The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler, Kertzer - A* ------------ 1,000th blog post

           In 2020, the archives of the papacy of Pius XII were opened, thus providing scholars an opportunity to more accurately assess the pope's conduct during the war. The story told here is "sometimes shocking and often surprising."

          The Fuhrer visited Rome and Florence in 1938. Pius XI was fond of Mussolini, but not Hitler, and did not receive the Chancellor. Pius had signed the Lateran Accords with the Duce in 1928 establishing the Vatican City as a sovereign state. The pope was planning an encyclical denouncing racism and anti-semitism, and a speech criticizing Mussolini's embrace of Hitler when he died. Eugenio Pacelli, Vatican Secretary of State and former nuncio in Germany succeeded as Pius XII in 1939.  Pius' goal as pope was "to safeguard the church and thereby protect its God-given mission of saving souls." He encouraged a peaceful resolution of the tensions in Europe. He said nothing when Italy invaded Albania on Good Friday. He was equally quiet about Italy's race laws, other than to encourage the state to treat baptized Jews as Catholics. Nor was anything said about the brutal invasion of Catholic Poland.

         The pope was concerned about the ongoing suppression of the church and its institutions in Germany, where schools were closed and priests arrested. He engaged in back channel negotiations with Hitler to no avail. At home, the papacy and the government's cordial relationship continued with the pope and the king exchanging Christmas visits as the pope worked to keep Italy out of the war. Pius expressed his sympathy to the rulers of Belgium, the Netherlands and Lichtenstein when Germany invaded. Awed by Hitler's success in Scandinavia and France, Mussolini joined the war on June 10, 1940. Pius, hoping to not offend either of the fascist dictators, said nothing. He gave a speech encouraging Italian Catholics to support their government. Italy's Catholic newspapers enthusiastically praised the war. 

         Mussolini introduced Nazi-like racial laws in the waning days of Pius XI's papacy. The pope enraged Il Duce with his criticisms and opposition. When Italy entered the war, it arrested all foreign Jews. As 1940 closed, Pius' year end speech to the College of Cardinals closed with, "Among contrasting systems of government...the Church cannot be called upon to make itself a partisan of one course rather than another." When he met with France's new ambassador, he thanked him for Petain's reinstatement of church privileges previously lost. Italians were never enthusiastic about the war or the Germans, and after repeated military failures overseas, support further weakened.

          The war abruptly changed on June 22, 1941 when Germany invaded the USSR. All of Italy, the church and the pope excitedly supported the invasion. The Axis cause was now "a Christian crusade." However, the news that the Germans were systematically slaughtering Jews reached the pope a few months after the invasion began. Then, the entrance of America into the war added a new dimension of complexity, as the financial support provided to the church by the US was immense. The Nazi's ongoing dismemberment of the church's place in German society pushed the pope closer to Mussolini. Throughout 1942, every country with a legate at the Vatican begged the pope to speak out as the specifics of the slaughter of Europe's Jewry became common knowledge.

       The second half of 1942 saw a decline in the likelihood of an Axis victory and a dramatic increase in the bombing of Italy's cities. In his Christmas address, on page 24, the pope lamented "the hundreds of thousands of people who, through no fault of their own and solely because of their nation or race, have been condemned to death or progressive extinction." Hardly the ringing denunciation of Nazi atrocities that his apologists would later claim it to be. Yet, Pius said that is what it was. As the new year unfolded, Pius requested that the Allies not bomb Rome, even though he had never said a word about the bombing of Allied cities. He had spent years worrying about Nazi Germany's disregard for religion but now began to worry that an Allied victory would lead to the spread of communism. 

       On July 19, 1943, the Allies bombed Rome, focusing on outlying railway yards. Pius directed his Secretary of State to write a letter to the Allies decrying their attack on "the city that is the center of Catholicism." Within a week, King Victor Emmanuel removed Mussolini from office, and had him arrested. In September, the new government announced an armistice and the Germans poured in from the north. The king and the prime minister both fled Rome. The Germans occupied the city. A week later, Himmler cabled the SS in Rome that all Jews were to be sent to Germany. On Oct. 16, the SS began to collect the city's Jews in a military base near the Vatican. Various Catholic officials were able to obtain the release of baptized Jews and Jews married to Catholics. Over a thousand people captured on the first day were sent to Auschwitz immediately. Sixteen survived. The German ambassador reported to Berlin that the pope would not intervene in the Aktion. Later in the fall, the SS renewed its policy of rounding up and transporting Jews in the occupied north. The Vatican's daily paper objected in a front page comment. "Over the next several months hundreds more Jews from Rome would be captured and sent north to their deaths, and thousands more from northern Italy. The pope judged it best to say nothing."

       In January, 1944, the Allies landed at Anzio, a mere 50 miles from Rome. The pope sent a message to the British hoping that no colored troops would be part of the Allied occupation of Rome. As Rome was a crucial railroad junction, the Allies bombed it throughout the months before liberation. When a group of partisans killed 33 Italian SS members, the SS responded by killing 335 Romans. The pope condemned civilian attacks on the German military. In early June, the Germans retreated and the Allies arrived. There was no battle. Rome was free. The pope now turned his focus to communism, as he feared it would take over Europe. 

     Postwar Italy whitewashed its support of Fascism and the Axis war efforts. The pope, in a speech a month after the war's end, spent all of his time talking exclusively about how badly the Nazi's had treated the Church. The Church would even later deny it supported the Facist regime. "At the center of this new, well-scrubbed historical narrative stands Pius XII, presented as the heroic champion of the oppressed. Erased from memory are the pope's regular assurances to the Duce that he need only inform him of anti-Fascist priests, and he would have them silenced." Eugenio Pacelli, Pope Pius XII, died in 1958.

    Pius' defenders would later argue that protesting to Hitler would accomplish nothing. They also reluctantly pointed out that half of the Reich was Catholic. He would have risked losing their allegiance. His focus throughout was protecting the Church, its property and its mission, although neither the Germans nor the Italians ever threatened it. He protected Vatican City, and the church came into the postwar era with all of its rights and privileges intact. "However, as a moral leader, Pius XII must be judged a failure. He had no love for Hitler, but was intimidated by him, as he was by Italy's dictator as well. At a time of great uncertainty, Pius XII clung firmly to his determination to do nothing to antagonize either man. In fulfilling this aim, the pope was remarkably successful."

   I will only add my total agreement with the author's condemnation. I sincerely hope historians will now pursue the issue of the Church's deplorable actions after the war assisting Nazi's escaping Europe for South America.