Hitler's Pope : The Secret History of Pius XII

FROM OUR EDITORS

Sins of the Holy Father

Like almost all other men who ascended to the position of pope, Eugenio Pacelli was a clever Vatican politician. As his predecessor, Pius XI, alienated non-Italian cardinals, Pacelli carried out the Vatican's wishes abroad as nuncio (the Vatican version of an ambassador). He became known to foreign cardinals, who are essential to elect a pope, and a favorite of Pius XI and his not-insignificant band of supporters. Pacelli easily became Pius XII.

That level of political maneuvering is nothing new in the upper levels of the Catholic Church. Pius XII, however, was also skilled at high-level politics outside the Vatican walls, working to strengthen and expand the influence of the Church in the countries to which he served as nuncio. Hitler's Pope takes a long, deep look at Pacelli's role in the rise of Hitler in Germany and the negotiations the ambitious cardinal undertook with the Nazis to ensure the survival of the German Catholic Church. In return for a guarantee of the Church's survival, Pius XII played a crucial role in Hitler's success by removing the influential German Catholics from the public debate. This, author John Cornwell argues, was a critical step in bringing Hitler to power. In Cornwell's words: "No other non-German did more to contribute to Hitler's rise to power."

Apart from the detailed documentation of Pius XII's conspiracy with the Nazis, what makes Hitler's Pope extraordinary is the way it came to be written. Cornwell has long been a defender of the Catholic Church. He is respected by the Vatican and Church historians. He began researching the full story of Pius XII's diplomatic relations with Nazi Germany with the goal of correcting what he always thought was an undeserved slander on the World War II pope that he had not done enough to help Jews in the Holocaust. As he writes in the preface: "I was convinced that if his full story were told, Pius XII's papacy, and the Catholic Church, would be vindicated of a perennial libel."

With that supportive goal and his friendly contacts at the Vatican, Cornwell gained access to previously unseen Church archives. By 1997, as he neared the end of his research, Cornwell realized that the materials he had gathered on Eugenio Pacelli's life did not exonerate the pope of the charge of indifference, but implicated him in a much more damning charge of collusion. Cornwell discovered that Pacelli was a career anti-Semite, documented as far back as 1919, and gives greater detail than ever before of the pope's complete refusal to help the Jews of Rome as they were rounded up just outside the Vatican's walls.

Pius XII is currently going through the process of canonization, the final step on the Church's path to sainthood. Hitler's Pope makes a strong argument that Pius XII was far from saintly -- a ruthless politician whose moral crimes are still unacknowledged by the Church.

—Greg Sewell

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Hitler's Pope is the previously untold story of the man who was arguably the most dangerous churchman in modern history: Eugenio Pacelli, Pius XII, Pontiff from 1939 to 1958 and long controversial as the Pope who failed to speak out against Hitler's Final Solution. Here is the full story of how Pacelli in fact prompted events in the 1920s and '30s that helped sweep the Nazis to unhindered power.

FROM THE CRITICS

Philadelphia Inquirer

Pope John Paul II's recent defense of his predecessor, Pius XII, against lingering charges that Pius had by his silence abetted the Nazi slaughter of Jews, scraped old wounds open. Not only had Pius done no harm, his brother pope said, but he acted heroically. This papal exoneration was the latest and most authoritative rebuke to the enduring accusation by many Jews and others that Pius' refusal to rally the world against the Holocaust was a byproduct of his German sympathies rather than part of a shrewd strategy to save the victims. Now we have Hitler's Pope, John Cornwell's devastating indictment of Pius as guilty of moral treachery so grave that it defames his papacy and should deny his elevation to sainthood. Cornwell, a Cambridge University scholar and prominent British journalist, gives us an account that is unsparing, though temperate and largely dispassionate. He has fresh sources, including the records of Archbishop Pacelli during his long tenure from 1917 to 1929 as Pope Pius XI's ambassador to Germany; correspondence from the British envoy to the Vatican; and key Jesuit archives.

Chicago Sun-Times

Cornwell's valuable book is extremely timely.

LA Times

In May 1940, some 14 months after the election to the papacy of Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, who took the name Pius Xii, the French cardinal, Eugene Tisserant, wrote privately to the cardinal archbishop of Paris, Emmanuel Suhard: "I fear that history will reproach the Holy See for having practiced a policy of selfish convenience and little else." Among Catholics, Tisserant's dim view of Pius XII was that of a small minority only, at least until the pope's death in October 1958. Since the early 1960's, however, when Rolf Hochhuth's play "The Deputy" caused a worldwide scandal and triggered passionate debate, the controversy regarding Pius XII's attitude toward Nazi Germany, and particularly his silence in the face of the extermination of the Jews, has sporadically erupted among Catholics and in the Christians world. For Jews, the subject has remained of major importance, linked as it is not only to the past but also to ongoing relations between the two faiths. John Cornwell's book is illuminating in the analysis of Pacelli's formative years, in the assessment of his personality, in the discussion of German political Catholicism for the sake of the concordat with Hitler and in the description of Pacelli's unrelenting efforts to centralize all major initiatives in the pope's hands. In dealing with the war years and particularly with Pius XII's silence in the face of extermination of the Jews. It is the section of Cornwell's book dealing with the war period that will certainly rekindle the strongest controversy.

SF Chronicle

A superb lesson in Catholic Church politics.

Library Journal