Pius XII and Hitler: The Truth, countering the thesis of  “Hitler’s Pope” by John Cornwell.[1]

The Holy See in the 1930s and 1940s confronted something it had had to deal with previously only in Mexico and Portugal – governments of countries with substantial Catholic populations that were institutionally opposed to Catholicism and Christianity (as opposed to anti-Papal, such as Italy in the period following unification). Mexico and Portugal were one thing; Germany , one of the most powerful countries, a far greater and more delicate problem. The Concordats with states were an essential element in relations between the Holy See and governments with substantial Catholic populations under their care. The Holy See was the largest individual provider of education (aside from the State) and health care and a large proportion of the national cultural heritage was in the custody of the Church. The Concordat with Germany was signed in September 1933, just eight months after Hitler came to power, and before the monstrous nature of his regime became apparent. It attempted to layout the terms of the relationship between State and Church, but like so many such agreements depended on the good faith of the signatories. If the Vatican had had any suspicion at that time of the duplicitous nature of the Hitler regime, it would never have been agreed.  

The Pope has been accused by Cornwell of being a Germanophile, and therefore pro-Nazi; insulting to all those German patriots who died resisting the Nazis. In fact it was Secretary of State Pacelli (later Pius XII) who reinforced Cardinal Faulhaber’s first draft of what became the 1937 encyclical Mit brennender Sorge – this described Nazi pressure on Catholic officials to disown their faith as “base, illegal and inhuman;” it condemned the “spiritual oppression in Germany such as has never been seen before”, and it attacked Hitler for his “aspirations to divinity”, “placing himself on the same level as Christ” and as being a “mad prophet possessed of repulsive arrogance”. These were hardly the words of an admirer of Hitler, as Cornwell claimed! The encyclical was written in German, and not Latin, as Cardinal Pacelli was fluent in German and knew that it would have far greater impact.  

The Holy See, however, learnt that the German propaganda machine was hard to combat; the encyclical had been smuggled into Germany and read from the pulpits, but not one word was reported in the newspapers and the offices of every German diocese was visited the next day by the Gestapo and all the available copies seized. Every publishing company that had printed it was closed and sealed, diocesan newspapers were all proscribed and limits imposed on the paper available for Church purposes. The concordat was directly breached with a cut in the agreed subsidies to theology students, Catholics flags were prohibited at religious ceremonies and towns with religious names (Heiligenstadt, etc) were renamed. More serious Hitler wrote that “I shall open such a campaign against them [the Catholic clergy] in press, radio and cinema so that they won’t know what hit them …. Let us have no martyrs among the Catholic priests, it is more practical to show they are criminals.” 170 Franciscans were arrested in Koblenz and tried for “corrupting youth” in a secret trial, with numerous allegations of priestly debauchery appearing in the Nazi controlled press, while a film produced for the Hitler Youth showed priests dancing in a brothel. [See Anthony Rhodes, Vatican in the Age of the Dictators, 1922-1945, pp. 202-210].  

What the Vatican confronted was a full-frontal attack on the German Catholic Church, and it was this attack with which it was most immediately concerned. When Pius XII was elected it was this threat that he had to deal with first, and his remarks to the British Minister, that “no signature of the present German government is worth the paper it was written on” (FO 371/21164) and to the French Ambassador Charles-Roux, when the Germans marched into the Rhineland, “If you had acted with 200,000 troopps, you would have done an immense service to the world” (Charles-Roux, Huit ans aux Vatican), demonstrate the reality of his feelings about the German government. The Nazis themselves understood the new Pope was hostile to them, and following his election the party paper, Der Angriff, warned that his policies would lead to a “crusade against the totalitarian states”.  

An understanding of the difficulties the Pope faced was expressed in his own words when it was proposed that he should not receive the German Ambassador: “What else can I do? I must treat him in a friendly manner. There is no other course. To break off negotiations is easy. But to build them up again – God knows what concessions we would have to make”. That Pius XII was realistic in his understanding of German aims is demonstrated in a letter to Bishop von Preysing, dated 30 April 1943 : “It was for Us a great consolation to learn that Catholics, in particular those of your Berlin diocese, have shown such charity towards the sufferings of the so-called non Aryans in their affliction. We express Our paternal gratitude and profound sympathy for Mgr Lichtenberg [Dean of the Berlin Cathedral, arrested after protesting Jewish persecution and killed while en route to Dachau] who asked to share the lot of the Jews in the concentration camps, and who spoke up against their persecution in the pulpit. As far as Episcopal declarations are concerned We have to leave to them the responsibility of deciding what to publish from Our communications. The dangers of reprisals and pressures – … counsel reserve. In spite of good reasons for Our open intervention, there are others equally good for avoiding greater evils by not interfering. … In Our Christmas message We said a word concerning the Jews in the territories under German control. The reference was short but it was well understood. It is superfluous to say that Our love and paternal solicitude for the non Aryan or half-Aryan Catholics, children of the Church like all others, are greater today when their exterior existence is collapsing and they know such moral distress. Unhappily … we can bring no other help than Our prayers. We are determined, however, to raise our voice again on their behalf, according to what the circumstances demand or permit.”  

The Pope has been criticized for not attacking the Nazis more overtly. He knew that no attack would be heard in Germany , and also that any outright attempt would lead to even more stringent measures against German Catholics. But it is also necessary to understand that the Vatican was prohibited by the Lateran Treaty from intervening in political matters, and likewise by the German concordat – any breach of which by the Vatican would justify further breaches by the Nazis. The Italians themselves argued that any criticisms of Germany were political interventions in breach of the Lateran treaty, since Germany was Italy ’s ally. Always the Pope’s first responsibility was to the Catholics in his care, and he knew that while he was personally safe (and in any case did not fear for his own life), he did fear the reprisals that could be brought down upon the innocent by his statements. His remarks were therefore more elliptical (and following consistent Vatican precedents during war time, the Holy See took the greatest of care not to take sides which might be perceived as condemning ordinary citizens of the belligerent powers) – such as his condemnation of the occupation of Poland, in the encyclical Summi Pontificatus (27 Oct 1939): “The blood of countless human beings, including many civilians, cries out in agony, a race as beloved to Us as the Polish, whose steadfast faith in the service of Christian civilization is written in ineffaceable letters in the book of history, giving them the right to invoke the brotherly sympathy of the whole world.”  

When a stronger response was needed, it was made by the Vatican radio (such as the condemnation of conditions in Poland , where the population was portrayed as “living in a state of terror and brutalization” 21 Jan 1940 ). This led to immediate and strong German protests, both in Rome by the Ambassador to the Vatican , and in Berlin to the Papal Nuncio. The Vatican radio continued to report on conditions in Poland , of the treatment of priests rounded up and imprisoned and that some Polish girls and boys were being forcibly sterilized. In 1943 the situation had become so bad in Poland that Cardinal Sapieha ordered the priest to whom he had consigned his detailed report for the Pope, not to deliver it in case it fell into the wrong hands on the way, which would result in the Germans “shooting all the bishops and perhaps many others”, rendering the Church completely ineffective. The priest instead committed the text to memory but because of Sapieha’s earlier request not to publish details of German atrocities as their “flock would become the victims of even worse persecutions” it was circulated only privately to Church officials and the officials of the neutral Powers. In June 1943 the situation became so desperate that the Pope denounced what was happening in a speech to the Cardinals broadcast on Vatican Radio (unfortunately jammed from being received in Germany, Occupied France and much of Italy), and of which 50,000 copies were smuggled into Poland and given to Polish exiles. The text, which might seem mild to the modern critic, spoke of “this people so harshly tried, and others who together have been forced to drink the bitter chalice of war today, may a new future dawn worthy of their legitimate aspirations and the depths of their sufferings, in a Europe based anew on Christian foundations.” It was published in the Vatican newspaper, the Osservatore Romano, under the headline: “The sufferings of the Polish people on account of nationality or race.”

The Pope’s consistent antagonism towards the Nazi regime was demonstrated in his communication in January 1940 to the British Minister that a plot was afoot to overthrow Hitler, led by certain Generals – unfortunately the British assumed that the Pope was being deliberately misled and did nothing to assist. A month later the Pope provided the Minister with the details, including the names of the Generals and the plan to arrest Hitler and try him, but again the British did nothing and did not follow up the Pope’s request to make contact and encourage the attempted coup. Then when Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg were invaded, the Pope sent telegrams to their rulers, citing his prayers that “full liberty and independence” be restored – not enough for the Allies, but sufficient for the Fascist ideologue Farinacci to declare that “with these telegrams the Pope incites the Catholic King of the Belgians to cause the blood of his people to flow, in order to help the Jews, the Freemasons and the bankers of the city of London.” The Pope was severely limited in what he could do effectively because his words would not be heard by those who needed to hear them – in August 1940 he said to Mgr Montini (future Pope Paul VI), “We would like to utter words of fire against such actions; and the only thing restraining Us from speaking is the fear of making the plight of the victims worse.”  

When word of the fate of the Jews began to reach the Vatican in 1942, the Pope in his Christmas address expressed his concerns for the “hundreds of thousands who, through no fault of their own, and solely because of their nation or race, have been condemned to death or progressive extinction.” The Vatican knew that in the Wartegau area alone, 700 of the 2000 Catholic priests there had been shot or sent to extermination camps, and that in this area the Church was to be “nationalized” as the “National German Roman Catholic Church” with no contact with Rome and no legal system or rules other than that prescribed by the German government. This was seen as a harbinger of what the Germans had in store for the Church as a whole. These penalties had been exacted precisely because of Episcopal resistance. In the Netherlands in May 1943, the Bishops had protested that “Deportation on such a scale has never been seen before in the Christian era. To find a parallel we must go back to the Babylon captivity, when God’s Chosen People werfe lead into exile… this deportation, my Brethren, is not only a calamity, it is an injustice that cries to Heaven.” The German response to this condemnation was to carry out their threat to transport Jews baptized as Catholics while continue to spare those baptized as Protestants (among those deported was the Saint, Edith Stein).    

Pius XII has been accused of not making strong enough protests against the murder of the Jews, but he was first unwilling to do so without firm proof that would be sustainable in any diplomatic exchanges or in the court of world opinion – memories of unproven (and demonstrably false accusations) against the behavior of German troops in World War I were a recent memory. Furthermore, without being even handed in his condemnation of Stalin’s atrocities against Russia ’s citizens, the Pope could be accused of bias in Germany , and such an accusation could seriously undermine the influence the Vatican might have over German Catholics. The Allies were exceedingly anxious to prevent a Papal condemnation of Stalin, which would play very badly in the US , South America and the Iberian peninsular. By the late 1942, however, the Pope was prepared to risk being accused of not being even handed and his Christmas address raised alarm bells in Berlin . A month later Ribbentrop wrote to the German Ambassador to the Holy See: “there are signs that the Vatican is likely to renounce its traditional neutral attitude and take up a political position against Germany . You are to inform him (the Pope) that in that event Germany does not lack physical means of retaliation.” The Pope’s response to the Ambassador was straightforward and courageous, the Ambassador reporting that “he did not care what happened to himself, but that a struggle between Church and State could have only one outcome – the defeat of the State. I replied that I was of the contrary opinion….. an open battle could bring some very unpleasant surprises for the Church. … Pacelli (Pius XII) is no more sensible to threats than we are. In event of an open breach with us, he now calculates that some German Catholics will leave the Church but he is convinced that the majority will remain true to their Faith. And that the German Catholic clergy will screw up its courage, prepared for the greatest sacrifices.”  

The most damaging accusations against Pius XII result from the reports of the German Ambassador Baron v. Weizsacker (whose son was later to be a distinguished President of the German Federal Republic ). Weizsacker, however, had pursued a deliberate policy of deceiving his own masters, reporting interventions he had made and his own interpretations of Papal responses in order to protect the Pope from what he considered the high risk of being arrested. When the Vatican protested to Weizsacker at the demands for hostages, the Ambassador simply failed to pass on the protest to Berlin , knowing that it would in any case be ignored. Weizsacker’s oft quoted report (repeated in Hochuth’s play, The Deputy), has been immensely damaging to Pius XII’s reputation, stating that the Pope had not “allowed himself to be carried away into making any demonstrative statements against the deportation of the Jews… [and that] he has done all he could, in this delicate question as other matters, not to prejudice relationships with the German government. Since further action on the Jewish problem is probably not to be expected here in Rome , it may be assumed that this question, so troublesome to German-Vatican relations, has been disposed of.”  

This report must be understood in the context of Weizsacker’s own conduct and attitudes, and the reality of what was actually happening. The Pope fully understood that direct protests would be wasted, so instead insured that protection would be offered to the victims themselves. Approximately half of the Jews in Rome were already being sheltered in ecclesiastical buildings, while many others escaped with Vatican papers (over three thousand Jews were hidden successfully, while one thousand deported and killed). Lists of “baptized Jews” were sent to the Ambassador, but the Secretariat of State insisted that the actual certificates (allegedly) substantiating their baptism had to remain in the archives. Weizsacker simply accepted the Vatican’s word on this, being himself disgusted by the persecution of the Jews. That the leading Jewish organizations knew the extent of Vatican protection afforded them is demonstrated in the letter of thanks from the Chief Rabbi Herzog to the Nuncio in Turkey and Greece (Mgr Roncalli, latger Pope John XXIII), and from the American Jewish Welfare Board in July 1944 to the Pope. In a dramatic response the Chief Rabbi of Rome himself converted to Catholicism at the end of the war, taking the baptismal name “Eugenio” as a personal tribute. One Israeli Consul in Italy wrote at the end of the war, “the Catholic Church saved more Jewish lives during the war than all the other Churches, religious institutions and rescue organizations put together. Its record stands in startling contrast to the achievements of the International red Cross and the Western democracies… the Holy See, the Nuncios and the entire catholic Church saved some 400,000 Jews from certain death.”  

In July 1943 the encyclical Mystici Corporis condemned the “legalized murder “ of the handicapped, insane and incurable; and stated that His Holiness considered attacks on Catholic to be attacks on his own person. In 1944 he intervened on behalf of Jewish victims directly with the Regent of Hungary, Horthy, having received direct information about the death camps from two Jews who managed to escape from Auschwitz and tell their story to the Papal representative in Slovakia . The Papacy informed the Allies and neutral states and protests followed as a result from the King of Sweden, the President of the International Red Cross, the Cardinal Archbishop of New York and the Archbishop of Canterbury, the British Foreign Secretary and the US Secretary of State and the governments of Turkey, Switzerland and Spain (Britain and the US did not have diplomatic relations with Germany or Hungary). When the Horthy regime responded positively, this simply set in motion the German plan for his overthrow. The Germans ignored Horthy’s intervention but were unable to prevent the Vatican envoy from organizing relief vehicles bearing the Papal insignia from accompanying the 20,000 remaining Hungarian Jews force-marched from Budapest to Theresianstadt. The distribution of Papal safe-conduct passes led to 2000 lives being saved.  

On 7^th April 1943 the Pope intervened with the Slovak government, stating that the “Holy See has always entertained the hope that the Slovak government … would never proceed with the forcible removal of persons belonging to the Jewish race. It is therefore with great pain that the Holy See has learned of the continued transfers of such a nature from the territory of the republic. This pain is aggravated further now that it appears, from various reports that the Slovak government intends to proceed with the total removal of the Jewish residents of Slovakia , not even sparing women and children. The Holy See would be failing in its Divine Mandate if it did not deplore these measures, which gravely damage man in his natural right, merely for the reason that these people belong to a certain race.”  

The Vatican found it more effective to work quietly, rather than trumpet condemnations to the world. In August 1943 the World Jewish Congress asked the Pope to intervene on behalf of 20,000 Jewish refugees and Italian nationals concentrated in transit camps in Northern Italy . Later the WJC representative reported in a letter of thanks to the Apostolic Delegate in London that “approximately 4000 Jewish refugees as well as Yugoslav nationals have been removed to the Island of Arbe (Rab), which has been captured by Yugoslav partisans and that the Jews can therefore be considered to have been removed from immediate danger.”  

In France the Primate ordered Catholics to prevent the deportation of Jews, and Jesuits who had hidden hundreds of Jewish children were arrested. Convents and monasteries were occupied and searched, and Cardinal Suhard locked up for three days on the grounds of Judeo-Masonic activities. Following the arrest and transportation to the Vélodrome, in preparation for shipment to concentration camps, the French bishops made a protest to Petain at the “unspeakable horror” of the “treatment of the Jews … from the depths of our hearts we pray Catholics to express their sympathy for the immense injury to so many Jewish mothers and children.” Archbishop Saliège of Toulouse ordered a statement read from every pulpit in his diocese, which read (after condemning the rounding up of men, women and children), “Jews are men too! Jewesses are women too! They belong to the human race, they are our brothers and sisters. Let no Christians ever forget this.” The Church announced that it would no longer bless soldiers of the Légion des Volontiers Français, nor celebrate Masses for those who died in its ranks.  

Could the Pope have said more publicly and protested more strongly to the World? Undoubtedly. Would it have done any good, or saved any lives? Almost certainly not. When the Papal Nuncio, Orsenigo, protested in early 1943 directly to Hitler at the persecution of the Jews, the Fuehrer simply picked up a glass of water and disdainfully threw it to the ground, without saying a word. Hitler himself said ( 9^th September 1943 ) “I will go into the Vatican whenever I like. Do you think the Vatican worries me? We will grab it. Yes, the whole diplomatic bunch of them. I could not care less. That bunch in there, we will drag them out, the whole swinish pack of them. What does it matter? We can apologize afterwards, that is nothing to worry about… (and later) … After the war well shall have no more attempts by the Church to interfere in matters of State .. there will be no more Concordats. The time is coming when I shall settle my accounts with the Pope.” There is little doubt that Hitler meant this. Had he done so, the diplomatic efforts of the Vatican would have collapsed completely, it would no longer have been possible for the Church to shelter Jews anywhere, and the suffering at the hands of the Germans would have been immeasurably greater, not only of the Jews, but of Catholics and the Catholic Church in Germany and the occupied states.  

Critics have demanded to know why the Pope did not excommunicate Hitler and the Nazi leaders. The Pope himself knew that excommunicating men who had long placed themselves outside the Church, was of no spiritual worth – saying to Fr Pizzo Scavizzi “I have often considered excommunication, to castigate in the eyes of the entire world the fearful crime of genocide. But after much praying and many tears, I realize that my condemnation would not only fail to help the Jews, it might even worsen their situation… No doubt a protest would gain me the praise and respect of the civilized world, but it would have submitted the poor Jews to an even worse persecution.” This remark was extraordinarily prescient and that the Pope preferred to expose himself to criticism for not doing enough rather than make a gesture he considered futile and would cause more harm is a credit to his personal courage.

Other related links: http://www.uscj.org/ohio/cincincb/church.htm  (for a respectful contrary view)

http://users.binary.net/polycarp/piusxii.html

http://www.catholicleague.org/pius/truth.htm