Customer Reviews

The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930-1965:

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This recent work on the Holocaust is an important addition to the ongoing debate about the role of the Catholic Church and the papacy under Pope Pius XII during World War II. Unlike other recent works, there is an objectivity and balance to Phayer's attempt to understand and explain the role of the Church during the Holocaust. Rooted in archival and secondary research, Phayer serves as an historical corrective at times to Cornwell's HITLER'S POPE. This work is comprehensive in scope as it deals with the nature of genocide in Europe and the failure of the papacy at times to confront this evil. Not only does the author concern himself here with the Nazi persecution of the Jews, but also with incidents of genocide in Croatia by a pro-Catholic government against the Serbs. More importantly, the scope of the work extends beyond the Vatican to examine the positions of European Catholic clergy confronting the Holocaust. The reader is faced with the stories of heroic rescuers of Jews as well as the anti-Semtism and/or indifference of others. Phayer's examination of the roles of several Catholic women is also significant, as the results of their courageous work would positively influence a later generation of German Catholc clergy after the war. This work is to be commended also for concluding its study with the development of the Catholic document NOSTRA AETATE toward the Jewish community in the era of Vatican Council II. In sum, this is a work that is noteworthy for its research and disturbing for its frank criticism of Catholic Church leadership during the Holocaust. It should be required reading for classes on the Holocaust.

This book removed itself from all of the hype, defensiveness and trash talking that seems to surround this topic. Michael Phayer approached the topic systematically and objectively and in so doing has produced a book that for me seems to be the definitive work on this subject. A must read for anyone interested in the history of Pius XII and the Holocaust.

Michael Phayer has a long and proven academic record in Holocaust studies. This work is no exception, indeed it may well be one of the most significant works on the Holocaust to be written in the last 25 years. Setting parameters for examining the role of the Catholic Church that extends beyond the customary years 1933 to 1945, Phayer creates a context that helps the reader understand the complex issued surrounding the papacies of Pius XI and Pius XII. At the end of the day, Pius XII was faced with a situation that he had seen developing for many years. Intelligent, articulate and devouted to serving the Church, Pacelli was also autocratic and filled with a sense of the importance of his office that failed to recognise the changing political realities of the 1930s through to the 1950s.

Bolshevism, rampant nationalism, pseudo-scientific racism and the rule of the Dictators faced the Popes during the inter-war years. Fearing Bolshevism as the greater evil than Fascism, both Pius XI and XII did the proverbial "deal with the devil", unwittingly allied themselves to Fascism, and reaped the whirlwind. Compromise after compromise eroded the Church's ability at the top to act decisively. Quibbles over canon law and mixed Catholic-Jewish marriages as people were arrested and beaten point to a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of Nazism and Fascism in general. When the trains began to roll east, Pius appears to have stuck his head in the sand and wished the whole thing would go away.

Phayer demonstrates convincingly Pius's longing to be seen as the great peacemaker in Europe. Nothing could stand in the way of achieving this dream, not even a public condemnation of a killing and bloodletting unparalleled in human history. Papal apologists have spent so much time explainging away the "silence" of Pius XII they have forgotten the essence of the office the all too human Pacelli held: to feed the sheep.

Pius XII and the Church structure of the 1930s through to Vatican II proved itself unable and often unwilling to recognise the need for dialogue with the world. It took the peasant simplicity and infectious humanity of Angelo Roncalli to cut through the moribund Vatican systems and the equally moribund and death-giving antisemitic theology of the Church to create an opportunity for confronting the past truthfully. It would not spell the end of the church to admit that Pius XII made some serious errors of judgement during his papacy. To continue to deny the pope's moral culpability is to deny the increasing body of archival material that tells a different story to that posed by Pacelli's defenders. Phayer's book makes a serious judgement about the reigns of Pius XI and Pius XII but does so without malice, and avoids the sweeping generaliztions that characterised much of John Cornwell's Hitler's Pope.

Phayer's book is a product of meticulous research and patient piecing together of historical evidence from a variety of sources, including the Vatican. It is balanced and fair. It is essential reading for any student of contemporary Catholic history and theology as well as for the student of the Holocaust.

This book explains the response of the Catholic Church to the Nazi Government and the Holocaust. Coverage is given to time periods before, during, and after the Holocaust. Ample coverage is given to actions of the Church and individual Catholics that were praiseworthy and to actions or nonactions that were shameful. There was much of both.

Unlike many other books and customer reviewers on this subject, the author appears not to have a particular bias that colors his analysis and assessment of every topic covered. The book is neither a blanket condemnation nor a blind hagiography. As such,
I recommend it highly.

Like so many hatchet jobs on poor Pius XII, the author systematically ignores the evidence of the pope's longstanding opposition to Nazism and anti-Semitism (no citations of his famous condemnation of anti-Semitism at Lourdes) and exaggerates the alleged anti-Semitism of obscure Catholic officials and publications. It is striking how little attention is paid to the Vatican newspaper and radio, which repeatedly detailed and denounced Nazi atrocities.

I winced on almost every page of Phayer's book. Historians are paid, presumably, to help us understand well......history, the perceptions, motivations and issues at play in a prior era. Historical analysis, synthesis and judgments should say something to us about the actual conditions people lived and experienced -- in doing so an historian is even better positioned to pass the moral judgments Phayer is so addicted to.

In Phayer's book we have no such thing but instead an overblown thesis that Pius XII can only be understood as obsessed with anti-communism and his role as peacemaker. Phayer arrives at his negative judgment on Pius XII largely by anachronism in his analysis, and selectivity and bias in his use (and lack of use) of key references. Considering all the ink that has been spilt over Pius XII, his detractors no longer deserve a pass when they fail to even mention now well documented and thoroughly vetted evidence that disproves parts of the Pius-the-bad-guy thesis. Almost every page is loaded with these errors.

One example will have to suffice. Phayer condemns Pius XII's 1942 Christmas message as weak and ineffectual, "...no one, certainly not the Germans, took it as a protest against their slaughter of the Jews."

Contrast Phayer's assessment to that of a German government report which described the pope's 1942 speech as, "...one long attack on everything we stand for, HERE HE IS CLEARLY SPEAKING ON BEHALF OF THE JEWS [emphasis added] and makes himself the mouthpiece of the Jewish war criminals."

There are plenty of other references to the contemporary impact of Pius' 1942 speech, to include the German ambassador, the New York Times and Mussolini's government.

None of that matters to writers like Phayer and his ilk, they are, it must finally be said lousy historians ---- using anachronistic reasoning and blithely ignoring or otherwise suborning evidence that does not meet their prejudiced preconceptions. They are hardly writing history at all, but are themselves mouthpieces for anti-catholicism.

The end result of their endeavors though is transferring blame for the holocaust away from its perpetrators and exploiting the deaths of millions for their personal prejudices.

This is a fairer portrayal than Cornwall's, but still lacking perspective. If the reader accepts the proposition that Nazi / Fascist Axis powers controlled the European media for most of the war years, how should the Pope have disseminated his message more effectively? And to play importantly off of Stalin's famous quote, the Pope has no military divisions. So it doesn;t take an active imagination to understand that the Pope, as a virtual prisoner inside the Vatican, was significantly limited in his ability to sound the alarm, so to speak. The media wasn't publishing his remarks, and to the extent his remarks were smuggled out of the Vatican and read in the European churches, there followed (repeatedly) a very regular and predictable pattern of persecution, in France (Vichy), Germany, Holland, etc. One need only to read the contemporary 1937-1945 New York Times accounts of what was going on in Europe vis-a-vis the Church to know that this book, and several more like it, are nothing more than exercises in Monday morning quarterbacking. If the reader wants to entertain fantasies about what could have been, this one may be a decent buy, but I don't recommend this book for anyone seriously interested in what really happened in Europe during the war. A visit to your local library will prove much more constructive, and is probably cheaper as well.

The author clearly had an agenda with no regard for the truth and the body of evidence available. This is book is an example of very poor scholarship, a complete waste of my time.

Before I form an opinion or rush to judgement on any subject, I like to get my facts straight first. I will do research to get differing viewpoints. This book is a step in that direction. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.