levine, head of the Bavarian Soviet Republic, was of Russian and Jewish origin. But the revolution had been launched by thousands of unemployed workers with the support of several thousand radicalized soldiers. Those who made up the Communist armed force, under the command of Rudolf Egelhofer, were not Jews. The workers had acted spontaneously, under circumstances of extreme deprivation, ideological fervour, class tensions, and political polarization, all in the days after the Great War had finally come to an end. To characterize the Bavarian Revolution as “Jewish-Russian” meant blaming foreign Jewish agitators for events. Pacelli was expressing the view adopted

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by the Bavarian police and military authorities after the revolution was crushed, declaring it “the work of personalities foreign to the Bavarian national character and nature.” The view implied that thousands of non-Jewish German workers were being led by the nose to bring “Jewish-Russian” domination upon themselves.16 Cardinal Pacelli and the Jews By the late 1930s Eugenio Pacelli, elevated to cardinal in December 1929, had served almost a decade as Vatican secretary of state. For continuing evidence of his anti-Jewish xenophobia, we move to the International Eucharistic Congress in Budapest, in 1938. The first such congress met in 1881; after 1922 the International Eucharistic Congress was held every two years. These congresses were great spectacles, meeting in different countries each time, and occasions for an outpouring of mass enthusiasm. The numbers attending could top one hundred thousand. Their theme was devotion to the Eucharist, emphasizing the Real Presence of the blood and body of Christ in the sacrament. The aim was to deepen the sense of a personal relationship to Christ, thus intensifying Catholic devotion, love, and gratitude to God. These mass gatherings were a show of strength celebrating church unity, the communion of all Catholics worldwide, and devotion to the Holy See and to the church’s role in society, which meant battling forces alien to the Catholic Church by proclaiming Christ’s lordship on earth. This often meant speaking to the issues of the day.17 Pope Pius XI spoke to Hungarians by radio on 29 May at the close of the 1938 congress. This was just eleven days after the Hungarian parliament passed the first of a series of anti-Jewish laws. Less than two weeks after the First Anti-Jewish Law was passed, Pope Pius XI expressly emphasized Hungary’s role as “a sort of invisible rampart against the enemies of the Christian name and of European civilization.” He complimented Hungarians on how the “memories and … glories” connected with Hungary’s “ancestral and active faith” have “revived.” Pius XI’s words could certainly be construed as approval of anti-Jewish decrees. Approval was even more evident in a speech given by Cardinal Pacelli, representing the pope at the congress. Pacelli recounted the suffering and betrayal Christ had endured: “the lapses of his disciples, the solitude at Gethsemane, the verdict of the Sanhedrin, the brutality of the executioner ... the denial of justice by Pontius Pilate, [who was]



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pressured by the Jews, the ‘Crucify him’ of the masses.” He went on, “All that ... is renewed in our day in different forms,” that is to say, the struggle against those who would crucify Christ continued into the present, “and however, He is the victor, the eucharistic Christ, He who has so often been the target of the furor of his enemies, even of persecutions, alas! by those who were his own [i.e., the Jews].” Pacelli did not let go of the theme of Jewish deicide but declared, “We oppose to the ‘Crucify him’ of the enemies of Christ, with the Hosanna of our fidelity and our love. Oh! without bitterness, without contemptuous arrogance for those whose lips curse him, whose hearts reject him still.” Cardinal Pacelli could not have been more clear: the term “crucify him,” which he used twice, was exactly what the Jews had cried out to Pilate in the Gospel account. Pacelli chose to emphasize the Jewish role in the Crucifixion, when he could just as well have emphasized that the Crucifixion was an expiation for the sins of all humanity. He was forcefully reminding Hungarians of the ancient Jew, murderer of Christ, and of the modern Jew, enemy of the Christian spirit. In his speech Cardinal Pacelli adopted a combative stance against all those who “deny the Christian revelation.” This stemmed from the realities of the 1930s, of a church persecuted by both Bolshevism and National Socialism. Pacelli was calling for militancy against the forces of unbelief. Evil intent – the arrogance of the unbeliever and vain presumption – were behind unbelief in Jesus. Catholics must oppose to it “a compact and resolute front that no force can break through.” When Pacelli called out twice “crucify him,” from the Gospel account of the Jewish cry to murder Jesus, all knew who were to be included among the forces to combat. In January 1939 the Synod of Hungarian Catholic Bishops, chaired by Jusztinián Cardinal Serédi, congratulated the government as it “strives to defend the interests of the Christian public in the face of Jewish spiritual domination.” The Synod objected, however, that the government did not exempt those who were Jews by birth and had converted to Catholicism after August 1919. Protecting converts was always an urgent matter for the church, but it hardly stopped the bishops from approving of the anti-Jewish decrees. Vatican opposition to racial antisemitism was certainly not construed by the Hungarian Synod as an objection to the anti-Jewish laws, which were seen as a necessary “self-defence” against so-called undue Jewish predominance in Christian Europe. Christian anti-Jewish prejudices and racial antisemitism converged when it came to laws segregating Jews as an alien body in Europe.18

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Another key example, this time pointing up Pacelli’s anti-Jewish animus, comes from his papal encyclical of 29 June 1943, Mystici Corporis Christi (The Mystical Body of Christ, the Church). At a time when the Vatican knew that Jews were being murdered on a wide scale, and when as Pope Pius XII he was time and again entreated to save Jewish lives, he chose to speak of Judaism in exceptionally lethal tones. Here I quote two passages: “On the gibbet of his death Jesus made void the Law with its decrees, fastened the handwriting of the Old Testament to the Cross” and “As our Lord expired, that mystical veil which shut off the innermost part of the temple and its sacred secret was rent violently from top to bottom.” Pius XII’s mention of the “mystical veil” refers to the Second Temple, where a curtain shielded the ark of the covenant in the Holy of Holies, where the spirit of God was said to dwell. “Its sacred secret’” was the ark which contained the Ten Commandments on their original tablets of stone. Only the high priest could enter the Holy of Holies, and just once a year, on Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement). The pope concluded, “On the Cross then the Old Law died, soon to be buried and to be a bearer of death in order to give way to the New Testament.” The passage wakened associations with the wretched fate of the Jews, past and present, as decreed by God.19 It is all too well to argue that Catholics shared a supercessionist view of the relationship between Judaism and Christianity, that the Christian revelation superseded and surpassed God’s covenant with the Jews, and that Pius XII simply shared in the views of his age. Indeed, the pope reiterated the supercessionist view in his encyclical of 30 September 1943, Divino Afflante Spiritu (On Sacred Scripture): “For what was said and done in the Old Testament was ordained and disposed by God with such consummate wisdom, that things past prefigured in a spiritual way those that were to come under the new dispensation of grace.”20 But even starting out from this view of Catholic supersessionism, and even before and during the Second World War, there was room for nuance in the church’s view of Judaism. Catholicism was not a monolith. We saw above that in 1928 a number of churchmen in Amici Israel wanted to introduce a more favourable view of Judaism in the interest of their conversionist agenda. Pope Pius XII made a choice. Theoretically, he could have pointedly reiterated the Council of Trent (1545–63) doctrine on the Crucifixion, published in 1566, which states, “And thus the principle cause of his [Jesus] passion will be found in his love for us.” Here the Catechism of the Council of Trent continues, and beginning with a quote from Hebrews 12:3, we read



Catholic Anti-Jewish Attitudes 171 “Think diligently on him who endured such opposition from sinners against himself ... In this guilt are involved all those who fall frequently into sin ... most certainly those who wallow in sin and iniquity as far as depends on them ‘crucify to themselves again the son of God and make mockery of him. Heb. VI:6.’ This our guilt takes a deeper die of enormity when contrasted with that of the Jews: According to the testimony of the Apostle, ‘if they had known it, they never would have crucified the Lord of Glory. I Cor. II:8,’ whilst we, on the contrary, ‘professing to know him, yet denying him by our own actions,’ seem, in some sort, to lay violent hands on him. Tit. I:16.”21

Accordingly, one could believe that Christianity superceded Judaism and introduced a higher form of love in the world, and see this as fulfilling Judaism rather than destroying it, as in Matthew 5:17–19, which reads, “Do not think that I [Christ] have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.” Pacelli could have found the words to emphasize a common Jewish and Catholic heritage in the patriarchs and prophets, even if he understood the Old Testament as foretelling and foreshadowing Christ. He could have stressed the Pauline teaching that Jews as the formerly chosen people had not been rejected by God, that they eventually would find redemption through Christ. Instead, he hammered away at condemnations. Even Pope Pius XI was able to say something positive about Jews, as he did in a letter of 10 January 1939 to the cardinals of Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Quebec, and Buenos Aires, asking for their help in promoting the emigration of some of the German-Jewish scholars who fled Nazi Germany and were welcomed to Rome to work at the Vatican Library and Archives.. He wrote, “The most benign divine redeemer would not be displeased at our thoughts and concern for those who belong to the people from which he came and for whom he wept and to whom, on the cross, he offered mercy and forgiveness.” Pius XI then appealed to these bishops’ charity that “without doubt includes those people for whom the precious blood of the redeemer was shed.” Nothing the pope said went against Catholic doctrine: he based his assertions on a reading of Romans 11:1–2, 11–13, 28–9. The pope made his request on behalf of some of the German-Jewish scholars fleeing Nazi persecution, welcomed to Rome in the 1930s, and employed at various institutes in Rome including the Vatican library which was under the directorship of Giovanni Cardinal Mercati, and who faced the threat of deportation. In short, Pope Pius XII could have omitted

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lethal statements on Judaism, while keeping within Catholic tradition. He could have promoted a more benign view of Judaism, at a time of extreme Jewish distress. He chose not to do so.22 Many have pointed to Pius XII’s Christmas Message of 24 December 1942, broadcast on Vatican Radio, as a sign of his concern for the Jewish plight. There he spoke of “the hundreds of thousands of persons, who, without any fault on their part, sometimes only because of their nationality or race, have been consigned to death or to a slow decline.” The allusion to the peril facing Jews came as a result of pressure on the pope from both the US representative to the Holy See, Myron Taylor, and his colleague, the British Minister Francis d’Arcy Osborne, as well as others. Indeed, the Vatican had showed itself reluctant to say anything. On 6 October 1942 Cardinal Maglione responded to Taylor’s request for information about the mass murders by claiming that up to now “it [the Holy See] has not been able to verify the accuracy of all the news received.” The Vatican knew far more about the destruction of European Jews from a variety of reliable sources, but wanted to avoid pressure to speak out. The turning point came with the Allied countries’ declaration of 17 December 1942, condemning the German government’s “bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination of the Jews of Europe.” Many of the signers were governments-in-exile: Belgian, Czechoslovak, Greek, Luxemburgian, Dutch, Norwegian, Polish, Yugoslav, and the French National Committee. Others were of the Allied nations, the United Kingdom and the United States. The declaration was blunt, stating, “The German authorities … are now carrying into effect Hitler’s oft-repeated intention to exterminate the Jewish people in Europe.” In response the Allies resolved that “those responsible for these crimes shall not escape retribution.” Pope Pius XII’s Christmas message followed just one week later. Because of this timing, it is highly probable that the pope believed he could not allow the church to be left behind, given his mission as a universal and divinely sanctioned moral authority.23 Still, the pope’s declaration was not all that it seemed. The crucial passage in his Christmas 1942 message was a generalized lament about the victims of war on all sides: “the countless dead who lie buried on the field of battle”; “the innumerable sorrowing host of mothers, widows, and orphans”; “those numberless exiles whom the hurricane of war has torn from their native land and scattered in the land of strangers”; “the hundreds of thousands of persons who without any fault on their part, sometimes only because of their nationality or race, have been consigned to death or to a slow decline”; “the many thousand of



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non-combatants, women, children, sick and aged, from whom aerial warfare has … without discrimination or through inadequate precautions, taken life, goods, health, home, charitable refuge or house of prayer.” The pope did not distinguish between victims and victimizers. No one was to blame; war was to blame. No specific action was called for, only the resolve that after the war, “a vast legion shall be formed of those handfuls of men who bent on bringing society back to its center of gravity, which is the law of God, aspire to the service of the human person and of his common life ennobled in God.” In other words, the answer to a world at war was a Catholic social order nurturing human bonds within the communion of the church. A second allusion to the destruction of European Jews was Pope Pius XII’s 2 June 1943 allocution to the College of Cardinals on the feast day of his namesake Saint Eugene, and broadcast on Vatican Radio. Again the pope spoke of the many victims of war. He expressed “profound sympathy to … those who, because of their nationality or their descent, are pursued by mounting misfortune and increasing suffering. Sometimes, through no fault of their own, they are subjected to measures which threaten them with extermination.” Then he spoke of “the small nations, which owing to their geographical and ­geo-political situation ... face the danger of being dragged into the struggle of the Great Powers, which, when their own soil has become the field of devastating war, witness indescribable outrages even against non-combatants, and the massacre of the flower of their youth and intellectuals.” Finally, he mentioned “the Polish people, which surrounded by powerful nations, is subjected to the blows of fate and to the changing tides of the gigantic tragedy of war” and also the victims of “air warfare ... which make[s] no discrimination between military and ­non-military objectives.”24 According to the Tablet, which carried the allocution, the Italian and German governments suppressed sections of the speech. In the Tablet’s view Pius was alluding to Jewish distress and singling out the Polish people as victims of war. In the pope’s view, his statement was a balanced one. His mention of small nations could just as well have applied to German allies such as Slovakia, Croatia, Hungary, and Romania, not to say, the victims of aerial warfare in 1943 were predominately Germans. The allocution was a lament; the pope did not call for action. He insisted, “It has never been our intention to make accusations, but on the contrary to recall men to the path of virtue and faith.” Whether the speech influenced Catholics to take some action may be decided by

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additional research. My tentative conclusion is that the statement did no more than attempt to burnish the record of the Roman Church. Civiltà Cattolica on Jews and Judaism Pope Pius XII was certainly not alone in his views, which were mainstream among Catholics close to the Holy See. An example was the biweekly of Italian Jesuits, Civiltà Cattolica, whose director was approved by the pope and whose articles were reviewed and subject to approval or disapproval by the pope and the Vatican secretary of state, that is, from 1930 to 1939 Pope Pius XI and Cardinal Pacelli. This section of the chapter is based on the findings of Sister Charlotte Klein (1915–1985) of the Order of the Sisters of Zion, a Catholic convert of Jewish descent, who continued to revere Judaism. She challenged the traditional Catholic teaching denigrating Judaism, and promoted Christian-Jewish dialogue. To this end in one of her publications Klein reports on her search through issues of Civiltà Cattolica in the 1930s and 1940s for articles on Jews; she found that the periodical regularly advocated for the exclusion of Jews from government posts as well as for quotas on entrance to high school and university. For the period spanning the Second World War, 1939–1945, Klein found just two articles mentioning Jews, one in December 1941 and the other in March 1942. We cannot be certain the authors knew or wanted to know that by August 1941 German special duty troops (Einsatzgruppen) were engaged in mass shootings of Jews in the Soviet Union, or whether they knew or wanted to know that in March 1942, Slovakian Jews were being deported to Auschwitz for murder by gas. Both articles underlined the Jewish role in the crucifixion of Jesus and Jewish hate for Jesus. The articles were meant to counter modern biblical criticism that questioned the historical accuracy of the Gospel account. Not content to stick to the biblical period, the December 1941 article described Jews as enemies of Christianity, through their so-called leading role in secular ideologies such as liberalism and socialism, in other words, Jews were crucifying Christ in perpetuity: “the crime of the sons of the Synagogue has been repeated in every generation.” The March 1942 article insisted that the Jews who crucified Christ “remain under the open accusation in front of the whole universe even today.” This was the message to fellow Catholics in this period of great Jewish distress. Pope Pius XII exercised no vigilance in preventing such toxic utterances, for they were considered acceptable as one clerical point of view.25



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Georges Passelecq and Bernard Suchecky also examined writings on Jews in Civiltà Cattolica published in the mid- to late 1930s. A theme hammered home, they found, was the Jewish drive for dominance over Christians by exploiting the instruments of revolution and finance. Jewish revolutionaries were said to be advocates of universalist ideologies that would eradicate differences among peoples and thus transform Jews from minority outsiders into insiders, allowing them a toehold into positions of dominance. Other weapons in the depicted Jewish arsenal were anticlericalism and atheism, ideologies that aimed to strip Christianity of its social and political hegemony, or even to eradicate Christianity totally. Frequent mention was made of the Jewish control of finance, spurred by Jewish materialism and parasitism. Accordingly, one article in Civiltà Cattolica approved of the First Anti-Jewish Law in Hungary (passed in May 1938), calling Jews “the masters of Hungary” and asserting that Jews had allied themselves with Freemasons and socialists, all of whom wanted to eradicate Hungary as “a fortress of Christianity.” Underlining these charges was the view that Jews were not fellow German, Italian, or Hungarian nationals, but remained aliens, as the journal put it, residing “on our soil … in order to take it away from us Christians, or to plot against our faith.” Even worse, though typical in conspiracy theory, Jews were assumed to be working together covertly across national boundaries – to dominate Christians. Convinced that Jews were undermining Christian society, the question for Civiltà Cattolica was what to do about it. Recommendations were ambiguous and evasive. A May 1937 article, while condemning antisemitism, recommended a mutually “amicable” segregation of Christians and Jews, “which seeks to serve the interests of both parties.” Here the author was doing fancy footwork, willing the end, a new ghetto, without willing the means, the draconian measures that would repeal emancipation, for Christian charity, he insisted, disallowed expropriation and violence. Such attitudes were mainline among Italian Jesuits. Enrico Rosa, SJ, published an article in the 22 September 1938 issue of Civiltà Cattolica at the special request of Superior General of the Jesuit Order Count Wlodimir Ledóchowski (1915–42). Emma Fattorini describes the superior general as “a fierce anti-Semite,” who believed in Jewish conspiracies. Jews, he claimed, successfully controlled the world press and were behind Bolshevism. Ledóchowski had enjoyed close ties with popes Benedict XV and Pius XI, and continued to do so with Pius XII.

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The superior general surely selected Rosa for his known views. In his article, Rosa wrote that Jews were a destructive anti-Christian force, but that remedies involving violence, expropriation, or expulsion were contrary to Christian charity. According to “God’s plan,” Jews were to be preserved in their dispersed state as witnesses to Christian truth. For Rosa, the ideal had been achieved earlier in time, before Jews were granted civic equality, and, he insisted, “complete civic equality is pernicious for Jews as well as Christians.” Civic equality, so Rosa claimed, had simply unleashed a colossal Jewish drive for dominance, which hindered their eventual conversion to Christ, and thus hindered their salvation; Jews had been better off in their former subservient state. Rosa concluded with a terrifying prediction, which made the Jews authors of their own misfortune: “the omnipotence to which revolutionary law had raised them [the Jews] is hollowing out beneath their feet an abyss whose depth is comparable to the height of the summit they have attained.”26 One last piece of writing from a close associate of Pacelli captures the special character of this clerical anti-Jewish hostility. Gustav Gundlach, a German Jesuit, worked on several of the encyclicals issued by Pope Pius XI. He was no reactionary, but mingled in progressive Catholic intellectual circles, was a supporter of the Weimar Republic, and like Pacelli, from the very beginning viewed National Socialism as an enemy of the church. Gundlach’s association with Pacelli went back to 1924, when Pacelli was Vatican nuncio to Germany. Pacelli held him in such confidence and esteem that when he became pope he called upon Gundlach to draft his speeches, declarations, and Christmas addresses. Gundlach’s attitude to Jewry, featured in a 1930 article in the Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, was a tightrope walk, balancing between a lethal diagnosis and a feeble cure. Liberal “assimilated” Jews, he insisted, exercised a “truly harmful influence” on the economy, politics, the arts, and the press. Such Jews were rootless, lacked national loyalty, were “given to moral nihilism,” and drawn to international plutocracy and international Bolshevism. But, Gundlach further insisted, these harmful influences can only be combatted by “moral and legal means” – “exceptional legislation” was not permissible. This was the difference in his own mind between his antisemitism, which he himself labelled as such, and racial antisemitism, which condemned Jews on racial grounds, showed contempt for legal norms, and was anti-Christian to boot. Racial antisemitism, he pointed out, violated the principle of brotherly love because it condemned people for



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who they were, rather than for what they did. Gundlach did not condemn all Jews, and he looked benignly on pious self-segregating Jews who conformed to his scenario of the workings of God. He explained that the church had always played a dual rule, protecting Jews from the excesses of hate and fanaticism, while inoculating society against their harmful influence. What message would have been drawn from Grundlach’s piece, written for educated Catholics? Was the message that Jews were a threat, or that this threat could only be countered by moral and legal means? And what were “legal means”? Nazi decrees banning Jews from public life in Germany were passed by a legal government granted special powers by the German parliament. At worst, Gundlach’s formulation encouraged approval of anti-Jewish legislation; at best, it inhibited opposition to such legislation.27 Taken together, these claims about Jews, that Jews conspired to dominate society, were behind Bolshevism, controlled the world press, controlled world finance, and were a corrupting influence on political life, culture, and the arts, coexisted with the start of Jewish civic emancipation. Such views were a new addition to the old religious hostility to Jews that focused on Jews as Christ killers, poisoners of wells, and killers who drained the blood of Christian children for Passover rituals. Now Catholic anti-Jewish hostility added a political element, aimed at thwarting Jewish power (so-called) by legally reducing Jews to second-class citizenship. This view meshed with Nazi racial antisemitism, especially in the early years of Nazi rule.28 These examples of Catholic clerical anti-Jewish hostility link theory to practice. Gundlach’s formulation was realized in the reaction of papal nuncios to the anti-Jewish decrees in Europe. Monsignor Guiseppe Burzio, apostolic delegate in Slovakia, saw justification for the decrees, and Nuncio Valerio Valeri in France saw the decrees as a response to the Jewish role in instigating the Second World War. Their chief quarrel with the decrees was that they did not exempt Catholics of Jewish origin.29 Anti-Jewish decrees were seen as inoculating society against the harmful influence of Jews. A striking example comes from Italy. When Mussolini fell in 1943, Cardinal Secretary of State Maglione pressed the new Italian government to modify the anti-Jewish decrees which had barred Jewish Italians from Italian political and cultural life, the education system, the professions, and commerce: Maglione’s sole concern was to exempt Catholics of Jewish descent.

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Accordingly, the Vatican’s emissary to the Italian government, Pietro Tacchi Venturi, SJ, informed Maglione that Jewish Italians had appealed to him to press for the full repeal of the anti-Jewish decrees, but he had turned them down. He wrote to Maglione, “[In communicating with the minister of the interior] I took care not to call for the total abrogation of a law which, according to the principles and the traditions of the Catholic Church, certainly had some clauses that should be abolished, but which clearly contains others that have merit and should be confirmed.” Father Tacchi Venturi called for the removal of clauses branding Catholics of Jewish descent Jews by race in cases of “mixed families” where one of the spouses was a Catholic of Jewish descent; clauses including catechumens, meaning those of Jewish descent not yet baptized but studying for baptism; and clauses against church marriages where one of the couple was of Jewish descent. This was the difference between clerical anti-Jewish attitudes and racial antisemitism.30 Antisemitism and Jewish Civic Emancipation How to explain this widespread Catholic clerical approval of the legally enforeceable decrees excluding Jews from participation in state, nation, and society, turning them to pariahs once again? Catholic anti-Jewish hostility in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries built on medieval continuities, but it was also greatly stirred by the more recent Jewish emancipation proclaimed in the states of Europe. The medieval legacy proclaimed that God decreed a wretched existence for Jews as part of his plan for their eventual conversion. In this light, Kenneth Stow has summarized medieval church policy towards the Jews as follows: “Only the subservient Jew exemplified the teachings of the Church, and under that condition alone was it correct to tolerate the Jews and offer them protection.” Put another way, “An active and threatening Jewish presence could not be tolerated; a passive and submissive one could be.” Stow’s comment applies to medieval times, but I would also apply it to modern times. After Jews gained full civic emancipation in various European states, that is, the rights of equal citizenship, they went on to claim and act on their rights, as fellow nationals and as Jews. But Jews who were French, German, or Italian citizens could no longer be seen as a banished people, as a people in exile, and as a people subservient. Jews now sought to help shape the societies and cultures in which they lived. As new understandings of Judaism were constructed in accord with



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modern views, Judaism could no longer be easily written off as a fossil doomed to disappear. The new stance of the Jews shattered the Christian hope of their eventual conversion, premised on the wretched state of the Jews as witnesses to Christian truth. Their assertiveness as equal citizens to some seemed arrogant, offensive, something like an emancipated slave in the American South running for Congress, let alone one who no longer scurried out of the way when a white person crossed his or her path. Many in the leadership of the Catholic Church, such as the Hungarian bishops, responded to this putative arrogance by seeking to restore Jews to a subservient status through legal restrictions, in effect, by repealing emancipation and thus restoring the hegemony of what they perceived as Christian truth. Thus, Catholic anti-Jewish hostility was not racially based, but it did have its own agenda. As one astute Jewish survivor later put it, “As long as the Jews were persecuted one could help them, but when they wanted to become equal to the Christian, this is quite a different matter.”31 Nazi Antisemitism and Church Priorities On 28 March 1933 the German government announced a boycott of Jewish stores, businesses, and professionals, meaning judges, lawyers, doctors, and teachers. The government alleged it was acting in selfdefence, merely responding to the threats of “international Jewry.” The boycott was scheduled for Saturday, 1 April, and it lasted just the one day. Since that February, however, the paramilitary SA (Sturmabteilung or Assault Detachment) had engaged in widespread vigilante action, creating a general atmosphere of terror in Germany: beating up political rivals, enforcing boycotts of Jewish stores, dragging Jewish judges and lawyers out of courtrooms and Jewish professors and students out of universities, kidnapping and demanding ransom, and taking part in random beatings that seriously injured Jews. Many Jewish Germans feared being on the street at night. Much of the Western press reported these events, which the German government labelled false atrocity propaganda stirred up by Jews.32 Though anti-Jewish hostility dominated German Catholic views on Jewish Germans, there was a significant minority of Catholic clerics deeply troubled over the anti-Jewish persecutions, and over the church’s hostile view of Judaism. We have evidence of their appeals to Michael Cardinal von Faulhaber of Munich. Father Alois Wurm,

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a priest and editor of the Catholic monthly Seele (The Soul), wrote to Faulhaber on 5 April 1933, describing what he (Wurm) called a time of “extreme incitement of hatred” against Jews, who were “99% innocent” of any wrongdoing, and pointing out that not one Catholic paper “had the courage to proclaim the teaching of the Catholic catechism, that one may hate and persecute no man, least of all on account of his race.”33 On 10 April the Dominican priest Franziskus Stratmann sent a memo to Faulhaber from a circle of Catholic pedagogues, in which he said that the anti-Jewish persecution was “trampling underfoot all feelings of justice ... [it amounted to] a barbaric, unprecedented spiritual and material expropriation against tens of thousands ... [who are] innocent, defenceless and without rights.” He lamented that “no authoritative [Catholic] voice has been publicly raised against it.” Father Stratmann reminded Faulhaber that in 1926 the bishops had strongly opposed a Socialist measure to expropriate the properties of Germany’s former ruling houses, yet they were now sitting on their hands during this far more terrible expropriation. Stratmann then told Faulhaber of cases of Jewish Germans lashed, others dying of maltreatment, others murdered, and still others who committed suicide. At a hospital where he was chaplain, Stratmann said he saw a badly wounded veteran of the Great War whose body bore “the most horrid marks of maltreatment.” The man was not politically active; he had been beaten just because he was a Jew. Rage against the Jewish race was a “blasphemy,” as Christ was a Jew, and Christianity was the heir of Judaism. Yet no one was protesting against this “unspeakable German and Christian outrage” perpetrated by what Stratmann called a “German pagan and barbaric … Nationalbolshevism.” He then put his finger on the moral failure of the Roman Catholic Church: “genuine Christianity goes to ruin from opportunism.” The church had lost its moral bearings; today, he said, it was the National Socialists who were “decisive and steadfast.” Stratmann concluded, “Only through true faith and martyrdom can a prostrate Christianity rise up again.” He then pointed out that Jewish persecution on the basis of racial doctrine violated the teaching of Saint Paul that God has not rejected the Jews; indeed, he said, Jews had an essential role in the Second Coming, when they would recognize Christ as Saviour (citing Rom. 11:1–36). Even from the viewpoint of Catholic supercessionism, Father Stratmann had no trouble understanding the difference between perpetrators and victims.34 One could even be revolted by the persecution of Jewish Germans for what it was doing to other Germans rather than for what it was



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doing to Jewish Germans. The Catholic priest Alois Eckert published a newspaper piece on 4 April in response to the boycott of Jewish businesses. He was concerned over what accommodation to the regime was doing to Catholics and quoted Paul, “There is no question here of Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, freeman, slave; but Christ is all, and in all” (citing Col. 3:11). This constituted “Christian ethics ... [which] knows nothing of a value difference in humans based upon race.” Indeed, Eckert pointed out, the regime had reverted to the Old Testament teaching of an “eye for an eye,” which was un-German and un-Christian, and closed by saying, “I am no Jew, but a Catholic priest of good Franconian blood.” Eckert was not writing for Jews, but for Germans, “in the name of Christian justice.” Even Father Eckert, while not showing particular empathy for Jews, saw the regime’s persecution as a violation of Catholic teaching: that Christ came for all, that all could embrace him and be saved.35 To these objections Cardinal Faulhaber acknowledged the Roman Church’s universal mission of love and charity to all, and the limit the church set against violence and lawlessness, but then he set other priorities. He responded to Father Wurm’s pointed reminder of Catholic teaching. Yes, Faulhaber agreed, “This action against the Jews is unChristian to such an extent, that every Christian, not just every priest, must rise against it.” Every Christian was obligated to intervene. But, he pointed out, there was a division of labour in the church, and “for the higher Church authorities, there were far more pressing issues of the day: [Catholic] schools, the continued existence of Catholic organizations, the Sterilization Law issued on 14 July 1933 [the prospect of forced sterilization], are still more important for Christianity in our country.” As the boycott lasted one day, he concluded, “Particularly as we may assume, and have already experienced in part, that the Jews can help themselves, that we therefore have no reason to give the regime an inducement to turn Jew baiting into Jesuit baiting.” In Faulhaber’s view, protesting against anti-Jewish measures would squander the church’s political capital on a marginal issue. His priority was preserving the church’s institutional life and its spiritual teachings to fellow Catholics. He strongly protested to the government when the rights of the church according to the concordat, were violated, but acquiesced on other issues. Cardinal Faulharber’s duty to the church pulled him further and further into acquiescence with state criminality.36 Cardinal Faulhaber’s assumption that Jews had been able to curtail the boycott tells us more about him, than about Jewry. How did

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Jewish Germans respond to these outrages? The Central Association of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith (Central-Verein Deutscher Staatsbürger Jüdischen Glaubens), the main organization defending Jewish civil and legal rights, was fearful of igniting further German wrath, and believed Hitler would contain vigilante action. For these reasons, the association denounced foreign atrocity charges and appealed to Jewish organizations in the United States not to stir things up.37 Cardinal Faulhaber had concluded that the boycott was cut short by Jewish power. On the contrary, it was President Paul von Hindenburg and Foreign Minister Konstantin von Neurath who persuaded Hitler to terminate the boycott quickly because of its economic effect on Germany and the poor impression it made abroad. An extended boycott would affect non-Jewish employees in Jewish-owned department stores as well as German banks and foreign creditors who had lent money to Jewish businesses and stores. Finance Minister Hjalmar Schacht had to assure potential foreign investors in Britain that German economic policy would remain orthodox, not reckless and unpredictable. This was a time of economic depression and high unemployment when the country was badly in need of foreign loans and capital investments.38 Faulhaber acknowledged that accommodating to the Nazi government’s anti-Jewish policies meant abandoning fundamental Christian doctrine. But he argued that while other Catholics could and should protest, the church leadership could not. Their mission was to maintain the continuity of the institutional church, which meant they had to carefully weigh the consequences of their actions. What prevailed here was Faulhaber’s belief in the higher morality, in his mind, of preserving the church’s institutional life and its spiritual teachings to fellow Catholics. Antonio Luegers sees Faulhaber set on a middle path, not inclined to confrontation with the regime, but more outspoken than other German bishops on issues such as Nazi neo-pagan doctrines or the autonomy of the Catholic Church.39 I have chosen to focus on Cardinal Faulhaber because his priorities mirrored those of Vatican Secretary of State Pacelli: both momentarily recognized an obligation to stand against the repression directed against Jews, while they both considered Jewish victimization a side issue and both recognized a prior obligation to preserve Catholic institutions. For example, in a 4 April 1933 memo from Pacelli to Cesar Orsenigo, papal nuncio to Germany, Pacelli wrote that Jewish dignitaries had urgently requested him to intervene against the “the excesses of anti-Semites in Germany,” and he indicated that he wanted to meet their appeal: “It is in the tradition



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of the Holy See to carry out its universal mission of peace and charity for all men, no matter what their social and religious condition.” The Catholic Church’s mission was a universal one, to bring all peoples to Christ. For this reason, said Pacelli, he always acknowledged the church’s mission of peace and charity for all. Concerning his response to the request from the Jewish dignitaries, Nuncio Orsenigo warned Pacelli off, arguing that the anti-Jewish measures were German law and that a Vatican protest would be viewed by the government as an intrusion into Germany’s internal affairs. Pacelli let the matter drop; it was no priority.40 More evidence comes from a 12 September 1933 report to the German Foreign Office from its chargé d’affaires at the German embassy to the Holy See, Eugen Klee. Pacelli presented Klee with a memo calling for the reinstatement of Catholic government officials and employees dismissed by the new regime, including Catholics of Jewish origin; he indicated that he was delivering the memo at the wish of Pope Pius XI. Klee insisted that by government decree Catholics of Jewish origin were considered Jews by race. Pacelli then proceeded to revise his memo, claiming that after the signing of the concordat, Catholics were committed to “practical cooperation in the new State,” so there were no grounds to dismiss Catholic state employees. But he backtracked on the issue of Catholics of Jewish origin by consigning them to a separate paragraph, where he simply “add[ed] a word in behalf” of them.41 Still, Cardinal Pacelli and Monsignor Orsenigo did not approve of these regime measures, which they labelled “excesses.” Orsenigo wrote to Pacelli on 11 April 1933, after the wholesale purge of Jewish Germans from the civil service, informing him that “the whole government approves the anti-Semitic principle … this will unfortunately stand as a despicable blemish on the first pages of the history of National Socialism – which is not without its merits.” However, they accommodated to the German government policy.42 Pacelli’s response to “excesses” against Jews, and even Catholics of Jewish origin, quickly gave way to other priorities, the preservation of the German church, and its ties to the Vatican. With Hitler’s popularity high among German Catholics, the cardinal secretary of state was not going to put himself in the position of angering and dividing German clerics or lay Catholics by engaging in a frontal attack on anti-Jewish hostility, shared by many of them. In view of these priorities disapproval in principle became calculated acquiescence in practice. We move forward to the 1960s when the priorities of the Catholic Church during the Nazi time became subject to widespread debate.

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Auxiliary Bishop Walter Kampe of Limburg, a priest during the Nazi period, offered a candid response to the controversy. Answering charges in the left-wing Catholic publication Werkhefte, in 1962, that the church’s only quarrel with the regime in the 1930s was over its anti-church policies, Kampe acknowledged, “We will look in vain … for mention of socialists, communists, unions, and Jews … It was not the practice of ecclesiastical statements to stand up explicitly for those groups with a different Weltanschauung.” He went on stating, “To mention such groups would only enrage the holders of power, without doing any good.” Kampe was granting that Jews had been considered a unified force, lumped together with communists and all others at war with the church. He was also acknowledging that what counted, indeed, was the long-range good of the church.43 Some have made the compelling argument that the Holy See should have led the way in condemning the first anti-Jewish measures in April 1933, the start of a process that eventually banished Jewish Germans from all forms of German public life, and then escalated to ghettoization, and then genocide. The National Socialist regime was new to power, which would have been the time for opponents to draw a line in the sand. Later, when Jews were being murdered, not just reduced to second-class citizens, it was too late, for by then the Nazi regime was well established and the nation was at war, with German soldiers dying at the front and German civilians dying in Allied air raids. Catholic consciences could not be suddenly mobilized by the Vatican after it had acquiesced in German Catholic complicity with the regime for a decade. Of course, no one could predict, in the 1930s, Hitler’s later resolve to systematically annihilate Jews. There was nothing inevitable about his decision, which he only came to, as far as we can tell, in the summer and fall of 1941. At the same time, the cardinal secretary of state, later Pope Pius XII, had already staked out his position: in the midst of their distress, Pacelli continued to speak of the guilt of the Jews and their continued hostility to the church. In doing so he did nothing to prevent Catholics from looking upon Jewish distress with indifference, and to continue to acquiesce to the German government’s persecution of the Jews, and ultimately to the destruction of European Jewry.

Chapter Six

Pope Pius XII and His Predecessors: Different Popes, Similar Policies

The Church’s essential task is and remains the proclamation of the Gospel of Redemption, the mediation of Christ’s saving grace – very definitely a pastoral task. The Church’s ministry of vigilance – intervention on behalf of persecuted persons ... is in general a genuine and necessary one, but not in the strictest sense, and in all circumstances, essential. Precisely here there can ... arise most difficult borderline cases of conscience which must be carefully weighed in forming a fair historical judgment. Julius Cardinal Döpfner, “Address in St Michael’s Church, Munich, 8 March 1964,” The Questioning Church

The pope is an idol whose hands you bind and whose feet you kiss. Voltaire, Le Sottisier. Usually attributed to Cardinal Richelieu

Pope Pius XII’s response to the destruction of Europe’s Jews still provokes fierce argument, yet his predecessors’ actions far less so. Where is the controversy over Pope Benedict XV’s response to the Armenian genocide of 1915, or Pius XI’s response to the use of mustard gas against civilians during the Italian conquest of Ethiopia? I have explained this fixation on Pius XII as an outcome of Vatican Council II, when he became the marker of all that was considered wrong with the Roman Catholic Church: its Catholic triumphalism, its focus on institutional self-preservation, its detachment from the struggle for human rights, from democracy, and from the struggle for humanity’s material well-being.

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At least until fairly recently the consensus was that Pius XII stood alone, that he brought baggage to the papacy that other popes did not, that his personality and training were ill-suited to the times. Even Domenico CardinalTardini, Pius XII’s undersecretary of state, later said as much while managing to keep his tone reverential. He compared the pope with his predecessor, saying, Pius XI “relished a fight,” while his successor, inclined to “solitude and tranquility,” preferred “to avoid rather than face the battles of life.” Tardini believed Pacelli’s temperament made him a natural fence-sitter: he sought to “please everyone and displease no one.” Pius XII was therefore inclined to see both sides of an issue, both “favourable and unfavourable” consequences, and this made him hesitant, overcautious.1 In keeping with this view of Pius XII, Michael Phayer argues that Pacelli’s predecessor, Pius XI, far more passionate, forceful, and outspoken, would have responded differently to the destruction of European Jewry, in keeping with the enormity of the crime. These assessments of Pius XI are just beginning to change in the light of additional research. Phayer later agreed with historians Gerhard Besier and Peter Godman that Pius XI was as diffident as his successor when it came to acting against “racism, totalitarianism, and Nazism.” Still, the biographer of Pope Benedict XV (1914–22), John Pollard, has argued that Benedict would have launched public protests, in contrast to Pius XII. The conclusion is plain: Pius XII was deficient in ways other popes were not. His policy was more an anomaly than a papal norm, an outcome of his timid and indecisive personality, or of his training as a diplomat in the art of negotiation and compromise. In Peter Kent’s blunt assessment, “At heart, Pacelli ... was an appeaser.”2 I will argue that the foreign policies of modern popes just prior to Pius XII – Leo XIII, Benedict XV, and Pius XI – in the face of war and even mass atrocities were all of a piece. Twentieth-Century Popes and Temporal Governments First it must be said that with but few exceptions papal policies in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries tended to be elastic and accommodating to governments no matter the kind of state and its ruling ideology, on the pragmatic rule of choosing the lesser evil to avoid a greater evil. The greater evil was, of course, harm to the church. Sometimes popes called for rupture with regimes, but this was when rupture was calculated to do more good than harm to the church. That calculation required that the pope had the country’s Catholics on his side.



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For example, in 1955 Pius XII excommunicated Juan Peron, Argentina’s head of state, following his campaign to drive the church out of public life: the Argentine government had expropriated Catholic charities, suppressed the Catholic labour unions, eliminated the church’s influence in public education, removed religious holidays from the public calendar, introduced civil divorce, and finally, to put a stop to protest demonstrations, deposed the archbishop of Buenos Aires. The pope took drastic action because he had the national church hierarchy and the bulk of the Catholic population on his side. Two months later, Peron was overthrown.3 The Vatican would have accommodated to Peron rather than excommunicated him, no matter how criminal his regime was, if Peron had had a majority of Catholics behind him. Elsewhere, the Holy See was accommodating even to republican anticlerical regimes. In 1937 then Cardinal Secretary of State Pacelli travelled to France to shore up Vatican relations with the leftist Popular Front regime, a move in their mutual interests. Two years later, on becoming pope, he would signal to Hitler that he wished to improve relations with the National Socialist government. Popes may have preferred conservative, authoritarian governments over democratic ones, but they were pragmatic. Pope Pius XII’s efforts to accommodate to Nazi ­Germany should be seen in this light. Both Leo XIII (1878–1903) and Pius XI, for example, had sought accommodation with republican France, in spite of their view that republican conceptions of liberty were an offence to God. As long as the advantages to the church outweighed the disadvantages to the church, popes bent to realities. What counted was maintaining unity among Catholics within nations and across national boundaries, and ensuring the doctrinal and disciplinary authority of the pope, guarantor of the common link of faith within the Roman Church. PAPAL PRAGMATISM Pope Leo XIII and the French Republic Pius XI, Pius XII, and Nazi Germany Some argue that Pius XI and Pius XII favoured National Socialism on principle for its affinity to the church’s authoritarianism, or that popes favoured reactionary regimes per se. But papal policy regarding Nazi Germany was no different from policy with regard to republican France, though both regimes were deplored.

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Through most of the nineteenth century popes, on principle, did favour one form of government, monarchy, called the alliance between “throne and altar.” However, this changed with Leo XIII, after which popes dealt with a wide variety of governments, from fascist to liberaldemocratic. A brief historical survey will explain this development. Initially, French republicanism proved catastrophic for the Catholic Church. The French Revolution decreed that bishops and parish priests were to be elected, and paid by the state. church property was sold off and most religious orders were banned. Bishops and priests were required to take an oath of loyalty to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, which led to divisions among Catholics, and to a new constitutional church labelled “schismatic” by the pope. Soon after, the revolutionary regime instituted the Religion of Humanity and the Supreme Being, and withdrew funding for the church.4 Afterwards, the crowned heads of Europe restored France to royal legitimacy and Catholic hegemony under kings Louis XVIII, and then his brother, Charles X, and thus gave the pope a stake in monarchy. True to the principles of legitimacy (traditional rule, i.e., monarchy) Pope Gregory XVI (1831−46) went so far as to condemn the Polish uprising of 1830 brutally repressed by Tsar Nicholas I, although the Poles were Catholic and the tsarist regime Russian Orthodox. However, by the late nineteenth century, the Papal States had been absorbed into anticlerical Italy, kingdoms had given way to republics, and anticlerical states decreed the separation of church and state. In this situation, the papal stake in the political alliance of throne and altar had become a millstone round its neck. Even earlier, Catholics and liberals had joined together in the Belgian Revolution of 1830. The Belgian Constitution brought separation of church and state, and with it freedom for the church. The Belgian parliament became an instrument for Catholic influence in the political arena. There were clear advantages to republicanism.5 In the 1890s Pope Leo XIII decided to undo the alliance of throne and altar in France, which, he believed, was sapping Catholic political influence. The French Third Republic founded in 1875 was a threat to the church, for it aimed to create secular republican citizens by indoctrinating schoolchildren in “moral and civic instruction.” The French were to be provided with a new narrative of French history, a new heritage, and new values, rooted in republicanism and the rational Enlightenment instead of monarchy and Catholicism. In the 1880s religious instruction was taken out of state schools, while clergy and teaching orders were



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banned from teaching in these schools. As another sign of the times, civil divorce, introduced by the French Revolution and banned by the Bourbon restoration of 1815, was re-established in 1884.6 In response Leo XIII urged French Catholics to unite as a conservative bloc behind moderate republicans, a strategy called the Ralliement, to forestall further political inroads on the church. French Catholic influence on the politics of the Third Republic was meagre since most Catholics had ruled themselves out of the political process by remaining intransigent royalists: those Catholics willing to work within republican conservative coalitions were weakened by this division.7 That there are strong similarities between Pope Leo’s accommodation to the liberal French state, and Pius XI’s and his secretary of state’s accommodation to Nazi Germany, may seem incongruous; nevertheless, in both cases the papal response was pragmatic. Pragmatism meant opposing particular government policies contrary to church interests, while accommodating to that same government. This was Leo’s approach to liberal France, as it was Pius XI’s approach to Nazi Germany. Those who deplore Pius XI’s 1937 encyclical Mit brennender Sorge (With Deep Anxiety) because it condemned Nazi religious policies but not the Nazi government as such, will find other such examples in his 1933 encyclical Dilectissima Nobis (On the Persecution of the Church in Spain), where he condemned the anticlerical policies of the Spanish republican government which had separated church and state and closed down religious orders, but did not condemn Spain’s republican form of government. Pius XI declared in the encyclical, “Universally known is the fact that the Catholic Church is never bound to one form of government more than to another, provided the Divine rights of God and of Christian consciences are safe. She does not find any difficulty in adapting herself to various civil institutions, be they monarchic or republican, aristocratic or democratic.”8 When Pope Leo XIII urged French Catholics to reconcile themselves to the Republic, it was certainly not because he favoured that form of government. He was actually urging French Catholics to reconcile themselves to a republic that was considered to be poison to the Catholic soul. Leo found republicanism destructive of fundamental Catholic teaching; indeed, he saw republicanism as an offshoot of the Protestant heresy now infecting the civic domain. In the pope’s view, the Protestant “passion for innovation” led to the dictum that “each man’s conscience is his sole and all-sufficing guide” or to a universal regard for

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“private judgment.” As a result republicanism had embraced liberty of conscience, freedom of opinion, and freedom of worship. All were pathways to error. Liberty was not “licence”; liberty was the capacity to do the good, which required guidance from the church into the path of openness to God’s grace. Pope Leo condemned “action which would end in godlessness – namely, to treat the various religions (as they call them) alike, and to bestow upon them promiscuously equal rights and privileges.” Fallen human nature needed “the Church of Christ ... the true and sole teacher of virtue and guardian of morals,” otherwise people would gravitate to those beliefs that “flatter the passions.” Ideally, then, the good society was one in which the church was able to direct human conscience. But pragmatic accommodation to hated regimes of whatever complexion had a papal imprimatur.9 By the same token, Pacelli urged accommodation to the National Socialist government because doing so, to his mind, made it possible to advance the interests of the Catholic Church. All this was no sign of Pius XII’s affinity with the policies of the German government, nor of Leo’s with the policies of the French government. Pope Leo XIII’s hope to strengthen Catholicism in France through political integration into the parliamentary republic did not achieve its purpose. As such, popes gained a hard-won lesson, which sheds light on the later policies of Pius XI and Pius XII. The lesson gained was how little the French Catholic faithful complied with Pope Leo XIII on political issues. In view of French Catholic anti-republicanism, the pope had made his views known as gingerly as he could, employing the highly respected Frenchman, Charles Cardinal Lavigerie, as his lightning rod. At a banquet in November 1890 Lavigerie announced to the assembled royalist naval officers that Catholics should make peace with republicanism, which in and of itself violated no principles “necessary to the life of civilized and Christian nations.” John McManners tells us that Catholics responded with “a storm of rage” at this betrayal of Lavigerie’s former royalism. Most French bishops did not come to Lavigerie’s defence. When Leo issued an encyclical in French in 1892, Au Milieu des Sollicitudes (On the Church and State in France), urging Catholics to reconcile to republicanism, French bishops either failed to publicize the encyclical or with a show of great reverence reinterpreted it out of existence. Even as French Catholics had embraced ultramontanism, unequivocal in supporting papal primacy in matters of faith and church governance, they ignored Leo’s admonitions to rally to the republic. Such examples help to explain why Pius XI and Pius XII did



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not push the German faithful too hard, when most of them supported Hitler.10 Pope Benedict XV: German Atrocities in Belgium Our next theme, political neutrality in wartime, also links Pius XII to other popes. Just like Pius XII, Pope Benedict XV (1914–22) faced world war, systematic atrocities, even the wholesale destruction of a people, the Armenians, and just like Pius XII would do, he followed a policy of political neutrality and withheld condemnation of those committing wartime atrocities. Two events tested the Vatican’s policy of neutrality in the First World War: the German invasion and occupation of Belgium and the Turkish annihilation of the Armenians – which today is called genocide. We will deal first with Belgium. The German invasion of neutral Belgium in August 1914 was widely considered a violation of international law. The Treaty of London of 1839, signed by the European powers, the later belligerents in the First World War, had guaranteed the permanent neutrality of Belgium. The German chancellor in 1914, Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg acknowledged the violation, though he insisted military necessity required it; indeed, he initially promised to repair the damage caused by the invasion. However, German aggression led to atrocities: about five thousand mostly innocent civilians were killed, usually young men, in reprisals for alleged sniper attacks on German soldiers. Alleged because German action was a mix of genuine panic fed by rumours and intensified by government propaganda and a sensationalist German media. As John Horne and Alan Kramer put it in German Atrocities, 1914, soldiers fresh from civilian life invading unknown territory and in fear of their lives, were prone to panic. Panic was stirred by the experiences of an earlier war, the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71. There German soldiers had faced extensive guerrilla warfare, sabotage, ambushes, and hit-and-run tactics by franc-tireurs (snipers in irregular military formations, dressed as civilians) operating under orders of the French army. As such, franctireurs were considered treacherous, deceitful, not lawful combatants, and thus not accorded prisoner-of-war status. Such resistance, extensive in France during the Franco-Prussian War forty years prior, was minor and incidental in Belgium during the First World War. Furthermore, neither panic nor military necessity played a role in the massive destruction inflicted upon the cities of Louvain and Termonde in 1914,

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but rather Protestant anti-Catholic zealotry. Anti-Catholic extremism fuelled the destruction by fire of the historic Catholic University of Louvain, including its library, a treasure trove of precious medieval manuscripts. The German army did not stop there: Catholic churches were burned down; priests were accused of espionage and shot, in some cases tortured.11 We must not diminish these atrocities by viewing the First World War through the lens of the Second World War, with its unprecedented genocidal crimes. Moreover, Germany was not the only perpetrator of atrocities during the First World War; others were the armies of Austro-Hungary in Serbia, and the armies of tsarist Russia in Poland and the Baltic states, and most spectacularly, the Ottoman Empire’s annihilation of the Armenians. But German atrocities against civilians in Belgium first caught the public eye. A New York Times report called the destruction of magnificent Gothic cathedrals and of Louvain University, with its library and buildings half a millennium old, “treason to civilization.” Events in Belgium were well known to the Vatican through detailed reports from the nunciature in Brussels, from the Belgian government-in-exile, and from the outspoken primate of Belgium, Desiré Joseph Cardinal Mercier. The pope then faced conflicting demands. British and French propaganda hammered away at German atrocities in Belgium as proof that the war was a fight for civilization against barbarism, and Belgian Catholics sought the pope’s public support in defence of Catholics, oppressed by a Protestant power. The Entente pressed Pope Benedict XV for a specific condemnation of German actions, while the German government insisted they were simply reacting to Belgian provocations, and urged the pope to help rein in the Belgians.12 In spite of criticism of papal inaction by prominent French Catholics, and bitterness expressed by Belgian Catholics, Benedict XV maintained a steadfast silence. In a meeting with Charles Loiseau, French representative to the Vatican, Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Gasparri dodged the diplomat’s indignant account of German crimes in Belgium by reciting the crimes of the tsarist Russian armies in Galicia. Many Belgian Catholics believed the pope had betrayed his obligation to defend Catholic rights and had abdicated his role as moral exemplar. Monsignor Giovanni Tacci, apostolic nuncio to Belgium, strongly advised the pope to issue a declaration in support of the Belgians. This would strengthen the Catholic parties in Belgium at war’s end, when confronting their anticlerical rivals.13



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Finally, the pope decided to say something about Belgium at his annual allocution to the Consistory of Cardinals on 22 January 1915. The war, Benedict began, was nothing but “horrible slaughter.” But what was his primary obligation as pope? As Benedict put it, “Vicar of Jesus Christ who died for each and all, and … the Common Father of Catholics … [who] has a great number of sons on each side [of the war], must concern Himself with the salvation of them all. Therefore, He must not consider the causes that divide them, but the common good of the faith that unites them.” To do otherwise “introduces jealousy into religion and exposes the peace and inner concord of the Church to great disturbances.” Benedict then spoke in general of the horrors of war and his “fear that at times reckless violence exceeded all measure.” Here the pope singled out “the beloved Belgium people” and “his special concern over those whose devotion to Him is well-known.” This led Benedict to appeal “to the humanity of those whose troops have crossed the borders of other countries not to perpetrate more destruction than is necessary, and what is more grievous, not to injure wantonly what the inhabitants hold most precious, their sacred temples, their priests, the rights of religion and of faith.” The pope then turned to those under occupation: “We would wish that in endeavouring to regain their freedom, they do not make their situation much worse by creating obstacles to the authorities and to public order.” Pope Benedict XV was offering a clear and forthright explanation of his neutrality in wartime. His foremost obligation was that of a shepherd guiding the faithful on the path to eternal life. Driving Catholics from the church endangered their salvation. Moreover, the Catholic Church universal was a communion, a fellowship in Christ. A church ripped apart by antagonisms or at worst reduced to an association of state or national churches would betray the message of universal love it was charged to bring to the world. Charity, for the pope, meant not offending Catholics in a time of war fever, whatever atrocities they committed or actively or passively sanctioned. A representative of the Belgian government reported the following comment by Benedict: “The blinder the patriotism of Germans, the more the Holy See must be careful not to offend them.” The pope did utter implicit criticism of Germany, but in the softened tone of an appeal not to go beyond “military necessity.” His appeal was blunted, however, by his warning to the occupied as well, not to foment disorder against the occupier. Pope Benedict XV was calling for moderation on the part of both occupier and occupied.

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Continuing his speech, Benedict’s explanation of the deeper causes of the war undercut his criticism of Germany: “It is not without the assent and permission of God that peace has, so to say, taken flight from the earth … the nations whose preoccupations are with the things of this world take revenge upon each other through mutual slaughter for having forgotten and abandoned God.” The final message was one of moral equivalence: sin was to blame; sin was universal. In this light, Benedict XV’s highest obligation as pope was not to judge and finger-point, but to hold Catholic belligerents together within a common communion.14 The allocution was enough to temporarily placate Belgian Catholics. Then, in September 1916, the German authorities decreed a labour draft: about 102,000 Belgians, mostly men, were forcibly deported for labour to Germany and northern France. This hard-line measure of the German military leadership was opposed by the occupation authorities, for it intensified Belgium resistance. The pope was pressed again, this time to condemn the deportations. The nuncio to Belgium, Monsignor Achille Locatelli who had replaced Monsignor Tacci, reported that the pope’s silence over the deportations was drawing Catholic criticism, while Cardinal Mercier cautioned that Benedict’s reserve was diminishing the prestige of the papacy. In response on 4 December 1916 Benedict addressed the assembled College of Cardinals (the Consistory) on the horrors of war in general, not naming perpetrators or victims, but alluding to deportations among other horrors. The victims of war included the “shameful treatment inflicted on sacred things and on ministers of religion ... peaceful citizens dragged away far from their homes in spite of their weeping mothers, their wives and their children ... cities not fortified and defenceless multitudes exposed to aerial raids ... on all sides, on land and on sea, crimes that fill the soul with horror and distress.” With no mention of Belgium these words could have applied to tsarist Russia, where the army’s retreat in late 1915 was accompanied by the deportation of about three million Lithuanians, Latvians, ethnic Germans, Jews, and Poles far to the east, or it could have applied to Ottoman atrocities against the Armenians, where the death toll was much higher than in Belgium. Nevertheless, Cardinal Mercier expressed his gratitude for these words. The deportations continued. The German authorities claimed they were simply aiding Belgians made destitute by the British blockade.15 Throughout the Great War, Pope Benedict XV’s priority was to forestall conflict between the Belgian population and the German authorities



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and, above all, between the Belgian and German church hierarchies. His first public intervention, in January 1915, came soon after Mercier issued a pastoral letter called “Patriotism and Endurance,” read out in the church pulpits of Belgium, detailing and condemning German atrocities. Mercier talked about the hundreds of innocent civilians shot, the use of torture, the thousands deported to German prisons, and the churches, convents, schools, and hospitals destroyed. Cardinal Mercier called the German occupation “illegitimate,” to which Belgians owed “neither respect, nor attachment, nor obedience.” He was encouraging non-violent resistance to the authorities, while ultimate victory and liberation would only come from the Belgian army, and he openly looked forward to this. This effort to stir up the Belgian population infuriated the German occupation authorities who wanted to arrest Mercier. The move was vetoed by Bethmann-Hollweg, who feared the arrest would spark an uprising. Instead, the German government asked Pope Benedict to discipline the cardinal. Benedict tried, instead, to dampen the conflict by placating Mercier and Belgian Catholics with his statement of sympathy, then sending a pointed letter to Mercier congratulating him for “calming” Belgian Catholics and advising him that “there is nothing further to be done.” Pope Benedict XV’s chief concern in wartime was to put out fires between Catholics inflamed by wartime zealotry. Confrontations between occupier and occupied could dangerously spill over into conflicts between different church hierarchies.16 One such flare-up threatened in the winter of 1915–16, when the Belgian bishops led by Cardinal Mercier issued a joint letter to the church hierarchies of Germany and Austro-Hungary, claiming that German atrocities in Belgium were unprovoked. Atrocities were again spelled out in detail: “plunder, incendiarism, imprisonments, massacres, and sacrileges,” directed at thousands of innocent Belgians. The letter called for the creation of a Belgian-German Catholic Commission headed by a neutral arbitrator to investigate the matter. Much of the letter was devoted to a condemnation of German Catholics for colluding in German propaganda on so-called Belgian atrocities against German soldiers. The Belgian bishops accused the newspaper of the German Catholic Centre Party of betraying the church, saying it “rivalled the Lutheran press in its chauvinisms.” The letter was disingenuous, for Mercier insisted the tribunal would show the world that German “crimes cry to heaven for vengeance.” The cardinal hastily distributed the Belgian joint letter, pre-empting efforts by the Holy See to quash it. In addition, a French broadside sponsored by the Archdiocese of Paris

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and the French Foreign Ministry accused the German church of covering up German atrocities. In response a German Catholic committee headed by a prominent theologian, Professor A.J. Rosenberg of Paderborn, denied the charges, insisting that Germany had only responded to Belgians engaged in armed struggle. Rosenberg was placed in charge in order to keep the German hierarchy out of a verbal duel with Belgian bishops, straining Catholic universalism. Pope Benedict XV, however, strongly advised the German bishops not to respond to the Belgian letter. They complied, preferring no response to one that was non-­ confrontational and appeared weak.17 Ludwig Volk has commented that belligerents in wartime wanted the “great moral power of the papacy” on their side. They wanted the impossible. For Benedict XV’s priority, as he saw it, was clearly stated in his January 1915 allocution: his responsibility was to the salvation of the faithful and his duty was to keep tranquility within the church.18 Belgian historian Jan de Volder has claimed that Cardinal Mercier by his actions was putting his Belgian patriotism before his responsibilities to the unity of the church. But there was another side to the story. The German authorities had engineered the administrative separation of the Flemish and Walloon parts of Belgium, intensifying already existing ethnic tensions in the country. This looked like a step to eventual German annexation. The Belgian king and cabinet had departed for French exile, and Mercier, as primate of the church, was now the foremost authority in the country. By becoming the protector of Belgian state unity, he was enhancing the standing and authority of the Belgian church. Mercier’s stance put Pope Benedict between two fires: standing up for the cardinal would alienate the German government, not to speak of German bishops and German Catholics. The pope did not wish to take sides. Fully sixty million Catholics lived in the German Empire and its ally, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, where the Church enjoyed the support of the state. The German church was subsidized through the state’s tax registry, while the Austrian church was the Empire’s established religion. Public criticism of these states would endanger the status and security of their churches. The Roman Church required the good will of governments for its institutional security and status.19 In 1918 the Archbishop of Toronto, Neil McNeil, published a defence of the pope’s impartiality during the First World War. McNeil obviously believed the pope’s stance needed an explanation; no doubt he was hearing from Canadian Catholics that the pope had abdicated his role as moral exemplar. The archbishop was plainspoken on the pope’s



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priority: “The Pope’s first duty is to safeguard the unity of the Church, as far as he can.” Archbishop McNeil was not alone in defending the pope. In 1915 Bishop of Northhampton Frederick William had taken on English Catholics who accused the pope of favouring the Central Powers by his public silence over atrocities in Belgium. Bishop William explained the pope’s priority, stating, “The safe navigation of the barque of Peter has been his main preoccupation.” The Tablet, the venerable English Catholic weekly newspaper, offered its own defence of Benedict. Papal interference in secular affairs was ammunition handed to the church’s enemies. Catholics who heeded a pope’s words of criticism of the regime under which they lived would be accused of disloyalty to their nation. War fever inflamed national patriotism, which was a threat to the church. German Catholics prepared for war by packing the churches, filling the confessionals, taking Communion, undertaking penance and works of charity, all to beseech God for victory against the godless enemy. They needed the church to pray for their nation’s victory, beseech God to protect their loved ones, and console them in their time of need and vulnerability. After a year of warfare, a holy space had settled around patriotism, consecrated by the blood of fallen husbands, sons, and brothers, loved ones of sacred memory. Bishop William put his finger on the problem when he said, “If an angel of heaven told them their beloved armies had murdered the innocent, desecrated churches, violated women and children, they would receive the message with derision, and reject the messenger as an emissary of Satan.” Pope Benedict XV chose to acquiesce to this reality if he was to bring Saint Peter’s barque to safe harbour.20 Benedict XV and the Destruction of the Armenian People Some would argue that atrocities in Belgium during the First World War did not reach the enormity of the destruction of European Jewry during the Second World War, so that comparisons between Benedict XV and Pius XII are not instructive. However, people in that era were not comparing the horrors of the First World War to the horrors of the Second World War. They believed they were witnessing unimaginable horrors, and they were shocked and outraged by them. Frederick William thought that if atrocities in Belgium accelerated, Pope Benedict XV might have to speak out to avoid being seen as complicit in evil, whatever the immediate costs to German Catholicism or the church.

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The bishop believed there was a limit to the amount of atrocities Benedict could have borne in silence without disgracing the good name of the church. Certainly events went far beyond that limit with the outright destruction of a people, namely, the Turkish genocide of the Armenians. The genocide was launched in 1915, and by the time it had spent its force, between eight hundred thousand and a million Armenians had been murdered, of a 1914 population of 1.8 million. The Armenian population of Eastern Anatolia, the Turkish heartland, all but disappeared from the face of the earth. The genocide had followed the loss of Ottoman territories in Europe in military defeats during the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913. The Young Turk movement governing the Ottoman Empire then abandoned Ottoman traditions of multi-ethnic rule and turned to integral Turkish nationalism to provide the foundation for state cohesion. The cover of war provided the government with a historic opportunity to rid the Turkish heartland of the Christian Armenians. The government now resorted to drastic ethnic cleansing.21 Pope Benedict XV was kept well informed of these events by the apostolic delegate to Constantinople Monsignor Angelo Marie Dolci. Gathering first-hand information from European missionaries and consular officials, Dolci told Cardinal Secretary of State Gasparri that the Turkish government aimed to “put an end to the Armenian nation by extermination.” By December 1915 Dolci informed Gasparri that fully one million Armenians had been murdered. He insisted that Turkish claims of an Armenian revolt were lies and that the killing of these people was unprovoked. Dolci made note of the pope’s “deep grief” over the events: the pope had ordered him to appeal to the German and Austrian ambassadors to pressure their Ottoman ally to stop the killings. The apostolic delegate himself also intervened directly with the Ottoman authorities, all to no avail. Dolci sent numerous messages to Gasparri on what he called “the annihilation of the Armenian element in Turkey.”22 Armenians were Christians in a Muslim empire. The Armenian Apostolic Church was as ancient as the Roman Church, though not in union with it. However, around 140,000 Armenians were Catholics, and the European powers had traditionally been their patrons and protectors; of that number around 100,000 perished in the genocide. Armenian church property was confiscated, and churches were turned into mosques, so that the genocide virtually destroyed the Armenian Catholic Church. Charles Frazee counts seven bishops, one hundred



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and thirty priests, and forty-seven nuns among those murdered. An additional outrage for Christians was the forced conversion of Armenians to Islam.23 World opinion was shaken by the scale and ferocity of the Armenian massacres, which took everyone – men, the aged, women, and children. The French, British, and Russian governments issued a joint declaration in May 1915 claiming that the systematic massacres, including the murder of all the inhabitants of a hundred villages around Van, a city in Eastern Anatolia, were committed “with the connivance and help of the Ottoman authorities.” The signatories resolved ”they will hold all members of the [Ottoman] government as well as such of their agents as are implicated, personally responsible for such massacres.” The issue even raised a political storm in Germany, ally of the Ottoman Empire, where eyewitness reports from missionaries and government representatives in the region were streaming in. Messages to the German Foreign Office employed horrifying phrases that captured the measure of the catastrophe, such as “Volksvertilgung” (extermination of a people) and “Vernichtung der armenischer Rasse” (annihilation of the Armenian race). The Protestant missionary and historian Johannes Lepsius, tireless promoter of aid to the Armenians during the earlier massacres of the mid-1890s, waged a wide-ranging campaign to inform the German public of the Turkish atrocities. Prominent Germans besieged their government with petitions demanding it pressure its Turkish ally to stop lethal deportations and aid surviving Armenians. Matthias Erzberger and Karl Bachem, leading members of the Catholic Centre Party, along with Prelate Lorenz Wertheim, addressed a public appeal to Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg. German diplomats intervened with the Ottoman authorities to stop the deportations and killings, sometimes vehemently so, but it became clear their government was not going to support them, fearful of alienating or causing a break with its Ottoman ally.24 Pope Benedict XV responded to the Turkish atrocities with a private letter of 10 September 1915 to Sultan Mohammed Reshad V. Monsignor Dolci had the letter translated into French and delivered it to the palace on 5 October. The letter was a passionate plea, and of necessity followed diplomatic usage by blaming underlings rather than the Sultan himself for the atrocities. Pope Benedict wrote: The echo of the sorrowful laments of a whole people, who in the vast Ottoman dominions is subjected to unspeakable suffering, reaches us. The Armenian Nation has already seen many of its children sent to the

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gallows, among whom not a few Churchmen, and also some Bishops have been incarcerated or exiled. We now know that entire populations of villages and of cities are forced to abandon their houses in order to move, with unspeakable hardships and suffering, to far away camps in which in addition to moral anguish, they must also endure the hardships of the most squalid misery and the tortures of hunger. We believe, Sire, that such unlawful acts go against the will of the Government of Your Majesty. We therefore faithfully turn to your Majesty and ardently exhort you to have pity, in your magnanimous generosity, and intervene in favour of a people which because of the religion it professes is compelled to maintain faithful subjection to the Person of Your Majesty. If among the Armenians there are traitors or those guilty of other crimes, they should be legally judged and punished. But Your Majesty, in your very lofty sense of justice, do not allow the innocent to be punished, and see to it that your Sovereign clemency also descends on those have gone astray. Speak your powerful and inspiring words of peace and of pardon and the Armenian Nation, assured that they are safe from violence and persecution, will bless the august name of its Protector. In this sweet hope we ask Your Majesty to appreciate the great vows we make for your long life and prosperity for the happiness of your people.25

Pope Benedict XV did not hold back when describing the sufferings of the Armenians, an indication of the difference between private and public utterances. He seemed to feel far more deeply about atrocities against the Armenians than he was willing to acknowledge in public. The public, however, was unaware of this, for the text of the letter was not released, just the news of a papal appeal. As such, a dispatch about the letter appeared as a six-line item on page 4 of the New York Times on 11 October 1915: in response to Monsignor Dolci’s reports “on the sufferings of the Armenians,” the pope “has written an autograph letter to the Sultan of Turkey interceding for the unfortunate [Armenian] people.” A report in the Osservatore Romano encouraged Catholic complacency over the issue by assuring its readers that “there is a every hope of a favourable result.”26 Favourable result, indeed. We do not know if the Sultan ever received the letter. Dolci wrote to the pope that he had delivered the letter to the director-general of the palace, who refused to grant him an audience with the Sultan. The director-general was both incensed by and dismissive of the letter, and charged that the pope knew nothing of the real facts and that the letter merely reflected European prejudice against



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Islam. Dolci then soft-pedalled the pope’s plea, saying that the letter was not a protest, but “a form of exhortation and of prayer.” Regretfully, he did not believe the letter would do any good.27 The letter meant even less than Monsignor Dolci would acknowledge, for in reality, the Sultan was a mere figurehead. By 1908 the real ruler of Turkey was the Committee of Union and Progress, promoting a nationalist Pan-Turkish ideology. Ottomanism, the ideology of the former multi-ethnic empire, had died with the loss of its European possessions. Leading figures in the Committee of Union and Progress, Interior Minister Talaat Pasha and Minister of War Enver Pasha, ordered the deportation of the Armenians. This was known – or should have been known – by the pope. Benedict’s letter did nothing more than put the Roman Catholic Church on record as rhetorically opposing mass killing.28 The pope made a public reference to Armenia during his allocution to the Sacred College of Cardinals on 6 December 1915. Discussing his failure to bring peace, Benedict lamented that “this disastrous war continues on land and on sea, and just at the same time that the unfortunate Armenians are almost entirely destroyed.” What was to be done about this? Benedict’s remedy was “an exchange of views” among the belligerents about their goals, and then mutual concessions in “a spirit of good will.”29 Some may say that Benedict XV acted as he did because he favoured one side in the war. It is true that the pope regarded defeat of the Central Powers as damaging to the church, that he feared a weakened Germany, the chief bulwark against the advance of tsarist Russia into Europe, and that he was well aware Germany needed its Turkish ally in the common struggle for survival. Just as Pope Pius XII would later, Benedict XV ordered diplomatic interventions to stop the massacres, through Monsignor Dolci in Constantinople and through the Vatican Secretariat of State. Later, in March 1918, the Vatican again appealed to both Berlin and Constantinople, on behalf of the Armenians in areas of Transcaucasia reoccupied by the Ottoman military. These private interventions were no substitute for raising a sustained public alarm about the massacres and reading the riot act to Catholic populations in the Central Powers to press their governments hard. But German Catholics in the main would not only have not responded; they would have been deeply offended, and ignored or openly criticized such words from the pope. After being branded by Bismarck enemies of the state for their allegiance to the papacy, German

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Catholics would have been convinced the pope was reckless in placing at risk their growing integration into German politics and society.30 The constraints on Pope Benedict did not stop there. Siding against the Ottomans endangered church establishments. With France and Italy at war on the side of the Entente, French and Italian clerics had to abandon religious establishments and missions in the Ottoman Middle East. In September 1914 the Ottomans abrogated the Capitulations, or grants of rights and privileges in the Empire that France had enjoyed for centuries. These included French missions and schools serving Catholics and French management of convents and monasteries and Holy Places. With the help of German officials, the Vatican was able to get a commitment from the Ottomans not to confiscate these establishments without prior consultation. The Ottoman government would have conceded nothing to a pope condemning its deeds. When Turkish officials confronted Dolci with stories that the pope had blessed Italian troops in Palestine, a sign he supported a holy war against Islam, Apostolic Delegate Dolci denied it, and cited evidence of the pope’s impartiality.31 The First World War posed even graver threats to the Catholic status quo. Charles Loiseau, the French representative to the Vatican at the time, reported that after the British took Jerusalem in 1917, a troubled Gasparri pointed out to him that “the Turks had been the most fair-minded guardians of the Holy Places.” Cardinal Gasparri now envisaged bitter rivalries for rights to the Holy Places, as well as the unwelcome intrusion of Zionist claims if the Entente powers were to seize control. Continued Ottoman hegemony in the Balkans and Middle East was in the church’s interest. With the British in control, a conflict among Christians for the Holy Places was inevitable.32 There were even more reasons why the pope could not alienate the Ottomans. The tsarist Empire, a member of the Entente, posed the gravest threat to the church. A key Russian war aim was control over the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, the straits linking the Black Sea to the Aegean and then to the Mediterranean. This would be an enormous strategic and economic advantage, as the Russian fleet would have ready access to Europe. Moreover, the road to the straits led to Constantinople, founded by the Emperor Constantine in the fourth century as the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, or the Byzantine Empire. Constantinople, also called the New Rome, was the dominant capital of Christian civilization for about five centuries until the revival of the West in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman



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Catholic Church went their separate ways in the schism of 1054. Constantinople, weakened and reduced, was captured and incorporated into the Muslim Ottoman Empire in 1453, and now also known as Istanbul. However, by that time, the Russians, Bulgarians, and eastern Slavs had converted to Eastern Orthodoxy. Maurice Paléogue, French ambassador to Russia, well-connected to the Russian elites and on friendly terms with Tsar Nicholas II, noted the Russian commitment to a long-held goal. He recorded their objectives: “This war is pointless to us if we do not regain Constantinople and the Straits … Tsarigrad [the Slavic name for Constantinople] must belong to us, to us alone … Our historic mission, our sacred duty is to re-establish the cross of panslavism, the cross of the Orthodox, on the copula of Santa Sophia … Russia will not be the chosen nation if she does not finally avenge the centuries-old shame of Christendom.” This was the basis for the pope’s fear that Russian Orthodoxy would then extend its reach to the Balkans and to the Southern Slavs, not to speak of threatening Catholic Croatia. Militant Orthodoxy had shown its true face during the Russian occupation of East Galicia from September 1914 to June 1915. As Mark von Hagen has documented, to the Russian authorities East Galicia, wrested from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was a long-lost part of medieval Kievan Rus, its majority Ukrainian population long-lost Eastern Orthodox brethren. Regardless that more than half the Ukrainian population were members of the Uniate or Greek Catholic Church in communion with the pope, or that Greek Catholics favoured Ukrainian nationalism, Russia saw itself as reintegrating East Galicia into the Tsarist Empire, and bringing Greek Catholics back into the Eastern Orthodox fold. Accordingly, beginning in late October, the occupation authorities began to replace the Ukrainian language – considered nothing more than a Little Russian dialect – as the working language of Galician institutions and schools. In addition, leading figures in the Greek Catholic Church were deported to the Russian interior, and efforts were made to dislodge Greek Catholic clergy from their parishes and replace them with Russian Orthodox clergy. The pope could expect blows to the Roman Church wherever Russia managed to dominate. So intent was the Vatican to ward off a tsarist victory, that it appealed privately to Felix Cardinal von Hartmann, chairman of the Fulda Conference of Bishops and thus the most influential bishop in Germany, to request the Kaiser to ask his Turkish ally to reinforce Constantinople with troops from another ally, Bulgaria. In exchange, the Vatican would

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entreat France and Britain not to interfere with this effort to thwart their own ally, Russia. The whole idea was unrealistic, even preposterous. For one, the outcome of the Balkan wars of 1912–13 had raised tensions between the Ottomans and Bulgarians over border issues and over Bulgaria’s large Muslim population.33 We note that in 1915 Pope Benedict XV was pressed to say something about the systematic massacres in Armenia. But in that same year the Ottoman armed forces, the chief barrier against Russian expansion, suffered a series of disastrous defeats in the Caucasus and at Suez. The Russians advanced into Eastern Anatolia, part of the Armenian heartland, and were now nearer to Constantinople. In January 1916 the British-French naval assault on Gallipoli, an effort to take possession of the straits, ended in defeat; however, in a secret agreement made in April 1915, Britain and France had conceded possession of the straits, Constantinople, and part of Eastern Anatolia to tsarist Russia.34 In this situation, the church’s interest, I would stress spiritual interest, was in maintaining the Ottoman status quo regarding the Holy Places and possession of the straits. The last thing Pope Benedict would have wanted to do was weaken German support for its Ottoman allies and strengthen Allied propaganda by condemning the Ottomans for their massive atrocities against the Armenians. No one seemed to think less of the pope for his equivocal pronouncements, which was the opposite of what later happened to Pius XII after the Second World War. What had intervened between Benedict XV and Pius XII were new expectations, the view that the Roman Catholic Church must be engaged in the wider struggles of humanity, and uphold human rights. Pope Pius XI and the French Occupation of the Ruhr, 1923 When a pope stepped outside his usual prudent, non-interventionist stance, momentarily, even cautiously, repercussions exposed his feet of clay on political issues. Pius XI (1922–39) is a good example. Just before Christmas 1922, in the first year of his reign, Pope Pius XI issued the encyclical Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio (On the Peace of Christ in His Kingdom), which included a statement on nationalism: “Patriotism – the stimulus of so many virtues and of so many noble acts of heroism when kept within the bounds of the law of Christ – becomes merely an … incentive to grave injustice when true love of country is debased to the condition of an extreme nationalism, when we forget



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that all men are our brothers and members of the same great human family, that other nations have an equal right with us both to life and to prosperity.” For Pius XI, “extreme nationalism,” or chauvinism, fed a lust for hegemony, instilled hatred, inflated grievances, and provoked wars. The pope observed that the catastrophic losses of the Great War and what he considered the draconian Treaty of Versailles, were feeding mutual bitterness and resentment, and strengthening extreme nationalism. The trouble was that placing national above religious loyalties turned the Christian virtues of justice and charity into a dead letter, subverted the drive for Christian unity, and eroded the authority of the papacy.35 But Pius XI did not heed the lesson learned by Benedict XV, who in August 1917 had issued a peace note to belligerents, setting out proposals for a negotiated end to the war. These included the mutual renunciation of war reparations and the evacuation of all occupied territories. Neither the Entente nor the Central Powers took up the proposals. Benedict had made careful preliminary soundings, but misjudged the situation. The entrance of the United States into the war that April had buoyed up the Entente, while in Germany power had shifted to those who favoured the pursuit of all-out victory. The peace note was almost universally rebuffed: Entente diplomats saw it as an attempt to head off the defeat of the Central Powers. The French press took to calling Benedict the “Boche pope.” With the approval of the cardinal archbishop of Paris, a priest declared from the pulpit of Notre Dame, “Like the rebellious heir in the Gospel, we are the sons who say ‘No.’” On all sides, citizens saw themselves fighting for civilization against barbarism, and they were incensed when Pope Benedict devaluated the war to a “senseless massacre.” War was about national crusades, belligerents made no distinction between God’s law and the national cause. The pope learned his lesson, and he said no more about mutual concessions to end the war.36 Pius XI’s confrontation with French nationalism during the Ruhr Crisis of 1923 was equally instructive. The outcome confirmed that French Catholics resented papal intervention in any political matter that did not pertain to the rights and privileges of the church. The encounter also brought home the lesson that his political intervention could only weaken the pope’s authority over the church. In January 1923 French and Belgian troops occupied the Ruhr, the industrial heartland of Germany. The French had counted on German reparations to help pay off its war debts and rebuild vast areas of

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France devastated by the war. But Germany was behind in payments, and the French believed the Germans were falsely pleading bankruptcy to shirk their obligations. The French and Belgians then occupied the Ruhr, seizing industries that put revenue directly into their hands. The German government’s response was to order passive resistance, a collective refusal to labour for the French and Belgian occupiers. But the German treasury could only manage to pay striking workers by printing money, and this contributed to the runaway inflation that year. With inflation the German mark plunged in value. The outcome was soaring unemployment and the impoverishment of middle-class families on fixed incomes. Strikes and street disturbances followed, while the Communist Party gained ground. There was reason to fear a return to post-war instability in Germany, coups by either the far left or right culminating in dictatorship by one or the other. The occupation intensified German-French hatred, and some feared the French would use the crisis to promote Rhineland separatism. Finally, in September, the new German chancellor, Gustav Stresemann, ended passive resistance and came to terms with the French.37 Concerned by instability in Germany, and by heightened tensions between Germany and France, Pope Pius XI had intervened on 24 June 1923 by issuing a letter to Cardinal Gasparri, his secretary of state, which was to be made public. The letter was discretely diplomatic, couched as a suggestion, and further softened by use of the conditional tense. The letter imagined the following situation: when a debtor is willing to expose his finances to impartial scrutiny, “justice and social charity” as well as practical self-interest would seem to dictate to his creditor not to make demands that drain the resources and productive capacity of the debtor and result in social upheaval and heightened national tensions bringing about the “definitive ruin of Europe.” But it is also right that creditors enjoy guarantees proportionate to what is owed them. For the rest, we leave it to the creditor to consider whether it is necessary to maintain an occupation entailing such “heavy sacrifices” for the occupied and occupier, or whether other guarantees are possibly “not less efficacious, and certainly less painful.” If the two parties agree to this point of view, and if as a result the occupation ends, “we will finally end at this real pacification of people, which is also a necessary condition of the very economic restoration so ardently desired by all.” As much as the pope endeavoured to be even-handed by proposing concessions from both sides, he had targeted the French occupation as a



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threat to European stability and a portent of war. His appeal to exercise “social charity” could be taken as an admonition to the French. Concerned over the impact of the letter on the French, the Vatican secretary of state issued an official commentary stressing its evenhandedness: the pope was assuming the debtor was sincere about paying off his debt. If this were not the case, the pope’s letter would have to be altered. The Osservatore Romano engaged in similar damage control by emphasizing the demands Pius made on Germany: the country had to acknowledge its duty to repair the damage done to Belgium and northern France during the Great War. As the Vatican newspaper saw it, the main issue was distrust, the French disbelief in German claims of insolvency. The pope was suggesting that an impartial body determine the issue of solvency. However, the impasse could only be resolved through negotiations between the two parties. Archbishop of Paris Louis Cardinal Dubois was quick to mollify his French co-citizens. He noted the papal letter had been badly received by all sectors of the French press. He emphasized, too, the demands the pope had made on Germany. Indeed, he removed whatever teeth there were in the letter by claiming it was a criticism of German bad will. There was nothing in the letter, Dubois insisted, to offend French patriotism. Finally, when ten Belgian soldiers of the occupying force were killed by German resisters, Pius XI asked the German government to join him and “condemn once and for all such criminal resistance.” The pope was well aware that whatever moral influence he had depended upon his reputation for political neutrality, so he was making every effort to show he was even-handed.38 The pope’s letter gave rise to a lengthy debate in the French National Assembly. The 1905 law separating church and state had led to the rupture of diplomatic relations between the Vatican and France; they had only been restored in 1921 in a spirit of rapprochement. With the pope’s letter, some parliamentary deputies were now questioning the wisdom of these French-Vatican ties. A number of Catholic deputies entered the debate. One was Marc Sangnier, a steadfast republican whose Le Sillon (The Furrow) movement had the aim of allying the church to the struggles of the French working class. Pope Pius X condemned the movement in 1910, and Sangnier had obediently dissolved it. Later, he shared the commitment of Pius XI and French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand to reconciliation with Germany in the interest of a peaceful and stable European order.

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Sangnier called the pope’s June 1923 letter a purely religious document, a sermon, not a diplomatic note. Acccordingly, he concluded, there was no need for an interpellation in the National Assembly on French-Vatican relations. He worried, reasonably enough, that debate could fracture good will between moderate Catholics and moderate republicans, which would only strengthen the zealots on both sides, the Catholic royalists and anticlerical republicans. But Sangnier overplayed his hand, inevitably, because he took seriously the application of Christian ethics to the political realm. During the debate, he recalled the 1922 encyclical Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, in which Pius XI had affirmed love of nation as a spur to virtue, but condemned extreme nationalism for denying universal human solidarity and the right of all nations to exist and prosper. Therefore, the pope’s letter was only defending Christian values: justice, charity, and forgiving enemies. Who could argue against these virtues? But Sangnier’s next point raised a red flag. Pope Pius XI, as the representative of Christ who broke the idols, had a duty to condemn the idolatry of exaggerated nationalism. To which one deputy, Henry Ferrette, responded heatedly, “But the patrie [fatherland] is [my emphasis] an idol.” Another deputy added, “The patrie is a religion.” Ferrette continued, “1,500,000 Frenchmen have died for this idol, because France was their idol, and you have no right to utter such a monstrous blasphemy against the fatherland.” Sangnier replied defensively that he was not condemning love of the fatherland, just the view that the fatherland stood above God. Deputy Ferrette retorted, “There is no such thing as immoderate love of the fatherland.” Sangnier had tried to play down the political thrust of the pope’s letter, but other deputies saw it as political through and through. Édouard Herriot, head of the anticlerical Radical Party and soon to become prime minister judged the letter political: the pope was denouncing the Ruhr occupation; he was not internationally minded at all, but a “germanophile.” Deputy Morucci, incredulous at Sangnier’s hedging, added his voice, saying, “In the name of God, the pope is condemning the occupation of the Ruhr.” Herriot wanted to revisit the restoration of Franco-Vatican diplomatic relations, which, he believed, had emboldened the Vatican to intervene in French politics. Prime Minister Raymond Poincaré, head of the current conservative Bloc National government, announced the government’s response: the French ambassador to the Vatican, Célestin Jonnart, was instructed to inform Cardinal Gasparri that the letter was “a scarcely veiled criticism of our [French] policy” and as such an unjustified intervention in French



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affairs. Poincaré pointed out that the pope’s call for an international commission to evaluate Germany’s solvency was an idea favoured by Germany, but rejected by France; Pope Pius was saying that the occupation was “too onerous” for Germany and was “advising us discretely, very discretely” to ease it. Poincaré insisted France would not cut off diplomatic relations with the Vatican nor recall its ambassador. But what he said next was far more of a threat to French-Vatican relations. He called attention to the Gallican tradition in France, a product of seventeenth-century churchstate rivalries, and cited the Four Articles of 1682, passed by the Assembly of the Clergy during the reign of Louis XIV. A brief summary of the Four Articles shows the force of Poincaré’s threat: “the articles denied his [the pope’s] authority over temporal affairs; reasserted the validity of the decrees of the Council of Constance which affirmed the superiority of general councils over a pope; made the authority of papal decrees conditional on their acceptance by the whole church; and rejected the separate infallibility of the Pope.” In addition, the French king was to control the appointment of French bishops and had the right to prohibit the publication and distribution of papal decrees. Poincaré was recalling a time when papal primacy was curbed by national churches ruled by kings and by church councils. He concluded to wide applause that he did not think anyone would ask the Republic “to expunge all these pages of our history and take the road to Canossa.” The allusion was clear: Canossa was the village where the German emperor Henry IV went down on his knees in 1077, in submission to Pope Gregory VII who had excommunicated him and released his subjects from obedience. The phrase, “We shall not go to Canossa,” denoting national humiliation, was famously uttered by Chancellor Otto von Bismarck in 1872, while campaigning for state regulations over the church. Seconding Poincaré’s account, Abbé Lemire observed that the Gallican heritage explained why Protestantism never took hold in France: Catholics in France had never felt oppressed by the papacy, but now they did. Poincaré concluded that the pope’s words were of “no political importance,” for they did not forbid “even the most fervent Catholic from making up his mind on the conception and defence of our national interests in complete independence.” Catholic deputies agreed. Xavier de Magallon acknowledged his “submission” to the pope in matters of “faith and discipline,” together with his “absolute independence as a citizen” when it came to “political and national questions.” He insisted,

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“There does not exist the least opposition between our duties as French citizens and our duties as Catholics.” What this meant in practice was that de Magallon had made his Catholicism a servant of his French nationalism. France was his idol: “France had always pursued some ideal, some divine end.” Her wars were always for “just national causes, or for wars of salvation and liberation for other peoples.” For de Magallon, Sangnier’s Catholic universalism was “defeatist,” pandering to the enemies of France. The Ruhr occupation served justice and European stability, for it was Berlin that threatened the European order. De Magallon declared, “French power is today the sole hope of the world.” He then gently admonished the pope: he was sure “the papacy will certainly refrain from ... errors ... contrary to all Church traditions [of which the first error is] not to ascribe proper importance to force employed for the good.” French power stood between our “classical civilization ... in which Catholicism is integrated” and the “powers … of the North,” meaning the Protestant powers. De Magallon’s Catholicism ministered to his triumphalist nationalism. He simply ignored papal teachings about the threat of nationalism to Catholic universalism. He even went further, complaining that the French ambassador to the Holy See should have made every effort to persuade the pope not to issue his letter. In the realm where morals and politics intersected, papal advice was inappropriate. Catholic deputies, all except Marc Sangnier, finessed papal teachings by limiting their scope. Louis Duval-Arnould declared that submission to the pope was restricted to matters of “dogma and discipline.” The royalist General Édouard de Castelnau was a commanding general during the First World War, a leading Catholic layman, and founder of the National Catholic Federation (in 1924). His deference to the pope had a touch of sarcasm: on the subject of politics we listen to the pope with “profound respect, pious and affectionate deference, happy … when this voice is … in harmony with the ancestral voices of our generous fatherland, and with those of our dead, fallen so that finally the reign of peace will arrive, with the justice and social charity evoked by the Sovereign Pontiff.” In other words, the maintenance of French power and the blood sacrifice of her soldiers would help usher in the Kingdom of God.39 Sangnier was right. French Catholics revered the nation, an idol enclosed in a sacred space into which the pope could not trespass. American historian Harry Paul has observed that while French Catholics dismissed the pope’s concerns over the Ruhr occupation, claiming



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his teaching authority did not extend to politics, the pope believed it did. He had, after all, condemned “extreme nationalism” in the encyclical Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio. Not only did the Catholic faithful not listen, but they were emphatic about their immunity to papal influence. They were in part reacting to the charge that they were “political pawns of the pope,” as Harry Paul puts it. Both anticlericals in France and Protestants in Germany were all too ready to accuse their Catholic co-citizens of loyalty to a foreign potentate. The pope’s 1923 letter was hardly a call to arms. Harry Paul calls it “delphian,” its wording ambiguous, painstakingly chosen to give the least possible offence. But in the end, the pope’s intervention only brought to light the feebleness of papal authority when challenging the unshakeable and uncritical loyalty of Catholics to the nation. If French Catholics ignored the pope during the Ruhr crisis, how would German Catholics respond to a condemnation by Pius XII of German atrocities in wartime when their loved ones were dying in battle, and when selfdoubt and weakened morale could court military defeat? The issues for the papacy were how far to expose the limits of papal authority in an era when its claims for authority within the church were more extravagant than ever; how far to reveal the hollowness of Catholic universalism and the supreme power of nationalism; and how far to risk the rise of national churches, and even schism, by unequivocal condemnation of what Pius XI called “extreme nationalism,” and its dire consequences.40 The Church as Servant to the Nation Reflecting on Pope Pius XI’s intervention in the Ruhr crisis, the French Catholic writer Maurice Vaussard, deeply disturbed by the human toll of the Great War, questioned prominent Catholics, many of them theologians, on the impact of national patriotism on the church; he published their responses in his 1924 book, Enquête sur le Nationalisme. Some believed nationalism and religion could coexist; some considered nationalism at odds with Catholic universalism; some even labelled nationalism a heresy. From these answers, Vaussard constructed a disheartening but instructive conclusion. Love of nation had come to trump Catholic loyalties even among priests, concluded Vaussard. Priests in France supported Action française, a movement valuing religion strictly for its service to integral nationalism. Flemish nationalist priests in Belgium supported a secular Flemish university to the disadvantage of the venerable francophone

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Catholic University of Louvain. Further proof of the triumph of the “religion of the fatherland, the nation, the race” was the “extremely cold reception” accorded encyclicals and other papal pronouncements on contemporary issues. So deep had secularization sunk its roots, according to Vaussard, that most French Catholics saw the Holy See chiefly as a “moral authority” whose mission was to condemn nations perpetrating crimes, that is, nations other than their own. Vaussard explained, “Nationalism tended to dominate faith in the supernatural and submit it to its [nationalism’s] laws.” The pope, however, upheld the supernatural, which submitted to its own laws. Vaussard insisted that the nationalist, stuck in the mundane realm, dealt with “immediate and material responsibility,” pinning blame on the other side for wars. But there was another kind of responsibility, supernatural or “moral metaphysical,” which all belligerents shared, and which was the pope’s reference point. With “moral metaphysical” responsibility guilt flowed from “universal sin,” the vice of pride unchecked by the virtue of humility. All were subject to this vice and shared responsibility for the devastation it caused. Implied was a blanket moral judgment that found all belligerents equally guilty. Vaussard held that the pope was speaking on behalf of authentic Christianity, of “the oneness of the origin and destiny of man; the merit of suffering; the price of expiation; pardon for injuries, leaving vengeance to God; the decisive action of Providence.” But war involved a life and death struggle for survival, brought untold suffering, intensified mutual hatred and self-righteousness, and brutalized nations. As a result, supernatural judgment about the sin of self-love, war as expiation for sin, and pardon for enemies were, to say the least, not welcomed by belligerents in wartime. In the light of the Ruhr occupation Vaussard put his finger on the dilemma of the papacy: During national conflicts the pope had to square the circle, be both above the battle and uphold Catholic moral imperatives. Pope Pius XI tried this nimble approach during the Ruhr crisis. But French Catholics – even those who professed ultramontanism or support for a strong papacy in line with the program of Vatican I (1869–79) – were French nationalists first, and trimmed their religion to their patriotism. Summing up, Vaussard quoted an ­English convert and priest, Robert Hugh-Benson, on the papacy: “The quaint old man ... digresses on the subject of the cross, the inner life, and the forgiveness of sins exactly the same way as his predecessors have before, for two thousand years. And the world sees it as one more



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sign proving that Rome has not only lost its power, but all common sense as well.”41 Pius XI and Italian Atrocities in Ethiopia There was right and wrong on all sides in the Ruhr occupation, blame equally shared by Germany, France, and Belgium. There were no such nuanced issues, however, in the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, which was unprovoked aggression in violation of international treaties and which employed systematic terror against civilian populations. But in spite of Pope Pius XI’s initial opposition to the invasion, in view of enthusiastic public and clerical support for Mussolini’s imperialist goals, his response after the invasion showed utter prudence and reserve. Pius XI bent to what in Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio he had called “extreme nationalism.” When the Italian government began concentrating troops in its colonies of Eritrea and Italian Somaliland and preparing public opinion for the invasion and annexation of Ethiopia, Pope Pius XI expressed his growing concern both privately and publicly. In July 1935, in a newspaper interview, Mussolini bluntly proclaimed his intentions. The die was cast: Mussolini could not back down without gaining concessions in return. That same month Pius XI told the French ambassador to the Vatican, François Charles-Roux, that the prospect of an Italian invasion was poisoning relations between Ethiopians and Italian missionaries, who operated freely under the Emperor Haile Selassie. Natives were now inciting the population against whites, and missionaries were being denounced as spies. As a result, heads of missions had asked the pope to speak out to dissociate the church from Italian policy. Papal support for an Italian invasion would sabotage efforts to foster a native clergy, which could only occur if the church showed respect for native cultures. Indeed, the Vatican had been succeeding in this mission: the overall number of native bishops went from zero to forty during the reign of Pius XI; the first Ethiopian bishop was consecrated in 1930. From this perspective the pope called European nationalism “the scourge of missions.” An invasion would only set the church back.42 The Catholic Church had a strong stake in the Italian status quo, and the outcome of war could upset it. The 1929 Lateran Accords with Mussolini established Vatican City as a sovereign state with the pope as a sovereign ruler, which amounted to a treaty guarantee of papal independence. An accompanying concordat made Catholicism the state

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religion, brought compulsory religious education to the schools, and recognized Catholic marriage following canon law as satisfying the civil law. Relations between church and state temporarily deteriorated in 1931, when the government dissolved Catholic youth and student organizations. These were youth auxiliaries of Catholic Action, a nationwide “lay apostolate” under clerical supervision, which was popular and thriving and not under government control. Catholic Action had attracted long-simmering resentment and suspicion from Fascists who wanted to recruit youth for Fascism and resented the church’s continuing hold on them. A fierce confrontation followed: suppression and violence on the part of the Italian government, and a strong papal condemnation of the regime’s actions, detailed in the June 1931 encyclical Non Abbiamo Bisogno (Catholic Action in Italy). Italian Catholics held steadfast on this issue. Afterwards, the controversy petered out, for Mussolini did not want to squander church support for the regime. The youth organizations were reinstated, though they could only engage in educational and religious activities; athletic and sporting activities were excluded. Relations with the regime remained relatively cordial until the Italian racial decrees of 1938. But in 1935 war in Africa threatened to upset this status quo.43 For Pope Pius XI war was to be avoided at all costs, for the outcome of war was unforeseen: perhaps a strengthened Mussolini, or a Mussolini moving closer to Nazi Germany, and therefore more Fascist, more pagan, more anticlerical. As the British Mission to the Holy See reported, the pope feared that an unsuccessful war followed by the fall of Mussolini would pave the way for an anticlerical or a Communist regime.44 The pope spoke out prior to the invasion, weighing his words carefully. He first spoke publicly on 28 July 1935, choosing the feast day of St Justin de Jacobis (1800–1860), founder of missions and schools in Ethiopia. Pius spoke of “clouds passing across the sky” between Italy and Abyssinia (an old name for Ethiopia), “clouds whose prospect, import, and to be more exact, mystery … will not have escaped anyone’s notice.” He then declared his hope for “the peace of Christ,” and concluded, “We hope nothing occurs that does not accord with truth, justice, and charity.” The statement managed to be implicit, guarded, but sufficiently clear. The Italian government was displeased by the speech, and allowed the press to report it only in part.45 Pius XI spoke more forcefully on 27 August 1935 in a speech to an international congress of Catholic nurses. This speech was published



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in the Osservatore Romano and widely circulated in the foreign press. Still, the pope’s words were carefully chosen, limited to deploring the recourse to war and its “ravages,” but remaining neutral on the rights and wrongs of the dispute. The Ethiopian government had placed the issue before the League of Nations, and Pius was hoping for negotiations that would avoid war. Apparently the pope at the end of his speech had blessed the nurses, and then impulsively called them back, a sign he had thought twice about speaking his mind. He said foreigners were speaking of “a war of conquest,” in other words, “an unjust war,” something he “could not envisage.” However, in Italy it was said to be “a just war, since it was a war of defence to ensure its [colonial] frontiers against continual and incessant dangers, a war become necessary for the expansion of an [Italian] population growing day by day, a war undertaken to defend or ensure the material security of the country, [and that] such a war justifies itself.” Pius concluded, “If the need for expansion is a fact that one must take into account, the right of defence has its limits and must observe moderation so that the defence not be a guilty one.” Moderation meant first trying “to resolve all the difficulties by means other than war.” Pius was saying in careful and cautious wording that the need for expansion was a fact, meaning it was not in itself a right, but expansion could also be considered defensive, and defence was a right. Therefore, if one first sincerely tried to avoid a war by negotiations and compromise, the later resort to war would fall within the definition of a just war. This stance was fully in keeping with the Catholic just war theory as enunciated by his successor Pope Pius XII, who claimed “the right to defend oneself if peaceful life has been attacked.” Pius XI was not willing to go so far as to criticize Italy’s imperialist agenda; he was stressing the need for conciliation with Ethiopia so as to avoid war. Conciliation, of course, meant Ethiopia would have to make concessions, for Italy had designs on the country, while Ethiopia had no designs on Italy.46 The pope’s speech to the nurses was widely reported in the foreign press. The Italian government considered the speech, circumspect as it was, an attack on its policies. It banned copies of the Osservatore Romano carrying the speech and sent a formal protest to the Vatican, demanding that in a coming 7 September address to war veterans, Pope Pius say nothing to bring aid and comfort to Italy’s enemies. Secretary of State Pacelli, moreover, reported that the Vatican had received indignant complaints from ordinary Italians.

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Pius XI took notice, and in his speech to war veterans he appealed for a peaceful resolution of the dispute, but this time praised the Italian people and identified with their national aspirations: “We wish that the aspirations, the demands, the needs of a great and good people, Our people ... be recognized and assured. Yes, We wish this as well. But with justice, with peace.”47 On 22 September Mussolini rejected a League of Nations proposal for a compromise, and on 3 October Italian troops invaded Ethiopia. The next month the League imposed economic sanctions on Italy. Then, on 11 December the British and French foreign offices issued a joint proposal for peace, which ceded Italy sovereignty over of a large part of Ethiopia, though less than it had conquered, and granted Italy an economic monopoly short of sovereignty over another part. Ethiopia was to retain sovereignty over about half the country, plus a seaport on the Red Sea, with an access corridor. This proposal to partition Ethiopia was negotiated by the British Foreign Minister Sir Samuel Hoare and his French counterpart Pierre Laval, at the time prime minister as well as foreign minister. Both were willing to go far to keep Mussolini on their side, for that April they had formed a common front with Italy, the Stresa Front, to try to keep Hitler within bounds. The effort took on added importance when, in violation of the Versailles Treaty, Hitler announced universal conscription. Another aim of the Hoare-Laval proposals was to ward off the threat of war between Britain and Italy, which would follow on a British naval blockade and oil embargo. So, instead of condemning Italian aggression and Italy’s violation of the League of Nations Covenant, the proposal recognized Italian claims to Ethiopian land. The Hoare-Laval proposals had short-circuited the efforts of the League, for almost all member states had approved economic sanctions against Italy and would have gone on to approve crippling oil sanctions if the Franco-British proposals had not intervened. Rewarding aggression was a slippery slope. George Baer has argued that the proposals helped sabotage the system of collective security laboriously built by the League. Small countries – Finland, the Baltic states, the Balkan states, and others – had counted on Britain and France to enforce treaty guarantees and League sanctions against aggressors. Now they saw they would have to fend for themselves in a world where betrayal was uninhibited and shameless, and find protectors wherever they could. In consequence, Britain suffered a loss of prestige, while the campaign in the United States to join the League of Nations was



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set back. The British public was not ready to sabotage the League and the promise of collective security by appeasing aggressors. The ­British government withdrew the compromise, and Hoare had to resign as ­foreign minister.48 The pope, however, had favoured the Hoare-Laval proposals. He sent a Vatican intermediary, the Jesuit Father Pietro Tacchi Venturi, to Mussolini to urge him to accept the offer and accept it quickly, before French and British public opinion turned against it. For all his denunciation of “extreme nationalism,” his distress that mutual hatreds from the Great War had not dissipated, and his talk of “the ever present menace of new wars,” Pope Pius XI counselled appeasement, signalling to aggressors that they could proceed with impunity. But the pope had to tread lightly, because he was working at crosspurposes to the Italian clergy. Count Jan Szembek, a seasoned diplomat in the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, reported, “Encouraging all attempts at conciliation, he [Pius XI] is resolutely hostile to anything that will prolong the war. That is why he has looked on with embarrassment and even annoyance at the patriotic actions of bishops and clergy which have contributed to … and facilitated military operations in Africa. Nevertheless, because of the necessity of maintaining the clergy’s popularity with the Italian population, the Vatican cannot oppose their actions.”49 The next time Pius XI spoke out on the Ethiopian War was to the College of Cardinals at the consistory of 16 December 1935. By then the Italians had full air superiority and were using mustard gas on soldiers and villagers, which burned the skin and resulted in a slow, agonizing death. In the meantime, League of Nations economic sanctions had only served to rally the Italian public around the war. Responding to the situation, the pope insisted he did not want to dwell upon current “military rivalries plunging … the whole world into a continual anxiety.” He went on, saying, “We persist in maintaining this reserve all the more, because among so much incertitude of men and events, it is to be feared that Our words, whatever they might be, would not be well understood, or might even be openly distorted of their meaning.” Pope Pius XI had every reason to complain. Italian news reports of his speeches were often paraphrases, with crucial points omitted. For his August 1935 speech, press reports omitted a comma and placed a period before the words “such a war justifies itself,” cutting out the previous sentence and making the quoted words read as the words of the pope, though it was his paraphrase of Italian opinion. The Osservatore

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Romano complained about distortions in the reports from the Fascist press office. Misrepresentation was a problem. After the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, the pope simply accepted reality, knowing that his fellow Italians cheered the conquest, and that the Fascist press would censor his statements. But his reserve was a response to another, deeper dilemma having to do with world Catholicism.50 Taking the measure of British Catholic opinion, Archbishop Arthur Hinsley head of the Catholic Church in England, wrote from London pleading with the pope to dissociate himself from Italy’s aggression. The Italian clergy and hierarchy, however, not only supported the war in homilies, addresses, and declarations, but placed the church in war service, ringing church bells when the invasion began, offering the Te Deum – a hymn of thanksgiving – blessing departing troops, and contributing the gold and silver of churches for the war effort. On 28 October 1935, during a ceremony at the Cathedral of Milan, Archbishop of Milan Alfredo Cardinal Schuster blessed the Italian army who “at the price of its blood was opening the gates of Ethiopia to the Catholic faith and to Roman [Catholic] civilization, a civilization that abolished slavery, dispelled the shadows of barbarism, gave God to the people.” And, he went on, “This is the constant mission of Catholic Italy … this is the consecration of the Ethiopian undertaking as a crusade.” Pope Pius XI had to face the harsh fact that the Italian clergy were not in the least bit interested in his anti-war appeals. Just like French Catholics during the Ruhr crisis, their religion was handmaiden to their patriotism.51 Yet, as the head of an international church with followers all over the world, the pope could not allow the church to identify too closely with Italian Fascism. Pope Pius XI had to manoeuvre adroitly. He could not support British Catholics, without alienating Italian Catholics. He could not challenge the national zeal of the Italian clergy, let alone the faithful, without insinuating that the papacy was a foreign interest opposed to Italy’s national aspirations, and laying himself open to Fascist charges of encouraging dual loyalties. He could not appear too much of an Italian to British and other Catholics, or too much of a non-Italian to Italian Catholics. Thus, his preferred approach was behind-the-scenes diplomacy, sending emissaries to mediate between Mussolini, the French authorities, and the British.52 The Italians captured Addis Ababa on 5 May 1936 and on 9 May announced that the war was over, though fighting continued for three more years. The pope commented glowingly at the outcome on 12 May



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at an international gathering of the Catholic press. He pointed out that the gathering was occurring at a time “so propitious and unexpected” because God has allowed it “to coincide with the triumphal joy of a whole great and good people for a peace that will be … the prelude to … [a] true European and world peace.” Pope Pius XI was sharing in the joy of his countrymen over the peace of the grave in Ethiopia.53 Prior to the invasion, the pope had deplored the ravages of war and insisted the resort to war could only be justified if sincere efforts at conciliation failed. But Mussolini wanted war and a military victory for his regime, and he spurned efforts at conciliation. By that criterion alone the war was not a just one. Moreover, Italy committed systematic atrocities in the conduct of the war, murdering civilians from the air with mustard gas. These were not episodic atrocities committed in the heat of warfare, but deliberate strategy. Denis Mack Smith quotes Mussolini ordering a “systematic policy of terrorism and extermination.” We can only approximate the number of Ethiopians who perished: Ethiopians claimed that up to half a million of their own were killed. In his history of the war, Angelo Del Boca cites an American journalist’s estimate of a quarter million deaths and injuries from mustard gas alone; these are not far from the latest estimate of between 350,000 to 760,000 killed, most of them civilian non-combatants. Pope Pius XI chose not to comment on the course of the war, neither on the government’s war aims, nor its criminal methods of warfare against civilians. Moreover, with victory declared, the pope considered it necessary to share in the popular mood and compliment the Italian people on their achievement. His words were a post factum exoneration of atrocities committed by Italian Catholics. By now we can understand why the pope did so, how he fell under the constraints of the papal office, and how unavailing it was to expect the papacy to champion morality in that realm where morals and politics intersect. It is not hard to conclude that if Pius XI had lived longer he, too, like his successor, would have pressed Poland to make concessions to Hitler to avert war.54 Availing himself of newly opened archives, Nicolas Virtue has emphasized the constraints on the pope as leader of world Catholicism. It is easy to sympathize with a pope shackled by the demands of his high office; nevertheless, his actions make any claim to papal moral authority null and void. Pope Pius XI opposed the invasion of Ethiopia fearing damage to the interests of the church, but he retreated to a selfimposed silence for the very same reason. Nicolas Virtue shows that

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the Italian government demanded the pope’s public neutrality to help check international disapproval of the invasion. In addition, with the Italian clergy’s enthusiastic support for the invasion, papal disapproval of their stance would have weakened his authority, as he would not have been obeyed. Finally, the pope had a strong interest in maintaining relative harmony in church-state relations.55 1938: Pius XI, the Anti-Fascist Pope I have argued that papal responses to twentieth-century atrocities followed an unvarying pattern. However, some have claimed that Pope Pius XI, unlike his successor, would have risen to the occasion and condemned Germany’s unprecedented atrocities during the Second World War. That claim is based on the record of his last full year in office, 1938. British historian Owen Chadwick has pointed out that between October 1935 and mid-1937, Pius XI was regarded in Britain as a “Fascist Pope.” Not only had he equivocated on the Ethiopian War, but the threat of Communism in Spain and the persecution of priests and nuns by its anticlerical government, in addition to fears that the fall of Mussolini would bring Communist rule, all led the pope to support the Fascist regime, and its support for Franco. However, by the end of 1938, Chadwick makes clear that in the eyes of the British Foreign Office, “The Pope … came to be one of the world leaders in the fight against Nazism and Fascism.” The turning point was the papal encyclical of March 1937, Mit brennender Sorge (With Deep Anxiety), which opened a public rift between the Holy See and the German government (to be discussed below).56 The rift itself began, when on 14 July 1938 Italian Fascist scholars under government patronage, published the Manifesto of Race. The manifesto announced that the world was divided into “great and lesser races,” that race was a scientific and biological concept, that there was a ”pure” Italian race of Aryan origin, and that “Jews were not of the Italian race and therefore unassimilable.”57 Israeli historian Meir Michaelis sees the Manifesto of Race as a “major turning point” in Italian policy: Mussolini was signalling his solidarity with Germany. Denis Mack Smith, biographer of the Fascist dictator, has observed that Mussolini was still keeping his options open, using the threat of a German alliance to gain concessions from the French and the British. Nevertheless, the manifesto, which Mussolini claimed to have drafted himself, signalled his admiration for German racial



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ideology. Pope Pius XI picked up the danger signals and without delay launched a campaign against an Italian-German accord. By the end of 1938 British Minister to the Vatican D’Arcy Osborne reported to the Foreign Office that the pope was “in open conflict” with Germany and Italy and that Nazi Germany and not Communism was now seen by the Vatican as “the Church’s most dangerous enemy.”58 Scarcely was the ink dry on the manifesto when the pope let loose a barrage of criticism. On 15 July, in an audience with the Sisters of NotreDame of the Cenacle, Pius XI referred to the Manifesto of Race as “a true form of apostasy.” He called it “this curse that is exaggerated nationalism” which “hinders the salvation of souls … raises barriers among peoples, and is contrary … to the faith itself.” On July 21, in a speech to the clerical mentors of the youth wing of Catholic Action, he branded racism “not human,” and in violation of Catholic doctrine, for in the confession of faith, the Apostles’ Creed, “Catholic means universal, not racist, nationalist, separatist.” On 28 July the pope spoke to the students of the Pontifical Urban College of Propaganda (For Propagating the Faith). There was only one race, the pope said, the human race. Word usage proved the point: “Latins never say race.” From ancient times on, Italians have used the “finer, more sympathetic: Italian people, Italian stock, Japhet’s people [descendants of Japhet, son of Noah].” He goaded Mussolini: Why would Italy need “to go and imitate Germany.” To this, Mussolini issued a heated public response, recalling the watchword of the Ethiopian campaign: “we will keep advancing forward,” for racial policy. Mussolini derided the view he was imitating Hitler, calling it “absurd.”59 Racial thinking was a wide-ranging threat to Catholic doctrine, and not only on the issue of Catholic universalism. We have a forceful theological statement on racism’s menace to the church in the November 1938 discourse of Jozef-Ernest Cardinal van Roey, archbishop of Malines (Mechelin), primate of the Belgian church, and a strong antiNazi. Other cardinals as well spoke out in November 1938, and we shall mention them in time. Racism, Roey insisted, was a doctrine of the blood, a materialism that reduced human beings to the quality of their blood. According to this doctrine, blood divides humanity and reconnects people into separate races, some superior, others inferior. Racism’s agenda follows the techniques of animal breeding to perfect the species, which included forcible sterilization and euthanasia. Humans exist to perfect the race. With this agenda, racism turned legality upside down: the just is what improves the race; the unjust is what corrupts the race. Racism was not

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merely nationalist extremism, but a complete moral system, rivalling Christianity. Racism had its own moral codes and imperatives. For Roey as a Catholic theologian, blood unites humanity rather than divides it; tt was our common blood with Adam that united us. Roey meant this literally: Adam was the common father of all humanity, and original sin was inherited from him. Roey claimed his argument was rooted in “current science,” which had demonstrated that blood was the “vivifying element” in the cells of the body, including the cells of the embryo. We may smile at his literal-mindedness, but it does reveal how fundamental the notion of a common humanity was to Catholic doctrine. Blood resurfaces in another way, in the “blood of the Redeemer.” For in John 6, it is written, “He [Jesus] took a cup of wine, blessed it, and giving it to them [the Apostles] said: ‘All of you drink of this; for this is my blood of the new covenant which is being shed for many unto the forgivenness of sins.’” The blood of the suffering God which flowed at Cavalry was re-enacted in the Eucharist in the consecrated wine, and if the sacrament was practised in good faith, it had a spiritual property that makes the gift of God’s grace possible. The redemptive blood is available to all humanity. All humans equally have the potential for spiritual perfection. In the light of common blood, all men are literally brothers. Cardinal Roey’s condemnation of the doctrine of race does not mention the persecution of the Jews. His discourse was given in November 1938, to priests at a clerical retreat. That November was a calamitous months for Jews. It was the month of the German pogrom, a series of coordinated attacks throughout Germany, on the 9th and 10th. One week later, following in Germany’s footsteps, the first Italian racial law was decreed, excluding Jews from the Italian “race,” and reducing them to the legal limbo of second-class citizenship. We do not know what day Roey spoke, whether it was before or after these events. Still the German persecution of the Jews had begun in 1933 and escalated afterwards. The cardinal’s failure to mention Jews shows how much he viewed racial doctrine as a threat to the heart of Catholicism. Accordingly, it is incorrect to assume that when Catholics attacked racial doctrine, they were speaking on behalf of its Jewish victims. Cardinal Schuster of Milan did point to Jews as the first victims of racial ideology. In a 13 November 1938 sermon in the Milan Cathedral he labelled racial doctrine an “anti-Roman [anti-Catholic] heresy” and “an international peril not less than that of Bolshevism itself.” Racism’s



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first target was “the descendants of Abraham,” but tomorrow, he said, we will have a repeat of the massacre of the “descendants of Augustus and Varus.” Schuster was referring to the annihilation of the Roman Legions commanded by Varus, and implemented by the German Arminius at the Battle of Teutoburg Forest in the year 9 CE. The cardinal was saying, in effect, “First the Jews, then we Roman Catholics.” Schuster’s sermon was a sensation and gained wide attention. But did the mention of “the descendants of Abraham” translate into disapproval of the Italian anti-Jewish decrees? Rino Parenti, a major Fascist Party leader, poured scorn on the sermon, calling it an example of “the lamentations of the protectors of the Jews.” But Schuster was condemning German racism not the Italian anti-Jewish decrees, and he saw Italians as potential victims of Nazi Germany. Susan Zuccotti has pointed out that Schuster supported the Fascist regime and that he acted on behalf of Jews only four years later, when the Germans occupied northern Italy and Jews were subject to deportation. Cardinal Schuster was then actively involved in clandestine operations to rescue Jews by helping them hide or flee to Switzerland. Jean Cardinal Verdier, archbishop of Paris, spoke out against racism a week after the November pogrom in Germany. He, too, saw racism as a negation of church teachings, but he only alluded to, while not mentioning Jewish Germans: “thousands and thousands of men are hunted like wild beasts, despoiled of their goods, veritable pariahs who search in vain for an asylum in the bosom of civilization.” Cardinal Faulhaber of Munich spoke out as well, but his preoccupation was with the German racist version of Christianity, which sought to remove the Old Testament from scripture. Against the notion of the Nordic origin of Christ, Faulhaber insisted Jesus was born a Jew. Jesus, however, had declared, “My mother and my brothers are those who listen to and follow the word of God.” What counted for Christ was “solely the new man.” or in the words of Saint Paul, “For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything; but a new creation is everything” (Gal. 6:15). Faulhaber concluded, “The Old Testament was based on blood relations, the New is [based] on relations of faith.” This was the pattern, with a few exceptions, in Catholic Church protests against German racism: for the most part racism was uncoupled from the persecution of the Jews. In Faulhaber’s case, Judaism was disparaged as a religion of “blood relations,” therefore racist.60 Meir Michaelis calls the conflict between the church and state in Italy “primarily a quarrel over foreign policy,” that is, over the growing

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bond between Germany and Italy. It was that as well. When Germany annexed Austria in March 1938, Mussolini took no action, though four years earlier he had sent Italian troops to the Austrian frontier to demonstrate his opposition to a Nazi takeover. Mussolini’s inaction now opened the way to the Nazification of Catholic Austria, a disaster for the church. The 1934 alliance of Italy, Hungary, and Austria, all Catholic states with common interests in both revising the 1919 Versailles Treaty and in protecting Austrian independence, became a dead letter as all three states now drifted into the German orbit. However, for Mussolini, a German alliance with Italy as junior partner would enable him to go to war to realize his imperial ambitions. Forging the alliance would also strengthen the pro-German, anticlerical wing of the Fascist Party, moving Italy away from its partnership with the church and closer to militant Nazi neo-paganism. Pope Pius XI chose issues on which he could count on backing from Italians: the Italian-German alliance, biological racism, and later, the state’s violation of the 1929 Lateran Accords. On the issue of the ItalianGerman connection, the pope knew that most Italians, including members of the government, were on his side; unlike the case of condemning the Ethiopian War, on this the risk of alienating Italian Catholics from the church was non-existent. Pius XI’s steadfast stance is, however, no indication that he would have spoken out against Nazi atrocities in the Second World War, when assuredly he would not have had German Catholics on his side.61 There is strong evidence showing that Pius XI had Italian Catholics on his side. Galeazzo Ciano, Mussolini’s foreign minister and son-in law, noted in his diary that Hitler’s visit to Rome on 3 May 1938 took place “in the midst of general hostility.” Indeed, so hostile were Italians to Germany that one of Mussolini’s ministers was later to call the May 1939 Italian-German military alliance “the breach between the people and the regime.” Thus, Pope Pius XI could risk his pointed absence from Rome during Hitler’s 1938 visit and his widely quoted comment on the swastika flags in the capital: “on the Day of the Holy Cross (Day of Discovery in the fourth century of the original cross used in Jesus’ Crucifixion) it was out of place and untimely to raise in Rome the sign of another cross, which is not the Cross of Christ.” The Rome reporter for the French Catholic daily newspaper La Croix claimed the pope’s gesture overshadowed the Hitler visit.62 We have come down to three separate issues: the Italian public’s response to the German alliance; the Italian public’s response to



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biological racism adopted officially by the government; and the extent of a native Italian antisemitism. Pope Pius XI had Italians behind him on the first two issues, so he was not ahead of Italian opinion, therefore not taking risks. Would the pope have Italian opinion behind him in speaking out on the persecution of Jews? There is solid evidence that the Italian public disapproved of Hitler, Nazism, and the move to close ties to Germany. But what of the anti-Jewish decrees? Were they simply a necessity of foreign policy, of Italy moving closer to Germany, or a result of home-grown Italian antisemitism? Italian historians such as Renzo De Felice and Meir Michaelis have long insisted on the relative absence of home-grown antisemitism in Italy. It is well known that during the Second World War, the Italian army went out of its way to protect Jews, refusing to yield to German demands to hand over Jews in areas occupied by Italy: southeastern France and parts of Croatia and Greece. Indeed, in the southeastern part of France that they occupied, Italian police snatched Jews out of the hands of the Vichy police. In chapter 3, I pointed out that German embassy officials in Rome feared a popular Italian reaction to arresting and deporting Jews. On this basis Italians have been depicted – not least by themselves – as a “good-hearted people” uniquely immune to the Jew-hatred that gripped other countries in the 1930s and 1940s. There is no denying a humanitarian impulse in the Italian army’s actions. However, the army was also asserting Italy’s independence of its German allies at a time when humiliating military defeats in North Africa, Greece, and France had ended Fascist dreams of Italy becoming an imperial power. The scraps of empire it had retained were beholden to the backing of Germany; Italy was now hostage to German war aims, something Italians deeply resented. Papal and episcopal pronouncements condemned biological racism because it was anti-Christian. But the pope did not condemn its practical effect on Italian Jews. Italy had its own version of antisemitism, strongly represented in the Catholic press and in nationalist movements. This antisemitism considered Jews foreign to the Italian soul and unassimilable. Though Italian antisemites often referred to the Jewish race, what they usually meant was race as a product of history and culture, of common religion and common origins, producing homogeneity among Italians. In this view Jewish loyalty was to international Jewry, perceived to be united and dedicated to dominating other nations through financial power and through subversive egalitarian anti-Christian movements such as Bolshevism. Jewish emancipation was seen as

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a mistake because it had unleashed Jewish power. Therefore, Jews had to be stripped of wealth, influence, and power and reduced to secondclass subjects. Italian historian Giovanni Miccoli has demonstrated that religiouspolitical antisemitism was a regular feature of the mainstream Catholic press. We are speaking of Civiltà Cattolica, the biweekly paper of the Italian Jesuits whose director was appointed by the pope; of the Osservatore Romano, the Vatican’s daily newspaper; of the Amico del Clero, the journal of the Italian clergy, whose organization counted twenty thousand members; and of the Scuola Cattolica, a monthly journal. These newspapers and journals expressed an overall theme often quoting clerics, namely, that Jews were a danger to Christianity. Some went back to Matthew 27:25, where Jews invoke God’s curse on themselves for their deicide. Most saw Jews as a separate nation parasitical upon the nations where they lived. Another theme was the catastrophe of Jewish emancipation, which allowed Jews to mix in Christian society, exert excessive influence, and subvert Christian beliefs. Jews had to be rendered inoffensive, subject to an exceptional status, restricting their field of activity in society. As a result the Italian government’s anti-Jewish decrees – eliminating Jews from full citizenship, from the public sphere, from public education, and restricting Jews in the economy and professions – were met with general silence. Alessandro Visani has studied the classified reports of public opinion by the Fascist police; he finds that the police concluded that people generally approved of the anti-Jewish decrees, that racism was strong in Italy, not in its biological version, but “from the point of view of Jewish coexistence in our country.” Not only Catholic, but even Fascist-nationalist publications rejected biological racism. To quote one such non-biological statement: race was “a human community sharing a harmonic whole of spiritual features and tendencies.”63 Some point to the private audience Pope Pius XI gave to a group of pilgrims from Belgian Catholic Radio as evidence of his opposition to antisemitism. He underlined to these pilgrims that antisemitism was a movement in which we Christians can “have no part.” He put it bluntly: “we are spiritually semites.” Catholics were spiritually semites because they were the spiritual heirs of Abraham’s prophecy of the coming of Christ. But as pointed out here in chapter 5, the pope attached a rider: “We recognize anyone’s right to defend themselves, to take measures to protect themselves against whoever threatens their legitimate interests.” The pope asserted a right of self-defence against Jews, for what



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he considered their excessive and corrupting power in Christian society and for their championing of anti-Christian ideologies. Similarly, as quoted above, when he condemned racism in his speech to the clerical mentors of the youth wing of Catholic Action, he insisted, “Catholic means universal, not racist, nationalist, separatist,” the pope did not mean universal in the sense of equal civic rights for all. What the pope meant was that the church’s conversionist reach must be universal; the Roman Catholic Church must offer the promise of salvation to all, for Christ died for all humanity. As Pope Leo XIII had proclaimed in one of his encyclicals: “His apostles re-echoed His [Jesus Christ] voice when they declared that in future there was to be neither Jew, nor Gentile, nor barbarian, nor Scythian, but all were brothers in Christ.”64 Pope Pius XI was a man of passionate and impulsive temperament, but he always knew just how far he could go without risks to the church, or to his authority over Catholics. He picked his fights with great care. In both his antagonism to the German alliance and his condemnation of German biological and materialist racism, and in his own religious and politically based antisemitism, he never was far ahead of the Italian people. There is more evidence of the pope’s caution. Both Peter Godman and Hubert Wolf have examined the newly released archives of the pontificate of Pius XI. The subject they cover is the Vatican plan to officially and authoritatively condemn National Socialist ideology. Although their interpretation of motives and intentions differ, their narrative of events is similar. The story of the Vatican plan and how it unfolded demonstrates Pius XI’s prudence. We know that the church and the Nazi regime were ideological rivals. Nazism wanted to instil a monolithic pagan ideology into Germans, reshaping and ruling over the total person from childhood on. But Christianity, too, made claims to shape the total person. Consequently, in October 1934 the pope asked for two German Jesuit experts to present proposals for a condemnation of Nazi ideology to be presented to the Holy Office of which Pius XI was prefect or head. The Holy Office was the logical agency for this, for it passed on matters of faith and morals, and it could pronounce on deviations from dogma or heresy, on error, or on unorthodox theology, and then issue warnings to shun certain ideas, or place items on the List (or Index) of Prohibited Books. As a disciplinary body, the Holy Office could excommunicate or impose other sanctions on Catholics who disobeyed these rulings. The Jesuits assigned to the task laid out forty-seven National Socialist propositions

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on nationalism, racism, and totalitarianism with the recommendation that they be condemned. By then it was mid-March 1935. Other issues were put on the table: whether to condemn Communism at the same time, and whether to target Hitler by condemning Mein Kampf (his autobiography) or even excommunicating him. In April 1936 the Holy Office appointed another committee of experts to study the issue. They offered their proposals in October, including Communism in movements to be condemned. A final decision was postponed.65 Finally, instead of a Holy Office decree, Pius issued the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge (On the Church and the German Reich), in March 1937. The German of the title is the gripping phrase, With Deep Anxiety. The encyclical was a response to a plea from German bishops, who were seeking Vatican support for their protests against growing regime violations of the concordat of 1933. Italian historian Emma Fattorini has analysed the various drafts of the document and determined that it was the work of many hands, with Cardinal Pacelli directing the process. Of the German bishops, Pacelli chose Cardinal Faulhaber of Munich to draft the German text, knowing that the cardinal wanted to minimize conflict with the German government. In the end the text was stronger than Faulhaber’s draft, perhaps reflecting the views of bishops Preysing of Berlin and Galen of Münster who did not shy from polemics and accusations. Mit brennender Sorge addressed the German government’s determined – and ultimately successful campaign – to eliminate confessional schools, to replace confessional religious instruction in the state schools with racist Germanic Christianity that eliminated the Old Testament from the scriptural canon and turned Christ into an Aryan hero. The education of the young was a major issue for both the Nazi regime and the church: the government had banned double membership in both the Hitler Youth and Catholic youth organizations, and offered inducements to those who joined the former. In the meantime the regime set about gradually dissolving Catholic youth organizations. The encyclical called these measures of the regime violations of the concordat, meant to sow a religious war. Parents’ right to raise their children as they saw fit was being usurped. A passage condemned Nazi racism: “whoever exalts race, or the people, or the State ... – however necessary and honorable be their function in worldly things – whoever raises these notions above their standard value and divinizes them to an idolatrous level ... is far from the true faith in God.” The passages that followed made clear the pope’s concern: Nazi racism went together with an effort to found a national German church, “a national God ...



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a national religion,” an alternative Christianity repudiating Catholic universalism. The encyclical dwelt mainly with violations of the rights of the church, along with appeals, admonitions, and encouragement to Catholics to hold fast in the face of regime threats and inducements. At the same time the Nazi regime was reassured that German Catholics were loyal and patriotic Germans, and should not be pressured into abandoning their faith. As the encyclical put it, “What We object to is the voluntary and systematic antagonism raised [by the regime] between national education and religious duty.” Neither Hitler nor Mein Kampf was mentioned, nor any thought of breaking off diplomatic relations with Germany. However, the encyclical did strengthen the belief that the Holy See might break off diplomatic relations with Germany. Issuing the encyclical was a bold act, and the Nazi regime retaliated by arresting those distributing the encyclical, for according to German regulations, pastoral letters and encyclicals were forbidden to be distributed outside diocesan gazettes, and could only be read from pulpits. The Nazi campaign against the church remained unabated. Catholic youth organizations were gradually being dissolved, clerics were brought to trial on currency and sexual immorality charges, and diocesan archives were sequestered to find evidence. However, each side stepped away from breaking off diplomatic relations. Both sides understood that Catholics were loyal to the church and loyal to the state regime.66 The encyclical was also directed to Italy. Mussolini had concluded a Treaty of Friendship with Germany on 25 October 1936, called the “Italo-German Axis.” By early 1937 Mussolini escalated what Denis Mack Smith terms his “warlike rhetoric.” At the same time Mussolini well understood that German policy towards the church was antagonizing Italian public opinion and sabotaging the Italian-German tie. Pius XI was exploiting this antagonism to drive a wedge between Italy and Germany.67 Some in the Vatican feared the pope was going too far, risking too much. In his discourse to the International Congress of Christian Archeology in October 1938, Pius XI commented that Napoleon III, Bismarck, and Kaiser William II all came to an ignominious end. Emperor Napoleon III was taken prisoner in the disastrous Franco-Prussian War, and deposed by the French. Bismarck, father of German unification, was dumped as chancellor by the Emperor Wilhelm II, and the Emperor himself was deposed and exiled to the Netherlands after the Great War.

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With these examples, Pius was pointing out that “the power of a man, of a system, has its limits in space and time.” The pope was clearly alluding to Hitler and his government. This version was reported by the Reuters news agency. However, the official version released by the Vatican omitted this passage.68 Ultimately, Pope Pius XI decided against a Holy Office condemnation of Nazism. Instead, in April 1938, he ordered the Congregation for Seminaries and Universities, a Vatican body of which he was the titular head, to issue instructions to Catholic universities and faculties to make use of their scholarly expertise to refute eight erroneous propositions on race and the state. The propositions on racism were now limited to instructions for prospective priests. The view of the church was to be proclaimed, but with far weaker impact than a Holy Office declaration on a matter of faith and morals which could include excommunicating Catholic heretics, or placing books on the Index of Prohibited Books. The propositions to be refuted can be summarized: Races are immutable. There is a hierarchy of races. The “vigour” of the race and the “purity of blood” must be cultivated. The source of intellectual and moral qualities is in the blood. “Religion is subject to the law of race.” The “burning love” of the race is the “supreme good.” There is only the universe (but no God), and man exists solely for the state and the only rights he has are ones conceded by the state. An earlier draft of the Holy Office declaration on racism had called for “justice and love toward all races, by no means excluding the Semitic race.” This was the first time criticism of racism and treatment of the Jews were linked in a Vatican document; however, the statement was omitted in the eight propositions to be refuted. For all that Pius XI became an anti-Fascist, his campaign against racism was not directed against the persecution of the Jews, but to other threats: to a pagan ideology undermining Catholic doctrine and to the danger of Italy falling into the German orbit.69 The Manifesto of the Race was a prelude to the Italian anti-Jewish decrees, the first of which was announced on 2 September 1938. It barred Jewish students from public and private schools, though in deference to the church, Catholics of the Jewish race (so-called) could attend primary and secondary schools. Four days later came the pope’s pronouncement to Belgian pilgrims that “Christians can have no part” in antisemitism. There is no reason to regard Pius XI’s outburst as a response to the school decree, for he did not link the two. He would not have had most Catholics on his side had he condemned the persecution



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of Jewish Italians. Indeed, the pope had portrayed Jews in his March 1937 encyclical as “a people that was to crucify Him [Christ],” as deicides.70 The pope later eased off on his July 1938 volley against racism and on goading Mussolini about imitating Nazi Germany. Renzo De Felice has pointed out that when the Manifesto of Race was issued that month, the Vatican had no idea how far Mussolini would take racist policy: would he introduce divorce or decree the civil annulment of all marriages between Catholics of Jewish descent and other Catholics? When neither happened, the Vatican concentrated on the single provision that subverted church doctrine: marriages between Catholics of Jewish descent and other Catholics. Dino Alfieri, the Italian ambassador to the Holy See, reported to Foreign Minister Ciano on the Vatican’s attitude to the Italian regime’s anti-Jewish decrees: “Within the list of motives for discrimination of Jews of Italian citizenship, a great spirit of moderation was observed, as well as for the limitations imposed upon the Jews’ occupations.” The one exception – “the only point the Church would object to” – was a decree on marriage which “would come into direct conflict with the doctrine and the discipline of the Church.” Alfieri reported the Vatican’s gratitude for the exemption for children of mixed marriages, who would not be considered of the Jewish race if they practised a religion different from Judaism as of 1 October 1938.71 The law for the defence of the Italian race of 10 November 1938 did prohibit marriage between Catholics of Jewish descent and other Catholics. The bill’s target was clear: a Jew was defined as someone “whose parents were of the Jewish race, although he or she belongs to a different religion.” This meant that converting Jews, an ongoing mission of the church, was being subverted by the state. Moreover, the decree violated article 34 of the 1929 concordat, which granted automatic civil recognition to church marriages. Pope Pius XI sprang into action, addressing letters to Mussolini and to King Victor Emmanuel III asking the provision be dropped, as it was “in complete contradiction with the solemn Concordat.” Protesting the integrity of the concordat was so important that the Vatican liaison with the regime, Father Pietro Tacchi Venturi, was instructed to write to Mussolini proposing a compromise. In view of the small number of Jews in Italy, there would be few of these marriages yearly, “a drop in the ocean!” They could be allowed as exceptions to the accepted principle of the decree. The government did not take up this adroit dodge. Pius XI uttered his final words on

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the anti-Jewish decrees in his Christmas discourse that year. Surveying the year 1938, he spoke of the “grave preoccupations” he had endured “as head of Catholicism and guardian of morals and truth.” He was referring to “the wound dealt the Concordat, precisely concerning holy marriage.” It was beyond the pope’s duty to mention the wound dealt Italian Jews, reduced to outcasts, banished from their occupations, property, and livelihoods.72 In the end, Pope Pius XI’s response to the Italian anti-Jewish decrees was no different from Pius XII’s response to the anti-Jewish decrees in France, Hungary, Croatia, and Slovakia. Both popes were concerned solely with anti-Jewish measures that intruded upon the jurisdiction of the church. Pius XI said nothing about the November 1938 pogrom in Germany, when 267 synagogues – houses of God – were destroyed, thousands of Jewish business were demolished, 30,000 Jews were despatched to concentration camps, and almost a hundred Jews murdered. Conditions for protest were not unfavourable: the civilized world was outraged, the violent pogrom was not popular among Germans, and war had not yet broken out, so criticism would not have been seen as undermining the war effort. As well, the Italian anti-Jewish decrees were not accompanied by large-scale violence, which Italians would have widely condemned. Pope Pius XI did not have to worry about Catholic opinion. But the pope’s expressed concerns with racist ideology, statism, and extreme nationalism were over threats to Catholic doctrine, religious rights, religious associations, and Catholic unity. Civic rights, universal human rights, these were not within the pope’s pastoral duty. In policy towards the state, Pius XI wanted things both ways. He warned of the dangers of statism, nationalism, and racism to the church. Yet he conceded to the patriotism and nationalism of the faithful. This was inherent in the policy of concordats, and the 1933 concordat with Germany adhered to it: bishops and clergy were obligated to “honour” the government. The concordat with Italy called for “respect” for the government. Thus, the pope could not place into question the respect and obedience the faithful owed government. The pope condemned measures that violated church doctrine, but never governments as such.73 The papacy still relied on the state, where possible, to enforce the Catholic Church’s privileged role in education and culture. The alternative was religious pluralism, the confusion and relativism of a so-called free society that left humans to follow their subjective consciences. The



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church still counted on its social and political eminence, its diplomatic weight, its access to the highest political echelons, and its official recognition in state and society for its spiritual influence. All these concerns pushed Pope Pius XI in the direction of caution, the same caution he had exhibited after the conquest of Ethiopia. Pius XII became pope in an even more trying time than Pius XI. He was elected pope on 2 March 1939, when the threat of war seemed far more certain. On 15 March German troops marched into Bohemia and Moravia, the Czech heartland, in violation of the Munich Agreement. Slovakia, under German protection, had already declared independence. If the annexation of Austria in March 1938 and the Memel Territory from Lithuania in March 1939 could be seen as bringing ethnic Germans back into the Reich, the seizure of the Czech lands was the conquest of a Slavic people. In March Polish troops were concentrated on Poland’s eastern and western borders in response to German threats against Danzig (now Gdansk), a semi-autonomous city under League of Nations mandate which gave Poland access to a port on the Baltic Sea. The conflict over Danzig was at a deadlock; neither side showed signs of retreating. War was to follow on 1 September.74 In this situation it is hard to see how Pius XI would have followed a different course than Pius XII. Both popes were careful not to advance ahead of the Catholic faithful. When Pius XI did, in the case of the Ruhr occupation and the invasion of Ethiopia, he swiftly retreated.

Chapter Seven

The Debate over Pius XII’s Priorities

The silences of the Pope – when they exist – are not His, but ours: that is, imposed by Christians [in order] to seal the lips of the Father and Teacher through their filial intractability. Is it not written in the Gospel: “Jesus kept silent”? The Vicar of Christ may also want and need to be silent. “Ancora del Vicario,” L’Osservatore Romano, (19 Mar. 1964); the reference is to Mark 14:61 and Matthew 26:62

A crime of this scale falls in no small part on all the witnesses who did not cry out, whatever the reasons for their silence. François Mauriac, “Préface,” In Léon Poliakov, Bréviaire de la Haine

But one cannot speak of a true complicity, and the moral and juridical difference between those who do and those who allow it to be done remains immeasurable. Primo Levi, “The Dispute among German Historians,” The Mirror Maker

Having examined Eugenio Pacelli’s policies from the rise of Nazi Germany through the Second World War, we can now assess with more understanding why he refused to condemn or warn Catholic perpetrators of mass atrocities and those actively or passively complicit that they were endangering their salvation. We have seen that many Catholics were implicated, in Croatia, Slovakia, France, Italy, Hungary, and Germany.



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The leading explanations for the actions of Pope Pius XII during the Second World War are but a few. One position is that the pope achieved all of the religious and moral goals of the Roman Catholic Church, omitting none at all: he acted cautiously and prudently in order to save the victims, including Jews, and managed to save many hundreds of thousands. At the same time, he placed the church in the vanguard of resistance against Nazism. Another view of Pius XII is that he sacrificed some goals for the sake of his priorities, for example, that he favoured Nazi Germany as a bulwark against Communism, the most dangerous enemy of the church, which meant he could not condemn Germany’s criminal policies. Some stress that the pope remained publicly impartial so as to serve as diplomatic mediator in the conflict, others that he feared his public condemnation of German atrocities would bring retaliation against the victims, including Jews. Finally, some have argued that as pope he was protecting the institutional church. One can also hold to several of these explanations at the same time. I will argue at the end of this chapter, that Pope Pius XII adhered to the mainline Catholic theology of his time, which required that he avoid condemning Catholics complicit in Axis crimes, so as not to alienate them from the church. This was done for the sake of their eternal salvation: Pope Pius XII’s priorities were spiritual. I will spell out this argument in my concluding chapter. Pius XII Achieved All of the Church’s Religious and Moral Goals One school of defenders makes highly exaggerated claims for the pope. According to them, Pius XII did it all: he signed a concordat with Hitler, yet encouraged German Catholics to oppose the Nazi regime; he opposed antisemitism and made a priority of saving the victims of Nazi Germany, especially Jews; he spoke out but at times was silent so as not to worsen the fate of the victims. These defenders insist that Pius XII had done well on behalf of all of the priorities of the church, both pastoral and moral, with the result that the Catholic Church came out of the Second World War with added moral authority. My purpose is to show that the evidence used by such apologists does not meet the most elementary standards of reliability. One apologist was Robert Leiber, SJ, Pacelli’s personal secretary and close adviser since his days as Vatican secretary of state and throughout his papacy; from 1930 to 1960 Leiber was also professor of church history at the Gregorian University in Rome. In an essay published in 1963 Leiber

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claimed that Cardinal Pacelli’s very first intervention after Hitler’s rise to power was for the protection of German Jews. On 10 April 1933 Pacelli had fired off an “urgent entreaty or admonition” to Berlin over the government’s anti-Jewish policies. This was his response to the violence directed against Jews, to the 1 April boycott of Jewish shops, and to the decree of 7 April, purging Jews from the civil service. Leiber stated that he was basing his claim on information in the Vatican Archives, but neither cited nor quoted any relevant documents. We have had to wait over forty years for public access to the archives for the pontificate of Pius XI (1922–39) to see how misleading Leiber’s claim was. (I have discussed this incident in another context in chapter 5.) On 4 April 1933 Cardinal Secretary of State Pacelli, on the instructions of the pope, requested of the apostolic nuncio to Germany, Cesare Orsenigo, that he look into the possibility of an intervention “against the excesses of anti-Semites in Germany.” Pacelli wrote, “The Holy Father asks … to see if and how it is possible to become involved in a way that is desired.” Monsignor Orsenigo replied a few days later, on 8 April, with the following statement: “An intervention by the Holy See would be the same as a protest against a law of the government … The situation is much more difficult in that the episcopate, aside from the Archbishop of Paderborn, has not protested against anti-German propaganda abroad.” In other words, Orsenigo was pointing out that antiJewish policies were now fixed in law, and intervention would be seen as an intrusion into internal German affairs. In addition, it was deemed that protest must be evenly balanced: as the German bishops had not protested the denunciations of Nazi Germany abroad, protest on behalf of Jewish Germans would be labelled unpatriotic. This was enough for Pacelli and Pius XI, and they simply let the matter drop. Leiber insisted, too, that many Jews were able to flee from the European continent to safety in Brazil in the early part of the war because of Vatican help with visas and funds. He failed to mention that these were all Catholics of Jewish descent, and not that many besides.1 In defence of the pope Leiber cited Léon Poliakov’s 1951 book Bréviaire de la haine. For its time the book was the most comprehensive and authoritative work on the destruction of European Jewry. Leiber quoted from Poliakov: “As for the clear and immediate practical consequences [of an explicit public protest] for the enterprises and institutions of the Catholic Church and for the Jews themselves, a pronouncement on that question is hazardous.” The quote provoked a response from Poliakov, published in the same 1963 edited volume, for it was a cut-and-paste



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job that was taken from the beginning and end of a paragraph, with the middle omitted. Poliakov had actually weighed both the immediate and long-term consequences of a papal protest. While acknowledging that protest could have led to retaliation in the short term, Poliakov had also written that in the long run, the “principle effect of an unbending attitude [by the pope] on this issue would have been immense.” This part was omitted by Leiber as was Poliakov’s assertion that he was “profoundly troubled” by Pius XII’s “obstinate muteness.” Pius XII’s former secretary had passed over in silence the crux of Poliakov’s argument, which was that Christian anti-Judaism was “the background to the causal sequences that culminated in genocide.” Leiber’s defence amounted to a succession of blunders.2 To come to recent times, Joseph Bottum is another apologist for Pius XII. As one of the editors of The Pius War (2004), he has dismissed criticism of the pope, calling it “slander,” insisting that the arguments of the critics all stem from bad faith, from a chip on their shoulder about the Catholic Church. He specializes in ad hominem claims, attacking persons rather than their arguments, so for example, historians such as Susan Zuccotti and Michael Phayer have simply been eager “to join the recent bandwagon of papal detractors.” In an essay in The Pius War, Russell Hittinger argued that the 1937 encyclical by Pius XI, Mit brennender Sorge (On the Church and the German Reich), “contains a discussion of why the Scriptures and the Incarnation itself forbid any racial derogation of the ‘chosen people.’” We know, of course, that Pius XI opposed racial concepts. However, the encyclical cites scripture to remind us that the people of the Old Testament were always “straying from God and turning to the world.” This disorder could only be cured by the coming of Christ who “triumphs over every fault and sin.” The encyclical repeats the deicide charge against Jews, stating that Jesus “took His human nature from a people that was to crucify Him,” and thus Jews remained a people punished by God.3 A final example is from Ronald Rychlak’s, Hitler, the War, and the Pope, a book in which he claims that “shortly after the Germans took over [France] [the armistice was signed 22 June 1940] Pius XII sent a secret letter to Catholic bishops of Europe entitled Opere et Caritate (By Work and by Love). In it he instructed bishops to help all who were suffering racial discrimination at the hands of the Nazis.” They were instructed to read the letter in their churches. No source for the letter is provided, only a reference to the magazine Inside the Vatican, which makes this claim without citing a source. As for the so-called letter, I have found

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mention of it in about half a dozen works, none citing the original source. If such a letter exists, where is it? No evidence is not evidence of a “secret letter” sent to many hundreds of recipients.4 Pius Favoured Nazi Germany as a Bulwark against Communism One explanation for Pius XII’s refusal to publicly condemn German atrocities was his close ties with Germany after a long career there, or even more significant would be that he favoured Nazi Germany as a bulwark against Communism. This was the charge popularized by Rolf Hochhuth, who depicted Pius in The Deputy as warning of the Red Army’s threat to Eastern Europe as well as Austria and Bavaria, and railing against those who would conspire to assassinate Hitler. In The Deputy Hochhuth has the pope proclaim, “Germany today is Hitler. They are visionaries who maintain that overthrow of the present regime in Germany would not result in the collapse of the [eastern] front,” the pope concludes, “Hitler alone … is now defending Europe.” A year later, Saul Friedländer came to a similar conclusion. After poring over German Foreign Office documents, he wrote that at the end of 1943, “the pope and the highest dignitaries of the church were still wishing for victorious resistance by the Nazis in the East.”5 There is much to say against this explanation. For one, Owen Chadwick has noted that both the British Foreign Office and the British Minister to the Vatican D’Arcy Osborne observed that the Vatican Secretariat of State, appointed by Pius XII, was strongly anti-Nazi. Cardinal Secretary of State Luigi Maglione was considered pro-French, while one of the two undersecretaries, Domenico Tardini, “loathed Nazis,” calling Hitler “that motorized Attila,” and the other, Giovanni Montini “had a horror of Nazism.” Osborne believed that Montini and Tardini shared his own disgust with “Nazi methods of warfare,” and were “full of respect” for the way the British stood up to German bombing raids.6 Moreover, several times during the war the pope was urged to come out publicly in favour of Germany against the Soviet Union. The first instance was when Germany and her allies, Italy included, invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 and proclaimed the invasion a defence of Western civilization against Communist barbarism. Ambassadors from both Germany and Italy appealed to the Holy See for a papal declaration endorsing their crusade against Communism. No such declaration was forthcoming. As Undersecretary Tardini told the Italian ambassador,



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context was everything. No one could doubt the pope’s antipathy to Communism, but proclaiming it during an invasion would make it look as if he was in league with the Italian government. Even more revealing were the private conversations Maglione and Tardini had with the Italian and German ambassadors. Tardini reacted with categorical scorn to the idea that Hitler should be seen as a defender of Western Christian civilization against Communism. Tardini told the Italian ambassador to Germany, Bernardo Attolico, that Communism “is the worst enemy of the Church, but not the only one. Nazism has conducted, and continues to conduct, a veritable persecution against the Church. Accordingly, the swastika is not … exactly that … of the crusade” and that “instead of applying the doctrine of the crusade [to the anti-Bolshevik campaign], I apply the proverb ‘one devil chases the other.’” In a memo for a papal speech, Tardini insisted that though Nazism only persecuted the church while the Soviets had stamped it out, this was, in part, because of the strength of organized Catholicism in Germany; but if Hitler triumphed over Bolshevism, he would feel free to adopt more radical measures to stamp out Christianity. In an interview with German Foreign Minister Ribbentrop, Pope Pius XII himself was scornful of the claim that National Socialism had prevented a Communist victory in Germany.7 That the Vatican favoured Germany against the Soviet Union is also contradicted by an episode in the autumn of 1941, this time regarding the United States. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June, President Roosevelt wanted to extend the lend-lease program to the USSR, enabling it to receive arms from the United States without immediate payment. Catholics in the United States were divided over this move, as were their bishops. They remembered Pope Pius XI’s strong condemnation of Communism in the 1937 encyclical Divini Redemptoris (On Atheistic Communism), where he had stated, “Communism is intrinsically wrong, and no one who would save Christian civilization may collaborate with it in any undertaking whatsoever.” The implication was clear: Catholics could not approve sending arms to the Soviet Union. Furthermore, Pius XII’s pronouncements in favour of peace from 1939 on gave added legitimacy to the position of the United States which did not enter the war until after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Catholics were opposed to intervention in the war. To change Catholic opinion, Roosevelt sent his personal representative Myron Taylor to Rome to confer with the Vatican secretary of state, and if necessary, to personally try to persuade the pope to speak out on

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the necessity of aiding the Soviet Union against German aggression. Cardinal Maglione informed Taylor that Pius had no objection to US aid to the Soviet Union, though he found naive Taylor’s assurances that Stalin was prepared to modify his policies on religion. However, the pope proceeded to move in covert fashion to sway Catholic opinion by instructing his representative to the Catholic Church in the United States, Apostolic Delegate Archbishop Amleto Giovanni Cicognani, to communicate the message “by word of mouth and in a reserved manner” to several US bishops. Thus, in October 1941 the bishops chose a widely respected colleague to announce publicly that they had no objection to military aid to the USSR. The bishops had been instructed not to breathe a word about the Holy See’s involvement in the matter. The covert way the pope proceeded is easy to explain: Italy participated in the invasion of the Soviet Union, and Pius did not want to be seen to be aiding the enemy. After Pearl Harbor (7 December) the issue of aid to the USSR was moot among American Catholics, for the United States was now at war with Japan and Germany, and the better armed the Soviets were, the fewer US soldiers would be killed.8 There are more examples later in the war that contradict the charge that Pius XII treated Germany as a bastion against Communism. One was his stance on the unconditional surrender ultimatum to Germany declared by Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Churchill at Casablanca in January 1943. Unconditional surrender meant there would be no peace terms, nor any prospect of a separate peace with Germany that excluded the Soviet Union. It is easy enough to rush to judgment, and see the pope’s opposition to the ultimatum as driven by a desire for a separate Allied peace with Germany and a common campaign against the USSR. Add to this what a separate peace would have meant to the Jews of Europe: providing even more time for Germany to destroy them. However, Pius was too much of a realist to push for a separate peace. There were other reasons for the pope’s opposition to the demand for unconditional surrender. The pope believed that unconditional surrender would harden resistance in Germany, prolong the war, and advance Communist domination in Europe. The ultimatum was no inducement to the Germans to overthrow Hitler, and make peace. During 1943 Pius XII spoke out against the ultimatum as forcing a peace based on “resentments and ... reprisals,” whereas peace had to be founded on “justice and on ... mutual understanding.” No doubt, Pius had drawn up his own list of lessons from the First World War: he feared that a draconian peace



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such as the Versailles Treaty of 1919 would encourage radicalism of the left and right in Germany, and result in a weakened postwar Germany unable to stand up against Communism in Europe. However, Pius did not advocate a “compromise peace,” the code word for a separate peace with Germany, which would exclude the Soviet Union. No such proposal was put forward by the Vatican to the Allies.9 In February 1943, one month after the Casablanca Conference, with the advance westward of the Red Army, the Vatican heard from governments-in-exile, some from states bordering the Soviet Union, who were pleading that the pope do something about the immanent Bolshevik threat to Europe. Appeals came from Switzerland, from Spain, Poland, and Lithuania, and from Hungary, then an ally of Germany. Miklós Kállay, prime minister of Hungary from 9 March 1942 to 22 March 1944, has left an account of an April 1943 audience with the pope during which he pressed this issue. Kállay called the West’s alliance with the Soviets a partnership with “barbarism,” which threatened “our European culture and our universal faith from destruction from the east.” The pope was moved, but made it clear that he would take no diplomatic initiative. Both the Axis powers and the Allies were fighting for total victory, and any peace proposal on the pope’s part would be viewed as favouring one side or the other. Kállay then met with Maglione, who told him no one expected the Allies to negotiate with Hitler or Mussolini. Diplomatic initiatives were out of the question, barring a change of regime in Germany and Italy.10 Pope Pius XII believed he could not appear to take sides, not even provide the slightest pretext for such a charge. In March 1943 Pius had told Baron Vilmos Apor, bishop of Győr (in northwest Hungary), that he could not publicly condemn Bolshevism, without at the same time condemning Nazi atrocities. Belligerents would magnify and exploit papal condemnations of the enemy, and appropriate the pope’s moral authority to whitewash all they did when waging war. The pope would be blamed for weakening the fighting will of those whose actions he condemned; the concept of a universal papacy would be undermined.11 Pius XII was not exaggerating. When Arthur Cardinal Hinsley of Great Britain offered a declaration of sympathy at a gathering to show solidarity with the Russian people, the German propaganda machine exploited it to the full. Hinsley’s declaration, Germany charged, was actually a “formal invitation” issued on the pope’s instructions to pray for the Russian people “in their heroic struggle against fascist and nazi barbarism.” German bishops let the Vatican know the faithful were

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troubled by this news, and the pope was quick to reassure them. Cardinal Faulhaber of Munich was told that Cardinal Hinsley had actually expressed hopes for the conversion of Russia. The Vatican also issued a formal denial that the pope had sent instructions to Cardinal Hinsley, which Cardinal Faulhaber was authorized to publish if he considered it “opportune” to do so.12 In September 1943 Pius XII learned that Germany was blaming him for Italy’s abandonment of the Axis and its armistice with the Allies, signed 3 September but made public five days later, followed on 10 September by the German occupation of Rome. The pope responded to the accusation by agreeing to a German request that he publicly declare that the German occupiers “have respected the territory and liberty of the Holy See.” As the editors of the ADSS point out, Pius was “haunted’ by the fear of a repeat of German accusations after the First World War that Pope Benedict XV had contributed “to the stab in the back” leading to Germany’s defeat. Pius XII’s priority was “to preserve intact the confidence of the faithful” on all sides of the conflict. For the same reason, whatever his justified fears of Bolshevism’s advance into Europe, the pope was mindful of Allied opinion, and he did nothing to promote a separate peace with Germany. Later in the war, in January 1944, Ambassador Ernst von Weizsäcker pressed the Vatican to persuade the Allies to conclude a separate peace with Germany. If the Allies waited for total victory, Weizsäcker argued, Europe would be overrun by the Soviets, or, what amounted to the same thing, a desperate Germany would conclude a separate peace with the Soviets. Undersecretary of State Domenico Tardini inquired sarcastically as to whether Weizsäcker thought the Soviets would offer Germany more favourable conditions than the Anglo-Saxon powers would.13 Taken together, the pope’s refusal to support the Axis’ anti-Bolshevik crusade in June 1941, his encouragement of American Catholic support for lend-lease aid to the Soviets in the fall of 1941, and his refusal to take an explicit stance against the Soviet threat and press for a separate peace with Germany in 1944 and 1945 demonstrate that in spite of his fervent anti-Communism, Pope Pius XII, by his actions, did not favour Nazi Germany as a bulwark against Bolshevism. The Pope and the Conspiracy against Hitler Another blow to the theory that Pope Pius XII favoured Nazi Germany for its anti-Communism is his participation in the 1940 plot to depose Hitler. This was his most risky gamble during the war.



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At first glance it is surprising that the ADSS passes quickly over the pope’s role – from September 1939 to February 1940 – as intermediary in the abortive plot by German generals and politicians to depose Hitler. However, this was not because the incident is unimportant, but because Vatican dealings with the conspirators were never committed to paper. The ADSS has only a paragraph on the affair, taken from the 11/12 February 1946 issue of the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano. The very brief report, which had been reviewed and corrected by the pope, underplayed his role and made no mention of the grave risk he took of retaliation by Hitler if his participation in the affair became public. The pope was described as merely a transmitter of messages from one side to another. It may be that in 1946 the pope feared that German Catholics would regard him as having had a hand in treason, just as the 1944 assassination plot against Hitler was still seen by Germans as treason one year after the war.14 Pius XII did more than transmit messages: he served as a trusted intermediary between the German plotters and the British. The Germans were seeking British assurances that Germany would not be attacked while a coup against Hitler was in the works; they were also seeking an agreement on Germany’s borders. However, for all the British knew, the plot could have been hatched by Nazi agents seeking to rally public opinion at home by uncovering a British plot to assassinate the Führer. This is where the pope played an indispensable role. He knew some of the plotters from his years as nuncio to Germany, and could vouch for them. In turn the conspirators trusted him, knowing he despised the Nazis. He had the trust and admiration of D’Arcy Osborne, the British minister to the Holy See, who enjoyed the confidence of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and his Foreign Secretary Viscount Halifax. The pope’s mediation even got the two sides through the Venlo Affair: on 9 November 1939, two British intelligence officers were lured to the Dutch-German border and kidnapped by agents posing as plotters against Hitler. The incident led the British to suspend talks for five or six weeks; negotiations only resumed because Pius vouched for the conspirators.15 Negotiations were by word of mouth, avoiding a paper trail. The discussions went by a circuitous route. One of the plotters, Josef Müller, a German Catholic who knew Pacelli, met with Robert Leiber, SJ, the pope’s private secretary; Leiber then reported to the pope, who conveyed his response to Osborne, who passed it on to London. According to the German-American historian Klemens von Klemperer, an understanding with Britain was hammered out, but the German generals

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involved in the conspiracy backed out owing to the immanent German attack against the west ordered by Hitler.16 Leiber thought the pope’s involvement in these discussions was “akin to foolhardiness.” To reach an understanding over what was still a hypothetical event, the plotters had to show Britain their good faith by passing on to them the date for the German offensive in the west. The pope, informed by the plotters, passed the information on, though this meant passing on military secrets, taking sides in a military conflict. Even worse, Pius XII was facilitating a plot to depose and probably assassinate a head of state. In so doing he was handing a gift to Hitler and Mussolini: an unassailable excuse for a crackdown on the Vatican. At the very least, the German ambassador to the Holy See could have been recalled and the nuncio in Germany sent packing; communication between the pope and German bishops could have been cut off; and the German church could have come under suspicion and Nazi persecution intensified. The pope would have enraged German Catholics, who believed Hitler’s war on Poland was justified by Polish intransigence over what they perceived as Germany’s just territorial claims and Poland’s persecution of its German minority. Mussolini would have had every reason to accuse the pope of violating the Lateran Accords, which called for the Vatican’s political neutrality. The Italian government could have cut off papal contact with the outside world, banned the Osservatore Romano, and sent gangs to assault those coming in and out of the Vatican. Surprisingly, Pius XII took on further risks. As David Alvarez and Robert Graham, SJ, report, Pius had learned from Müller on 1 May of the immanent invasion of Belgium and the Netherlands and informed their respective governments through intermediaries that an attack was immanent. Resistance circles in Germany apparently hoped that such prior information would forestall a German attack, and the pope must have agreed.17 We can only speculate on why the pope was willing to take such risks, for he was known for his habitual caution. One thing is clear: Pope Pius XII regarded Hitler as a disaster for Germany, and for Europe. Pope Pius XII Wanted to Be a Diplomatic Mediator If Pius XII did not favour Nazi Germany as a bulwark against Communism, and felt no affinities with the Nazi regime, how to explain his public silence about the unprecedented scale of mass murder by



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Germans? An explanation often advanced was that he believed he could play a key role as a diplomatic mediator between the belligerents. Pius XII did seek to mediate between states to avert war and bring peace, and this required a stance of political neutrality. I would argue, however, that the pope’s chief mission, as he saw it, was to maintain the unity and universality of the Catholic Church in a world at war. Proclaiming himself a neutral diplomatic mediator was linked to this key mission. War in Europe threatened the church: war set Catholic against Catholic, stirred national chauvinism, compelled the pope to follow the political lead of national church hierarchies, and led to demands that the pope take sides among Catholics. As war was bad for the church, the pope had a strong interest in peace. So the role of diplomatic mediator was more a papal stance than a practical project. The role of diplomatic mediator marked the papacy as an agent of peace, and enhanced the moral authority of the papacy by providing the pope with an international profile. Popes had sometimes been invited to arbitrate disputes. For example, in 1893 Leo XIII was invited to settle a boundary quarrel between Peru and Ecuador. A Vatican official, Bishop Hyginus Cardinale, has listed eight requests made between 1870 and 1914 by states calling on the pope to arbitrate disputes: seven of them came from Latin America. But being chosen by two parties to arbitrate a dispute meant both had agreed to accept the pope’s ruling. Intervention in a conflict as an uninvited mediator was a different story, and always ended in failure. Two examples of failure are the 1870 papal mediation to prevent the FrancoPrussian war and the 1898 mediation to prevent the Spanish-American War over Cuba.18 Pius XII was a wartime pope. On 13 March 1939, less than two weeks after he assumed the papacy, Germany marched into what was left of the Czech state. A week later a German ultimatum compelled Lithuania to cede the Baltic port city of Memel to the Reich. These actions brought an end to the West’s policy of appeasing Hitler, and prompted warnings to Germany of the consequences if the Fűhrer engaged in further aggression. Britain and France responded by guaranteeing Poland that they would come to her aid if she had to resist any assault that threatened her independence. The pope’s mediation efforts at that time all ended in failure, some veered into the quixotic. Prior to and early in the Second World War, the pope’s interest lay in preventing war, even at the price of appeasing Hitler. The Vatican believed Poland might avert war by conceding to

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German’s demand for the city of Danzig and for extraterritorial road and rail connections between East Prussia and the rest of Germany, cut off at the time by the Polish Corridor. The Vatican tried soundings at various capitals, but ultimately backed off. As Owen Chadwick sums it up, “But now the age of appeasement was dead. The Vatican had not quite realized that until this moment.” Indeed the astute Undersecretary of State Monsignor Tardini cautioned Vatican Secretary of State Maglione that such a papal move would look like “the Holy See had played into Hitler’s hands” by proposing “a new Munich.” Vatican diplomacy after this lurched back and forth: first urging the Italian ambassador to Germany to pass on to his government the warning that if Hitler tried to seize Danzig by force, Britain and France would surely intervene; then, on the very eve of Hitler’s invasion of Poland, Cardinal Maglione again urged Poland to negotiate Hitler’s claims on Danzig and the Polish Corridor.19 The pope continued to promote a policy of appeasement even after the German occupation of Poland. He declared in his October 1939 encyclical Summi Pontificatus (On the Unity of Human Society), that he was still “trusting in those statesmen who before the outbreak of the war, nobly toiled to avert such a scourge from the peoples … who call not for justice alone but for love and mercy.” This could only mean continued appeasement at a time when Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria had come under Germany’s sphere of influence, when the Czech state was occupied, Poland was occupied from both west and east, and when the German government hoped to pursue an understanding with the British which would leave their empire intact in exchange for ceding European hegemony to Germany.20 A year later, after the German defeat of France and the armistice agreement of June 1940, the Vatican pleaded with Germany, Italy, and Britain to seek peace. This would have meant British acquiescence to German domination of the European continent. In Owen Chadwick’s view, the Vatican feared that Britain, the only counterweight to German power, would soon be conquered as German armies were now at the English Channel. Certainly the German defeat of France had stunned Europe, as it had seemed unlikely, but Winston Churchill, known for his opposition to appeasement, was now prime minister, and it was clear Britain would fight. Nevertheless, in July 1940 the pope instructed Archbishop William Godfrey, the apostolic delegate to Great Britain, to urge the British government to explore the peace offer made by Hitler in his Reichstag speech of 19 July. This move was made just when



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the German bombing campaign against Britain had begun, with the subsequent struggle for air supremacy over the Strait of Dover, and just when Churchill had dismissed the peace offer by Hitler as a ruse. Godfrey replied that he had consulted Cardinal Hinsley, and they both agreed that the action was ill-advised: the pope would be seen to be taking the side of the Axis in pressing Britain to agree to German hegemony in Europe. Poles also complained that in trying to pry Britain out of the war, Pius was depriving Poland of its sole ally. By now the Vatican was far more than one step behind events.21 Vatican Secretary of State Maglione continued to pursue soundings with foreign governments, while the pope kept a low profile. Italy was now in the war on the side of Germany, and Pius XII did not want to appear to be serving either Allied or Axis interests. In any case, the pope was pursuing a hapless diplomacy. When the Holy See issued an appeal for peace to the belligerents in June 1943, Chadwick points out, “No one took the least notice.” Given his reputation as a realist, it is hard to believe Pius XII thought he could achieve anything substantial through diplomatic mediation, beyond boosting the universalist image of the papacy and the Catholic Church. As early as August 1943, the British Ambassador Osborne reported to the Foreign Office, “His Holiness no longer believes in the possibility of a compromise peace.” In February 1945 German Foreign Minister Ribbentrop instructed his ambassador to the Holy See, Ernst von Weizsäcker, to try to persuade the pope to use his influence with the Allies to have them ease the military pressure against Germany so it could fight the common threat of Bolshevism by concentrating all its military resources against the Soviet Union. Pius XII replied, “Unconditional surrender held the Allies together; they could hardly be separated by the Germans.” He now acknowledged there was no room for a diplomatic mediator.22 Speaking Out Would Bring Retaliation against the Victims The defenders of Pope Pius XII have another explanation for his public silence: his fear that Germany’s victims would suffer even more if he spoke out. In an allocution to the College of Cardinals on 2 June 1943, the pope expressed profound sympathy for some of the war’s worst victims: “those who, because of their nationality or descent, are pursued by mounting misfortune and increasing suffering. Sometimes ... they are subjected to measures which threaten them with extermination.” “Small nations” were another victim: when their own soil became a

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battlefield subjected to the systematic destruction of villages and towns and by mass death, these small nations “witness indescribable outrages even against non-combatants, and the massacre of the flower of their youth and intellectuals.” The pope then explained why he could not intervene more forcefully and directly on behalf of the victims of war saying, “Every one of Our public utterances, has had to be weighed and pondered by us with deep gravity, in the very interest of those who are suffering, so as not to render their position even more difficult and unbearable than before.”23 The pope’s explanation cannot be dismissed out of hand by branding him as cynical and uncaring, as Hochhuth did. Indeed, others had a different impression of the man. For Ambassador D’Arcy Osborne, who during the war met with the pope regularly, “his [the pope’s] sensitive nature was acutely and incessantly alive to the tragic volume of human suffering caused by the war.” Perhaps the fear of German retaliation against the victims was well founded; victims, after all, doubled as hostages. We must examine the evidence.24 Pius XII explained what had prompted his fears in a letter of 30 April 1943 to Bishop of Berlin Konrad von Preysing. The pope was responding to the bishop’s plea to intervene on behalf of thousands of Jews, “wretched innocents,” just then being deported from Germany, among whom were a number of Catholics of Jewish descent. The pope said that he left it to the bishops on the ground to decide what seemed advisable in view of the dangers of “retaliatory measures,” for they were more attuned to the war psychology at home, more able to judge how “to avoid a greater evil” (ad maiora mala vitanda). Then the pope explained, “Herein lies one of the reasons why We Ourselves impose restrictions on Our declarations. The experience We had in the year 1942 with papal writings made available by Us [to bishops] to transmit to the faithful as they saw fit, justifies Our attitude, as far as We see.” The evidence indicates that two incidents fit this description; one with the German bishops, another with a Polish bishop.25 First let us consider the incident relating to the German bishops. Adolf Cardinal Bertram of Breslau, as chairman of the annual bishops’ conference at Fulda, wrote a letter to the pope in September 1942. On behalf of all German bishops, Bertram asked the pope write an open letter to the German faithful. The pope’s letter, suggested Bertram, would raise the morale of the Catholic clergy and laity, who were facing increasing persecution by the regime. Pius sent such a letter to Cardinal Bertram on 3 January 1943, in which he spoke of the “battle against the Christian



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faith and way of life” taking place in Germany, and of those who wish to “inscribe the New Order on the gravestone of Christian Germany.” Pius expressed concern about the massive effort to deprive Catholic youth of parental and religious influence, while exposing them to an “alien and hostile spirit.” For the rest, he uttered inspiring words and exhorted Catholics to stay firm. When Bertram received the letter he backtracked, hesitating to pass it on to his fellow bishops for fear of the risks in making it public. Bishops as a body considered the issue at their annual conference at Fulda that August, where they decided not to publish the by now six-month-old letter.26 The other incident is the pope’s exchange with Archbishop Adam Stefan Sapieha of Kraków, which I have discussed in chapter 4. Sapieha wrote to Pius on 28 February 1942 about horrific conditions in Poland including the systematic destruction of the Polish church in the Wartheland, the territory annexed to Germany. An opportunity to place the letter into the pope’s hands came six weeks later, when a hospital train returning to Italy from the eastern front stopped in Kraków. The Archbishop gave the letter to the priest Pirro Scavizzi, chaplain on the train, with instructions to hand it personally to Pius. The very next day Sapieha backtracked. He sent a priest to Scavizzi to tell him to burn the letter, fearing it might end up in German hands. Scavizzi was told the Germans might well shoot all Polish bishops and perhaps others in retaliation. Father Scavizzi burned the letter, but not before copying it out in his own hand, and bringing it to the pope. Later, on 18 May 1942, Vatican Undersecretary of State Tardini recommended that the pope not publicly condemn atrocities in Poland, which might well heighten the persecutions. However, Tardini thought Pius should respond to Sapieha with “words of comfort and relief.” The pope did so. Sapieha replied on 28 October 1942. He thanked the pope for “Your holy letter,” but feared new persecutions if he made it public. By then, Sapieha’s two secretaries had been arrested by the Gestapo.27 Pius feared retaliation if he spoke out in another unpredictable situation. A few pointed examples from Owen Chadwick’s work will shed light on this. Forewarned of the immanent invasion of neutral Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg, the Vatican alerted the French, British, and Belgian ambassadors. When Germany invaded the Low Countries on 10 May 1940, the pope responded publicly, though instead of issuing the more provocative statement drafted by Tardini, the ever-cautious pope sent telegrams of sympathy to the sovereigns of Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg expressing hopes for the restoration of their

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nations to independence. The Osservatore Romano then published the texts of these telegrams. Even this gesture turned out to be risky, for the police prevented sales of the newspaper in Italy. Thugs, sent by the government beat up sellers and buyers of the paper, and threats were made to block Vatican mail; the police just stood by. The nuncio to Italy complained about this to Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano, who commented in his memoirs, “I was able to offer him only kind and vague words,” meaning the intimidation would not let up. In order to continue to sell the Osservatore Romano in Italy, the Vatican agreed to publish war communiqués of the belligerents, without comment. This was not the end of the story, for the pope was mobbed as he went to celebrate Mass at a church in Rome. Fascist gangs rushed his car screaming, “Death to the Pope!” After that, the pope never again risked appearing in the streets of Rome till after Mussolini’s fall. These incidents drove home a lesson: if the pope went too far ahead of Italian public opinion, the government, at the least, would close down the Osservatore Romano, the official Vatican daily, and Vatican Radio, cutting off all communication between the pope, the Italian public, and the world. Moreover, the supply of electricity and water was in the hands of the Italian government. Indeed, Mussolini had declared contemptuously that the Vatican could be occupied “by a few hundred men, and at any minute.” Vatican Radio broadcasting in European languages was already in trouble. In January 1940 the radio carried a program on the persecution of the church in German-occupied Poland, which was picked up by the BBC and the US press. The German government threatened allout attacks on the church by the German press if this were to go on. Broadcasts on the situation in Poland were then suspended. In October Vatican Radio reported on government restrictions on the church in Germany. Again the German government threatened retaliation. In April 1941, after several similar confrontations, the pope forbad any broadcasts on the situation of the church in Germany. A restricted Vatican Radio was better than none at all. The Vatican also lived with the ever-present danger that the Italian government would turn its countrymen against the pope. Indeed, members of the Italian secret police and other informants had infiltrated the Vatican, including its gendarmerie. Rumours circulated that the Vatican was feeding secret news of ship and troop movements to the British. Many Fascists believed the Vatican was a “nest of spies.” Such charges ran counter to the pope’s efforts to maintain the esteem of Italians, so that he would emerge as an influential figure in the post-war era.28



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This was a key papal dilemma. Pius XII was walking a tightrope, for the same pronouncements considered meagre and inadequate by the Allies were considered objectionable by the Axis. As we have seen, in his Christmas message to the world in 1942, the pope had inserted a brief mention alluding to the fate of the Jews without naming them: the “hundreds of thousands of innocent people put to death or doomed to slow extinction, sometimes merely because of their race or descent.” Many thought the impact of the statement was virtually lost in a long message describing victims on both sides. Chadwick observes that British Minister to the Vatican Osborne thought the allusion “useless,” while German Foreign Minister Ribbentrop ordered the German ambassador to the Vatican to “threaten retaliation.” The Reich Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst) reported that Pius “makes himself the mouthpiece of the Jewish war criminals.” It is easy to see the repercussions that might have followed a more pointed condemnation.29 The reader may have noted that so far the retaliation that Pius feared was against the church, against Catholic clergy, and not against those outside the church: Jews, Roma and Sinti, Serbs in Croatia, or others. Yet papal defenders have insisted that his fear of retaliation against Jews was what stopped him from any specific condemnation of their tormentors. The eminent scholar Konrad Repgen insists that a “flaming protest” would not have halted the murder of Jews, but could well have increased its “tempo and magnitude.” Some have argued that the best example of this was in the Netherlands, where this concern was allegedly borne out to a tragic conclusion.30 Hochhuth had made much of the absence of a public condemnation by the pope in October 1943, during the deportations of Jewish Romans by the Germans. Robert Leiber responded to this charge by stressing Hitler’s “insane urge to retaliate.” Leiber claimed a key example was the public protest of Dutch Catholic bishops over the deportation of Dutch Jewry. He insisted that this protest did not stop the deportations, but what is more, the German occupation authorities retaliated by seizing Dutch Catholics of Jewish descent as well. Thus, papal silence did not sacrifice Jewish lives, but saved them. The Dutch example was used time and again by defenders of Pius XII in the 1960s to argue that official Vatican protests would only have created more victims. This in spite of the fact that as early as 1951 Léon Poliakov in Bréviaire had pointed out that Protestants of Jewish descent later suffered the same fate, even though Protestant ministers had issued no public protest.31

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The only eyewitness source for this story is a memoir by Sister Pascalina Lehnert, Pacelli’s long-time housekeeper and confidante. She wrote that on a morning in August 1942 newspaper headlines carried “horrible news”: “the public protest of the Dutch bishops against the inhuman persecution of the Jews prompted Hitler to order the nighttime arrest and gassing of 40,000 Jews.” Pius read this, she said, and became “dead white.” After, he entered the kitchen with some “closely written sheets of paper,” to be published in the Osservatore Romano that evening; it was to be his protest against the “horrible persecution of the Jews.” Pius then said that its “tone was much sharper than the Dutch one [protest],” and then proceeded to burn the papers in the stove, exclaiming, “If the letter of the Dutch bishops cost 40,000 lives, my protest could cost perhaps 200,000.”32 Perhaps the reader is already shaking his or her head. First of all, no newspaper is named. Indeed, what newspaper in German-occupied Europe, even from neutral countries, even the underground press, would so exaggerate the number of Jews deported by August 1942, and if one did would Pius have read it, let alone have access to it? Moreover, we know of no other explicit protest by Pius about the wartime persecution of the Jews. Jews had already been murdered in large numbers in Croatia in 1941 and deportations began in Slovakia in March 1942. In addition, we know that Pius never used the word Jews. We also know that he only alluded publicly to the Jewish catastrophe when including it among other victims on all sides suffering because of the war. Furthermore, the news that Germany was gassing 40,000 Dutch Jews because of a protest by Dutch bishops was preposterous on its face. The figure represents the number of Jews deported from the Netherlands and murdered during the whole of 1942. What we know from the available documents is that Pius XII had received muddled news of the bishops’ protest. On 28 July 1942, two days after the protest was read from pulpits, Nuncio to Germany Orsenigo wrote to Vatican Secretary of State Maglione that there are “rumours” from Holland that the protest succeeded in having “baptized non-Aryans … excluded from the deportations.” On 9 October, Paolo Giobbe, internuncio (of a lower diplomatic rank than nuncio) to the Netherlands, reported to Maglione that initially non-Aryan Catholics had been granted exemptions but this had been revoked because of the bishops’ protest over the deportation of Jews. Nothing was said about their deportation, no numbers were mentioned. Much later, on 10 May 1943, a letter from a Father De Witte informed Pius that 190 non-Aryan



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Catholics had been deported from the Netherlands; he does not say that this was the result of the bishops’ protest the year before.33 Theo Salemink has traced the extensive use of the Netherlands story to the 1960s, when it became the ultimate riposte to Hochhuth’s condemnation of Pius. Robert Leiber insisted that after the protest of the Dutch bishops, “The country was combed for Catholics of the Jewish race ... and [they were] brought to the death camps.” The story took on a life of its own in a number of books and articles.34 Not just one, but many details tell against this explanation for the public silence of Pius XII. First, the pope never mentioned the events in the Netherlands, let alone as a reason for not speaking out. Next, he resolved not to speak out long before the events in the Netherlands, which means the latter was no turning point. Pacelli’s principled position of not condemning perpetrators of atrocities went as far back as the First World War. The then Monsignor Pacelli was serving under the Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Gasparri. The unofficial French representative to the Vatican, Charles Loiseau, reported on a long conversation with Pacelli about the war. Loiseau noted that Pacelli defended the Holy See against the charge that the pope (Benedict XV) observed “a questionable neutrality [during the war].” Benedict himself never said his neutrality during the Great War sprang from a fear of retaliation against victims, but rather from his role as “Common Father” to Catholics on opposite sides in the war. Pacelli had repeated to Loiseau Benedict’s explanation of his policy.35 Later as pope, Pacelli adopted this very same position. The papal stance of neutrality in wartime was announced to all the world in the Osservatore Romano of 15 October 1939. In response to complaints that the Holy See had shown itself indifferent to the German invasion of Poland, the article pointed out that the pope had movingly expressed his “paternal solicitude” for Poland to an audience of Poles resident in Rome. The Vatican complained that such thoughtless and lazy accusations against it went back to the First World War and Benedict XV. But, it continued, in wartime a pope could do no more than express his solicitude for all the victims. War inflamed emotions so that every belligerent nation saw things according its “own inclinations and passions.” Nevertheless, the pope had to abide by his role as “common Father.” For this reason, it was explained, his words would seem weak in a period used to “heated and at times violent language.” However, it was pointed out, the pope had a higher responsibility, and in an era witnessing “the destruction of the most sacred moral values,” the

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world needed an “impartial authority,” for only such a figure would be respected as a “serious voice.” Consistent with this position, just three days after the article appeared, the pope told the new Lithuanian envoy, “Conscious of the duties in accord with Our responsibility as supreme Pastor, ever oriented to the salvation of souls, We will not allow Ourselves – unless forced – to engage in purely temporal or in territorial controversies among states.” On another occasion Pius was even more succinct: “She [the church] is a mother. Do not ask a mother to favour or oppose the part of one or the other of her children.”36 So we have two explanations directly from the mouth of Pius: one that as “common Father” he had to stay politically impartial; the other that he feared retaliation on others if he spoke out. Who exactly were the potential victims? On 13 May 1940 Undersecretary Montini quoted Pope Pius XII’s exchange with Dino Alfieri, the Italian ambassador to the Holy See. Pius had referred to the “horrible things” occurring in German-occupied Poland: “We should say fiery words against such things, and the only thing that holds Us back from doing so is the knowledge that ... We would render the condition of these unfortunate ones even harsher.” Who were these “unfortunate ones”? Germany had threatened the Vatican with retaliation if Vatican Radio and the Osservatore Romano did not stop reporting on harsh conditions in Poland. In February 1940 Nuncio Orsenigo reported from Berlin that the German government declared that it was on a war-footing and that so-called lies about its actions in Poland spread by the Catholic Church, “capable of damaging the internal front and the need for defence of the German people will be exposed and punished ... even if the intention [of these utterances] cannot be proven.” There were also warnings of a German press campaign against the pope; of a ban on Polish priests travelling outside the German-occupied General Government; and greater restrictions on the already restricted Polish church in the annexed territories. It turns out, then, that the potential unfortunates were the church, the pope, the Polish clergy, and the faithful who would be deprived of the sacraments. Retaliation was not aimed at the Polish people as such.37 The retaliation argument was useful to the pope, and some Vatican officials carried it to patently absurd lengths, believing their task was to ward off pressure on the pope while protecting his lofty reputation. Saul Friedländer has unearthed a memo of a 1944 conversation between Chief Rabbi Isaac Herzog of Palestine and Apostolic Delegate to Egypt and Palestine Monsignor Arthur Hughes. Rabbi Herzog requested



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an audience with the pope to discuss what could be done to save the remaining Jews of Budapest. Monsignor Hughes said the pope personally wished to meet with the rabbi, but regrettably no invitation would be forthcoming. He claimed Pius had expressed fears over retaliation: “We must do all in our power to save the people of Israel. But every step we take must be calculated with the greatest caution, because I could not bear the idea that our activity might have an effect opposite to the one intended and cause the death of still more Jews.” But we know Pius intervened in Hungary with his June 1944 open telegram to Regent Miklós Horthy, and had reason to believe his act had helped save – not harm – Jews. This was the best argument for more interventions by the pope. The retaliation argument with regard to the fate of the Jews became a shopworn alibi, produced at need. 38 The Pope’s View of His Pastoral Responsibilities Pius XII was aware and indeed concerned over the price to be paid for not speaking out, that both his papacy’s and the Roman Catholic Church’s reputation would suffer, though he certainly could not have imagined the enormity of the disgrace that fell upon his papacy after his death. The evidence of his anguish over the harsh choices he made is in his 20 February 1941 letter to Bishop of Würzburg Matthias Ehrenfried: In the present hour tremendous events [are occurring] in the realm outside the Church, to which the pope is determined to observe the restraint which an incorruptible impartiality imposes upon him. [Yet these events] intersect ... with the Church’s tasks and [current] travails, which require his intervention. They intersect so frequently and disastrously, even more disastrously than in the past World War, that the successor of Peter can apply to himself in a figurative sense the Lord’s words to the first pope “another will bind you fast, and carry you where you have no wish to go.” Where the pope would want to shout out loud, he is sometimes unfortunately bidden to a waiting silence, where he would want to help and act, to a persevering patience.

Pius was quoting John 21:18, with Jesus saying to Simon Peter: “Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.” Jesus was referring

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to Peter’s later denial that he was associated with Jesus or even knew him. The letter demonstrates that managing the church’s institutional survival was not a clear-cut issue for Pius. He thought deeply of the religious consequences of his actions and had chosen public silence reluctantly; it remained a place where he had “no wish to go.” This was no isolated moment of anguish. Pius wrote to Archbishop of Cologne Joseph Frings: “It is often painfully difficult to decide whether reserve and cautious silence or open speech and strong action is called for.” To Bishop Preysing of Berlin he made the distinction between “impartiality” and “neutrality.” He was being impartial, not neutral: neutrality assumed a “passive indifference,” whereas impartiality did not exclude “judging matters according to truth and justice.” Ultimately, Pius XII had decided that his role as pope of a universal church required that he be impartial towards belligerents, which meant restraining his desire to hurl thunderbolts at the perpetrators of atrocities or rally Catholics in the Axis to protest or passively resist their government’s policies. All this was decided by Pius before European Jews were targeted for mass destruction. The February 1941 letter to Bishop Ehrenfried came months before the invasion of the Soviet Union, and the first mass shootings of Jews.39 Pius XII feared that not speaking out would bring damage to the reputation of the church. This was evident when he insisted that criticism of their government policies – not by the pope, but by native bishops – would, on the other hand, enhance the long-range reputation of the church. However, even criticism by national episcopacies had to be strategically timed, find resonance with the faithful, and not lead to in-fighting among bishops. That time came in Germany only in the middle of the war. Pius XII then privately praised criticism of the regime by German bishops, even on matters other than the persecution of the church. In his 30 April 1943 letter to Bishop Preysing, Pius declared himself “grateful” for the bishop’s pastoral sermon of 20 December 1942 for the Advent season that had pronounced “clear and outspoken words” for victims of Nazi Germany including those who were non-Catholics. Preysing had insisted that the rights and duties of the individual were divinely grounded. No one could override these rights: “whosoever wears a human countenance has rights that no earthly power can take away.” These included the right to “life, inviolability, freedom, property, marriage.” No one can be deprived of these rights simply because “they are not of our blood or do not speak our language.” He repeated, “These rights are universal and apply to



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all.” Preysing then directly addressed National Socialism: the fault lay in its concept of the nation (Volk) which granted it the right to overturn morality when it came to nations considered weaker or on a lower cultural level. Such actions by a German bishop, Pius XII claimed, were important simply to register moral outrage, to assert moral order in the face of evil, to set an example, to not allow oneself to be tainted by complicity, and to maintain the honour and good name of the Roman Catholic Church. Pius told Preysing that some said the bishop’s defence of “children of the Church or those standing outside [it] … harms your fatherland before the world public.” On the contrary: “it would gain respect [for you and for Germany] before the world public, and can, in the future, work out very much for the best.”40 Then why did Pius XII himself not stand up for the truth, for the honour and good name of the church? For one, as pope he was the common father of all Catholics, while criticizing a government would be blown up by its war propaganda to charge him with siding with the enemy, and equally exploited by enemy war propaganda to claim the pope was siding with them. Moreover he could easily be considered both a traitor by fellow Italians and an interfering outsider by non-Italians. While he spoke as head of the universal church, bishops spoke as fellow nationals, and appealed to patriotism and the national interest in criticizing their governments. Therefore, if the explanation for Pius XII’s public silence does not lie in his view of Nazi Germany as a bulwark against Communism, nor in any affinities to the Nazi regime, nor in his wish to be a diplomatic mediator, nor even in his fear of retaliation against Germany’s victims, it does, however, lie in his pastoral responsibilities as spiritual leader of a worldwide church. That is why the Jesuit editors of the Actes et Documents de Saint Siège relatifs à la Seconde Guerre mondiale (ADSS) in an introductory essay make only vague and elusive claims about the pope’s rescue efforts during the Second World War. They wished to defend the pope but recognized that rescue was a secondary issue for him. They acknowledge that “Vatican diplomacy and the resources available for papal intervention only obtained limited results.” They conclude that the Holy See “in spite of all, saved a considerable number of human lives.” How many was “considerable” and who was saved, remain unstated.41 The explanation the editors of the ADSS go back to time and again is that the pope’s priorities were primarily pastoral. An example of this lay in his policy to Germany. Volume two of the ADSS contains the

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letters Pius wrote to German bishops between 1939 and 1944. He knew some members of the German episcopacy personally from his years as nuncio to Germany, then as Vatican secretary of state; the letters are private not public and frank about his policies. Pius left no private papers or memoirs, at least to our knowledge, for the archives of the papacy and the Second World War are still closed. What we have are the letters, 124 in all, which offer a rare, intimate view of the pope’s thinking. We learn from the letters that Pius had one eye on German Catholics when making policy decisions. During the war he feared that criticism of Germany on his part would create “misunderstandings” among German Catholics, which would “shake the fidelity of the faithful toward the Church and its head.” While some Catholics would side with the church, many would abandon it, perhaps turn to Protestantism (more of a German national religion), and thus endanger their salvation. Harold Tittmann, Jr, based in the Vatican as US chargé d’affaires, reported as much from a conversation with Pius. Tittmann knew the pope detested Nazi ideology, and he pressed him to be more explicit in his public comments during the war. The pope responded that there were over forty million Catholics in Germany (including Austria and Cechoslovakia) and that if he denounced the Nazis and Germany lost the war, Germans would say he contributed to their defeat. For it would “only be human in the confusion and distress of defeat” for Germans not to distinguish “between the Nazis and the Fatherland.” In private conversation the pope was frank about his main concern: “I cannot afford to risk alienating so many of the faithful.”42 This acknowledgment was the key to Pius XII’s wartime actions. Writing in August 1940, after Germany’s lightning victory in France and the Low Countries, Pius was well aware that the Führer was wildly popular. Most Catholics, like most other Germans, favoured the regime and shared many of its goals. If there was to be a church-state struggle in Germany, Catholics there must be convinced that the sole interest of the papacy was in maintaining church rights and that Rome had done everything possible to avoid a conflict with the regime. Pius said repeatedly that he did not want to impose sacrifices on German Catholics. By that he was not thinking so much of their suffering under the Nazi regime, but, as the ADSS editors state, “of the dangers that threatened their faith and their loyalty to the Church.” In other words, Pius XII feared that if tested by having to choose between their loyalty to the church or the regime, most German Catholics would side with the regime, or at best would be torn in their loyalties, and could well end



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up fighting among themselves over how much support the church or the regime was due. Catholic unity would be threatened.43 In the years before the liberalizing reforms of Vatican Council II, Catholic defenders of Pius XII were not embarrassed to say that for the sake of the church, the pope yielded to German Catholic loyalty to the Nazi regime. One such was the Italian journalist Dr Edoardo Senatro, wartime Berlin correspondent for the Osservatore Romano, who enjoyed personal access to the pope. In a public forum on the Hochhuth play in 1963, Senatro reported that the pope had posed the following question to him in 1943: “If he [Pius] should put Catholic soldiers who had sworn an oath to Hitler in a predicament of conscience, by a protest against the persecution of the Jews.” In view of the pope’s self-appointed role as upholder of moral law, we might assume that confronting German Catholics with a “predicament of conscience” would be his duty. But Pius had put a rhetorical question to Senatro. He believed forcing a “predicament of conscience” would put German Catholic soldiers before an either-or choice: keeping their oath to Hitler, or heeding the pope. Pushing Catholics to decide such a charged question would lose them to the church, cutting off their access to the instruments of salvation. Therefore, the pope permitted their oath to Hitler to override God’s commandments. Senatro was speaking in the pope’s defence, though his audience thought his argument cynical. The newspaper account of the public forum reported, “What was thought of as a defence of the pope, was transformed, unexpectedly, as the public reaction proved, into its opposite.”44 Soon after his election as pope on 2 March 1939, Pius adopted a publicly conciliatory attitude to the Nazi regime. On 6 May he sought the advice of the three German cardinals and one Austrian cardinal who had come to the electoral conclave, and then he composed an amicable letter to Hitler announcing his elevation to the papacy and underscoring the good relations he hoped to pursue with the Reich. If publicly displaying good will towards Hitler seems spineless in the light of the Führer’s saber-rattling threats and ultimatums to Poland and the Czech lands in that year, it must be said that Pius was being tactical. His chief concern was negotiating rights for the church in the areas recently incorporated into Greater Germany: Austria and the Sudetenland, the Czech borderland conceded to Hitler at Munich. In view of this, it would not have helped to act as a bullfighter waving a red cape before Hitler. Another concern was defending against official German talk of creating a national Catholic Church independent of Rome, for

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which there were some antecedents in German history. Hitler was at the height of his popularity in Germany, and to gain Catholic support for church interests, the pope could not take an openly antagonistic attitude to Hitler. Pius said so to his German colleagues: “The world must see that we have tried everything in order to live in peace with Germany.”45 Pius XII was dealing with a regime all too ready to use its formidable propaganda apparatus to paint him as an enemy of Germany, so as to drive a wedge between himself and German Catholics. Here again he walked a tightrope. When he sent sympathetic telegrams to the sovereigns of Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxemburg after the German invasion of these neutral states, the pope was also intent upon warding off German government efforts to depict him as a lackey of the Allies and an enemy of Germany. He asked the German bishops to put the faithful on guard against this by stressing the moderation of his words, and the great pressure he had been placed under to say something. The pope’s great fear was that he would “alienate the hearts and souls of [German] Catholics from him.” As a result, his words would lose their efficacy. Being seen as a pope distrusted for his politics would weaken his authority to speak on matters of faith and doctrine central to the church.46 Ludwig Volk, SJ, has made a strong case for the pope’s dilemma. He pointed to the role of propaganda in wartime, with belligerents ready to embroider or distort the pope’s words for their own ends. Besides, who would listen to his exhortations? Catholics, for whom war meant either victory and survival or defeat and destruction, were not disposed to listen to a pope telling them what they did not want to hear. It was easy enough to finger-point after the war, when all knew the outcome. But during the war one experienced “agonizing uncertainty [rather than] crystal-clear insight.” Pope Pius XII faced a choice between lesser evils, for which the parables of Christ provided no guidance.47 Pierre Blet, SJ, one of the editors of the ADSS, was artlessly frank in explaining and defending Pius’ attitude of caution towards Nazi Germany. He insisted the pope was forced “to refrain from any action that was excessive or idealistic,” for “he was worried that he not place too great a burden on the faith and on the loyalty to the church of those who were sympathetic to the seductions and successes of the Nazi party.” Blet points out that the pope’s call for caution to avoid greater evil referred not only to “possible reprisals but even more to misunderstandings capable of disturbing loyalties.” Put another way, if the pope



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were thought to be taking a stand against Germany, there was a great danger of “placing too heavy a burden on believers and of disturbing their loyalty to the church and its leader.” Thus, we can conclude that Pius was unwilling to protest, or warn about the outrages of the Nazi regime, escalating into unprecedented, systematic atrocities, for fear of losing German Catholics to the Church – including those Catholics committing the atrocities or abetting them or approving them or just looking the other way. Many will see this as a perverse attitude in a spiritual leader, for it seems no way to keep people from sin. But his defenders argue that Pius XII was aware he could not counteract the seductions of the regime. As he wrote to the German bishops, Catholics were subject to a constant flow of propaganda from a “de-­Christianized environment ... [which] subjects them to a spiritual pressure, which combined with external pressure and constraints, often forces them to undergo trials that demand heroic fidelity to their faith.” But one could not demand such stubborn loyalty from the laity. For this reason the pope believed that only if Catholics saw that the Vatican was not Germany’s enemy, that he was not weakening the national will in wartime by condemning the government, was there any possibility that the pope’s moral teachings would be heeded by some. Moreover, the papal priority was directed to the future, to the church thriving once Hitler was no more, to maintaining the religious, moral, and disciplinary authority of the pope intact, to a church free of disunity or even schism, to not embittering German Catholics while their sons, fathers, and husbands were fighting and dying. Keeping all this in mind, we can understand the explanation in the Osservatore Romano for the pope’s silence when Germany invaded neutral Norway: “There are only 2,000 Catholics in Norway. Though He judges the moral aspect severely, from the practical point of view, the Holy See must think of the 30 million German Catholics.”48 Pius XII feared a harsh condemnation of German atrocities would be met with incomprehension, since the German people “as a whole,” he said, were not responsible for the crimes of the regime, “of which the majority perhaps know even nothing at all.” In the pope’s view only the hands of the few were stained with blood, while the majority were merely misled, seduced, taken in, or ignorant of what was happening around them. Pius XII’s assumption that most Germans were virtually victims of the regime was certainly convenient in a pope who wanted to avoid divisive issues and recriminations after the war, indeed, avoid anything that might shake the church and bring disorder and discord.49

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Papal Prudence as a Religious Responsibility Many condemn Pius XII by observing that papal prudence was aimed at preserving and maintaining the institutional church; perhaps surprisingly, this notion has also been championed by his defenders. Prior to the 1960s and the onslaught of criticism of the Vatican for its feeble concern for human rights and its indifference towards – even acquiescence to – Catholic antisemitism during the Nazi era, the supporters of Pius XII were frank in pointing to the pope’s institutional priorities, and they felt no need to make much of his record in other respects. One example was Paul Duclos, SJ, writing in 1955. For the critics of Pius, “institutional priorities” meant self-preservation and power, but for Duclos, institutional and spiritual priorities were one and the same. They were both aimed at the salvation of souls and eternal life, which required the pastoral mission of the institutional church, founded by Christ. The church was the conduit for divine grace and the sacraments, assured Catholic unity and universality, and provided authoritative teaching for the laity. Duclos insists that the pope’s chief responsibility was his “spiritual paternity.” He was the “common Father”; all the faithful were his sons and daughters. As such, the pope had to direct them, consider their sinful state, their weaknesses. Therefore, “he refrains from provoking irreparable gestures by excessively severe condemnations.” Thus, Pius XII did not pronounce an interdict on Germany for its aggression against Poland because this would have put some 30 million German Catholics in a “terrible conflict of conscience: obey the Church and risk their own death and the annihilation of Christian life in Central Europe; obey the State, and lapse into schism, and equally destroy Catholicism.” (An interdict excluded Catholics from reception of the sacraments. Schism was the sin of breaking off communion with the church.) Duclos uses the extreme example of a religious interdict, but his words equally applied to other grave papal measures, such as explicit public condemnations. Pointing to the inhibitions on papal action, Duclos bluntly justifies what he calls the “contorted often deceptive formulas” employed in papal declarations during wartime, their intentional vagueness, the avoidance of proper names, such as Germany, or Jews. This was no moral failure, but “proverbial Vatican prudence,” which had to be “redoubled” in time of war when the pope had to rise above the impassioned quarrels of men. At the war’s end, he would have sabotaged the task of binding former Catholic belligerents into one universal church, if one side bitterly resented his condemnations during wartime.



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The pope’s role of “common father” restrained him. If the pope was to be obeyed as supreme religious authority by all Catholics, he could not indulge in “spectacular protests.” There were limits. If a “father” wanted to be revered and trusted, he could not “humiliate the guilty” among his sons. The “common father” even had to make sure that “too avid consolation given to one nation, is not resented as an injury to another nation in the opposite camp.” In effect, in wartime the pope had to act publicly as if there were a moral equivalence among belligerents. In support of this stance, Duclos quotes an editorial in the Osservatore Romano, which insisted that there were “upright spirits and hearts wounded by injustice” on all sides of the conflict. Duclos’ defence of the pope had pedigree in one line of Catholic theology. To make his argument about papal constraints in wartime, Duclos bifurcated the spiritual and temporal realms, insisting that Pius XII could not interfere in the latter. This narrowed the spiritual realm to Catholic institutions: the church, Catholic schools, newspapers, and organizations, with the temporal realm left to the jurisdiction of the state. No doubt, boundaries had to be set between the “spiritual and “temporal” realms, but, we may ask, where did one draw the line? Other Catholics would argue, especially after Vatican II but even before, that the church’s teaching was broadly moral and social, so that the “temporal” realm was to be governed by natural law, by respect for human rights and social justice. But Duclos claims that in wartime the pope had to be careful not to “embitter the conflict,” for his task was to “reconcile minds” when the conflict ended. Duclos provides the theology behind this objective: “The Holy See does not aim at men, but their errors and their injustices”; in other words, one should hate the sin, not the sinner. This maxim would open the gates of repentance, forgiveness, and salvation, made possible, in Duclos’ eyes, by the pope’s refusal to publicly and specifically condemn perpetrators of mass murder by name. Pius said as much himself in a 1943 allocution to the College of Cardinals: “We have never intended to draw up a bill of indictment, but rather to bring men back to the paths of truth and redemption.”50 Clerics who wrote prior to the reforms of Vatican II and were untouched by the new spirit in the Roman Church understood Pius XII best of all. Monsignor Alberto Giovannetti who had served in the Vatican Secretariat of State, draws a glowing picture of Pius in L’Action du Vatican pour la paix: Documents inédits, 1930–1940, which appeared in 1963, before The Deputy had come on the scene. (The original Italian edition appeared in 1960.) Giovannetti probably caught better than anyone the thinking

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behind the minimalist papal approach during the war, which was not to condemn any one side but simply indicate in general terms the moral and juridical basis for peace. In doing so, Pius XII sought “not [to] embitter minds any further, [but lead them to] reflection.” Therefore, “for the good of souls, he must often forebear from provoking irreparable gestures through absolute and definitive condemnations.” Above all, the faithful must not be alienated from the church. Giovannetti writes, “If he [the pope] protests, if he condemns, it is with love, with solicitude for the ... weak.” By the weak Giovannetti did not mean the victims, but those on the side committing atrocities, ranging from the indifferent to the complicit to the perpetrators.51 These were understandable priorities for a pope wanting to be true to his mission. As a result, much was gained by the Catholic Church, but what was lost? In a letter of 7 May 1939 to Bishop Preysing, Pius agreed that the German episcopacy had to avoid “bringing about needless friction” and concentrate on “strongly and resolutely defending the faith and the rights of the Church.” The meaning of his intent was clear: getting into conflicts over the rights of others, whoever they may be, would only get in the way of efforts to defend the faith, and the rights of the church.52 Vatican Secretary of State Maglione also made an argument from Catholic piety in defending the pope. While the war was raging, he declared that the pope’s “supreme religious mission” was to promote “always and everywhere, the salvation of souls, whether the years flow [by] peaceably, or whether, as is happening now, they rush by extremely arduous and menacing.” Cardinal Maglione was gazing beyond the war, to eternity.53 Maglione was painfully aware of the mass deaths and horrendous suffering unleashed by the Second World War, but in the perspective of eternity the war was another in a long line of temporal conflicts, another episode in humanity’s sinful history. To Maglione, a twothousand-year-old institution must think in long time spans beyond the passing conflicts of humanity. Religious values were at the heart of the papal mission. The historical consequences, what was sacrificed, were clear: Pope Pius XII looked the other way when human rights were being trampled on, and when Jews were deported to face unprecedented horrors, and continued to look the other way when Catholics participated in these crimes. The two imperatives, religious versus moral, were irreconcilable.

Conclusion

Religious Good Trumps Moral Good

[The Church has to be the leaven in the world,] but the Church, being of men, is forever under the temptation to make herself at home in the world, to regard her worldly successes as the coming of the Kingdom of God, to be intent only on making herself secure and powerful and free from opposition and persecution. Hans Küng, The Council, Reform and Reunion

I entreat [fellow Catholics] ... to ask themselves seriously the question whether the laws of the Inquisition are or are not a scandal and a sorrow to their souls ... Our Church stands, and our faith should stand, not on the virtues of men, but on the surer ground of an institution and a guidance that are divine. John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, First Baron Acton, “Letters to the Editor of the Times”

The retreat of Pope Pius XII before radical evil had deep roots in Catholic doctrines. The time has come to examine these doctrines. Pius XII’s stance of public impartiality in wartime, which meant applying a standard of moral equivalence to all belligerents and their deeds, had its roots in his spiritual role as pope. His understanding of the role God had assigned him prohibited him from taking a strong stand against mass atrocities: warning Catholics that involvement or complicity endangered their salvation or instructing bishops to do the same; or speaking out forcefully on behalf of victims of mass atrocities; or publicly – or even surreptitiously – alerting Jews to what he knew of the deportations. This was particularly true for Catholic countries such as Slovakia, Croatia, and France, where he was revered as a moral authority, and where his co-religionists were committing, or complicit in committing mass murder.

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Papal Claims and Papal Realities We now know that much of what Rolf Hochhuth said in his play The Deputy (Der Stellvertreter) is false: the portrait of Pope Pius XII is a nasty caricature, and the overwrought assumptions about the effectiveness of a papal protest were fantasy. But Hochhuth’s approach has remained influential to our day by deliberately – and mistakenly – focusing discussion on the man Eugenio Pacelli rather than on the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church in his day. It is tempting to concentrate on the career of Pius XII. Measuring up his own lofty claims against his actions shows him to be a backslider. From the very beginning of his pontificate, he boasted of his heroic stance. He wrote in his first encyclical of October 1939, Summi Pontificatus (On the Unity of Human Society), “In the fulfillment of this Our duty, we shall not let Ourselves be influenced by earthly considerations nor be held back by mistrust or opposition, by rebuffs or lack of appreciation of Our words, nor yet by fear of misconceptions or misinterpretations.” He promised to be assertive no matter the risk and said, “The ecclesiastical Hierarchy ... in union with the Successor of Peter ... [is] firm when, even at the cost of torments and martyrdom, it has to say: Non licet; it is not allowed!” In the face of the high standards Pius XII set for the papacy, how could he duck his head when confronted by unprecedented evil?1 But the issues go deeper than Pius XII, to the mainline Catholic doctrine at that time. The eminent historian of ideas Isaiah Berlin put the predicament of any belief well when he wrote, “We are faced with choices between ends equally ultimate and claims equally absolute, the realization of which must inevitably involve the sacrifice of others [other ends and claims].” We know that Pius XII weighed the alternatives open to him and that he chose to be publicly impartial during the Second World War. The ends he upheld were at great cost to other ultimate ends and claims. To put it plainly: in the case of Pope Pius XII, religion trumped civic and political morality.2 Pius himself insisted in his 1939 encyclical that the church’s concerns extended to all of humanity, for it abided by “that law of human solidarity and charity, which is dictated and imposed by our common origin and by the equality of rational nature in all men, to whatever people they belong.” We know that countless pleas for papal intervention on behalf of justice and humanity came from heads of state, Catholic

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clerics, diplomats, and Jewish organizations. Belief in the moral authority of the pope during both world wars held firm.3 Pius XII was, however, able to create the illusion of potent moral authority on behalf of all humanity, while his priority was actually the spiritual well-being of the (Catholic) faithful. His stance stemmed from a belief in the universalist, conversionist mission of the Catholic Church. The pope spoke of his concern for all people, because Jesus submitted to suffering and death out of love for all, for the salvation of all. To enhance the world status of the papacy, Pius XII claimed to serve all humanity, as he understood that term in the light of Catholic doctrine. For that reason, in the area where morality and politics intersect, appeals to Pius XII to exercise his moral authority on behalf of all humanity were in vain. To examine why, I believe it is important to take a long look at history and the theology of the Roman Church, or ecclesiology. The Church as a Religious Institution What we first should look at is the Roman Catholic Church as an institution, and what became of that institution in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. What I mean by institution here is a church with appointed officials, a hierarchy with set jurisdictions, and a central body defining doctrine. Many today view religious institutions as repressive, set on tyrannizing individuals, demanding their uncritical loyalty, pressuring them into following a common well-trod path rather than striking out on their own. The Roman Church was and is such a religious institution, but such institutions also serve positive ends. They provide members of a religion with a strong sense of corporate identity, define boundaries for inclusion and exclusion, provide membership in a community anchored in history and tradition, afford the fellowship and intimacy of participation in common rituals, have authoritative teachers who maintain and interpret doctrines, and finally, establish a division of religious labour. Organized religions develop institutional frameworks. The theologian Daniel Donovan has reminded us that the Greek word ecclesia, which means church, originally meant assembly, a people of common faith coming together. Nowhere does scripture specifically mention a

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juridical hierarchy of office-holders, a pope, or papal primacy. Instead, we have the apostles, disciples of Jesus, proclaiming his mission, and inspiring others. Some had visions of the “Risen Lord,” his resurrection after his degrading crucifixion, evidence that God had raised him from the dead, and that the willed suffering of the Son of God carried the great gift of God’s love with its promise of human redemption and eternal life. At the very beginnings of Christianity, believers’ trust in the apostles was not based on the authority vested in an office, but on the conviction that the “Spirit” dwelled within them, that the “transcendent power” of the resurrected Jesus had reached into their souls. Indeed, all believers constituted a “holy priesthood” living by the Spirit. There was as yet no legally constituted distinction between ordained clergy and the faithful. When Paul appointed leaders of churches, they were so appointed because the Spirit dwelled within them, not by virtue of the office they held. Nor was there one church with primacy, but different churches, organized in different ways.4 From this beginning jurisdictional structures developed, with an accepted canon of scripture, an authoritative creed, and formally ordained bishops heading churches where legitimacy was conferred by the office rather than by personal charisma. Thomas Bokenkotter calls this “a durable structure of authority, a framework of steel that has enabled it [the church] to meet every conceivable crisis.” This framework was solidified by the end of the second century.5 Organization by statute and jurisdiction was inevitable for a religion that saw itself as reaching out to all of humanity, offering a communion of the faithful. Moreover, as the great German sociologist Max Weber observed, leadership based on charisma (from the Greek for divine gift) or the gift of the Spirit, is inherently unstable, as it is continually tested and has to prove itself. Such leadership lasts only temporarily, for it is based upon the continuing trust of believers. But only thus can the selfappointed leaders inspire what a Weber scholar called “extraordinary enthusiasms,” which turn the world upside down, creating new communions of believers, jettisoning old pieties.6 In the long run, to achieve permanence, belief must be anchored in a new kind of legitimacy, in the authority of law, tradition, and in the jurisdictions of office. For one, rival views of doctrine, such as on the Trinity and on the human and divine in Christ, needed to be resolved by bodies carrying legitimate authority. So, Catholicism established a hierarchical jurisdictional division of labour with pope, bishops, priests, and the laity, each with their assigned roles.

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The Weakness of Human Nature and the Redemptive Power of the Church With the division of religious labour, a two-tier system developed, of cleric and laity, shepherd and flock. At its foundation was a view both of the weakness of human nature and the redemptive power of the church. As a consequence of human weakness was the need for authoritarian and paternalist structures. This view had deep and solid roots in church history. As one forerunner of this view, I turn to Saint Augustine (354–430 CE). Augustine started out with the notion of fallen humanity, how the sin of disobedience, self-love, and pride committed by Adam and Eve, our common parents, placed a curse on human nature. As a result, humans suffered from a disorder of the will which enslaved them to their worldly desires. As Augustine famously pleaded with God in his Confessions, “Make me chaste and continent, but not yet.” Peter Brown put it best in his biography of the man. The church was to serve the sort of man “with a few good works to his name, who slept with his wife ... often just for the pleasure of it; touchy on points of honour, given to vendettas ... and, for all that, a good Christian ‘looking on himself as a disgrace, and giving the glory to God.’”7 In the light of their flawed human nature, Augustine believed that humans, by themselves, were powerless to do the good. What liberated them was God’s love and forgiveness, revealed in Christ who suffered in the flesh from the murderous hands of humanity but responded with self-giving love. Christ’s redeeming love unmerited by humans, but working in their hearts, enabled them to turn to God with love and remorse for their sins, and thus to free the will to rise above worldly desires. Augustine’s stress on human frailty came from his personal experience, but also followed from the Catholic Church’s universalism. Christianity was now far beyond the point of its origins as a small group of heroic wayfarers sailing in a pagan sea. The church was meant to be wider than the Roman Empire itself, encompassing all of known civilization and transforming it. This would be a church whose members included sinners and the weak, in short, a church rather than a sect of the elect who separated themselves from society and pursued a rigorous perfectionism. To Augustine, most Christians were made up of what Peter Brown has called “seemingly intractable human material,” while only the few

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pursued the pure and rigorous ideal. Augustine emphasized the dangers of placing so heavy a burden on people that they would be crushed under its weight. Out of these concerns came his maxim: “God does not command of man things which are impossible to do.” The church could not eliminate the effects of original sin, but it could deliver the gift of God’s abundant mercy and forgiveness, making penitence possible. On this basis, no sin can exclude a person from the church, only heresy. To cite Augustine, “love may despair of no man.”8 Augustine’s confrontation with a movement later pronounced heretical will make his position clear. The fifth-century CE Pelagian movement, named after one Pelagius, stressed human perfectionism. Pelagians redefined the concepts of sin and grace and emphasized the strength of the human will. All Christians could achieve perfection through “absolute obedience to God’s law.” Augustine placed greater emphasis upon human weakness, a view that enormously strengthened the sacramental life of the church. This was certainly the conclusion of an African synod, which declared that Pelagianism, with its view of humanity’s potential for perfection, would not need the church and its authority “to ‘liberate’ men from themselves.”9 Another quarrel was with the Donatists, a broad movement founded in the fourth century CE whose supporters included clerics and bishops. The Donatists were “rigorists”; in their quest for a pure and holy church, they insisted that the prayers of a morally unworthy bishop in the act of ordaining or baptizing lacked efficacy. The power of the Holy Spirit in the office-holder made a sacerdotal act valid, not just holding office by ordination. Augustine’s attack on the Donatists also turned on his view of the redemptive life of the church. Augustine insisted that the sacrament of ordination to the clerical position, not the moral status of the bishop, gave his prayers efficacy. The office, not the person, gave the act legitimacy. As the church itself, sustained by the Holy Spirit, was “objectively” holy, by extension so were its sacraments, independent of the character of its clergy.10 Disputes along these lines resurfaced in the Roman Church in later times. Jansenism, condemned in the seventeenth century, began as a reform movement within the church. Jansenism also deplored lowered standards of moral rigour, particularly in Jesuit teaching. This French reform movement drew its inspiration from the notion of human nature corrupted by original sin, desperately needing God’s grace, but was far more exacting in its standards for Divine forgiveness. Alexander Sedgwick offers a concrete example, a dispute between the Jansenist

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Saint-Cyran and the famous churchman and statesman Cardinal-Duc de Richelieu. Saint-Cyran insisted that only contrition was worthy of absolution from a priest, meaning the penitent was moved solely by love of God and fully determined to change his ways. Richelieu, on the other hand, argued that contrition motivated by love of God set an impossible standard for the many and that attrition, or repentance motivated by fear of God, was fully acceptable as a motive, for it also contained an element of love of God. Indeed, it seemed only saints could satisfy Jansenist standards. For Saint-Cyran priestly absolution for someone without genuine contrition was null and void. As Sedgwick argues, what turned church authorities against Jansenism was that it minimized “the redemptive powers of the Church,” for it concluded that God was sparing in the gift of grace, hence humans had to remain anxious and uncertain of their salvation. Moreover, Jansenists saw persecution as a welcome Divine test of their faith. This was not a belief the church could hold out to potential converts and ordinary mortals, who sought some compromise between faith and their worldly lives.11 The mainstream Catholic tradition thus emphasized human weakness redeemable through the sacramental life of the church. Pope Pius XI (1922–39) almost three hundred years later, pointed out that for Jansenism the faithful were to judge the sincerity of their penitence by an impossibly high standard, so that many needlessly considered themselves unfit to receive communion more than once or a few times a year. John Mahoney notes that Pius XI saw this as a denial of God’s goodness, and hence blasphemy. The pope himself encouraged frequent – even daily – communion for those not in a state of serious sin. It should not be surprising that Cardinal Pacelli expressed a similar view. Speaking at a Eucharistic Congress in France in 1937, he noted that in the late nineteenth century the “remnants of Jansenism” inhibited too many Catholics from partaking of the Eucharist. He, too, saw Jansenism as belittling the redemptive power of the church and “its treasures of compassion and indulgence.”12 Armed with the redemptive power to bring salvation to weak humans, the institutional church took on the role of micro-manager of souls. In keeping with its responsibility, the church developed manuals of casuistry to guide priests, whereby eternal moral norms were fitted to the complex circumstances of everyday life at different times and places. This was the tradition Eugenio Pacelli drew from in reacting to the events of the 1930s and 1940s. He exercised a wide-ranging leniency in

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judging fellow Catholics in wartime. Catholic historian Wilhelm Alff puts this leniency in its most positive light. He speaks of the realism of Vatican policy, aware of its own “limited means,” hence its need to “fulfil the Christian precept of love within the framework of a casuistry of the possible.” Alff insists that “casuistic morality seems to me a humane achievement. All too often rigourism goes along with misanthropy.” Casuistry, to Alff, was the wisdom of not being over-rigorous; the faithful had to be guided and spurred, but not broken, or alienated. In the name of Catholic inclusiveness, the church was to compromise with human nature as it was, keenly aware of the church’s redemptive power.13 Thus, the church hierarchy with the pope at its apex saw itself as responsible for the salvation of souls and that meant keeping sinners, even the greatest evildoers, inside the church. Contrition, forgiveness, and the gift of God’s grace coming through the church were always possible. In his June 1943 encyclical, Mystici Corporis Christi (The Mystical Body of Christ, the Church), Pope Pius XII insisted on the redemptive power of the church. As long as the sinner was not a heretic or an apostate, whatever he or she did, the church can bring him or her back, for the church possessed the means for personal transformation through the sacraments.14 A word must be said about the sacraments as agents of God’s grace. Richard McBrien has explained “sacramentality” as the principle that God is present in the church. “Mediation” is the principle that God is mediated in the sacraments, present, active, and spiritually effective in them. “Communion” is the principle that the encounter with God occurs in the community of faith, or the church. As Daniel Donovan puts it, as we are “embodied spirits,” so God, “invisible and transcendent,” reaches out to us not in pure inwardness but “in visible and tangible form” and “in the context of community.”15 So the Roman Catholic Church holds the keys to heaven. This is because for most of the seven sacraments, that is, except for baptism and marriage, the sacraments have efficacy only when clergy officiate. In the sacrament of penance, for example, the priest has the power to forgive sins. Thus, the salvation of souls, a gift of God, is mediated through the church. Pope Pius XII insisted, “He [Christ] also won for us, His brethren, an ineffable flow of graces ... He willed to do so only through a visible Church made up of men, so that through her all might cooperate with Him in dispensing the graces of Redemption.”16 Pius as head of the Roman Catholic Church, therefore, considered himself responsible for the salvation of the faithful. Examples abound of

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the church as keeper of Catholic consciences: thus Pope Leo XIII (1878– 1903) lashed out at the modern view of the autonomy of conscience, its self-governance, as leading to unanchored subjectivity. Conscience was free only when guided by the church to the Good. Benedict XV (1914– 22) declared, “Let each one subject his own opinion to the authority of him who is his superior, and obey him as a matter of conscience.” Pius XII himself wrote, “As for the laity … they can be … accepted as helpers in the defence of truth … But must remain under the authority, leadership, and watchfulness of those who by divine institution are set up as teachers of Christ’s Church.”17 These were the theological underpinnings behind Pius XII’s thinking. As Pierre Blet, one of the Jesuit editors of the Actes et Documents de Saint Siège relatifs à la Seconde Guerre mondiale (ADSS) comments, German Catholics were “weak in their faith and enthused by German victories.” The paternalist conclusion was that decisions had to be made on behalf of the faithful, that they were not the best judges of their own interests and needed to be protected from themselves, for sin warps judgment, and wilful pride serves both the person’s and the group’s short-term, selfish interests. These were long-held habits of paternalism that went back to the time of rural Europe and illiterate peasants. Such habits still prevailed in the twentieth century in conflict with new norms of the autonomy of conscience and individual responsibility. In the words of another of the ADSS editors, Robert Graham, the pope is “the only religious authority that affords peremptory guidance to consciences.” Accordingly, Pius XII called himself a shepherd to whom “the divine prince of pastors [Christ] has assigned the full weight of responsibility for his whole worldwide flock.” Thus, the pope acted as a surrogate conscience for the Catholic faithful, deciding how much they could bear, how strong their faith was, and he withheld chastisement accordingly. But he could not speak truth to them. One had to tread on tiptoes with those of weak faith so as not to close off the possibility of their repentance and return.18 A March 1939 article in the Dominican magazine Blackfriars put it bluntly, “Care for the conscience of the ordinary Catholic, anxiety that no unusual strain shall be placed upon it, is not indeed a virtue peculiar to Pius XI among the popes. The Roman Church has been generally ready to stretch principles to the very limits of the possible in order to avoid the scandals that inevitably follow on these conflicts between Church and State.” Pius XI said as much in his 1937 encyclical Mit brennender Sorge (With Deep Anxiety). Speaking to Catholics in “guilty

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cooperation” with the Nazi campaign against confessional schools, he declared that he did not want to equivocate, “nor by excessive severity to harden the hearts of those who live under Our pastoral responsibility ... for all their infidelity.” He would not foreclose the prospect of their repentance and return even if “those who are trying to adapt their mentality to their new surroundings have ... nothing but words of mistrust, ingratitude or insult [for the church].”19 Casuistry, by easing harsh standards, by judging by the measure of greater or lesser evil, certainly had a humane side, but it could also lead to acquiescence to horrendous crimes committed on behalf of the nation. In the belief that the faithful were for the most part weak and sinful, Pius XII engaged in calculated acquiescence to mass atrocities when committed by fellow Catholics in order to hold out to them the prospect of God’s forgiveness and grace. How else can we understand Pius XII’s policy towards the Catholic laity, his refusal to challenge them, to speak out specifically in cases of indifference towards mass atrocities, let alone complicity, even active participation? A telling example of this paternalism and leniency came after the war. In 1947 American officials interviewed five German bishops, asking them why they had rejected Bishop of Berlin Konrad von Preysing’s impassioned appeal in 1943 for an episcopal declaration condemning the murder of European Jewry. Bishop Preysing had told them that if they failed to do so “they would stand guilty before God and man.” The five bishops explained that they did not want German Catholics to have to choose between loyalty to Hitler and loyalty to the church. They believed a strong episcopal protest would have alienated Catholics from the church. Archbishop of Cologne Josef Frings described the position as prudent moral laxity: “In order not to overburden the faithful we had to choose the ‘minus malum’ [the lesser evil].” We can conclude that the greater evil was lack of access to the sacraments; the “lesser evil” was conceding to collective evil and indifference as long as Catholics stayed within the fold.20 Popes and Nationalism Leniency was a slippery slope ending in an accommodation to views popes have found abhorrent, all to keep Catholics within the fold. Popes have struggled to maintain the loyalty of the faithful especially in wartime when the vast majority in every nation rallied uncritically to the flag, and not only the Catholic faithful but their priests and bishops

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as well. Pius XII ended up tolerating the complicity of the faithful to keep them within the fold. Or to put it with more nuance, Pope Pius XII delivered a mixed message during the Second World War, he was both critical of extreme nationalism and accommodating to it. Popes and national church hierarchies differed sharply in wartime. Both Benedict XV in the First World War and Pius XII in the Second World War saw war as an unmitigated disaster for the Roman Catholic Church: war divided Catholics along national lines, fed mutual hatred, made a mockery of the notion of a communion of Catholics in a universal church, and endangered the papal position as “common father” of all Catholics. Benedict XV dreaded the outbreak of the Great War. He was to call the war a “butchery,” “murder increasingly boundless,” “madness.” But to Michael Faulhaber, in 1915 bishop of Speyer, Germany was fighting a “just war.”21 The Treaty of Versailles after the First World War became the seedbed of bitter grievances among both losers and winners and heightened nationalist rage. In response, Pope Pius XI acknowledged in his December 1922 encyclical Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio (On the Peace of Christ in His Kingdom), “Patriotism – the stimulus of so many virtues and so many noble acts of heroism when kept within the bounds of the law of Christ – becomes … debased to the condition of an extreme nationalism when we forget that all men are our brothers and members of the same great human family, that other nations have an equal right with us both to life and to prosperity.” His words fell on deaf ears.22 In his October 1939 encyclical Summi Pontificatus (On the Unity of Human Society) issued seven weeks after the German invasion of Poland, Pope Pius XII instructed, “Legitimate and well-ordered love of our native country should not make us close our eyes to the all-embracing nature of Christian Charity, which calls for consideration of others and of their interests in the pacifying light of love.” This was a principled though quixotic plea for forbearance in wartime.23 At this early stage in the war, before the German government threatened him with dire consequences, Pope Pius XII expressed his partiality for “Our Dear Poland, which … has a right to the generous and brotherly sympathy of the whole world, while it awaits … a resurrection in harmony with the principles of justice and true peace.” (See chapter 4.) But Germans saw a different Poland: a country that Versailles had fattened with most of former German Posen and more than half of East Prussia, and which now had a German minority population of over a

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million inhabitants; a country that had taken hold of a German city, Danzig, now operating under League of Nations authority as a Polish port; and a country employing land reform to confiscate even modest German farm holdings. Mark Mazower has pointed out that most Germans in the Weimar period thought it an outrage that so many Germans were now minorities under foreign rule and favoured regaining former German territories. Weimar governments thought this could be achieved by diplomacy, but the ground was being prepared for later, more drastic measures.24 When these drastic measures were put in place with the invasion of Poland, Archbishop of Freiburg Conrad Gröber insisted the invasion was a “war forced upon us.” Bishop of Münster Clemens August von Galen wrote, “The war which was seemingly ended in 1919 through a dictated peace, has newly broken out ... Our men and youth are again … called to arms and stand guard on our frontier to shield our fatherland and to fight, at the risk of their lives, in stern determination or bloody battle, for a peace through freedom and justice for our nation.” The war was a just one, for self-defence.25 The pope’s words could be falsified in self-serving ways. Along these lines a German newspaper had its own distorted reading of the pope’s October 1939 encyclical, neatly deflecting the issues in order to vindicate Germany. When Pius XII said that true peace required justice, the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung insisted that he was referring to the unjust “dictatorship of Versailles” and that, since 1933, the German government had sought a “a pacific revision” of the treaty which the Allied powers had ignored, creating precisely those divisions among nations that the pope deplored. The newspaper went on to take exception to Pius’ concern and sympathy for Poland: “there might have been a word of compassion for the thousands of our German compatriots, who were the victims of Polish hatred.” Naturally, the newspaper omitted to mention the pope’s critique of race and of the all-powerful state, or his complaints over the persecution of the church in Germany. Unless the pope spoke up far more unequivocally, which would have turned many German Catholics against him, his words could be turned around, and twisted.26 Later, Pius XII turned down a demand to endorse the German invasion of the Soviet Union by pronouncing it a crusade against Bolshevism. However, four days after the invasion began, a joint pastoral letter by German bishops sent a greeting to soldiers fighting at the front: “in fulfilling the harsh duties of the hour ... may the certainty console and strengthen you that in doing so you serve not simply the fatherland,

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but at the same time obey the holy intent of God.” The faithful and the clergy everywhere made God a steadfast ally of their own nation at war – God would bring them victory because their cause was just. In a 1939 pastoral letter, one bishop saw German soldiers as Christlike figures: “To follow Christ is to risk one’s own life to save our Volk.” Christ was being hijacked to promote predatory ultranationalism. Both Pius XI and Pius XII would have considered that statement blasphemy.27 German Catholics were no less nationalistic and had their own national-religious saints and heroes, not Martin Luther, a nationalist hero to Protestant Germany, who cut German ties to Rome, but Saint Boniface (ca. 675–754), apostle to the Germans, sent by the pope to convert pagans into Christians. Boniface’s wide-ranging campaign was made possible by the close collaboration of the pope and Charles Martel, king of the Franks. This partnership with the church carried benefits for the state: an administrative structure of dioceses, papal disciplinary power over clergy, flourishing churches and monasteries, and Benedictine monks pioneering land clearing and agriculture – all of which helped unify the king’s subjects and consolidate his rule. This close alliance between church and state became the seedbed of the Holy Roman Empire, the Germanic successor to the Roman Empire. In the Catholic view, the church was there at the founding of what would become a strong, united Germany. It was no coincidence that German bishops held their annual meetings at Fulda, the monastery founded by Boniface, and the site of his relics. Barbara Stambolis has shown how this narrative supported the Catholic aspiration to be fully accepted into the German state and nation. Catholic aspirations were not understood by Bismarck when in 1871 he launched his campaign, known as the Kulturkampf, against the Catholic Church in Germany. The American historian of the Kulturkampf, Ronald Ross, sees a key factor in “grassroots fear of an alleged alien presence within the nation,” and “anti-Catholic hysteria.” But by the late nineteenth century Catholic processions and pilgrimages combined religious and national ceremonial rituals. Catholics sang a hymn to Pope Leo XIII in 1888, to the tune of the German anthem: “Hail to thee [the Kaiser] garlanded in victory.” Later, in 1937, eight hundred thousand pilgrims gathered together at the Cathedral of Trier, site of the Seamless Tunic of Christ, said to be worn at his crucifixion. They heard the Bishop of Aachen call the Catholic faith “the most precious support of German blood in a thousand-year history of our race,” though popes had condemned the idea of a common national blood as pagan.28

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How did Pope Pius XII handle this desecration of the faith, which turned it into an instrument of warlike and expansionist nationalism? He condemned nationalism taken to an extreme, which included a state’s aggression and invasion of another state. But what the pope condemned with one hand, he conceded with the other. The reader will remember from chapter 7 that Pius XII insisted he would not provoke a conflict between the Catholic’s duty to the state and duty to God. However, German clerics high and low went him one better, claiming that duty to the state was duty to God. Clerics insisted that war brought out Christian virtues: devotion, self-sacrifice, and obedience, and access to the sacraments, which especially when soldiers ran headlong into battle made death more bearable. We know that war subverts judgment, for people need to give meaning to death and destruction. As usual, then, the pope stepped down from his original stance and provoked no conflict of loyalties between state and religion. His self-restraint ended up as a blank cheque for war fever. The Catholic Church’s practice of laxity discussed earlier in this chapter put in the shade his condemnation of extreme nationalism. After all, citizens in their vast majority always saw their own nation as acting defensively rather than aggressively. The condemnation of extreme nationalism remained a dead letter.29 Church and State as “Perfect Societies” Accommodation to fallen human nature in view of the redemptive power of the church was one factor behind Pacelli’s policies. Another key to his policies, rooted in Catholic doctrine, was accommodation to the state. Pius XII made this clear in his 1939 encyclical Summi Pontificatus: “The Church preaches and inculcates obedience and respect for earthly authority which derives from God its whole origin and holds to the teachings of her Divine Master: ‘Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s (Saint Matthew xxii.21).’” Papal accommodation to National Socialism had nothing to do with favouring Hitler, and everything to do with accommodation to earthly authority. Accommodation, however, was – or was supposed to be – a twoway street. The church sought autonomy over its own affairs from the state; the trade-off for this independence was to be deference to the state. In sum, the church was willing to confer legitimacy to any state, no matter how criminal, in order to gain church autonomy. In this church-state pact, the claim to autonomy created a fence around

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the church. The state was not to dictate to the church on its religious rights.30 The Roman Church’s claim to autonomy was based on the notion that church and state were each a perfect society (Societas Perfecta), having sovereignty in its own sphere. Leo XIII in his 1885 encyclical Immortale Dei (On the Christian Constitution of States) spoke of the two powers of church and state, “each in its kind is supreme, each has fixed limits within which it is contained.” This meant that the church must remain “unfettered,” for the state’s concern was with its subjects’ well-being on earth, while the church’s was with the ultimate good, salvation, and eternal life. God was the author of authority both civil and religious, and the Divine intention was to have harmony between them. Ideally, this meant that the state’s duty to God was to recognize the Divine origin of the church and accept its dominance in morals, education, and matrimony. In this trade-off, the state would benefit from its close partnership with the church, as the church counselled obedience to authority as a religious duty.31 The notion of two perfect societies was supple and employed in different contexts: against state control of the church by the absolute monarchs of the eighteenth century; as a defence against the secular and anticlerical liberal state in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which was doing away with the church’s prominence in public life by asserting the priority of civil law in matters of education, marriage, and divorce; and against the authoritarian and totalitarian state in the twentieth century. The notion of the Perfect Society was often restated by popes. Indeed, the famous “Syllabus of Errors Condemned by Pius IX” of 1864, taken to be an onslaught on liberal notions of civil liberty and toleration, was far more concerned with incursions of the state into areas of ecclesiastical jurisdiction such as controlling papal communication with national hierarchies, appointing and dismissing bishops, regulating religious orders, and interfering in the education of youth. In his first encyclical in 1939, Pius XII used the concept to denounce the all-powerful, totalitarian state’s campaigns against the church. Much of the encyclical was devoted to the German government’s efforts to bar the church from educating Catholic youth and to the ideology of racial superiority which denied Catholic teaching on the unity of the human race.32 Vatican concordats or agreements between the sovereign Roman Church and state followed the Perfect Society model. Each was to be given its due, with overlapping areas to be negotiated: notably

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education, marriage, and divorce and the regulations for Catholic lay organizations. The 1929 concordat with the government of Fascist Italy recognized church sovereignty over its own affairs. In exchange each bishop vowed “to make respected by my clergy the King and the Government” and not to permit clergy “to be present at any meeting, which may injure the Italian state and public order.” In gaining the church’s support, the Italian government was forthcoming with concessions, recognizing the juridical personality of religious associations, the civil legality of church marriages, and extending Catholic religious education to secondary schools. In the 1933 concordat with the German government, the church was granted sovereignty over its own affairs – on paper only, as it turned out – while members of the hierarchy swore to “honor the legally constituted Government and to cause the clergy of my diocese to honor it.”33 The church needed the state for another reason as well. Popes viewed the church as a civilizing power, with an authoritative voice in public life, in religion, culture, education, and social and moral teaching. To this end, the church sought social eminence and good will on the part of the state. This concept has been called “Constantine’s Church,” for the Roman emperor who promoted and privileged the church, convinced that its unity and strength was essential to the unity of the state. Various Catholic spiritual movements over the centuries would complain about these church-state alliances: “Less pomp and more of the Gospel! You are Constantine’s church, not the Church of the Apostles.” Seeking partnership with the state cut off any justification for proclaiming truth to power, except on issues directly affecting the church in the narrow sense.34 The state was to deal with temporal matters, the church with supernatural matters. This division of labour sharply separated the temporal and the spiritual realms. Accordingly, the church ceded a wide range of public moral issues to the state. Accommodating to the state, Pius XI and Pius XII addressed governments most strongly and specifically on such subjects as religious education, marriage and divorce, abortion and pornography, and of course, racism to the extent that it violated church doctrines. How many times did Pius XII repeat that the church was above politics? One of the most unadorned expressions of this concept came from Adolf Cardinal Bertram of Breslau, well known for accommodating to the Nazi regime: “According to its nature and the task set by its Divine Founder, the Church should not act from a worldly standpoint

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according to a political viewpoint, but, on the contrary, from a supernatural standpoint, according to the viewpoint of Christian faith and Christian morals ... In fact, the Church will fulfil its responsibility to the welfare of state and nation more effectively, precisely in time of war, the more conscientiously it limits itself to its own realm.”35 There were, nevertheless, times when churchmen widened the notion of supernatural values, appealing to values of human solidarity and charity: when six French bishops protested against the deportations of the Jews in 1942; when Preysing pleaded with his fellow bishops for a public protest against the deportations of Jewish Germans in 1943; when Slovak bishops protested against the deportation of Jews in 1943; and when Bishop Galen spoke out against murderous forced euthanasia in Germany in 1941. For these churchmen, the concept did not consider divinely sanctioned state authority to have a blank cheque, but conditional on states not engaging in mass atrocities. We can conclude that the Perfect Society concept influenced but did not determine choices of action. But popes most often did impose drastic limitations on the scope of the church’s realm by making a sharp division between temporal and supernatural concerns. Nostalgia for a Lost Christian Civilization Culminates in Pragmatism In the 1960s Vatican II endorsed liberal democracy and human rights. As such, Vatican II set criteria for judging states not only according to the rights they granted to the church, but also according to the dignity and voice they afforded their citizens. Before the Second World War, popes simply favoured states that granted rights to the Roman Catholic Church, no matter what their form. Aside from that, popes embraced a nostalgic vision of a restored Christian civilization, while in reality they retreated into a free-floating pragmatism, measuring “greater” and “lesser” evils in their decision making. The gap between papal rhetoric and papal actions was wide. In spite of rhetoric, accommodation was the rule. Accommodation could take many forms, to either republican or authoritarian governments. For example, Pope Leo XIII, who counselled accommodation to the French Third Republic, considered liberal democracy anarchic. In 1885 he enumerated the “sophisms” of the modern world: “That no preference should be shown for any particular form of worship; that it is right for individuals to form their own

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personal judgments about religion; that each man’s conscience is his sole and all-sufficing guide; and that it is lawful for every man to publish his own views, whatever they may be.” In other words, error, socalled, is dangerous, and society should not allow it a hearing. Error is the fruit of pride and self-worship, and must yield to obedience to the Catholic Church “the true and sole teacher of virtue and guardian of morals.”36 Pope Pius XII, as well, saw little that was good in the modern world because it lacked a unitary Christian civilization which in medieval times marked the high point of “spiritual cohesion.” As he wrote in his 1939 encyclical, Summi Pontificatus, the world had lost “that unity of doctrine, faith, custom and morals” that prevailed in the heyday of the church. For only a civilization with a common faith could carry the message that all men are brothers, all descended from a common parent, all “sons of the same [divine] Father” and thus could bind humans together in a “supernatural union of all-embracing love.” The Christian faith was the only path to human brotherhood, to an end to wars, and to stability in public life.37 But popes had to deal with realities: with regimes that refused to privilege the church, or that were anticlerical, or that enacted freedom of religion for all. In these cases, popes put forth what was called the thesis-hypothesis rule. The thesis, or the goal in principle, was a close partnership between church and state, the hypothesis came into play when that partnership was not possible, but when the situation had to be accepted in order to avoid a greater evil. Pope Leo XIII stated the dilemma in his August 1881 encyclical Licet Multa (On Catholics in Belgium): “The divine influence of Christ should penetrate and completely impregnate all orders of the State.” But, referring to religious toleration in Belgium, he wrote, “She [the church] is often constrained to tolerate at times evils that it would be almost impossible to prevent, without exposing herself to calamities and troubles still more disastrous.” Or as he put it in Libertas Praestantissimum (On the Nature of Human Liberty; 1888), “Yet with the discernment of a true mother, the church weighs the great burden of human weakness, and well knows the course down which the minds and actions of men are in this our age being borne. For this reason, while not conceding any right to anything save what is true and honest, she does not forbid public authority to tolerate what is at variance with truth and justice, for the sake of avoiding some greater evil.” This pragmatic accommodation allowed the church to cling to its nostalgic remedy for the ills of the modern world, a church privileged

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by state and society, while making wide-ranging concessions to political realities. In his work of 1890, The Pope and the New Era, William Stead quoted this very passage and remarked bitingly, “This doctrine of the pitying mother who understands the tendency of the times, and tolerates in practice what she condemns in theory, enables the Pope to execute a curve with rapidity and dignity. Not, of course, that he admits the curve.”38 Pius XII was the last in the line of popes to take the thesis-hypothesis position, though in a bit more flexible version than previous popes. As late as 1953, in a speech to the National Assembly of the Union of Italian Catholic Jurists, he was still wrestling with this issue. His model remained a church ruling religion and morals in state and society. For “anything that does not take into account truth and morality has, objectively speaking, no right to exist, nor to dissemination, nor to a plan of action.” But he made broad exceptions: to say that “moral and religious error” must be suppressed because “tolerating it is in itself immoral” cannot apply in an “absolute and unconditional sense.” It was not just a matter of avoiding a “greater evil,” but of seeking a “greater good.” This greater good was creating amicable relations between church and state, and holding to the pragmatism that would allow the Roman Church to gain adherents everywhere.39 No wonder Pope Pius XII’s 1944 endorsement of democracy was a clumsy mix of the thesis-hypothesis position. He did claim that democracy provided a check on dictatorial regimes, for citizens in a democracy have power, voices of their own, and cannot be simply pressured to obey. But Pius XII supposed that such citizens were joined in an “organic and organizing unity,” somewhat like the Greek polis, or Rousseau’s “general will,” or in his mind medieval Christian civilization. In his view, such citizens would not be individualistic, motivated by self-interest, but linked in a communion, which put the “common good” first. In other words, democracy would have to be based on “the dignity of moral community willed by God; [and the] dignity of political authority ... deriving from its sharing in the authority of God.” Without such a foundation, political authority would be fragile, and the moral community would split apart, giving way to competing self-interest and the free rein of “impulses and appetites.” Using the patriarchal model of cleric as shepherd, the faithful as flock, Pius recommended that those in authority be “chosen for their solid Christian convictions,” for they best understood the need for “national unity and concord,” while citizens were susceptible to being “led astray.”40

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None of this resembles a real democracy with its plurality of religions, institutions that allow for peaceful combat among competing self-interests, rivalry among political parties, robust distrust of authority, and individualistic distaste for “moral communions.” Pius XII was still dreaming of reviving the Christian commonwealth. Nostalgia for a revived Christian civilization was so far from reality that the Roman Catholic Church was left to navigate between “greater” and “lesser” evils. During the Second World War weighing degrees of evil made it easier for Pius XII to take a stance “above the battle.” Such a stance was considered a “lesser evil” for the church. Militant Catholicism So far I have discussed the Catholic doctrines that led popes to take a stance of calculated acquiescence to evils, in the name of “lesser evils.” However, both Pius XI and Pius XII had their own way of doing battle with fascism, and we have to assess the results of their campaigns. Both popes were creatures of their era, an age of authoritarian and fascist governments in Europe, a period when democracy was on the defensive. As such, from 1938, Pope Pius XI took an aggressive stance against state totalitarianism by proposing another form of totalitarianism: authoritarian and fascist absolutism was to be fought with religious authoritarianism and absolutism. Pius XI declared in the summer of 1938: They say: everything must belong to the state, and so we have the totalitarian state ... This is a great usurpation, for if there is a totalitarian regime – totalitarian in practice and by right – it is the regime of the Church. Man is the creature of the good Lord. It was for him that Divine Redemption was ordained. He is the servant of God, destined to live for God on earth, and with God in heaven ... Therefore the Church truly has the right and the duty to claim total control over the individual ... The whole man belongs to the Church because he belongs to God.41

For Pius XI much of Europe had been captured by a rival ideology he called “statolatry,” a neopaganism that endowed the terrestrial collective – the nation, the state, the ruling party – with sacred and absolute value, and with the right to make total claims on the individual. Fire had to be fought with fire, pagan “totalitarianism” with Christian “totalitarianism,” pagan absolutism with Christian absolutism, fascist

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claims to unconditional obedience with the Catholic Church’s claim to absolute obedience, the cult of the pagan leader with the cult of the pope, fascist rituals with Catholic rituals, the fascist idea of tight community with the Catholic idea of tight community, fascist spectacles with Catholic spectacles, the fascist cult of heroes and martyrs with Catholic saints. Only so, would Catholics be strengthened in their faith, in the face of the rival claims of “statolatry.”42 Pope Pius XI set down his agenda in two encyclicals at the beginning of his pontificate, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio (On the Peace of Christ in His Kingdom), in December 1922, and Quas Primas (On the Feast of Christ the King), in December 1925. In Ubi Arcano he lamented that four years after the end of the Great War European nations were still in a “state of armed peace,” people’s fears were manipulated by demagogic politicians raising “the ever present menace of new wars,” and class war within nations was tearing at “the social fabric.” “Mutual provocations” led to “revolutions, riots and forcible repression.” Add to that parliamentary democracy, where political parties promoted their own selfish interests, rather than “the common welfare.” For Pius XI the modern concept of popular sovereignty created anchorless political systems, ripe for “overthrow” by one faction or another. Finally, “the revolutionary spirit” had penetrated and weakened the family and corrupted personal morals. The root of these evils was “the plague of anti-clericalism,” Pius XI’s term for modernism or secularism, where Catholicism was no longer the foundation for culture, education, politics, economics, family life, and public morals. Dethroning the Catholic Church, “the safe and sure guide to conscience,” meant Truth no longer ruled over public life. Religion had been banished to the realm of private life, where subjective choices were limitless.43 Europe had lost the anchor of church authority. Pius XI traced the evil back to the Protestant Reformation. On 21 May 1925 he pointedly canonized Peter Canisius, apostle to the Germans. Canisius, spearhead of the Catholic Counter-Reformation, led the campaign against “the deadly errors of heresy.” Martin Luther was the Roman Church’s nemesis, the source of these errors, and a straight line went from him to present-day secularism. Luther’s notion of the transparency of scripture and the primacy of faith broke free of the church as interpreter and teacher of doctrine, and led to a dangerous subjectivism in which men followed the whims of personal conscience. The proliferation of Protestant sects during the Reformation was the first indication of how far Christian unity was torn apart.44

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Condemning the Protestant Reformation as the root of modern decline was customary in the Catholic Church. In Militantis Ecclesiae (On St Peter Canisius), an encyclical he issued in August 1897, Pope Leo XIII had denounced the “Lutheran revolt,” whose “error hastened the final collapse of morals.” And in the May 1910 encyclical Editae Saepe (On St Charles Borromeo), Pope Pius X condemned the Protestant Reformation as the root of modern secularism and anticlericalism.45 Now conflict ruled between individuals, in families, within societies, and among nations, all the result of the breakdown of authority. Secularism unleashed the sinful passions: materialism, greed, pride of self, and insubordination. Pius XI declared in his encyclical Quas Primas that authority was now “derived not from God but from man,” which subjected authority to the winds of ideological fashions, to subjectivity, to the whims of the age, to whoever ruled. Only legitimacy derived from God had rock-solid permanence: “Authority itself lost its hold on mankind, for it had lost that sound and unquestionable justification for its right to command on the one hand and to be obeyed on the other.” Pius XI’s ideal was a monolithic Roman Catholic Church restoring authority and “well-ordered discipline, peace, and harmony,” where men recognized their obligations to others and their common origins and brotherhood through the worship of Jesus and his message of love. Men must return to the “Kingdom of Christ,” not only to Christ the Redeemer who saves the individual, but Christ the “lawgiver,” who rules over society. Christ’s Kingdom extended to all realms, public and private: culture, education, government, society, and the family. As Pius XI saw Christ the lawgiver, his “earthly kingdom” will “be enriched with justice and peace ... and He shall rule from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth.” Christ’s reign was to cover “the most far distant regions of the earth,” for “His empire includes ... also those who are outside the Christian faith.”46 Pius was calling for Catholic militancy against the forces of secularism. This was behind his launch in 1925 of the annual feast of Christ the King. As the pope put it, “feasts affect both mind and heart,” so feasts are far more effective than official pronouncements. Church festivals were to rival fascist neopagan festivals. Italian historian Emma Fattorini has pointed out how this feast, and others, were meant to promote both deeper personal piety and activism on behalf of the rechristianization of the public realms of politics, society, and culture. British Ambassador to the Vatican D’Arcy Osborne noted that during Holy Year 1925, a jubilee year, approximately 1.25 million pilgrims had come to Rome to

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pray for peace, or “Pax Christi in regno Christi.” He observed that the Holy Year “was not only a religious demonstration; it was also a political event of no little interest.”47 The International Eucharistic Congress was held about every other year since 1881. These were great open-air assemblies of several days duration attended by dignitaries of both the Roman Church and the state and by many tens of thousands to over a hundred thousand of the faithful. These congresses featured inspirational speeches, devotional masses, acts of personal contrition and penance, close communion with Christ through the Eucharist sacrifice, and high hopes for God’s gift of grace. The Eucharist was a meal, as it were, in which the believer who partakes in faith and love becomes “one body” with Christ, and one body with each other. It is the strongest way Christ is present in the believer, opening his or her heart to the love of God and to love of one another. Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli attended a number of these congresses as Pius XI’s representative. At the 1934 Congress in Buenos Aires, on 14 October he spoke of the meaning of the Eucharist as “the sacrament of love,” then quoted Jesus from John 6:57, “He that eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood abideth in Me and I in him.” Then in tones of world-conquering militancy, he said, “From the depths of all hearts rise voices of reparation and of triumph, which seem to say: ‘No, Jesus will not now die amid the humiliations and sorrows of Calvary.’ Faith will conquer apostacy … With His help we shall raise a throne for Him in every heart. We shall make Him loved by every soul, and by all the peoples of the earth.”48 Another cult was devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Devotion was based upon the old notion that the heart was the “seat” of love, and that Christ’s heart, pierced at the Crucifixion, was “united to his divinity as the symbol of his redemptive love,” which opened the gates of divine love and grace.49 Spurred on in 1854 by Pius IX’s declaration of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary were the Marian devotions, which were practices of piety to Mary who was born free of original sin. Four years later, in 1858, apparitions of Mary appeared over a span of several months to one Bernadette Subirous at Lourdes. Soon Lourdes became a site of mass pilgrimage and miraculous healing. Another apparition endorsed by the Church, occurred in May 1917 to three young children at Fatima in Portugal. By that October fifty thousand pilgrims had descended on Fatima. These pilgrimages built upon the traditional view of Mary, the

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Mother of God, who could turn away her son’s righteous wrath and bring mercy to sinners. Devotions to the “immaculate heart of Mary” saw a great revival in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.50 Feasts and pilgrimages were signs of an enormous Catholic spiritual vitality and revival beginning in the nineteenth century, a revival surging from below and directed from above. The eminent Catholic Church historian Roger Aubert pointed to the development of “a piety more accessible to the masses,” marked by intense and emotional devotions and more frequent participation in confession and communion. Emphasis on the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, and on translating Christ’s gift of love into a more apostolic life, promoted a deeper Catholic spirituality.51 Through these cults Pius XI was promoting a highly organized and militant Catholicism primed to do battle with secularism and neopaganism by promoting objective Truth, unconditional certainty, human conscience guided by the church, and obedience to authority. Did the papal campaign make any difference in the Catholic response to collaborationist and fascist governments in the mid-twentieth cenutry? Perhaps new research will yield a more certain answer, but from the evidence at hand (see chapter 3), I would argue that the Catholic revival simply reinforced these regimes. After all, the Vichy regime presided over a Catholic revival, as did the Slovak and Croatian regimes, while Fascist Italy extended relatively ample powers to the church. In 1938 Cardinal Secretary of State Pacelli called upon Hungary to continue to fulfil its historic Catholic mission, tacitly approving its recent anti-Jewish laws (see chapter 4). Their friendliness to the church helped mute papal criticism of these regimes. All that can be said is that the Catholic revival strengthened the impact of papal criticism when regimes curtailed the rights of the church. Holding On to the Old and the Coming of the New

“The Mystical Body of Christ, the Church”: Encouraging and Restraining Popular Piety In the next two sections of this chapter, I will point to some new developments in the Roman Catholic Church which show up the contrast between the theology of Pope Pius XII and later Catholic views. These later views downplayed notions of papal paternalism and responsibility for the salvation of souls.

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Popes promoted religious authority in an authoritarian age. The appearance of papal power rested on centralization from above. Vitality from below, from the laity, while welcome in a later democratic age, witness the decrees of Vatican II, could be worrisome to Pius XI and Pius XII, as in their eyes, it threatened to diminish the monolithic image of the church. Pius XII’s June 1943 encyclical Mystici CorporisChristi (The Mystical Body of Christ, the Church) was a response to what had become a popular development called the liturgical movement, which championed greater lay participation in communal public and private prayer in the church. Originated by theologians and monks in the nineteenth century, the movement became Europe-wide, with an especially strong presence in Belgium and Germany. The eventual outcome was a deeper and more active lay participation in the liturgy and with it a growing use of the vernacular, as well as an emphasis on the parish church as the focus of the communal life of the faithful. The movement was about communion, a fellowship of believers singing together and participating in the liturgy. The culmination of the liturgy was the Eucharist, partaking of the consecrated bread and wine, which was the body and blood of Christ. A principle of faith that followed from the liturgical movement was that the Holy Spirit dwelling within the Body of Christ carried “charisms” or spiritual gifts, bestowed sometimes on humble believers. The implication was that the Holy Spirit makes no juridical distinction among believers. All are equal in receiving grace, the transforming power of God’s love that penetrates deeply into the hearts of believers, strengthening their will to good. Pope Pius XII himself had encouraged more fervent lay devotion, and more frequent Communion. He approved of these trends, but did not want to concede too much to them, pointing out their dangers in undermining the juridical and hierarchical character of the church. Archbishop Conrad Gröber of the archdiocese of Freiburg im Breisgau expressed his worries about the liturgical movement to the Curia in January 1943. He was concerned about what he called “overstressing” the concept of the general priesthood (by extending it to the laity), by attempts to make the congregational mass “obligatory,” and finally, by using German in the Mass. Other German bishops pointed out that the communal celebration of the liturgy was strengthening Catholic solidarity under Nazi rule, by giving Catholic youth an “awareness and experience of community.” This was the usual dilemma of the hierarchical church: how to allow creative initiatives from below while maintaining top-down control.52

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The American theologian and later cardinal, Avery Dulles, SJ, has called the 1943 encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi “the most comprehensive official Catholic pronouncement on the Church prior to Vatican II.” Pius XII was seeking to square the circle, to accommodate two streams in tension within Catholicism: the Holy Spirit as a source of enthusiastic initiatives and renewal in the church and the Holy Spirit that endows the hierarchy with special pastoral and teaching gifts. In Pius XII’s understanding of the two-tier church and the role of the laity, even though some laypersons do reach the heights of holiness, they still occupy “an honorable if often a lowly place,” in relation to “those who exercise sacred power … its first and chief members.” Pius XII made fine distinctions: “He [Christ] is personally present and divinely active in all the members, nevertheless in the inferior members acts also through the ministry of the higher members.” Pius XII was not breaking new ground, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit was a general papal concern, as those possessed by it might unsettle the church, speak truth to power, demand reforms. Pius XII was only echoing Leo XIII’s strictures of 1899: “these monitions and impulses of the Holy Spirit are for the most part felt through the medium of the aid and light of an external teaching authority.” Pius XII was affirming the notion of the church as the Mystical Body of Christ, an organic body of the faithful bound together by the presence of the Holy Spirit. Nevertheless, Pius XII did not want to weaken the hierarchical element in the church. Pius XII saw a further danger in how the concept of the church as the Mystical Body of Christ was understood: spiritualist sects during the Protestant Reformation had made a distinction between the visible church full of sinfulness and an invisible church of those truly touched by grace: those saved, and known only to God. Pius XII rejected the view that Christ pours out the graces of the Holy Spirit “in a hidden and extraordinary manner,” creating an “invisible” church, a special holy communion of those possessed of charismatic gifts. He pointedly said that Christ won for mankind “an ineffable flow of graces,” but chose “not to impart these graces to mankind directly; but He willed to do so only through a visible Church.” Pius XII was reaffirming not only monolithic papal authority, but also the notion of the weakness of human nature and the redemptive power of the church. He was identifying the Body of Christ with the visible church, the two-tier church whose children, for the most part, were “sinners and the weak” and needed shepherds to protect them from themselves.53

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The Church as the Body of Christ We are being anachronistic if we suppose that later theological developments might have led Pope Pius XII to a different response to fascist and collaborationist regimes. Doing so is counterfactual history, or “what if,” or imagined history. Still, such history highlights by contrast the reasons the pope made the choices he did, within the limits of the historical context of the time. For a final example: by identifying the two-tier hierarchical church with the Body of Christ, that is, the resurrected Body, Divine and abiding as Spirit in the Church, Pius XII was emphasizing the divine aspect of the church, or in a famous phrase, the church was “without Spot or Wrinkle,” that is, the perfect holiness of the church. Pius declared, “Our Divine Redeemer also governs His Mystical Body [the Church] in a visible and normal way through His Vicar on earth.” In other words, God speaks through his Vicar, the pope. Such close identification with the divine rules out any criticism of the juridical and hierarchical structures of the church, not to say papal pronouncements. Again the pope was standing for absolutism in the church. Avery Dulles puts it plainly when he states, “Although Catholics have sometimes admitted the faults of individual believers, they have regarded the church itself as pure and holy.”54 Indeed, in Catholic theology, the church is Divine; it is the church of Christ, of the sacraments, of his gifts of grace, of the Holy Spirit. However, the church, the official Roman Church, also burned heretics, sanctioned Holy Wars, burned the Talmud, lusted for power – and the list of outrages goes on and on. We are not, therefore, dealing here with an either/or issue, but with a matter of emphasis, that is, Pius XII’s overemphasis on the divine rather than human reality of the Church. Later Catholic theologians in the period of Vatican II and beyond have taken a different position. The Swiss theologian Hans Küng agrees that the Holy Spirit is present in the church. But then he qualifies what that means by saying, “The Church is a building which exists in the Spirit and through the Spirit and by virtue of the Spirit of the Lord.” However, the Spirit is “the Spirit of God,” while the church is a human structure made up of saints and sinners. In other words, only God, not the church, is “without Spot or Wrinkle.” As Küng declares, the church “is not an idealized Church, which self-confidently claims to be more than it is and therefore cannot fulfill its promises, it is not a minimalized Church, which despises itself, claims to be less than it is and therefore

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cannot make any promises.” In other words, one can speak of a human and sinful church without denying its divine character. By these criteria Pius XII certainly professed an idealized church claiming “to be more than it is.”55 The Dominican theologian Yves Congar, O.P., has also been critical of Pius XII’s view. He pointed to the difference between seeing the church as the Body of Christ rather than as the Bride of Christ: as the Bride of Christ, Christ is her Lord, the relationship is one of “encounter,” while the church as the Body of Christ suggests identity. Congar concludes, thus “the authority of God has been seen as wholly, one might almost say physically and automatically present in the authority of the Church; the absolute standard of the divine authority has become, so it would seem, identified with and invested in the human standard of the ecclesiastical authorities.” To Congar this theology promoted an “absolutist sense given to authority and obedience.”56 The matter was clear to Pius XII: The church is holy, of divine origin, the Body of Christ, informed by the Holy Spirit, dispenser of the sacraments, the channel of grace through which men are reconciled to God. Therefore, any abuses by the church, even at the highest level, were committed by sinful individuals, not by the “Church as such.” I turn to Hans Küng once again: “The Church … is not an idealized and hypostatized pure element, distinct from human beings, but is a fellowship of believing men, the Church is a sinful Church.”57 Karl Rahner, SJ, the most influential of the theological experts at Vatican II, spoke of the “Church as such” as both sinful and holy, a way of putting together both the divine and human aspect of the church. The implication was that some doctrines, traditions, and practices of the past may reflect older involuntary biases and need to be re-examined. Rahner found Church self-criticism fully compatible with the faith, “for the Church is never so distorted by sin that the Holy Spirit abandons her; she remains the principle channel of grace.”58 In addition, Vatican Council II introduced a widened sense of the role of individual judgment in matters of conscience. In Avery Dulles’ assessment, “Without diluting the institutional aspect, the council accented the values of personal freedom, inner appropriation and active participation.” Much more stress was now laid on the autonomy of individual conscience and the notion that Catholics were responsible for their own salvation. In line with this emphasis on individual conscience, Vatican II sought a wider legitimization for Catholic self-criticism by stressing that the

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church must be viewed in the light of the biblical term, “the People of God,” as well as being a divine institution. This put weight on the human element in the church, underscoring that Catholics up and down the hierarchy, just as the ancient Israelites, were often unfaithful. Accordingly, the church had to be open to penance and renewal. Vatican II affirmed the value of personal freedom. As Avery Dulles writes, “The acceptance of true doctrine should not be a matter of blind conformity, as though truth could be imposed by decree. The church, as a society that respects the freedom of the human conscience, must avoid procedures that savor of intellectual tyranny.” When Pope John XXIII, in a gesture of reconciliation to Protestants, said that abuses in the church helped bring about the Reformation, he was echoing the reformist Pope Hadrian VI (1522–23), who had admitted that “the evils of the Church had spread downwards from the papacy.” The official Vatican newspaper, the Osservatore Romano, did not publish Pope John’s statement, apparently not relishing official mea culpas. John’s successor, Pope Paul VI (1963–78), repeated the confession of official guilt when addressing the Vatican Council. For Avery Dulles, the notion of the “people of God” was a sign of the times, a breath of fresh air full of promise for a reformed church. These principles, the autonomy of conscience and the legitimacy of criticizing the church itself, would become suited to the post–Second World War individualism of democratic states and cultures, though not to the papal creed of absolutism and obedience of an earlier era.59 Thus, while a number of post-war theologians, some who were theological experts/advisers at Vatican II and on the Council itself, developed an alternative version of the relation between the divine and the human in the church, Pope Pius XII, in the interwar and wartime periods, did not want to shake the pillars of Catholic paternalism, absolutism, unquestioned hierarchical leadership, and obedience. Indeed, this was the basis of the Roman Church’s relative strength in the 1930s and 1940s. Holiness Upheld by Lies Overemphasizing the divine nature of the church highlighted the human and fallible and devious schemes of Vatican officials. Those close to the Vatican were ever mindful of the church’s divine image, and they went to great lengths to uphold it by burnishing the reputation of the Roman Church, sometimes resorting to deception.

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One example is a memo by Vatican Undersecretary of State Monsignor Domenico Tardini. In a note of 18 May 1942 to Cardinal Secretary of State Luigi Maglione, he discussed German crimes in Poland. Tardini described Archbishop Adam Stefan Sapieha of Kraków as “a terrorized and disheartened man” and recommended sending him a personal letter to raise his spirits, one he could also communicate to others. In Tardini’s sober judgment, a public condemnation by the pope “would not seem opportune,” even though it falls “within the rights and duties of the Holy See (as the supreme guardian of natural law)”; the Germans would retaliate by intensifying the persecution of Catholic Poles, impede even more severely contact between the pope and the Polish bishops, and stop the little charitable work the pope could still do for the Poles. Accordingly, Tardini advised Maglione, “You could prepare instead a refined diplomatic note to the German government … elevated, noble, delicate in form as much as it is stark in substance … The note should have the character of a kind of anguished appeal more than of a protest.” Tardini did not believe the note would stop the Germans, but it would demonstrate “the prudence and steadfastness of the Holy See.” Tardini was well aware that the German Foreign Office was no longer accepting – let alone responding to – Vatican diplomatic notes on Poland. However, he concluded, “It would be a document coming to light one day … and will demonstrate the prudence and steadfastness of the Holy See.” The point of this useless act was to bolster the image of the church. On another occasion, in a memo of 7 April 1943, Monsignor Tardini insisted the church had every right to intervene over renewed threats of deportations in Slovakia as they were “an offence against justice, charity, humanity,” and as such violations of “divine law or natural law.” The case was all the more pressing as the president of Slovakia was a priest: “therefore the scandal is greater and greater also is the danger that the responsibility can be shifted to the Catholic Church itself.” The answer was to follow the path of diplomacy: “it would appear opportune” for the Vatican to hand a protest note to the Slovak minister, “in even clearer form” than the one the year before. Since the Jews had appealed to the Vatican for aid, the note should be made “discreetly known” to the world. The fact that the Jews “will never be too friendly to the Holy See” will only add to the merit of the church’s deed. Tardini was proposing that a confidential memo be sent to the Slovak ambassador and then leaked to the world press. The aim was to go on the offensive: prevent criticism of the church by making the church shine as the moral conscience of the world. Tardini assumed that this empty

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gesture would win high praise because the world would understand that caring about the lives of those “never too friendly to the Church” was above and beyond its duty to humanity.60 In another example, about a week after the deportation of the Jews of Rome, the Jesuit Pietro Tacchi Venturi, the Vatican’s liaison to the Italian government, told Cardinal Maglione that families of the deportees were pleading with him to urge the pope to make enquiries about their fate. Tacchi Venturi continued, “A step like this by the Holy See, even if it does not have the desired effect, will without doubt help increase the veneration and gratitude towards the August Person of the Holy Father.” For Maglione’s information Monsignor Angelo Dell’Acqua, a Vatican official, had added a comment to the note. Based on what had happened in other countries, he noted there was little chance of finding out about the fate of the deportees: “the experience in other countries is rather eloquent in this regard.” Apparently this did not deter Father Tacchi-Venturi as long as the gesture paid off in gratitude to the pope. We could call his proposal cynical, except that the view of the church as “without spot or wrinkle” encouraged lies.61 Perhaps the crudest example of turning the church into an end in itself can be found in a January 1943 statement by Monsignor Cesar Orsenigo, apostolic nuncio in Berlin. This was during an exchange between Orsenigo and Bishop Preysing’s secretary. Preysing, bishop of Berlin, the most anti-Nazi of the German bishops, complained about the exchange to Pius. It happened that Orsenigo was exasperated with the actions of German Catholic clergy who defied the Gestapo by pressing for care, including pastoral care, for Poles deported to Germany as forced labourers. Orsenigo explained that “the Reich government did not consider Poles a conquered people, but enemies of the Reich.” Preysing’s secretary responded, “Nevertheless, [these] priests suffering injustice were, anyhow, martyrs to Christian love.” Preysing then stated, “To which Orsenigo retorted (in the following sense). Christian love is all well and good, but the highest Christian love is to make no difficulties for the Church.” Preysing was incensed at Orsenigo’s remark, so indifferent to Polish suffering. Pius XII responded by pointedly praising Canon Bernhard Lichtenberg, arrested and shipped to Dachau for calling for prayers for the persecuted German Jews. He made no comment about Orsenigo’s callousness towards the Poles. In any case, Orsenigo’s brutally frank manner of speech showed how the tactics employed to uphold the divine image of the Roman Church, were penetrated with cynicism and lies.62

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Image and Reality It is easy to see how the self-declared monarchical papacy created the image of a powerful church whose pronouncements would make dictators think twice, and influence the course of history. Add to that the foreign apparatus of the Holy See: Joël-Benoît d’Onorio has counted Vatican diplomatic relations with thirty states in 1939, along with forty concordats and accords. Pope Pius XII was seen as an international figure, important enough to merit President Roosevelt’s personal representative in lieu of diplomatic relations.63 Many things contributed to this image of the pope. For one, personal devotion to the pope, initiated by Pius IX, became a new feature of modern Catholicism. Prior to this time, popes tended to be remote. Eamon Duffy has pointed to the frequency of mass papal audiences, pilgrimages to Rome to see and venerate Pope Pius IX, and devotional pictures of him in every Catholic household.64 Pope Pius XII as well fostered these personal ties. In his 30 September 1939 audience in Rome with Poles, a few weeks after the invasion of their land, he established an emotional bond with them and their suffering. Pius XII called himself “the representative of Jesus-Christ, the living image of God incarnate.” He spoke of his “paternal tenderness” and the “effusions of [his] heart” for his children: “Who of you can suffer without me suffering with him?” Pius XII was a Christlike figure, suffering for Poles, indeed for humankind. As such his paternal love and concern would protect the faithful.65 Oliver Logan has added much to our understanding of the “cult of the papal person.” The cult was a phenomenon of the age of the masses and their emotional enthusiasm for a unifying leader standing above internal divisions. Like Mussolini – Il Duce – Pius XII spoke to adoring crowds from a balcony overseeing St Peter’s Square. Mussolini spoke from the Palazzo Venezia. Their messages certainly differed, but what was similar was the masses’ emotional bond to a specific person believed to have special powers. Anniversary years marking stages in a pope’s career were occasions for mass pilgrimages to Rome, for a sight of the pope, for his blessing. Logan quotes a 1944 description of Pius XII in the Osservatore Romano: “He resembles an El Greco figure … with that extreme elongation of the emaciated and almost transparent body, as if it were made only to serve as a refuge for a soul.” Pius XII marshalled what Logan calls “the unarmed power of purity,” the opposite of naked force.66

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Ceremonial added to the impression of papal power. Popes were anointed and crowned, like Christian kings. When Pope Pius XII was elected pope, only two Christian monarchs still kept up this solemn ceremonial, George VI (King of the United Kingdom, the Dominions of the British Commonwealth, and Emperor of India), and the pope. The papal crown was a tiara or triple-tiered crown encrusted with precious stones. Just as Napoleon took the crown from the hands of Pope Pius VII and crowned himself emperor, Pius was crowned not by the College of Cardinals who elected him nor a representative chosen by the cardinals, but by the dean of the Cardinal Deacons (the lowest ranking of Cardinals), a sign that the pope was crowning himself. As the New York Times reported, “ A Pope cannot acknowledge any authority superior to his own save, of course, the authority of God, whose vicar on earth he claims to be and whose authority he employs in sacred delegated form.” After the coronation, Pius XII performed the Mass before the throng in St Peter’s Square. After that he was carried aloft in a portable chair (Sedia gestatoria) so as to be visible to all. The chair took him to the sanctuary in St Peter’s, on a route lined with royalty – “kings and princes and princesses, and dukes and marshals and ambassadors.” Going beyond protocol, the Crown Prince of Italy in full military uniform advanced to the pope with the Princess, and kneeled before him. St Peter’s Basilica itself was the burial site of the apostle Saint Peter, the first bishop of Rome, himself crucified; ninety-one other popes were buried there. Pius XII was at the church of origin. The world gazed at this “drama-pageant,” this sacred ceremony worthy of an emperor ruling by divine authority, and staking a claim to universal moral authority in a world hungry for leadership.67 The Canadian biographer of Pius XII, Robert Ventresca, has described the impression left on US Ambassador to the United Kingdom Joseph Kennedy, who was invited with his family to the coronation. Honoured to have Pius preside over the seven-year-old Teddy Kennedy’s First Communion, Kennedy noted in his journal: “If this world hasn’t gone too far to be influenced by a great and good man, this is the man.”68 Image and reality were not the same, however. During the First World War Benedict XV had put himself forward as a world moral authority, yet his biographer, John Pollard, has called him “an impotent bystander” by the war’s end. For all Pius XII’s international apparatus and universalist claims, we can say the same for him. However, just like Benedict XV, Pius XII was a success as pope, not a failure, for he steered the Roman Church intact through stormy seas. As a universal

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moral authority, however, an immense gap existed between his claims and reality.69 Catholic traditions had always revered the memory of its martyrs. In 1940 Theodor Haecker, the German-Catholic writer and philosopher, wrote in his diary, “It often seems to me that the Vatican has completely and absolutely forgotten that Peter was not only Bishop of Rome, and as such held the primacy of teaching and was infallible, but was also a martyr. But the days of recollection and imitation are approaching and are not far distant.” The days of “imitation” came for Haecker. As an anti-Nazi, he was arrested and released, but forbidden to lecture or speak publicly.70 Both Pope Pius XI and his Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli claimed that the church universal had a mission to uphold humanity, morality, and charity. As early as April 1933, when the first anti-Jewish decrees were issued, Pope Pius XI asked Cardinal Pacelli to sound out Cesare Orsenigo, nuncio to Germany, on what could be done to raise objections to anti-Jewish persecution. Pacelli had made a note to himself: “The day may come when we will have to be able to say that something was done about this matter.” The day never came.71 The fact remains however, that when Theodor Haecker took risks, only he and his loved ones were involved. For Pius XII what was at stake was his duty to hand down a two-thousand-year-old religious institution intact to his successors, in a time of danger. The weight of his office pointed him to the past. A story by Vatican Undersecretary of State Giovanni Montini, later Pope Paul VI, tells it all: in February 1941 Pius and Montini descended to the crypt of St Peter’s Basilica, the burial place of almost a hundred popes. For a long time, Pius XII simply lingered “praying and commenting,” then prayed at the tombs of Pius X and Benedict XV. Montini commented, “Never had the communion of saints and the spiritual genealogy of the successors of Christ been given, it seemed to me, a more moving expression.” Pius XII was at the church where it all began, where Saint Peter was buried, where he himself would be buried, a church whose architectural edifices had been built up by succeeding generations of popes. Pius XII was a link in this chain.72 Pope Pius XII explained his priorities in his allocution to the Sacred College of Cardinals on Christmas Eve 1946: “The Church, mandated by the divine Saviour to lead all peoples to their eternal salvation, has no intention of intervening or taking sides in controversies of a purely earthly order. She is a mother. Do not ask a mother to pronounce against

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one or the other of her sons. Each must experience her clear-sighted and generous affection, a deep and unfailing tenderness … which inspires the lost sheep and those led astray to find their way back to her maternal guidance … Our intention is not to criticize but to encourage, not to accuse but to save.” Pius XII’s mission as pope was to accord leniency to the faithful, to his flock.73 Judgment and Historical Context The papal cult and papal ceremonial as well as papal authoritarianism and absolutism were the natural defences for the Roman Catholic Church in the interwar era, for these defences suited the climate of the times. Democratic parliamentary republics introduced in much of Europe after the First World War seemed to usher in liberal values of pluralism, separation of church and state, conflicting political interests settled by parliamentary negotiation, and the importance of individual rights. But in the interwar years, most parliamentary governments were fragile and beset by political paralysis, and cabinet coalitions were shortlived, unable to muster stable majorities in multiparty parliaments. Just as important, the liberal values underpinning these governments were not widely held. With some exceptions, Europe turned to authoritarian government. Mark Mazower has argued astutely that Europeans were not being seduced, as it were, by charismatic demagogues the likes of Mussolini and Hitler. Instead, Europeans were turning to familiar traditions of authoritarian rule. As a result, interwar politics came to be dominated by clashes between the Old Right, standing for the old elites and the church, and the New Right, or fascist movements. One or the other took power, or sometimes a mix of the two. Authoritarian governments triumphed in Spain, Greece, Austria, Slovakia, Croatia, Poland, Hungary, Romania, and of course, Italy and Germany. As a result, still fragile values of individualism and civic rights gave way to notions of the primacy of the collective and tight national unity. Characteristic of this period was “the sacralization of politics,” mass rallies, rituals, parades, leader worship, in which the individual merged himself or herself into the collective. Particularly in Italy and Germany, governments sought to remould their subjects by controlling every aspect of their lives.74 A more progressive Catholic theology became dynamic and forceful only long after the Second World War, in the 1960s. Vatican II selectively appropriated the values of liberal democracy, of human rights,

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the rights of conscience, a higher regard for the autonomous conscience of the laity, less stress on the hierarchy having to guide the faithful for their own good, the separation of church and state, greater pluralism within the church, a larger field for self-criticism, more dialogue within and without the church, less exclusivist views on who can attain salvation, greater stress on temporal activism, and an affirmation of some of the good in the optimistic vision of earthly progress. Such reforms could only have occurred in an era when liberal democracy was a success, not a failure. This different outlook could not emerge in a period when the church was up against statist fascism, or at a time when Catholics on all sides were engaged in armed conflict. For all the talk about returning to a medieval utopia when authority had divine sanction, when popes were powerful, when state and society shared one bond of faith, Pius XII well understood that the time was long gone when popes could enforce their judgments on kings, or have kings enforce the church’s judgments. Dictatorships and the war placed constraints on him, as did his own beliefs. But his universalist spiritual claims prompted him to pretend to a role as a moral authority who would resist evil and speak truth to power. Need gave credence to this claim, the need among those fighting a war, or in distress, for an unassailable world moral authority to rally to their side. The most lamentable part of the story belongs to the victims reaching out to the pope in a last-resort desperate appeal to weigh in with his moral authority on their behalf. As were so many, they were taken in by papal pretentions. Listen to this cringing appeal by the lay leaders of the three Jewish religious denominations of Slovakia, which reached Pius XII on 13 March 1942. The occasion was the deportation of Jewish Slovaks to German-occupied Poland, by the government of Slovakia: “Most Holy Father! The Jewry of all Slovakia, 90,000 souls, has recourse to Your Holiness for help and salvation. We are condemned to destruction … No one can help us. We place all our hope and confidence in Your Holiness as the safest refuge of all the persecuted … Would Your Holiness kindly influence the President of Slovakia, so that he … will not permit our banishment?” But as the bishops of Slovakia and the president of the country, the priest, Father Josef Tiso, approved the deportations, the Vatican did no more than intervene on behalf of Catholics of Jewish descent.75 By contrast we have Pius XII defending his world mission as Vicar of Christ. On 13 May 1940 the Italian ambassador to the Holy See, Dino Alfieri, told the pope that his messages of commiseration addressed to

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the sovereigns of Belgium, Luxemburg, and the Netherlands, during the German invasion these countries, were “a cause of serious displeasure” to the Duce. Pius replied that as head of the Vatican city-state, officially neutral, he had to stand up against violations of the neutrality of other states, no matter who invaded them and that, after all, he had not mentioned Germany. The pope then launched into a lofty and extravagant proclamation of his world mission: “The Pope at times cannot remain silent. Governments only consider political and military issues, intentionally disregarding moral and legal issues in which, on the other hand, the Pope is primarily interested in and cannot ignore … How could the Pope, in the present circumstances, be guilty of such a serous omission as that of remaining a disinterested spectator of such heinous acts, while the entire world was waiting for his word?”76 The pope’s words were not matched by his actions. Pius XII betrayed these grand claims, whose purpose was, in any case, to strengthen the Roman Church’s conversionist reach. It would be naive to expect otherwise. The pope’s claim to speak for universal justice certainly burnished his image and that of the church, but practically speaking it was a dead letter. During the crisis of the 1930s and 1940s, Eugenio Pacelli fulfilled his mission, as defined by long-established Catholic doctrine. The Roman Church came through intact during stormy seas. His triumph depended upon top-down clerical hierarchy, clear lines of juridical and teaching authority, a two-tier conception of shepherds and flock, upholding absolute truth, bringing salvation to the faithful, and carrying out the conversionist mission of a world-conquering religion. The consequence was a papacy engaged in calculated acquiescence in the face of systematic atrocities, even state-sponsored destruction of whole peoples.

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Notes

Introduction 1 John Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII (New York: Viking, 1999). Daniel Goldhagen, A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair (New York: Alfred Knopf, 2002). 2 Michael Phayer, Pius XII, the Holocaust, and the Cold War (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), x, includes the Marrus quote. On the spiritual world of Pius, see xiv; Emma Fattorini, Hitler, Mussolini, and the Vatican: Pope Pius XI and the Speech that Was Never Made, trans. Carl Ipsen (Cambridge: Polity, 2011), 7; Paul O’Shea, A Cross Too Heavy: Eugenio Pacelli – Politics and the Jews of Europe, 1917–1943 (Kenthurst, NSW: Rosenberg, 2008), 20. Other books in English dealing with Catholic religious doctrine include Kevin Spicer, Resisting the Third Reich: The Catholic Clergy in Hitler’s Berlin (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2004); James Carroll, Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001); José Sánchez, Pius XII and the Holocaust: Understanding the Controversy (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2002). 3 Kevin Spicer, “Selective Resistance: The German Catholic Church’s Response to National Socialism,” in Stephen Feinstein, Karen Shierman, and Marcia Sachs Little, eds., Confronting the Holocaust: A Mandate for the 21st Century, Part 2 (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1988), 71–88. Breuer Thomas, “Kirche und Fremde unter dem Hakenkreuz: Zur Frage nach dem Selbstverständnis der katholischen Kirche in der N-S Zeit.” In Ottmar Fuchs, ed., Die Fremden. (Düsseldorf: Patmos, 1988), 183–93.

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Notes to pages 6–14

4 Hubert Wolf, Pope and Devil: The Vatican’s Archives and the Third Reich, trans. Kenneth Kronenberg (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 245. 5 Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York: HarperCollins, 1992). Robert Ericksen, Complicity in the Holocaust: Churches and Universities in Nazi Germany (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 34–45, quotes from 16–­22. Victoria Barnett, Bystanders: Conscience and Complicity during the Holocaust (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1999), 5–13. 6 The Canadian Oxford Dictionary, ed. Katherine Barber (Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press, 1998). 7 I owe the valuable remarks on the vast quantity of documents in the archives to Hubert Wolf, Pope and the Devil, 12–18, 309. For other accounts of the newly opened archives, see Gerhard Besier, The Holy See and Hitler’s Germany, trans. W.R. Ward (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), vii–ix; Thomas Brechenmacher, ed., Das Reichskonkordat 1933: Forschungsstand, Kontroversen, Documente (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2007), 7–12, 281–2. Included in these archives are the series from the papacy of Pius XI (1922–39) that coincide with the period when the future Pope Pius XII was cardinal secretary of state (1930–39) and before that apostolic nuncio to Bavaria (1917–20) and then to the whole of Germany (1920–29). We also have the archival records for Pacelli’s nunciature from 1917 to 1929. Hubert Wolf and Michael Matheus are preparing a digitized critical edition of Pacelli’s dispatches as nuncio. See the website www.pacelliedition.de. 1. The Demolition of Pope Pius XII’s Reputation 1 New York Times, 9 Oct. 1958. 2 Jerusalem Post, 29 May 1955. 3 New York Times, 9 Oct. 1958. 4 Jerusalem Post, 10 Oct. 1958. 5 Aryeh Kubovy, “The Silence of Pope Pius XII and the Beginnings of the ‘Jewish Document,’” Yad Vashem Studies 6 (1967): 23; Kubovy was secretary of the World Jewish Congress. Léon Poliakov, “The Vatican and the Jewish Question,” Commentary 10 (Nov. 1950): 441–5. Jewish Labor Committee, in Editorial, “Billy Rose’s Message,” America, 24 Aug. 1963, 187. 6 “Aus der Ökumene: Pius XII. im Urteil der nichtkatholischen Welt,” Herder-Korrespondenz 13 (1958–59): 208–10. Editorial, “The World Mourns Pope Pius XII,” Christian Century, 22 Oct. 1958, 1, 196.



Notes to pages 14–5 305

7 “Russen gestrichen,” Spiegel, 27 Feb. 1963, 71. Karl-Heinz Wiest, “‘Der Stellvertreter’ – Ein Stück und seine Wirkung,” in Geschichtsverein der Diözese Rottenburg-Stuttgart, ed., Kirche im Nationalsozialismus (Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbeck Verlag, 1984), 239. The Nazis banned and burned the book when they took power. 8 Derek Fogg, “Outrage and Outcry: The Premiere of Der Stellvertreter,” in Claude Schumacher and Derek Fogg, eds., Hochhuth’s The Representative at the Glasgow Citizens’, 1986 (Glasgow: Theatre Studies Publications in association with the Goethe Institute, 1988), 39. Joachim Günther et al., Der Streit um Hochhuth’s “Stellvertreter” (Basel: Basilius Presse, c. 1963). 9 Der Spiegel reported that the Israeli Foreign Ministry pressured Habimah (National Theatre of Israel) not to produce the play. “Vietnam in Basel,” Spiegel, 2 Oct. 1963, 84. The news of the government’s censorship became public and led to protests by Israelis. Subsequently, Habimah decided not to knuckle under and staged the play in June 1964. See Jerusalem Post, 19 and 26 June and 26 and 12 July 1964. The government had good reason to block the play, on the other hand democratic Israelis had good reason to fight against censorship. Vatican Council II was sitting, and the government was concerned that staging the play would inflame anti-Jewish sentiment among Catholics and hand weapons to those opposed to overturning the Catholic teaching about Jews as murderers of God. The teaching was indeed overturned in October 1965, with the publication of Nostra Aetate (In Our Time). Another government concern was not to provoke the Vatican, which would strengthen those elements in Rome urging the internationalization of Jerusalem and insisting Israel not be granted diplomatic recognition. The whole story is well told by Uri Bialer, Cross on the Star of David: The Christian World in Israel’s Foreign Policy, 1948–1967 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005), 72–82. 10 Otto Riewoldt, “Nimm ein Brechmittel, du, der du dies liesest: Die katholische Reaktion auf Hochhuth’s ‘Stellvertreter,’” Text+Kritik 58 (Apr. 1978): 5–6. Riewolt borrowed the title of his article from a quote by Kierkegaard, which appears at the beginning of Hochhuth’s play: “Take an emetic … You who read this.” “Gesundes Theater,” Spiegel, 25 Dec. 1963, 101; “Vietnam in Basel,” Spiegel, 2 Oct. 1963, 86; Riewolt, “Nimm,” 6. One such small circulation journal was the left-wing Catholic Werkhefte, published in Munich. See Werner Beutler, “Der Deutsche Katholizismus und Pius XII.,” Werkhefte 17, no. 5 (May 1963): 178. Wiest, “Der Stellvertreter,” 239.

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Notes to pages 16–23

11 Rolf Hochhuth, The Deputy, trans. Richard and Clara Winston (New York: Grove, 1964), 304. 12 Ibid., 24–6. In reality, Gerstein was turned away at the door, denied an interview with the nuncio. See Saul Friedländer, Kurt Gerstein: The Ambiguity of Good (New York: Knopf, 1969), 128. 13 Hochhuth, Deputy, 205–11. 14 Ibid., 156, 206. 15 Ibid., 157, 216–20. Alexander VI was the notorious Rodrigo Borgia, father of Caeser Borgia. Bankrupt in leadership, false to its ideals, the Church suffered the consequences in the Protestant Reformation. 16 Hochhuth, Deputy, 100–1, 195–8, 212, 214, 220, 296. 17 Discussion of Piscator’s production in Fogg, “Outrage,” 38; “Zur Diskussion um Hochhuth’s ‘Stellvertreter,’” Herder-Korrespondence 17 (May 1963): 373. “Russen gestrichen,” Spiegel, 27 Feb. 1963, 72. Walter Adolph, Verfälschte Geschichte: Antwort an Rolf Hochhuth (Berlin: Morus-Verlag, 1963), 60; for this concept of “totalitarianism,” see 53–7. 18 Hochhuth, Deputy, 76, 106–7, 118, 248–9. 19 Michael Gross, The War against Catholicism: Liberalism and the Anti-Catholic Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004), 21–6, 129–39, 143, 154–76. 20 Hochhuth, Deputy, 60–3, 97, 102, 148. 21 Ibid., 237–8, 242, 247. 22 Ibid., 30–1, 79, 81, 230–1, 260–1. For a first-rate historical account, confirming Hochhuth’s observations about post-war Germany, see Peter Fritzsche, Life and Death in the Third Reich (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 270. 23 Hans-Albert Walters, “Hochhuth’s Moralische Appel,” Frankfurter Hefte 19 (1964): 345–9. “Kitsch” means trashy, a tear-jerker. Hochhuth, Deputy, 96, 160–3, 293. 24 Hochhuth, Deputy, 298, 304. 25 Ibid., 299, 304. Gerald Reitlinger acknowledged that 3,000 patients were killed after Bishop Galen’s protest, but did not believe this weakened his argument, in The Final Solution (London: Sphere, 1971 [1953]), 139–40, 468–9. 26 Hartmut Berghoff, “Zwischen Verdrängung und Aufarbeitung: Die Bundesdeutsche Gesellschaft und ihre nationalsozialistische Vergangenheit in den Fünfziger Jahren,” Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 49 (1998): 97–114. Grass, in English, The Tin Drum, trans. Ralph Manheim (Greenwich, CT: Fawcett Crest, 1962). Fischer, in English, Germany’s Aims in the First World War (New York: Norton, 1967). Rebecca Wittmann



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generously shared with me her knowledge of the 1960s; see her Beyond Justice: The Auschwitz Trial (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005). 27 Dennis Bark and David Gress, A History of West Germany, 2 vols. (Oxford: Basel Blackwell, 1989), 2: 68–79. 28 “Neothomism,” in Anselm Doering-Manteuffel, “Kirche und Katholizismus in der Bundesrepublik der fünfziger Jahre,” Historischer Jahrbuch 102 (1982): 115–16, 121, 125. “The Reformation,” in Fredric Spotts, The Churches and Politics in Germany (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1973), 63, 162. Karl Otmar Frhr. v. Aretin, “20 Jahre Katholizismus in Deutschland,” in Karl Dietrich Bracher, ed., Nach 25 [fünfundzwanzig] Jahren: Eine Deutschland Bilanz (Munich: Kindler, 1970), 340–1. “Lay apostolate” in Bernhard Hanssler, “Der Pluralisierungsprozess im deutschen Katholizismus und seine gesellschaftlichen Auswirkungen,” in Albrecht Langner, ed., Katholizismus im Politischen System der Bundesrepublik 1949–1963 (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1978), 106. “Döpfner,” in Thomas Gauly, Kirche und Politik in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1945–1976 (Berlin: Bouvier, 1990), 221. “On Modern Disorders,” in Joseph-Matthias Görgen, Pius XII., Katholiche Kirche und Hochhuth’s “Stellvertreter” (Berlin: Martin-Verlag, 1964), 176. 29 “Catholic Youth,” in Wiest, “Der Stellvertreter,” 222. “Amtskirche” in Doering-Manteuffel, “Kirche,” 133. 30 “Ein Kampf mit Rom,” Spiegel, 24 Apr. 1963, 78–9. Hochhuth was on the cover of the news weekly. 31 Adolph, “Verfälschte,” 109–10. Karl Fürst zu Löwenstein, “Erklärung des Präsidenten des Zentralkomitees der deutschen Katholiken,” in Fritz Raddatz, Summa iniuria oder, Durfte der Papst schweigen? Hochhuth’s “Stellvertreter” in der öffentlichen Kritik (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1963), 67. 32 “In schlimmer Weise,” Spiegel, 15 May 1963, 25. Charges of defaming the dead had to be brought by a family member; Pius XII had a surviving sister. Bafile’s interventions were confidential, but became public knowledge. The Kölnischer Rundschau called for criminal legislation to protect Pius’ memory. For this and other Catholic responses, Beutler, “Der deutsche Katholizismus und Pius XII,” 170–3. 33 Interpellation and government response in Raddatz, Summa, 229–30. 34 Repgen, “Papsttum,” 238–47; Spotts, Churches, 92. Pius created a straw horse by taking up the most extravagant reproach one could make against Germans, which was accusing all Germans of guilt for German atrocities. In railing against hyperbolic accusations, he avoided the more cogent question of degrees of political and moral responsibility shared by Germans for the crimes of the regime. There is no indication Pius ever spoke out so strongly and explicitly against those attributing collective guilt to the Jews for the Crucifixion.

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Notes to pages 26–30

35 Spotts, Churches, 89–90. For Pius’ view of resistance, see Vera Bücker, Die Schulddiskussion im deutschen Katholizismus nach 1945 (Bochum: Brockmeyer, 1989), 15–18. 36 The politics of the early Adenauer years in Norbet Frei, Adenauer’s Germany and the Nazi Past: The Politics of Amnesty and Integration, trans. Joel Golb (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 303–12. Pius XII and post-war Germany in Michael Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930–1965 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), 159–62. 37 The letter was published in the Tablet on 3 July 1963, two weeks after Montini became pope. The letter also appears in Dolores Schmidt and Earl Schmidt, eds., Deputy Reader: Studies in Moral Responsibility (Glenview, IL: Scott, Forseman, 1965), 203–5. “Terms ‘Unjust’ Charges against Pius Twelfth,” Jerusalem Post, 6 Jan. 1964. The paper pointed out that the debate about Pius XII was an “Inter-Christian and Catholic” issue; Jews had largely stayed out of it. “Statement on Pius Seen as Highly Dramatic Act,” Jerusalem Post, 6 Jan. 1964. 38 NBC Monitor, “Interview with Father Robert A. Graham,” in Schmidt and Schmidt, Deputy Reader, 213. Tom Prideaux, “Homage and Hate for the Deputy,” in ibid., 208; the article first appeared in Life, 13 Mar. 1964, 28D. 39 Saul Friedländer, Pius XII and the Third Reich: A Documentation, trans. Charles Fullman (London: Chatto and Windus, 1966), 236. The book was first published as Pie XII et le IIIe Reich, Documentation (Paris: Seuil, 1964). Guenter Lewy, The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany (New York: McGrawHill, 1964), 305. Kazin, “Review,” in Schmidt and Schmidt, Deputy Reader, 215–16. 40 Kazin, “Review,” 215–16. Peters had also accompanied Chancellor Adenauer on visits to the US. For the full story, New York Times, 4 Feb. 1964, 1, 13. 41 Text of “Humanae Salutis,” in Walter Abbott, SJ, ed., The Documents of Vatican II (New York: Guild, 1966), 703–9. An apostolic constitution is a solemn papal declaration on a matter of faith, doctrine, or discipline. See Richard McBrien, ed., The Harper/Collins Encyclopedia of Catholicism (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), 76; Peter Hebblethwaite, John XXIII: Pope of the Council (London: Chapman, 1984), 39, 398. 42 In later criticism of these views, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) was to speak of “the overly positive interpretation of an agnostic and atheistic world.” Timothy McCarthy, The Catholic Tradition, before and after Vatican II, 1878–1993 (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1994), 131. “Aggiornamento,” in Avery Dulles, SJ, The Reshaping of Catholicism: Current Challenges in the Theology of Church (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1988), 20. Abbott, Documents, 296, 712.45. Dulles, Reshaping, 20.



Notes to pages 31–5 309

43 Mater et Magistra, paras. 47–9, 54, 61, 103, 165, 202. I cite paragraph numbers (rather than page numbers) for papal encyclicals as they are published in many different editions. McCarthy, Catholic Tradition, 99. More on the United Nations in Pacem in Terris, paras. 142–3. 44 Pacem in Terris, paras. 12, 14, 61, 63, 96, 106, 158. 45 McCarthy, Catholic Tradition, 150. Pinchas Lapide, Three Popes and the Jews (New York: Hawthorn, 1967), 301–5, 320–1. Anti-Jewish violence, in Norman Roth, ed., “Holy Week and the Jews,” in Medieval Jewish Civilizations (New York: Routledge, 2003), 156, and Nicholas de Lange, ed., “A Rejected People, in The Illustrated History of the Jewish People (Toronto: Key Porter Books, 1997), 118–26. Lapide calls the concessions under Pius a “small and hesitant” step. “The declaration of the Holy See,” in P.D., “Les juifs ‘perfidis,’” Documentation catholique 46 (17 July 1949): 937–8. The meanings of perfidi in Kathryn Sullivan, R.S.C.J., “Pro Perfidi Judaeis,” The Bridge: A Yearbook of Judaeo-Christian Studies (New York: Pantheon, 1956), 2: 212–13, 216. 46 “I am Joseph” quoted in Lapide, Three Popes, 322–32. Lapide discusses a number of other personal initiatives by Pope John XXIII to rid the Church of anti-Jewish views. Catholic journal Unitas quoted in Lapide, 323; “brotherhood … from common origin” quoted in Hebblethwaite, John XXIII, 193. “The External Climate,” in Giuseppe Alberigo, ed., History of Vatican II, vol. 1, Announcing and Preparing Vatican Council II: Toward a New Era in Catholicism (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1995), 395. 47 Poliakov, “The Vatican and the Jewish Question,” 443. Poliakov incorrectly placed the audience in 1949. A lengthy quote from Pius’ address to the survivors, in Rosario Esposito, Procès au Vicaire: Pie XII et les Juifs selon le témoinage de l’histoire, trans. Eugène Hudon (Sherbrooke, QC: Paulines, 1965), 65–7; New York Times, 30 Nov. 1945, reported the audience. The delegation appealed to Pius for his support of a Jewish state in Palestine. Pius responded that the Vatican remained neutral on “questions of a ‘purely political and territorial’ nature.” The quotes are in both Esposito and the New York Times. The 1955 collection of Pius XII’s speeches and declarations are mentioned in “Ein Kampf mit Rom,” Spiegel, 24 Apr. 1963, 87. Maritain in Kubovy, “Silence of Pope Pius XII,” 24–5. French clerics in Lapide, Three Popes, 303–5. The call for revisions was based on an exhaustive study of anti-Jewish statements in Catholic catechisms. See Paul Démann, La catéchèse chrétienne et le peuple de la Bible (Paris: Cahiers Sioniens, 1952). Cardinal Saliège, archbishop of Toulouse, wrote the preface. 48 John Connelly, From Enemy to Brother: The Revolution in Catholic Teaching on the Jews, 1933–1965 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 176–82, 245–70. Nostra Aetate discussed Hinduism and Islam as well. In

310

Notes to pages 35–42

conversation with me, Professor Gregory Baum, a priest at the time and theological adviser to Vatican II, stressed the influence of Hochhuth’s play in the deciding vote for Nostra Aetate. 49 Hanssler, “Der Pluralisierungsprozess im deutschen Katholizismus, 112. 50 W.A. Purdy, The Church on the Move: The Characters and Policies of Pius XII and John XXIII (London: Hollis and Carter, 1966), 71–2, 80, 129, 136, 298, 312–18. McBrien, Encyclopedia, 647–8, 659–60. John Mahoney, The Making of Moral Theology: A Study of the Roman Catholic Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987), 198–9, 213. “The Monitum,” in Purdy, Church, 277–8. Julius Cardinal Döpfner, The Questioning Church, trans. Barbara Waldstein-Wartenberg (Montreal: Palm, 1964), 4–6. 51 Purdy, Church, 80, 168. The Christmas message is in New York Times, 25 Dec. 1944. Döpfner, Questioning Church, 6. 52 Eamon Duffy, Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 266–8. Frank Coppa, The Modern Papacy since 1789. (New York: Addison Wesley Longman, 1998), 144–7. 53 Purdy, Church, 245, 328. 54 “Konzil,” Spiegel, 16 Oct. 1963, 58–9; McCarthy, Catholic Tradition, 97. 55 Hochhuth, Deputy, 156–7. 56 Thomas Bokenkotter, A Concise History of the Catholic Church (New York: Doubleday, 1990), 284–94. Prussia and mixed marriage in Jacques Kornberg, “Ignaz von Döllinger’s Die Juden in Europa,” Zeitschrift für Neuere Theologiegeschichte / Journal for the History of Modern Theology 6, no. 2 (1999): 223–45. 57 “Personal infallibility,” Bokenkotter, Concise History, 285; “teaching authority,” encyclical Humani Generis, paras. 8, 18, 20, 21, 34; “non-definitive teachings,” Francis Sullivan, Magisterium: Teaching Authority in the Catholic Church (New York: Paulist Press, 1983), 153–73; “universal doctor,” Roger Aubert et al., eds., The Church in a Secularized Society (New York: Paulist Press, 1978), 567. 58 “Personality cult,” in Bokenkotter, Concise History, 287; “integration function,” in Werner Blessing quoted in Margaret Anderson, “Recent work on German Catholicism,” Journal of Modern History 63 (Dec. 1991): 692. Alberigo, History of Vatican II, vol. 1, 73. Bokenkotter, Concise History, 353. 59 Christus Dominus, in Abbot, Documents, 397–400, paras. 2–5; Gaudium et Spes, in Abbot, Documents, 199–308, paras. 41, 58. 60 McBrien, Encyclopedia, 1: 302–4. 61 Döpfner, Questioning Church, 1–15. 62 Kenneth Woodward, Making Saints: How the Catholic Church Determines Who Becomes a Saint, Who Doesn’t and Why (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), 280–7.



Notes to pages 43–9 311

63 Martin Greschat, “Kirche und Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus,” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 46, no. 10 (1998): 887. Kevin Spicer, Resisting the Third Reich: The Catholic Clergy in Hitler’s Berlin (Dekalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2004), 5–6. Geyer and Koontz quoted in Beth Griech-Polelle, Bishop von Galen: German Catholicism and National Socialism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 4–5, 166–7. 64 “Zur Diskussion um Hochhuth’s ‘Stellvertreter,’” Herder-Korrespondenz 17, no. 8 (May 1963): 373–7. The Italian journalist was Professor Edoardo Senatro, who was on friendly terms with Pacelli. I quote from the Senatro article in Petrusblatt: Katholische Kirchenzeitung Bistum Berlin, 7 Apr. 1963, 2. The high point of persecution by the anticlerical Mexican government was the late 1920s. 65 I have taken the term “sanctuary Christianity” from McCarthy, Catholic Tradition, 85. 66 Dulles, Reshaping, 32. 2. The 1933 Concordat 1 Rolf Hochhuth, The Deputy, trans. Richard and Clara Winston (New York: Grove, 1964), 298. 2 The Four Power Pact was signed on 15 July, the concordat on 20 July. The pact is printed in Great Britain, Command 4342, Miscellaneous no. 3 (1933), Dispatch to His Majesty’s Ambassador at Rome in regard to the Agreement of Understanding and Co-operation between France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom, London, June 7, 1933. Thanks to Andrea Tornielli for pointing to the Four Power Pact. See David Bankier, Dan Michman, and Iael Nidam-Orbieto, eds., Pius XII and the Holocaust: Current State of Research (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2013), 65. For the summary of the terms of the concordat, see Joseph Biesinger, “The Reich Concordat of 1933: The Church Struggle against Nazi Germany,” in Frank Coppa, ed., Controversial Concordats: The Vatican’s Relations with Napoleon, Mussolini, and Hitler (Washington DC: Catholic University of American Press, 1999), 139–40. 3 Karl Dietrich Bracher, “Nationalsozialistische Machtergreifung und Reichskonkordat,” in Friedrich Giese and Friedrich August Frhr. v.d. Heydte, eds., Der Konkordatsprozess, part 3: 947–1021 (Munich: Isar-Verlag, 1958); the quote is on 1008. The German government was seeking to overturn a Lower Saxony education law, insisting that the government had the right to require that Länder adhere to international treaties such as the concordat. In the end, the court deftly ruled that the concordat was still valid, but that the Länder had full freedom in matters of education. See Alfred

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Notes to pages 49–51

Grosser, Germany in Our Time: A Political History of the Postwar Years, trans. Paul Stephenson (New York: Praeger, 1971), 90–1. Then a young Privatdozent, Bracher went on to write a landmark work on the Nazi dictatorship, Die deutsche Diktatur: Enstehung, Struktur, Folgen des Nationalsozialismus (Cologne: Kiepenheuer and Witsch, 1969). The work was translated into English as The German Dictatorship: The Origins, Structure, and Effects of National Socialism, trans. Jean Steinberg (NewYork: Praeger, 1970). 4 Bracher’s argument for the timing went as follows: Just two weeks after the Enabling Act was passed, Vice-Chancellor von Papen was on his way to Rome for negotiations on a concordat; Papen had declared in a cabinet meeting on 20 March that political Catholicism had to be eliminated, while Catholics had to be integrated into the new state; Mgr Ludwig Kaas spoke of assurances he had received from Hitler, whose speech that day had placed great value upon fostering good relations with the Holy See. Bracher, “Nationalsozialistische Machtergreifung,” 981, 984, 991. 5 Ibid., 991. For the ban on Nazi Party membership, see Peter Matheson, ed., The Third Reich and the Christian Churches (Grand Rapids, MI: William Eerdmans, 1981), 6–7; Hans Müller, ed., Katholische Kirche und Nationalsozialismus (Munich: Nymphenburger-Verlag, 1963), 43. Membership was, in principle, forbidden, though there was room for clerical discretion when membership was due to outside pressure or out of ignorance. The sequence of Catholic submission is in Matthias Stickler, “Kollaboration oder weltanschauliche Distanz? Katholische Kirche und NS-Staat,” in Karl-Joseph Hummel and Michael Kissener, eds., Die Katholiken und das Dritte Reich: Kontroversen und Debatten (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2009), 85, 87. 6 Bracher, “Nationalsozialistische Machtergreifung,” 985–7, 991, 999–1000. 7 Hochhuth, Deputy, 296–8. Harry Graf Kessler, Tagebücher, 1918–1937 (Frankfurt am Main: Insel-Verlag, 1961); for an English translation, Berlin in Lights: The Diaries of Count Harry Kessler (1918–1937), trans. Charles Kessler (New York: Grove, 1999), 471–2. The Brüning-Kessler conversation took place on 20 July 1935. Hochhuth’s report of what Brüning said to Kessler is accurate. Brüning’s animus stemmed from a confrontation with Pacelli in 1931, which I describe later in this chapter. The depth of his animus was expressed in a statement not quoted by Hochhuth. According to Brüning, Pacelli wept after their confrontation, whereupon “Brüning frankly granted the elegant lady-like quality of Pacelli’s appearance.” Kessler, Berlin in Lights, 472. 8 Heinrich Brüning, Memoiren, 1918–1934 (Stuttgart: Deutsche VerlagsAnstalt, 1970), 358–60. The unpublished statement is in William Patch,



Notes to pages 52–7 313

Jr, Heinrich Brüning and the Dissolution of the Weimar Republic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 295. 9 The Brüning biographer is Patch, Heinrich Brüning, 3–10. Ludwig Volk was another who considered Brüning’s account of the Pacelli meeting untrustworthy; see “Brüning Contra Pacelli: Ein Dokument korrigiert die Memoiren,” in Dieter Albrecht, ed., Katholische Kirche und Nationalsozialismus: Ausgewählte Aufsätze von Ludwig Volk (Mainz: Matthias-GrünewaldVerlag, 1987), 315–20. On Pius XI, see Roger Aubert et al., eds., The Christian Centuries, vol. 5, The Church in a Secularized Society, trans. Janet Sondheimer (New York: Paulist Press, 1978), 546, 551. Michael Feldkamp, Pius XII. und Deutschland (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2000), 73–7. 10 For efforts to bring the National Socialists into the government, see Hajo Holborn, A History of Modern Germany, vol. 3, 1840–1945 (New York: Knopf, 1969), 668–9; Ellen Lovell Evans, The German Center Party 1870– 1933: A Study in Political Catholicism (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1981), 366–7; Noel Cary, The Path to Christian Democracy: German Catholics and the Party System from Windhorst to Adenauer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 132–3. Brüning in Patch, Heinrich Brüning, 9. 11 Klaus Scholder, The Churches and the Third Reich, vol. 1, Preliminary History and the Time of Illusions, 1918–1934, trans. John Bowden (London: SCM, 1987), 52–8, 593; the German edition had appeared ten years earlier as Die Kirchen und das Dritte Reich, vol. 1, Vorgeschichte und Zeit der Illusionen, 1918–1934 (Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Ullstein, 1977). 12 Scholder, Churches, 66–7, 152–3. Scholder also cites Brüning’s account of his August 1931 meeting with Pacelli. 13 Ibid., 135. 14 Ibid., 147–8. 15 Ibid., 166–7, 241–9, 384. 16 Quote is in ibid., 238, 253. The German bishops’ declaration is in Bernhard Stasiewski, ed., Akten deutscher Bischöfe über die Lage der Kirche 1933–1945, vol. 1 (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag, 1968), 30–2. 17 Scholder, Churches, 395–401. 18 Ibid., 399, 406, 495. 19 Ibid., 241–2, 245. For doubts about the Scholder thesis, see Karl Otmar von Aretin, “Altes und Neues zur Vorgeschichte des Reichskonkordats, ” in Karl Otmar von Aretin and Gerhard Besier, eds., Die Kirchen zwischen Republik und Gewaltherrschaft: Gesammelte Aufsätze (Berlin: Siedler-Verlag, 1988), 171–3.

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Notes to pages 58–63

20 John Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII (New York: Viking, 1999), 43–5, 84–5, 149; James Carroll, Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001), 487-89; Holborn, History, 726. 21 Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, 45, 85, 134, 139, 143. 22 Konrad Repgen, “Hitlers Machtergreifung und der deutsche Katholizismus,” in Historische Klopfsignale für die Gegenwart (Münster: Aschendorff, 1974), 131–4. The article first saw the light of day as a ceremonial lecture on 13 Nov. 1963, published in Saarbrücker Universitätsreden, no. 6 (1967). 23 Repgen, “Hitlers Machtergreifung,” 135, 142–3. See also Holborn, History, 732. 24 Repgen, “Hitlers Machtergreifung,” 147. Volk, in Albrecht, ed., Katholische Kirche, 1–10. 25 Konrad Repgen, “Das Ende der Zentrumspartei und die Entstehung des Reichskonkordat,” in Historische Klopfsignale, Lecture, 1969, also published in Militärseelsorge, no. 2 (1970): 101. Repgen’s sources were as follows: Dieter Albrecht, ed., Der Notenwechsel zwischen dem Heiligen Stuhl und der Deutschen Reichsregierung, 3 vols. (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag, 1965); Alfons Kupper, ed., Staatliche Akten über die Reichskonkordats-Verhandlungen, 1933 (1969); Burkhart Schneider, ed., Die Briefe Pius XII. an die Deutschen Bischöfe, 1939–1944 (1966). The Briefe also appears in the Actes et Documents du Saint Siège relatifs à la Seconde Guerre mondiale, vol. 2, Lettres de Pie XII aux Éveques allemands. The German edition has minor revisions. In both publications, the letters are in the original German. Pius’ letters stress his pastoral concerns. Bernhard Stasiewski, ed., Akten deutscher Bischöfe über die Lage der Kirche 1933–1945, vols. 1–3 (1968–1985); Ludwig Volk, ed., Akten deutscher Bischöfe über die Lage der Kirche, 1936–1939, vols. 4–6 (1981); Ludwig Volk, ed., Akten Kardinal Michael Faulhaber, vol. 1, 1917–1934; vol. 2, 1935–1945 (1975–78); Ludwig Volk, ed., Kirchliche Akten über die Reichskonkordatsverhandlungen, 1933 (1969). All of these works were published by Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag in Mainz. I have taken the above from the comprehensive bibliography on the concordat in Frank Coppa, ed., Controversial Concordats, 225–43, an indispensable work. 26 Repgen, “Das Ende,” 107–13. 27 Ibid., 120. 28 Konrad Repgen, “Zur Vatikanischen Strategie beim Reichskonkordat,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 31, no. 3 (1983): 525, 530–1. 29 Ludwig Volk, Das Reichskonkordat vom 20 Juli. 1933: Von den Ansätzen in der Weimar Republik bis zur Ratifizierung am 10. September, 1933 (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag, 1972), 72–3. For the March elections, see Volk, “Ökumene des Versagens? Die Auseinandersetzing um das



Notes to pages 63–8 315

Reichskonkordat – Klaus Scholders eigenwillige Deutung,” in Dieter Albrecht, ed., Katholische Kirche und Nationalsozialismus: Augewählte Aufsätze von Ludwig Volk (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag, 1987), 358. Deputized Brownshirts, Ludwig Volk, “Zur Kundgebung des deutschen Episcopats vom 28. März 1933,” Stimmen der Zeit 173 (1963–64): 440. 30 Volk, “Kundgebung,” 436–7, 440, 448, 454–5. 31 For von Bergen, see Volk, Reichskonkordat, 70; for Pacelli’s unhappiness, 88; for Pacelli’s unhappiness over the timing of the Centre Party’s self-dissolution, 184. Also see Pacelli’s unhappiness in Thomas Brechenmacher, “Teufelspakt, Selbsterhaltung, universale Mission? Leitlinien und Spielräume der Diplomatie des Heiligen Stuhls gegenüber dem nationalsozialistischen Deutschland (1933–1939) in Lichte neu zugänglicher vatikanischer Akten,” Historische Zeitschrift 280 (2005): 612–13. The full text of Gröber’s letter is in Ludwig Volk, Kirchliche Akten über die ReichskonkordatsVerhandlungen, 1933 (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag, 1969), 92–3. 32 Volk, Reichskonkordat, 250–1. 33 Rudolf Morsey, Der Untergang des Politischen Katholizismus: Die Zentrumspartei zwischen christlichem Selbstverständnis und “Nationaler Erhebung” 1932/33 (Stuttgart: Belser Verlag, 1977), 188. By the 1970s Morsey’s work benefited from more available sources: the Kaas diary for 1933; the Kaas– Papen correspondence for 1933–34; memoirs of the period; the minutes of the Centre’s parliamentary group and its executive for 1926–33. In addition, more Vatican, German Church, and government documents on the concordat were available; see Morsey, Untergang, 10. For the earlier study by Morsey, see Erich Matthias and Rudolf Morsey, eds., Das Ende der Parteien, 1933 (Düsseldorf: Droste-Verlag, 1960). 34 Ronald Ross, The Failure of Bismarck’s Kulturkampf: Catholicism and State Power in Imperial Germany, 1871–1887 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1998), 6–8. 35 Morsey, Untergang, 13–17. 36 Rudolf Morsey, ed., Die Protokolle der Reichstagsfraktion und des Fraktionsvorstands der Deutschen Zentrumspartei 1926–1933 (Mainz: MatthiasGrünewald-Verlag, 1969), 621–33. 37 Wirth quote and SA and SS threats, in Noakes and Pridham, Nazism 1919– 1945: A Documentary History, vol. 1 (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1983), 161. Cyanide capsule, in Richard Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich (New York: Penguin, 2004), 352–4. 38 Hubert Wolf, Pope and Devil: The Vatican’s Archives and the Third Reich, trans. Kenneth Kronenberg (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 12–18, 133–4.

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Notes to pages 69–74

39 Gerhard Besier, The Holy See and Hitler’s Germany, trans. W.R. Ward (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), x. Wolf, Pope and Devil, 310; on Volk and Repgen, 17. Thomas Brechenmacher, ed., Das Reichskonkordat 1933: Forschungsstand, Kontroversen, Dokumente (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2007), 129–30. 40 Brechenmacher, Reichskonkordat, 139. For more on Orsenigo’s gloomy reports to Pacelli, see Wolf, Pope and Devil, 151, 161–2. Also see Giovanni Miccoli, Les Dilemmes et les silences de Pie XII, trans. Anne-Laure Vignaux (Brussels: Complexe, 2005), 129, on the report to the Vatican of 22 March from Orsenigo: “It is unfortunately undeniable that the Catholic people, aside from some exceptions, have turned to the new regime with enthusiasm, and forgotten the disciplinary norms prescribed by the episcopate.” 41 Wolf, Pope and Devil, 159, 167. Besier, Holy See, 119. Brechenmacher, Reichskonkordat, 142–4. 42 Wolf, Pope and Devil, 147–9. Emma Fattorini, Hitler, Mussolini and the Vatican: Pope Pius XI and the Speech That Was Never Made, trans. Carl Ipsen (Cambridge: Polity, 2011, 58–9. 43 Besier, Holy See, 121–2. On Orsenigo’s and Pacelli’s criticism of the bishops and the Centre Party, Wolf, Pope and Devil, 127, 167–75. 44 Martin Menke, “The Catholic Center Party and the Enabling Act: A Historiographical Long View,” paper presented at the American Catholic Historical Association Conference, St Mary’s College, Notre Dame, Indiana, 3–5 Apr. 2008, 2–3. Wolf, Pope and Devil, 171. 45 Scholder, Churches, 147–8, 151, 157. 46 For the Papen coup, see Ian Kershaw, Hitler, 1889–1936: Hubris (New York: Norton, 1999), 425; Holborn, History, 696–8; Martin Broszat, The Hitler State: The Foundation and Development of the Internal Structure of the Third Reich, trans. John Hiden (London: Longman, 1981), 8–9. 47 Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century (New York: Vintage, 2000), 18–19. For a similar view, see Mary Fulbrook, Fontana History of Germany, 1918–1990: The Divided Nation (London: Fontana, 1991), 44, and H.W. Koch, A Constitutional History of Germany in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (London: Longman, 1984), 310. 48 Kershaw, Hitler, 435, 475–7. 49 Richard Evans, Coming of the Third Reich, 448–9. 50 “Audience du Collège de Mandragone: Discours de S.S. Pie XI,” Documentation catholique 11, no. 1 (1929): 495–9. French translation for the Italian text in the Osservatore Romano (16 May 1929). Wolf has made these words the title of his book; see Pope and Devil, 1–12, for his illuminating explanation of why he chose this title.



Notes to pages 74–9 317

51 Hansjakob Stehle, Eastern Policies of the Vatican 1917–1979, trans. Sandra Smith (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1981), 6, 66–79. The book first appeared in German as Die Ostpolitik des Vatikans, 1917–1975 (Munich: Piper, 1975). 52 Wolf, Pope and Devil, 173–4. 3. The Catholic Belligerent States 1 Pierre Blet, Robert Graham, Angelo Martini, and Burkhart Schneider, eds., Actes et Documents du Saint Siège relatifs à la Seconde Guerre mondiale, 11 vols. (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1965–1981). Graham joined the project with vol. 3. Hereafter I will refer to the collection as the ADSS. Pierre Blet, SJ, Pius XII and the Second World War: According to the Archives of the Vatican, trans. Lawrence Johnson (New York: Paulist Press, 1997), 2. 2 Susan Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows: The Vatican and the Holocaust in Italy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 7. The International Catholic-Jewish Historical Commission was appointed in 1999, and it suspended its work in July 2001; its full report of 2000 can be found at www. jewishvirtuallibrary.org. Blet, Pius XII, 1–3. Paul O’Shea, A Cross Too Heavy: Eugenio Pacelli – Politics and the Jews of Europe, 1917–1943 (Kenthurst, NSW: Rosenberg, 2008), 18. John Morley, Vatican Diplomacy and the Jews during the Holocaust, 1939–1943 (New York: KTAV, 1980). Michael Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930–1965 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000) and Pius XII, the Holocaust and the Cold War (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008). 3 Phayer, Pius XII, xiii; Phayer’s listing of omissions in the ADSS is on 47, 88, 94, and 244. Maglione claiming the Vatican saved Croatia’s Jews, Maglione to Apostolic Delegate in Washington Cicognani, 21 Apr. 1942, ADSS 8: 514; the editors of ADSS do not support Maglione’s claim, ADSS 9: 35. Jonathan Steinberg came to a similar conclusion: “The Italian government frequently cited the Vatican as a reason for behaving as it wanted to behave, but did not … make or unmake a single policy as a direct result of Vatican intervention,” in All or Nothing: The Axis and the Holocaust 1941–1943 (London: Routledge, 1990), 80–1. Jozo Tomasevich recounts the whole story, finding no Vatican pressure on Italy, in War and Revolution in Yugoslavia 1941–1945: Occupation and Collaboration (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 597–603. George Mosse, “Actes et Documents…,” Church History 44, no. 1 (1975): 127–8. Morley, Vatican Diplomacy, 3. 4 Norman Rich, Hitler’s War Aims: The Establishment of the New Order (New York: Norton, 1974), 55–61; Phayer, Catholic Church, 88–9.

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5 Rich, Hitler’s War Aims, 62. For reports on the situation in Slovakia from a Vatican emissary and from the German ambassador, see Walter Brandmüller, Holocaust in der Slowakei und katholische Kirche (Neustadt an der Aish: Verlag P.C.W. Schmidt, 2003), 124–31,132–6. Brandmüller has translated key documents from Slovak and Italian into German; he includes the original documents. 6 These diplomatic rankings were loose designations. Burzio was officially an apostolic delegate to Slovakia, which means that he was accredited to the ecclesiastical hierarchy of that country rather than to its government. Such delegates sometimes had diplomatic privileges, which was the case with Burzio. Karl Sidor was the Slovak minister to the Holy See, which was below the rank of nuncio (or ambassador), i.e., he was not considered a representative of President Tiso, his head of state, however, he had full authority to represent his government. Burzio to Maglione, 5 Sept. 1940, ADSS 6: 408–10; Maglione to Sidor, 12 Nov. 1941, in Morley, Vatican, 221–3. Morley includes the Italian originals along with his English translations. The document is ADSS 8: 345–7. 7 Letter of the Slovak Church hierarchy to President Tiso, 7 Oct. 1941, in Brandmüller, Holocaust, 145–53. 8 See n6, Maglione to Sidor, 12 Nov. 1941. 9 Burzio to Maglione, 9 Mar. 1942, ADSS 8: 453; Maglione to Sidor, 14 Mar. 1942, ADSS 8: 459–60. 10 Giovanni Miccoli, Les Dilemmes et les silences de Pie XII: Vatican, Seconde Guerre mondiale et Shoah. trans. Anne-Laure Vignaux (Brussels: Complexe, 2005), 357. 11 Maglione to Burzio, 18 Apr. 1942, ADSS 8: 511. 12 Burzio to Maglione, 31 Mar. 1942, ADSS 8: 486–9. Declaration of the Slovak bishops to the Catholic public, 26 Apr. 1942, in Brandmüller, Holocaust, 159–63. 13 Ludin’s report to Berlin, in Miccoli, Les Dilemmes, 361. 14 One-quarter of the members of parliament were priests, in Livia Rothkirchen, “The Slovak Enigma: A Reassessment of the Halt to the Deportations,” East Central Europe / L’Europe du Centre-Est 10, nos. 1–2 (1983): 3–13. Worries about implicating the Church, Burzio to Maglione, 31 Mar. 1942, ADSS 8: 486–9. The Burzio note translated into English, in Morley, Vatican, 226–9. Gojdič, 31 Mar. 1942, ADSS 9: 177–8. Tardini on Tuka and Tiso, ADSS 8: 478–9. Calamity that Tiso is a priest, Tardini’s note, 14 July 1942, ADSS 8: 597–8, and in a French translation by the editors, ADSS 8: 43–4. 15 The full story of Sturzo’s forced resignation is in John Molony, The Emergence of Political Catholicism in Italy: Partito Popolare 1919–1926 (Totowa,



Notes to pages 85–8 319

NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1977), 160–7. For the German measures, see Hajo Holborn, A History of Modern Germany, vol. 3, 1840–1945 (New York: Knopf, 1969), 261–6. Pope Pius IX, Quod Nunquam, 5 Feb. 1875, para. 7. All papal encyclicals can be found at this website; I cite paragraph numbers for papal encyclicals as they are published in many different editions. Burzio to Maglione, 5 Sept. 1940, ADSS 6: 408–9. 16 Tiso was empowered to issue exemptions, see 11 Apr. 1942, ADSS 8: 504. Exemptions for Christians of Jewish descent in Yeshayahu Jelinek, “The Vatican, the Catholic Church, the Catholics and the Persecution of the Jews during World War II: The Case of Slovakia,” in Bela Vago and George Mosse, eds., Jews and Non-Jews in Eastern Europe 1918–1945 (New York: Wiley, 1974), 234. 17 Hanns Ludin’s report to German Foreign Ministry, quoted in John Conway, “The Church, the Slovak State and the Jews, 1939–1945,” Slavonic and East European Review 52, nos. 126–9 (1974): 105. Slovak bishops’ pastoral letter, 8 Mar. 1943, in Brandmüller, Holocaust, 169–74. Report of the German Security Service in Conway, “Church,” 102–4. 18 Maglione to Burzio, 6 Mar. 1943, ADSS 9: 170. Burzio to Maglione, 10 Apr. 1943, and Burzio on State Council’s view of Vatican intervention, ADSS 9: 245–51; translated in Brandmüller, Holocaust, 181–8, and Morley, Vatican, 239–43. Maglione to Sidor, 5 May 1943, ADSS 9: 275–7; translated in Brandmüller, Holocaust, 194–6. 19 Slovak battle reverses in Peter Gosztony, Deutschlands Waffengefährten an der Ostfront 1941–1945 (Stuttgart: Motorbuch Verlag, 1981), 217–8. What stopped the deportations in 1942–43, in Yehuda Bauer, Jews for Sale? NaziJewish Negotiations, 1933–1945 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 96–8; Phayer, Catholic Church, 90. 20 Maček’s intransigence and Pavelić and the Ustasha, in Rich, Hitler’s War Aims, 273–6. Ties to papacy, in Stella Alexander, The Triple Myth: A Life of Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1987), 57–8. Marcone’s diplomatic position, in Morley, Vatican, 149. 21 Phayer, Catholic Church, 31–2. Figures on the murder and expulsion of Serbs come from Sabrina Ramet, The Three Yugoslavias: State-Building and Legitimation, 1918–2005 (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2006), 114. Forced conversions in Mark Biondich, “Religion and Nation in Wartime Croatia: Reflections on the Ustaša Policy of Forced Religious Conversions, 1941–1942,” Slavonic and East European Review 13, no. 1 (2005): 84–100. For a briefer discussion of the story of forced conversions, see Mark Biondich, “We Were Defending the State,” in John Lampe and Mark Mazower, eds., Ideologies and National Identities: The Case of

320

Notes to pages 88–92

Twentieth-Century Southeastern Europe (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2004), 63. For more on the Church and state struggle over the conversion process, see Alexander, Triple Myth, 75–6, and Richard Wolff, “The Catholic Church and the Dictatorships in Slovakia and Croatia, 1939–1945,” Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia 88, nos. 1–4 (1977): 17–18. 22 “Byzantine schismatics,” in Yeshayahu Jelinek, “Clergy and Fascisms: The Hlinka Party in Slovakia and the Croatian Ustasha Movement,” in Stein Larsen et al., eds., Who Were the Fascists?: Social Roots of European Fascism (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1980), 371–2. Stepinac on the “schism,” in Tomasevich, War and Revolution, 553. 23 Orthodox-Serb dominance over Catholic Croats in the interwar period, in Ramet, Three Yugoslavias, 94–9. For the absurdity of the Croat claim equating Serb actions against Croats in the interwar period and Croat mass killings of Serbs during the war, see Tomasevich, War and Revolution, 402–7. Scholars offer a range of numbers of Serb converts to Catholicism in wartime. Steven Pavlowitch notes both Tomasevich’s estimate of 300,000 and Biondich’s estimate of a little less than 100,000, in Hitler’s New Disorder: The Second World War in Yugoslavia (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 135–6. Biondich estimates 99,333, in “Religion and Nation,” 91; Tomasevich reckons 240,000, in War and Revolution, 524. On the Croatian Orthodox Church, see Biondich, “We Were Defending,” 63–4. 24 The anti-Jewish decrees in Tomasevich, War and Revolution, 592–4. Maglione refers to Marcone’s statement in his report of 23 Aug. 1941 about “supernatural motives” behind Jewish conversions to Catholicism. Maglione to Marcone, 3 Sept. 1941, ADSS 8: 261; translated by Morley in Vatican, 150. 25 Stepinac’s 22 May and 30 May 1941 letters to Andre Artuković, minister of the interior, in Richard Pattee, The Case of Cardinal Aloysius Stepinac (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1953), 300–5. Pattee has translated a number of the relevant documents into English. Stepinac’s Te Deums on Pavelić’s birthdays, in Alexander, Triple Myth, 101. Bishops’ resolution on “Catholic Jews,” in Pattee, Case, 305–6. Maglione praising the bishops’ efforts, Maglione to Marcone, 21 Feb. 1942, ADSS 8: 443. Pius’ response to the bishops’ resolution in Alexander, Triple Myth, 78. 26 Time line for the murder of Jews, in Tomasevich, War and Revolution, 594–7. 27 Stepinac reports to the pope on bishops’ letter to Pavelić, 3 Dec. 1941, ADSS 8: 368–9. Stepinac protesting to Artuković, 7 Mar. 1942, over “cruelest” measures against Jews, in Pattee, Case, 306. Protesting the executions



Notes to page 94 321

of Serbs and Jews, Stepinac letter to Pavelić, 20 Nov. 1941, in Pattee, Case, 395. Stepinac protesting murder of 300 Slovene priests, Stepinac letter to Pavelić, 24 Feb. 1943, in Alexander, Triple Myth, 91. Pavelić humiliating Stepinac in Tomasevich, War and Revolution, 538. Pavelić demanding Vatican remove Stepinac, in Wolff, “Catholic Church,” 20. The mass murder of Gypsies in Croatia, in David Crowe and John Kolsti, eds., The Gypsies of Eastern Europe (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1991), 81–92. Stepinac’s public protests, late May 1943, in Pattee, Case, 267–71; on 14 Mar. 1943, 271–6; on 25 Oct. 1943, 276–81. The Church hierarchy only began to speak out after Oct. 1943, in Marcone to Maglione, 8 May 1943, ADSS 9: 219–21. Phayer calling Stepinac’s words “courageous and principled,” in Catholic Church, 35. 28 BBC broadcasts of excerpts from Stepinac’s sermons against the persecution of the Jews. in Pattee, Case, 291–3. Stepinac anticipated a re-established Yugoslav state, no doubt a federal one rather than the centralized state in interwar Yugoslavia, which would guarantee Serbian hegemony, in Tomasevich, War and Revolution, 557. Roman Catholic Archbishop of Belgrade asking for the Holy See’s intervention, 24 July 1941, ADSS 5: 104–5. Montini asked Nicola Rusinovic about the news of Croat crimes, in Carlo Falconi, Le Silence de Pie XII 1939–1945, trans. Viviana Pâques (Monaco: Rocher, 1965) 316. Maglione instructing Marcone to recommend “moderation in the treatment of Jews,” Maglione to Marcone, 3 Sept. 1941, ADSS 8: 261–2; “painful situation” and “due tact,” Maglione to Marcone, 6 Oct. 1942, ADSS 8: 675. Marcone reporting to Maglione that two million Jews have recently been killed, 17 July 1942, ADSS 8: 601; he had this information from the Croatian Chief of Police Dr Eugenio Kavernik. For more on exemptions for Jews in intermarriage and on Catholics of Jewish descent, see Marcone to Maglione, 30 Sept. 1942, ADSS 8: 668–9. Maglione wanted to counter Serbian Orthodox propaganda, Maglione to Marcone, 2 Apr. 1943, ADSS 9: 218–19. 29 Each bishop went his own way, in Alexander, Triple Myth, 93. Mišić’s horrifying report, in Tomasevich, War and Revolution, 536–7. Stepinac to Pavelić condemning atrocities, 20 Nov. 1941, in Pattee, Case, 395. Tomasevich notes that Stepinac did not mention the atrocities to the pope, 537n57; see also Stepinac to Pius XII, 3 Dec. 1941, ADSS 8: 368–70. Stepinac defending the Pavelić government, Stepinac to Maglione, 24 May 1943, ADSS 9: 221–4. Stepanic listing his forty interventions with the government and not requesting help from the Vatican, Stepinac to Maglione, 31 May 1943, ADSS 9: 224–9. Maglione praising Stepinac’s work, Maglione to Stepinac, 17 June 1943, in Pattee, Case, 261–2.

322

Notes to pages 95–100

30 “Schism” in McBrien, Encyclopedia, 1: 167–8. “Decree on Ecumenism,” in Walter Abbott, SJ, ed., The Documents of Vatican II (New York: Guild, 1966), 345–6, 349. 31 Rich, Hitler’s War Aims, 212–14. 32 These statistics can be found in Susan Zuccotti, The Holocaust, the French, and the Jews (New York: Basic Books, 1993), 4–5, 206–7. 33 The anti-Jewish statutes can be found in Michael R. Marrus and Robert Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews (New York: Basic Books, 1981), 4, 98–101, and Robert Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940–1944 (New York: Norton, 1975), 174. For the full texts of the decrees, see Centre de documentation juive contemporaine, Les Juifs sous l’Occupation: Recueil des textes officiels français et allemands 1940–1944 (Paris: Centre de documentation juive contemporaine, 1945). 34 Valeri noting Laval’s fears to Maglione, 13 Nov. 1940, ADSS 4: 241–3. For this account of the National Revolution, see Paxton, Vichy, 136–68. For the religious revival and Catholic organizations, see Thomas Kselman, “Catholicism, Christianity and Vichy,” French Historical Studies 23, no. 3 (2000): 515–18. For the religious revival and Catholic organizations, see André Latreille, Histoire du catholicisme en France, vol. 3, La Periode contemporaine (Paris: Spes, 1962), 617–21. 35 The Catholic consensus on Pétain, in Étienne Fouilloux, “Église catholique et seconde guerre mondiale,” Vingtième Siècle: Revue d’histoire 1, no. 73 (2002): 112–13. Archbishop Saliège, 23 June 1940, quoted in Jean-Pierre Azéma and François Bédarida, eds., Le Régime de Vichy et les Français (Paris: Fayard, 1992), 459; “Godless France” quoted in the cardinals’ and archbishops’ letter to the pope, 447. Aiding priest POWs, Cardinal Archbishop Suhard to Pope Pius XII, 19 June 1941, ADSS 8: 214–15. ACA declaration, in Georges Wellers, André Kaspi, and Serge Klarsfeld, eds., La France et la question juive, 1940–1944 (Paris: Sylvie Messinger, 1981), 153–4; “mutisme official,” in Azéma and Bédarida, Régime, 452. 36 Pétain seeking opinion of Vatican, in Marrus and Paxton, Vichy, 200. Bérard consulted with Montini and Tardini before writing his report, Maglione note, 30 Sept. 1941, ADSS 8: 295–7. The Bérard memo, “Lettre Adressée au Maréchal Pétain par l’Ambassade de France près le Saint Siège, 2 Sept. 1941,” in Jacques Nobécourt, “Le Vicaire” et l’histoire (Paris: Seuil, 1964), 356–62. The Bérard memo was published as early as 1946 in “Le Vatican vu par Vichy,” Le Monde Juif (Oct. 1946), 2–4. The Vichy government made good use of the report, in Marrus and Paxton, Vichy, 202. Pétain brought up the Bérard memo in Valeri to Maglione, 30 Sept. 1941, ADSS 8: 295–7. Maglione backing Valeri’s response in Maglione to Valeri, 31 Oct.



Notes to pages 101–4 323

1941, ADSS 8: 333–4. “Jews contributed … to outbreak of war,” Valeri to Maglione, 4 Oct. 1940, ADSS 4: 173. 37 The backlash to the round-ups, in Marrus and Paxton, Vichy, 270–9. The joint letter of the Church hierarchy to Pétain, end of July 1942, in Cahiers et courriers clandestins du Témoignage chrétien 1941–1944, vol. 1 (Paris: R. Bédarida and A. Nemoz, 1980), 209. The latter is a facsimile publication of the Catholic and Protestant underground journal that strongly opposed Vichy’s antisemitic policies; it was published in tens of thousands of copies and widely circulated. On the journal, see Jacques Adler, “The Changing Attitude of the ‘Bystanders’ toward the Jews in France, 1940–1943,” in John Milfull, ed., Why Germany? National Socialist Anti-Semitism and the European Context (Providence, RI: Berg, 1993), 178–9. On the joint letter of the Church hierarchy, see Marrus and Paxton, Vichy, 271. The threat to Catholic Action, Valeri to Maglione, 29 July 1942, ADSS 8: 610. On Catholic Action, Jacques Duquesne, Les catholiques français sous l’Occupation (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1996), 189, 206. During the occupation, Catholic Action provided social services, soup kitchens, and aid to prisoners and the unemployed. 38 A scrupulous, sensitive, and heart-breaking account of the interned children can be found in Marrus and Paxton, Vichy, 263–9. Bishops Saliège, Théas, Delay, and Gerlier are quoted in François and Renée Bédarida, eds., La Resistance Spirituelle 1941–1944: Les cahiers clandestine du Témoignage chrétien (Paris: Albin Michel, 2001), 200–2. The public response to the bishops’ protests can be found in Zuccotti, Holocaust, 148; for Saliège and Jewish evasion, 214; for Jewish evasion, 210–46. For more on rescue and the churches, see Michael R. Marrus, “French Churches and the Persecution of Jews in France, 1940–1944,” in Otto Kulka and Paul MendesFlohr, eds., Judaism and Christianity under the Impact of National Socialism (Jerusalem: Historical Society of Israel and the Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History, 1987), 324–6, and Serge Klarsfeld, La Shoah en France, vol. 1, Vichy-Auschwitz: La “solution finale” de la question juive en France (Paris: Fayard, 2001), 175–9, 184–7, 295–6. For the preoccupation over the transfer of French skilled workers to Germany, Valeri to Maglione, 22 Oct. 1942, ADSS 8: 690. “The real deportation” and “no more protests,” in Marrus and Paxton, Vichy, 276–8; Valeri complemented Pétain on supporting “spiritual values,” 278. 39 Pius’ speech, “La Vocation Chrétienne de la France,” Discours de Son Eminence le Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli à Notre-Dame de Paris, 13 juillet 1937, in Actes du Colloque de la Faculté de Droit d’Aix-en-Province, ed., Pie XII et la Cité: La pensée et l’action politique de Pie XII (Marseille: Presses

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Notes to pages 106–11

Universitaire d’Aix-Marseille, 1988), 465–79. A fascinating account of the Pacelli visit and the circumstances that brought it about can be found in François Charles-Roux, Huit Ans au Vatican, 1932–1940 (Paris: Flammarion, 1947), 212–37; Charles-Roux was French ambassador to the Vatican. Secular and anticlerical ideology, in James McMillan, Dreyfus to De Gaulle: Politics and Society in France 1898–1969 (London: Edward Arnold, 1985), 15–17, 90. 40 Pius to the Catholic hierarchy in Acta Apostolicae Sedis (AAS; Vatican City) 32 (1940): 299–300. Pius’ March 1941 letter to Cardinal Gerlier and archbishops in the unoccupied zone, in “Nous venons à peine,” L’Ecole sociale populaire: Publication mensuelle 329 (June 1941): 27–9. The pope’s plea for moderation in New York Times, 27 Aug. 1942. Valeri’s report on discussions with prominent officials, cited ADSS 8: 48. Valeri suspicious of the socalled labour conscription of Jews, Valeri to Maglione, 7 Aug. 1942, ADSS 8: 613–15. The French offended by deportations, in Marrus and Paxton, Vichy, 270–9. Valeri’s report to Maglione on conversation with Laval, 24 Aug. 1942, ADSS 8: 624. Pius agreed not to complicate the task of the Marshal, in Duquesne, Les catholiques français, 275–6. 41 Reasons for cancelling the denaturalization law, in Zuccotti, Holocaust, 175–80. Chapoulie cited in Morley, Vatican, 63. The 1943 deportations are in Zuccotti, Holocaust, 189. 42 “Le Pape et la France: Allocution prononcée le 11 décembre 1944, dans la cathédrale de Montauban à son retour de Rome, par S. Exc. Mgr Théas, évêque de Montauban,” in Documentation catholique, Nov./Dec. partial issue, no. 3 (24 Dec. 1944): 6–8. Paxton calls Vichy self-vindication the “shield theory,” in Vichy, 359. 43 Maglione instructed Tacchi Venturi to object to certain provisions of the anti-Jewish decrees, ADSS 9: 433–4; Maglione to Tacchi Venturi, 18 Aug. 1943. Intermarriage rate in the 1930s in Morley, Vatican, 169. Tacchi Venturi on the provisions to be abrogated, Tacchi Venturi to Interior Minister Ricci, 24 Aug. 1943, ADSS 9: 459–62. 44 September round-ups of Jews in northern Italy, in Susan Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows, 150–2. “Feared measures against Jews in Italy,” Tardini Memo of 17 Sept. 1943, ADSS 9: 480–1. Pius used the word “extermination” in “Allocution of Pius XII on the Feast of St Eugenius, 2 June 1943,” Catholic Mind 41, no. 969 (Sept. 1943): 1–5. The speech was broadcast on Vatican Radio; the speech itself is in Latin in the AAS 35 (1943): 165–71, in which Pius used the lethal word “sterminatrici.” Jews “systematically destroyed,” Burzio to Maglione, 27 Oct. 1941, ADSS 8: 327–8; “condemning the majority … to certain death,” Burzio to Maglione, 9 Mar. 1942, ADSS 8:



Notes to pages 111–6 325

453. “Slaughter of Jews in Ukraine is … complete,” Scavizzi to Pius XII, 12 May 1942, ADSS 8: 534. Scavizzi had a face-to-face meeting with the pope and reported, “I saw him weep like a child [on hearing my account],” in Peter Hebblethwaite, Paul VI: The First Modern Pope (London: HarperCollins, 1993), 169. Hebblethwaite’s source was Hansjakob Stehle, Eastern Politics of the Vatican 1917–1979, trans. Sandra Smith (Athens, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1981), 414. Stehle’s source was a conversation in Rome with Cardinal Archbishop Josyf Slipyj of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. Thus, it is a third-hand report, so should not be taken as a certainty. The most that could be said was that Stehle had no interest in vindicating the pope. Reference to two million Jews already killed, Marcone to Maglione, 17 July 1942, ADSS 8: 601. Altogether about 620,000 Jews were murdered in Western Ukraine, Szeptyckyj to Pius XII, 29 and 31 Aug. 1942, ADSS 3: 625–9. “Jews. A horrendous situation,” Secretariat of State memo, 5 May 1943, ADSS 9: 274. 45 Pope Pius’ directive to study the question, 17 Sept. 1943, ADSS 9: 40. Phayer, Pius XII, 72. 46 Round-ups and German trucks carrying the victims parked within sight of the pope’s windows, in Robert Katz, The Battle for Rome: The Germans, the Allies, the Partisans and the Pope, September 1943–June 1944  (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003), 103. This is the US edition. The British edition is called Fatal Silence: The Pope, the Resistance and the German Occupation of Rome (London: Cassell Military, 2004). The Maglione-Weizsäcker meeting, 16 Oct. 1943, ADSS 9: 505–6; Katz’ translation of their discussion, in Battle, 104–5. Weizsäcker’s letter to his mother, 20 Oct. 1943, ADSS 9: 54–5. Weizsäcker to a colleague, in Leonidas Hill III, “The Vatican Embassy of Ernst von Weizsäcker, 1943–1945,” Journal of Modern History 39, no. 2 (1967), 149. 47 Makeup of the armed resistance groups, in Charles Delzell, Mussolini’s Enemies: The Italian Anti-Fascist Resistance (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961), 280–1, 286–91, 304. The partisan attack on the Via Rasella, and Pius’ plea to both sides for restraint, in Katz, Battle, 248. Not enough German manpower to deport all Jewish Romans, in Richard Breitman, “New Sources on the Holocaust in Italy,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 16, no. 3 (2002): 402–14. 48 Möllhausen messages to Ribbentrop and the latter’s response as well as the Wiezsäcker, von Kessel, and Gumpert scheme, in Katz, Fatal Silence, 106–8. Hudal letter to General Stahel, 16 Oct. 1943, ADSS 9: 509–10. German diplomats’ plot to avert deportation, in Katz, Battle, 106–8. Valuable comments on the Hudal affair in Phayer, Holocaust, 77–8, and Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows, 161–3. About the title of Zuccotti’s book: Weizsäcker’s dramatic

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Notes to pages 117–21

embellishment, meant to raise concerns in the German Foreign Office that Pius was on the cusp of a public protest, became for others a neat description of Pius’ passivity; Pius quote in the Osservatore Romano of 25/26 Oct. and Weizsäcker’s  message to Foreign Office discounting it, in Katz, Battle, 115–16. 49 Vatican-Ribbentrop quid pro quo, in Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows, 160–1.  50 The number of Jewish Romans who found refuge, in Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows, 199–200. Phayer has estimated that 6,700 Roman Jews found refuge, not all in Church institutions, in Pope Pius XII, 85–6. Controversy over whether the pope ordered the rescue, in Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows, 208, 217–19, 225, 231–2; Zuccotti’s later article on this subject, “Pius XII and the Rescue of Jews in Italy: Evidence of a Papal Directive,” in Joshua Zimmerman, ed., Jews in Italy under Fascist and Nazi Rule, 1922–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 287–307. Controversy over the pope’s role in the rescue, in Miccoli, Dilemmes, 264–5. Italian historian Dovere Motto concluded that rescue efforts were a “spontaneous reaction,” in Lutz Klinkhammer, “Pius XII., Rom und der Holocaust,” Quellen und Forschungen aus Italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken 80 (2000): 676–7. 51 The uncharacteristic relentlessness in Pius’compaign to save Rome from bombing, in Phayer, Catholic Church, 61–3; Phayer, Pius XII, 81–3; and Miccoli, Dilemmes, 261–3. Owen Chadwick calls Pius’ campaign “frantic,” in Britain and the Vatican during the Second World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 235. Vatican exchanges with Taylor and President Roosevelt, in Harold Tittmann, Jr, Inside the Vatican of Pius XII: The Memoir of an American Diplomat during Wartime (New York: Doubleday, 2004), 150–3. Pius’ response to Rome bombings, in Chadwick, Britain and the Vatican, 242–4. Comments on Pius’ hypocrisy, in Phayer, Catholic Church, 62–3. D’Arcy Osborne quote, in Chadwick, Britain and the Vatican, 216. 52 “Whoever raises his hand against Rome,” Pius on Vatican Radio, 2 June 1944, quoted in Katz, Battle, 305. Pius’ letter to Roosevelt, 19 July 1943, in Tittmann, Inside, 170–1. Pius explaining his stance to Preysing, Pius to Preysing, 21 Mar. 1944, ADSS 2: 376–81. Constraints on Pius’ demands to make Rome an “open city” in Chadwick, Britain and the Vatican, 281–2. Rome did not become a battlefield, in Tittmann, Inside, 210, and Katz, Battle, 308–13. Weizsäcker quoted in Chadwick, Britain and the Vatican, 288; Olivier Logan, “Pius XII: Romanità, Prophesy and Charisma,” Modern Italy 3, no. 2 (1998): 237–47.



Notes to pages 123–7 327

53 Religious percentages in Mária Ormos, Hungary in the Age of the Two World Wars, 1914–1945, trans. Brian McLean (Boulder, CO: Social Science Monographs, 2007), 377. Pius XI at the Budapest International Eucharistic Congress, in Documentation catholique 39, no. 874 (20 June 1938): 723–4; Pacelli at the Congress, 710–24. Paul Hanebrink, In Defense of Christian Hungary: Religion, Nationalism, and Antisemitism, 1890–1944 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006), 144–5; Hanebrink’s is a valuable account of Christian nationalism for this period. For the advantages of commercial relations with Germany, see Joseph Rothschild, East Central Europe between the Two World Wars (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1974), 188–9. For the regained territories, Randolph Braham, The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary, vol. 1 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), 130, 144–5, 180, and Ormos, Hungary, 371–2. I cite a number of statistics throughout the section on Hungary; while these come from authoritative scholarly sources, they are approximate and don’t add up neatly. 54 For Hungarian politics and society, see Hanebrink, In Defense, 109; for how Hungary changed drastically after the First World War, 125–7, 139; for the conservative right and the radical right, 112, 127, 135, 144–5. 55 For more on intermarriage rates during the 1930s, see Ezra Mendelsohn, The Jews of East Central Europe between the World Wars (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983), 102. The number of converts to Christianity, in Braham, Politics, 77. Hanebrink’s estimate is 72,250, in In Defense, 174. Jewish economic profile, in Mendelsohn, Jews, 101. See also István Deák, “Hungary and the Jewish Question,” in Randolph Braham and William vanden Heuvel, eds., The Auschwitz Reports and the Holocaust in Hungary (New York: East European Monographs, 2011), 1–27. For where Jews fit in the Hungarian ethnic state, see Mendelsohn, Jews, 91. 56 Conservative strategy on anti-Jewish policy, in Loran Tilkovsky, “The Late Interwar Years and World War II,” in Peter Sugar, ed., A History of Hungary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 340, and Hanebrink, In Defense, 160. The First Anti-Jewish Law, in Braham, Politics, 122–7; the Second Anti-Jewish Law, 153–6. Rotta and Serédi advising that an intervention by Pius is unnecessary, Rotta to Maglione, 30 Mar. 1939, ADSS 6: 60–1. To avoid a greater evil, Serédi would not oppose the bill, Rotta to Maglione, 15 Apr. 1939, ADSS 6: 77. Maglione urging Rotta to prevent harsh measures against Catholics of Jewish origin, Maglione to Rotta, 23 Oct. 1940, ADSS 6: 449. The importance of the convert issue to Pope Pius XII, Rotta to Maglione, 2 Nov. 1940, ADSS 6: 465–6. The Third Anti-Jewish Law, in Braham, Politics, 194–5. Rotta on the protest of the Church hierarchy led by Cardinal Serédi, Rotta to Maglione, 14 June 1941, ADSS 8:

328

Notes to pages 128–35

206–8. Rotta authorized to protest to the government in the name of Pius XII, Rotta to Maglione, 6 July 1941, ADSS 8: 223–34. 57 The expulsion of the Serbs, in Ormos, Hungary, 377. Expulsions and massacre at Kamenets-Podolsk, in Mendelsohn, Jews, 104, and Braham, Politics, 198–207. Maglione prodding Serédi to speak to the government, Maglione to Serédi, 2 Nov. 1941, ADSS 8: 338–9. Serédi reporting on his intervention with the government, Serédi to Maglione, 24 Nov. 1941, ADSS 8: 359. 58 Kállay’s anti-Jewish policy can be found in Braham, Politics, 223, and Ormos, Hungary, 379, 396–7. Kállay’s attempts to disentangle Hungary from the German alliance, in Braham, Politics, 240, and Ormos, Hungary, 398–401, 403–4. Klessheim meeting, in Ormos, Hungary, 405, and Braham, Politics, 240–1. Braham’s paraphrase of Horthy’s response: He said he could not have the Jews killed. 59 The German occupation is discussed in Ormos, Hungary, 412–13. The concentration and ghettoization of Jews from the provinces is in Mendelsohn, Jews, 90. The deportations are in Richard Evans, The Third Reich at War (New York: Penguin, 2008), 618. Jewish conversions during 1941–3, in Braham, Politics, 778–80. Hanebrink counts 1,463 converts in 1941, plus 788 in Pest after the German occupation, In Defense, 202, 209. The reader will note some discrepancy in numbers when I restate the number of Jews murdered by 7 July. This is the result of using different scholarly sources; the numbers are close enough. 60 Rotta’s increasingly critical view of the Church’s tepid stance, in Rotta to Maglione, 19 Apr. 1944, ADSS 10: 224–8, and Rotta to Maglione, 23 May 1944, ADSS 10: 283–4. Rotta berating the government and complaining about Serédi’s evasiveness, in Rotta to Maglione, 28 Apr. 1944, ADSS 10: 247–9. Rotta’s blunt talk, in Rotta to the minister of foreign affairs, 15 May 1944, ADSS 10: 285–6. Rotta to the president of the Council of Ministers, 15 May 1944, ADSS 10: 286–8. Rotta requesting a direct intervention by the Holy See, in Rotta to Maglione, 24 May 1944, ADSS 10: 288–9. Rotta challenging the government’s lies, 5 June 1944, ADSS 10: 309–13. The ADSS editors on Rotta ADSS 10: 25, 28. Rotta reported to Maglione that deportations meant death, 18 June 1944, ADSS 10: 320–1. Concessions gained by Serédi, in Hanebrink, In Defense, 202–3, and Braham, Politics, 1033–4. Several bishops urged Serédi to issue a pastoral letter, in Hanebrink, In Defense, 208–9. Rotta telling Sztójay the anti-Jewish measures were “abominable,” in Braham, Politics, 1072. 61 The entire pastoral is translated in Braham, Politics, 1035–8. The Teleki quote, in Mendelsohn, Jews, 118. The Horthy quote in Bela Vago and George Mosse, eds., Jews and Non-Jews in Eastern Europe 1918–1945



Notes to pages 138–42 329

(Jerusalem: Israel Universities Press, 1974), 146­–51. Baky was pro-German and active in the deportations. There is evidence from Horthy’s own actions that he differentiated among Jews in Hungary. Serédi’s deal with the government, in Braham, Politics, 1038. Pius’ telegram to Horthy, 25 June 1944, ADSS 10: 328. Pressure Pius felt to join those protesting or appealing for the end of deportations, in Phayer, Pope Pius XII, 91. The numbers of Jews deported, in Braham, Politics, 1143–7; intervention by Roosevelt and Eden, 1102–3. The bombing raid, 2 July 1944, in Randolph Braham, The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary, Condensed Edition (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2000), 161. Some details on the 2 July bombing raid are in Kit Carter and Robert Mueller, compilers, U.S. Army Air Forces in World War II: Combat Chronology 1941–1945 (Washington, DC: Center for Air Force History, 1991), 387. Warning leaflets dropped by Allied planes, Richard Breitman, “The United States and the Holocaust in Hungary,” in Braham and vanden Heuvel, Auschwitz Reports, 58. Tittmann reminds Maglione of the US warnings, Tittmann to Maglione, 24 June 1944, ADSS 10: 326–7. The “Auschwitz Report,” in New York Times, 3 and 6 July 1944, and in Zoltán Szabó, “The Auschwitz Reports: Who Got Them and When,” in Braham and vanden Heuvel, Auschwitz Reports, 85–120, and see 116–20 for the worldwide distribution of the “Auschwitz Report” in the spring of 1944. 62 The “highway of death,” in Braham, Politics, 840; the Szálasi era, 820–84; letters of protection issued by Rotta, 874, 1075–7; the priest sent by Rotta to aid Jews on the “death marches,” 841, and ADSS 10: 39. Pius chose another way, ADSS 10: 37–8. Pius to Serédi, 26 Oct. 1944, ADSS 10: 460. ADSS editors’ interpretation of Pius’ message, ADSS 10: 37–8. A Catholic priest later declared that denying perpetrators the sacraments would have been effective, in Moshe Herczl, Christianity and the Holocaust of Hungarian Jewry, trans. Joel Lerner (New York: New York University Press, 1993), 189; Serédi quote in early 1939, 98–9. Praise for Rotta by the editors of the ADSS in vol. 10: 28. 63 Morley statements in Vatican, 13, 200–1. Montini response to Taylor, 1 Oct. 1942, ADSS 8: 669. The Holy See harboured no illusions about limited results and saved a considerable number of lives, ADSS 10: 61–2. The Church had a prior right to help Catholics of Jewish descent, ADSS 6: 12. 4. Poland 1 Michael Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930–1965 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), 20–1.

330

Notes to pages 143–5

2 Ribbentrop’s demands in “The Foreign Minister to the Embassy in Poland,” Documents on German Foreign Policy, Series D (1937–1945), vol. 6, no. 73 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1956), 85–7. The wording is from a draft telegram cancelled by the Führer, but the substance of the message was laid out in a conversation between Ribbentrop and the Polish Ambassador Józef Lipski on 21 March, which the latter then reported to Beck in Warsaw. The Polish view of German demands, Maglione notes, 16 Aug. 1939, in Records and Documents of the Holy See Relating to the Second World War, vol. 1, The Holy See and the War in Europe: March 1939–August 1940, trans. Gerard Noel (Washington: Corpus Books, 1968), 201–2. This is volume 1 in the ADSS, the only volume translated into English. Pius’ radio message of 24 Aug. 1939, in Holy See, 216–18. “Exposé of Colonel Beck to the Polish Seym on May 5th, 1939,” in the memoir by Colonel Jozef Beck, Final Report (New York: Robert Speller, 1957), 188–9. D’Arcy Osborne to Tardini, 24 Aug. 1939, on Chamberlain’s letter to Hitler, in Holy See, 224. France approves of pope’s radio message of 24 August, Valeri to Maglione, 25 Aug. 1939, in Holy See, 227; “concealed appeasement,” in Chadwick, Britain and the Vatican, 59. 3 Manfred Clauss, Die Beziehungen des Vatikans zu Polen während des 2.Weltkrieges (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 1979), 1. Neal Pease, Rome’s Most Faithful Daughter: The Catholic Church and Independent Poland, 1914–1939 (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2009). The following in Holy See: Mussolini’s advice to the Vatican, Tardini notes, 6–7 June 1939, 159–60; Maglione to nuncios, instructing them to sound out governments on holding a conference, also issuing a caution to Poland, 3 May 1939, 111–12; mutual provocations, Maglione to Chargé d’Affaires in Warsaw Pacini, 22 July 1939, and Cortesi to Maglione, 14 Aug. 1939, 200–1; Germany has no intention of attacking Poland, Maglione to Cortesi, 16 June 1939, 167–8; editors of the ADSS indicate the reliable source was Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano, 21–2; Pius tries to influence the Polish church hierarchy, Maglione to Orsenigo, 28 June 1939, 181–2; German troop concentrations, Cortesi to Maglione, 18 Aug. 1939, 207. Vatican urges Poland to negotiate on return of Danzig to Germany, in Jan Szembek, Journal 1933–1939, trans. J. Rzewuska and T. Zaleski (Paris: Plon, 1952), 499–500. Beck states Germany is using tactics it had used on Czechoslovakia, in Final Report, 195. Holy See advising Poland to negotiate over Danzig, Maglione to Cortesi, 30 Aug. 1939, in Holy See, 247; Tardini warning it would look like the pope has played into Hitler’s hands, Tardini to Maglione, 30 Aug. 1939, 245–6, original emphasis. Beck’s response to papal message in Final Report, 202. French and Polish ambassadors want pope to condemn the aggression, Tardini’s notes, 24



Notes to pages 146–9 331

Aug. 1939, in Holy See, 224–25; 40,000,000 Catholics in the Reich, Montini’s and Tardini’s notes, 28 Aug. 1939, 240. 4 Himmler quote in Phayer, Catholic Church, 21. Estimates of Polish deaths in Norman Davies, God’s Playground: A History of Poland, 1795 to the Present, vol. 2 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 447, and Phayer, Catholic Church, 21–2. More on the murder of Poles can be found in Richard Lukas, The Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles under German Occupation (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1986), 8–9. Persecution of the Polish church and clergy in Mgr Georges Roche and Philippe Saint Germain, Pie XII devant l’Histoire (Paris:Robert Laffont, 1972), 499–501, and Phayer, Catholic Church, 22. 5 Poles expected Pius to condemn Germany, in Pease, Rome’s Most Faithful Daughter, 204–5, and Tittmann, Inside the Vatican, 112–13. Charles-Roux’s praise for Pius’ 30 Sept. 1939 discourse to Polish audience, in Huit Ans, 345–6. An English translation of the discourse to Poles in “Discours. Vous Êtes Venus to Cardinal Hlond … and a group of Polish pilgrims,” in Rev. Harry Koenig, STD (Doctor of Sacred Theology), ed., Principles for Peace: Selections from Papal Documents, Leo XIII to Pius XII (Washington: National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1943), 589–91. The full French speech can be found in “Audience pontificale des Polonaise en résidence à Rome,” Documentation catholique 4, no. 908 (5–20 Jan. 1940), 3–6. Summi Pontificatus, para. 106; summing up the encyclical, in New York Times, 28 Oct. 1939, 1, 9. German authorities stopping distribution of the encyclical, in Martin Broszat, Nationalsozialistische Polen Politik, 1939–1945 (Stuttgart: Deutsche VerlagsAnstalt, 1961), 159. Hlond thanked Pius on 30 Oct. 1939, ADSS 3: 111–12. 6 Hlond’s broadcasts on Vatican Radio in The Persecution of the Catholic Church in German-Occupied Poland; Reports Presented by H.E. Cardinal Hlond, Primate of Poland, to Pope Pius XII, Vatican Broadcasts and Other Reliable Evidence (London: Burns Oates, 1941), 115–17. Charles-Roux’ comments on Hlond’s broadcasts, in Huit Ans, 345. New York Times report on Hlond broadcasts, 24 Jan. 1940, 8. German threats, Montini notes, 27 Jan. 1940, ADSS 3: 208–9. Orsenigo reporting on German threats, Orsenigo to Maglione, 10 Feb. 1940, ADSS 3: 216–17. German reprisals, in Roche and Saint Germain, Pie XII, 249–50, and Blet, Pius XII, 75–6. 7 Pius to Alfieri, reported in Montini’s note, 13 May 1940, ADSS 1: 453. Sapieha to Maglione, 3 Nov. 1941, ADSS 3: 489–91. Breitinger to Pius, 23 Nov. 1942, ADSS 3:681–4. Scavizzi’s report, Scavizzi to Maglione, 21 Nov. 1941, ADSS 8: 352. Accusations over the pope’s public silence, in Roche and Saint Germain, Pie XII, 506. Pius’ explanation for his public silence, 13 May 1940, ADSS 1: 453–5. Bertram to Orsenigo, 17 Dec. 1940, ADSS 3: 207–8.

332

Notes to pages 152–5

8 Pius’ response to Sapieha, 6 Dec. 1941, ADSS 3: 502–3. See also Roche and Saint Germain, Pie XII, 509; Sapieha to Pius, 28 Feb. 1942, ADSS 3: 539–41. Scavizzi’s account, no date, ADSS 3: 538–41. Sapieha to Pius, 28 Oct. 1942, ADSS 3: 669–70, and Roche and Saint Germain, Pie XII, 511. Reasons for Sapieha’s fear of retaliation, in Czesław Madajczyk, Die Okkupationspolitik Nazideutschlands in Polen 1939–1945, trans. Berthold Puchert (Cologne: Pahl-Rugenstein, 1988), 362–3, and Klaus-Peter Friedrich, “‘Land without a Quisling’: Patterns of Cooperation with the Nazi German Occupation Regime in Poland during World War II,” Slavic Review 64, no.4 (2005): 733–9. Sapieha to Pius, 23 Mar. 1943, ADSS 3: 769–70, and Roche and Saint Germain, Pie XII, 515. Pius’ allocution on the feast of Saint Eugene, 2 June 1943, “The Allocution of Pope Pius XII,” Tablet (12 June 1943), 282–3. Sapieha expressing gratitude to Pius, in Sapieha to Pius, 15 June 1943, ADSS 3: 812–14. Bishop of Kielce and Archbishop Sapieha’s differing attitudes to German occupation, in Friedrich, “‘Land without a Quisling,’” 733–6. Sapieha’s secretaries arrested, in Burkhart Schneider, SJ, “Der Heiligen Stuhl und Polen während der Kriegsjahre,” Stimmen der Zeit 180 (1967): 23–4, and footnote ADSS 3: 431. Tardini’s description of Sapieha, 18 May 1942, ADSS 3: 569–71. 9 “Every attempt at non-adherence” quoted in Schneider, “Der Heiligen Stuhl,” 27–8. Papée’s complaint, Papée to Maglione, 12 Nov. 1942, ADSS 3: 671–3. Poles felt betrayed, in Phayer, Pius XII, 6. 10 Pleading with Pope Pius to speak out, Raczkiewicz, 12 Aug. 1944, ADSS 10: 381. The death toll among non-combatants as an outcome of the 1944 uprising came to some 225,000, another 550,000 were dispatched to concentration camps, while 150,000 Poles were deported to the Reich for forced labour. Figures are from Davies, God’s Playground, vol. 2, 477. Pius met with the Polish colony in Rome, Pius to Raczkiewicz, 31 Aug. 1944, ADSS 10: 398–9. Raczkiewicz thanking Pius, 30 Nov. 1944, ADSS 11: 635. Radonski lashing out at Pius, Radonski to Maglione, 15 Feb. and 14 Sept. 1942, in Roche and Saint Germain, Pie XII, 510–15. For the kidnapping of Polish children, see Davies, God’s Playground, vol. 2, 446, and Lynn Nicholas, Cruel World: The Children of Europe in the Nazi Web (New York: Knopf, 2005), 242–53. Maglione to Radonski, 9 Jan. 1943, in Blet, Pius XII, 83–4. The aims of the Polish government-in-exile, in Clauss, Beziehungen, 183, and Davies, God’s Playground, 464–6. 11 Pius to Preysing, 30 Apr. 1943, ADSS 2: 324–5; Maglione to Godfrey, apostolic delegate in London, 9 Jan. 1943, ADSS 3: 711–12, and in Roche and Saint Germain, Pie XII, 513. Tardini note, 18 May 1942, ADSS 3: 569–71.



Notes to pages 157–61 333 5. Catholic Anti-Jewish Attitudes

1 Guenter Lewy, The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany (New York: McGrawHill, 1965), 305. James Carroll, Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001), 510. Daniel Goldhagen, A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair (New York: Knopf, 2002), 3. See also, John Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII (New York: Viking, 1999), 296. Nechama Tec, When Light Pierced the Darkness: Christian Rescue of Jews in Nazi-Occupied Poland (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 101–9. 2 “To Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith,” Pope John Paul II on Jews and Judaism, 1970–1986 (Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 1987), 52. 3 Peter Godman, Hitler and the Vatican: Inside the Secret Archives that Reveal the New Story of the Nazis and the Church (New York: Free Press, 2004), 23–4. Known as the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office at the time, the name prior to 1904 was the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition, and after 1965, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. 4 “Suppression de l’Association des ‘Amis D’Israël,’” Documentation catholique 19, no. 425 (28 Apr. 1928): 1077. 5 Hubert Wolf, Pope and Devil: The Vatican’s Archives and the Third Reich, trans. Kenneth Kronenberg (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 84, 93–7. For “perfidious Jews,” see Godman, Hitler and the Vatican, 25. For “deicide,” see Georges Passelecq and Bernard Suchecky, The Hidden Encyclical of Pius XI, trans. Steven Randall (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1997), 98–9. 6 Merry del Val quoted in Wolf, Pope and Devil, 102–8. 7 Ibid., 85–6, 110–11. 8 “Les declarations du Pape aux dirigeants et aux délégués de Radio Catholique Belge,” Libre Belgique (14 Sept. 1938). The address also appears in “A propos de l’Antisémitisme: Pèlegrinage de la Radio catholique belge,” Documentation catholique 39, no. 885 (5 Dec. 1938): 1459–60. Pius was referring to part of the Eucharistic prayer, “the sacrifice of Abraham our father in faith.” For Melchisedech, see Gen. 14:18–20. He was viewed by the Catholic Church as an anticipation of Christ, and is mentioned in the Eucharist prayer in the Roman Canon of the Mass. 9 Anti-Jewish decrees, in Susan Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows: The Vatican and the Holocaust in Italy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 42.

334

Notes to pages 161–5

10 The report of Pius XI’s declaration in the L’Osservatore Romano of 9 Sept. appears in the same issue of Documentation catholique as the Pius XI audience, 39, no. 885 (5 Dec. 1938): 1459–60. Later reports followed suit. In both Pope John Paul II’s address, and in the later document, Commission of the Holy See for Religious Relations with the Jews, “We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah,” in Catholic Church, National Conference of Catholic Bishops, and Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, eds., Catholics Remember the Holocaust (Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 1998), 51, the Pius XI statement was abridged to “Antisemitism is unacceptable. Spiritually we are all Semites.” The part about “justified self-defence” was omitted. The truncated quote can also be found in Joseph Bottum and David Dallin, eds., The Pius War: Responses to the Critics of Pius XII (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004), 113–14. Michael Feldkamp includes the passage about “justified self-defence” in Pius XII. und Deutschland (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2000), 114. Thieme quoted in Elias Fullenbach, “Shock, Renewal, Crisis: Catholic Reflections on the Shoah,” in Kevin Spicer, ed., Antisemitism, Christian Ambivalence, and the Holocaust (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), 206. 11 The debate over the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, “La Question juive: Les Protocols des Sages de Sion,” was by H. de Vries de Heekelingen, a prominent pro-Fascist who argued that the Protocols were an authentic account of the Jewish plot for world domination. The article appears in the same issue of the Documentation catholique as the Pius XI audience, 39, no. 885 (5 Dec. 1938): 1447–50. The papal encyclical was A Quo Primum, June 1751, para. 5. 12 I owe a great deal to David Kertzer’s account, The Popes against the Jews: The Vatican’s Role in the Rise of Modern Anti-Semitism (New York: Knopf, 2001), 16, 249–63. All the Ratti statements come from his book; I am responsible for the comments. 13 The events leading up to the pogrom, in Alexander Prusin, Nationalizing a Borderland: War, Ethnicity, and Anti-Jewish Violence in East Galicia, 1914–1920 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2005), x, 86–7, 75–91. For Jews and Bolshevism, see André Gerrits, “Antisemitism and Anti-Communism: The Myth of ‘Judeo-Communism’ in Eastern Europe,” East European Jewish Affairs 25, no. 1 (1995): 49–72. Julia Brun-Zejmis has estimated that Jewish membership in the Communist Party of Poland was between 22 and 26 per cent. From 1918 through the 1920s, according to Gabriele Simoncini, this proportion would have been about one-quarter out of between 5,000 and 20,000 members. The Party was a negligible force in Poland: its internationalism or anti-nationalism made it inimical to Poles, and an ally of



Notes to pages 166–71 335

Poland’s natural enemy, the Soviet Union. From the viewpoint of other Jews, Communists of Jewish descent were self-avowed enemies of Jews and their parties, the Bund, Zionism, and religious Jewish movements. See Julia Brun-Zejmis, “The Origins of the Communist Movement in Poland and the Jewish Question,” Nationalities Papers 22, Suppl. 1 (Summer 1994): 29–48, and “Ethnic and Social Diversity in the Membership of the Communist Party of Poland 1918–1938,” ibid.: 55–67. 14 Pacelli’s memo is in Emma Fattorini, Germania e Santa Sede: Le nunciature di Pacelli fra la Grande Guerra e la Repubblica di Weimar (Bologna: Società editrice il Mulino, c. 1992), 323–4. 15 Nuncio Eugenio Pacelli, Letter to Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Gasparri, 30 April 1919, “Attenti contra la Nunciatura,” in Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Nunciatura apostolica Monaco di Baveira, Report 2602, Germanie 442. 16 Levine, in Werner Angress, “Juden in politischen Leben der Revolutionszeit,” in Werner Mosse, ed., Deutches Judentum in Krieg und Revolution, 1916–1923 (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1971), 242. Levine and Bavarian Soviet in Allan Mitchell, Revolution in Bavaria: The Eisner Regime and the Soviet Republic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), 195–6, 300–30. “Bavarian National Character,” in Dirk Walter, Antisemitische Kriminalität und Gewalt: Judenfeindschaft in der Weimarer Republik (Bonn: J.H.W. Dietz Nachfolger, 1999), 54. 17 Eucharistic congresses, in Roger Aubert, “Eucharistic Congresses from Leo XIII to Paul VI,” in Edward Schillebeeckx, ed., The Church and Mankind, vol. 1, Dogma, trans. Paulist Fathers (New York: Paulist Press, 1965), 155–65. 18 Anti-Jewish laws, in Randolph Braham, The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary, vol. 1 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), 122–7. Anti-Jewish laws and the Hungarian church, in Moshe Herczl, Christianity and the Holocaust of Hungarian Jewry, trans. Joel Lerner (New York: New York University Press, 1993), 90–100. Pius XI’s brief message, in Documentation catholique 39, no. 874 (20 June 1938): 723–4. The same issue (at 725–40) contains another Catholic debate over whether The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a forgery or an authentic record of a Jewish plot to dominate the world. Pacelli’s speech is in the same issue, 710–24. The term Crucifige (Crucify him!) is from the Vulgate, Mark 15:14,15 and Luke 23:21. 19 Mystici Corporis Christi, paras. 29–30. 20 Divino Afflante Spiritu, para. 26. 21 The Catechism of the Council of Trent: Published by Command of Pope Pius the Fifth, trans. Rev. J. Donovan (Baltimore: Lucas Brothers, 1829), articles 4, 47. The Apostle was the author of the Letter to the Hebrews, believed at the time to be Saint Paul.

336

Notes to pages 172–8

22 Thanks to Professor Daniel Donovan for translating this letter from the Latin. These scholars were not Catholics of Jewish origin. A second letter by Giovanni Cardinal Mercati, archivist and librarian of the Vatican Library, mentions these scholars’ contribution to science and knowledge. ADSS, 6:50–1. Some German-Jewish scholars among those escaping Nazi persecution were welcomed to Rome by Cardinal Mercati to work at the Vatican library and archives. “In 1934 the Pope hired a German Jew,” English edition of L’Osservatore Romano (29 June 2011), 13. 23 Maglione, ADSS 8: 669. See my chapter 3 for evidence of how much the Vatican knew of the destruction of European Jewry. “Text of Pope Pius XII’s Christmas Message Broadcast from Vatican to the World,” New York Times (25 Dec. 1942). “11 Allies Condemn Nazi War on Jews,” New York Times (18 Dec. 1942). A different and a far more positive view of the influence of the pope’s Christmas allocution, in Michael Phayer, Pius XII, the Holocaust, and the Cold War (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), 42–64. 24 “The Allocution of Pope Pius XII,” Tablet (12 June 1943): 282–3. 25 Confirmation of the close ties between the journal and the Vatican comes from a variety of sources. See Paul Duclos, SJ, Le Vatican et la Seconde Guerre mondiale: Action doctrinale et diplomatique en faveur de la paix (Paris: A. Pedone, 1955), 9; Thomas Reese, SJ, “Obituary, Robert Graham, SJ,” Catholic Historical Review 83 (Apr. 1997): 362; Peter Hebblethwaite, John XXIII: Pope of the Council (London: Chapman, 1984), 508; Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows, 11; Kertzer, Popes against the Jews, 135; Sister Charlotte Klein, “In the Mirror of Civiltà Cattolica: Vatican View of Jewry, 1939–1962,” Christian Attitudes on Jews and Judaism, no. 43 (Aug. 1975): 12-16. Klein cites Pius XII’s praise for the journal in 1950. 26 Passellecq and Suchecky, Hidden Encyclical, 124–5,128–9, 131–5. On Ledóchowski, Emma Fattorini, Hitler, Mussolini and the Vatican: Pope Pius XI and the Speech That Was Never Made, trans. Carl Ipsen (Cambridge: Polity, 2011), 4, 65–6. 27 Gustav Gundlach, “Antisemitismus,” in Michael Buchberger, ed., Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1930), 504–5. On Gundlach, Passellecq and Suchecky, Hidden Encyclical, 42, 285. 28 A succinct statement of this merging of religious and political antisemitism: Oliver Logan, “Review article,” Modern Italy 9, no. 1 (2004), 101–5. 29 Burzio to Maglione, 5 Sept. 1940, ADSS 6: 408–10; Valeri to Maglione, 4 Oct. 1940, ADSS 4: 173. 30 “Le père Tacchi Venturi au cardinal Maglione” and “Le père Tacchi Venturi au Ministre de l’Intérieur Ricchi,” 24 and 29 Aug. 1943, ADSS 9: 458–62. See also Kertzer, Popes against the Jews, 289.



Notes to pages 179–83 337

31 Kenneth Stow, “Hatred of the Jews or Love of the Church?: Papal Policy toward the Jews in the Middle Ages,” in Shmuel Almog, ed., Antisemitism through the Ages (New York: Pergamon, 1988), 78; quoted in Tec, When Light Pierced the Darkness, 106. 32 The events of March and April 1933 and the Jewish response, in Moshe Gottlieb, “The First of April Boycott and the Reaction of the American Jewish Community,” American Jewish Historical Quarterly 57, no. 4 (1968): 516–56. 33 Wurm to Faulhaber, 9 Apr. 1933, in Ludwig Volk, ed., Akten Kardinal Michael von Faulhabers, 1917–1945, vol. 1 (Mainz: Matthias-GrünewaldVerlag, 1975), 701–2. 34 “Schreiben von Franziskus Stratmann OP an den Erzbischof von München und Freising, Michael Kardinal v. Faulhaber” in Hubert Gruber, Katholische kirche and Nationalsozialismus, 1930–1945: Ein Bericht in Quellen, (Paderborn: Schöning, 2006), 55–8. 35 Alois Eckert, “Zeitungsartikel von Pfarrer Alois Eckert anlässlich des Boykotts jüdischer Geschäfte, 4 April 1933,” in Gruber, Katholische Kirche, 47–9. Violence against Jews, in Marion Kaplan, Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 18–21. 36 Faulhaber’s response to Wurm, in Volk, Akten Kardinal, vol. 1, 705. 37 Avraham Barkai, From Boycott to Annihilation: The Economic Struggle of German Jews, 1933–1943, trans. William Templar (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1989), 21–2. 38 Events of Feb./Mar. 1933, in Hajo Holborn, A History of Modern Germany, 1840–1945 (New York: Knopf, 1969), 723–30. Decision to limit boycott to one day, in Karl Schleunes, The Twisted Road to Auschwitz: Nazi Policy toward German Jews, 1933–1939 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970), 65–88. 39 Faulhaber, in Antonia Leugers,”Positionen der Bischöfe zum Nationalsozialismus und zur nationalsozialistischen Staatsautorität, ” in Rainer Bendel, ed., Die katholische Schuld? Katholizismus im Dritten Reich zwischen Arrangement und Widerstand, 2nd ed. (Münster: Lit, 2002), 133, 136–7. 40 Giovanni Sale, Hitler, la Santa Sede e gli ebrei: Con documenti dell’Archivio segreto vaticano (Milan: Jaca Book, 2004), 100–3. 41 Documents on German Foreign Policy, 1918–1945, Series C, vol. 1 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1957), 793–4. 42 Thomas Brechenmacher, “Pope Pius XI, Eugenio Pacelli, and the Persecution of the Jews in Nazi Germany, 1933–1939: New Sources from the Vatican Archives,” German Historical Institute London 27, no. 2 (2005): 25–7.

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Notes to pages 184–9

Brechenmacher underscores that Pacelli “recognized the legitimacy of the Jewish appeal for help … as part of the Church’s ‘universal mission.’” This moral imperative was at odds with the imperative of preserving the institutions and life of the church under the Nazis. It would have been opposed not only by the government, but from within, by the majority of German Catholics. For the Vatican’s public silence after the November 1938 pogrom, see Suzanne Brown Fleming’s public lecture, “November 1938: Perspectives from the Vatican Archives.” She has examined the documents newly released in 2003. See the online journal, Contemporary Church History Quarterly 20, no.1 (2014): 1–8. 43 Weihbischof Walter Kampe, “Die Katholiken und der Nationalsozialismus,” Werkhefte: Zeitschrift für Probleme der Gesellschaft und des Katholizismus 16 (1962): 70–2. 6. Pope Pius XII and His Predecessors 1 Domenico Cardinal Tardini, Memories of Pius XII, trans. Rosemary Goldie (Westminster, MD: Newman, 1961), 73–4. 2 Michael Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930–1965 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), 19, 233. For Phayer’s later view, Pius XII, the Holocaust, and the Cold War (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), 259–61. John Pollard, “The Papacy in Two World Wars: Benedict XV and Pius XII Compared,” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 2 (Jan. 2001): 83–96. Peter Kent, “A Tale of Two Popes: Pius XI, Pius XII and the Rome-Berlin Axis,” Journal of Contemporary History 23 (1988): 590, 603. 3 Anthony Rhodes, The Vatican in the Age of the Cold War 1945–1980 (Norwich: Russell, 1992), 315–16. 4 Eamon Duffy, Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 200–2. 5 For Poland, see Duffy, Saints and Sinners, 219–20; for Belgium, see Owen Chadwick, A History of the Popes 1830–1914 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998), 298–301. On the benefits for Catholics of the liberal Belgian Constitution, see Roger Aubert et al., eds., The Christian Centuries, vol. 5, The Church in a Secularized Society, trans. Janet Sondheimer (New York: Paulist Press, 1978), 37. 6 R.D. Anderson, France, 1870–1914: Politics and Society (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977), 12–13. 7 John McManners, Church and State in France, 1870–1914 (London: SPCK, 1972), 69–80. The encyclical Au Milieu des Sollicitudes (16 Feb. 1892), para. 13, 14, 19, 20, stressed the need for Catholic unity in France.



Notes to pages 189–96 339

8 Dilectissima Nobis (3 June 1933), para. 3. 9 Quotes from encyclicals Immortale Dei, 1 Nov. 1885, paras. 23–4, 26, 32, 34, 37, and Libertas Praestantissimum, 20 June 1888, paras. 21, 23. 10 Quoted in McManners, Church and State, 72–5. The encyclical was Au Milieu des Sollicitudes. 11 For this account, see Jan De Volder, Benoît XV et la Belgique durant la grande guerre (Brussels: Institut historique belge de Rome, 1996), 31–3. De Volder claims 20 clerics were executed. Horne and Kramer make a case for the higher figure of 47. They offer a definitive account of the background to German atrocities: John Horne and Alan Kramer, German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), chapters 3 and 4, 89–174. Also see Alan Kramer, Dynamic of Destruction: Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 7–8, 14–20, and Larry Zuckerman, The Rape of Belgium: The Untold Story of World War I (New York: New York University Press, 2004), 51–61. 12 New York Times, 29 Aug. 1914; De Volder, Benoît XV, 33–7; Horne and Kramer, German Atrocities, 267–71. 13 De Volder, Benoît XV, 38. Charles Loiseau, “Ma mission auprès du Vatican (194–1918),” Revue d’histoire diplomatique 74 (1960): 100–15. 14 “Allocution au Consistoire du 22 janvier 1915,” in Actes de Benoît XV: Encycliques, motu proprio, brefs, allocutions, actes des dicastères, vol. 1, 1914– 1918, Latin text with French translations (Paris: Maison de la Bonne Presse, 1924), 66–70. 15 Zuckerman, Rape, 164; De Volder, Benoît, 128–31. “Allocution fait au Consistoire du 4 décembre 1916,” in Actes de Benoît XV, vol. 1, 131–7. The Russian retreat, in Kramer, Dynamic, 151–2. 16 Lettre pastorale de son éminence le cardinal Mercier, archevêque de Malines, primat de Belgique, sur la patriotisme et l’endurance (Paris: Bibliothèque des ouvrages documentaire, 1914). Horne and Kramer, German Atrocities, 271– 5; De Volder, Benoît, 92–6. 17 “An Appeal to Truth, Nov. 24, 1915. Addressed to Their Eminences the Cardinals and Their Lordships the Bishops of Germany, Bavaria, and Austro-Hungary,” in Cardinal Mercier: Pastoral Letters, Allocutions 1914–1917, trans. Rev. Joseph Stillmans (New York: P.J. Kennedy and Sons, 1917), 65–77. Rosenberg, in Horne and Kramer, German Atrocities, 273–4. My university, the University of Toronto, presented Cardinal Mercier with the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws at the Convocation of 15 Oct. 1919. The University of Toronto Monthly underlined the leadership the cardinal assumed in occupied Belgium at a time when Belgian’s government was in exile. Then it posed the question, “Whence came the sanction for his

340

Notes to pages 196–200

power?” The article went on to say, “Mercier’s power to foster courage in an enslaved nation, to drive fear into the heart of a triumphant military foe who held him in his power and dare not touch him, that power, without parallel in history, came from within his own personality.” Aside from the hyperbole, this was a shrewd observation. H. Carr, “Cardinal Mercier at Convocation,” University of Toronto Monthly (Oct. 1919), 55–6. 18 Ludwig Volk, SJ, “Cardinal Mercier, der deutsche Episkopat und die Neutralitätspolitik Benedikts XV., 1914–1916,” Stimmen der Zeit 9 (Sept. 1974): 611–30. 19 De Volder, Benoît XV, 92–3, 248–50. 20 Archbishop of Toronto Neil McNeil, The Pope and the War (Toronto: Archdiocese of Toronto, 1918), 13. Bishop of Northhampton Frederich William, “The Neutrality of the Holy See,” Dublin Review 157, nos. 314/315 (1915), 141–4. “Why Does Not the Church Speak?” Tablet, 16 Jan. 1915, 3. 21 The figures are from Francis Latour, “Les relations entre le Saint-Siège et la Sublime Porte à l’épreuve du génocide des chrétiens d’Orient, pendant la Grande Guerre,” Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains, no. 219 (May– July 2005), 431–43. For a definitive statement of the Young Turk movement’s aims, see Robert Melson, Revolution and Genocide: On the Origins of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 141–70. 22 Dolci quoted in Manoug Somakian, Empires in Conflict: Armenia and the Great Powers, 1895–1920 (London: I.B. Tauris, 1995), 87, 91, 93–4. 23 Charles Frazee, Catholics and Sultans: The Church and the Ottoman Empire, 1453–1923 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 272–3. On forced conversions, see Ulrich Trumpener, Germany and the Ottoman Empire, 1914– 1918 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), 227. 24 Joint Declaration, New York Times, 24 May 1915, 1. Eyewitness reports of the destruction of the Armenians, in Dr Johannes Lepsius, Deutschland und Armenien 1914–1918: Sammlung diplomatischer Aktenstücke (Potsdam: Templeverlag, 1919), 164–5, 280–1. For the campaign in Germany, see Trumpener, Germany, 216–17, 220, 227–8. On German government policy, see Vahakn Dadrian, The History of the Armenian Genocide (Providence, RI: Berghahn, 1995), 203–6. 25 Pope Benedict XV, autographed letter to Sultan Mahomet Reshad V, 10 Sept. 1915, in Sacra Congregazione degli Affari Ecclesiastici Straordinare, Austria-Ungheria Anno 1915–1916, Pos. 1069, Fasc. 472. 26 The papal letter is reproduced in Giorgio Rumi, ed., Benedetto XV e la pace – 1918 (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1990), 104–5. New York Times, 11 Oct. 1915, 4. Osservatore Romano report translated in the Tablet, 23 Oct. 1915, 536.



Notes to pages 201–6 341

27 The Dolci letter comes from the Vatican archives. Sacra Congregazione degli Affari Ecclesiastici Straordinari. Austria Ungheria, Anno 1915–1916, Pos. 1069, Fasc. 462. 28 For the real rulers of Turkey, see Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 94, 109, 217, 364; Melson, Revolution and Genocide, 142–7, 158; and Handan Nezir Akmeşe, The Birth of Modern Turkey: The Ottoman Military and the March to World War I (London: I.B. Tauris, 2005), 94, 109. 29 “Allocution prononcée au Consistoire du 6 décembre 1915,” Actes de Benoît XV, vol. 1, 1914–1918, (Paris: Maison de la Bonne Presse, 1924), 106–12. 30 For diplomatic interventions, see Trumpener, Germany, 250. 31 Latour, “Les relations,” 31–8. 32 Loiseau, “Ma mission,” 104–5. 33 Maurice Paléologue, La Russie des Tsars pendant la grande guerre, vol. 1 (Paris: Plon-Nourrit, 1921), 153, 221–3. Paléologue estimated the Greek Catholic population in East Galicia at 3.7 million of a total population of 5 million. He mentioned further Russian occupation policies: suppression of all Ruthenian newspapers, firing of Galician government officials and replacing them with Russians, transporting Ruthenian children to Kiev and Karkov so that they could be raised in the Orthodox religion. Mark von Hagen, War in a European Borderland: Occupations and Occupation Plans in Galicia and Ukraine, 1914–1918 (Seattle, WA: Herbert J. Ellison Center for Russian, East European, and Central Asian Studies, University of Washington, 2005), 23–53. The historical background to the Roman Catholic–Eastern Orthodox rivalry, in Nathalie Renoton-Beine, La colombe et les tranchées: La tentatives de paix de Benoît XV pendant la Grande Guerre (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2004), 83–9; she calls the papal proposal “scarcely believable.” Her claim that “hundreds of thousands of Uniates were deported to Siberia” is not credible, and not supported by the works I have consulted. The antagonism between Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire, in Trumpener, Germany, 133–4. 34 For the sequence of events in 1915, Michael Reynolds, Shattering Empires: The Clash and Collapse of the Ottoman and Russian Empires 1908–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 124–39. 35 Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, 23 Dec. 1922, para. 25. 36 The peace note in John Pollard, The Unknown Pope, Benedict XV (1914–1922) and the Pursuit of Peace (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1999), 123–8. For popular reactions to the peace note, see Aubert et al., The Church in a Secularized Society, 540–1. 37 I owe this account to Gordon Craig, Germany 1866–1945 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1978), 443–66.

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Notes to pages 207–15

38 “Le conflit de la Ruhr: Programme de Paix du Saint-Siège,” Documentation catholique 5, no. 207 (21–8 July 1923): 67–9; “Commentaire officieux de la letter du Pape par la Secrétairerie d’État du Saint-Siège” and “La Lettre du Saint-Père et son programme de paix,” ibid., 69–71 (I have largely paraphrased this lengthy statement.); “Lettre du Cardinal Dubois, archevêque de Paris, sur le document pontifical,” ibid., 71–2; “Démarches diplomatique du Saint Siège,” ibid., 73–4. 39 “Discussion à la Chambre des Dèputès,” ibid., 131–91. The Four Articles can be found in Thomas Bokenkotter, A Concise History of the Catholic Church (New York: Doubleday, 1990), 242–3. Bismarck quoted in Ernst Helmreich, ed., A Free Church in a Free State? (Boston: D.C. Heath, 1964), 65. Quotes from the National Assembly debate are from Documentation catholique 5, no. 207 (21–8 July 1923), 133, 138, 145–6, 151–66, 179, 190–1. 40 Harry Paul, The Second Ralliement: The Rapprochement between Church and State in France in the Twentieth Century (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1967), 96. 41 Maurice Vaussard, Enquête sur le Nationalisme (Paris: Spes, 1924), ii–iii, 395–9, 402–3, 411. 42 On missions, see Daniel Binchy, Church and State in Fascist Italy (1941; reprint, London: Oxford University Press, 1970), 640. Peter Kent, “Between Rome and London: Pius XI, the Catholic Church, and the Abyssinian Crisis of 1935–1936,” International History Review 11 (May 1989): 255. See François Charles-Roux, Huit Ans au Vatican (Paris: Flammarion, 1947), 135. Pius XI quoted in Peter Kent, The Pope and the Duce: The International Impact of the Lateran Agreements (London: Macmillan, 1981), 62–3. British ministerial reports to the Foreign Office reported that the Vatican feared if Italy invaded, “the effect on the work of the Church among black peoples would be disastrous.” See Thomas Hachey, ed., Anglo-Vatican Relations, 1914–1939: Confidential Annual Reports of the British Ministers to the Holy See (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1972), 325. 43 For the Catholic Action issue, see Binchy, Church, 496–528. 44 Hachey, ed., Anglo-Vatican Relations, 322. 45 Abyssinia is a historical name for Ethiopia though not the official name. “Discours de S.S. Pie XI lors de la lecture du décret sur l’héroïcité des vertus de Justin de Jacobis,” Documentation catholique 34, 762 (14 Sept. 1935): 323–4. Charles-Roux, Huit Ans, noted that the speech was not fully reported in the Italian press, 135. 46 “Allocution de S.S. Pie XI aux infirmières catholiques,” Documentation catholique 34, no. 762 (14 Sept. 1935): 324–7. Pius spoke in French to an international gathering of 2,000 nurses. Pius XII quote on Catholic just war



Notes to pages 216–9 343

theory, in Brian Kane, Just War and the Common Good: Jus ad Bellum Principles in Twentieth-Century Papal Thought (San Francisco: Catholic Scholars Press, 1997), 14. 47 The foreign press reports, see Documentation catholique 34, no. 762 (14 Sept. 1935): 329–51. Italian government complaints, see Kent, “Between Rome and London,” 257–8. Pacelli reported complaints from Italians to CharlesRoux, Huit Ans, 137. “Discours addressé aux anciens combatants venus á Rome pour leur Congrès (7 Sept. 1935),” in Actes de S.S. Pie XI: Encycliques, motu proprio, brefs, allocutions, actes des dicastères, etc., vol. 12, 1934–1935 (Paris: Maison de la Bonne Presse (1927–), 146–9. Bonne Presse was a publishing house of the Assumptionist religious order. 48 George Baer, Test Case: Italy, Ethiopia, and the League of Nations (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1976), 121–44. See also Charles-Roux, Huit Ans, 147. 49 See Comte Jan Szembek, Journal 1933–1939, trans. J. Rzewuska and T. Zaleski (Paris: Plon, 1952), 147, the diary entry of 5 Jan. 1936. 50 “Allocution ‘Graves equidem’ de S.S. Pie XI,” Documentation catholique 35, no. 777 (4 Jan. 1936): 11–14. The salient part of the 27 Aug. speech was transmitted by l’Agence Radio, an agency of the French press; see “Depêche de l’Agence Radio,” 329–30. For distortions, see the Osservatore Romano, 334. For an example from the Italian press, see Messaggero, 332. All of these can be found in Documentation catholique 34, no. 762 (14 Sept. 1935): 329–30, 332, 334. 51 Hinsley quoted in Kent, “Between Rome and London,” 258–9. For clerical pro-war enthusiasm, see Baer, Test Case, 161, and Gaetano Salvemini, “The Vatican and the Ethiopian War,” in Francis Keene, ed., Neither Liberty Nor Bread: The Meaning and Tragedy of Fascism (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1940), 191–3. Schuster is quoted in Hubert Lagardelle, Mission à Rome Mussolini (Paris: Plon, 1955), 299. Lagardelle was a French government emissary to Italy. For clerical nationalism, see Charles-Roux, Huit Ans, 149. 52 Papal diplomacy, see Kent, “Between Rome and London,” 259–63. Lagardelle was sure Pius XI supported Italian colonial aims, Mission, 180. 53 “Discours de S.S. Pie XI à la cérémonie d’inauguration de l’Exposition internatonale de la presse catholique,” Documentation catholique 35, no. 800 (13 June 1936): 1481–6. 54 The Mussolini quote and the half a million figure is in Denis Mack Smith, Mussolini: A Biography (New York: Vintage, 1982), 200–1. For more on mustard gas, see Angelo Del Boca, The Ethiopian War: 1935–1941, trans. P.D. Cummins (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), 82–3, 109. For the latest estimates, see Kramer, Dynamic of Destruction, 329.

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Notes to pages 220–4

55 Nicolas Virtue, “A Way Out of Isolation: Fascist Italy’s Relationship with the Vatican during the Ethiopian Crisis,” in Bruce Strand, ed., Collision of Empires: Italy’s Invasion of Ethiopia and its International Impact (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2013), 287–310. 56 Owen Chadwick, Britain and the Vatican during the Second World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 7, 19–20. 57 The full text of the manifesto can be found in Documentation catholique 39, no. 879 (5 Sept. 1938): 1049–52. For a summary, see Meir Michaelis, Mussolini and the Jews: German-Italian Relations and the Jewish Question in Italy 1922–1945 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1978), 152–3. 58 Michaelis, Mussolini and the Jews, 163-4; Smith, Mussolini, 219–21. Osborne quote in Chadwick, Britain and the Vatican, 25–6. 59 All the July discourses are in Documentation catholique 39, no. 879 (5 Sept. 1938): 1054–62. Pius shared the common belief that the sons of Noah were progenitors of different “peoples”: Japhet of the Europeans, Shem of Middle Easterners, and Ham of Africans. For Mussolini’s response, see 1062. 60 For a pathbreaking analysis of Nazism as a moral system, see Claudia Koonz, The Nazi Conscience (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003). “Discours de S. Em le cardinal van Roey, archevêque de Malines,” Documentation catholique 39, no. 886 (20 Dec. 1938): 1481–95. “Allocution de S. Em. le cardinal Schuster, archevêque de Milan,” ibid.,. 1497–502; “Lettre de S. Em. le cardinal Verdier, archevêque de Paris,” ibid.,. 1495–7. Verdier was an outspoken anti-Fascist. He died in April 1940 before the German invasion of France. See “Discours de S. Em. le cardinal Faulhaber, archevêque de Munich,” ibid., 1510. On Schuster, see Giovanni Miccoli, Les Dilemmes et les silences de Pie XII, trans. Anne-Laure Vignaux (Brussels: Complexe, 2005), 315. On Parenti, see Renzo De Felice, The Jews in Fascist Italy: A History, trans. Robert Miller (New York: Enigma, 2001), 306. Susan Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows: The Vatican and the Holocaust in Italy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 244–5. 61 Michaelis, Mussolini and the Jews, 248. 62 Ciano quoted in ibid., 146; quoting the government minister, 249. The Day of the Holy Cross commemorated the discovery of remnants of the true cross in Constantine’s time. When the papal nuncio to Italy refused to attend the official reception for Hitler, the government masked the insult by excusing all ambassadors from attending. Pius’s statement and the comments from La Croix are in Documentation catholique 39, no. 873 (5 June 1938): 685–90. Binchy noted “resentful shame” among Italians over the racial manifesto, not out of “philosemitism” but out of contempt for



Notes to pages 226–9 345

Nazi “neo-barbarism,” and also pointed to the open opposition of Italian bishops to racial ideology, in Church, 614, 624–5. In Mussolini, Denis Mack Smith insists on the unpopularity of these policies, 220–2; he also cites a contemporary view that the public would have supported the king’s dismissal of Mussolini in September 1939 when Germany invaded Poland, 470. 63 Salvatore Garau, “Between ‘Spirit’ and ‘Science’: The Emergence of Italian Fascist Antisemitism through the 1920s and 1930s,” in Daniel Tilles and Salvatore Garau, eds., Fascism and the Jews: Italy and Britain (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2011), 45–9; Miccoli, Les Dilemmes, 309–11, 313, 315. Alessandro Visani, “Italian Reactions to the Racial Laws of 1938 as Seen through the Classified Files of the Ministry of Popular Culture,” Journal of Modern Italian Studies 11, no. 2 (2006): 171–87. The last quote is in Garau, “Between ‘Spirit’ and ‘Science,’” 59. 64 Les declarations du Pape aux dirigeants et aux délégués de Radio Catholique Belge,” La Libre Belgique (14 Sept. 1938), n.p. “Discours de S.S. Pie XI (21.7.38),” in Documentation catholique 39, no. 879 (5 Sept. 1938): 1056. Leo XIII in the 1888 encyclical Libertas Praestantissimum, para. 12. The statement is an adaptation from “The Letter of Paul to the Colossians,” 1 Corinthians 3:11, and “The Letter of Paul to the Galatians,” Galatians 3:28. 65 On the many drafts, see Peter Godman, Hitler and the Vatican (New York: Free Press, 2004), 58–70, 173–93, 195–9; Hubert Wolf, Pope and Devil: The Vatican’s Archives and the Third Reich, trans. Kenneth Kronenberg (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 227–9, 255–70; and Emma Fattorini, Hitler, Mussolini and the Vatican, trans. Carl Ipsen (Malden, MA: Polity, 2011), 116–17, 235. The Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office was so named in 1908. Prior to that, it was called the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition. Today, it is called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. 66 Mit brennender Sorge, paras. 8, 11, 31, 34. The encyclical as the work of many hands, in Fattorini, Hitler, 115–19. For Nazi measures against the Catholic Church prior to the encyclical, and in retaliation to it, see Ernst Christian Helmreich, The German Churches under Hitler: Background, Struggle, and Epilogue (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1979), 286–96, 290–1. See John Conway, The Nazi Persecution of the Churches 1933–1945 (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1968) on the “Nazi Pseudo-Religion,” 140–57, and on the campaign against the church, 122–8, 158–95. The encyclical encouraged belief that the Vatican would break off relations with Germany, in Miccoli, Les Dilemmes, 164–5. 67 On the encyclical and Italy, see Smith, Mussolini, 207–13.

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68 “Discours de sa Sainteté Pie XI (20 Oct. 1938),” in Documentation catholique 39, no. 885 (5 Dec. 1938): 1411–14. 69 On Pius’ caution and on omitting mention of the persecution of Jewish Germans, see Godman, Hitler and the Vatican, 158–9. A member of the Holy Office had commented on the all-too-brief treatment of racism in the 1937 encyclical. The eight propositions can be found in “Église catholique et racisme,” Documentation catholique 39, no. 872 (20 May 1938): 579–80. 70 The first anti-Jewish decree can be found in Michaelis, Mussolini and the Jews, 236, and Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows, 42. Mit brennender Sorge, para. 16. 71 Rienzo De Felice, Jews in Fascist Italy, 280; the full Ciano report, dated 10 Oct. 1938, 684–5. Ciano transmitted the report to Mussolini, reminding him that the marriage decree violated article 34 of the Concordat, 686. 72 On the definition of a Jew, see Michaelis, Mussolini and the Jews, 236–7. Article 34 of the Concordat read: “The Italian State wishing to restore to the institution of marriage, which is the basis of the family, the dignity it deserves considering the Catholic tradition of the nation, recognizes the civil effects of the sacrament of marriage as laid down by Canon Law.” See Frank Coppa, ed., Controversial Concordats: The Vatican’s Relations with Napoleon, Mussolini, and Hitler (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1999), 202. The letters to Mussolini and the king are in De Felice, Jews in Fascist Italy, 687–90. The Christmas 1938 discourse is in Documentation catholique 40, no. 889 (20 Jan. 1939): 67–72. The government gave in to the Vatican on one point: such marriages would not be labelled “concubinage.” De Felice, Jews in Fascist Italy, 282, 559. 73 Coppa, ed., Controversial Concordats, 197, 209. 74 The sequence of events leading up to the war can be found in Donald Watt, How War Came: The Immediate Origins of the Second World War, 1938–1939 (New York: Pantheon, 1989), 150–60. 7. The Debate over Pius XII’s Priorities 1 Pater Robert Leiber, SJ, “Der Papst und die Verfolgerung der Juden,” in Fritz Raddatz, ed., Summa iniuria oder Durfte der Papst schweigen? Hochhuths “Stellvertreter” in der öffentlichen Kritik (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1963), 101–7. The full Orsenigo-Pacelli exchange can be found in Giovanni Sale, Hitler, la Santa Sede e gli ebrei: Con documenti dell’Archivio segreto vaticano (Milan: Jaca Book, 2004), 100–3. There is a substantial literature on the Brazil project. See esp. Lutz-Eugen Reutter, Katholische Kirche als Fluchthelfer im Dritten Reich: Die Betreuung von Auswandern durch den St Raphaels-Verein



Notes to pages 237–42 347

(Recklinghausen: Paulus-Verlag, 1971), 141–55; and Jeffrey Lesser, Welcoming the Undesirables: Brazil and the Jewish Question (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 146–68. For the German church and Vatican correspondence on the issue, see ADSS 6: 62–7, 91–2, 103, 124–5, 398–400. 2 Leiber, “Der Papst,” 101–7; Léon Poliakov, “Wie das bei Poliakov heisst,” in Raddatz, Summa iniuria, 113–14. For the full Poliakov statement, see his Bréviare de la haine (Paris; Calmann-Levy, 1951.) 347, 351. 3 Joseph Bottum, “Introduction,” and “Pius and the Nazis,” in Joseph Bottum and David Dalin, eds., The Pius War: Responses to the Critics of Pius XII (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004), 9, 91; Russell Hittinger, “Desperately Seeking Culprits: Who Unleashed Anti–Semitism? Review Essay,” in ibid., 48. See also Mit brennender Sorge, paras. 15–16. 4 Ronald Rychlak, Hitler, the War, and the Jews (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 2000), 142. Inside the Vatican (Oct. 1999), xi. The issue quotes Father Peter Gumpel favourably, a man who has been a leading advocate for Pius XII’s canonization. Inside the Vatican speaks for the conservative wing in the Catholic Church, the wing that deplores the influence of Vatican II. 5 Hochhuth, Deputy, 205–6. Hochhuth portrayed clerics at the Vatican lamenting German losses on the eastern front, 104, 110, 147. Saul Friedländer, Pius XII and the Third Reich: A Documentation, trans. Charles Fullman (London: Chatto and Windus, 1966), 237. Michael Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930–1965 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), 58. Phayer has called attention to Friedländer’s conclusion, 60. 6 Owen Chadwick, Britain and the Vatican during the Second World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 53–5,137. 7 ADSS 5: 4, 8–9, 12, 21–2. The Ribbentrop interview in Records and Documents of the Holy See Relating to the Second World War, vol.1, The Holy See and the War in Europe: March 1939–August 1940, trans. Gerard Noel (Washington, DC: Corpus Books, 1968), 355–8. This is the only volume of the ADSS translated into English. 8 ADSS 5: 13–26. Also Pierre Blet, SJ, Pius XII and the Second World War: According to the Archives of the Vatican, trans. Lawrence Johnson (New York: Paulist Press, 1999), 119–27. Divini Redemptoris, para. 58. 9 Gerhard Weinberg, A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 438–9. ADSS 7: 67–8. 10 ADSS 7: 16–18. Nicholas Kallay (i.e., Miklós Kállay), Hungarian Premier: A Personal Account of a Nation’s Struggle in the Second World War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1954), 168–72. 11 ADSS 7: 23. 12 Hinsley, in ADSS 7: 26, 274–6.

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Notes to pages 242–8

13 Pius and the German request in ADSS 7: 68–9. Weizsäcker, in ADSS 11: 39–40. 14 The following account is drawn from Harold Deutsch, The Conspiracy against Hitler in the Twilight War (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1968), 102–48, and Klemens von Klemperer, German Resistance against Hitler: The Search for Allies Abroad, 1938–1945 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992), 171–80. For German opinion on the July 1944 plot, see Peter Fritzsche, Life and Death in the Third Reich (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 270. 15 For the Venlo affair, see Deutsch, Conspiracy, 136–7. 16 Deutsch, Conspiracy, 146, and Klemperer, German Resistance, 180. 17 Leiber quote in Deutsch, Conspiracy, 121; David Alvarez and Robert Graham, Nothing Sacred: Nazi Espionage against the Vatican, 1939–1945 (Portland, OR: F. Cass, 1977), 26. 18 The claim about Pius XII as diplomatic mediator is made in Peter Kent and John Pollard, eds., Papal Diplomacy in the Modern Age (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994), 8, 14, 127; Hyginus Eugene Cardinale, The Holy See and the International Order (Toronto: Macmillan, 1976), 89. 19 Donald Cameron Watt, How War Came: The Immediate Origins of the Second World War, 1938–1939 (New York: Pantheon, 1989), 65–6; Chadwick, Britain, 70; Tardini, Records and Documents, 245–6. 20 Summi Pontificatus, para. 111. 21 Blet, Pius XII, 48–50; Chadwick, Britain, 138–9. For a defence of Pius XII’s many efforts to avert war, see ADSS 1: 3–94. 22 Chadwick, Britain, 255. Osborne encloses a translation of a letter from the pope to Cardinal Maglione ordering prayers for peace, published in the Osservatore Romano, 7 Aug. 1943, inferring that His Holiness no longer believes in the possibility of a compromise peace. Letter from Sir D’Arcy Osborne, dated 10 Aug. 1943, registry no. R 8323/158/57, Kew, Richmond, Surrey; Leonidas Hill, III, “The Vatican Embassy of Ernst von Weizsäcker, 1943–1945,” Journal of Modern History 39, no. 2 (1967): 157. 23 “The Allocution of Pope Pius XII,” Tablet, 12 June 1943. Pius repeated this explanation in a speech to the diplomatic corps at the Vatican, 25 Feb. 1946. Documentation catholique 43, no. 960 (17 Mar. 1946): 202–6. Cardinal Montini, undersecretary of state during the war and later to become Pope Paul VI, made the same argument when the criticisms of Pius began to mount in the 1960s. “Pius XII et les Juifs,” Documentation catholique 60, no. 1406 (18 Aug. 1963): 1071–5. 24 Osborne quoted in Meir Michaelis, Mussolini and the Jews: German-Italian Relations and the Jewish Question in Italy, 1922–1945 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1978), 424.



Notes to pages 248–53 349

25 ADSS 2: 324. 26 ADSS 2: 285–9. 27 Sapieha, in ADSS 3: 539–41. Accounts by: Scavizzi, in ADSS 3: 539; Tardini, 3: 569–71; Sapieha, 3: 669–70; and secretaries, 3: 431. 28 Chadwick, Britain, 110–14, 141–9, 173–6, 186. Maglione’s report on the Fascist vigilante acts, ADSS 1: 456–7. The paper’s circulation had soared from 80,000 in 1939 to 150,000 by May 1940, the month before Italy entered the war. For an eyewitness account of the Fascist vigilante acts, see Eleanor Packard, “The Pope and the War,” Catholic Mind 41 (Jan. 1943): 25–6. Galeazzi Ciano, Diary, 1937–1943, trans. Robert Miller and V. Umberto Coletti Perucca (New York: Enigma, 2002), 352–3. For German government threats, see ADSS 3: 208–9. 29 For the Pope’s Christmas address, see the New York Times, 25 Dec. 1942; Chadwick, Britain, 218–20. 30 Hubert Jedin, Konrad Repgen, and John Dolan, eds., History of the Church, vol. 10, The Church in the Modern Age, trans. Anselm Biggs (New York: Crossroad, 1981), 94. 31 Leiber, “Der Papst,” 106; Poliakov, Bréviare, 341. 32 Sister M. Pascalina Lehnert, Ich durfte Ihm dienen: Errinerungen an Papst Pius XII. (Würzburg: Verlag Johann Wilhelm Naumann, 1983), 117–18. 33 Orsenigo, in ADSS 8: 607–8; Giobbe, in ADSS 8: 677–8. Internuncios were nuncios without ambassadorial status. De Witte, in ADSS 9: 287–9. 34 Theo Salemink, “Bischöfe protestieren gegen die Deportation der niederländischen Juden 1942,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 116, no. 1 (2005): 63–77. Salemink cites a number of books and articles that gave the story currency, including a court trial in Germany. I have come across other examples: Rosario Esposito, Proces au Vicaire: Pie XII et les Juifs selon le témoinage de l’histoire, trans. Eugène Hudon (Sherbrooke, QC: Editions Paulines, 1965), 145–6; Walter Adolph, Verfälschte Geschichte: Antwort an Rolf Hochhuth (Berlin: Morus-Verlag, 1963), 29–30; Leiber, “Der Papst,” 106. For a penetrating analysis of the events based on more current research, see Bob Moore, Victims and Survivors: The Nazi Persecution of the Jews in the Netherlands 1940–1945 (London: Arnold, 1997), 127–9. Moore found that 92 Catholics of Jewish origin were deported in August 1942; 500 Protestants of Jewish origin were deported to Theresienstadt in September 1944, of whom about 150 survived. In both groups those married to spouses of non-Jewish origin were exempted. 35 Charles Loiseau, “Mission auprès du Vatican (1914–1918),” Revue d’histoire diplomatique 74 (1960): 105. For Benedict XV’s defence of his refusal to

350

Notes to pages 254–61

condemn perpetrators of atrocities, see Actes de Benoît XV, vol. 1, 1914–1918 (Paris: Maison de la Bonne Presse, 1924), 66–8. 36 “Le Saint Siège et la Pologne,” Documentation catholique 41, no. 908 (5–20 Jan. 1940): 6–8, 11–14. “She is a mother,” in The Church and the Modern World, 79. The quote is from “Christmas Address of 1946,” Acta Apostolicai Sedis 39 (1947): 7–17. 37 Montini, ADSS 1: 453–5; Orsenigo, ADSS 3: 216–17. German threats, ADSS 3: 208–9, and Manfred Clauss, Die Beziehungen des Vatikans zu Polen während des II. Weltkrieges (Cologne: Böhlau-Verlag, 1979), 175–6. 38 Friedländer, Pius XII and the Third Reich, 226–31. 39 To Ehrenfried, ADSS 2: 200–3. I quote from the New Revised Standard Version, Harper Catholic Bibles. To Frings, ADSS 2: 365; to Preysing, 2: 292–6. 40 To Preysing, ADSS 2: 322. “Hirtenwort Preysings und der Kölner Kirchenprovinz,” in Ludwig Volk, ed., Akten deutscher Bischöfe über die Lage der Kirche 1933–1945, vol. 5, 1940–1942 (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag, 1983), 959–64. Not all clerics were as bold as Preysing. The sermon was read out in churches only in Berlin, Mainz, and Limburg. 41 ADSS 10: 61. 42 ADSS 2: 56. Harold H. Tittmann, Jr., Inside the Vatican of Pius XII: The Memoir of an American Diplomat during World War II, edited with an Introduction by Harold H. Tittmann, III (New York: Doubleday, 2004), 124–5. 43 ADSS 2: 34. 44 “Theater als Provokation Öffentliche Diskussion mit Erwin Piscator im Jüdischen Gemeindehaus.” Der Tagesspiegel 19 (13 Mar. 1963). When Pacelli was Vatican secretary of state, Senatro once asked him why the Holy See did not utter a “forceful word” about the persecution of the Catholic Church in Mexico. Pacelli replied that in these days “spectacular actions” did more harm than good. He meant that we are no longer in the Middle Ages when the Pope could claim both spiritual and secular hegemony, including the power to consecrate and depose monarchs. “Halfen spectaculäre Aktionen den Verfolgten?” Petrusblatt: Katholische Kirchenzeitung Bistum Berlin, 7 Apr. 1963. 45 ADSS 2: 385–436 for the full document, see esp. 400–13. 46 ADSS 2: 45. Pius’ telegrams to the neutrals were published in the Osservatore Romano, 12 May 1940. 47 Ludwig Volk, “Pius XII. und die ‘grosserer Űbel,’” in Dieter Albrecht, ed., Katholische Kirche und Nationalsozialismus: Ausgewählte Aufsätze von Ludwig Volk (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag, 1987), 328–34. 48 Blet, Pius XII, 59, 66. ADSS 2: 160. The quote from the Osservatore Romano is in Paul Duclos, Le Vatican et la Seconde Guerre mondiale: Action doctrinale et diplomatique en faveur de la paix (Paris: A. Pedone, 1955), 58.



Notes to pages 261–70 351

49 Pius XII’s remark on 15 Oct. 1942 to the Austrian Bishop Andreas Rohracher. See ADSS 2: 278. 50 Duclos, Le Vatican, 20–1, 43. “Allocution au Sacré Collège a l’Occasion de la Fête de Saint Eugène Ier, 2 June 1943,” in Mgr. Simon Delacroix, ed., Documents Pontificaux de Sa Sainteté Pie XIIer, 1943 (Saint-Maurice, Switzerland: Editions Saint-Augustin, 1962), 128. 51 Alberto Giovannetti, L’Action du Vatican pour la Paix: Documents inédits 1939–1940, trans. Élisabeth de Pirey (Paris: Fleurus, 1963), 116, 157–8. For the Italian original, see Il Vaticano e la guerra, 1939–1940: note storiche (Città del Vaticano: Liberia editrice vaticana, c. 1960). 52 ADSS 2: 71. 53 ADSS 3: 49. Conclusion 1 Summi Pontificatus, paras. 20, 99, www.papalencyclicals.net. All papal encyclicals can be found at this website; I cite paragraph numbers for papal encyclicals as they are published in many different editions. 2 Isaiah Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” in Four Essays on Liberty (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), 167–72. 3 Summi Pontificatus, para. 35. 4 Daniel Donovan, The Church as Idea and Fact (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1988), 11–26. “Holy Spirit,” in Richard McBrien, ed., The Harper/Collins Encyclopedia of Catholicism (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), 628–35. 5 Thomas Bokenkotter, A Concise History of the Catholic Church (New York: Doubleday, 1990), 28, 33. 6 Max Weber, From Max Weber, ed. and trans. H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1952), 52, 245–9. 7 Augustine, The Confessions of St Augustine, trans. Rex Warner (New American Library, 1963), 173–4, or see Bk. XIII, chap. 7 in any edition; Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), 348. I have drawn this interpretation of St Augustine from Peter Brown and from John Burnaby, Amor Dei (London: Hodder and Staughton, 1938), Henry Chadwick, Augustine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), and John Mahoney, The Making of Moral Theology: A Study of the Roman Catholic Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987). 8 Brown, Augustine, 219. The second quote cited, in Mahoney, Making of Moral Theology, 48; the third quote cited, in Burnaby, Amor Dei, 230–1. 9 Brown, Augustine, 259, 342; Chadwick, Augustine, 110. 10 Brown, Augustine, 208; Mahoney, Making of Moral Theology, 42.

352

Notes to pages 271–8

11 Alexander Sedgwick, Jansenism in Seventeenth-Century France (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1977), 28–9, 193–206. 12 Mahoney, Making of Moral Theology, 53, 56, 94; “frequent communion” in Owen Chadwick, A History of the Popes (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998), 361–2; “Discours de S. Em. le Cardinal Légat,” Documentation catholique 38, no. 852 (14 Aug. 1937): 223, 236. 13 Wilhelm Alff, “Entgegnung auf Hochhuth,” in Fritz Raddatz, ed., Summa iniuria (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1963), 139–41. 14 Mystici Corporis Christi, para. 23. 15 Richard McBrien, Catholicism (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994), 9–14; Daniel Donovan, Distinctively Catholic (New York: Paulist Press, 1997), 88, 91. 16 Mystici Corporis Christi, para. 12. 17 Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, para. 34; Benedict XV, Ad Beatissimi Apostolorum, para. 22; Pius XII, Allocution, Si Diligis (Canonization of St Pius X) (1954). 18 Pierre Blet, Pius XII and the Second World War, trans. Lawrence Johnson (New York: Paulist Press, 1999), 67; Robert Graham, Vatican Diplomacy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959), 395; Pius XII, ADSS 2: 275. 19 Philip Hughes, “Pius the Eleventh,” Blackfriars 20, no. 228 (Mar. 1939): 170; Pius XI, Mit brennender Sorge, paras. 39, 41. 20 Michael Phayer, “The Postwar German Catholic Debate over Holocaust Guilt,” Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte 8, no. 2 (1995): 435–7. 21 Quotes in Hans Prolingheuer and Thomas Breuer, Dem Führer gehorsam (Oberursel: Publik-Forum, 2005), 158. 22 Ubi Arcano, para. 25. 23 Summi Pontificatus, para. 49. 24 Ibid., para. 106. Mark Mazower, Hitler’s Empire (New York: Penguin, 2008), 36–43. 25 Gröber and von Galen quotes, in Prolingheuer and Breuer, Dem Führer gehorsam, 159. 26 “Germany: A Commentary on the Encyclical,” Tablet (18 Nov. 1939): 582. 27 Quotes cited in Prolingheuer and Breuer, Dem Führer, 194. 28 Barbara Stambolis, “Nationalisierung trotz Ultramontanisierung oder: ‘Alles für Deutschland. Deutschland aber für Christus,’” Historische Zeitschrift, 269 (1999): 57–97. Ronald Ross, The Failure of Bismarck’s Kulturkampf (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1998), 5–7. 29 Heinrich Missalla, “Gott mit Uns”: Die Deutsche katholischer Kriegspredigt 1914–1918 (Munich: Kösel-Verlag, 1968), 99, 126. Missala writes about the



Notes to pages 279–85 353

First World War, “theologizing” war was no monopoly of Germans, and continued in the Second World War. 30 Summi Pontificatus, para. 102. 31 Immortale Dei, paras. 6, 12, 13. 32 The Syllabus of Errors Condemned by Pius IX, paras. 39–55; Summi Pontificatus, paras. 41–8, 67–73. 33 Frank Coppa, ed., Controversial Concordats (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1999), 197–8, 200–3, 209. The volume includes the full texts of the concordats with Italy and Germany. 34 Quote in Yves Congar, O.P., “The Historical Development of Authority in the Church: Points for Reflection,” in John Todd, ed., Problems of Authority: The Papers Read at an Anglo-French Symposium Held at the Abbey of Notre-Dame du Bec, April 1961 (Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1962), 142. 35 Bertram to Bishop H. Wienken in Berlin (15 Sept. 1940), in Ludwig Volk, ed., Akten deutscher Bischöfe über die Lage der Kirche, vol. 5, 1940–1942 (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag, 1983), 186–7. 36 Immortale Dei, paras. 32, 34. Leo took these words from the 1832 ­encyclical  Mirari Vos (On Liberalism and Religious Indifferentism) by Pope Gregory XVI. 37 Summi Pontificatus, paras. 29, 83: “sons of the same [divine] Father,” para. 43, and “supernatural union in all-embracing love,” para. 44. 38 Licet Multa, para. 3; Libertas, para. 33. For Leo’s idealized view of the Christian Middle Ages, see Immortale Dei, para. 21. William Stead, The Pope and the New Era Being Letters from the Vatican in 1889 (London: Cassell and Company, 1890), 218. 39 “Devoirs et Problèmes des communautés d’États souverain: La pluralité des confessions religieuses devant la loi,” Documentation catholique 50, no.1 (Dec. 1953): 1601–8. 40 “Text of Official Translation of the Pope’s Christmas Message, Broadcast to World,” New York Times, 25 Dec. 1944. All quotes are from this issue. 41 “Discours: Adressé aux members du pèlegrinage de la Confédération française des travailleurs chrétiens (C.F.T.C) à l’audience du 18 septembre 1938, à Castel-Gandolfo,” Actes de S.S. Pie XI, Encycliques, Motu Proprio, Brefs, Allocutions, Actes des Dicastères, etc. Texte Latin et traduction française, vol. 17 (Paris: Maison de la Bonne Presse, 1945), 159. 42 Non Abbiamo Bisogno, 1931, para. 44. 43 Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, paras. 11–14, 44; Quas Primas, para. 24.

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Notes to pages 285–92

44 “Homélie pronouncée à la canonisation solennelle du Bienheureux Pierre Canisius,” in Actes de S.S. Pie XI 2 (1924): 36–41. 45 Militantis Ecclesiae, para. 5; Editae Saepe, para. 9. Saint Charles Borromeo like Saint Canisius was a champion of the Catholic Counter-Reformation. I’m puzzled why Leo XIII calls Canisius saint. He was beatified in 1864, which meant he was the Blessed Canisius, and canonized in 1925. 46 Quas Primas, paras. 3, 4, 8, 17–19, 25; Ubi, para. 28. 47 Pius XI from Quas Primas, para. 21. Emma Fattorini, Hitler, Mussolini, and the Vatican (Cambridge: Polity, 2011), 40–2; Thomas Hachey, ed., AngloVatican Relations 1914–1939 (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1972), 77–8. 48 “Eucharistic Congresses,” Catholic Encyclopedia on CD-ROM, www.newadvent.org. Anthony Wilhelm, Christ among Us: A Modern Presentation of the Catholic Faith, 3rd rev. ed. (New York: Paulist Press, 1981), 240–1. Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli, “The Kingdom of Christ,” Catholic Mind 32, no. 254 (22 Dec. 1934): 474–80. 49 Quote in Richard McBrien, Encyclopedia of Catholicism, 1150; Fattorini, Hitler, Mussolini, and the Vatican, 41. 50 McBrien, Encyclopedia, 833. 51 Roger Aubert et al., The Church in a Secularized Society, vol. 5, The Christian Centuries, trans. Janet Sondheimer (New York: Paulist Press, 1978), 117. 52 Hubert Jedin, Konrad Repgen, and John Dolan, eds., History of the Church, vol. 10, The Church in the Modern Age, trans. Anselm Biggs (New York: Crossroad, 1981), 300-5. 53 Avery Dulles, “A Half Century of Ecclesiology,” Theological Studies, 50, no. 3 (1989): 422. Mystici Corporis Christi, paras. 44, 57. Leo XIII, Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae; this encyclical lacks numbered paragraphs; the quote is a little over halfway down in the encyclical. Mystici Corporis Christi, paras. 8, 12, 17, 20, 24, 40. 54 “Without Spot or Wrinkle,” in Avery Dulles, SJ, The Reshaping of Catholicism: Current Challenges in the Theology of the Church (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1988), 21. Mystici Corporis Christi, para. 40. A succinct explanation of the church as Body of Christ and Holy Spirit can be found in McBrien, Catholicism, 600–4. 55 Hans Küng, The Church (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967), 59–65, 226–30, 414–16. 56 Congar, “Historical Development,” 145–6. 57 Küng, Church, 416–17. 58 Karl Rahner, “Concerning Vatican Council II,” Theological Investigations, vol. 6 (Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1969), 260–3.



Notes to pages 293–9 355

59 Dulles, Reshaping of Catholicism, 21–2; Hadrian VI, in Duffy, Saints, 157; Pope Paul VI in “Konzil,” “Kirchenspaltung ‘Sunden der Vater,’” Der Spiegel (16 Oct. 1963), 58­–9. 60 On Poland, Tardini’s note of 18 May 1942 to Maglione, ADSS 3: 569–71. On Slovakia, Tardini’s memo of 7 April 1943, ADSS 9: 233. Morley has translated the Tardini memo in Vatican, 93–4. 61 ADSS 9: 525–6. 62 The Orsenigo statement is in Preysing’s letter to Pius, 23 Jan. 1943, ADSS 9: 93–4. I thank the anonymous reader of my manuscript for pointing out that Orsenigo was annoyed at German clergy who demonstrated compassion for the Poles. 63 Joël-Benoît d’Onorio, “La Papauté, de la romanité à l’universalité,” in Éduard Bonnefous, Joël-Benoît d’Onorio, and Jean Foyer, eds., La Papauté au XXe siècle (Paris: Cerf, 1999), 24–5. 64 Duffy, Saints and Sinners, 228, 287. 65 “Audience pontificale des Polonais en residence à Rome,” Documentation catholique 41, no. 908 (5–20 Jan. 1940): 3–6. 66 Oliver Logan, “Pius XII: Romanità, Prophesy and Charisma,” Modern Italy 3, no. 2 (1998): 237–47. 67 Christian monarchs in the Tablet (11 Mar. 1939): 309. The coronation, New York Times (13 Mar. 1939): 3. 68 Robert Ventresca, Soldier of Christ: The Life of Pope Pius XII (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 138–41. 69 John Pollard, The Unknown Pope: Benedict XV (1914–1922) and the Pursuit of Peace (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1999), 112. 70 Theodor Haecker, Journal in the Night, trans. Alexander Dru (London: Harvill Press, 1950), 88; Tag- und Nachtbücher in the original. Haecker was a friend of Sophie and Hans Scholl who were executed for distributing leaflets calling for the overthrow of the government. A Theodor Haecker prize exists for human rights activists. 71 Quote in Hubert Wolf, Pope and Devil: The Vatican’s Archives and the Third Reich, trans. Kenneth Kronenberg (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 179. 72 Peter Hebblethwaite, Paul VI: The First Modern Pope (London: HarperCollins, 1993), 159–60. 73 Allocution de S.S. Le Pape Pie XII au Sacré-Collège des cardinaux, le veille de Noël 1946, in Documentation Catholique 29, no. 981 (5 Jan. 1947), 1–10. 74 Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century (New York: Vintage, 2000), 3–40.

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Notes to pages 300–1

75 John Morley, Vatican Diplomacy and the Jews during the Holocaust, 1939–1943 (New York: KTAV, 1980), 80–1. 76 Report on papal audience, “Mgr Montini’s Notes,” in The Holy See and the War in Europe: March 1939–August 1940, trans. Gerard Noel (Washington, DC: Corpus Books, 1968), 422–4. The Noel translation corresponds to vol. 1 of the ADSS, which is the only volume translated into English.

Bibliography

Abbreviations AAS ADSS

Acta Apostolicae Sedis Actes et Documents du Saint Siège relatifs à la Seconde Guerre mondiale (Records and Documents of the Holy See Relating to the Second World War) Newspapers, Journals, and Magazines

America Christian Century La Documentation catholique Inside the Vatican Jerusalem Post La Libre Belgique Life Magazine New York Times L’Osservatore Romano Der Spiegel The Tablet Unpublished Primary Sources Archbishop Angelo Maria Dolci, Apostolic Delegate to Turkey, letter to Pietro Gasparri, Cardinal Secretary of State, 10 Oct. 1915, in Sacra Congregazione degli Affari Ecclesiastici Straordinare, Austria-Ungheria Anno 1915–1916, Pos. 1069, Fasc. 472. D’Arcy Osborne, letter dated 10 Aug. 1943, registry no. R8323/158/57, Kew, Richmond, Surrey.

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Index

Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 150 Actes et Documents (ADSS): about, 5, 29, 76 – 8, 304n7; CatholicJewish historical commission, 77, 317n2; editorial statements, 78, 132, 137 – 40, 257 – 8, 260 – 1, 273; incomplete resource, 76 – 8, 317n3; Jesuit editors, 76 – 8; one-volume synthesis, 77; translations, 76, 77, 78, 347n7 Acts of the Apostolic See, 150 Adenauer, Konrad, 25, 308n36, 308n40 Alberigo, Giuseppe, 40 Alexander VI, 17, 38, 306n15 Alfieri, Dino, 148, 231, 254, 300 – 1 Allies. See Second World War Alvarez, David, 244 Amici Israel, 157 – 9, 170 Amico del Clero, 226 anti-Jewish decrees: about, 80 – 1, 177 – 9; Catholic support for, 138 – 9; and church jurisdiction, 232; and civic emancipation of Jews, 176, 178 – 9, 225 – 6; political and religious antisemitism, 177 – 8; provisions in, 80 – 1, 89; racial

definitions, 80 – 1, 161; Vatican response, 139 – 40, 232. See also specific countries antisemitism: about, 10; and civic emancipation of Jews, 176, 178 – 9, 225 – 6; influence on genocide responses, 28, 138; Jewish racial definitions, 80 – 1, 158 – 9, 161; medieval beliefs, 32, 177 – 9; political and religious antisemitism, 177 – 8; Protocols of the Elders of Zion debate, 334n11, 335n18; racial antisemitism vs. anti-Jewish hostility, 158 – 61, 176 – 8; stereotypes, 163, 166 – 7; terminology, 10, 158; Vatican II on, 31 – 5, 157. See also racism and racial thinking; and specific countries antisemitism, beliefs on: about, 177 – 8; anticlericalism, 175; Aquinas on, 99; atheism, 175; Communists, 163, 166 – 8, 175, 177; Crucifixion role of Jews, 169, 177, 307n34; deicide accusations, 32, 33, 158, 169, 174, 177, 226, 231, 237, 305n9; Jewish hate for Jesus, 174; Jews as punished people,

384 Index 89, 170, 178, 237; as justified self-defence, 160 – 1, 169, 177, 179, 226 – 7, 334n10; medieval beliefs, 32, 177 – 9; plots for world domination, 161 – 3, 175 – 6, 225, 334n11, 335n18; plots with Freemasons, 158, 175; ritual murder, 158; secular ideologies, 174 – 6; undue power, 161, 163 – 4; unpatriotic, 100 antisemitism, beliefs to counter: all created in image of God, 157; common descent from Adam and Eve, 159 – 60, 222; efficacy of baptism, 158; God’s love for Israel, 34, 158; Jewish role in Second Coming, 180; redemption through Christ, 171; Vatican II declaration, 34 – 5, 305n9 antisemitism, Roman Catholic Church: call for reform in Pax super Israel, 159; Catholic press, 174 – 8, 226, 336n25; clerical antisemitism, 158 – 9; Friends of Israel affair (1928), 157 – 9, 170; history of initiatives to change, 34; Holy Office statement (1928), 157 – 9; Holy Week persecutions, 32; John Paul II’s statement (1984), 157; Nostra Aetate, 33 – 5, 305n9, 309n48; “perfidious Jews” in liturgy, 31 – 2, 158; Pius XI’s statement (1938), 157, 159 – 61, 226 – 7, 230 – 1, 334n10; racial antisemitism vs. anti-Jewish hostility, 158 – 61, 176 – 8; Ratti’s response to Lwów pogrom, 162 – 5, 334n12; supercessionism, 170 – 1; support for anti-Jewish decrees, 138 – 40, 232; Vatican II on, 31 – 5 Aquinas, Thomas, 99

A Quo Primum (On Jews and ­Christians Living in the Same Place), 162 Argentina, 187 Armenian genocide: Benedict XV’s response, 7, 185, 191, 197 – 200, 204; clerical response, 197 – 9; historical background, 197 – 204 Artuković, Andrija, 90, 91, 320n27 Attolico, Bernardo, 239 Aubert, Roger, 40, 288 Augustine, Saint, 269 – 70 Auschwitz-Birkenau: Auschwitz Report, 135, 328 – 9n61; Catholic Poles, 146; Croatian Jews, 91, 93; in The Deputy, 18 – 19; French Jews, 101; Hungarian Jews, 130, 131, 135; Italian Jews, 111 – 12; Slovakian Jews, 86, 174; trial of SS officials, 23. See also concentration camps; Holocaust Austria, 8, 167, 224 Badoglio, Pietro, 109 – 10, 113, 118, 137 Bafile, Corrado, 25, 307n32 Baky, László, 129, 133, 328 – 9n61 Bárdossy, Lásló, 127 – 8, 135 Barnett, Victoria, 7 – 8 Bauer, Yehuda, 86 Bavaria: concordat (1924), 73; extraterritorial protection, 166; historical background, 165 – 8; Nazi terrorism, 56; Pacelli as papal nuncio, 4, 9, 53, 165, 304n7; Pacelli’s antisemitism, 165 – 8; papal intervention, 71; Weimar concordats, 60 Bea, Augustin, 34 Beck, Józef, 142 – 5

Index 385 Belgium: Benedict XV’s response to atrocities, 7, 191 – 7; church-state relations, 188, 282; clerical response to atrocities, 192 – 7, 221 – 2, 339n17; deportations and murder, 194 – 5; German invasion (1914), 191 – 2; German invasion (1940), 12, 76, 249 – 50, 260, 301; historical background, 188, 191 – 6; Leo XIII on religious toleration, 282; nationalism, 211 – 12; Pius XII’s relations, 12; Pius XI on antisemitism (1938), 157, 159 – 61, 226 – 7, 230 – 1, 334n10; Ruhr Crisis, 205 – 13 Benedict XIV, 161 – 2 Benedict XV: accusations of a “stab in the back” to democracy, 48 – 9, 242; Armenian genocide, 7, 185, 191, 197 – 204; autonomy of conscience, 273; Belgian atrocities, 7, 191 – 7; “common father” of all Catholics, 193, 253 – 4, 275; Polish atrocities, 162 – 5; political neutrality, 192 – 7, 199 – 202, 253; reputation, 185, 204; salvation of the faithful, 196 – 7; temperament, 186, 297; on war, 275; as wartime pope, 4, 185, 275, 297; WWI peace proposal by, 205 Benedict XVI, 67 – 8, 308n42 Bérard, Léon, 99 – 100, 106, 322n36 Bergen, Diego von, 63 – 4 Berlin, bishop of. See Preysing, Konrad von Berlin, nuncios to. See Orsenigo, Cesare; Pacelli, Eugenio Berlin, Isaiah, 3, 266 Bertram, Adolf, 60, 63, 149, 248 – 9, 280 – 1 Besier, Gerhard, 69, 70, 186

Bethmann-Hollweg, Theobald von, 191, 195, 199 Bible, terminology, 10 Bismarck, Otto von, 67, 84 Blet, Pierre, 76 – 7, 260 – 1, 273 Bokenkotter, Thomas, 40, 268 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, 43 Boniface, Saint, 277 Borgia, Rodrigo, 17, 38, 306n15 Borromeo, Charles, Saint, 286 Bottum, Joseph, 237 Bracher, Karl Dietrich, 48 – 53, 61, 311n3, 312n4 Braham, Randolph, 125 – 6, 130, 132, 136, 328n58 Brechenmacher, Thomas, 69, 304n7, 315n31, 337 – 8n42 Breitinger, Hilarius, 149, 152 Britain. See Great Britain Brown, Peter, 269 – 70 Browning, Christopher, 7 Brownshirts (Sturmabteilung), 56, 62 Brüning, Heinrich, 50 – 2, 66, 70 – 1, 312n7, 313n9 Budapest, Hungary, 134, 135 Burzio, Giuseppe, 80 – 6, 110 – 11, 138, 177, 318n6 By Work and by Love (Opere et Caritate), 237 – 8 Byzantine schismatics, 88, 95 Canisius, Peter, 285 – 6, 354n45 Carroll, James, 58, 156 – 7 Casablanca Conference, 240 – 1 Catholic Action, 24, 101, 214, 221, 227, 323n37 Catholic Church. See Roman Catholic Church Celestine V, 38

386 Index Centre Party, Germany: about, 65 – 7; collapse of, 50, 57, 59 – 61, 65 – 7, 69 – 70, 73, 315n31; elections, 54 – 6, 59 – 60, 62, 66; Pacelli’s role, 51; Pius XI’s neutrality, 69, 71 – 2; support for Enabling Act, 49 – 50, 54, 58 – 60, 65 – 7, 69. See also Kaas, Ludwig Chadwick, Owen, 119, 143, 220, 238, 246 – 7, 249, 251 Charles-Roux, François, 147 – 8, 213 Chenu, Marie-Dominique, 37 Christ. See Roman Catholic Church, theology Christian-Democratic Union (CDU), 23 – 6, 28 Christianity: religious institutions, 267 – 8; supercessionism, 170 – 1. See also Eastern Orthodox Church; Protestantism; Roman Catholic Church Church as Mother and Teacher of All Nations (Mater et Magistra), 30 – 1 Churchill, Winston, 240, 246 – 7 church-state relations. See papacy and governments; and specific countries Ciano, Galeazzo, 224, 231, 250, 330n3, 346n71 Cicognani, Amleto, 119, 240 Civiltà Cattolica, 174 – 8, 226, 336n25 Code of Canon Law, 53, 57 Communism: in Austria, 167; in Bavaria, 165, 166 – 7; in Germany, 51; Germany as bulwark against, 6, 16, 26, 74, 201, 238 – 42, 347n5; in Hungary, 125; in Italy, 113, 167; Pius XI’s Divini Redemptoris on, 239; in Poland, 149, 163 – 4,

334 – 5n13; proposed condemnation of Nazism and Communism (1936), 227 – 30. See also Soviet Union concentration camps: Belzec, 16; complicity with atrocities, 8; Dachau, 146, 295; in The Deputy, 18 – 19; Mauthausen, 8; reports to Vatican on, 111. See also Auschwitz-Birkenau; Holocaust Concerning New Opinions (Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae), 290, 354n53 concordats, 46, 53, 232, 279 – 80 Concordat (1929). See Lateran Accords Concordat (1933): about, 47 – 8, 280; archives, new research, 67 – 71, 304n7; Catholic membership in Nazi party, 58, 70, 312n5; clergy’s de-politicization, 61 – 2, 64, 69 – 71; clerical roles, 62 – 4, 69 – 71; controversy over, 47 – 8, 50 – 1; hearing on validity of, 48 – 9; historical background, 50 – 1, 54 – 67, 70 – 4; impact on Hitler’s reputation, 47, 48; and Nazi popularity, 51 – 2, 72 – 3; Pius XI’s role, 51 – 2, 69 – 71, 73 – 4; provisions in, 48, 50, 61 – 2; violations of (1937), 228 Concordat (1933), Pacelli’s role: accommodation policy, 73 – 4, 75 – 6; accusations of “stab in the back” to democracy by Vatican, 48 – 9, 61; Brüning’s views, 50 – 2, 70 – 1, 312n7, 313n9; condemnation of Pacelli, 47 – 58, 65, 67, 71; fear of a Rome-free national Church, 70, 228 – 9; institutional preservation, 64 – 5, 74 – 6; Kirkpatrick memo on,

Index 387 64 – 5; Morsey’s views, 65, 67, 69, 71, 315n33; negotiations, 53 – 5, 60 – 4, 70 – 1; Pacelli’s power, 58 – 9; Repgen’s defence of, 47 – 8, 58 – 62, 67, 69, 71, 314n25; salvation of the faithful, 64 – 5, 74 – 5; Scholder’s condemnation of, 47 – 8, 52 – 8, 65, 67, 71; Scholder’s uncertainty on, 56 – 7, 58, 71 – 2; Volk’s views, 60, 62 – 9, 71, 313n9; Wolf’s views, 68 – 71 Condemning Current Errors (Quanta Cura), 30 – 1 Congar, Yves, 37, 292 Congregation of the Holy Office. See Holy Office Connelly, John, 34 – 5 “Constantine’s Church,” 280 converts to Catholicism. See Roman Catholic Church, Jewish converts Conway, John, 85 Cornwell, John, 3, 57 – 8 Council of Trent Catechism, 170 – 1 Croatia: anti-Jewish decrees, 89 – 90; Catholics of Jewish origin, 88 – 91, 93; clerical responses, 88 – 95, 321nn28 – 9; deportations and murder, 87 – 8, 91 – 4, 111, 234, 252; forced conversions of Serbs, 88 – 9, 319n21, 320n23; historical background, 86 – 9, 95 – 6; Jewish aid, 78, 317n3; Jewish racial definitions, 90; labour conscription, 93; militant Catholicism, 88; nationalism, 88 – 90, 95; Serbs vs. Catholic Croats, 88 – 9, 92 – 5, 320n23; Ustasha movement, 87 – 8, 89, 92; Vatican response, 86 – 7, 91 – 5, 138

Curtius, Julius, 52 Czechoslovakia, 76, 79, 82 Dachau, 146, 295 Dalberg-Acton, John Emerich Edward, First Baron Acton, 265 Danzig (Gdansk), 142 – 5, 233, 246, 276 de Castelnau, Édouard, 210 “Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions,” 33 – 4, 305n9, 309n48 “Decree on Ecumenism,” 95 De Felice, Renzo, 225, 231 Delay, Jean, 102 del Val, Merry, 158 – 9 Delzell, Charles, 113 de Magallon, Xavier, 209 – 10 Denmark, 16, 76 deportations, and murder. See specific countries The Deputy (Hochhuth): about, 14 – 15, 22; length of play, 17; personal attacks on Hochhuth, 24 – 5; plot and characters, 16 – 19, 305n10; productions, 14 – 15, 17, 27 – 8, 76, 305n9; reception of, 14 – 15, 18 – 22, 28, 44, 259; research on controversies in, 20 – 2, 28, 47, 253, 266; “Sidelights on History” (appendix), 21, 38 The Deputy (Hochhuth), Pius XII’s portrayal: about, 14 – 16, 266, 305n9; ADSS as response to, 29, 76; Concordat (1933) and rise of Hitler, 50; condemnation of Pius XII, 17 – 18, 20 – 2, 26 – 8, 35, 38, 47, 251, 253, 266; defence of Pius XII, 24 – 9, 38, 44 – 5, 262, 266, 307n32;

388 Index Germany as bulwark against Communists, 16, 26, 54 – 5, 238, 347n5; Holocaust portrayal, 18 – 19, 21 – 2; new liberalism in Germany, 22 – 4; Paul VI’s defence of Pius XII, 27; salvation of the faithful, 259; and Vatican II, 29 – 31, 34 – 5, 305n9 Der Stellvertreter. See The Deputy Deutsche Zentrum. See Centre Party De Witte, Father, 252 – 3 Dilectissima Nobis (On the Persecution of the Church in Spain), 189 Divini Redemptoris (On Atheistic Communism), 239 Divino Afflante Spiritu (On Sacred Scripture), 35 – 6, 170 – 2 Dolci, Angelo Marie, 198 – 202 Donovan, Daniel, 267 – 8, 272, 336n22 Döpfner, Julius, 24, 36, 42, 185 Duclos, Paul, 141, 262 – 3 Duffy, Eamon, 36, 296 Dulles, Avery, 30, 290 – 3 Durkheim, Émile, 6 Dymek, Walenty, 152 Eastern Orthodox Church: in Croatia, 88 – 9, 111; history, 202 – 3; in Hungary, 122; members as schismatics, 88, 95; militant Orthodoxy, 203, 341n33; Vatican II on ecumenism, 95 Eckert, Alois, 181 Eden, Anthony, 134 Editae Saepe (On St Charles Borromeo), 286 Ehrenfried, Matthias, 255 – 6 Eichmann, Adolf, 14, 129, 130, 136 Emmanuel II, Victor, 109 Enabling Act, 49 – 50, 54, 58 – 60, 66 – 7, 69

encyclicals, 39 – 40, 309n43, 351n1, 358 – 9. See also specific popes Endre, László, 129 England. See Great Britain Erhard, Ludwig, 28 Ericksen, Robert, 7 – 8 Ethiopia, atrocities in, 7, 185, 213 – 20, 233 Fattorini, Emma, 5, 70, 175, 228, 286 Faulhaber, Michael von, 26, 56, 63, 179 – 82, 223, 228, 242, 275 Ferrette, Henry, 208 First Vatican Council. See Vatican Council I First World War: Belgian atrocities, 191 – 7; Benedict XV’s peace proposal, 205; lessons for Pius XII, 240 – 2; threats to Catholic status quo, 202 – 3. See also Armenian genocide; Benedict XV; Treaty of Versailles; and specific countries Fischer, Fritz, 22 – 3 Four Power Pact, 48, 311n2 France: church-state relations, 104, 188 – 90, 205, 281 – 2; healing at Lourdes, 287; post-war Vatican relations, 33 France, history (interwar era): Au Milieu des Sollicitudes, 190; churchstate relations, 205, 208 – 11, 281 – 2; clerical response, 210, 223; decline of power, 104 – 5; Four Power Pact, 48, 311n2; nationalism, 205, 208 – 13; Pacelli’s visit (1937), 104; Ruhr Crisis, 204 – 213, 205 – 13; Vatican relations, 187 France, history (in WWII): anti-­ Jewish decrees, 96 – 7, 99 – 100, 102 – 3, 106, 177; antisemitism,

Index 389 100, 102, 107, 323n37; Catholics of Jewish origin, 100, 177; clerical responses, 98 – 9, 101 – 3, 105 – 8, 281; denaturalization of Jewish citizens, 106 – 7; deportations and murder, 96 – 7, 100 – 3, 105, 107 – 8, 323n38; historical background, 76, 96 – 9, 106 – 7; Jewish aid, 103, 105 – 7, 225; labour conscription, 103, 105, 108; Pius XII’s response, 104 – 8, 138; POWs in Germany, 98 – 9; Resistance, 96, 323n37; Vatican relations, 98 – 105, 238; Vichy regime, 95 – 100, 102 – 8, 288 Francis I, 4 Franco-Prussian War, 191, 229, 245 Frazee, Charles, 198 – 9 Freemasons, 158 Freud, Sigmund, 6 Friedländer, Saul, 28, 238, 254 – 5 Friends of Israel, 157 – 9, 170 Frings, Joseph, 256, 274 Galen, Clemens August von, 21, 228, 276, 281, 306n25 Galicia, 133, 165, 192, 203, 341n33 Gasparri, Pietro: archives, 68; Armenian genocide, 198; on Hitler’s popularity, 74; Pacelli’s neutrality, 253; on papacy after WWI, 1; Polish atrocities, 162 – 3; Ruhr Crisis, 206 – 9; on threats from WWI, 202 Gaudium et Spes (Joy and Hope), 30, 41 Gdansk (Danzig), Poland, 142 – 5, 233, 246, 276 genocide, deportations, and murder. See specific countries genocide, Pius XII’s response to. See Pius XII, wartime response to atrocities

Gerlier, Pierre-Marie, 102, 105 German Socialist Party (SPD), 23 – 4, 67, 71 – 2, 73 Germany, history: church-state relations, 209, 277. See also Benedict XV Germany, history (interwar era): anti-Jewish decrees, 179, 236, 298; antisemitism, 176 – 7, 179 – 84; Belgian atrocities, 191 – 7; Catholic institutional preservation, 64 – 5, 74 – 6, 181 – 4; Catholic population, 49; Catholics of Jewish origin, 183, 236; Catholic support for Hitler, 48, 191, 316n40; clerical response, 179 – 84, 223, 228 – 30, 277, 298, 344 – 5n62; Communist Party, 51; conscription, 216; deportations and murder, 232; dissolution of political parties, 49; elections, 49, 51, 54 – 6, 59, 66; Enabling Act, 49 – 50, 54, 58, 59 – 60, 65 – 7, 69; fear of a Rome-free national Church, 70, 228 – 9; Four Power Pact, 48, 311n2; German-Italian alliance (1939), 223 – 5; Italy’s Manifesto of Race, 220 – 1, 230 – 1; Jewish aid, 236; Jewish fear of retaliation, 181 – 2; Jewish persecution, 179 – 84, 222, 232, 236; Pacelli’s response to persecution, 236 – 7; Pius XI’s Mit brennender Sorge, 43, 189, 220, 228 – 30, 237, 273 – 4, 345n66, 346n69; Pius XI’s response generally, 187, 232 – 3; Ruhr Crisis, 204 – 211; trade unions, 49, 73. See also Centre Party; Concordat (1933); Enabling Act; Hitler, Adolf; Nazi Party; Weimar Republic

390 Index Germany, history (in WWII): Allied condemnation of genocide, 172; Catholics, 145, 258, 273 – 4, 277; Catholics of Jewish origin, 248; clerical response, 21, 43, 228, 248 – 9, 256, 260, 274, 277, 280 – 1, 295, 306n25; collaborator regimes, 96; complicity with atrocities, 8, 19 – 20; Danzig conflict, 142 – 5, 233, 246, 276; deportations and murder, 111, 248; euthanasia program, 21, 281, 306n25; nationalism, 277; Pius XII’s concern for salvation of the faithful, 258 – 64; Pius XII’s letters to clergy, 248 – 9, 258; Pius XII’s response generally, 186 – 7; Pius XII’s retaliation fears, 248 – 51; sacralization of politics, 299; separate peace, 240 – 2; threat of Rome-free national church, 259 – 60; wartime propaganda, 121, 251, 257, 260 – 1, 276. See also Hitler, Adolf; Nazi Party; Orsenigo, Cesare; Preysing, Konrad von Germany, history (post-war era): apologetics, 22; as bulwark against Communism, 26, 238 – 42; former Nazis in government, 20, 28; new liberalism (1960s), 22 – 4; Pius XII’s advocacy for, 25 – 6; portrayals in The Deputy, 15 – 16, 18 – 22, 26 – 7, 29, 306n25 Giobbe, Paolo, 252 Giovannetti, Alberto, 263 – 4 God. See Roman Catholic Church, theology Godfrey, William, 246 – 7 Godman, Peter, 186, 227 Gojdič, Pavel, 83 Goldhagen, Daniel, 3, 157

Good Friday prayers, 31 – 2, 158 governments and the papacy. See papacy and governments; and specific countries Graham, Robert, 1, 27, 78, 244, 273, 317n1 Great Britain: Casablanca Conference, 240 – 1; clerical response, 197, 241 – 2, 246 – 7; condemnation of genocide (1942), 172; Four Power Pact, 48, 311n2; Hitler assassination plots, 242 – 4; Pius XII’s response to bombing, 119; Tablet, 27, 127, 173, 197; Venlo Affair, 243; warning of punishment for Jewish atrocities, 134. See also Osborne, Francis D’Arcy Greece, 76 Greek Catholics, 122, 203 Gregory XVI, 188, 353n36 Greschat, Martin, 43 Griech-Polelle, Beth, 43 Gröber, Conrad, 64, 276, 289 Gumpel, Peter, 347n4 Gundlach, Gustav, 176 – 7 Hadrian VI, 38, 293 Haecker, Theodor, 298, 355n70 Hagen, William, 165 Hanebrink, Paul, 122 – 3, 124, 130, 326 – 7n53, 328n59 Hebblethwaite, Peter, 30 Herder-Korrespondenz, 44 – 5 Herzog, Isaac, 254 – 5 Hill, Leonidas, 112 Himmler, Heinrich, 18, 56, 114, 115, 146 Hindenburg, Paul von, 51 – 2, 55, 59, 66, 182 Hinsley, Arthur, 218, 241 – 2, 247

Index 391 Hitler, Adolf: elections, 54 – 6, 59, 66; emergency decrees (1933), 59; Enabling Act provisions, 54, 59 – 60, 66 – 7; impact of Concordat (1933), 47; insane rages, 116, 251; Jewish genocide decision (1941), 184; Jewish persecution (1933), 182; Pacelli’s views on, 64; Pius XI’s proposed condemnation of (1934), 227 – 8, 229; Pius XII and assassination plots on, 43, 242 – 4; Pius XII’s letters to, 259 – 60; popularity, 20, 63, 69, 72 – 4, 191, 258, 260; visit to Rome (1938), 224, 344n62. See also Concordat (1933); Germany; Nazi Party Hlond, August, 144, 148, 151, 331n6 Hoare, Samuel, 216 – 17 Hochhuth, Rolf, 15, 22, 24 – 5, 139, 307n30. See also The Deputy Holland. See Netherlands Holocaust: in The Deputy, 18 – 19, 21 – 2; reports on, 111, 135, 328 – 9n61; trials of perpetrators, 14, 23. See also Auschwitz-­ Birkenau; concentration camps Holy Office: about, 68, 157, 227; on antisemitism (1928), 157 – 9; Friends of Israel affair (1928), 157 – 9, 170; Index of Prohibited Books, 68, 157, 227, 230; proposed condemnation of Nazism and Communism (1936), 227 – 30; punishments by, 68, 157, 227; on racism (1937), 230, 346n69; terminology, 333n3, 345n65 Horne, John, 191, 339n11 Horthy, Miklós: antisemitism, 133; arrest of, 136; Auschwitz Report, 135; deportation stop orders by,

130, 134 – 5, 328 – 9n61; in The Deputy, 21 – 2; government of, 126, 128 – 30, 135; on Jewish murder, 129, 328n58; Pius XII’s telegram to, 21 – 2, 134, 137, 255 Hudal, Alois, 115 – 16 Hughes, Philip, 46 Humanae Salutis (Of Human Salvation), 29 – 30, 308n41 Humani Generis (On Human Origin), 36 – 7 Hungary, history (before WWII): alliance with Austria and Italy (1934), 224; anti-Jewish decrees, 125 – 6, 168 – 9, 175, 288; antisemitism, 82, 123, 168 – 9, 175; Catholics of Jewish origin, 124, 126, 169; Christian nationalism, 326 – 7n53; civic emancipation of Jews, 179; Communists, 125; deportations and murder, 127; historical background, 122 – 5, 127 – 8, 133; Jewish population, 327n55; multi-ethnic society, 124 – 5, 127 – 8, 327n55; nationalism, 125, 127; Pius XI on, 122, 168 – 9. See also Horthy, Miklós Hungary, history (in WWII): anti-Communist stance, 241; anti-Jewish decrees, 125 – 33; antisemitism, 123 – 8, 133, 137; assimilation, 124 – 5; Auschwitz Report, 135, 328 – 9n61; Catholics of Jewish origin, 124 – 8, 130 – 3, 140; clerical responses, 127, 131 – 3, 137; deportations and murder, 21, 122, 127 – 37; deportation stop orders, 130, 134 – 5; exclusionary ideology, 124, 127; German occupation, 76; historical background, 122 – 9, 134 – 6; intermarriage,

392 Index 125, 127; Jewish aid, 134, 136 – 7; labour conscription, 129, 131, 134, 136; multi-ethnic society, 124 – 5, 327n55; Pius XII’s responses, 127, 136 – 8, 255; Pius XII’s telegram to Horthy, 21 – 2, 134, 137 – 8, 255; racial thinking, 123 – 8, 130; Rotta’s protests, 126 – 7, 130 – 2, 136 – 8, 328n60, 329n62; statistics estimations, 326 – 7n53, 328n59. See also Horthy, Miklós Immortale Dei (On the Christian Constitution of States), 279, 353n36, 353n38 Index of Prohibited Books, 68, 157, 227, 230 Innocent III, 161 – 2 In Our Time (Nostra Aetate), 33 – 4, 305n9, 309n48 institutions, religious, 6 International Catholic-Jewish Historical Commission, 77, 317n2 International Eucharistic Congress, 122, 168, 271, 287 interwar era. See France, history (interwar era); Germany, history (interwar era); Italy, history (before WWII) Isaac, Jules, 33 – 4 Islam, 199, 200 – 1, 309n48. See also Armenian genocide Israel: Eichmann’s trial, 14; Paul VI’s visit, 27; productions of The Deputy, 15, 305n9 Italy, history (before WWII): alliance with Austria and Hungary (1934), 224; anti-Jewish decrees, 7, 108 – 9, 161, 214, 222, 225 – 6, 230 – 2; antisemitism, 222 – 3, 225 – 6;

Catholic Action, 101, 214, 221, 227, 323n37; Catholics of Jewish origin, 109, 161, 177 – 8, 231 – 2; clerical response, 222 – 3, 344 – 5n62; Communists, 167; Ethiopian atrocities (1935), 213 – 20; Four Power Pact, 48, 311n2; German-Italian alliance (1939), 223 – 5; intermarriage of Jews and Catholics, 109, 231 – 2, 346nn71 – 2; Jewish racial definitions, 231, 346n72; Manifesto of Race, 220 – 1, 230 – 1; nationalism, 218, 225; Pius XI’s Mit brennender Sorge, 229; Pius XI’s responses, 214, 224 – 5; Vatican protection of Catholics, 231. See also Lateran Accords Italy, history (in WWII): anti-Jewish decrees, 108 – 9, 177 – 8; antisemitism, 109, 225 – 6; Catholics of Jewish origin, 109, 117 – 18; deportations and murder, 110 – 13, 117 – 18, 223; extraterritorial protection, 117; historical background, 76, 109 – 10, 135; intermarriage of Jews and Catholics, 117 – 18, 231; Jewish aid, 13, 78, 223, 225; labour conscription, 114; Pius XII’s responses, 108, 110; sacralization of politics, 299; Vatican response, 78, 108 – 11, 317n3. See also Rome Jesus. See Roman Catholic Church, theology John Paul II: archives for Pius XI, 67 – 8; on Catholic antisemitism, 157, 159, 334n10 John XXIII: on abuses in church, 293; antisemitism repudiation, 33 – 4, 47, 309n46; autonomy of

Index 393 conscience, 31; canonization of, 42; compared with Pius XII, 35 – 7, 41 – 2, 45, 47; human rights advocacy, 31, 47; Jewish-Catholic relations, 31 – 5, 47, 309n46; “perfidious Jews” in liturgy, 31 – 2; progressive theology, 37, 40 – 2, 45, 47; reputation, 42, 47; Vatican II reforms, 29 – 31, 35 – 7, 41, 47. See also Vatican Council II John XXIII, encyclicals and apostolic constitutions: Divino Afflante Spiritu, 35 – 6; Humanae Salutis, 29 – 30, 308n41; Mater et Magistra, 30 – 1; Pacem in Terris, 31, 35, 309n43 Joy and Hope (Gaudium et Spes), 30, 41 Judaism and Jewish people. See anti-Jewish decrees; antisemitism; Holocaust; Roman Catholic Church, Jewish converts; and specific countries Kaas, Ludwig, 54 – 8, 61, 65, 66, 312n4, 315n33 Kállay, Miklós, 128 – 9, 241, 328n58 Kamenets-Podolsk massacre, 128 Kampe, Walter, 184 Kappler, Herbert, 114 Katyn massacre, 151 Katz, Robert, 112, 116 Kazin, Alfred, 28 Kennedy, Joseph, 297 Kent, Peter, 186 Kershaw, Ian, 72 – 3 Kesselring, Albert von, 114 Kessler, Harry, 50 – 1, 312n7 Kielce pogrom, 163 – 4 Kierkegaard, Søren, 16, 305n10 Kirkpatrick, Ivone, 64 – 5

Klee, Eugen, 183 Klein, Charlotte, 174, 336n25 Klemperer, Klemens von, 243 – 4 Koonz, Claudia, 43 Kramer, Alan, 191, 339n11 Kun, Béla, 125 Küng, Hans, 265, 291 – 2 Lakatos, Geza, 135 Lapide, Pinchas, 309nn45 – 7 Lateran Accords, 109, 213 – 14, 224, 231, 244, 280, 346nn71 – 2 Laval, Pierre, 97 – 8, 105 – 7, 216 – 17 Lavigerie, Charles, 190 laws, anti-Jewish. See anti-Jewish decrees League of Nations: Danzig, 142, 233, 276; Ethiopian atrocities, 215 – 17 Ledóchowski, Wlodimir, 175, 336n26 Lehnert, Pascalina, Sister, 252 Leiber, Robert, 62, 235 – 7, 243 – 4, 251, 253 Leo XIII: autonomy of conscience, 273, 281 – 2; church-state relations, 187 – 91, 281 – 2, 286; diplomatic mediation, 245; on Holy Spirit, 290; nationalism, 277; political pragmatism, 189 – 90, 281 – 2 Leo XIII, encyclicals: Au Milieu des Sollicitudes, 190; Editae Saepe, 286; Immortale Dei, 279, 353n36, 353n38; Libertas Praestantissimum, 282, 345n64; Licet Multa, 282; Militantis Ecclesiae, 286, 354n45 Levine, Eugen, 167 Lewy, Guenter, 28, 156 Libertas Praestantissimum (On the Nature of Human Liberty), 282, 345n64

394 Index Licet Multa (On Catholics in Belgium), 282 Lichtenberg, Bernhard, 295 List of Prohibited Books, 68, 157, 227, 230 Logan, Olivier, 121, 296 Loiseau, Charles, 192, 202, 253 Louvain University, 191 – 2, 212 Ludin, Hanns, 83 – 5 Luegers, Antonio, 182 Lutherans, 43, 122, 285 Luxembourg, 249 – 50, 260, 301 Lwów pogrom, 162 – 5 Maček, Vladko, 87 Mach, Alexander (Šaňo), 79, 83 – 5 Maglione, Luigi: on anti-Jewish decrees, 177 – 8; anti-Nazi stance, 238 – 9; archives, 76, 78; on Catholics of Jewish origin, 177 – 8; on genocide verification, 172; Jewish aid, 78, 317n3; on papal influence, 78; salvation of the faithful, 264; warning of punishment for Hungarian Jewish atrocities, 134 – 5 Maglione, Luigi, relations with states: Croatia, 78, 89 – 94, 320n24, 321n28; France, 100, 105, 238; Hungary, 126 – 8, 130 – 2, 241; Italy, 108 – 9, 112 – 13, 117, 177 – 8, 295; Netherlands, 252; Poland, 143 – 4, 149, 153 – 5, 246 – 7, 294; Slovakia, 80 – 3, 85 – 6, 110 – 11 Mahoney, John, 36, 271 Manifesto of Race, 220 – 1, 230 – 1 Marcone, Guiseppe, 87, 89 – 90, 92 – 3, 105, 111, 320nn24 – 5 Maritain, Jacques, 33 Marrus, Michael, 5, 97, 101, 103, 105 – 6

Marx, Karl, 6 Mary. See Roman Catholic Church, theology Mater et Magistra (Church as Mother and Teacher of All Nations), 30 – 1 Matheus, Michael, 304n7 Mauthausen, Austria, 8 Mazower, Mark, 72, 276, 299 McBrien, Richard, 35, 95, 272 McCarthy, Timothy, 31, 38 McManners, John, 190 McNeil, Neil, 196 – 7 Mediator Dei, 35 – 6 Mein Kampf, 228, 229 Mendelsohn, Ezra, 125 Mercati, Giovanni, 171, 336n22 Mercier, Desiré Joseph, 192, 194 – 6, 339 – 40n17 Mexico, atrocities, 44, 311n64, 350n44 Miccoli, Giovanni, 117, 118, 226, 316n40 Michaelis, Meir, 220, 223 – 4, 225 Au Milieu des Sollicitudes (On the Church and State in France), 190 Militantis Ecclesiae (On St Peter Canisius), 286, 354n45 Minorities Treaties, 164 Mirari Vos (On Liberalism and Religious Indifferentism), 353n36 Mit brennender Sorge (With Deep Anxiety), 43, 189, 220, 228 – 30, 237, 273 – 4, 345n66, 346n69 Möllhausen, Eitel Friedrich, 114 Montini, Giovanni Battista: antiNazi stance, 238; Danzig conflict, 145; deportations of Italian Jews, 112; on The Deputy, 27, 308n37; French anti-Jewish decrees, 99; genocide in Croatia, 93, 321n28; knowledge of genocide, 139; on

Index 395 Pius XII’s neutrality, 254; on Pius XII’s preservation of Church, 298; support for Pius XII, 27, 308n37, 348n23; Vatican undersecretary of state, 27. See also Paul VI Morley, John, 77, 78, 81, 109, 138 – 40, 318n6 Morsey, Rudolf, 65, 67, 69, 71, 315n33 Mosse, George, 78 Müller, Josef, 243 – 4 Munich Agreement, 76, 79, 123, 143, 233 murder and deportations. See specific countries Mussolini, Benito: anti-Jewish decrees, 108 – 9, 161; Ethiopian atrocities (1935), 213 – 20; historical background, 109 – 10, 220 – 1, 229; Manifesto of Race, 220 – 1, 230 – 1; personality cult, 296; for Pius XII’s intervention, 143; threats to Vatican safety, 250. See also Italy Mynster, Jakob Peter, 16 Mystici Corporis Christi (Mystical Body of Christ, the Church), 36, 170, 272, 289 – 90 nationalism: about, 274 – 8; churchstate issues of, 210 – 13; in Croatia, 88 – 9, 95; Ethiopian atrocities (1935), 213 – 20; extreme nationalism, 205, 208, 210 – 11, 213; in France, 208 – 13; German Catholics, 276 – 7; in Hungary, 122, 125, 127, 326 – 7n53; leniency tradition of papacy, 278; Pius XII’s ambivalence on, 275, 278; Pius XI’s Ubi Arcano, 204 – 5, 208, 211, 213, 275; in Poland, 143, 146 – 7, 163; Ruhr Crisis, 205 – 6, 210 – 13, 233; in Slovakia,

81 – 2; as threat to Catholic universalism, 210 – 11 Nazi Party: anti-Communist stance, 54 – 5; antisemitism, 177, 179 – 84; Catholic membership in, 55, 58, 60, 62 – 3, 69, 70, 312n5; elections, 66; ideological rival with Catholicism, 227; majority government (1933), 59 – 60; militant Catholicism as response to, 284 – 5, 288; Pius XI’s Mit brennender Sorge, 189; popularity, 7 – 8, 51, 52, 54, 56, 63, 73. See also Concordat (1933); Enabling Act; Germany; Hitler, Adolf Netherlands, 12, 76, 249 – 53, 260, 301, 349n34 1929 concordat. See Lateran Accords 1933 concordat. See Concordat (1933) Non Abbiamo Bisogno (On Catholic Action in Italy), 214 Norway, 76, 261 Nostra Aetate (In Our Time), 33 – 4, 305n9, 309n48 Of Human Salvation (Humanae Salutis), 29 – 30, 308n41 On Atheistic Communism (Divini Redemptoris), 239 On Catholic Action in Italy (Non Abbiamo Bisogno), 214 On Catholics in Belgium (Licet Multa), 282 On Human Origin (Humani Generis), 36 – 7 On Jews and Christians Living in the Same Place (A Quo Primum), 162 On Liberalism and Religious Indifferentism (Mirari Vos), 353n36

396 Index On Sacred Scripture (Divino Afflante Spiritu), 35 – 6, 170 – 2 On St Charles Borromeo (Editae Saepe), 286 On St Peter Canisius (Militantis Ecclesiae), 286, 354n45 On the Christian Constitution of States (Immortale Dei), 279, 353n36, 353n38 On the Church and State in France (Au Milieu des Sollicitudes), 190 On the Feast of Christ the King (Quas Primas), 285 – 6 On the Nature of Human Liberty (Libertas Praestantissimum), 282, 345n64 On the Peace of Christ (Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio), 204 – 5, 208, 211, 213, 275, 285 On the Persecution of the Church in Spain (Dilectissima Nobis), 189 On the Unity of Human Society (Summi Pontificatus), 12, 147 – 8, 246, 266, 275 – 6, 278, 279, 282 d’Onorio, Joël-Benoît, 296 Opere et Caritate (By Work and by Love), 237 – 8 Orsenigo, Cesare: archives, 68, 69; Concordat (1933), 68, 69, 70; deception to protect Church image, 295; in The Deputy, 16; fear of Rome-free German church, 70, 149; Nazi retaliation threats, 254; nuncio in Berlin, 316n40; Pacelli’s response to Jewish persecution, 182 – 3, 236 – 7, 298; Polish suffering, 148 – 9, 295 Orthodox Catholic Church. See Eastern Orthodox Church

Osborne, Francis D’Arcy: GermanItalian alliance (1938), 221; Hitler assassination plots, 243; Kirkpatrick memo on, 64 – 5; papal mediation, 247; on papal response to atrocities, 119; Pius XII as wartime pope, 3; Pius XII on Communists, 116, 172, 251; on Pius XII’s anti-Nazism, 238; Pius XII’s temperament, 248; on religion and morality, 75; on religious demonstrations, 286 – 7 O’Shea, Paul, 5, 77 Osservatore Romano: about, 226, 349n28; antisemitism, 226; Nazi censorship of, 250, 254; Pius XII on deportations, 116; Pius XI on Ethiopia, 215, 217 – 18 Ottoman Empire, Armenian genocide. See Armenian genocide Pacelli, Eugenio: antisemitism, 156 – 7, 165 – 72, 176 – 7; career, 4 – 5, 53; Gundlach’s assistance to, 176 – 7; neutrality, 44, 253, 256; temperament, 53 – 4, 186. See also Pius XII Pacelli, Eugenio, career, nuncio to Bavaria (1917-20): antisemitism, 165 – 8; archives, 67 – 8, 304n7; career, 4 – 5, 165 – 6; role in Code of Canon Law, 53, 57 Pacelli, Eugenio, career, nuncio to Germany (1920-29): antisemitism, 176 – 7; archives, 9, 48, 67 – 8, 304n7; career, 4 – 5; on persecutions in Mexico, 44; political pragmatism, 190. See also Concordat (1933) Pacelli, Eugenio, career, Vatican secretary of state (1930-39):

Index 397 anti-Catholic stereotypes of, 52; antisemitism, 156 – 7, 168 – 9, 182 – 4; archives, 9, 48, 67 – 71, 236, 304n7; Bruning-Pacelli confrontation (1931), 312n7, 313n9; career, 4 – 5; at Eucharistic Congresses, 168 – 9, 271, 287; on Hungary’s role, 122; institutional preservation, 183; leniency tradition, 271 – 2; Mit brennender Sorge draft, 228, 346n69; on papal secular power, 350n44; on persecution of Jews, 182 – 3, 298; Pius XI’s speech on Ethiopian atrocities, 215; political pragmatism, 190; response to Jewish persecutions, 236 – 7; visit to France (1937), 104. See also Concordat (1933), Pacelli’s role Pacem in Terris (Peace on Earth), 31, 35 papacy: anti-Catholic stereotypes, 52; appointment of bishops by, 39, 41; autonomy of conscience, 273 – 4, 282, 292 – 3; centralization issues, 38 – 9, 47, 57, 121, 289 – 93; ceremonies and image of power, 73, 297, 299; Code of Canon Law, 53, 57; deception to protect image of, 293 – 5; encyclicals, 39 – 40, 309n43, 351n1; flawed popes, 17, 37 – 8; identification with Rome, 118 – 21; infallibility, 39 – 40, 291 – 2, 298; institutional preservation for spiritual ends, 6, 74, 140, 181 – 3, 186 – 7, 262 – 4; nationalism as threat to, 205; papal cult, 40, 121, 268, 296 – 7, 299; pope and church as one, 38 – 9; primacy, 37 – 9, 53, 74; Rome as centre of, 118 – 20; salvation of the faithful, 5, 74 – 5,

140, 258 – 64, 272 – 4; in wartime, 1, 139 – 40, 275 – 8, 297 – 301. See also Roman Catholic Church; Vatican councils; and individual popes papacy and governments: about, 39, 211 – 13, 219, 232 – 3, 256 – 7; authority over national churches, 39; bishop appointments by papacy, 57; clerical vs. papal political stances, 137; concordats, generally, 46, 53, 232; diplomatic mediation, 244 – 7; historical background, 188 – 91, 209; militant Catholicism, 284 – 8; neutrality, 1, 193 – 7, 212 – 13, 253 – 4, 257, 263, 266 – 7, 300 – 1; papal accommodation stance, 73 – 6, 278 – 81; papal political intervention, 73 – 4, 205 – 11; papal political powerlessness, 73 – 4, 212 – 13; perfect societies, 279 – 81; political stances and infallibility, 37 – 8; pragmatism, 186 – 91, 281 – 4; reliance on state for privileged role, 232 – 3, 278 – 9; salvation of the faithful, 5, 74 – 5, 138, 140, 258 – 64, 272 – 4; spiritual vs. temporal realms, 3, 5, 263, 265, 280; thesishypothesis rule, 282 – 3; wartime propaganda, 121, 147 – 8, 251, 257, 260 – 1, 276. See also Concordat (1933); Lateran Accords; nationalism Papée, Kazimierz, 152 Papen, Franz von, 52, 54, 61, 72, 312n4, 315n33 Paul, Harry, 210 – 11 Paul VI: canonization initiatives, 4; defence of Pius XII, 27, 29, 76, 78, 348n23; official guilt, 293; progressive-conservative divide, 42.

398 Index See also Montini, Giovanni Battista; Vatican Council II Pavelić, Ante, 87, 89 – 91, 94 – 5, 320n27, 321nn28 – 9 Paxton, Robert, 97 – 8, 101, 103, 105 – 6 Peace Be upon Israel (Pax super Israel), 159 Peace on Earth (Pacem in Terris), 31, 35 Peron, Juan, 187 Pétain, Philippe, 96, 98 – 103, 106 Peters, Ewald, 28, 308n40 Phayer, Michael: Christmas message (1942), 336n23; on Croatia, 87, 92; Jewish aid, 326n50; occupation of Rome, 111, 115 – 16; on Pius XI’s intervention, 134; on Pius XI’s temperament, 186; on Poland, 141, 152; on spiritual vs. temporal realms, 5 Picard, Louis, 159 – 61 Pius IX: Immaculate Conception of Mary, 39; Mary, 287 – 8; papal cult, 40, 268, 296; perfect societies, 279; Quanta Cura, 30 – 1; sanctions, 84 Pius X: canonization, 37; Editae Saepe, 286; renouncement of modernism, 37 Pius XI: accommodation to the state, 73 – 5, 280; annual feasts, 286 – 7; anti-Communist stance, 239; antiFascist responses (1938), 220 – 33; antisemitism, 157, 159 – 61, 226 – 7, 237, 334n10; archives, 9, 48, 67 – 71, 158 – 9, 227, 236, 304n7; autonomy of conscience, 273 – 4, 285; Concordat (1933) role, 51 – 2, 69 – 71, 73 – 4; Ethiopian atrocities (1935), 213 – 20; Friends of Israel affair (1928), 157 – 9, 170; German Catholics of Jewish origin (1933), 183; goal to

evangelize, not civilize, 41; on Hitler’s visit to Rome (1938), 224, 344n62; issues with Italian support, 224, 227; Jewish aid, 171; leniency tradition, 271 – 2; likelihood of protest of Nazi atrocities, 224; militant Catholicism, 284 – 8; nationalism, 232, 275, 277; native clergy, 213, 342n42; political intervention, 205 – 13; political neutrality, 219 – 20; political pragmatism, 73 – 4, 189 – 91, 232 – 3; proposed condemnation of Nazism and Communism (1936), 227 – 30; reputation, 185; response to Nazi propositions on race, 230, 237, 346n69; Ruhr Crisis, 205 – 13, 233; temperament, 51 – 2, 186; as wartime pope, 4, 185. See also Concordat (1933) Pius XI, encyclicals: Dilectissima Nobis, 189; Divini Redemptoris, 239; Mit brennender Sorge, 43, 189, 220, 228 – 30, 237, 273 – 4, 345n66, 346n69; Non Abbiamo Bisogno, 214; Quas Primas, 285 – 6; Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, 204 – 5, 208, 211, 213, 275, 285 Pius XI, statements: on anti-Jewish decrees (1938), 232; on antisemitism (1938) to Belgian pilgrims, 157, 159 – 61, 226 – 7, 230 – 1, 334n10; on dictators’ ignominious ends (1938), 229 – 30; on Ethiopian atrocities, 214 – 15, 217 – 19; on Eucharist, 287; on government, 189; on Hungary, 122; on nationalism, 204 – 5; on racism, 221, 344n59; speech to Eucharistic Congress (1938), 168 – 9 Pius XII: about, 4, 78, 297 – 301; antisemitism, 156 – 7, 174; archives,

Index 399 9, 68, 76 – 8, 258; authoritarian control, 47; author’s approach to, 4 – 5, 9 – 10, 45, 48, 77; canonizations by, 37; compared with John XIII, 35 – 7, 41 – 2, 45, 47; death of, 11 – 14; election, 76, 233; excommunications, 187; just war theory, 215, 219; papal centralization, 47, 289 – 93; papal ceremonies, 297, 299; papal cult, 40, 121, 268, 296; preservation of Rome, 118 – 21, 138; spiritual vs. temporal realms, 5, 263, 265; temperament and appearance, 186, 248, 296; as wartime pope, 3 – 4, 76, 172 – 3, 245, 253 – 4, 297 – 301. See also Pacelli, Eugenio Pius XII, post-war era: advocacy for Germans, 25 – 6; canonization issue, 4, 42, 347n4; institutional preservation, 183 – 4; Jewish-Catholic relations, 12 – 13, 32 – 3; liturgical movement, 289; omission of Jewish victimization in speeches, 309n47; praise for, 11 – 15, 38, 259; progressive views, 35 – 7, 289 – 90; reputation, 9 – 15, 35, 42, 46 – 7, 185 – 6, 262; reputation background (1960s), 22 – 4; retaliation fears, 27, 44; Vatican II’s impact on reputation, 29, 42, 43, 185 – 6. See also The Deputy (Hochhuth), Pius XII’s portrayal Pius XII, priorities, political: about, 5 – 9, 234 – 5, 257, 263 – 4; accommodation to the state, 75 – 6, 115 – 16, 278 – 81; ambivalence on extreme nationalism, 275, 278; anti-Nazi stance, 235 – 8; “calculated acquiescence,” 8 – 9; clerical vs. papal protests of atrocities, 137; diplomatic mediation, 6, 16, 235, 244 – 7; fear

of retaliation, 27, 44, 92, 247 – 55; Germany as bulwark against Communists, 6, 16, 26, 74, 235, 238 – 42, 347n5; Hitler assassination plot, 242 – 4; militant Catholicism, 284 – 8; neutrality, 235, 240 – 2, 244 – 7, 253 – 6, 265 – 7, 301; opposition to unconditional surrender, 240 – 1, 247; political pragmatism, 187, 190 – 1, 282 – 4; progressive views, 35 – 7; thesis-hypothesis rule, 282 – 3; WWI lessons for, 240 – 2. See also Pius XII, wartime response to atrocities Pius XII, priorities, spiritual: about, 5 – 9, 234 – 5, 257 – 8, 263 – 4; achievement of all goals, 235; “calculated acquiescence,” 8 – 9; “common father” of all Catholics, 154, 253 – 4, 257, 262 – 3, 275; fear of retaliation, 44, 235, 247 – 55; fear of Rome-free German church, 259 – 60; “hate the sin, not the sinner,” 263 – 4; institutional preservation for spiritual ends, 5 – 7, 44 – 5, 74, 138, 140, 235, 255 – 61, 262, 298; leniency tradition, 271 – 4, 278, 299; militant Catholicism, 284 – 8; and moral failure, 5 – 8; neutrality, 253 – 6, 265 – 7, 300 – 1; partial sacrifice of goals, 235; progressive views, 35 – 7, 289 – 90; salvation beyond the faithful, 36; salvation of the faithful, 5, 74 – 5, 138, 140, 235, 258 – 64, 267, 272 – 4. See also Pius XII, wartime response to atrocities Pius XII, theological views: about, 7; antisemitism in Mystici Corporis Christi, 170; autonomy of conscience, 273; church as Body of Christ, 289 – 93; conservatism,

400 Index 7, 11; impact on decisions, 5 – 9; liturgical reform, 35 – 6; Mary, 20, 37; mission of the church, 44 – 5; modernization of biblical studies, 35 – 6; neo-Thomism, 23, 36; progressive-conservative divide, 41 – 2; salvation of the faithful, 5, 74 – 5, 138, 140, 258 – 64, 267, 272 – 4; supercessionism, 170 – 1. See also Roman Catholic Church, theology Pius XII, wartime response to atrocities: about, 5 – 9, 44 – 5, 138 – 40; antisemitism, 138, 156 – 7; before WWII, 87; blame on war, not victimizers, 173 – 4; as “calculated acquiescence,” 8 – 9; Christmas message (1942), 44, 172 – 3, 251, 336n23; College of Cardinals speech (1943), 173 – 4; compared with predecessors, 6 – 7; complicity issue, 7 – 9; knowledge of Jewish atrocities, 110 – 12, 139, 172; neutrality, 138, 140, 253 – 6, 266 – 7, 298 – 9, 300 – 1; papal directive to study issue, 111 – 12; salvation of the faithful, 75, 138, 140, 258 – 64, 267, 272 – 4; self-preservation vs. social justice, 44 – 6, 138, 140, 298; Summi Pontificatus, 147 – 8, 275; “under his very windows,” 112, 115, 325n46, 325 – 6n48; weighing consequences, 44. See also specific countries Pius XII, works, encyclicals: about, 41, 309n43; Divino Afflante Spiritu, 35 – 6; Humani Generis, 36 – 7; Mediator Dei, 35 – 6; Mystici Corporis Christi, 36, 170, 272, 289 – 90; Summi Pontificatus, 12, 147 – 8, 246, 266, 275, 278, 282 Pius XII, works, speeches and letters: Christmas message (1942), 251,

336n23; Christmas message (1944), 35, 36; on church-state relations (1953), 286; on fear of retaliation (1943), 173 – 4, 247 – 8; on his mission (1940), 300 – 1; Opere et Caritate (By Work and By Love), 237 – 8; salvation of faithful (1943), 263; on war and peace (1939), 142 pogroms, 162 – 5, 222, 232 Poincaré, Raymond, 208 – 9 Poland: antisemitism, 162 – 5; Benedict XV’s response, 162 – 5; Catholic Church destruction, 146, 149 – 50, 153; Catholic nationalism, 143, 146 – 7, 163; Catholic victims, 142, 146, 148 – 9; censorship, 250; clerical responses, 144 – 5, 148 – 55, 162, 249, 276; Communists, 149, 163 – 4, 334 – 5n13; Danzig conflict, 142 – 5, 233, 246, 276; deportations and murder, 111, 135, 141, 145 – 6, 148, 151 – 3, 332n10; fear of Romefree German church, 149, 152; German occupation, 76, 145 – 6, 149; historical background, 76, 142 – 7, 150, 162 – 5, 188, 245 – 6, 275 – 6; labour conscription, 295, 332n10; Lwów pogrom, 162 – 5; Pius XII’s response, 119, 141 – 7, 148 – 55, 173 – 4, 245 – 6, 253, 262, 275 – 6; Pius XII’s statement (1943), 150 – 1; Pius XII’s Summi Pontificatus, 147 – 8, 275; propaganda, 147 – 8, 276; Ratti’s response to atrocities, 162 – 5, 334n12; retaliation fears, 149 – 52, 154, 249, 254; Russian atrocities, 192; salvation of the faithful, 154 – 5; Sapieha’s letters to Pius XII, 148 – 52, 155, 249, 294; Wartheland devastation, 145 – 6, 148 – 50, 152 – 4, 249; WWI atrocities, 192

Index 401 Poliakov, Léon, 13, 236 – 7, 251, 309n47 Pollard, John, 186, 297 pope Pius XII, speeches: Christmas message (1942), 44, 172 – 3 Portugal, 287 – 8 press, Catholic. See Roman Catholic Church, publications Preysing, Konrad von: anti-Nazi stance, 274, 281, 295; Concordat (1933) negotiations, 63; draft of Mit brennender, 228; on human rights, 256 – 7; and Pius XII, 120 – 1, 154, 248, 256 – 8, 264 Protestantism, 38, 43, 122, 189 – 90, 285 – 6, 290, 293 Protocols of the Elders of Zion, 161 – 2, 334n11, 335n18 Prusin, Alexander, 162 – 3, 165 Prussia: Centre Party, 65, 72; concordat with, 53, 73; German control, 142; mixed marriages, 39; Papen’s coup (1932), 72; Wartheland, 145 – 6; Weimar concordats, 60 publications, Catholic. See Roman Catholic Church, publications Purdy, W.A., 35, 36, 37, 75 Quanta Cura (Condemning Current Errors), 30 – 1 Quas Primas (On the Feast of Christ the King), 285 – 6 racism and racial thinking: as blood doctrine, 221 – 3, 225; as contrary to Catholic beliefs, 100, 180 – 1, 225; and fear of a German Rome-free national church, 228 – 9; in Hungary (in WWII), 123 – 8, 130; Italy’s Manifesto of Race, 220 – 1, 230 – 1; Jewish racial definitions, 80 – 1,

158 – 9, 161; Pius XI on Nazism and, 228 – 30, 346n69; racial antisemitism vs. anti-Jewish hostility, 158 – 61, 176 – 8; as separate from Jewish persecution, 222 – 3, 225, 230; as threat to Catholicism, 80, 222 – 3 Raczkiewicz, Wadyslaw, 153 – 4 Radonski, Karol, 153 – 4 Rahner, Karl, 292 Ratti, Achille: apostolic visitor to Poland (1918-1921), 162 – 5, 334n12. See also Pius XI Ratzinger, Joseph, 308n42 Reitlinger, Gerald, 21 – 2, 306n25 religion: modern views of, 6, 11; Nostra Aetate (In Our Time), 33 – 4, 305n9, 309n48; religious institutions, 6, 267 – 8; Vatican II on, 34 – 5, 95 Repgen, Konrad, 47 – 8, 58 – 62, 69, 71, 251, 314n25 Reshad V, Mohammed, 199 – 201 Ribbentrop, Joachim von, 112, 114, 116, 142, 239, 247, 251, 330n2 Ricci, Umberto, 109 Roey, Jozef-Ernest van, 221 – 2 Roman Catholic Church: about, 267 – 74; anti-Catholic stereotypes, 18, 52; benefits to members, 267 – 8; canonization of saints, 4, 42, 347n4; deception to protect image of, 293 – 5; feasts, ceremonies, and pilgrimages, 286 – 8, 297, 299; militant Catholicism, 284 – 8; as a religious institution, 267 – 8. See also antisemitism, Roman Catholic Church; concordats; Holy Office; papacy; Vatican; and individual popes Roman Catholic Church, Jewish converts: baptism’s efficacy, 159;

402 Index Friends of Israel affair (1928), 157 – 8, 170; Jewish racial definitions, 80 – 1, 158 – 9, 161; “perfidious Jews” in liturgy, 31 – 2, 158; for survival, 81, 84 – 5, 130; theological justification for favourable view of Judaism, 34. See also specific countries Roman Catholic Church, publications: antisemitism, 174 – 8, 180 – 1, 184, 225 – 6, 336n25; corrections of misrepresentations, 217 – 18; Herder-Korrespondenz, 44 – 5; Nazi censorship of, 250. See also Vatican Radio Roman Catholic Church, theology: about, 7, 269 – 74; autonomy of conscience, 273, 282, 292 – 3; Christ, 7, 32, 41, 160, 168 – 9, 227, 237, 286 – 7; church as Body of Christ, 88, 272, 289 – 93, 354n54; Crucifixion, 32, 170 – 1, 287; Eucharist, 7, 168, 222, 271, 287 – 9; “hate the sin, not the sinner,” 263 – 4; Holy Spirit, 29 – 30, 270, 289 – 92; human weakness, 269 – 74, 290; and institution of the Church, 267 – 9; Jews in Second Coming, 180; leniency tradition, 271 – 4, 278, 299; liturgy, 31 – 2, 35 – 6, 289; Mary, 20, 37, 39, 287 – 8; medieval antisemitism, 32, 177 – 9; neo-Thomism, 28, 36; original sin, 39, 159 – 60, 222, 270, 287; paternalistic tradition, 273 – 4, 288; perfect societies, 279 – 81; Pius XI’s on Nazi propositions, 230, 346n69; racism, blood, and common humanity, 221 – 3, 344n59; redemption, 269 – 74; rise of progressive theology, 11, 23 – 4, 31, 35 – 7, 40 – 2, 289 – 90, 299 – 300; sacraments,

7, 270 – 4; salvation of the faithful, 5, 7, 74 – 5, 138, 140, 258 – 60, 264, 272 – 4; schismatics, 88, 95; supercessionism, 170 – 1; transcendence of God, 7; universalism, 7, 227, 241. See also papacy; Vatican Council II Romania, 123 Rome, Italy: about, 118 – 21; clerical protests, 115 – 16; Communists, 113; deportations and murder, 110 – 18, 251, 295, 325n46, 325 – 6n48; extraterritorial protection, 111, 116 – 21, 138; historical background, 113 – 14, 118 – 20, 132; Jewish aid, 111, 117, 326n50, 336n22; labour conscription, 113, 114, 115; papacy’s identification with, 118 – 21, 138; Pius XII’s fear of retaliation, 250; Pius XII’s protection of, 118 – 21; Pius XII’s responses, 110, 111 – 18, 251 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 134, 135, 239 – 40 Rosa, Enrico, 175 – 6 Ross, Ronald, 65, 277 Rotta, Angelo, 126 – 7, 130 – 2, 136 – 8, 328n60, 329n62 Ruhr Crisis, 204 – 13, 233 Russia, 194, 202 – 4, 341n33. See also Soviet Union; Ukraine Rychlak, Ronald, 237 – 8 Salemink, Theo, 253, 349n34 Saliège, Jules-Gérard, 98, 102 – 3, 309n47 Sangnier, Marc, 207 – 8, 210 San Lorenzo Basilica, 119 Santa Maria dell’Orto, 119 Sapieha, Adam, 148 – 52, 155, 249, 294

Index 403 Scavizzi, Pirro, 111, 149 – 50, 249, 324 – 5n44 Schioppa, Lorenzo, 70, 165 – 7 schismatics, 88, 95, 188, 262 Scholder, Klaus: critic of Pacelli, 47 – 8, 52 – 8, 65, 71 – 2; uncertainty of, 56 – 7, 58, 71 – 2 Schuster, Alfredo, 218, 222 – 3 Schutzstaffel (SS): in Germany, 18, 20 – 3, 67, 110, 128; in Poland, 146; in Rome, 111, 114, 116, 117 Scuola Cattolica, 226 Second Vatican Council. See Vatican Council II Second World War: Allied condemnation of genocide (1942), 172; authoritarian traditions in government, 299; Casablanca Conference, 240 – 1; as a “just war,” 275 – 6; overview, 76, 118, 245; papal archives, 9, 29, 258; papal mediation, 244 – 7; propaganda, 121, 147 – 8, 251, 257, 260 – 1, 276; sacralization of politics, 299; separate peace, 240 – 2; Vatican aid, 12 – 13, 33. See also Pius XII; and specific countries Sedgwick, Alexander, 270 – 1 Senatro, Edoardo, 259, 311n64, 350n44 Serédi, Jusztinián, 126 – 8, 131 – 3, 135, 137, 169 Sidor, Karl, 80 – 2, 318n6 Slovakia: anti-Jewish decrees, 80 – 1, 177; antisemitism, 82 – 3; Auschwitz Report, 135, 328 – 9n61; Catholic population, 81 – 2; Catholics of Jewish origin, 80 – 1, 84 – 5, 300; clerical response, 80 – 3, 85 – 6, 138, 281, 294 – 5, 300, 318n6; deportations and murder, 79, 81 – 6, 110 – 11, 174, 252, 294 – 5, 300;

deportation exemptions, 84 – 5, 319n16; historical background, 78 – 80, 84 – 6, 95 – 6, 123; Jewish brothels story, 82; Jewish pleas for aid, 81, 300; Jewish racial definitions, 80 – 1; nationalism, 81 – 2; Vatican response, 80 – 6, 94, 110 – 11, 318n6 Smith, Denis Mack, 219, 220, 229, 344 – 5n62 Social Democratic Party (SPD), 23 – 4, 67, 71 – 2, 73 Soviet Union: deportations and murder, 110 – 11, 174, 324 – 5n44; German invasion of, 123, 238 – 9, 276 – 7; Katyn massacre, 151; separate peace, 240 – 2; US aid to, 239 – 40; Vatican relations, 74 Spain, 103, 189, 220 SPD (German Socialist Party), 23 – 4, 67, 71 – 2, 73 Spicer, Kevin, 5, 43 Stahel, Rainer, 114 – 15 Stambolis, Barbara, 277 state-church relations. See papacy and governments; and specific countries Stead, William, 283 Stehle, Hansjacob, 74, 324 – 5n44 Steinberg, Jonathan, 317n3 Der Stellvertreter. See The Deputy Stepinac, Aloysius, 88 – 95, 320n25, 320n27, 321nn28 – 9 Stow, Kenneth, 178 Stratmann, Franziskus, 180 Sturmabteilung (SA), 56, 62, 67, 179 Sturzo, Luigi, 84 Suhard, Emmanuel Célestin, 106 Summi Pontificatus (On the Unity of Human Society), 12, 147 – 8, 246, 266, 275 – 6, 278, 279, 282

404 Index Sweden, protective passes, 136 Szálasi, Ferenc, 135 – 6 Szembek, Jan, 144, 217 Szeptyckyj, Andrey, 111 Sztójay, Döme, 129 – 32, 135 Tablet, 27, 127, 173, 197 Tacci, Giovanni, 192, 194 Tardini, Domenico: anti-Communist stance, 238 – 9, 242; anti-Nazi stance, 238 – 9, 242; antisemitism, 294; archives, 76; Danzig conflict, 144 – 5, 246; deception to protect Church image, 294 – 5; deportations in Italy, 110; deportations in Slovakia, 83 – 4, 294 – 5; French anti-Jewish decrees, 99; on German retaliation, 155; on Pius XII’s temperament, 186; on Sapieha’s discouragement, 152 Taylor, Myron, 118 – 19, 139, 172, 239 – 40 Tec, Nechama, 157 Teleki, Pál, 133 Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae (­Concerning New Opinions), 290, 354n53 Théas, Pierre-Marie, 102, 107 – 8 Thieme, Karl, 161 Tiso, Jozef, 79 – 81, 83 – 6, 300, 318n6, 318n14, 319n16 Tittmann, Harold, 118 – 19, 134 – 5, 147, 258 Tomasevich, Jozo, 89, 91, 317n3, 320n23, 321n29 Transylvania, 123 Treaty of Versailles, 142, 162, 205, 216, 224, 241, 275, 276 Tripartite Pact, 123

Tuka, Vojtĕch, 79, 84 – 6 Turkey, 202 – 3. See also Armenian genocide Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio (On the Peace of Christ), 204 – 5, 208, 211, 213, 275, 285 Ukraine: deportations and murder, 110 – 11, 324 – 5n44; Lwów pogrom, 162 – 5; Russian occupation of Galicia, 203, 341n33 Ukrainian-Polish War, 165 Unitatis Redintegratio, 95 United Kingdom. See Great Britain United Nations, 30 – 1 United States: aid for USSR, 239 – 40; Casablanca Conference, 240 – 1; chargé d’affaires to Vatican, 118 – 19, 134 – 5, 147, 258; condemnation of genocide (1942), 172; emissary to Vatican, 118 – 19, 139, 172, 239 – 40; entry into WWI, 205; entry into WWII, 239 – 40; productions of The Deputy, 27 – 8; warning of punishment for Jewish ­atrocities, 134 USSR. See Soviet Union Valeri, Valerio, 100 – 1, 103, 105 – 6, 177, 324n40 Vatican: deception to protect image of, 293 – 5; diplomatic rankings, 318n6; German-Jewish refugee scholars, 171, 336n22; native clergy, 213, 342n42; Nazi threats against, 250; protection in WWII, 118 – 21; recognition of new states, 87; as sovereign state, 213 – 14. See also Holy Office; Lateran Accords; Roman Catholic Church; Rome

Index 405 Vatican councils: canonization ­powers, 42; papal authority, 39 – 40 Vatican Council I, 37 – 9, 212 Vatican Council II: about, 29 – 31, 281, 299 – 300; on antisemitism, 34 – 5; autonomy of conscience, 292 – 3, 300; church as Body of Christ, 291 – 3; church goals, 44 – 5; conservative-progressive divide, 11, 40 – 2, 347n4; and The Deputy, 29 – 31, 34 – 5, 305n9; on ecumenism, 95; Gaudium et Spes (constitution), 30, 41; impact on papal reputations, 29, 42, 43, 185 – 6; Jewish-Catholic relations, 31 – 5; liturgical reform, 41, 289; nonChristian religions, 34 – 5; Nostra Aetate (In Our Time), 33 – 4, 305n9, 309n48; schismatics, 95; social justice, 41, 44 – 5, 281 Vatican Radio: in The Deputy, 20 – 1; fear of retaliation against, 250, 254; Pius XII’s speeches, 120 Vaussard, Maurice, 211 – 12 Venlo Affair, 243 Ventresca, Robert, 297 Venturi, Pietro Tacchi, 109, 178, 217, 231, 295, 324n43 Verdier, Jean, 223, 344n60 Versailles Treaty, 142, 162, 205, 216, 224, 241, 275, 276 Vichy France. See France, history (in WWII) Virtue, Nicholas, 219 – 20 Visani, Alessandro, 226

Volk, Ludwig, 60, 62 – 9, 71, 196, 260, 313n9 Vrba Rudolf, 135 Vrba-Wetzler Report, 135, 328 – 9n61 Warsaw Uprising, 153 Wartheland, 145 – 6, 148, 150, 152 – 4, 249 Weber, Max, 268 Weimar Republic: Catholic protection, 60; coalition governments, 65; Enabling Act, 66; failure of, 52; opposition to concordats, 50; political weakness, 72. See also Germany, history (interwar era) Weiss, Peter, 23 Weizsäcker, Ernst von, 112 – 17, 121, 242, 247 Wetzler, Alfred, 135, 328 – 9n61 William, Frederick, 197 – 8 Wirth, Joseph, 67, 72 With Deep Anxiety (Mit brennender Sorge), 43, 189, 220, 228 – 30, 237, 273 – 4, 345n66 Wolf, Hubert, 5 – 6, 9, 68 – 71, 158 – 9, 227, 304n7, 316n50 Woodward, Kenneth, 42 World Wars, First and Second. See First World War; Second World War Wurm, Alois, 179 – 81 Yugoslavia, 76, 88 – 9, 123, 127 Zuccotti, Susan, 77, 103, 106, 117, 223, 237

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GERMAN AND EUROPEAN STUDIES General Editor: Rebecca Wittmann 1 Emanuel Adler, Beverly Crawford, Federica Bicchi, and Rafaella Del Sarto, The Convergence of Civilizations: Constructing a Mediterranean Region 2 James Retallack, The German Right, 1860-1920: Political Limits of the Authoritarian Imagination 3 Silvija Jestrovic, Theatre of Estrangement: Theory, Practice, Ideology 4 Susan Gross Solomon, ed., Doing Medicine Together: Germany and Russia Between the Wars 5 Laurence McFalls, ed., Max Weber’s ’Objectivity’ Revisited 6 Robin Ostow, ed., (Re)Visualizing National History: Museums and National Identities in Europe in the New Millennium 7 David Blackbourn and James Retallack, eds., Localism, Landscape, and the Ambiguities of Place: German-Speaking Central Europe, 1860-1930 8 John Zilcosky, ed., Writing Travel: The Poetics and Politics of the Modern Journey 9 Angelica Fenner, Race under Reconstruction in German Cinema: Robert Stemmle’s Toxi 10 Martina Kessel and Patrick Merziger, eds., The Politics of Humour in the Twentieth Century: Inclusion, Exclusion ,and Communities of Laughter 11 Jeffrey K. Wilson, The German Forest: Nature, Identity, and the Contestation of a National Symbol, 1871‑1914 12 David G. John, Bennewitz, Goethe, Faust: German and Intercultural Stagings 13 Jennifer Ruth Hosek, Sun, Sex, and Socialism: Cuba in the German Imaginary 14 Steven M. Schroeder, To Forget It All and Begin Anew: Reconciliation in Occupied Germany, 1944‑1954 15 Kenneth S. Calhoon, Affecting Grace: Theatre, Subject, and the Shakespearean Paradox in German Literature from Lessing to Kleist 16 Martina Kolb, Nietzsche, Freud, Benn, and the Azure Spell of Liguria 17 Hoi-eun Kim, Doctors of Empire: Medical and Cultural Encounters between Imperial Germany and Meiji Japan 18 J. Laurence Hare, Excavating Nations: Archeology, Museums, and the German-Danish Borderlands 19 Jacques Kornberg, The Pope’s Dilemma: Pius XII Faces Atrocities and Genocide in the Second World War 20 John K. Noyes, Herder: Aesthetics against Imperialism