Preface xvii
Hitler’s ally rather than his slave—as the ‘Republic of salò’ would eventually
become during the latter part of the second world war.
on Pius xi’s death, Pacelli, now Pope Pius xii (1939–1958), desperate for
peace, spent the year of 1939 trying to preserve it. in 1940 he secretly acted as
intermediary between the allies and a group of German army officers trying to
assassinate Hitler, but scruples often overcame him and he was in such anguish
about the morality of his actions that he kept quiet about them. even in his peace
broadcast of august 1939 he avoided direct denunciation of German aggression.
nevertheless, during the second world war the Vatican kept a record of the ter-
rible atrocities committed against Jews, and Vatican funds financed rescue meas-
ures, such as the offer to supply fifteen of the fifty kilos of gold demanded by
the German head of police in 1943 to ensure the safety of the Jewish community
of Rome. Pius xii ordered religious houses in Rome to admit Jewish refugees and
approximately 5,000 Jews were sheltered there and in the Vatican itself. after the
war the Vatican processed approximately 11,250,000 missing-persons enquiries
and took the unprecedented step of appointing Jesuit historians to publish eleven
volumes of documents detailing its involvement with the war and its interventions
on behalf of Jews.
notwithstanding, many have criticized Pius xii for not doing more. He ref-
rained from any outright denunciation of nazi activities against Jews until his
christmas radio address in 1942, and although when he spoke out many Germans
were angered by what they saw as an abandonment of neutrality, many of the allies
wished it had been a far more direct and fierce condemnation. in 1963 Rolf
Hochhuth’s communist-inspired play ‘The Representative’ portrayed an anti-
semitic pope who refused to help the Jews of Rome. although the publication of
archives detailing the papacy’s interventions on behalf of Jews showed this to be
false, the Vatican was still blamed for lack of courage and feeble diplomacy during
the war. allegations in the 1980s that a ‘Ratline’ for nazi war criminals from Rome
to Latin america was organized within the Vatican only added to the furore, par-
ticularly when it was revealed that pro-nazi austrian and croatian clerics in Rome,
aided by right-wing catholic circles in France, had helped provide shelter.
certainly throughout the second world war Pius xii seems to have believed
that grand statements by the church denouncing nazi atrocities would only worsen
the situation—as they did when dutch bishops tried to intervene to help Jews in
Holland in 1941—and that quiet, behind-the-scenes intervention would be more
effective in saving lives. not only did the pronouncements of the dutch bishops
not prevent Jews being murdered, but the nazis as a result actually extended the
range of victims in various ways, not least to include Jews who had converted to
christianity. of course Jews in Holland might have been murdered eventually by
the nazi regime, but the dutch bishops seem to have been surprised when their
speeches proved lethal for many new victims. Living in a very different world from
their medieval predecessors, in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries popes have
increasingly realized that their ‘good’ pronouncements have not infrequently led to
the murder of both christians and non-christians. when dealing with dictators
such as Hitler—and to a lesser extent Mussolini—the problem is obvious.