27 Godman, Hitler and the Vatican, 82–83.
28 Osborne quoted in Rhodes, The Vatican in the Age of the Dictators, 222–23; McKnight, The Papacy, 257, 291; Tardini, Memories of Pius XII, 73.
29 Chadwick, Britain and the Vatican, 50–52.
30 A two-thirds majority of the eligible sixty-two cardinals was necessary for selection as Pope. Pacelli polled the most votes from the first ballot, but it took two additional ballots before he garnered the necessary forty-eight votes. See Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, 207. Pacelli’s coronation was the first time the U.S. government sent an emissary. FDR dispatched the Catholic Joseph Kennedy, then ambassador to the U.K. The British, recognizing that having a friendly relationship with the new Pope was critical given the tensions in Europe, appointed the Duke of Norfolk to the new post of Special Ambassador to the Vatican for the Papal Coronation. Cabinet 1 (39), January 18, 1939, 23/97/1, 380, Cabinet Papers, National Archives, Kew, UK.
31 J. N. D. Kelly, Dictionary of Popes, 318. Pacelli’s coronation was the grandest in modern times, principally because it was the first since the Lateran Pacts and as a result was the only one in a century to be held outdoors. See also G. A. Borgese, “Pius XII and the Axis,” The Nation, March 11, 1939, 285–88.
32 Chadwick, Britain and the Vatican, 57; see also The Pope Speaks, with a preface by Cardinal Arthur Hinsley (London: Faber & Faber, 1940), 60–63.
33 Blet, Pius XII and the Second World War, 53–54.
34 Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, 208–9.
35 Pie XII à Hitler (minute de letter), Records and Documents of the Holy See Relating to the Second World War (Vatican City: Liberia Editrice Vaticana, 1965–1981), Vol. 2, Appendix No. 6, 420.
36 Coppa, Controversial Concordats, 165; Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 45; Pius XII and Franklin Roosevelt had maintained a cordial correspondence since their meeting during the Pope’s 1936 trip to the U.S. A month after Pacelli became Pope, FDR wrote asking for his support for Roosevelt’s request to Hitler and Mussolini that they agree to no further aggression for at least a decade. Pius declined, telling him that the Vatican would address both Hitler and Mussolini in good time, and on its own terms. See generally Blet, Pius XII and the Second World War, 9–10.
37 Sondern, “The Pope,” 91, 93–94. Pius did not trust the telephones for calls outside the Vatican, convinced that Italy’s security services monitored them. During the war he learned that the Soviets regularly intercepted phone calls between the Vatican and Castel Gandolfo. See Hoffman, Anatomy of the Vatican, 253.
38 Sondern, “The Pope,” 91, 93–94.
39 Mother Pascalina later recounted that during Pius’s nineteen-year tenure, he only broke his silent meal tradition once, inviting Munich’s Cardinal von Faulhaber to stay for dinner after a meeting had run late. Even those who knew him best, like his secretary Father Robert Leiber, a German Jesuit who met with him daily, observed that it was tough to break through his great reserve: “One of his classmates said that as a boy he had been difficult to approach. He stayed that way. . . . He remained solitary. It was hard to penetrate the depths of his soul.” Hoffman, Anatomy of the Vatican, 21–22, 140.
40 Chernow, The House of Morgan, iBooks edition, location 789.
41 Murphy, La Popessa, 85.
42 Webster, Industrial Imperialism in Italy, 153, 58.
43 Giovanni Preziosi, Germania alla Conquista dell’Italia: Con prefazione di G.A. Colonna di Cesaro’ e con nota del prof. Maffeo Pantaleoni (Florence: 1915).
44 Lo Bello, The Vatican Empire, 28; Martin, Rich Church, Poor Church, 41–42; Gollin, Worldly Goods, 453–54.
45 Giovanni Preziosi, Germania alla Conquista dell’Italia: Con pefazione di G.A. Colonna di Cesaro’ e con nota del prof. Maffeo Pantaleoni (Florence: 1915). Preziosi, a former priest who left the order to become the chief anti-Semitic spokesman for Mussolini’s Fascist Party, set forth the nationalist suspicions about foreign, Jewish, and Freemason influence at Banca Commerciale Italiana (BCI). Mussolini rewarded Preziosi with a 1942 appointment as Minister of State. He committed suicide after the war when his arrest by the Allies was imminent.
46 Lo Bello, The Vatican Empire, 28; Martin, Rich Church, Poor Church, 41–42; see also Murphy, La Popessa, 76.
47 Lai, Finanze Vaticane, 21–22; see also Martin, Rich Church, Poor Church, 42.
48 The most likely replacement was Monsignor Alberto di Jorio, the Curia bureaucrat who was Nogara’s most trusted colleague. He kept the finances balanced while Nogara was under scrutiny.
49 Martin, Rich Church, Poor Church, 42. Gollin, Worldly Goods, puts the sum as low as $150 million, while Lo Bello, The Vatican Papers, puts it as high as $2 billion.
50 Martin, Rich Church, Poor Church, 42.
51 McGoldrick, “New Perspectives on Pius XII and Vatican Financial Transactions During the Second World War,” 1031. Nogara kept notes of his meetings with Pius XI for a decade. It is not clear whether the decision to leave no written record was made by Pius or Nogara. The answer is possibly sealed inside the Vatican’s Secret Archives. The Vatican has not even released a log of the days and times during Pius’s Papacy during which the two met.
52 Pius had floated a diplomatic proposal several months before Hitler invaded Poland. He wanted the Vatican to mediate negotiations with Germany over contested lands in Czechoslovakia and Austria. France and Britain rejected the idea. Cabinet 27 (39), May 10, 1939, 23/99/6, 161, Cabinet Papers, National Archives, Kew, UK. Pius also suggested a truce that December, after the Nazis had taken Poland and were marching on Finland. The Allies thought it a terrible idea, as a lull would provide the Germans a short rest, after which they could renew the fighting with vigor; Notebook, Foreign Policy in Europe, December 11, 1939, (WP-39-155), 66/4/5/1, Cabinet Papers, National Archives, Kew, UK.
53 Veröffentlichungen der Kommission für Zeitgeschichte, Series A, Vol. 34, 550–51.
54 The following month the Third Reich instituted its euthanasia program (Gnadentod, “mercy death”), with a goal of eliminating those with physical abnormalities or mental illnesses. It was supposed to be a closely held secret within the Reich, but that was impossible since the program employed more than a thousand people in its administration and execution. Rumors of what was happening were soon widespread throughout Germany. German bishop August von Galen ignored entreaties from the Vatican to stay silent and condemned the program in his sermons. Some top Nazis, including Martin Bormann, wanted Galen arrested and executed, but the Nazis did not move against him because they feared they would lose popular support if they harmed him. Over time, the public denunciations of the “secret” murders grew. Hitler’s response was to end the German program after two years, with a tally of 70,273 dead. The Nazis moved the killings to Poland and Russia, where they were lost under the chaos of the fighting there. Another 130,000 were killed before the war’s end. But that the Nazis had to backpedal in Germany has been cited by some scholars as evidence that wider Catholic protests might have slowed or even stopped the Holocaust; see Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, 195–99.
55 See Documents on German Foreign Policy, Series C, Vol. 1, No. 501; Series D, Vol. 13, No. 309, cited in George Kent, “Pope Pius XII and Germany: Some Aspects of German-Vatican Relations, 1933–1943, American Historical Review 70 (October 1964). Pius never used the church’s influence with prominent Italians to try and stem Il Duce’s embrace of the Führer. Instead, the Pope merely complained sub rosa to the British. The U.K. government took notice, but of course had no sway when it came to Mussolini. Summary of the War Cabinet, March 6, 1940 (WM-40-61), 65/6/6, 39–40, Cabinet Papers, National Archives, Kew, UK.
56 Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews, 223.
57 Moshe Y. Herczl, Christianity and the Holocaust of Hungarian Jewry, trans. Joel Lerner (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), 118.
58 American diplomat George Kennan was assigned to Prague until the Nazis took control. In his memoirs, he recounted that Rudolph Mikuš, the influential chief of the Jes
uits in Slovakia, gave a “carefully prepared interview” in 1939 to the country’s semi-official newspaper. Mikuš “favors the segregation of the Jew and the elimination of their influence in political and economic life in Slovakia.” He only allowed an exemption for baptized Jews. George F. Kennan, From Prague After Munich: Diplomatic Papers, 1938–1940 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), 51–52.
59 Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 87; Gabriel Wilensky, Six Million Crucifixions: How Christian Teachings About Jews Paved the Road to the Holocaust (San Diego, CA: Qwerty Publishers, 2010), Kindle edition, 3906 of 8032.
60 Quoted in Ladislav Lipscher, “The Jews of Slovakia: 1939–1945,” The Jews of Czechoslovakia, ed. Avigdor Dagan, Vol. 3 of Historical Studies and Surveys (New York: Society for the History of Czechoslovak Jews, 1984), 166.
61 Michael Robert Marrus, The Nazi Holocaust, Part 8: Bystanders to the Holocaust, Vol. 3 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1989), 1313.
62 Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 46.
63 See generally Le nonce à Berlin Orsenigo au cardinal Maglione (Report of Apostolic Nuncio Cesare Orsenigo regarding his meeting with Hitler), Vol. 1, No. 28–29, 128ff, Records and Documents of the Holy See Relating to the Second World War, Actes et Documents du Saint Siège relatifs à la Seconde Guerre Mondiale, Le Saint Siège et la guerre en Europe (Vatican City: Liberia Editrice Vatican), (ADSS); Notes du cardinal Maglione (Note of the Italian Ambassador [Ciano] the Vatican Secretary of State [Maglione]), May 9, 1938, No 36, 138, Records and Documents of the Holy See Relating to the Second World War, ADSS; Sir Neville Henderson to the British Foreign Office, Series 371/23790/190, file of the Foreign Office, National Archives, Kew, UK. French suspicions about Pius and Maglione working with Italian intelligence were largely based on the extent to which the Vatican was intertwined with Mussolini’s government during the summer of 1939, just before the breakout of hostilities. See generally the archival documents relating to British Foreign policy, 3rd Series, 1919–1939, Vol. 7, National Archives, Kew, UK; see also Chadwick, Britain and the Vatican, 65, 68.
64 Ronald Modras, The Catholic Church in Poland and Anti-Semitism, 1933–1939 (Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge, 2000), 186.
65 Chadwick, Britain and the Vatican, 82.
66 Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 25.
67 Memo, Harold H. Tittmann, U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, Diplomatic Papers, Europe, 1942, University of Wisconsin, Digital Collection, http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/FRUS/FRUS-idx?type=turn&entity=FRUS.FRUS1942v03.p0783&id=FRUS.FRUS1942v03&isize=text.
68 Walter Hannot, Die Judenfrage in der katholishen Tagespresse Deutschlands and Osterreichs, 1923–1933 (Mains: Grünewald, 1990), Series B of Veröffentlichungen der Kommission für Zeitgeschichte, Vol. 51, 286ff.
69 Modras, The Catholic Church and Anti-Semitism, 195. In 1995, on the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II, the Polish clergy issued a formal apology for not having condemned the Nazi slaughter of Polish Jews.
70 The Polish cardinals who promoted blood libel included Józef Sapieha and Karol Radonski. Paper presented by Andrzej Bryk, “Polish-Jewish Relations During the Holocaust: The Hidden Complex of the Polish Mind,” at the History and Culture of the Polish Jews, 1988, Jerusalem; see also Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews, 47–48; Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 14–15. Hlond later tempered his anti-Jewish remarks and became a critic of Nazi crimes. Hlond’s rant about Jews was part of a 1936 pastoral letter that was read during Sunday mass at churches across Poland. Cymet, History vs. Apologetics, 152. See generally Besier, The Holy See and Hitler’s Germany, 134–35; Natalia Aleksiun, “The Polish Catholic Church and the Jewish Question in Poland, 1944–1948,” Holocaust Studies, Yad Vashem, vol. 33, 2005.
71 The Nazis had begun targeting clerics they thought were not enthusiastic about the new German General Government. Richard C. Lukas, The Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles Under German Occupation, 1939–1944 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1986), 13–14; August Hlond, The Persecution of the Catholic Church in German-Occupied Poland. Reports presented by H. E. Cardinal Hlond, Primate of Poland, to Pope Pius XII, Vatican Broadcasts and Other Reliable Evidence—preface by Cardinal Hinsley (New York: Longmans, Green, 1941), 110–17; see also Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 22–23; and Phayer, Pius XII, the Holocaust, and the Cold War, 21–24, 28.
72 George La Piana, “Vatican-Axis Diplomacy,” The Nation, November 30, 1940, 530–32.
73 Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 25.
74 Lukas, The Forgotten Holocaust, 16.
75 Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 29.
76 Burzio’s most detailed warning was an early March 1942 letter in which he reported the imminent deportation of 80,000 Slovakian Jews, Burzio to Maglione, March 9, 1942, Vol. 8, 153, ADSS; see Livia Rothkirchen, “The Churches and the Deportation and Persecution of Jews in Slovakia,” Shoah Resource Center, The International School for Holocaust Studies, 2000; Morley, Vatican Diplomacy and the Jews During the Holocaust, 78–81; Chadwick, Britain and the Vatican, 205, citing the diary of British envoy D’Arcy Osborne.
77 Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 87.
78 Ibid., 88. See also Livia Rothkirchen, “Vatican Policy and the ‘Jewish Problem’ in ‘Independent’ Slovakia 1939-1945, Yad Vashem Studies, 6 (1967), 36. Secretary of State Maglione made a more direct appeal in May 1943.
79 “Notes de Mgr Tardini,” Vol. 8, Doc. 426, 597–98, Records and Documents of the Holy See Relating to the Second World War, ADSS; see also John S. Conway, “The Vatican, Germany and the Holocaust,” in Papal Diplomacy in the Modern Age, ed. Peter C. Kent and John F. Pollard (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994), 113.
80 Phayer, Pius XII, The Holocaust, and the Cold War, 10.
81 Marco Aurelio Rivelli, L’arcivescovo del genocidio: Monsignor Stepinac, il Vaticano e la dittatura ustascia in Croazia, 1941–1945 (Milan: Kaos, 1999), 12–13. It appears that Pavelić made two appointments as military vicar. One was Monsignor Stipe Vučetić, and subsequently Stepinac. When Stepinac was charged after the war with war crimes, his position as military vicar was cited in the indictment. See generally Stella Alexander, The Triple Myth: A Life of Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1987), 86-87.
82 Mussolini also was an early Ustaša supporter, providing them with logistical and military support.
83 Alexander, The Triple Myth, 57-58, citing Katolički List, the semi-official journal of the Zagreb diocese, as KL 8 (92) 20.2.41, 93.
84 Blet, Pius XII and the Second World War, 108; see also Harold H. Tittmann Jr., Inside the Vatican of Pius XII: The Memoir of an American Diplomat During World War II (New York: Image Books/Doubleday, 2010), Kindle edition, location 746 of 3089.
85 Blet, Pius XII and the Second World War, 108–9.
86 Quoted in Aarons and Loftus, Unholy Trinity, 71.
87 Miha Krek passed the request to Pius XII through Ljubljana’s Bishop Gregory Rozman; see Mark Aarons, Sanctuary: Nazi Fugitives in Australia (Melbourne: William Heinemann, 1989), 19.
88 Alexander, The Triple Myth, 59–60.
89 Menachem Shelah, “The Catholic Church in Croatia, the Vatican and the Murder of the Croatian Jews.” Included in Remembering for the Future: The Holocaust in an Age of Genocides, Vol. 1 (Oxford: Pergamon, 1988), 266, 274.
90 Aarons and Loftus, Unholy Trinity, 71–72; On the same day as Pavelić saw Pius, Secretary of State Maglione issued a letter declaring the visit did not constitute an official recognition of the new Croatian government. Blet, Pius XII and the Second World War, 109.
91 Alexander, The Triple Myth, 63-65. See also Raul Hilberg, Destruction of European Jews, Vol. 1 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 710–11; see also Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 32–33. Besides meeting Pavelić that day, Pius blessed a delegation of the Great Crusader’s Brotherhood, a Croatian natio
nalist group whose goal was to convert Serbs to Catholicism.
92 Chadwick, Britain and the Vatican, 193–95; see also Phayer, Pius XII, the Holocaust, and the Cold War, 39–40.
93 According to statistics compiled by the German High Command, from the time of the invasion, June 1941, through the end of the war, more than 90 percent of all Nazi casualties were on the Eastern Front.
94 Fritz Menshausen to State Secretary Weizsäcker, September 12, 1941, Documents on German Foreign Policy 1918-1945, Series D, Vol. 13 (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1964), 489.
95 Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, ed. Israel Gutman (New York: Macmillan, 1990), 39.
96 Jonathan Steinberg, All or Nothing: The Axis and the Holocaust, 1941–43 (London: Routledge, 2002), 36; Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 33, n. 11
97 Aarons, Sanctuary, 61–62: During the first months of Pavelić’s regime, there was no doubt that an anti-Jewish and intra-Slavic race war was under way. Serbs were ordered to wear blue armbands and Jews yellow Stars of David. All public transport and retail stores had to post signs that announced, “No Serbs, Jews, Gypsies and dogs allowed.”
98 Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, 250–51. The Vatican did not even officially express its disapproval of forced conversion until 1942. See Rychlak, Hitler, the War, and the Pope, 303, citing a memorandum from the Vatican Secretary of State to the Legation to Yugoslavia, January 25, 1942.
99 Quoted in Shelah, “The Catholic Church in Croatia, the Vatican and the Murder of the Croatian Jews,” 266–80; see also Aarons, Sanctuary, 59–60. Sarić appropriated real estate and bank accounts from Jews. After the war he found safe haven at Rome’s Pontificium Institutum Orientalium, a Pontifical school that studies Eastern Christianity. Wilensky, Six Million Crucifixions, Kindle edition, 3207 of 8032.
God's Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican Page 78
