PIUS XII and the Second World War

Citation

Taylor, J. (2001), "PIUS XII and the Second World War", European Business Review, Vol. 13 No. 3, pp. 197-201. https://doi.org/10.1108/ebr.2001.13.3.197.4

Eugenio Pacelli, elected Pope in 1939 , had been Papal Nuncio in Munich and Berlin from 1917 and 1929 and so must have had considerable experience of Germany and its rulers when, as Pius XII, he presided over the Vatican during the Second World War years. In the liberal atmosphere encouraged by the Second Vatican Council, his conduct during the crisis after the fall of Mussolini, when Rome was occupied by the Germans and its Jews threatened with deportation, was examined and found wanting. This was most noticeably the case in Berlin itself, where Rolf Hochhuth’s play Der Stellvertreter was premiered in 1963. This play ensured popular appeal by stripping the Vatican prelates of the reverence which had hitherto been accorded them by lifting the soutane, so to speak, to reveal devious manipulations in Vatican circles, particularly in the matter of finance. As the result of this polemic many column inches were expended, debating the issue of whether the Pope should have kept silent or have spoken out against the deportation of the Roman Jews in October 1943. Hochhuth’s play was an example of the so‐called documentary drama which became popular after the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Israel in the early 1960s had brought the whole question of Hitler’s persecution of the Jews back into the public arena. Subsequently, the thesis of Pius XII’s sins of omission proved to have considerable staying power, surviving the 1960s intact, it would seem, to re‐emerge in Hitler’s Pope, the bestselling historical study by the Cambridge historian John Cornwell published in 1999. Although Cornwell does find some redeeming features in his subject – most notably recording Pacelli’s revulsion at the racism of the National Socialists in Germany – the burden of his critique is that the Pope’s fear and hatred of the atheistic Communism of the Soviet Union led him to favour Fascism in its various European manifestations. This fear explained not only his failure to protest at the fate of the Roman Jews and his earlier silence over the ethnic cleansing in the Italian protectorate of Croatia in 1941.

The Catholic Church is, of course, no stranger to apologetics. Its response to these accusations showed that it took the charge very seriously indeed. A four‐man team of archivists was entrusted with sifting the voluminous material. The result of their labours, twelve volumes entitled Acts and Documents of the Holy See during the Second World War, appeared between 1965 and 1981. The volume currently under review is a summary of the material by the sole survivor of the team, the French Jesuit Pierre Blet, which first appeared in French in 1997 in response to requests to make the material more accessible. To this end he adds some commentary, summarises the historical background and translates all the documents quoted.

The author offers the reader a clear guide through the complex maze of material by dividing it into 12 chapters, beginning with “Vatican Diplomacy against the War”, and ending, appropriately, with “The Last Days of the War”. Within this broad chronological framework the approach is to divide the material geographically, devoting discrete chapters to different European countries and, in the case of Italy, to Rome itself. Additionally, there is a chapter on “Racial Laws and Persecutions”, which outlines some of the measures taken by the Vatican to assist “non‐Aryan” Catholics, for example, the provision of Brazilian visas in the spring of 1940. The author highlights the political aspects of the Second World War, which influenced Vatican diplomacy, such as maintaining Spanish neutrality, the fall of Mussolini and the subsequent fate of the Vatican under German occupation.

It must be stated outright that the reader who looks for an explicit refutation of the allegations against the Pope will be disappointed. For in seeking to do so the Vatican was required to prove a negative – to argue, namely, that the Pope’s conduct dictated by diplomatic prudence, his decision not to forsake the measured tones of diplomatic discourse for the polemic and declamatory prose of denunciation from the pulpit, was successful in preventing greater evils. Moreover, the more it could be asserted that he had intervened successfully in other aspects of protecting the city – for example, in deterring the Allies from bombing Rome in the early stages of the Second World War – the greater the clamour that he should have exercised his influence elsewhere, the complaint that he could have prevented the deportation, if only he had cared a little more or tried a little harder. Nor is the argument that some Jews were saved by being secreted in closed religious houses – a procedure which involved suspending the cloister so that married couples could remain together, a major sacrifice for the religions concerned – considered acceptable. This point, when raised in Hochhuth’s play, was denied on the grounds that the numbers saved in this manner were too few to count. A further difficulty which no amount of careful editing can disguise is that archive material of this kind does not always fit easily into the broad sweep of historical narrative. And diplomatic notes do not always make for gripping reading.

However, the discerning reader will find in this slim volume an indication of the terrifying moral responsibilities facing the Holy See and the Pope as head of a state which, in worldly terms, had very few resources. This material places the whole argument in the context of the times and takes the reader back to a situation where the statesmen did not have the benefit of hindsight. Here we have some indication of the evils which Vatican diplomacy was striving to prevent. In the wake of the fall of France, for instance, Spain was increasingly under pressure to join the war. The efforts of the apostolic nuncio to prevent this were the object of a note of thanks from Anthony Eden, quoted on page 114. Even the most moralistic condemnation of the Vatican’s omissions must falter before the delightful anecdote of the interview between the British Minister to the Holy See and a Vatican prelate at the end of 1940, five months after Italy entered the war, on the matter of sparing Rome from Allied bombing. It had to be pointed out that the suggestion that the Vatican should illuminate its boundaries to avoid being bombed was impracticable. First, since such a course would pinpoint Rome for the convenience of enemy aircraft. Second, since the Vatican did not generate electricity itself but bought it from Italy, it was unlikely that this arrangement would continue, if such use were to be made of it.

The excellent critical apparatus – a short bibliography and an extension index which, by including job titles, explains clearly the responsibilities of all the statesmen and prelates mentioned – makes this book suitable for the general reader as well as the specialist. It is to be recommended to generalist and specialist alike for the light it throws on the course, as well as the conduct, of the Second World War.