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Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII

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I was fascinated by this book and went on to do some more digging. I found so much material contrary to Cornwell's account that I keep asking myself why an historian would go to such efforts to smear a man who, it seems, saved so many lives. I can only assume that marketing considerations determined the tone of this book.

A few quotes: "When fearful martyrdom came to our people in the decade of Nazi terror, the voice of the Pope was raised for it's victims." Golda Meir

"He (Pope Pius)is the only ruler left on the continent of Europe who dares raise his voice at all." New York Times editorial Dec. 25, 1942

"Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign." Albert Einstein (Time magazine 1944)

It is a "regretable irony that the one person in all of occupied Europe who did more than anyone else to halt the dreadful crime...is today made the scapegoat for the failures of others." Jeno Levai (Jewish historian specializing in the Holocaust in Hungary)

"The Catholic Church under Pius XII was instumental in saving the lives of as many as 860,000 Jews" Pinchas Lapide (Israeli diplomat)

I don't like this book because I think that it is bad research, and even worse targetting at misleading the masses. BTW I am not Catholic, so I have no interest or particular reason to defend Pius XII. The argumentation of the book is poor and the evidence very selective. Cornwell ignored the mass of evidence that sustained the contrary thesis, and the reasons that led Pius to use a soft policy for helping the Jews (Hitler reacting with more persecution when the pope would condemn antisemitism strongly, and Hitler's becoming full of hate just by hearing the word "Jew".) For those who are interested in a much better book on the same topic, I definitely recommend Pierre Blet's book on Pius XII. (Pius XII and the Second World War : According to the Archives of the Vatican)

The principal strength of this book lies in its source material, not all of which has been available previously. However, it is also packaged with a fair amount of invective against Pius XII and the institution of the papacy itself. Yet, there is enough there so that a discerning reader can pick out the important details and ignore the fluff. It is unfortunate that Cornwell was not more professional in his treatment; it could have been a much more powerful indictment.

For example, Cornwell strongly implies that Pius XII's extravagant coronation is evidence of his autocratic tendencies. But this is taken out of context; Pius XII quite obviously was trying to boost morale of Catholics around the world during very trying times. Cornwell unfortunately, here as in many places in Hitler's Pope, simply squeezes too many biased conclusions out of innocuous data. Also, Cornwell's use of pictures taken out of context to bolster his case does show a lack of professionalism.

That being said, there is also enough raw information provided that can enable the discerning reader to reach valuable conclusions about the role of the papacy in the context of WWII. There is ample evidence provided in the book to support the conclusion that the papacy undermined local Catholic resistance to Hitler and that Pacelli in his role of nuncio to Germany played a large role in bringing that about. There is also ample evidence presented of the casual anti-Judiasm that pervaded the church at the time. And where I feel that Cornwell is strongest is in arguing for the capacity of the Catholic Church and its members to do good : particularly in presenting cases where Catholic opposition to barbarity during WWII did in fact bring about change; both in Germany and in other fascist regimes in eastern Europe. Finally, Cornwell is also strong in showing that Pius XII knew what was happening to the Jews in Nazi Germany and yet said nothing. Cornwell's book, despite the sometimes obviuos bias of the author, shows that the silence was indeed deafening. At the very least, Pius XII was inept on the scale of Neville Chamberlain, largely (perhaps willingly) blind to the plight of the Jews during the Holocaust, and certainly unwilling to spend any political capital to join the fight against one of the most evil regimes in history.

Apologists continue to defend Pius XII as defending the church from being stamped out in Germany and its conquered regions during WWII. However, in light of Cornwell's work, this can no longer be considered justification, but only perhaps an excuse. Also it is evidence of the lengths that high ranking officials of the Catholic Church went during WWII to sacrifice principle in favor of themselves and their institution : which I painfully view as an astounding lack of Faith in the triumph of the Church by its very own leader.

You have to read 370 pages into this book to get to the crux of the matter, Cornwell's real aim:

"Those who long for the realization of collegiality in the Catholic church may also come to accept, in the light of this narrative ... that papal autocracy, carried to the extreme, can only demoralize and weaken Christian communities. ... It has been the urgent thesis of this book, however, that when the papacy waxes strong at the expense of the people of God, the Catholic Church declines in moral and spiritual influence to the detriment of us all."

I have no illusions about the power of the Papacy to inflict harm needlessly and unconsciously on the Christian church. I have no doubt that past popes have been responsible for death and destruction to further their own political power. However, I do not think Cornwell presents a credible case to damn Pius XII. He merely presents an indictment of the papacy as a strong, reactionary, unresponsive office badly in need of reform from his own perspective.

To do this, he invokes the name of Hitler in the title, conjuring up all the evil of history associated with that name, hoping some will rub off on the pope. He then calls him by his Christian name, stripping him of title and making him into a faceless bureaucrat. Finally, he associates him with every evil of the era, from fascism to McCarthyism, hoping for some revolt against John Paul II at the end, in a chapter which seemed hastily added on and beside the point until you arrive at page 370, the next to last page.

This is history as polemic, and not necessarily well done either. The section dealing with Pius' death is, frankly, dispicable. Because of the nature of the work as revealed at the end, this book calls all of its conclusions into suspicion. If Pius stood idlely by while the Holocaust was going on, he was no more guilty of the same moral astigmatism when presented with a choice between communism and fascism that many of that era were. One would expect a biography of FDR entitled "Hitler's President." But such a criticism would be unfair in that case, and in this.

A final word on Cornwell's thesis: John Paul II has stood against so-called reformist movements, such as liberation theology, the push to ordain women and homosexuals, a more modern view of contraception, etc. If one has a problem with a strong, centralized leadership standing in the way of "reform," there are plenty of denominations to choose from besides Catholicism, a sect not known in the past for its visionary reform. But speaking as a Protestant, frankly, Catholicism without a strong Papacy would be ridiculous, and I think Martin Luther would agree with me.

And to the reader from New Jersey: Americans don't necessarily like sugar coated history. We just don't chase after every damned red herring thrown to us by dubious historians ready to abandon credible history based on their own axe-grindings. The author and those who agree with him should instead find a better way of pursuing Catholic reform instead of dishonoring the memory of those unable to defend themselves.

When the author stuck with the core theme of the book (What did Pius XII know, when did he know it, and what did he do) I thought the book was fascinating. I thought the inferences the author arrived at from foriegn diplomats' memos, the Vatican's own records, etc. were well reasoned. I also thought the author made a strong case that the Pope and the Church abandoned its moral authority in the face of the Nazi threat. While the Pope clearly never conspired with the Nazis, he certainly acquiesced to their actions, while amply apprised of the Nazi campaign against the Jews. I personally felt the research on these issues was presented in a thorough and convincing manner. This was not the Church's finest hour.

But the author constantly included trivial, unflatttering facts whose sole purpose could only have been to purposely make the Pope look worse to the reader. This made me question whether the author was presenting a fair portrayal of the Nazi matters. It made me wonder if he purposely failed to present other exculpatory evidence that would have lead to a different interpretation of the Pope's actions. It made no difference to me that the Pope's body decomposed early, or the Vatican staff was required to get on their knees when talking to him on the phone. It is irrelevant to me that the Pope had such high esteem of himself that he felt compelled to lecture no other than T.S. Eliot on literature. Pius XII's eccentricies and ego shouldn't have been analyzed here...his action (or inaction) in light of the Nazi threat should have been the sole focus of this book. The author's constant indulgences in bringing up these matters seemed to undermine what was an otherwise powerful and justified condemnation of the Pope's inaction at a time when the world, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, needed him most. I even thought the title was unfair, since it implies a complicity that wasn't there.

The "piling on" was unnecessary, and it made me question the veracity of a very interesting and compelling argument.

I personally could care less whether Pope Pius XII was a good pope or a bad pope. Anyone who knows Vatican history knows that there have been both kinds of popes in the history of the Church... and it's certainly possible that Pius XII was the callous, immoral fraud that Cornwell depicts him as being. But there are two things that have always troubled me about this denunciation of Pius XII plainly also despise the Catholic Church for other reasons; and, more significantly, (2) the people who actually LIVED through World War II (including the former Chief Rabbi of Rome) had only PRAISE for Pius XII's courage when dealing with the Nazis (who were, by the way, stationed with tanks about 100 yards from where the pope slept!). Cornwell fails utterly to explain why, if Pius XII was so bad...

1. Golda Meir, the former prime minister of Israel, said upon Pius XII's death that " During the ten years of Nazi terror, when our people passed through the horrors of martyrdom, the Pope raised his voice to condemn the persecutors and to commiserate with their victims."

2. Elio Toaff, the Chief Rabbi of Rome during the Nazi terror, said, "More than anyone else, we have had the opportunity to appreciate the great kindness, filled with compassion and magnanimity, that the Pope displayed during the terrible years of persecution and terror."

3. Nahum Goldmann, president of the World Jewish Congress, said that, "with special gratitude we remember all he has done for the persecuted Jews during one of the darkest periods in their entire history."

4. The Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, Isaac Herzog, sent the Pius XII a personal message of thanks on February 28, 1944, in Holiness and his illustrious delegates, inspired by the eternal principles of religion which form the very foundations of true civilization, are doing for us unfortunate brothers and sisters in the most tragic hour of our history, which is living proof of divine Providence in this world."

5. The New York Times, in its Christmas editorial of 1941, said of Pius would be expected to express in time of war. Yet his words sound strange and bold in the Europe of today, and we comprehend the complete submergence and enslavement of great nations, the very sources of our civilization, as we realize that he is about the only ruler left on the Continent of Europe who dares to raise his voice at all."

6. Former Israeli diplomat and now Orthodox Jewish Rabbi Pinchas Lapide stated that Pius XI "had good reason to make Pacelli the architect of his anti-Nazi policy. Of the forty-four speeches which the Nuncio Pacelli had made on German soil between 1917 and 1929, at least forty contained attacks on Nazism or condemnations of Hitler's doctrines. . . . Pacelli, who never met the Führer, called it `neo-Paganism.' "

7. Lapide, in his book "Three Popes and the Jews," insisted that the Catholic Church saved more Jewish lives than all other relief efforts (such as those of the International Red Cross, the Haganah, and American Jewish organizations) Catholic Church had been the instrument is thus at least 700,000 souls, but in all probability it is much closer to . . . 860,000."

8. Albert Einstein, again someone who fled Hitler personally and lived through the the Hitlerian onslaught on liberty. Up till then I had not been interested in the Church, but today I feel a great admiration for the Church, which alone has had the courage to struggle for spiritual truth and moral liberty."

In conclusion, it is plainly obvious that Pius XII didn't do enough to save Jewish refugees in Europe -- anyone who has visited Dachau or Yad veh-Shem, as I have, knows that -- as it is obvious that the Allied Forces, the International Red Cross, and American Jewish groups in the U.S. didn't do enough. No one did enough. Eleven million people were murdered in cold blood. But why is the Catholic Church in general, and Pius XII in particular, singled out for attacks? For Cornwell and other critics of Pius XII to be credible, they have to explain, once again, why SO MANY people (including the most prominent Jews who survived) heaped PRAISE on Pius XII for his efforts on behalf of the Jews. Until Cornwell CAN explain this, his book will appear to be yet another screed against the Vatican by a former Catholic. It is scholarship in the service of rage, a sad waste of talent and time. END

This book is getting a lot of attention. But all the reading I have done, especially the testimony of Jewish leaders during and after WWII concerning what Pius XII did to help the Jewish people, makes me very skeptical about Mr. Cornwell's allegations. I would urge everyone to suspend judgment until they have read a lot of other evidence. A great deal of material, pro and con, can be found on the Internet by searching on "Pius" and "Holocaust".

At present, Amazon is bringing up "Pius XII and the Second World War: According to the Archives of the Vatican" by Pierre Blet, et. al. as a book that others who have bought Mr. Cornwell's book have also purchased. I would point out that Pierre Blet is one of the four persons who edited the 12-volume "The Acts and Documents of the Holy See Relative to World War II". So, he is in an even better position than Mr. Cornwell is to talk about this issue. I realize that he is also potentially biased because he is a Jesuit priest. But then, it is fair to ask what Mr. Cornwell's bias is.

On p. 310 of Hitler's Pope, Cornwell, after numbering the deported Roman Jews at 1,060, notes that "an unspecified number of Jews" were sheltered from deportation by the Vatican. This number is freely available, Cornwell must have known it well: about 5,000. As this would have undercut his thesis (that the diplomacy of Pius XII clearly was only self-serving and did not save lives), he assiduously keeps it from the reader. The book is rife with these sorts of distortions.

First, contrary to Cornwell's assertions, there is precious little new material, and he did not enjoy "unprecendented" access to Vatican archives. Second, his assertion that he started the project with the intention of clearing the name Eugenio Pacelli (Pius XII) is highly suspect, since by his own admission, his main point is that the papacy is itself an evil institution; it's unlikely that the reign of one man would have changed his mind on this, especially given the REALLY bad popes of history. If he really felt the papacy was an unreformable evil, what would be his motivation to clear the name of a pope who exercised such clear authority? Third, nothing is mentioned of Pacelli's support of Christian Democrat parties after the war, as this would undercut Cornwell image of a pope who distrusted democratic movements.

Structurally, the book is a mess. Is it a biography of Pacelli? Not really. Is it a story of the wartime behavior of Pius XII? About one-third of it is, but that is better covered by authors who focused on original sources, e.g., Pierre Blet, and not secondary and tertiary sources as Cornwell does. He takes the opportunity to tell us what he thinks about John Paul II (against, natch) and contraception (for, natch), all the while showing that, his claim to be a "devout Catholic" notwithstanding, he's clearly out of touch with both Catholic theology and Catholic life as practiced today. He's hilariously uninformed about NFP (no, I have no idea what this has to do with the Nazis or Pius, either), and only someone who's never read or understood John Paul II's philosophical work could call his work "a narrow reading of neo-Thomist philosophy," unless neo-Thomist philosophy somehow now includes 20th century phenomenology.

The book is also filled with fun, irrelevant, "zany" tidbits like what Orson Welles and Alec Guinness recalled of their meetings with the pontiff. Oh, and in case you missed it (most historians have), the Vatican was also responsible for World War I (p. 48-58)! Who writes this stuff?

After reading "Hilter's Pope" through twice, I think you would not have much of a book left if you took out Cornwell's criticisms of Pius XII and other popes for trying to ensure that Catholic doctrine is correctly taught and for trying to ensure that Church practice is universally consistent. Disdain for the teaching authority of the Catholic Church and the papacy is on every page.

Even if you hate the idea of a central teaching authority or the fact that the Church isn't run as a democracy, it does not follow, as the author implies over and over again, that someone who believes that a central authority is necessary is the same as a vicious murdering dictator who has dreams of world dominion and will stop at nothing to carry it out.

Cornwell tries to yoke these two disparate figures together in every way possible, trying to tar Eugenio Pacelli, who became Pope Pius XII, with the brush of Hilter's guilt.

Cornwell's main thesis is that Pacelli/Pius XII was power-hungry, and everything he did throughout his career, including his concordat with Hilter, had that single motive. The rhetorical techniques Cornwell uses are impressive, even if reprehensible. A photo of the Pope blessing people in St. Peter's Square is shown on the same page as Hilter on a balcony in front of a huge crowd. A paragraph documenting an action by Pacelli during his diplomatic career will be followed by a paragraph about an unrelated atrocity by a Nazi official, even there is no evident connection between the two. Readers who read through this long book too fast may find these things blurring together to achieve the author's sought-for impression.

It is obvious from the title and book itself that the author was trying to prove that Pius XII, collaborated with Hilter and hated Jews both before and afer he became pope. My understanding is that the pope did not try more directly to stop Hilter because of the very real danger that Hilter would respond with more violent action against Catholics and Jews. Religious practice had been exterminated in countries under Communist rule. The same prospect was hanging over the German church with the rise of the Nazis, even though Hilter gave lip service to the Christian churches.

In spite Hilter's being born Catholic, no one could accuse Hilter of remaining a Catholic. He was a neo-pagan; his fantastic man-made religion built upon the notion of survival of the fittest to conceive of a super race to be achieved by destroying all genetically inferior members of the human species, Jewish and Polish people included, and anyone else who stood in his way. A lot of Catholic clergy who spoke out died in concentration camps, including the priest St. Maximillian Kolbe, who volunteered to die instead of a Jewish family man in one of the camps.

As Pacelli, the Vatican diplomat, and Pius XII, the pope, he saw that a concordat with Mussolini succeeded in buffering the Church in Italy to some degree, and that a concordat with Hilter could have the same effect in Germany...P>Cornwell writes scornfully even about things that wouldn't seem evil in someone else's eyes. For example, Cornwell cricizes Pacelli/Pius XII for his asceticism, his dedication to personal prayer, his hard work, and his devotion to St. Therese, who taught a "little way" to God through love of God expressed through love of the people around us. And from what he writes, Cornwell apparently sees the fact that people loved this pope whenever they got to meet him as due to the pope's evil genius rather than his holiness.

Cornwell described the decay of Pope Pius XII's body after death in horrifying detail (but didn't quote any sources for his information). This final indignity leaves me with an impression contrary to make his point.

Cornwell starts this book saying he got access to secret archives because he told the Vatican archivists about his desire to defend Pius XII, but then he got disillusioned by what he discovered. Cornwell's previously published words show his disdain for the Church dated from before the date of his research on this book, which makes me think that when Cornwell told the Vatican that he wanted to defend Pius XII that Cornwell was not really sincere.

In Cornwell's previous book about the death of John Paul I after a little over a month as pope, Cornwell claimed he had been asked by the Vatican to dispel rumors about the pope's early death, and then he was disillusioned by what he found out after doing his research on that topic.

If you believe what Cornwell writes in these two books, his respect for the Church has risen at least twice until it was deflated twice by his research for two books that coincidentally turn out to be scandalous exposes. It also strains one's credibility that the Vatican would have asked a former seminarian and outspoken critic of the Church to investigate the death of a Pope.

Perhaps Cornwell has proven his ability, not as a historian but a skilled writer of conspiracy theories? END

Cornwell is a compelling writer, and he makes a serious case that Pius XII's legacy was not a positive one. As such, this book deserves consideration. But it is not what it claims to be.

Mr. Cornwell would have us belief he was originally sympathetic to Pius XII but that access to previously secret information about the Pope caused him to change his mind. That is, the book claims to be based on new revelation. It's not. It's an analysis of widely known historical information by one critical of the Catholic conservativism that Pius XII advanced.

Mr. Cornwell is first and foremost concerned with criticizing the conservative faction that advocates centralized church authority, enforced doctrinal orthodoxy, and the precedence of personal holiness over social action. His analysis of Pius's papacy is a vehicle for this critique. He dedicates considerable attention to the First Vatican Council, to the papacy of the arch-conservative Pius X, and to the current backslash against the progressive legacy of the Second Vatican Council, all topics that bear no relation to Pius XII's role in the Second World War, the book's ostensive subject matter.

Mr. Cornwell admits that he gained access to archives in possession of the Jesuits by claiming he was favorable to Pius, but pretends that this was true at the time. This seems to me very implausible, since all of Mr. Conrwell's previous books about the Catholic Church have expressed the same anti-conservative, anti-hierarchic orientation that is so evident throughout this work. Moreover, Mr. Cornwell dislikes Pius XII personally. He is not above repeating gossip about his housekeeper or informing us that his corpse was grotesquely putrified at the time of his funeral.

That said, I think the book is worth reading and commenting. I am personally inclined to agree with Mr. Conrwell that Pius XII did more harm than good to the Catholic Church. But readers should keep in mind that this work was not written in good faith.