UNIT 1012 BOOK CLUB: THE HITLER’S POPE DEBATE

             Unit 1012 presents’ two books about Pope Pius XII and World War II which there is a debate on whether the Pope was good or bad in his role during Nazi Germany.

INTERNET SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler%27s_Pope

 

Hitler’s Pope by John Cornwell

Author	John Cornwell
Subject	Religion
Publisher	Viking
Publication date	1999
ISBN	0-670-87620-8

Hitler's Pope is a book published in 1999 by the British journalist and author John Cornwell that examines the actions of Eugenio Pacelli, who became Pope Pius XII, before and during the Nazi era, and explores the charge that he assisted in the legitimization of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime in Germany, through the pursuit of a Reichskonkordat in 1933. The book is critical of Pius' conduct during the Second World War, arguing that he did not do enough, or speak out enough, against the Holocaust. Cornwell argued that Pius's entire career as the nuncio to Germany, Cardinal Secretary of State, and pope was characterized by a desire to increase and centralize the power of the Papacy, and that he subordinated opposition to the Nazis to that goal. He further argued that Pius was antisemitic and that this stance prevented him from caring about the European Jews. The author has moderated some of his allegations since publication of the book, and the work remains controversial.

Various commentators have challenged the book's leading ideas, or challenged factual assertions contained within it. Jewish historian of the Holocaust Martin Gilbert credits Pius XII with various actions which saved Jews, and notes that the Nazi security forces referred to him as the "mouthpiece of the Jewish war criminals". Pius XII maintained links to the German Resistance. and in the assessment of Catholic historian Frank Coppa writing for the Encyclopedia Britannica, Cornwell's depiction of Pius XII as anti-Semitic lacks "credible substantiation".

The author has been praised for attempting to bring into the open the debate on the Catholic Church's relationship with the Nazis, but also accused of making unsubstantiated claims and ignoring positive evidence. The author has moderated some of his allegations, since publication of the book. In 2004, Cornwell stated that Pius XII "had so little scope of action that it is impossible to judge the motives for his silence during the war, while Rome was under the heel of Mussolini and later occupied by Germany. ... But even if his prevarications and silences were performed with the best of intentions, he had an obligation in the postwar period to explain those actions" He similarly stated in 2008 that Pius XII's "scope for action was severely limited", but that "[n]evertheless, due to his ineffectual and diplomatic language in respect of the Nazis and the Jews, I still believe that it was incumbent on him to explain his failure to speak out after the war. This he never did." In 2009 he described Pacelli as effectively a "fellow traveller" of the Nazis.

Cornwell's work

Cornwell's work was the first to have access to testimonies from Pius's beatification process as well as to many documents from Eugenio Pacelli's nunciature which had just been opened under the seventy-five year rule by the Vatican State Secretary archives. Cornwell's work has received both praise and criticism. Eamon Duffy wrote that Cornwell's "gripping and impassioned account" had presented "an indictment that [could not] be ignored" and Saul Friedländer that Cornwell had demonstrated how "Pius XII brought the authoritarianism and the centralization of his predecessors to their most extreme stage." Susan Zuccotti's Under His Very Windows: The Vatican and the Holocaust in Italy (2000) and Michael Phayer's The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930–1965 (2000) are critical of both Cornwell and Pius XII. Ronald J. Rychlak's Hitler, the War and the Pope is critical as well but defends Pius XII in light of his own access to recent documents.

Cornwell researched the conduct of Pacelli, both while he served as nuncio to Germany and after he was made Pope; some of Cornwell's principal resources were the Vatican archives. Cornwell stated that he intended his book as a defense of Pius XII but that "nearing the end of my research... [t]he material I had gathered, taking the more extensive view of Pacelli's life, amounted not to an exoneration but to a wider indictment"

Allegations of antisemitism

Cornwell alleged that, from at least his early 40s onward, Pacelli had antisemitic tendencies. He traced the earliest manifestation of these antisemitic tendencies to an incident in 1917 in which Pacelli refused to help facilitate the exportation of palm fronds from Italy to be used by German Jews in Munich to celebrate the festival of Tabernacles. Cornwell argued that, although this incident was "small in itself", it "belies subsequent claims that Pacelli had a great love of the Jewish religion and was always motivated by its best interests."

Cornwell stated he uncovered a "time bomb" letter signed and personally annotated by Pacelli that had been lying in the Vatican archives since 1919, regarding the actions of communist revolutionaries in Munich. Regarding this letter, Cornwell stated "The repeated references to the Jewishness of these individuals, amid the catalogue of epithets describing their physical and moral repulsiveness, gives an impression of stereotypical anti-Semitic contempt". Cornwell asserts that the letter from Pacelli to Pietro Gaspam [sic Gaparri ] portrays Jews in an unfavorable light and associates them with the Bolshevik revolution.

In the assessment of Catholic apologist Professor Frank Coppa writing for Encyclopedia Britannica, Cornwell's depiction of Pacelli as anti-Semitic lacks "credible substantiation". Professor Coppa writes: "though Pius's wartime public condemnations of racism and genocide were cloaked in generalities, he did not turn a blind eye to the suffering but chose to use diplomacy to aid the persecuted. It is impossible to know if a more forthright condemnation of the Holocaust would have proved more effective in saving lives, though it probably would have better assured his reputation."

Papal absolutism

Cornwell asserts that Pacelli was a strong proponent of the absolute leadership principle. He writes that, "More than any other Vatican official of the century, [Pacelli] promoted the modern ideology of autocratic papal control, the highly centralized, dictatorial authority..."

Allegations of collaboration with fascist leaders

Cornwell argued that Pacelli's antisemitism combined with his drive to promote papal absolutism inexorably led him to collaboration with fascist leaders, a collaboration which led to what Cornwell characterizes as "the betrayal of Catholic democratic politics in Germany".

Cornwell describes this collaboration with fascist leaders as starting in 1929 with the concordat with Mussolini known as the Lateran Treaty, and followed by the concordat with Hitler known as the Reichskonkordat.

Lateran Treaty

Cornwell recounts that Eugenio Pacelli's brother, Francesco, successfully negotiated a concordat with Mussolini as part of an agreement known as the Lateran Treaty. A precondition of the negotiations had involved the dissolution of the parliamentary Catholic Italian Popular Party. Cornwell claims that Pius XI disliked political Catholicism because it was beyond his control. According to Cornwell, a succession of Popes took the view that Catholic party politics "brought democracy into the church by the back door". Cornwell asserts that the result of the demise of the Popular Party was the "wholesale shift of Catholics into the Fascist Party and the collapse of democracy in Italy".

Anti-communist posture of the Vatican

Cornwell asserts that Pius XI and his new secretary of state, Eugenio Pacelli, were determined that at a time that saw the church persecuted by Communist and socialist regimes from the Soviet Union to Mexico and later Spain, no accommodation was to be reached with Communists. At the same time, Cornwell alleges that Pius XI and Pacelli were more open to collaboration with totalitarian movements and regimes of the right.

Reichskonkordat

Cornwell asserts that Hitler was determined to conclude a concordat with the Vatican similar to the one that Mussolini had negotiated. According to Cornwell, Hitler was obsessed by a fear of German Catholics who, politically united by the Center Party, had defeated Otto von Bismarck's Kulturkampf, during the "culture struggle" against the Catholic Church in the 1870s. According to Cornwell, Hitler was "convinced that his movement could succeed only if political Catholicism and its democratic networks were eliminated".

Cornwell explains that Hitler had good reason to fear the political power of the German Catholic Church. He asserts that in the early 1930s, the German Center Party, the German Catholic bishops, and the Catholic media had been united in their rejection of National Socialism. The hierarchy instructed priests to combat National Socialism at a local level whenever it attacked Christianity, even going so far as to deny Nazis access to the sacraments and church burials. At the same time, Catholic journalists lambasted National Socialism daily in Germany's 400 Catholic newspapers. According to Cornwell, after Hitler came to power in January 1933, he made the concluding of a concordat with the Vatican one of his top priorities. The negotiations took over six months; Cornwell asserts that Hitler spent more time on this treaty than on any other item of foreign diplomacy during his dictatorship.

The Reich Concordat granted the Vatican the right to impose the new Code of Canon Law on Catholics in Germany, and promised a number of measures favorable to Catholic education, including new schools. Cornwell alleges that the 'quid pro quo' for Hitler's agreeing to grant the Vatican these rights and privileges was Pacelli's collaboration in the withdrawal of Catholics from political and social activity. The negotiations were conducted in secret by Pacelli, Kaas, and Hitler's deputy chancellor, Franz von Papen, over the heads of German bishops and the faithful. According to Cornwell, the German Catholic Church was not involved in the negotiations and had no say in the terms of the agreement.

In the end, Hitler insisted that his signature on the concordat would depend on the Center Party's voting for the Enabling Act, the legislation that was to give him dictatorial powers.

Cornwell recounts that Kaas, chairman of the Center Party and a close associate of Pacelli, was the one who marshalled the votes of the party members to pass the Enabling Act. Next, Hitler insisted on the "voluntary" disbanding of the Center Party, the last truly parliamentary force in Germany. Again, Cornwell alleges that Pacelli was the prime mover in the surrender of the Center Party. Cornwell asserts that the fact that the party voluntarily disbanded itself, rather than go down fighting, had a profound psychological effect which deprived Germany of the "last democratic focus of potential noncompliance and resistance". The German bishops capitulated to Pacelli's policy of centralization, and German Catholic democrats found themselves politically leaderless. In the political vacuum created by its surrender, millions of Catholics joined the Nazi Party, believing that it had the support of the Pope.

Thus, according to Cornwell, Pius XII facilitated the rise of Hitler first through the negotiation of the Reichskonkordat and subsequently through his passivity, silence and inaction, which ultimately condoned and enabled the Holocaust.

Criticism of Cornwell's work

A major response to Hitler's Pope came from University of Mississippi law professor Ronald J. Rychlak in his 2000 book on the subject, Hitler, the War, and the Pope. Rychlak was acknowledged by the Vatican to have been given special access to their closed archives for his research. Rychlak disagreed with Cornwell's claim of having found a "time bomb letter", arguing that the letter in question had actually been written not by Pacelli but by his assistant, and moreover had been fully published and discussed in a 1992 book by Emma Fattorini (a highly respected docent at the University of Rome). With respect to Cornwell's allegations of antisemitism, Rychlak stated that "When Pius XII died in 1958, there were tributes from virtually every Jewish group around the world".

Rychlak also alleged that Cornwell manipulated the photograph on the front cover of the American edition of the book, and incorrectly dated the photo as having been taken in March 1939, the month that Pacelli was made Pope. Rychlak charged that this had been deliberately in order to give the impression that Pius had just visited Hitler when, in fact, the photo had been taken in 1927 as Pius was leaving a reception held for German President Paul von Hindenburg. Robert Royal has also repeated this allegation.

In his 2005 book The Myth of Hitler's Pope, the historian and rabbi David G. Dalin countered Cornwell. Dalin suggested that Yad Vashem should honor Pope Pius XII as a "Righteous Gentile," concluding that "[t]he anti-papal polemics of ex-seminarians like Garry Wills and John Cornwell...of ex-priests like James Carroll, and or other lapsed or angry liberal Catholics exploit the tragedy of the Jewish people during the Holocaust to foster their own political agenda of forcing changes on the Catholic Church today." Dalin called the book's conclusions "unverified" and "strongly anti-religious". Eugene Fisher, who has a PhD in Hebrew culture and education, said it was a "sad commentary on the secular media that this anti-Catholic screed was ever published".

In his book The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice, Philip Jenkins said that Hitler's Pope could not be understood except as a series of "very low blows against the modern Catholic Church, and specifically the papacy of John Paul II."

Ken Woodward, writing in Newsweek, stated that Hitler's Pope has "errors of fact and ignorance of context [that] appear on almost every page."

In an historical assessment of Pope Pius XII, the Encyclopedia Britannica addressed Conrnwell's book in the following terms: "John Cornwell's controversial book on Pius, Hitler's Pope (1999), characterized him as anti-Semitic. [The depiction], however, lack[s] credible substantiation". The Encyclopedia further assessed his role in aiding Jews during the Holocaust as follows: "Although he allowed the national hierarchies to assess and respond to the situation in their countries, he established the Vatican Information Service to provide aid to, and information about, thousands of war refugees and instructed the church to provide discreet aid to Jews, which quietly saved thousands of lives".

Cornwell's later views

According to a 2004 article in The Economist, Cornwell's historical work has not always been "fair-minded" and Hitler's Pope specifically "lacked balance". The article goes on to state that Cornwell, "chastened", had admitted as much himself, in a later work, The Pontiff in Winter, citing the following quote as evidence:

I would now argue, in the light of the debates and evidence following 'Hitler's Pope', that Pius XII had so little scope of action that it is impossible to judge the motives for his silence during the war, while Rome was under the heel of Mussolini and later occupied by the Germans... But even if his prevarications and silences were performed with the best of intentions, he had an obligation in the postwar period to explain those actions."

In a more recent interview, Mr. Cornwell stated:

While I believe with many commentators that the pope might have done more to help the plight of the Jews, I now feel, 10 years after the publication of my book, that his scope for action was severely limited and I am prepared to state this.... Nevertheless, due to his ineffectual and diplomatic language in respect of the Nazis and the Jews, I still believe that it was incumbent on him to explain his failure to speak out after the war. This he never did.

In 2009 he described Cardinal Pacelli (the future Pope Pius XII) as being an example of a "fellow traveller" of the Nazis who was willing to accept the generosity of Hitler in the educational sphere (more schools, teachers and pupil places), so long as the Church withdrew from the social and political sphere, at the same time as Jews were being dismissed from universities and Jewish pupil places were being reduced. For this he considers Pacelli as effectively being in collusion with the Nazi cause, if not by intent. He further argues that Monsignor Kass, who was involved in negotiations for the Reichskonkordat, and at that time the head of the Roman Catholic Centre Party, persuaded his party members, with the acquiescence of Pacelli, in the summer of 1933 to enable Hitler to acquire dictatorial powers. He argues that the Catholic Centre Party vote was decisive in the adoption of dictatorial powers by Hitler and that the party's subsequent dissolution was at Pacelli's prompting.

INTERNET SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_Hitler%27s_Pope

The Myth of Hitler's Pope: How Pope Pius XII Rescued Jews from the Nazis by David G. Dalin

The Myth of Hitler's Pope: How Pope Pius XII Rescued Jews from the Nazis is a book written by American historian and Rabbi David G. Dalin and published in 2005 by Regnery Publishing.

Background

In 2001 Joseph Bottum commissioned Dalin to write an omnibus review article on the books relating to Pope Pius XII, who was the centre of controversy in the wake of John Cornwell's book "Hitler's Pope." The latter received attention in the Weekly Standard.

Published in February 2001, Dalin's essay (later expanded into the book) concluded that Pius XII was a Righteous Gentile who saved hundreds of thousands of lives during the Holocaust. Bottum stated that the essay "went far beyond any claim I had been willing to make", though he did not say whether he disagreed with any of the claims in the essay, and also noted that one New York Times reviewer who "responded in the way I had supposed most would" and "grumbled a little but eventually concluded the claims about Pius XII were overwrought and Dalin was basically right: the Pope did 'more than most to shelter Jews.'"

Bottum said that at a Holocaust symposium the next summer, one conservative editor, who had previously supported Bottum's approach, declared he would never read another word David Dalin wrote. Bottum also said that in "conservative Catholic" circles it was generally well received, but noted that many in these circles have a "self-image as victims" and fear that attacks on Pius XII are signs of "rampant anti-Catholicism" in larger society, and that these sorts of fears drive them to an insular attitude of wanting to "flee to small fellowships of the saved and away from the corruption of the public square". When people like this endorse the book, Bottum says, then in the minds of others who completely disagree with Dalin and were "only angered" by his pro-Pius XII argument, these endorsements just serve to confirm "that David Dalin let himself be used as a Jew to advance a sectarian Catholic agenda".

Contents

Dalin first presents evidence to support his conclusion that popes through history have defended the Jews, and that they have refuted attacks like the blood libel.

Then he gets to the main part of the book: defending the reputation of the late Pope Pius XII by presenting extensive documentation culled from Church and State archives throughout Europe. Rabbi Dalin suggests that Yad Vashem should honor Pope Pius XII as a "Righteous Gentile", and documents that Pius was praised by many leading Jews of his day for his role in saving more Jews than Schindler. Pius's admirers included Chief Rabbi Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog of the Palestinian Mandate and Israel, Israeli Prime Ministers Golda Meir and Moshe Sharett, and Israel's first president Chaim Weizmann.

Dalin also presents Albert Einstein as one of the Jews who supposedly praised Pius XII, writing that Einstein "paid tribute to the 'courage' of Pope Pius and the Catholic Church". He references a 23 December 1940 article in Time magazine and quotes Einstein as saying in the article that "Only the Catholic church stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for suppressing the truth." However the article actually quoted Einstein saying, "only the church", not the "Catholic church", and in the original 1934 La Crosse Tribune and Leader-Press article that the quote came from before it was reprinted 6 years later in Time, the author prefaced it by saying he was "quoting in free translation a statement made by Professor Einstein last year to one of my colleagues who has been prominently identified with the Protestant church in its contacts with Germany." In a 1943 letter Einstein said he made a statement "which corresponds approximately" with the Time article, but that it was made much earlier than 1940 "during the first years of the Nazi regime" and that his actual comments were "more moderate." In a 1950 letter Einstein said that his quoted remarks from the Time article were "not my own", that they had been "elaborated and exaggerated nearly beyond recognition" and that he was "predominantly critical" of the clergy. In a 1943 interview Einstein was extremely critical of the Catholic Church's behavior under the Nazis, and also singled out Pope Pius XII for criticism because of his Concordat with Hitler, saying  

"Since when can one make a pact with Christ and Satan at the same time?"

Reviews

In the July/August 2006 issue of The American Spectator, Martin Gilbert, a Holocaust historian, writes: "Building on earlier, documented defenses of Pius XII...[ Dalin ] builds a powerful case for Pius XII, suggesting that the desire of Pope John Paul II to canonize Pius need not have been offensive -- or insensitive -- to Jews, as it was widely portrayed." Gilbert asserts that "Professor Dalin's book is an essential contribution to our understanding of the reality of Pope Pius XII's support for Jews at their time of greatest danger."