Hitler's Pope?
Dateline: November 10, 1999
Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII, by John Cornwell. (1999 Viking/Penguin Group). Reviewed by Jim Baysinger.
NOTES:
[1] (Pius XII's love of form over function, egotism, misanthropism...) I find myself hardly alone in my character assessment of Pacelli. An Amazon.com review of "Hitler's Pope" cites Pius' "anti-Semitism, narcissism [and]...ambition." I wrote my own evaluation before I read that one, so my conclusions are independent.
[2] (...sharp popular or Vatican reaction...improved matters.) A famous example provided by Cornwell, which I have also read of in Daniel Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners, was when, at the height of the war, a group of German wives protested the round-up of their Jewish husbands right in the streets of Berlin. Hitler backed down and released the Jewish spouses! Also, the only time Pacelli protested against atrocities by pro-Nazis in the Balkans, he achieved success (see comment about Tiso, above).
[3] (...apologists, even among the Jews...) While it is true that Pacelli is credited by some prominent Jews with saving many of them, Cornwell notes that the same Catholic "safe houses" and underground networks that smuggled Jews out of Nazi-held Europe were later used to help smuggle Nazis away from Allied justice after the war, with Pius' knowledge. More on this in Part Two.
[4] (...closer to Pacelli's home...) Pius failed to condemn the Nazi bombings of Rotterdam and Coventry, but begged for Rome to be spared when it became obvious that the Allies would soon bomb Mussolini's capital. And, incidentally, possibly hit the precious, irreplaceable Vatican, with it's precious, irreplaceable Pope inside. Some have said that Pius XII did not condemn the bombings by the Nazis because he would have had to also condemn Allied bombing of Axis cities, but the reader is reminded that the Nazis dropped bombs first.
[5](...manipulated by der Feuhrer...) Pacelli couldn't possibly have had a clearer warning of how Hitler regarded the Concordat than the following quote from the Reichschancellor in 1933: "The conclusion of the concordat seems to me to give sufficient guarantee that the Reich members of the Roman Catholic confession will from now on put themselves without reservation at the service of the new National Socialist state."
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Don't miss the other sections: |
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Part 1 |
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Part 2 |
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Part 3 |
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You can also view a Printable Version. |
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