What most people are wondering, I am sure, is what Tittman has to say about the Vatican’s reaction to the Nazis, antisemitism, and the Holocaust? It’s a mixed bag. On the positive side, which should please defenders of the Catholic Church, Tittman is clear that the pope was not a supporter of Nazism, fascism, or Hitler:
- “There were absolutely no signs that the Pope was pro-Fascist or pro-Nazi. In fact, the opposite seemed more the case. Personally, I cannot help but feel that the Holy Father chose the better path by not speaking out and thereby saved many lives. Who can say what the Nazis would have done in their ruthless furor had they been further inflamed by public denunciations coming from the Holy See?”
On the negative side, there is no label that fits Vatican attitudes and behavior quite so well as “appeasement.”
- “I then asked [Secretariat of State Archbishop Filippo Bernadini, at the time the Apostolic Nuncio in Berne, Switzerland] how, as a Roman Catholic churchman, he could possibly be in favor of a compromise which would mean a Hitler-controlled Europe and the continued harassment of Catholics, to which he made the amazing reply that, taking the long view, he welcomed a certain amount of persecution of the Church for its own good and that he was certain that within a few years the Nazi prejudice against Catholics was destined to die out.”
Many assumed that the Nazis would win and that any American aid would come too late to do any good, so the best course of action was to avoid annoying the likely victors:
- “[T]he Pope, responsible for the welfare of the Church, was obliged to shape his policies accordingly as best he could, always in the interests of millions of Roman Catholics. ...In this the Holy See was only reflecting opinion that currently [1941] prevailed in high Italian circles. The Vatican apparently felt that the quicker a peaceful settlement was reached, the more likely something could be salvaged for the Church. Hence I detected a certain sense of disappointment in those with whom I talked that the United States seemed to have chosen to play the part of a belligerent rather than a peacemaker.”
There is much here for both Catholics and outsiders to learn about how the Vatican functioned during World War II, its relationship with Italy, and how people within the Vatican reacted to the war raging around them. As noted above, this book contains not only the writings of Harold H. Tittman, but also his son. The juxtaposition of father and son writing about the same incidents is interesting and at times helps prevent the stories from becoming bogged down or moving too slowly.
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