I got this book at a used book sale last year. It caught my eye because I have always heard accusations against and defences of the wartime papacy, but I had never really done much reading on it. With a title like Hitler's Pope I was expecting it to be a rather violent diatribe against Pius XII and the Catholic Church in general. I was mostly pleasantly surprised. Cornwell is a practicing Catholic, which meant that there wasn't an automatic bias, and for the most part the book is in support of the Church in general, just not of some specific practices. Cornwell claims that he went into the project intending to defend and vindicate Pius XII but couldn't do so after confronting the evidence. Whether or not that is actually true, the book made for good reading that traces the life of Pius XII from his birth, to his role as nuncio in Germany, to his efforts to shape canon law, and finally to his papacy. Cornwell condemns the wartime papacy on a number of grounds.
First, and most flimsily (in my opinion) is his assertion that Pius XII was at least somewhat anti-Semitic, and that therefore influenced his opinion in order to do nothing in the face of the Holocaust. He cites a number of incidents from the early 1900s, including one in which Pius XII (then Eugenio Pacelli) rejected a request by the Jewish community in Germany to help them obtain palm fronds for a Passover ceremony. According to Cornwell, Pacelli rejected the request himself but let the Jewish leaders believe that he had done his best and that the decision had come from the Vatican. Cornwell also claims that in the post-WWI chaos in Germany Pacelli began to link the Jewish community with communism, which in his opinion was a far worse threat than fascism. For the most part, I think that this argument is somewhat weak. While there might easily have been some amount of anti-Semitism on the part of Pius XII, that was not exactly a rare sentiment during the first half of the twentieth century, especially in Europe. In my opinion, actions such as the palm frond incident illustrate less of a dislike of Jews and more of a disinterest in any religious community that was not Catholic.
As mentioned, Pius XII believed communism to be the primary threat to Europe until his death. In his role as Secretary of State for the Vatican prior to being elevated to the papacy, Pacelli was of the opinion that while the fascists could be reasoned with, the communists were a deadly threat to the Catholic community of Europe. This opinion would change over the course of the war, but by then it was far too late. Even then, however, fear of communism clouded his thinking as he refrained from supporting the resistance in Italy after the Allied invasion for fear that if the resistance overthrew the government before the Allies arrived in Rome then the communists might take over the country. His efforts against communism continued during the Cold War, and interestingly he loudly and publicly called for Catholic resistance in a way that was drastically different than his actions during WWII. Cornwell uses this as more evidence of Pius XII's anti-Semitism, but I would again argue that it indicates more his apathy for the lives of non-Catholics in general.
Part of the problem, according to Cornwell, was that Pius XII believed in a church that was authoritarian in nature. This accomplished three things. First, it severely hampered the efforts by clergy in the war zones from doing anything "official" to help. There were early and public denunciations of Nazism by a large number of German bishops when the Nazis were rising to power, but Pacelli and his predecessor walked those back and silenced the outspoken bishops for speaking out of turn. Second, it contributed to an anti-democratic attitude that put Pacelli more in sympathy with totalitarian fascist governments than with the European democracies. Third, and perhaps most important, it led to Pacelli (as Secretary of State) being able to force Catholics to withdraw from politics in pre-war Europe. Specifically, it meant that as part of the bargaining process with Hitler Pacelli forced the Catholic Center Party to dissolve in exchange for the protection of the religious rights of Catholics within Germany (which Hitler largely ignored, obviously). Since in the early 1930s the Center Party was one of the largest parties in Germany and was in many ways the only stumbling block in the way of Hitler's ascent to power these actions on Pacelli's part in essence smoothed the way for Hitler to take over Germany. This is yet more evidence that Pacelli was only concerned with Catholic well-being to the exclusion of all else. In my mind this is also the most damning of the accusations laid at Pacelli's feet. His supporters might claim that during the war speaking out would only have made things worse (as will be seen below), but there is little that can be said in favour of surrendering the Center Party except Pacelli's own belief that Catholics should stay out of politics.
Prior to the war Pacelli was strongly in favour of appeasement of both Germany and Italy. He did not speak out against either the Anschluss or the takeover of Czechoslovakia, and he pushed for Poland to allow Germany to take a "corridor" to Danzig through their territory. In addition, he did not condemn the invasion of Poland until mid-October 1939. While Cornwell makes this out to be a major failing, and in some ways it is, it is not that different from the appeasement of both Chamberlain and Daladier, and does not make him stick out more than either of those two men.
Once the war began and the facts of the Holocaust became known, the recently elevated Pius XII was almost entirely silent on the matter despite the efforts of the Allied governments to convince him to denounce the atrocities. In fact, over the course of the war he made very few public statements, and when he did he confined himself to general statements condemning all violence against non-combatants, never mentioning either Jews or the Nazis specifically. His detractors (like Cornwell) and his supporters have very different arguments for why this is so. The main argument by Pius XII's supporters is that speaking out against the actions of the Nazis not only would have done nothing to stop the atrocities, but may have led to reprisal attacks against Catholics under German control. They also argue that a denunciation may have led to an increase in the pace of the Holocaust, which I find fairly hard to believe considering the pace at which it was already moving. Cornwell lays out a number of arguments against these theories, based mostly around three incidents. Cornwell and other detractors argue that Jews in western countries (specifically France, Belgium, and the Netherlands) were caught off-guard by the extremes of anti-Semitism that led to the Holocaust when Germany invaded. He believes that the Pope could have made a public denunciation prior to the invasions and thereby given warning to the Jews in those countries. In Croatia, in many cases the local Catholic clergy warmly welcomed the Nazis and in some cases they participated in the massacres. Cornwell states that the Vatican was kept completely up to date on these issues and yet failed even to rein in the priests committing murder. In Cornwell's opinion Pius XII kept silent on this because he saw Croatia as a gateway to converting the Orthodox in the east. If true, this is more evidence in my mind of the unconcern for anything not Catholic by Pius XII. Finally, in the roundup of Jews in Rome before the Allies liberated the city Cornwell argues that Pius XII made virtually no efforts to save them even in the face of pleas to do so by the local German authorities who feared that the roundup by the SS would lead to riots.
While I largely agree with the arguments put forth by Cornwell, there are nonetheless a number of flaws in the book. Many of these have to do with the dismissal by Cornwell of the seemingly sincere (but ultimately ineffective) efforts by Pius to bring about peace, such as his part in writing an encyclical critical of Germany in 1937. He also did what he could to convince Mussolini to stay out of the war, including publicly praising him for wanting to maintain peace. Pius XII was also a somewhat complicit party in a 1939-1940 attempt to overthrow Hitler, acting as a go-between for the plotters and the Allies. While Cornwell does praise this last action, for the most part he is contemptuous of the efforts by the papacy for peace and seems to argue that Pius XII spoke when he should have remained silent and said nothing when he should have spoken out (the latter of which I agree with).
I believe that there were several other flaws in the form of absent information. For one, virtually nothing is mentioned in the book of what Pius XII did in the years between the liberation of Rome and the end of the war. Cornwell says nothing of whether the pope began to speak out or remained silent, and this is a major problem in the scope of the book. Second, Cornwell makes very little effort to address the main argument of Pius XII's supporters; namely that the pope supposedly saved a huge number of Jewish lives (one source puts it at 860,000). Cornwell dismisses this argument but doesn't actually offer any real evidence to refute it. These two omissions call into question whether the book is written fairly and leave major holes in the argument.
Nonetheless, I very much enjoyed the book. Although I wish it would have expanded its argument to cover the omissions I mentioned, the evidence it does present is compelling. I would recommend the book, but perhaps also recommend reading a book that is supportive of Pius XII in order to get a fuller picture of the issues and to look at the evidence presented in favour of Pius XII having worked to save the Jewish community.
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