by Anthony Schratz
During the last three years of the
Second World War some 6 million of Europe's 8-9 million Jews were
executed by Germany's Nazi regime under Adolph Hitler. The name
commonly attributed to this genocide is the Holocaust.
The Pope during that period was
Plus XII. In the years following the war he was praised by many
Jewish leaders for all that he had done to save European Jews
during the War.
However, in 1963 a play was
published (The Deputy by Rolf Hochhuth) which maintained
that Pius XII remained silent during the War. It implied that
Pius XII was anti-Semitic, that he was afraid of the Nazis and
was not courageous enough to take a stand against the genocide,
and that he feared that the Vatican's investments would be seized
by the Nazis should he dare to take a stand against them. Since
1963 the debate has raged over the alleged Silence of Pius XII.
The issue of the Holocaust and the
Church raises many questions. Did Pius XII remain silent, and if
so, why? What was the reaction of the Catholic Hierarchy to the
Holocaust in the countries of Europe. How did lay Catholics
react? How was it possible for Christian Europe to acquiesce in
the genocide of a people? To what extent did the treatment of the
Jews by the medieval Church lay the groundwork for the Holocaust?
No year goes by without several
books on these questions being published. These range from
passionate defenses of Pius XII and the Church to outright
denunciations of both. In this short article we can do no more
than to have a brief look at the first question. Let us review
the facts.
Germany and the Rise of Hitler
Germany had been defeated in the
First World War and in 1918 humiliating peace terms had been
imposed on it by the allies, who blamed Germany for the war.
Germans, however, did not feel that they were responsible for the
First World War and they believed the peace terms to be harsh and
unfair. Those terms were meant to have the Germans pay for the
War and to keep them down. This caused a serious depression in
Germany which was ripe for a nationalistic leader. Germany wanted
revenge.
Hitler and the National Socialists
came to power in Germany 1933. They was elected with a plurality
and not a majority and failed to obtain a majority in almost any
of the Catholic regions of Germany. In 1933 there were
approximately 35 million Catholics in Germany, equivalent to a
little over 40% of the German population.
Long before he came to power
Hitler had clearly set out in writing what his program was to be.
It called for the internal consolidation and rearmament of
Germany followed by treaties with Britain and Italy. He would
then make war on France and, after defeating France, he would
make war with Russia in order to obtain living space for the
German people.
Hitler was strongly anti-Semitic.
He had spent some years in Vienna where he was influenced by the
radical racist and nationalist theories that were popular at the
time. His views on the Jews were formed in this atmosphere.
He saw the Jews as a race and not
as a religion. For him they were a foreign race in Germany. His
program called for their civil rights to be removed. They were to
be ineligible to hold public office. They were to be pressured
into emigrating and, if that failed, they were to be deported.
However, genocide is nowhere mentioned in Hitler's pre-war
writings.
In his view the Jews stood for
everything that he opposed. They were internationalists and he
was a German nationalist. Influenced by Nietzsche’s theories
he believed the best should rule and the Jews promoted democracy.
He believed in militarism and the Jews were pacifists. He saw
them as responsible for the Russian Revolution, for the League of
Nations, for financing the war effort of Germany's enemies during
the First World War and so responsible for her defeat. He
believed that they had no culture of their own. He considered
them parasites who produced nothing of their own but lived off
the efforts of other nations.
As soon as he came to power Hitler
began to implement this program by enacting legislation against
the Jews. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 forbade inter-marriage
between Jews and others; Jews were forbidden to own businesses
and their citizenship was revoked. By these laws he hoped to
pressure them into emigrating. In 1938 even harsher laws were
enacted, including forced emigration, forced labor in
concentration camps and expulsion from schools.
As a result of these laws, the
majority of Germany's Jews did try to emigrate. This, however,
was not easy, for in order to emigrate one needed to find a
country that would accept one as an immigrant. The British would
neither accept them or allow them into Palestine, which was at
that time under British rule. The U. S. and Canada did not want
to be saddled with thousands of Jewish refugees.
Hitler also attempted to implement
the rest of his program. He re-armed Germany. He bullied Austria
and Czechoslovakia into succumbing to him. He then made a treaty
with Russia in 1939 and, on September 1, Germany and Russia
invaded Poland. In the Spring of 1940 he attacked and defeated
France. In June of 1942 he attacked Russia.
Pius XII
Who was Pius XII? He was an
Italian by the name of Eugenio Pacelli. He was born in 1876 and
ordained to the priesthood in 1899 at the age of 23. He was a
brilliant student who knew Latin, Greek, English, French, German,
Spanish, Portuguese, Hebrew and Aramaic. His talent was spotted
by Pope Leo XIII and he entered the diplomatic service. During
the First World War he was given special assignments by Pope
Benedict XV to try to obtain a peace settlement.
Pacelli became a bishop in 1917.
His first assignment was as Nuncio to Bavaria in Germany. At that
time the Church had separate concordats with different German
regions since the German federal government after unification had
refused to sign a concordat. He stayed in Bavaria until 1925.
From 1925 to 1929 he was Nuncio in Berlin. In 1929 he became the
secretary of state of Pope Pius XI. He was elected Pope in 1939
just before the War started.
National Socialism and
Communism
Although it was the Nazis who
would be the first to sweep victoriously across Europe, Pacelli
and all Catholics were looking apprehensively at the rise of
Communism in Russia.
By 1939 Lenin and Stalin had
killed 15 million Russians in concentration camps, had killed
over 5 million Ukrainians through a forced policy of starvation
and had killed some 8 million peasants in the war against the
kulaks. The Catholic Church in Ukraine and Lithuania had to go
underground. Catholic priests were killed wherever they were
found.
Hitler was also anti-clerical and
had plans to eliminate the Catholic Church in Germany. But when
the war began, he had signed a concordat with Plus XI and his
intentions to liquidate the Jews were still unknown and had quite
possibly not even been hatched yet. He was violating the
concordat, but he was not systematically killing priests. He was
like the other anti-clerical dictators with whom the Church had
been dealing throughout Europe since the French Revolution.
Hitler did see the Catholic Church
as his enemy and intended to destroy it once he had achieved
victory in the War. Until then he felt that he could not risk
alienating Germany's Catholics by a wholesale onslaught against
the Church. However, he did go as far as he dared in lessening
the Church's influence. He closed Catholic schools and
seminaries, closed down Catholic publications, arrested some
priests, closed down monasteries and deported the monks,
expropriated some Church lands, etc.
Hitler was quite correct, of
course, in seeing the Catholic Church as an enemy, for National
Socialism involved a neo-paganism that was incompatible with
Christianity.
Vatican Diplomacy
During the First World War Pope
Benedict XV had remained neutral and impartial. He denounced
cruelty and war but did not take sides. It was this model that
Pius XI followed in the various conflicts that raged in Europe
between the two World Wars and that Pius XII followed during the
War.
For example, during the Spanish
Civil War (1936-1939), the Republican side was dominated by
fiercely anti-Catholic Communists and Anarchists who executed
many thousands of Catholic priests and nuns, some of whom have
been canonized as martyrs. The slaughter also included many
Catholic laity who refused to deny their faith. It was
consequently assumed that Pope Pius XI and the Vatican favored
the Nationalist side in that conflict. However, an October 21,
1937 article in the Osservatore Romano expressly denied this,
stating "The Church does not belong to any political or
social camp. It is not a combatant but a martyr. The various
national states in the world can take one side or the other; but
religion stands above the conflict, something public opinion has
never understood."
Here indeed lies the answer to the
puzzle of the position taken by Pius XII during the Second World
War. He was essentially following the perennial policy of the
Holy See, which is to remain impartial in the hope of being able
to contribute to the end of the conflict in question by acting as
a mediator or arbiter.
In the first half of the 20th
Century the Vatican had to work with anti clerical regimes in
many European countries, including Spain, France, Italy, Russia
and Germany. Since the Church's first concern is with the
salvation of souls, it has to work with whatever regime happens
to be in power in a given country in order to obtain the best
possible terms for Catholics in that country. This often means
making the best of a bad situation. Indeed, Pius XI had once said
that in order to help souls he would be ready to negotiate with
the Devil himself if necessary.
In order to implement this policy,
the Vatican seeks to remain neutral and impartial in the face of
politics and conflicts, limiting its declarations to generic
condemnations of injustice, cruelty, war, etc. and always
remaining at the level of principle. It does not publicly condemn
any country nor declare any war as just or unjust. It will not
censor specific individuals or countries.
It follows this policy for several
reasons. As Christ stated, his Kingdom is not of this world and
he was not called to be a judge on temporal matters (cf. Luke 12:
14). The Church's mission is the salvation of souls. Her role on
earth is to welcome sinners into her bosom in order to convert
and save them. She must never be seen as espousing a particular
political cause nor as favoring one nation over another. She must
remain open to all, a sign and safeguard of the transcendent
character of the human person.
In addition, the Church wishes to
be available to help make peace and can only do this by remaining
technically neutral and impartial, refraining from any specific
condemnation. It does not want to alienate any given state nor,
by a specific denunciation, risk reprisals against Catholics in
that state. It does not see its role as taking sides in partisan
political issues but must stand above the fray, denouncing
injustice in a generic way so that injustices committed by either
side in a conflict will be included in the condemnation. In the
specific case of the Second World War, there was an additional
reason. Pius XII had good reasons for believing that a
condemnation of the Nazis would have been imprudent in that it
would have entailed serious reprisals against both Catholics and
Jews.
Interestingly enough, this was
well understood at the time. The New York Times, in its Christmas
editorial in 1942 after the defeat of Poland and France by
Germany stated the following: In these circumstances no one
would expect the Pope to speak as a political leader, or a war
leader, or in any other role than in that of a preacher ordained
to stand above the battle, tied impartially, as he says, to all
people and willing to collaborate in any new order which will
bring a just peace.
But, one may well ask, how can one remain
impartial when a terrible genocide is going on? The answer is
that impartiality never means to condone evil actions. By virtue
of her mission, the Church is called upon to condemn injustice,
war, genocide, unjust aggression, etc. But if the Church were
ever to be drawn into a conflict as one more party thereto she
would lose the unique position that she is called by Christ to
adopt: that of an independent observer who stands above temporal
questions, reminding all parties concerned of the great moral
principles they are bound to follow and raising the alarm when
they fail to do so. She will, however, always perform this latter
action in a generic way without specifically condemning any
country, political party or person. To take sides is to alienate
one side long after the conflict is over.
Pius XII and Nazi Germany
We are used to thinking of
Hitler's war as unjust. The anti-Semitism and genocide obviously
were. However, most Germans saw the war as a national effort to
fight off those enemies who had humiliated Germany and had
imposed an unjust peace on her.
When the allies asked the Pope to
condemn Germany and the Nazis by name, he always answered that he
could not do so without also condemning the atrocities committed
by Communist Russia and the indiscriminate bombing of civilian
targets by the allies.
Having spent 12 years in Germany,
Pacelli knew the Germans well and liked them. However, he was not
pro-Nazi. On the contrary, he saw the anti-clericalism from the
beginning and as early as 1933 he was on record as expressing
alarm at the Nazis' treatment of the Church, of the Jews and of
their political opponents. For example, in speaking about the
Nazis in 1935 he said that possessed by superstitions of race
and blood, their philosophy is essentially opposed to the
Christian Faith.
The Nazis also knew him for an
enemy. Before his election in 1939, the German Ambassador to the
Holy See warned the Cardinals against electing him. The Nazi
press was against him. And an internal memorandum found after the
War and written just after his election states that his election
as Pope is problematic since he was opposed to the Nazi regime.
The Holy See under Pius XI had
signed a Concordat with Nazi Germany in July 1933. As stated
above, even though it was clear that the regime was anti-clerical
and anti-Semitic, the Church believed that its main
responsibility was to secure the best possible deal for Germany's
Catholics so that they would be free to practice their religion
and to run Catholic schools, institutions, newspapers, etc.
Because of violations of the
Concordat, in 1937 Pius XI issued an encyclical letter entitled
in German Mit Brennender Sorge (With Burning Anxiety). It
was the only encyclical ever to be written in German. It
condemned the attacks on the Church by the German government and
amounted to a wholesale condemnation of the National Socialist
ideology though without specifically mentioning it. It was read
from the pulpits of all the Catholic churches in Germany on Palm
Sunday, March 12, 1937. It is now known that the encyclical was
written mainly by German bishops and given its final form by
Pacelli.
The Final Solution
The Final Solution is the term
given to Hitler's plan to exterminate the Jews of Europe. This
plan was experimented with in 1941, formally adopted in January
of 1942 and put into effect in the summer of 1942. It was secret.
Very few people even in the upper ranks of the government knew
about this. No written order on this subject has ever been found.
It is only known by the testimony given at the Nuremberg trials
and by other testimonies of prisoners who survived.
It took place in Poland and in
remote areas in Eastern Germany, out of sight of the German
population. Even though some historians have maintained the
contrary, it is clear that secrecy was imposed because it was
thought that public opinion in Germany would not tolerate
genocide.
Hundreds of thousands of Jews had
already been settled in ghettos and concentration camps over the
previous years. Beginning in 1942 death camps were set up. Jews
were transported there, gassed to death and their bodies burnt.
Despite the secrecy, early on some
prisoners escaped from Auschwitz and spoke of the genocide that
was being perpetrated. In spite of this, right to the end of the
war there was some doubt as to the exact fate of the deported
Jews. A letter of Pius XII written in late 1944 expresses fear
that many of the Jews who had been transported to prison camps
would be put into forced labor under inhuman conditions that
would imply death for many. This shows that even at that late
date, though he was aware that the deportations meant likely
death for many Jews, he was unaware of the systematic genocide
that was being carried out.
Why were the escaped prisoners
disbelieved? During the First World War both sides in the
conflict had engaged in massive efforts of disinformation
concerning atrocities committed by the other side. In the
propaganda battle atrocities perpetrated by the other side were
invented or grossly exaggerated. After the War all this became
known. People were consequently leery about believing any story
of a systematic genocide, the like of which had never been seen
before.
Faced with his fears for the
safety of the Jews, Plus XII had two choices. On the one hand he
could issue a public denunciation of the Nazi regime and
excommunicate those of the Nazi leaders who were baptized
Catholics, even though by embracing National Socialism they had
already de facto left the Church. The other choice was to
encourage the local hierarchy (national or more local) to do
whatever they could on behalf of the Jews who were being
persecuted.
He used a combination of both
public denunciations and clandestine aid to the Jews.
Public Denunciations
In his Christmas message of 1942,
the Pope spoke about the hundreds of thousands of persons who,
through no fault of their own, and solely because of their
nationality or race, have been condemned to death or progressive
extinction.
This is the kind of diplomatic
language one finds in the Pope's war time messages. They contain
a general condemnation which could be applicable to both sides,
even though it was obvious that it was directed at the Nazi
regime in particular. Why had he not issued such a condemnation
before? Because the Final Solution only began in 1942 and because
he was trying to find a way to act as a peacemaker or mediator
among the warring parties. The allies wanted him to condemn
Germany by name, but this he would not do. They would have been
upset had he jointly condemned Russia and the allied bombing of
civilian targets.
The Nazis reacted with rage to the
broadcast even though they largely prevented it from reaching
Germany and many other parts of Europe. It was evident to the
Nazis that they were being targeted. The German Ambassador to the
Holy See was told to threaten the Pope and the Church. In his
report he said that the Pope was not the slightest bit afraid of
the threats and threatened back that if it came to war between
the Nazis and the Church the result would inevitably be a Church
victory, as history shows. The Nazis admired his personal
courage. At the time the Vatican was entirely at the mercy of the
Germans, who could have taken the Pope prisoner without meeting
any serious opposition.
There were several other such messages
throughout the War disseminated by the Osservatore Romano and
Vatican Radio. The Pope's effort was appreciated at the
time. A New York Times Editorial described it as follows: The
voice of Pius XII is a lonely voice in the silence and darkness
enveloping Europe. He is about the only ruler left on the
Continent of Europe who dares to raise his voice at all.
The effect of these public
denunciations, however, was invariably to engender reprisals. The
most famous example of this was in 1942 in Holland. Up until that
time Dutch Jews who had converted to Christianity had been spared
arrest. The Catholic and Protestant hierarchies decided to read a
protest against the deportation of the Jews in the churches on
July 26, 1942. The Nazis learned of the protest beforehand and
warned both the Catholic and Protestant hierarchy that there
would be reprisals if they dared to ahead with it. The Protestant
Churches backed down but the Catholic hierarchy had the protest
read. As a result, on August 2, 1942, all Catholic Jews were
rounded up and deported, including Saint Edith Stein. In fact, in
Holland 90% of all Jews were killed, the highest percentage of
any country in Europe.
Efforts to Save Jewish Lives
As a result of this and similar
events, Pius XII decided to leave it up to the local bishops to
decide what to do in each case, in order to avoid as much as
possible the suffering and death of the Jews. He instructed the
Catholic hierarchy everywhere to do everything possible to save
Jewish lives, but left it up to local initiative to decide on the
best course of action in each case. He pointed out that each word
had to be weighed in order to avoid reprisals and so doing more
harm than good.
Pius XII was not afraid for
himself. It would have been very easy for him to make a grandiose
public denunciation, excommunicating Germany's leaders, thereby
bringing on his own martyrdom. Had he done that, he would have
been blamed for an imprudent gesture which led to hundreds of
thousands more victims of the Nazi genocide. In such a case
instead of debating the Silence of Pius XII we would today
be debating the Imprudence of Pius XII .
The Nazis did not want a public
denunciation. They feared that this would cause doubts in the
ranks of their own Catholic soldiers, most of whom did not know
about the Final Solution, and most of whom felt they were
fighting a just war against their nation's enemies.
But if a public denunciation had
been made, they would have reacted brutally. They would not have
caved in. This was made clear by testimony in the Nuremberg
trials. Oddly enough, even though the denunciation would not have
helped, the threat of a denunciation saved many thousands
of lives.
The Red Cross came to exactly the
same conclusion. When they learned about the Final Solution they
discussed whether to issue a condemnation. They decided that
doing so would be counter productive. They would be prevented
from continuing their work on behalf of the victims of the war.
Other organizations took the same line.
Over the past 25 years all the
important documentation of the Holy See having to do with the
Second World War has been edited and published by the Vatican in
12 thick volumes. This documentation is evidence of the enormous
efforts of the Vatican to save Jewish lives and the lives of
prisoners of war. After the war, when bishops and nuncios were
thanked for all they had done to save Jewish lives, they all said
they were only obeying the instructions of Pius XII.
During the period where Jewish
emigration was permitted, most countries refused to accept them
as immigrants. Working through the nuncios and the local
hierarchy, Pius XII was able to obtain thousands of visas for
Jews to travel to South America, putting pressure on the
governments of those countries to accept them. He managed to
convince the government of Spain to accept any Jew who could show
Spanish ancestry (many Jews were descendants of those who had
been expelled from Spain in the 15th Century). The Vatican spent
huge sums on all this, paying for transport, etc.
The Pope used many other means to
save Jewish lives. He had false Vatican Passports issued to Jews.
He gave teaching positions in pontifical universities to Hebrew
scholars. He made frequent protests to the Nazi regime about its
treatment of the Jews. He had false baptismal certificates
issued. He ordered monasteries, churches and other Catholic
institutions to provide sanctuary to Jews fleeing the Nazi
persecution.
In Italy the Jews were persecuted
but not deported until Italy was occupied by Germany in 1944. At
the request of Pius XII a great mobilization then took place to
save as many Jews as possible from the inevitable roundup that
would take place. Some 7,000 Jews were hidden for a year in the
Vatican and in 180 other places such as Churches, convents,
hospitals, schools, etc. Convents of cloistered nuns were ordered
to allow sanctuary to married couples.
There were 50,000 Jews in Italy in
1939 and another 16,000 Jewish refugees arrived during the war.
Of all these, only 8,000 were captured and deported, thanks to
the efforts of Pius XII and the Catholic Church.
The Nazis knew that many were
being hid, but they did not want to risk breaking with the
Vatican. There is evidence that the Jewish community in Rome
specifically asked the Pope not to issue any public condemnation
for fear that this would generate reprisals resulting in the
violation and search of the many places of sanctuary where the
Jews were hiding.
At one point the Germans demanded
50 kilos of gold from the Jewish community of Rome within 24
hours, failing which the whole community would be deported. Plus
XII offered to make up what was missing, using sacred vessels of
the Vatican. In recognition the Jewish community in Rome wanted
to place a stone with an inscription in the Synagogue in honor of
the Holy Father.
At the end of the war, the chief
rabbi of Rome, Israel Zolli, converted to Catholicism and took
the baptismal name Eugene in gratitude to the Pope for all that
he had done to save Jewish lives.
There is abundant internal Nazi
documentation to the effect that the propaganda of the Church
against the persecution of the Jews was hurting their cause. From
all the countries where deportations were taking place there are
complaints of Nazi officials that the Church was turning public
opinion against them.
Pinchas Lapide in his book The
Last Three Popes and the Jews estimates that the Holy See
directly saved some 820,000 Jewish lives during the war. He is a
Jewish historian who is no friend of the Catholic Church. Indeed
his book begins with a bitter critique of the way the Catholic
Church has treated the Jews throughout its history. He fought in
the British Army during the war and had first hand knowledge of
the efforts of Pius XII to save Jewish lives.
Jewish Reactions to the Efforts
of Pius XII and the Church
When the war ended there was a
great outpouring of gratitude to Pius XII from the international
Jewish community and this was renewed on his death. He was
considered a hero who had saved hundreds of thousands of Jewish
lives. A few examples of these plaudits will suffice to measure
the extent of the gratitude that the international Jewish
community felt for Pius XII.
Golda Meir: When fearful
martyrdom came to our people in the decade of the Nazi terror,
the voice of the pope was raised for its victims. The life of our
times was enriched by a voice speaking out about great moral
truths above the daily conflict. We mourn a great servant of
peace.
Dr. Joseph Nathan representing the
Hebrew Commission: We thank Pius XII and the religious men and
women who, executing the directives of the Holy Father,
recognized the persecuted as their brothers and, with great
abnegation, hastened to help them, disregarding the terrible
dangers to which they were exposed.
Albert Einstein: When all
others had abdicated their responsibility, only the Catholic
Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign. The
Church alone has the courage and persistence to stand for moral
freedom.
As an expression of this
gratitude, on May 26, 1955 the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra went
to Rome to play for the Pope. The chief rabbis of Zagreb and
Bucharest each wrote emotional letters of gratitude to the Pope
in which they state that the survival of the Jewish communities
of those cities is owed to the intervention of the Catholic
hierarchy.
So how do we explain the critiques
of Pius XII which have arisen since his death?
The author of the play, The
Deputy, is one of those armchair communists with no love for
the Church. His accusations that Pius XII was anti-Semitic or
pro-Nazi are the work of his imagination and are entirely without
foundation. There is abundant documentary evidence available
disproving such allegations and today no serious historian
accepts them.
The real question comes down to
this. Did Pius XII make an error in judgment by not issuing a
public statement excommunicating the German leaders and
specifically condemning the Nazi regime by name? Should he not
have been more forceful and less diplomatic? Did not the gravity
of the situation call for a setting aside of the usual Vatican
practice of limiting itself to generic condemnations? Is it not
possible that such a denunciation would have led to a refusal to
fight by Hitler's Catholic soldiers? Would it not have alerted
the Jews of Europe to what was happening and allowed many more of
them to escape? And even if it did not, would it not have been
better to issue such a condemnation at least for appearances sake
so that it could never be said that the Church had not taken a
firm stand against the Nazi ideology?
The short answer to all this is
that, on the one hand, the Nazis were powerful enough to prevent
any such denunciation from reaching many people. They had shown
this by the way they had prevented Pius XII's Christmas message
of 1942 from being heard in many places in Europe. But more
importantly we know that the Nazis would have reacted to a
specific, public condemnation by an even greater attack on the
Jews and on Catholics as well. This was made clear at Nuremberg
and had been shown by their reaction to local denunciations, as
in the case of Holland and St. Edith Stein. If Pius XII had made
a public condemnation he would have been blamed after the War for
imprudence which would have cost the lives of hundreds of
thousands of Jewish lives. As for a denunciation for appearances
sake, the Pope was clearly not going to risk the lives of
hundreds of thousands of Jews simply to increase the prestige of
the papacy in the eyes of the world.
In summary, during the War Pope Pius XII
did issue condemnations of the genocide being perpetrated by the
Nazis in Germany, but did so following the perennial policy of
the Holy See, which is to avoid denouncing any country, political
party or individual specifically by name so as not to risk
permanently alienating any country long after the conflict has
been resolved. This was well understood and appreciated at the
time, but has been called into question by some in our own day
who, not having lived through the War, are unaware of the
increased persecution that such a denunciation would have
entailed. These people also fail to understand the nature of the
Church and its role in the world and so cannot appreciate the
need for the Holy See to remain above partisan politics and
international conflicts.
There are many excellent books on this subject. The
reader who wishes to pursue this further would do well to begin
with the following two:
Pius XII and the Second World War by Pierre
Blet, S.J. (Paulist Press, 1997). The author is a member of the
team that was asked to edit and make public the Vatican archives
having to do with the War. These were published in a 12 volume
edition. Here he has written a one-volume history based on those
archives.
Hitler, the War and the Pope by Ronald J.
Rychlak (Our Sunday Visitor Publications, 2000).
Anthony
Schratz
The Catholic Legate
April 2, 2004