Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII [ILLUSTRATED] (Hardcover)

by John Cornwell (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
This devastating account of the ecclesiastical career of Eugenio Pacelli (1876-1958), who became Pope Pius XII in 1939, is all the more powerful because British historian John Cornwell maintains throughout a measured though strongly critical tone. After World War II, murmurs of Pacelli's callous indifference to the plight of Europe's Jews began to be heard. A noted commentator on Catholic issues, Cornwell began research for this book believing that "if his full story were told, Pius XII's pontificate would be exonerated." Instead, he emerged from the Vatican archives in a state of "moral shock," concluding that Pacelli displayed anti-Semitic tendencies early on and that his drive to promote papal absolutism inexorably led him to collaboration with fascist leaders. Cornwell convincingly depicts Cardinal Secretary of State Pacelli pursuing Vatican diplomatic goals that crippled Germany's large Catholic political party, which might otherwise have stymied Hitler's worst excesses. The author's condemnation has special force because he portrays the admittedly eccentric Pacelli not as a monster but as a symptom of a historic wrong turn in the Catholic Church. He meticulously builds his case for the painful conclusion that "Pacelli's failure to respond to the enormity of the Holocaust was more than a personal failure, it was a failure of the papal office itself and the prevailing culture of Catholicism." --Wendy Smith

From Library Journal
Relying on exclusive access to Vatican and Jesuit archives, an award-winning Roman Catholic journalist argues that through a 1933 Concordat with Hitler, Pope Pius XII facilitated the dictator's riseAand, ultimately, the Holocaust.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; First Edition edition (October 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670886939
• ISBN-13: 978-0670886937
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (251 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #244,084 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating--but biased, December 20, 1999

By	Russ Fuerst (California) - See all my reviews

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.

41 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating new information, but overwrought, November 22, 1999

By	Gregory E. Graham "ggraham39" (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews

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.

28 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars From a Protestant perspective, this book is unfair, October 31, 1999

By A Customer

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.