War Against Pius XII and the Church

Few historical events are more debated than Pope Pius XII’s leadership of the Catholic Church during World War II.

Throughout the war, at its conclusion, and even at the time of his death in 1958, Pius was regarded as a friend to the Allies, an enemy of the Nazis, and a champion of the Jews.
 
In its 1941 Christmas editorial, the New York Times affirmed that the Pope “uttered the ideas a spiritual leader would be expected to express in time of war,” and noted that “his words sound strange and bold in the Europe of today… [H]e is about the only ruler left on the Continent of Europe who dares to raise his voice at all.” The final paragraph explained, “the Pope put himself squarely against Hitlerism.”
 
The following year, the Times again praised Pius, noting that “more than ever he is a lonely voice crying out of the silence of a continent.”

ATTACK ON THE PAPACY

The consensus that Pius was a champion of the Jews later came under attack not on historical grounds, but on ideological ones.
 
Following Germany’s defeat, the struggle between Christianity and communism intensified, with the latter doing everything in its power to turn people away from religion. Associating a pope with the Nazis was an effective way to do that.
 
Historian Owen Chadwick aptly commented, “Stalin had a political need to make this Pope contemptible.”
 
Soviet bloc intelligence agencies launched an operation to disparage Christianity and promote atheism by linking Pius XII to the Nazis. This massive disinformation campaign was centered on a play, The Deputy, which accused Pius of having turned a blind eye to Jewish suffering at the hands of the Nazis. Ever since, some writers and commentators have depicted Pius as a villain.

Between 1965 and 1981, the Vatican published 12 volumes of wartime archival documents refuting allegations from the play. They earned high praise from leading historians, but the so-called “Pius War” raged on.
 
‘SECRET’ ARCHIVES OPENED

In 2020, the Vatican opened the remaining wartime archives — some 16 million pages of primary documents — hoping to resolve any unanswered questions. While a full assessment of the documents will take time, significant findings have already appeared.
 
Most reports are overwhelmingly favorable to the Church. Books by Johan Ickx (Le Bureau, Les Juifs de Pie XII, 2020), Michael Hesemann (The Pope and the Holocaust: Pius XII and the Secret Vatican Archives, 2022), and Christian Jennings (Syndrome K: How Italy Resisted the Final Solution 2022), all give positive reviews of Pius XII’s wartime leadership.
 
Cesare Catananti’s book, 
(Il Vaticano nella Tormenta, 2020) is based upon archives of the Vatican’s police force and highlights the measures it took to defend against an expected Nazi invasion and potential kidnapping of the Pope. Clearly, those inside the Vatican knew that they were seen as enemies by the Nazis.
 
Other researchers have not yet published findings, but they have praised the Church under Pius XII.
 
Michael Feldkamp, author of Pius XII und Deutschland, reports that the documents prove Pius XII aided endangered Jews and notified the United States about their persecution earlier than previously thought. Father Hubert Wolf, who at first raised questions about a document he found, later concluded that the Holy See responded to Jewish calls for help with “money, food, or shelter” and that the Pope assisted Jews in obtaining visas to escape Nazi deportation.

‘SHOCKING,’ ‘SECRET’ MEETINGS

Only Brown University professor David Kertzer, author of The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler, claims to have found evidence that puts the Pope in a bad light. Unfortunately, his book has drawn the most attention.

Kertzer acknowledges that the archives have no “smoking gun,” and he admits that “Pius XII and Adolf Hitler had no affection for each other.” Still, he charges the wartime pontiff with callous disregard for Jewish suffering. 
What Kertzer calls his “most shocking finding” is that within weeks of Pius XII’s 1939 coronation, Hitler sent an envoy, Prince Philip of Hesse, to negotiate an agreement with the Vatican.

That is neither a new revelation nor at all shocking. The negotiations were proposed by Germany and transpired well before the final solution and the death camps were in place. No one knew how Nazi persecution would evolve, but the Pope had a duty to protect his people. Besides, humanitarian efforts to protect others could not be undertaken unless the Catholic institutions were protected.

Kertzer says of the negotiations, “We didn’t know about these until just now,” and he accuses the Vatican of a cover-up because the Jesuit editors of the 12-volume wartime collection “systematically expunged all reference” to the secret talks. That is incorrect both factually and logically.

In the first volume of the Actes et Documents collection, document 254, dated March 9, 1940, is a note by Monsignor Domenico Tardini of the Vatican Secretariat of State stating that “the Prince of Hesse” was involved in secret preparations for a meeting between German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and the Pope (which took place on March 11). The first footnote to the text, supplied by the Jesuit editors, reads: “Prince Philip of Hesse was the husband of Italian Royal Princess Mafalda and acted frequently as an intermediary between Berlin and Rome,” adding that he “evidently had many secret audiences with Pius XII.” The Vatican published that in 1965.

Although Kertzer’s account of the negotiations begins with the implication that they would end up in shameful capitulation, he ultimately acknowledges, “[i]n the end, no formal agreement emerged.”

Any fair person should recognize that it was appropriate for the Pope to communicate with the most consequential leader in Europe at that time, especially when there was an opportunity to protect people under his charge. Thus, the claim that the meetings were sinister or even out of the ordinary is baseless.

FLAWED SCHOLARSHIP

It also makes no sense to claim that the four Jesuits tried to hide this interaction, considering what they published. On page 62 of his book, Kertzer discusses the first meeting between Pius XII and the German emissary. He writes, “After welcoming von Hessen, the Pope took out a copy of the letter he had sent Hitler shortly after his election as pope two months earlier. He read it aloud to the prince, then read Hitler’s reply.” Pius went on to note that the situation in Germany had deteriorated since the time of his letter.
 
Kertzer does not, in his text or footnotes, mention that the full letter from Pius to Hitler was published in the second volume of the Actes et Documents collection. This letter, which was sent after consultation with Germany’s leading bishops, was the start of an appeal to reverse Germany’s mad course and avoid catastrophic bloodshed. The point here, though, is that the letter would not have been included in the collection if the Jesuit editors were trying to hide relevant documents.

Kertzer has some interesting findings, but his analysis is flawed, and his work is incomplete. The bibliography does not include (and his book does not cover) some of the most important revelations of the past decade, including Pius XII’s active role in plans to assassinate Hitler, and the Kremlin’s efforts to defame Pius after his death.
 
The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler is a disappointment. David Kertzer should have done better.

WILLIAM DOINO, who writes often about religion, history, and culture, is the lead contributor to the anthology The Pius War: Responses to the Critics of Pius XII (Lexington Books). His research on this subject has been cited by the New York Times, The Catholic Historical Review, and L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican’s newspaper.

RONALD J. RYCHLAK is distinguished university professor and holder of the Jamie L. Whitten Chair in Law and Government at the University of Mississippi. He is a legal advisor to the Holy See’s delegation to the United Nations and author of 12 books, including Hitler, the War, and the Pope, which the Congregation for the Causes of Saints called “definitive.”