In his Christmas broadcast for 1942, Pope Pius XII spoke of the ‘hundreds of thousands of innocent people who have been killed or condemned to a slow extinction only because of their race’. As part of a wider denunciation of the Holocaust this would have been brave and useful, but in fact it was to be his only public wartime mention of it, and he did not even identify Hitler, the Nazis or the Jews by name. This failure publicly to denounce the greatest single crime in the history of mankind has unsurprisingly led to a major debate on the wartime role of the Pontiff, of which this well-researched, very well written, sane and thoughtful book is the latest and one of the most distinguished contributions.
Few people are better qualified than Gerard Noel to disinter the subtle diplomacy conducted by the prewar and wartime Vatican. A translator of the first volume of the official documents relating to the Holy See in that period and a former editor of the Catholic Herald, Noel had a private audience with Pius XII at the Castel Gandolfo in 1948, partly because he is collaterally descended from three saints, including Sir Thomas More. Yet far from being biased towards the Pontiff, as one might expect from this ultra-papabile curriculum vitae, this book lands some heavy blows against him.
Since Pius’ death in 1958 the debate on his actions — or inaction — has been dominated in the media by the case for the prosecution, principally Rolf Hochhuth’s 1963 play The Representative, Constantine Costa-Gravas’ film Amen, Daniel Goldhagen’s A Moral Reckoning, David Kerzer’s The Pope Against the Jews, David Cornwell’s outrageously titled Hitler’s Pope, Robert Katz’s Fatal Silence and other important and more nuanced books by Ralph McInery, Susan Zuccotti and José Sanchez. The case for the defence was best put by Professor Owen Chadwick in his succinct study Britain and the Vatican During the Second World War in 1986, but Pierre Blet S.J., Eamon Duffy, Clifford Longley, Cardinal Winning, Michael Burleigh, Paul Johnson, Ronald Rychlak and Denis Mack Smith have all landed blows that have tended to undermine the prosecution’s more extreme positions.
Comments
KARL ROLEWICZ
July 18th, 2008 1:45pmThat you have made your biased anti-Pius XII comments based on the 'wise with hind-sight' 20-20 vision so common to 'merchant' banker' (rhymes with...)journalists , I am not surprised but that such a respected figure such as Gerard Noel should also sit in judgement with the also 'wise with hindsight' approach is an absolute disgrace.As you yourself say,the Germans would not have stopped their persecution of the Jews by one iota if the Pope had said something but in an unsavvy non-media age he quietly sent out orders that Jews were to be sheltered everywhere possible by Catholic monasteries,nunneries etc. etc..So please no more of this total bull---- about Pope Pius XII WHO WAS PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR SAVING OF COUNTLESS TENS OF THOUSANDS OF JEWS!...I AM ALSO SURE THAT THE VATICAN CONGREGATION FOR THE CAUSES OF SAINTS DOES NOT NEED ANY ADVICE FROM A VERTICALLY CHALLENGED IDDIOT OF A JOURNALIST!!!
Report this comment
David Short
July 18th, 2008 1:11pmJews were treated very badly in just about every European country in those days, and many people in Britain even after the war and the knowledge of the death camps didn't care very much.
It was in America where Jewish people could reach their potential, even if that didn't include entry to country clubs.
This article smacks a little too much of judging yesterday's events by today's values.
Report this comment
Larry
July 18th, 2008 7:15amThe great Winston Churchill didn't mention the Holocaust in his autobiography? Neither did Eisenhower or De Gaulle? How did the greatest crime in Human history not rate a mention by these great Statesmen?
Report this comment
JohnA
July 17th, 2008 11:04pmThe Pope did not need to excommunicate members of the Nazi Party in 1944: they had already been publicly and lastingly excommunicated by the German Catholic bishops in 1932, before Hitler came to power, and all German Catholics were solemnly forbidden on pain of excommunication to vote for them. Nor do you mention Pius's 1939 pre-War encyclical 'mit brennender Sorge' - 'With vivid anxiety/alarm' - one of the first acts of his papacy, and written in German, not in Latin; although it addresses the problems of the Church in Germany, it also clearly attacks the Nazis' racial and racist policies.
As for fearing in December 1942 that the Church 'might suffer', even by 1939 Pius was well aware that the Catholic Church in Germany had been in grave difficulties since 1933, its churches forcibly closed, many of its members (particularly those associated with the Zentrumspartei) thrown into concentration camps or imprisoned (e.g. the courageously outspoken Dean of Berlin's Catholic Cathedral) for their anti-Nazi sermons. Anything he said across the air waves to a victorious and bloodthirsty Hitler was unlikely to have a calming effect, and as a diplomat, Pius realised that. Many of his actions (or inactions) look pusillanimous by modern papal standards, but they stem from his decision to maintain neutrality, and his disapproval of the punitive allied treatment of Germany after 1918.
Report this comment