Hitler's Pope

Hitler's Pope

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 Pope Pius XII 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, criticizing him for not doing enough, or speaking 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 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. Some commentators have characterized the book as having since been "debunked". The author, himself, has since retracted a number of his accusations, saying that it is "impossible to judge [Pacelli's] motives" and that "his 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."

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 much praise and criticism. Much praise of Cornwell centered around his disputed claim that he was a practising Catholic who had attempted to absolve Pius with his work. While works such as 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 most 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" The sincerity of this statement has been questioned by Ronald Rychlak.

Pacelli's alleged 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 next manifestation of Pacelli's antisemitism can be found in a letter from Pacelli to Pietro Gaspam that portrays Jews in an unfavorable light and associates them with the Bolshevik revolution.

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..."

Alleged 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

Main article: 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 Communists 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

Main article: 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

Ronald Rychlak

The major response to Hitler's Pope came from University of Mississippi law professor Ronald J. Rychlak, who is a Roman Catholic himself and an outspoken Roman Catholic advocate, 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. In fact, Pacelli never met with Hitler, neither before or after he was made Pope.

Other criticism

In his 2005 book The Myth of Hitler's Pope, the historian and rabbi David G. Dalin used Rychlak's research to counter Cornwell and refocus the attention of his readers toward Muslims, accusing Hajj Amin al-Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem of being "Hitler’s Mufti". 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 (author of Hitler’s Pope), 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."

In the book The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice, Philip Jenkins said that Hitler's Pope, along with anti-Catholic conspiracy theories and other “anti-Church historical polemic”, belongs to the pseudohistory category of books about anti-Catholic “mythic history”, historical manipulation, and national demonization, such as the Black Legend about Spain, said that publishers publish such books because the sell many copies, not because they mean to “destroy or calumniate Catholicism”.

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

Cornwell's current views

According a 2004 article in the 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."

In light of such remarks, one commentator asked: "So why has Mr. Cornwell not withdrawn his book, or at least altered its hateful title?"

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.

See also

• Criticism of religion
• The Myth of Hitler's Pope, a 2005 book by American historian Rabbi David G. Dalin
• Pope Pius XII and World War II- The Documented Truth, by Gary L. Krupp, a compilation of recently revealed documents and testimonies showing the secret actions of Pope Pius XII and the Vatican during World War II

References

• Jimmy Akin, How Pius XII Protected Jews. Catholic Answers (2005).
• Anonymous, Persecution of the Catholic Church in the Third Reich. Pelican Pub Co (February 2003). ISBN 1-58980-137-7. (originally published in 1941)
• Joseph Bottum, The Pius War: Responses to Critics of Pius XII. Lexington Books (2004). ISBN 0-7391-0906-5
• James Carroll: Constantine’s Sword. Houghton Mifflin (2002). ISBN 0-618-21908-0
• John Cornwell, Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII. Viking (1999). ISBN 0-670-87620-8
• David G. Dalin, The Myth of Hitler’s Pope: How Pope Pius XII Rescued Jews from the Nazis. Regnery (2005). ISBN 0-89526-034-4.
• Emma Fattorini, "Germania e Santa Sede: Le nunziature di Pacelli fra la Grande guerra e la Repubblica di Weimar" (Pubblicazioni dellIstituto storico italo-germanico in Trento / Istituto trentino di cultura). il Mulino (1992). ISBN 978-8815036483
• Michael F. Feldkamp, Goldhagens unwillige Kirche. Alte und neue Fälschungen über Kirche und Papst während der NS-Herrschaft. München (2003). ISBN 3-7892-8127-1
• Guenter Lewy, The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany. Da Capo Press (2000). ISBN 0-306-80931-1
• Margherita Marchione, Pope Pius XII: Architect for Peace. Paulist Press (2000). ISBN 0-8091-3912-X
• Ronald J. Rychlak, Hitler, the War, and the Pope. Our Sunday Visitor (2000). ISBN 0-87973-217-2
• Ronald J. Rychlak, Righteous Gentiles. Spence Publishing (2005). ISBN 1-890626-60-0
• Ronald J. Rychlak, Hitler, Pope Pius XII, The Jews, The Catholics - the Truth
• Ronald J. Rychlak, "60 Minutes" on Pius XII
• Karl Scholder, The Churches and the Third Reich. London (1987).
• Garry Wills: Papal Sin. Bantam Dell (2001). ISBN 0-385-49411-4
• Eugenio Zolli, Before the Dawn. Roman Catholic Books (1997). ISBN 0-912141-46-8
• Susan Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows: The Vatican and the Holocaust in Italy. New Haven/London: Yale University Press (2000). ISBN 0-300-08487-0

External links

• John Cornwell's abridged version of Hitler's Pope written for Vanity Fair.
• Exposing Hitler's Pope and Its Author
• Exposing the Myth of Pius XII's 'Silence'
• Moral Accords? a review of 'Controversial Concordats' in America Magazine