Pope and Devil: The Vatican's Archives and the Third Reich [ペーパーバック]

For anyone interested in the Pius Wars - the argument that Pius XII was somehow complicit with the Holocaust by virtue of his alleged silence or other actions - or for anyone who has read the execrable John Cornwell's "Hitler's Pope" - "Pope and Devil" by Hubert Wolf is an essential resource for arriving at a balanced assessment of the issues. Wolf's book largely refutes Cornwell's specious arguments by meticulous attention to archival material released in 2003.

Not all of the relevant material have been released, but in 2003, the papacy of Pope John Paul II, released files relating to the nunciature - the diplomatic representatives of the Vatican - in Munich and Berlin during the period 1922 - 1939, as well as files relating to the Vatican's interaction with these nunciatures. This information was not available to Cornwell, and essentially disproves Cornwell's thesis that Pius XII, as Secretary of State Pacelli, pulled the strings that resulted in the Catholic Center Party supporting the Nazi Enabling Act. The proof is established by correspondence between Pacelli and the nunciatures indicating Pacelli's opposition to the Center Party's decision to dissolve itself.

Wolf also brings balance and depth that is missing from Cornwell's Manichean good- liberal versus evil- conservative story. Thus, Wolf describes the case of the Amici Israel, which was an association of Catholic priests, including bishops and cardinals, that in the late 1920's was committed to eradicating anti-semitism within the Catholic Church. Part of the agenda of Amici Israel was to eliminate the Good Friday prayer's reference to "perfidious Jews." This project was unsuccessful, and Amici Israel was suppressed, not because of anti-semitism, but because of a party of anti-liberal, conservative irredentists within the curia, led by Cardinal Merry De Val, who opposed anything that smacked of "modernism." The point of the story is that the Catholic Church, and particularly its bureaucracy, has not ever been monolithic. There were parties within the church with their own agenda, entirely unrelated to the agendas that people like Cornwell want to find. Hence, the blanket accusation by Cornwell, Goldhagen and Carroll that the Church, pope and curia have all been anti-semitic is simply wrong.

Moreover, irony is a constant of history. One of the results of the Amici Israel affair was that the decree of dissolution of Amici Israel in March of 1928 contained a clear condemnation of racial anti-semitism long before Kristalnacht. (p. 120.)

Wolf's chapters generally are as follows:

Chapter 1 - Neutralizing Evil? Vatican Prescriptions for Germany (1917 - 1929).
This chapter largely deals with the Vatican's diplomatic history with Germany between 1917 and 1929. Wolf points out that the Vatican's decision to reach out to Nazi Germany was not unusual or unexpected; it had reached out on three separate occasions to conclude a concordat with Stalinist Russia. (p. 9.) No one views those efforts as recognizing the legitimacy of the Soviet Union.

What was particularly interesting in this chapter was the fact that the up until the Weimar Republic, German states - including Protestant German states - were directly involved in selecting Catholic bishops. In Berlin, the Protestant state was able to choose which candidates would be put to the local church from which it could choose a bishop. Even though Weimar Germany, saw many German states give up their control over the Catholic Church, this movement was not entirely complete, and the concordat process was intended to cement the separation of church and state.

Not surprisingly, the bishops that were selected under the prior arrangement tended to be more conciliatory to the state, including the Nazi state, than the bishops selected by Rome after the concordat was signed. Galen and Von Preysing were both bishops who became known for being anti-Nazi stalwarts who would not have been chosen under the prior system.

Not surprisingly, this fact completely escapes Cornwell's potted history.

Chapter 2 - Perfidious Jews? The battle in the Vatican over Anti-Semitism.

This chapter covers the interesting, relatively unknown and important Amici Israel affair.

Chapter 3 - The Pact with the Devil? The Reichskonkordat (1930 - 1933.)

This chapter covers the circumstances leading to the execution of the concordat between Nazi Germany and the Vatican.

Contrary to Cornwell's unsubstantiated claims that the perfidious Pacelli single-mindedly engineered the Nazi police state, Wolf's scrutiny of the dispatches between Pacelli and the nunciatures show that Pacelli was outside the loop, and that the Center Party and German Catholic bishops were running their own shows.

Chapter 4 - Molto Delicato? The Roman Curia and the Persecution of the Jews.

This chapter addresses the many petitions to Pius XI to speak out and condemn Nazi persecutions of the Jews. Wolf describes how both Pius XI and Pius XII desired to speak out against anti-semitism, and encouraged others to speak out, but believed that because of their position as leader of the worldwide church were required to maintain a position of public neutrality.

Chapter 5 - Dogma or Diplomacy? The Catholic Worldview and Nazi Ideologies (1933 - 1939).

In this chapter, Wolf looks at the compatibility of Catholic and Nazi ideological claims and concludes that those claims were not compatible. In reaching this conclusion, Wolf outlines the various occasions when the Catholic Church condemned core Nazi doctrines as being incompatible with Christianity.

Wolf also tackles a "talking point" advanced by Christopher Hitchens that since the Church didn't put "Mein Kampf" on the Index of Forbidden Books, it must in some sense have endorsed Nazism. Wolf points out that although Mein Kampf was not placed on the Index, Alfred Rosenberg's "The Myth of the Twentieth Century," which was viewed as the key ideological treatise on Nazism was put on the Index. Wolf concludes that the reason Mein Kampf was not indexed was due to the curia placing diplomacy ahead of doctrine, particularly with respect to a book "written by a head of state who had come to power through legal means and with whom the Vatican had just signed an agreement binding under international law." (p. 264.) On the other hand, "the dangerous opinions to be found Mein Kampf [were] refuted in the syllabus of the Congregation of Studies and contrasted to the true Catholic doctrine in the encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge." [p. 270.] In other words, the Church compromised short of placing Mein Kampf on the Index, but it was clear to all that the noxious teachings of Mein Kampf were condemned.

Finally, similar constraints prevented the excommunication of Hitler - which in 1938 Mussolini, of all people, was advocating. [p. 270.] As Wolf concludes the book, "Pronouncing a Reich chancellor and head of state anathema was simply out of the question. Hitler remained a member of the Catholic Church until the day he died. Like the pope, even the devil could be Catholic."

All in all, this is a readable and balanced book that examines the real world nuances facing real people in real history, which is a far cry from the comic book version of history that is currently so popular.

Excellent, scholarly, and well written book using the Vatican archival material of Pius XI. It's treatment of Eugenio Pacelli as nuncio, secretary of state, and of Pius XII, whose archives have not yet been open, was rather pedestrian.

I attended two graduate classes with the famous Catholic historian John Tracy Ellis, at Catholic University. One which I took for credit, and another on European Catholic History, in my free time, as auditor just because I found him an interesting lecturer. In that latter course he addressed the matter of Pacelli's involvement with the Nazis several times. I expect that this matter will never be solved conclusively, particularly since there is so much at stake for Catholic apologists generally, and the Vatican in particular. But it is worth noting that in the 1980's when I took this course, long before the issue had become really infamously popular, this famous Catholic historian, whom is now claimed posthumously as a great influence by no less than the Cardinal Archbishop of New York, had a different take on Pacelli. John Tracy Ellis portrayed Pacelli as someone quite compromised by his variable enthusiasm for Nazi political praxis, as sharply opposed from ideology. Of course this kind of honesty is lost on current Catholic apologists in Church history circles. But I was a witness to one of the most famous Church historians saying something quite otherwise.