Pope Pius XII, the Holocaust, and the Cold War

Holocaust and Genocide Studies

Volumn 12, Issue 2, 1998, Pages 233-256

  Phayer, Michael ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0002409459     PISSN: 87566583     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/hgs/12.2.233     Document Type: Article

References (75)

1. I use the subjunctive imperative here because if statesmen were impressed by Pius's foresight, they paid him little respect in their papers. See, for example, Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (New York, 1969)
2. and Kai Bird, The Chairman: John J. McCloy - The Making of the American Establishment (New York, 1992)
3. Julius Döpfner, The Questioning Church (London, 1964), p. 83
4. see also, Léon Papeleux, Les silences de Pie XII (Brussels, 1980), p. 168
5. The best collection of church statements is in Rolf Rendtorff and Hans Hermann Henrix, eds., Die Kirchen und das Judentum (Paderborn, 1988), see p. 244 for the quoted statement
6. Catholic University of America Archives (CUA), Muench papers: 37/1-4
7. See Muench's diary entries from June 19, 1946 to October 23, 1946. On Eisenhower, see Frank M. Buscher, The U.S. War Crimes Trial Program in Germanty, 1946-1955 (New York, 1989), p. 18
8. Vera Bücker, Die Schulddiskussion im deutschen Katholizismus nach 1945 (Bochum, 1989), pp. 15-18
9. see also Konrad Repgen, "Die Erfahrung des Dritten Reiches und das Selbstvertändniss der deutschen Katholiken nach 1945," Die Zeit nach 1945 als Thema kirchlicher Zeitgeschichte, eds. Victor Conzemius et al. (Göttingen, 1988), p. 134
10. and Karl-Dietrich Bracher, "Problems of the German Resistance," The Challenge of the Third Reich, ed. Hedley Bull (Oxford, 1986), pp. 57-76
11. Heinz Mussinghoff, Rassenwahn in Münster: Der Judenpogrom 1938 und Bischof Clemens August Graf von Galen (Regensberg: Münster, 1989), p. 84
12. Robert Graham et al., eds., Actes et Documents du Saint Siège Relatifs à la Seconde Guerre Mondiale (Vatican, 1965-67)
13. For example, the Jewish historian L. Falconi, The Silence of Pius XII (London, 1970)
14. and the Catholic John F. Morley, Vatican Diplomacy and the Jews During the Holocaust, 1939-1943 (New York, 1980)
15. Studies of antisemitism abound. Those dealing especially with Christian antisemitism include Edward H. Flannery, The Anguish of the Jews: Twenty-three Centuries of Anti-Semitism (New York, 1985)
16. and Friedrich Heer, God's First Love: Christians and Jews Over the 2000 Years (New York, 1970)
17. More recently, Gavin I. Langmuir has distinguished between Christian anti-Judaism and antisemitism, concluding that it is "morally lazy to ask whether Christianity was responsible for Auschwitz;" see his, History, Religion, and Antisemitism (Berkeley, 1990), p. 367
18. Friedrich Heer, on the other hand, links the anti-Judaism of the Protestant German Christian movement closely to the Holocaust. Jakob Katz rejects the notion that Christian antisemitism culminated in the Holocaust. He points to the fact of a traditional church toleration of Jews based on belief in their ultimate conversion. See Jakob Katz, From Prejudice to Destruction: Antisemitism, 1700-1933 (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 321-23
19. Eva Fleischner contends that Christian and Nazi antisemitism are distinct but that the former fed the latter; see Eva Fleischner, Judaism in German Christian Theology Since 1945 (Metuchen, NJ, 1975), the introduction
20. See also, Burkart Schneider, Pius XII (Göttingen, 1968), p. 32
21. George O. Kent, "Pope Pius and Germany: Some Aspects of German-Vatican Relations, 1933-1943," American Historical Review 70:1 (Oct. 1964), p. 65
22. Klemens von Klemperer, German Resistance Against Hitler: The Search for Allies Abroad, 1938-1945 (Oxford, 1992), p. 170ff
23. When the American Jesuit Vincent A. McCormick and the General of the Jesuit order Wladimir Lédochowski attempted to restrain their fellow Jesuit, Robert Leiber, from becoming involved in these negotiations, Pius told them to mind their own business; see James Hennesey, "American Jesuit in Wartime Rome: The Diary of Vincent A. McCormick, S.J., 1942-1945," Mid-America 56:1 (Jan. 1974), pp. 32-33
24. Volker Berghahn points out that even those involved in the July 20, 1944 attempt on Hitler's life intended to roll the Allied invaders back to the beaches of Normandy after taking control of Germany. See Volker Berghahn, "Resisting the Pax Americana?" America and the Shaping of German Society, 1945-1955, ed. Michael Ermath, p. 20
25. John S. Conway, "Catholicism and the Jews," Judaism and Christianity Under the Impact of National Socialism, eds. Otto Dov Kulka and P. R. Mendes-Flohr (Jerusalem: Historical Society of Israel and the Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History, 1987), pp. 439-40
26. Historian Peter Hoffmann writes that Roosevelt's personal envoy to the Vatican, Myron Taylor, was primarily concerned with preventing Pius from making proposals for a compromise peace after the Allies had made an unconditional surrender their announced objective in 1942. See, "Roncalli in the Second World War: Peace Initiatives, the Greek Famine and the Persecution of the Jews," Journal of Ecclesiastical History 40:1 (Jan. 1989), p. 77
27. Leonidas E. Hill, Die Weizsäcker Papiere, 1933-1950 (Frankfurt, 1974), p. 398
28. José M. Sánchez, "The Popes and Nazi Germany: The View from Madrid," paper presented at the spring 1995 meeting of the American Catholic Historical Association, p. 17
29. Hansjakob Stehle, Geheimdiplomatie im Vatikan: Die Päpste und die Kommunisten (Zurich, 1993), p. 201
30. and Owen Chadwick, Britain and the Vatican During the Second World War (Cambridge, 1986) pp. 199, 213
31. Osborne's 1945 Annual Report, Rome, Feb. 22, 1946, in Veröffentlichungen der Kommission für Zeitgeschichte, Series A, Vol. 38, ed. Ludwig Volk, Akten Deutscher Bishöfe über die Lage der Kirche, 1933-1945, p. 902
32. Pius made remarks similar to those addressed to Preysing after the bombing of the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Rome in July, 1943, but added, ". . . almost in the center of Rome. . . is our Vatican City, an independent State and an independent neutral State, which shelters priceless treasures, sacred not only to the Apostolic See but to the whole Catholic world"; see, Reginald F. Walker, ed., Pius of Peace (Dublin, 1945), p. 58
33. See my discussion of this in "The Catholic Resistance Circle in Berlin and German Catholic Bishops During the Holocaust," Holocaust and Genocide Studies 7:2 (Fall 1993), p. 224
34. Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness (New York, 1983), p. 319
35. Stanford J. Shaw, Turkey and the Holocaust (New York, 1993), pp. 277 and 390
36. Freiburger Rundbrief 28 (1976)
37. Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich points out this in his review of the Vatican's documentary series, Actes et Documents, p. 126
38. Freiburger Rundbrief 1:1 (1948), p. 13
39. Johannes Willebrands, "Vatican II and the Jews: Twenty Years Later," Christian Jewish Relations 18:1 (March 1985), p. 19
40. See, for example, Eva Fleischner, "Response to Emil Fackenheim's "The Holocaust and the State of Israel," Auschwitz: Beginning of a New Era? ed. Eva Fleischner (New York, 1977), pp. 225-35
41. The Vatican, the first state to recognize the Federal Republic of Germany, was one of the last to recognize Israel. At the time of the founding of the Jewish state a high Vatican official in the Secretariat of State is reputed to have remarked that "it is unthinkable that the Holy Land finds itself in the hands of Christ's murderers." See Kurt Hruby, "Antizionismus, Antijudaismus und christlicher Antizionismus," Freiburger Rundbrief 22:81-84 (1970), pp. 11-18
42. IZG, Bishop Albert to Thieme, Mainz, Aug. 19, 1950
43. For an overview of the post-Holocaust German Church, see my chapter "Die Katholische Kirche, der Vatikan und der Holocaust," Der Umgang mit dem Holocaust nach 1945, Europa-USA-Israel, ed. Rolf Steininger (Vienna, 1994), pp. 137-46
44. For a specific discussion of the German Church's postwar reaction to the Holocaust, see my article, "The Postwar German Catholic Debate Over Holocaust Guilt," Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte 8:2 (1995), pp. 426-39
45. Werner Blessing, "'Deutschland in Not, wir im Glauben . . .' Kirche und Kirchenvolk in einer katholischen Region, 1933-1949," Von Stalingrad zur Waehrungsreform, eds. Martin Broszat et al. (Munich, 1988), p. 68ff
46. Annual Report of Osborne for 1945, Rome, Feb. 22, 1946, in the Public Record Office PRO), London, Foreign Office (FO) 371/60 803, document reprinted in VKZ Reihe A, 38, p. 904
47. For my analysis of this statement, see Frank Buscher and Michael Phayer, "German Catholic Bishops and the Holocaust, 1940-1953," German Studies Review 11:3 (Oct., 1988), pp. 163-85
48. John Hellman, "The Jews in the 'New Middle Ages,'" Jacques Maritain and the Jews, ed. Robert Royal (South Bend, 1994), pp. 89-103
49. Maritain's wife, Raissa, was a Jewish convert to Catholicism. See also, Jacques Maritain, A Christian Looks at the Jewish Question (New York, 1939)
50. Dieter Froitzheim, ed., Kardinal Frings (Köln, 1980), p. 263
51. Repgen, "Die Erfahrung," p. 145
52. There is no satisfactory biography of Muench. Coleman Barry, O.S.B., American Nuncio: Cardinal Aloisius Muench (Collegeville, MN, 1969), lacks familiarity with the critical questions of German history
53. Frederic Spotts, who wrote knowledgeably on these questions, mistakenly took Muench for only a front-man for Pius' German Jesuit advisers, Ivo Zeiger and Robert Leiber; see, Frederic Spotts. The Churches and Politics in Germany (Middletown, CN, 1973), p. 34
54. Frank Stern (trans. William Templer), The Whitewashing of the Yellow Badge (New York, 1992), pp. 78-9
55. Graf v. Galen, Rechtsbewusstsein und Rechtsunsicherheit (Rome, 1946). Printed as MS
56. Jean E. Smith, Lucius D. Clay: An American Life (New York, 1990), pp. 301-302
57. Ernst Klee, Persilscheine und falsche Pässe (Frankfurt, 1992)
58. Loftus and Aarons, see p. 25, for example, where bishops Hudal and Montini are linked, and chapter five, which deals with Croat fugitives: "It is virtually inconceivable that the key officials in the Vatican hierarchy were ignorant of Draganovic's Nazi-smuggling network," p. 119. Ernst Klee, who specializes in ecclesiastical "muckraking" for the distinguished German weekly Die Zeit, is the only person to have gained access to Hudal's papers in Rome
59. M. Shelah, "The Catholic Church in Croatia, the Vatican and the Murder of the Croatian Jews," Remembering for the Future, I, p. 268
60. CAM File Ambassade I., Maritain to the Conférence Internationale Extraordinaire Pour Combattre l'Antisemitisme, Rome, July 28, 1947
61. CAM File Ambassade I., Letter of Maritain to Montini (copy), Rome, July 12, 1946
62. Iwona Irwin-Zarecka, "Poland After the Holocaust," Remembering for the Future, I., pp. 143-55. The author points out that Kielce was hardly an isolated event
63. NA, RG 54, Box 28, Bernstein to Gen. J.T. McNarney, September 14, 1946. This report differs substantially from the recollections of Rabbi Herbert A. Friedman, Bernstein's aide, as recorded in Moment (October, 1996), p. 16. Friedman asserts that Pope Pius was downright critical of the response of the Polish hierarchy, headed by Cardinal Hlond, to the Kielce massacre. Bernstein's minute does not reflect this. Furthermore, Friedman writes in Moment that Pius promised to issue a letter, to be delivered to all parish pastors in Poland, in which he would "forbid pogroms against Jews." It would be highly unusual for a pope in modern times to bypass the hierarchy of a nation in order to give unilateral instructions regarding a topic as controversial as antisemitism in Poland. I have found no evidence that Pope Pius actually did this. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's collection of interviews includes one by Rabbi Friedman taken in 1992. Here Friedman relates the indifference of both Cardinal Hlond and the Jewish leader of the Communist Party in Poland to the Kielce massacre. But, unlike his strong assertions in Moment about Pius XII's dismay over the massacre, Friedman's two-and-a-half hour taped interview contains no references at all to the pope
64. Michael Marrus, The Unwanted (New York, 1985), pp. 325-26
65. Constantin Goschler, "The United States and Wiedergutmachung for Victims of Nazi Persecution: From Leadership to Disengagement," Holocaust and Shilumim: The Policy of Wiedergutmachung in the Early 1950s, ed. Axel Frohn, Military Law no. 59 (Nov. 1947), p. 9
66. IZG, Karl Thieme to Bishop Landersdorfer, Loerrach, Switzerland, July 10, 1950
67. Ronald Webster, "Jewish Returnees to West Germany After 1945: Why They Returned and How They Fared," YIVO Annual 21 (1993), pp. 33-66
68. IZG, 163/49; see the comment by Berlin s famous Pastor Grüber in the Freiburger Rundbrief 1:4 (July 1949), p. 12
69. Two cases that made national news over a considerable period of time were those of the fired Württemberg bureaucrat Otto Kuester, who was "overly" zealous in enforcing restitution regulations, and of the survivor Norbert Wollheim, whose case against slave labor employer I. G. Farben was successful; see the excellent account of this by Wolfgang Benz, Zwischen Hitler und Adenauer (Frankfurt, 1991), ch. 8
70. Robert Hürtgen, "Untergang und Neubeginn, Köln in den Jahren 1942-1946," Kardinal Frings, ed. Dieter Froitzheim, (Köln, 1980), p. 36
71. Compare this interpretation with that of Hansjakob Stehle, who believes that Pius acted out of uncertainty, indecisiveness, fear, and weakness; see Geheimdiplomatie, pp. 194 and 224
72. Susan Zuccotti would argue that Pius was less zealous than other Italians in saving Jews; see her fine essay "Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust: The Case in Italy," The Italian Refuge: Rescue of Jews During the Holocaust, eds. I. Herzer, K. Voigt, J. Burgwin (Washington, 1989), pp. 254-70
73. Owen Chadwick, The Christian Church in the Cold War (London, 1992), p. 15
74. Several authors have reported that Pius, as a result of the audience he gave the French survivor Jules Isaac, deleted the word "perfidious" in the Good Friday liturgy. See, for example, Geoffrey Wigoder, Jewish-Christian Relations Since the Second World War (New York, 1988), pp. 76-7
75. This is incorrect. Rather, Pope John struck the word from the liturgy. Later, when a careless celebrant used the word "perfidious" in Pope John's presence during the Good Friday liturgy in St. Peters, the pope stopped the service and had the phrase repeated, omitting the offensive word; see Freiburger Rundbrief 15:57-60 (January 1964), p. 109