Hitler’s Pope

Title: Hitler’s Pope – The Secret History of Pius XII

Author: John Cornwell

Publisher: Penguin, 2008 (First published 1999)

ISBN: 9780143114000

Pages: 426

 

Racial hatred against the Jews was the hallmark of Germany in the Second World War. It disenfranchised, evicted and deported them to concentration camps to finish them off at leisure. After the German homeland, the Nazis continued the practice in those places which they conquered in the first years of the War when the tide was decidedly in their favour. Germany, as we know, is predominantly Christian, but the Protestants enjoyed a majority in numbers with the Catholics constituting a sizeable and powerful minority. This book analyses the relations between Eugenio Pacelli – later Pope Pius XII – with the Nazis before and after he ascended the papal throne. This book argues that Pacelli enabled the Nazi onslaught by his silence and failure to organize efforts to check Hitler so that he is known as Hitler’s Pope. This was neither because he favoured Hitler nor he was anti-Semitic but because he was an ideal church leader for Hitler’s purposes. He openly colluded with the Nazis before the war and this appeasement dignified the Nazi regime in the eyes of the world. John Cornwell is an award-winning journalist and author with a lifelong interest in Catholic and Vatican affairs. He has profiled Pope John Paul II and has written on Catholic issues for many publications.

 

The book opens with the concerted effort of the papacy to become the absolute ruler of Catholicism in the near term, of Christianity in the medium term and of the entire world in the long term. Modern means of communication has facilitated a single man to rule the church in a vastly unequal power relationship. This replaced those old times when Catholic Church’s authority was widely distributed through many councils and local discretion. The Pope was declared infallible in the First Vatican Council of 1869 and the curia prepared a code of law applicable to the church to solidify papal prominence. This Code of Canon Law was enacted in 1917 under the supervision of 2000 scholars and 700 bishops. Eugenio Pacelli, who was a church lawyer, was the main architect. Canon 218 in the document assured supreme authority to the Pope over the church. Till that time he had to consult local European governments in the nomination of bishops. It was Pacelli’s principal task to reach an agreement – a concordat – with those governments in implementing the code. Being the largest and most powerful Catholic population in Europe, Germany proved a formidable obstacle. Compared to this, it was easier to reach a consensus with Mussolini who ruled Italy. In the Lateran Treaty of 1929, he permitted imposition of Canon law over the church in Italy. The Pope was granted sovereignty over the tiny territory of Vatican. In compensation, Vatican paid the equivalent of $85 million. Also, the Catholic Popular Party was disbanded and the Fascists thrived in the political vacuum. Pope Pius XI, Pacelli’s predecessor, spoke of Mussolini as ‘a man sent by Providence’!

 

Pacelli had a special relationship to Germany as he worked there as Papal Nuncio for many years. After his elevation as the Cardinal Secretary of State, he entered into protracted negotiations with short-lived regimes of the Weimar period. These instable administrations were not prepared to concede total control of their churches to the Pope. Germany also had a powerful Catholic presence in internal politics. Bolstered by the strength of the Catholic Centre Party during the post-1919 period, there was an unprecedented growth of German Catholic life and activity. There had been a proliferation of Catholic associations like workers’ unions, religious vocations and public fervor. Hitler took control of a favourable situation in diplomacy. In 1933, Pacelli negotiated with Hitler to form a treaty which authorized the papacy to impose the new church law on German Catholics and granted generous privileges to Catholic schools and clergy. In return, Catholic political and social associations withdrew from activity and gave the Nazis a walkover. Hitler wanted a two-thirds majority for an Enabling Act to bring in dictatorship. The Catholic Centre Party supported his coalition and voted in favour due to Vatican’s pressure. This Act enabled Hitler to pass laws without consulting the Reichstag and to make treaties with foreign governments. When the Concordat was ratified, the church organisations were authorized only to indulge in social and religious activities. The nature of the social work was subject to bureaucratic interpretation and the organisations and their workers were targeted for intimidation and harassment by Nazi workers and Gestapo.

 

Cornwell attempts to find the reason why the church tried appeasing totalitarian ideologues even though what they practiced was diametrically opposite to what the church preached. The church was mortally opposed to atheism and communism which had strong roots and pockets of influence in west European nations. With the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, the ingress of communism under various guises were intensely resented and resisted. The church fathers found the Nazis and Fascists as wary of the Communists as they themselves were. This aversion extended to centre-left political parties as well. From the 1870s, Vatican encouraged a distrust of social democracy as a precursor of socialism and thus of communism. Since Nazis had declared open war on socialism and communism alike, they became a natural ally of the ecclesiastical authority.

 

Even with this mitigating factor, the book contains sufficient references to prove the church’s anti-Semitic stand beyond a trace of doubt. Here, the church merely echoed the sentiments of the community at large. Even Pacelli was not above partisan mistrust of the Jews. Speaking at the 1938 Eucharistic Congress in Hungary, Pacelli declared, “As opposed to the foes of Jesus who cried out to his face, ‘crucify him!’, we sing him hymns of our loyalty and love. We act in this fashion, not out of bitterness, not out of a sense of superiority, not out of arrogance toward those whose lips curse him and whose hearts reject him even today” (p.185-6). Taking a cue from their pontiff, thousands of German priests took part in the anti-Semitic attestation process, supplying the Nazi regime with details of blood purity through marriages and baptism registries. The author also presents a racially prejudiced face of Pacelli. After the Second World War ended, when the Allies were about to enter Rome, Pius XII asked the British ambassador that no Allied coloured troops should be among the soldiers garrisoned in Rome.

 

The Catholic Church’s silence on the Nazi war crimes did not end with the Jews, but extended to Orthodox Serbs too. The combined forces of Hitler and Mussolini overran Croatia and they appointed Ante Pavlic as the dictator. Ethnic cleansing and forced conversion of the Orthodox Serbs followed. Pius XII recognised the new state of Croatia without demur. Direct involvement of the clergy in sectarian violence was shocking. Priests, invariably Franciscans, took a leading part in the massacres. Many went around routinely armed and performed their murderous acts with zeal. A father Bozidar Bralow was accused of performing a dance around the bodies of 180 massacred Serbs at Alipasin-Most (p.254). In Sep 1941 in Germany, Hitler decreed that all Jews must wear the Yellow Star which naturally had a devastating, stigmatizing and demoralizing effect on those forced to wear it. Catholic bishops lodged a complaint against this in which they asked for the stars to be removed, not from all Jews, but only from those Jews who had converted to Christianity!

 

The Second World War got into motion with the German invasion of Poland. Their Soviet allies invaded Eastern Europe. Pius XII failed to denounce the attack. At last, Rome itself fell to the Germans after Mussolini’s ouster by nationalist forces. Nazis rounded up hundreds of Jews from the Roman ghetto, right under the nose of Vatican, but what Pacelli offered was a feeble protest in vague language presented half-heartedly. At the same time, he tried to forestall Allied bombing of Rome to capture the city. The author surmises that apart from the likely loss of his own life, Pacelli was also worried at the probable damage to priceless art stored in the churches and cathedrals of Rome. However, irrespective of the subtle anti-papal stance of the author, it also tells about numerous priests and bishops venturing to help the victims in their personal capacity. Pacelli himself organized an impressive charity work that brought solace to the oppressed Jews.

 

The book presents an absorbing style of diction that is bold, sharp and lucid. What makes it stand out from the rest is its handling of both the dark and bright sides of the protagonist. The first edition of the book was subjected to seething criticism from the faithful as the beatification proceedings of Pius XII were well under way. Cornwell gives fitting replies to many allegations in a special foreword to the second edition. What is also evident unbroken throughout the narrative is the assumption of unchallenged supremacy of the Pope over all spiritual and ecclesiastical matters, starting from Pope Pius IX to John Paul II. The book came out in 1999, so we don’t know how the two recent popes fared on this issue.

 

The book is highly recommended.

 

Rating: 4 Star