84 Pollard, The Vatican and Italian Fascism, 154, 187–89; Pallenberg, Inside the Vatican, 31. Pacelli helped Pius XI draft a series of anticommunist decrees. See generally Godman, Hitler and the Vatican, 99.
85 See generally, Pollard, Money and the Rise of the Modern Papacy, 176–77.
86 Owen Chadwick, Britain and the Vatican During the Second World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 28.
87 Frederic Sondern Jr., “The Pope: A Great Man and a Great Statesman Works for the Peace of the World,” Life, December 4, 1939, 86–87. For Pacelli’s attitude toward communism, and how it affected his tenure later as Pope, see Ludwig Volk, Das Reichskonkordat von 20 Julie 1933 (Ostfildern: Matthias Grünewald Verlag, 1976), 64–65. See also the concerns of the Vatican about unrelenting oppression of religion in Russia: Memorandum, Alleged Religious Persecution in Russia, Arthur Henderson, Foreign Office, March 3, 1930, 24/210/24, 171–74, Cabinet Papers, National Archives, Kew, UK.
88 Alvarez, Spies in the Vatican, 130–31, 133, 141–43; Coppa, Controversial Concordats, 27.
89 Quadragesimo Anno, May 1931; Nova Impendet, October 1931; and Caritate Christi Compulsit, May 1932.
90 Claudia Carlen, IHM, ed., The Papal Encyclicals, 5 vols. (Ypsilanti, MI: Pierian Press, 1990), vol. 3, 431–32, 475.
91 Ibid., Vol. 3, 481.
92 Gollin, Worldly Goods, 440; Lo Bello, The Vatican Empire, 26.
93 Gollin, Worldly Goods, 131, 451–52; Pollard, Money and the Rise of the Modern Papacy, 165–66.
94 Archivo Famiglia Nogara, Personal Papers of Bernardino Nogara, Rome, diary entry for February 15, 1932, cited in Pollard, Money and the Rise of the Modern Papacy.
Chapter 7: Prelude to War
1 Quoted in Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, 106.
2 Ibid.
3 Carroll, Constantine’s Sword, 495–97; Phayer, Pius XII, the Holocaust, and the Cold War, 139.
4 Anthony Rhodes, The Vatican in the Age of the Dictators, 1922–1945 (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1973), 167; Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, 133.
5 Coppa, Controversial Concordats, 22–23; see generally Klaus Scholder, The Churches and the Third Reich, trans. John Bowden (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988), 52–73; 146–67.
6 There is some dispute among historians as to whether the Nazis or the Vatican made the first overture to negotiate a concordat. The credible evidence is that the Third Reich put out a feeler to which the Vatican was receptive. The talks with Germany were important for Secretary of State Pacelli, since he feared that his career would be finished if the agreement turned sour and he was also blamed for having chased the Third Reich for the deal. For a summary of the conflicting sources, see generally Coppa, Controversial Concordats, 129–30; and Besier, The Holy See and Hitler’s Germany, 165–67.
7 Germania 1937–38, Pos. 720, fasc. 329, 23–24, ASV, AES. Pacelli negotiated on his own, much to the consternation of the German bishops, who were largely shut out of the agreement by which they would be most affected: Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, 145–46. See also Reinhold Niebuhr, “Pius XI and His Successor,” The Nation, January 30, 1937, 120–22.
8 Carroll, Constantine’s Sword, 508.
9 The storm troopers included SS, Schutzstaffel, and SA (Sturm Abteilung).
10 Clifford J. Hynning, Germany: Preliminary Report on Selected Financial Laws, Decrees and Regulations, Vol. 2, Appendices (Washington, DC: Treasury Department, Office of the General Counsel, 1944), E48.
11 Gregg J. Rickman, Conquest and Redemption: A History of Jewish Assets from the Holocaust (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2006), 10.
12 Hynning, Germany: Preliminary Report, E48-50. See also Gerald D. Feldman, Allianz and the German Insurance Business, 1933–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 67.
13 The Nazis created different categories. A person with two Jewish grandparents was considered fully Jewish. Those Germans were classified as Geltungsjude (legally Jewish). One Jewish grandparent meant the descendant was not Aryan and those were called Mischlinge (mixed breeds). The Nazis did not apply their racial laws to the groups uniformly. An estimated 150,000 German soldiers who fought for the Reich were either Mischlinge or Geltungsjude who had earlier converted. See Bryan Mark Rigg, Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers: The Untold Story of Nazi Racial Laws and Men of Jewish Descent in the German Military (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004), 7. Document Archives, Laws and Legislation, NSDAP, 1933–1936, Archives, National Holocaust Museum, Washington, DC. See also Klaus Hentschel, editor, and Ann Hentschel, editorial assistant and translator, Physics and National Socialism: An Anthology of Primary Sources (Berlin: Birkhäuser, 1996). The church had considered a blood definition for Jews during the Inquisition, but decided against it since it diminished the lure of converting to Catholicism. However, as late as World War II, the Jesuits applied “purity of blood” restrictions to aspiring priests. See generally Robert A. Maryks, The Jesuit Order as a Synagogue of Jews: Jesuits of Jewish Ancestry and Purity-of-Blood Laws in the Early Society of Jesus (Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, 2009).
14 Appeals for condemnation of the Nazi persecution were made to Pius XI that April from prominent rabbis in New York and Vienna. An Austrian rabbi, Dr. Arthur Zacharias Schwarz, knew Pius from when he was Milan’s cardinal. Pacelli’s office intercepted the letters and decided that such matters were better left to the German bishops. However, neither were the appeals ever passed to the German clerics. Besier, The Holy See and Hitler’s Germany, 126–27.
15 The Nazis banned not only Jewish authors; many non-Jews were also put on the prohibited list. Thomas Mann was taboo because he had a Jewish wife. Helen Keller was deaf blind and her handicap got her listed. Ernest Hemingway was banned because A Farewell to Arms was judged as antiwar. Jack London’s socialist politics got him blacklisted. “Book Burnings in Germany, 1933,” PBS: American Experience, April 25, 2006.
16 Carroll, Constantine’s Sword, 508, n30, 684.
17 Bertram quoted in Ibid; see also Godman, Hitler and the Vatican, 32–34.
18 Faulhaber quoted in Guenter Lewy, The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964), 41. Cardinal von Faulhaber emphasized during his 1933 Advent sermons that he was interested only in defending the Old Testament, not commenting on any contemporary matters affecting German Jews. And the cardinal—who believed Hitler was a gifted leader—began inserting anti-Semitic clichés into his weekly sermons. Godman, Hitler and the Vatican, 124.
19 Ernest Christian Helmreich, The German Churches Under Hitler: Background, Struggle and Epilogue (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1979), 276–77.
20 One of the many things that Pius could have done to slow the Nazis was to instruct parish priests across Europe to destroy or hide their baptismal records once it became apparent they were being used to uncover Jewish ancestry. A few priests did try to keep their records from the Nazis, but they were the exception. See generally Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, 154.
21 AES, Germania 1932–36, Pos. 632, fasc. 150, 3–5; see also Godman, Hitler and the Vatican, 36–37.
22 AES, 51; see also Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews.
23 Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience (New York: Vintage, 1983), 75, 282.
24 Godman, Hitler and the Vatican, 40–42, 47; See also Chad Ross, Naked Germany: Health, Race and the Nation (New York: Berg Publishers, 2005).
25 For an English language translation of the Concordat Between the Holy See and the German Reich, July 20, 1933, see http://www.newadvent.org/library/docs_ss33co.htm.
26 Although the Nazis affirmed the right to a Catholic education, they did their best to undermine it. They often demanded that parents explain why they had chosen a Catholic over a state school. The pressure worked. In the Catholic stronghold of Munich, for instance, in the four years following the Reichskonkordat, the number of families who sent their children to Catholic schools dropped from 655 to 20. See Coppa, Controversial Concordats, 148.
27 Besier, The Holy See and Hitler’s Germany, 102–23; Coppa, Controversial Concordats, 139–42.
28 David Cymet, History vs. Apologetics: The Holocaust, the Third Reich, and the Catholic Church (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2010), 60.
29 Robert P. Ericksen, Complicity in the Holocaust: Churches and Universities in Nazi Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 54–57; see also Ira Katznelson and Gareth Stedman Jones, Religion and the Political Imagination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 322.
30 Margherita Marchione, Man of Peace: Pope Pius XII (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2004), 15; Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, 164.
31 Lewy, The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany, 3; Coppa, Controversial Concordats, 126–27; Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, 10.
32 Lewy, The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany, 71–72. See also Robert A. Krieg, “The Vatican Concordat With Hitler’s Reich,” America, September 1, 2003.
33 John Jay Hughes, “The Reich Concordat 1933: Capitulation or Compromise?,” Australian Journal of Politics and History 20 (1974): 165.
34 The Reichskonkordat did not address the relationship between the Catholic press and the Third Reich. Evidently, the church intended that papers concentrate only on religious matters, and as such, did not expect any problems. The Nazi control of the Catholic press began with state qualifications for journalists. On April 24, 1934, nine months after the Reichskonkordat was signed, the Third Reich shuttered all Catholic dailies.
35 Pierre Blet, SJ, Pius XII and the Second World War: According to the Archives of the Vatican (New York: Paulist Press, 1997), 153. Blet, who passed away in 2009, was a French Jesuit and leading church historian. He assisted in the compilation of the Vatican’s first multivolume release of documents from the Secret Archives about World War II and Pius, Actes et Documents du Saint Siège relatifs à la Seconde Guerre Mondiale. Blet’s 1997 book was essentially a 392-page condensed version of the eleven-volume Actes.
36 Carroll, Constantine’s Sword, 509–10.
37 The church tried to stake a claim to baptized Jews. Whenever bishops and other church officials criticized the Third Reich it was always in language about “racism” (since the definition of race included converts), as opposed to “anti-Semitism” (which would have condemned only anti-Jewish actions). Walther Hofer, Der Nationalsozialismus Dokumente, 1933–1945 (Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag GmbH, 1957), 130; see also Klaus Scholder, The Churches and the Third Reich: Preliminary History and the Time of Illusions (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988), 228, 240. As for the Nazi view on the threat posed by converted Jews, see Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 10. Catholic converts who were forced to later wear yellow Stars of David identifying their Jewish ancestry were frequently shunned by other Catholics (some refused to kneel next to them when attending a Mass or waiting to receive the Eucharist).
38 German historian Michael Hesemann was granted special access to the Vatican’s Pius XII archives and in 2008 made headlines with his discovery of four letters from the Pope seeking exit visas. Defenders of the Pontiff seized on those letters to contend that “non-Aryan Catholics” was a code word for persecuted Jews. But there is no evidence that the Pope used the terms interchangeably. Only to the Nazis, with their strict race interpretation of Jewishness, were non-Aryan Catholics the same as Jews. Pacelli’s effort saved the lives of baptized converted Jews, or in the eyes of the church, Catholics. For more on the letters, see generally Michael Hesemann, Der Papst, der Hitler trotzte. Die Wahrheit über Pius XII (Augsburg: Sankt Ulrich Verlag GmbH, 2008); David G. Dalin, The Myth of Hitler’s Pope: How Pope Pius XII Rescued Jews from the Nazis (Washington, DC: Regenery; annotated edition, 2005).
39 Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, 130.
40 Ibid., 507.
41 Carroll, Constantine’s Sword, 499–506.
42 The British were disappointed that the Reichskonkordat eliminated the possibility the Vatican would marshal their rank-and-file followers to oppose Hitler: Memorandum, The German Danger; A collection of Reports from His Majesty’s Embassy at Berlin between the accession of Herr Hitler to Power in the Spring of 1933 and the end of 1935, January 17, 1936, 24/259/13, 60–61, Cabinet Papers, National Archives, Kew, UK.
43 See generally Michael Berenbaum, The World Must Know: The History of the Holocaust as Told in United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (New York: Back Bay, 1993), 40; see also, Ludwig Volk, Das Reichskonkordat; Klaus Scholder, “The Churches and the Third Reich,” Vol. 1, Ch. 10, “Concordat Policy and the Lateran Treaties” (1930–33); and Vol. 2, “The Capitulation of Catholicism” (February–March 1933); see also Krieg, “The Vatican Concordat With Hitler’s Reich,” America.
44 Lewy, The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany, 104; see also Coppa, Controversial Concordats, 142.
45 Walther Hofer, ed., with commentary. Der Nationalsozialismus Dokumente, 1933–1945 (Frankfurt: Fisher Bucherei, 1959), 129–30; Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, 130, 152.
46 Cymet, History vs. Apologetics, 94.
47 Ludwig Volk, Das Reichskonkordat vom 20, Juli, 1933. Von den Ansätzen in der Weimarer Republik bis zur Ratifizierung am 10, September 1933, Veröffentlichung der Kommission für Zeitgeschichte (VKZ), B, 5 (Mainz, 1972).
48 Cymet, History vs. Apologetics, 95. The Jesuit periodical La Civiltà Cattolica had gone so far as to criticize Nazi anti-Semitism as not being ecclesiastically pure since it did “not stem from the religious convictions or the Christian conscience.” La Civiltà Cattolica had published stories about supposed Jewish ritual murders of Christian children. Benedict XV had banned in 1914 any Vatican newspaper from printing anything about blood libel, but in the decades after his death the prohibition was not strictly enforced.
49 Archivo della Congregazione per la dottrina della fede, S.O., 125/28 [R.V. 1928 n. 2], vol. 1.
50 Kevin J. Madigan, “Two Popes, One Holocaust,” Commentary, December 1, 2010; see also Godman, Hitler and the Vatican, 25.
51 Theodor Herzl, Account of Audience with Pope Pius X (1904), Dialogika, Council of Centers on Jewish-Christian Relations, online at http://www.ccjr.us/dialogika-resources/primary-texts-from-the-history-of-the-relationship/1253-herzl1904.
52 Godman, Hitler and the Vatican, 24–26.
53 “Obelisk arrives back in Ethiopia,” BBC, April 19, 2005.
54 The Vatican often encouraged Mussolini’s grander ambitions, supporting him in one of his first disputes with the British, over Malta in 1933. Cabinet 50 (33), September 5, 1933, 23/77/1, 29–30, Cabinet Papers, National Archives, Kew, UK.
55 Bernard Bridel, “Le Temps Les ambulances à Croix-Rouge du CICR sous les gaz en Ethiopie,” International Committee of the Red Cross archives, August 13, 2003.
56 Six years later, in 1941, Nogara applied for an exemption to U.S. wartime Treasury restrictions. The Vatican wanted to import for safekeeping to New York’s J. P. Morgan some of the stocks that had been transferred to it during the early stages of the Ethiopian invasion. In a written statement to U.S. officials, Nogara said the securities were a gift from an unidentified donor. Since receiving them, the Vatican had supposedly kept the stocks on deposit at the Banque de l’Etate de Fribourg in Switzerland. McGoldrick, “New Perspectives on Pius XII and Vatican Financial Transactions During the Second World War,” 1031–32.
57 For instance, when the League tried issuing sanctions on oil, the British and French successfully argued that if they were not allowed to sell oil to the Italians, then America—which was not a League member—would simply fill the void and make all the profit.
58 Gollin, Worldly Goods, 447.
59 Coppa, Controversial Concordats, 115; see also Anthony Rhodes, The Vatican in the Age of the Dictators, 69.
60 Chadwick, Britain and the Vatican During the Second World War, 8.
61 Rhodes, The Vatican in the Age of the Dictators, 77.
62 Paul I. Murphy, La Popessa: The Controversial Biography of Sister Pascalina, the Most Powerful Woman in Vatican History (New York: Warner, 1983), 138; Lo Bell
o, The Vatican Empire, 72.
63 Murphy, La Popessa, 140. British professor John F. Pollard, in his study of modern Vatican finances (Money and the Rise of the Modern Papacy), believes the loan “is highly unlikely” and that references to it in other accounts refer to the fact that the church was “indirectly propping up the war effort through its massive holding of Italian government stock and IRI bonds.” However, Paul Murphy, in his biography of Sister Pascalina, Pius XII’s confidant (La Popessa) describes the loans as having been initiated by the fascist government, and that the church agreed only to protect its other investments that were intertwined with Italy.
Massimo Spada, Nogara’s deputy, told Benny Lai in 1979 that he had opposed making the wartime loan to Italy. He thought it too risky for the Vatican. Lai, Finanze Vaticane, 109, citing Lai interview with Spada, March 7, 1979.
64 Lo Bello, The Vatican Empire, 132.
65 See generally Renzo De Felice, “La Santa e il confitto Italio-Etiopico del diario di Bernardino Nogara,” Storia Contemporanea 9 (1977): 821–34.
66 Archivo Famiglia Nogara, Personal Papers of Bernardino Nogara, Rome, diary entry for November 23, 1935, cited in Pollard, Money and the Rise of the Modern Papacy.
67 Lo Bello, The Vatican Empire, 170.
68 Cooney, The American Pope, 66–71; Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, 176–77.
69 Western governments also noted that the Vatican tacitly supported Generalissimo Francisco Franco’s fascists in the Spanish Civil War. Chadwick, Britain and the Vatican During the Second World War, 8–9.
70 Belardelli, “Un viaggio di Bernardino Nogara,” 321–38.
71 Ibid., 327; see also Pollard, Money and the Rise of the Modern Papacy, 180–81.
72 Pollard, “The Vatican and the Wall Street Crash,” 117.
73 Coppa, Controversial Concordats, 159; Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, 180–81; see also Rychlak, Hitler, the War, and the Pope, 63–64.
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