Hitler's Pope: Legacy and Controversy
Dateline: December 01, 1999
Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII, by John Cornwell. (1999 Viking/Penguin Group). Reviewed by Jim Baysinger.
"HITLER'S POPE: LEGACY AND CONTROVERSY" > Page 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5
The Controversy Over Hitler's Pope
As one could well expect, there are elements in the Roman Catholic Church, especially the Vatican itself, which strongly disapprove of Cornwell's work. The counterattack is on in earnest, and a firestorm of controversy has whipped up over the attempts of Cornwell and like-minded writers to portray Pius XII as a Nazi dupe.
Just before this review was written, the Vatican published a book refuting Cornwell's charges, entitled Pius XII and the Second World War, by Pierre Blet. The book is said to be based on previously secret Vatican archives, which should make it especially interesting since Cornwell himself was allowed access to Vatican archives by people operating under the impression that Hitler's Pope was to have been the very kind of book that Blet has written. Either the Vatican withheld information in Pius' favor from Cornwell, which seems rather unlikely, or the Vatican book is a re-interpretation of the same basic information Cornwell was given.
A sample of the Vatican's defense strategy to defend Pius XII's reputation can be found in recent essays by Sister Margherita Marchione, Ph. D, and by Peter Gumpel, S.J., on the websites of the Catholic League for Civil Rights and the ultra-conservative Catholic Insight, respectively.
Sister Margherita Marchione
Marchione, writing for the Catholic League, says she "resents" the accusations against Pius XII, and proceeds to lay great stress upon the testimonials offered by various prominent Jews in his favor.[6] It is in this area that Cornwell's treatment of Pius, while hardly impartial, is nevertheless shown to be more even-handed and fair than what we read from Pius' defenders. Cornwell is honest enough to include in his book virtually all of the exculpatory evidence in favor of Pacelli that Sister Marchione does in her essay, including the Jewish testimonials.
Sister Marchione, however, presumably writing with the approval of her hierarchical superiors in a semi-official Catholic forum, omits mention of the negative evidence that Cornwell provides. For example, while Cornwell acknowledges that many Catholics were instrumental in saving a large number of Jews (the estimates by both writers are around 800,000), he also relates that, after the war, the same safe houses used by Catholics to smuggle Jews away from Nazi tyranny were then used, with Pacelli's approval, to smuggle many Nazi war criminals away from Allied justice. Neither Marchione or Father Gumpel (see below) mention this in their impassioned defenses of Pacelli.
She also makes extensive use of the laudatory testimonials from Jewish leaders, including Albert Einstein and Golda Meir among others. However, these testimonials were garnered many years ago, when the secret Vatican archives that Cornwell used and his rebutters are presumably using were still secret. Einstein's testimonial was issued in 1940, when he could hardly have known much about the whole situation. Ms. Meir's testimonial was issued in 1958 on the occasion of Pacelli's death, when, as anyone with any knowledge of diplomacy knows, it would have hardly been politic to mention that Pius XII fiddled while Jews burned. Sister Marchione argues that Pius XII is "unjustly criticized" by New York's Holocaust museum, which strongly indicates that not all Jews are satisfied with Pacelli's alleged concern for their welfare.
Likewise, the Catholic League's presentation of some NY Times editorials in Pacelli's favor are from the early 1940's, when much was not yet known about his actions or motives, or even about the true extent of the Holocaust, for that matter. In the recent NY Times Review of Books about Hitler's Pope, V.R. Berghahn states that Cornwell makes "...a case...that is very hard to refute."
In the years that have passed since those testimonials were issued, much has been, and may yet be, learned about Pius XII's activities concerning the Holocaust. There is also John Paul II's 1997 apology to the Jews for the shortcomings and failures of Christians to render aid to them, partly due to an "historic anti-Semitism in New Testament Christianity." Although John Paul II did not mention Pius XII by name, the implications are clear enough.
Significantly, Wojtyla subsequently refused to release the relevant Vatican archives to the B'nai B'rith which were later presumably made available to Cornwell. On page 295, Cornwell writes, "The new material made available in this narrative...reveals Pacelli's long-standing anti-Jewishness. Pacelli displayed a secret antipathy toward the Jews...both religious and racist...contradicting earlier claims that he respected the Jews and that his wartime actions and omissions had been performed with the best of intentions."
Peter Gumpel
Then there is the vituperative reaction of Father Peter Gumpel, previously mentioned as the man in charge of Pius XII's beatification proceedings. Although superficially more scholarly and detailed than Marchione's effort, laying less emphasis on the Jewish testimonials and more on criticizing Cornwell's research efforts and sources, his tone is even more shrill and indignant.
Catholic Insight advertises itself as being "Devoted to the Traditional (Latin) Mass, Loyal to the Holy Father, Dedicated to Our Lady of Fatima and St. Pius X." Pius X was, of course, the Pope described here as the one who laid the groundwork for the modern despotic papacy and Gumpel's work certainly fits into CI's authoritarian, pro-infallibility editorial stance.
While Gumpel raises some intriguing and perhaps valid points about the objectivity and depth of some of Cornwell's research, he undermines his own efforts to a large extent with his unbalanced and dishonest presentation. It also doesn't help that he nitpicks over trivial points like the choice of cover photos for the dust jacket of Hitler's Pope. While Gumpel does not say the photo is a fake, he objects to the image of Pacelli being photographed with German soldiers, believing that readers may get the impression that Pacelli was in the habit of attending Nazi-sponsored martial reviews. In fact, the same dust jacket says that the photo was taken in 1927 at an event in honor of German President Hindenburg.
Gumpel makes derogatory comments about Cornwell, calling him a "rank amateur" and his book "totally untrustworthy." First, one wonders how this "rank amateur" became a Senior Research Fellow at Cambridge, and then was allowed access to secret Vatican files. Secondly, how untrustworthy is Gumpel himself, when he concludes his review with the words "[Cornwell's book] is objectively biased, tendentious and so unilateral and one-sided that one wonders what really prompted this man to write this book." As I have already explained, Cornwell's deeper purpose was to challenge the authoritarian papacy, and Gumpel can only dishonestly plead ignorance of that.
Lastly, though as I said Gumpel does raise a few intriguing points about Cornwell's research, he himself makes no attempt at objectivity throughout most of his review. A great deal of his essay consists of re-phrasing Cornwell's words in a pro-papal cast, rendering the debate largely an exchange of interpretation and opinion. Perhaps the two most telling points against Gumpel's thesis are his total neglect of any mention of the Balkan situation in WWII, as well as his complete omission of Pacelli's role in destroying the German Catholic Center Party. If the Center Party had been supported instead of undermined, Hitler might well have never come into power in the first place.
The International Baccalaureate Holocaust Program's presentation on Pius XII's involvement with the Holocaust, while less impassioned than Marchione's or Gumpel's work, nevertheless follows the same tack of presenting only the positive evidence. Actually, though billed as a "Vatican response" to Pius XII's detractors, a great deal of that essay is concerned with the activities of the French Resistance movement which had little to do with Pacelli, if anything.
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