Pope Pius XII As World War II example essay topic

Gregory Luther History Thesis 10/15/01 "Triumph in battle offers twin trophies to the victors. Their writers can impose on history their version of the war they won, while their statesmen can impose the terms of peace". -- Winston Churchill "The first law of history is not to dare to utter falsehood; the second is not to fear to speak the truth". -- Pope Leo X "We should not forget that in the long run the Pope in Rome is a greater enemy of National Socialism than Churchill or Roosevelt".

-- Reinhard Heydrich In 1901, Winston Churchill ominously predicted that the wars of men would be far bloodier and more costly than the wars of kings. How prophetically accurate this proved to be for the Twentieth Century -- by far, and by all standards and accounts, the bloodiest century mankind has ever seen. Tens of millions of innocent civilians were deported, tortured, and murdered. Millions more were left homeless; and millions never learned the fate of their loved ones. The world was consumed by the madness of war, and many of its leaders were no longer controlling events, but rather being controlled by them.

Europe, the birthplace of western civilization, found itself suddenly an amorphous battlefield where the boundaries did less to separate good from evil, and Christianity from neo-paganism and atheism, than it served to distinguish one totalitarian regime from another. To many, humanity, indeed God, must have seemed dead. Perhaps one of history's most difficult tasks is to place oneself in the historical context of a time, or an ethos, or an individual, and to see that very world as someone living then saw it. This is difficult when one considers that we have the comfort and perspective of knowing how events unfolded, or, what Belloc called, "the distorting medium of our later knowledge". (The Great Heresies.) To a Pole in 1939, to an Englishman or Frenchman in June of 1940, to any European Jew, prior to or during the war, how impossible it must have been to foresee an outcome other than complete totalitarian control of most of the world. This is the background against which we find the Catholic Church and Eugenio Pacelli, Pope Pius XII, as World War II begins to rage in Europe.

A world in which, to many, democracy appeared a failed experiment, and the world seemed to be faced with two mutually opposed, yet hardly antithetical ideologies: German Fascism and Russian Bolshevism. For Pope Pius XII and many Catholics and Christians in Europe, this period in history would be their finest. Much has been written to defame Pius XII and the Church during World War II and the Holocaust. Likewise, much has been written in their defense.

Some attacks on the Pope have targeted his putative "silence" during the Holocaust, and have thereby -- sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly -attempted to make Pius into a Deputy of Hitler, not the Vicar of Christ. To make or refute such claims one should have a more definite, concrete, and substantial understanding of the economic, political, and religious setting in Europe, the nature and history of anti-Semitism - particularly as regards Germany - the personalities that would drive events, the politics of diplomacy, the modern Church in the world, and the burdensome responsibility that is the Papacy. Eugenio Pacelli was born in Rome, on March 2, 1876, to a noble Roman family that had a long history of official interaction and dealings with and for the Vatican-generally not a propitious association for anyone in Italian politics or public life at the time. The years leading up to surrender of the Papal States in 1870 were marked by revolution, intrigue, and nationalistic fervor on the Italian peninsula, which did not always allow for a healthy co-existence with the Catholic Church. Pius IX had called himself a "prisoner of the Vatican", a notion Pacelli would come to understand during his own reign as pontiff. After home-schooling and formal education, Pacelli entered the seminary in 1893, choosing the priesthood over studying law.

He was ordained on April 2, 1899, and continued in his studies for a doctorate in canon and civil law. In 1901, Pope Leo X appointed Don Pacelli to the Congregation of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs. From an early time, then, the future Pope was given an insight into the politics and diplomacy of the Vatican. His career would continue to blossom through the papacies of Pius X (1903-1914), and Benedict XV (1914-1922) as pro-Secretary of State and later Secretary of the same congregation where he started his priestly service.

In 1914, The Great War erupted in Europe. A series of alliances dragged nation after nation into a war that would take millions of lives until an armistice was reached in 1918. Worse still, this war, in ways few could have seen or predicted, would lay the foundations for the far more egregious Second World War. Pope Benedict made several attempts to bring the warring parties to peace, but all failed. Don Pacelli would face similar frustrations later in his career as a diplomat, and later in his own papacy. While Father Pacelli polished his skills of diplomacy, other figures central to the events that would shape World War II were taking categorically divergent steps.

In England, Winston Churchill had been named first lord of the Admiralty in 1914. After failing at successive naval campaigns at Antwerp and later during the Gallipoli campaign, his career seemed at and end. Franklin D. Roosevelt, after being re-elected to Senate from New York, was named Secretary of the Navy by President Woodrow Wilson. He would serve at that post until the end of the war. Both Churchill and Roosevelt were marked by their aristocratic bearings, which permitted them, at appropriate and timely occasions, to become larger than life to their constituents. Roosevelt and Churchill were also marked by their unconventional approaches to the political realities of their day: war, depression, upheaval and uncertainty.

Both were successful at transforming their weaknesses into strengths. Each had the luxury of being the leader of a great, established, and industrialized western power. In sharp contrast to the leaders of America and the British Empire were Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. Neither descended from aristocracy.

Each had failed in the idealistic realm: Hitler as an artist, Stalin as a seminarian. Both had distinguished themselves-at least by their own standards, either during or in the aftermath of the Great War. Both worked as informants for a time, ironically for the very ideological causes they would someday come to personify. Both Nazism and Communism ultimately came to be defined by the volition, obsession, and ideology of each man, and the terror that resulted from their actions. Hitler and Stalin were responsible for murder of tens of millions of people, notwithstanding the millions of Soviet and German soldiers killed in combat. To say that choosing between Hitler and Stalin is choosing between the least of the two greatest evils the world has ever known would not be an exaggeration.

Pius XI and Pius XII understood that a Europe dominated by atheistic communism or pagani stic national socialism could never be condoned. Therefore, the papacy chose to condemn, with great consistency, the innate errors of the tenets of national socialism and communism. Shakespeare wrote that there were three kinds of men: Men who are born great; men who achieve greatness; and, men who have greatness thrust upon them. It could be argued that Churchill and Roosevelt would be of the first order, Stalin and Hitler of the second, (if one understands 'greatness' in terms of power). Eugenio Pacelli, however, does not fit quite as comfortably into one of these categories as his contemporaries did. Perhaps the nature of the papacy in the modern world-given the limited means of any Pope to affect world events outside of church teaching and diplomacy-makes this appropriately the case.

In 1933, Cardinal Pacelli signed a Concordat with Germany in the hope of preserving the life of the Church in Germany. For this early diplomatic solution to the Nazi question, some have criticized and excoriated Pacelli. Clearly the Pope understood his obligation to be to the Catholics of Germany. In light of the blanket accusations made against Pius Xii by Rolf Hochhuth in his play The Deputy, it is necessary not only for Catholic apologists to respond by addressing these claims, but also the responsibility of any serious historian who makes any claim to objectivity. The records of the time, from newspaper headlines praising Pius XII to articles in L'Osservaotre Romano and condemning Nazi policies, from minutes of diplomatic exchanges between Pius XI and Pius XII and foreign representatives of the Fascist governments in Germany and Italy, clearly show that Pius XII was no friend to any totalitarian regime. And if Pius XII was the 'Deputy' of Adolf Hitler, this seems to have been lost on the Nazis.

As Cardinal Secretary of State, Pacelli, with help of some German bishops, drafted the Papal Encyclical, MIT BRENNENDER SORGE, or "With Burning Anxiety". ("Sorge" can also be translated to mean "sorrow" and "worry". ) This encyclical, the only encyclical ever to be written and issued by the Church in German, Pope Pius XI denounced Nazi paganism and racism. The document was smuggled into Germany in March, 1937, and read from all Catholic pulpits. The secrecy with which SORGE was smuggled into Germany and read without the foreknowledge of the National Socialist government, or the SS, infuriated the Nazis, and made them suspicious of any underground pipeline in the Church that was able to conduct operations with such a high degree of stealth and efficiency. The encyclical did not specifically mention Hitler by name, or the term National Socialism, but it firmly condemned Nazi doctrines.

Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the State, or a particular form of State, or the depositories or Power, or any other fundamental value of human community-however necessary and honorable be their function in worldly things-whoever raises these notions above their standard value and divinize's them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created by God; he is far from the true faith in God and from the concept of life which that faith upholds. (Mit Brennender Sorge, n. 8) Despite the difficulties and obstacles, Pope Pius XI, with the assistance of Cardinal Pacelli, must have considered that he'd spoken out with unequivocal clarity, prudent diplomatic language notwithstanding. But this, understood in the context of preventing a more egregious reaction from the Nazis, makes the strategy of the Church hierarchy, even with the advantage of hindsight, a very sensible one. In spite of the encyclical denouncing the pagan, racist, and false banner of truth that the national socialist government in Germany represented, many still condemn Pius XII as having been "silent".

Although the Pope was despised and excoriated in both German and Italian propaganda as well as private discourse among fascist leaders and sympathizers in Europe, many argue that he was, in some manner, an ally. These are categorical and fundamental falsehoods. The Nazis viewed the Pius, the Papacy, and the Church as an enemy. European-primarily Italian-Jews saw Pius XII as an ally, and a protector.

Opposition forces in within Germany, composed mainly of military and political figures, saw the Pope as a potential intermediary between their movement and the Allied governments if a coup against Hitler was to be pulled off. Many in Germany believed that Hitler would bring about the ultimate destruction of Germany. In his book, The Wisdom of The Popes, Thomas Craughwell, notes that such Germans as Hans Oster, Hans von Dohnanyi, and General Ludwig Beck-who participated and died in the failed putsch of July 20, 1944-were among the loosely aligned resistance in Germany. Craughwell notes that Josef Muller, a devout Catholic and active member of Germany's resistance, went to Rome in 1939, hoping to establish contact with the Allies through Pius XII, informing them that a coup d'etat against Hitler was a possibility. In February, 1940, Muller returned to Germany with the details of peace should Hitler be overthrown. Regrettably, within months the war resumed against Denmark, and Norway, with Belgium, France, and Britain soon to follow.

Perhaps the most important question to be asked is this: What political or military power did Pius XII have to deter Hitler from carrying out mass murder? When asked once if a decision would draw moral condemnation from the Church, Stalin was said to have uttered flippantly, "How many divisions does the Pope have?" In one context, this statement is very accurate. There were no papal states, or papal army to speak of, barring the Palatine and Swiss Guard. And what blame is placed at the feet of Roosevelt, or Churchill, or Neville Chamberlain, for that matter? Some have argued that excommunication would have been an effective tool. It is highly unlikely that Adolf Hitler, a superstitious pagan, would have stood in the snow at Canossa, begging the Pope to lift a ban of excommunication.

The closest the Allies came was Munich, which, instead of becoming the answer to peace, only served Hitler's purposes. It's almost as if Hitler and his henchmen are to be regarded by history as having committed the moral equivalency of youthful indiscretion: misguided youths who were given the keys to the kingdom; Pius XII, a negligent neighbor who failed to do his civic duty. Only he did do his duty-and more. And no one is responsible for the atrocities carried out by the Nazis, save the Nazis themselves. There is no moral equivalency between those responsible for the mass murder of millions of innocent people and those who attempted, successfully or not, to stop them.

And if one is compelled to brand a leader from World War II-aside from Hitler-"Guilty", then it seems odd that it should be Pius XII with such a variety to choose from. In his book, Papal Sin, Garry Wills, a former Jesuit seminarian, produced a work that broadly impugns the papacy, the church hierarchy, and, more or less, every catholic who lived in this century, for the Holocaust. The church is itself complicit in the Holocaust, according to Wills, as anti-Semitism is part of the church. It is impossible for him to distinguish between those nominal Catholics who took part in the atrocities of the war in Europe and the church. (He is able to this in no small part thanks to one essential ecclesiological interpretation from Vatican II: The church's infinitely complex definition of itself.

Mr. Wills is unable to accept the church's teaching of the 'Church as Mystery", and therefore, simply cannot understand her.) In sum, Wills does little more than use circular logic to arrive at conclusions which might appear preconceived to a first-year psychology student. He uses statistics to aver that the Pope is wrong on issues such as contraception because many western Catholics see merits in contraception and abortion -- presumably making it thereby morally licit. This begs the question, would a poll today showing that most Catholics favored the deportation of Jews make such an action licit? One gets the sense, reading Wills, that the average Catholic has done more to contribute to the Holocaust than Adolf Eichmann. (One also wonders if Wills feels any compunction at being Catholic who makes a living Catholic bashing.) It could be argued that Pope Pius XII's treatment of the Jews during World War II was an enlightened one, considering the predominant attitudes of anti-Semitism on continental Europe at that time. The tendency of modern historians to read the present into the past, dividing historical figures into progressives, or reactionaries, inherently flaws any historical perspective.

It is necessary to understand figures, movements, and ideas in history as they understood themselves, and not to use retroactive arguments and judgments, by modern standards, to praise or condemn them. Many see Catholicism-primarily the papacy -- as the enemy of progress, an antediluvian institution inherently opposed to unfettered man actualizing his seemingly limitless potential. Contrary to what some historians may think, it might aver that Pius XII's treatment of the Jewish question was rather enlightened and progressive for his time. Today, anti-Semitism is seldom espoused publicly in the United States or Western Europe, and is even more rarely backed by any individual or group with a claim of popular support.

However, in the 1930's in Europe, even in the United States, anti-Semitism was a conscious element within the culture. Many Catholic intellectuals and priests in Europe thought that there were simply too many Jews in the predominantly Catholic countries of Europe. They were likewise thought to have an inability, or lack of desire to, assimilate within their nation and develop a sense of being, say, German, Italian, or French. Therefore, it would stand to reason that this, coupled with a perceived disproportionate economic influence, and not the murder of Jesus Christ-two millennia after the fact-was the reason for Europe's anti-Semitism. Also, accurately or not, Jews were considered to be the bearers of destructive cultural modernism, immorality, Marxism, Freemasonry, and the like. As recently as 2000, the Italian president and an Italian Archbishop condemned the booming rate at which Muslims are immigrating to, and repopulating, their nation.

Some voiced contempt at these statements, but by and large they went unnoticed. Many Catholics viewed-probably more then than today-their culture, nation, and identity as fundamentally Christian in nature; to wit, the remnant of Christendom. Anything exclusive of this would be necessarily treated as alien to that nation's ambitions, aspirations, and faith predicated destiny. This attitude-and Church teaching-did not make allowance for Catholics to be uncharitable toward Jews or take part in acts of violence against them. It can, nevertheless, be understood that these attitudes did not create a welcome environment everywhere for Jews, but that does not mean that deportation and extermination were logical consequences, as some have suggested. An accurate assessment of Catholic thought at the time-typical of post-Middle Age Christian attitudes-would be generally opposed to violence against Jews, but in favor of cultural, religious autonomy, independent of Jewish influence.

(One may be tempted to view this with disgust and outrage, but for the same reason, Christian influence is not usually a welcome influence in other countries whose cultures are rooted in their religious traditions, such as nations in the Middle East, including Israel.) Pius XII's putatively roundabout, indirect appeals to man through encyclicals, and public addresses and statements are undoubtedly marked with diplomatic precision, but that should not be mistaken for vacillation, weakness, or moral indifference. In his 1942 Christmas address, for example, Pius XII appealed to the world to take a hard, long look at "the ruins of a social order which has given such tragic proof of its ineptitude", vowing never to permit a calamity such as National Socialism afflict the world again. He continued: "Mankind owes that vow to the hundreds of persons who, without any fault on their part, sometimes only because of their nationality or race, have been consigned to death or slow extermination". (Lapide, The Last Three Popes and the Jews.) Such a condemnation could have applied to any form of persecution, and it is important to remember that while the Nazis were the most visible example of tyranny on the continent, others existed. How could the Pope, in good conscience, condemn the Nazis without condemning Stalinist Russia in the same breath? And the countless others who died at the hands of ruthless leaders: were their lives less valuable?

What of the 3 million Catholics murdered? Is their significance lost on account of numbers? There is no evidence that the Pope ever acted out of personal fear of Nazi retaliation against the Vatican, while that threat was in fact a real one. Nazi Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop believed it likely that the Holy See planned to renounce its traditional neutral attitude and take up a political position against Germany.

On March 11, 1940, von Ribbentrop called on Pius XII, the Pontiff is reported to have repeatedly protested the treatment of Jews. As the foreign minister responded by speaking of the Reich's invincibility, the Pope withdrew a paperwork from a drawer and, as Israeli historian Pinchas Lapide tells it, "began a recital-in perfect German-of all the racial persecutions and violations of the concordats, both the German and the Polish ones, committed by the Nazis, quoting the dates and particulars of all major crimes". (Lapide, The Last Three Popes and the Jews.) It is foolish to suppose, as a few have argued, that a papal condemnation of Nazi atrocities would have had any positive effect. Men committing genocide weren't going to reconsider their actions because the Pope told them what they were doing contravened natural law.

If they didn't already know this at some level, it was too late. It is far more likely-as evidenced by formal condemnations and the Nazi reactions elsewhere-that the Nazis would have responded more severely and harshly. So what would have been the prudent thing to do? Actions speak louder than words.

Much of this is lost on our western culture today. It is easier for us to watch a movie such as Schindler's List, or read a book review praising a work by a "Catholic" who castigates the Papacy, Eugenio Pacelli, and Catholics during the World War II. But even Oskar Schindler collaborated, ate, and drank with Nazis-the very Nazis who were murdering innocent people by the bushel. His 'silence' in the Holocaust saved the lives of 1,100 Jews. Pius XII cannot fairly be condemned for silence. Diplomatic language perhaps, but that very diplomatic language gave him, and the Church, the cover under which they were able to save hundreds of thousands.

The estimates of Jews hidden by the Catholic Church vary anywhere from 400,000 to 860,000. (Lapide, The Last Three Popes and the Jews.) Some argue that principles are more meaningful than numbers; that the Church failed is evidenced by the Holocaust. While the Pope and the Church often lacked immediate means to impact events in distant regions in Europe, the situation in Italy was of quite a different nature. The number of Jews hidden in Rome and outside the city-including the Vatican-numbered into the thousands.

New evidence suggests that Hitler actually wanted to storm the Vatican after Italy's capitulation in 1943. In Pius XII, Pope of the Jews, Italian historian Andrea Tornielli reveals that Hitler, in one of his frequent outbursts, ordered the destruction of the Vatican, the deportation of Pius XII to Liechtenstein, and the establishment of a puppet papacy. This was to be Hitler's reprisal for the Pontiff's reported assistance to Jews and the Church's opposition to National Socialism. Tornielli contends that Hitler was so enraged by the signing of an armistice between the Allies and the Badoglio government in September of 1943, that he wanted the SS to destroy the Vatican with "blood and fire". This plan did not materialize, however. The commander of the SS in Italy, General Karl Wolff, convinced the Fuhrer that this course of action would backfire in their faces.

The unsolicited endorsements given to Pius XII, praising his efforts throughout the war, leave one to wonder how his contemporaries could have been so wrong? The serious argument today seems to be whether or not the Pope should have formally condemned the Nazis, excommunicated Hitler, his immediate circle, and any Catholics who were Nazis. While it might be reassuring to Catholics today, with the comfort of hindsight, to argue that the moral authority of the Church would have been reinforced had an excommunication or specific condemnation been issued, one has to wonder at what the cost in human lives would have been. There appears to be among these revisionist historians a need to condemn not the national leaders of the time, or any individual exercising the power that accompanies that leadership, but rather anyone with a claim to moral authority-as if a morally authoritative assertion is a more effective means in dealing with Machiavellian tyranny. The manner in which some indict the Church and her members for silence, active participation -- even active participation and complicity through their silence -- seems to presuppose that they would have openly condemned Nazism and the Jewish persecutions as surely as if they were openly protesting the Vietnam War in America's 1960's.

What is lost on them are the consequences countless suffered for their vociferousness. "History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which were brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools". -- Ambrose Bierce

Bibliography

The Conspiracy Against Hitler in the Twilight of the War, Harold C. Deutsch, 1968 The Defamation of Pius XII, Ralph Mcinerney, St.
Augustine's Press, 2001 The Deputy, Rolf Hochhuth, 1963, ? The Vatican in the Age of the Dictators (1922-1945), Anthony Rhodes, ? The Germans, Gordon A.
Craig, New York Press, 1982 Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII, John Cromwell, Viking Press, ? Hitler, the War and the Pope, Ronald J.
Rychlak, ? The Last Three Popes and the Jews, Patches Lapide, Souvenir Press, 1967 Papal Sin, Gary Wills, ? Pius XII: Greatness Dishonored, Michael O'Carroll, Roman Catholic Books, Pius XII and the Second World War, Pierre Bet, ? The Pope and Poland in World War Two, Robert A.