The Myth of Hitler’s Pope: How Pope Pius XII Rescued Jews from the Nazis, by Rabbi David G. Dalin. Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2005. 209 pages, Hardcover, $27.95.
Rabbi Dalin’s The Myth of Hitler’s Pope is far from the first book to clear the name of Pope Pius XII, but it is certainly an admirable defense and a welcome addition to the growing scholarship on the subject. The charges leveled against Pius XII are widely known: during the Second World War, the Pope was allegedly responsible for the deportations and eventual deaths of thousands of Jews. In this narrative, at best, Pius XII simply remained aloof and silent as the Holocaust steamrolled Europe; at worst, the Pope was an active Nazi collaborator, enthusiastically purging Jews from central Italy. In this portrait, Pius XII was cold and cruel, driven by a sociopath’s sadism and a centuries-old tradition of anti-Semitism.
It is probably accurate to say that this is the prevailing view of the pontiff’s legacy today, and the image appears in numerous forms. It is no coincidence that in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the Minister of Magic who is cursed into collaborating with the Death Eaters bears the Christian name Pius. John Cornwell’s Hitler’s Pope captured the popular imagination. Using a slew of secondary sources, Cornwell’s book condemned Pius XII for his complicity in the Holocaust. Cornwell became a media darling, and countless people who never read his book still took the title (which summed up Cornwell’s thesis in only two words) to heart.
The chief flaw in this papal portrait is that it is patently false. As Dalin illustrates, the widely held caricature of Pius XII’s career is more than just a distortion of the true historical record, it is a flat-out lie. Far from being an enthusiastic Nazi supporter, the Pope was actually one of Hitler’s staunchest enemies. Pius XII actually saved the lives of thousands of Jews, leading an effort to protect the Jewish population. Nuns sheltered Jews in their convents, the Vatican funded food drives to help the Jews, and Pius XII even turned his summer residence into a sanctuary for Jewish refugees. The Pope’s position as a statesman required him to maintain a certain level of civility with enemy authorities, and papal denunciations tended to exacerbate already difficult situations, so he was forced to temper his public criticisms in order to avoid potentially disastrous repercussions from Hitler’s or Mussolini’s armies. Pius XII developed a firm friendship with Israel Zolli, the Chief Rabbi of Rome. Zolli gained such a powerful respect for Pius XII that he eventually converted to Catholicism.
One might think that the Pope’s actions would have earned him a reputation as one of the great heroes of World War Two, but unfortunately, the opposite has proven to be the case. Other European leaders were shamed by the Pope’s defense of the Jews, and they minimized his contributions in order to distract from their own inaction. Pius XII did little to self-promote his own good works, but prominent Jews ranging from Albert Einstein to Golda Meier all praised the Pope for his accomplishments. It was not until the left-wing playwright Rolf Hochhuth, backed by communist officials desperate to discredit the Catholic Church, released the play The Deputy in 1964, that the world’s perception of Pius XII changed. Though Hochhuth’s work is in fact an utter inversion of reality, the image of Pius XII as a Jew-loathing bureaucrat with liquid nitrogen in his veins lodged itself into the public mindset and refused to be shaken, like some monstrously gigantic kidney stone. The Deputy won a Tony Award for Best Producer when it came to Broadway, and Hochhuth swiftly gained numerous fans. The fictional play permeated the historical record, despite the fact that the evidence proved the opposite conclusions.
Books clearing Pius XII are often dismissed out of hand as the scribblings of overzealous Catholics desperate to whitewash their religion’s guilty past, so it is fortunate that the good rabbi has taken it upon himself to defend the honor of the man who did more to thwart the Holocaust than any other world leader. The book opens with a history of how the slanders started, and moves on to describing the papacy’s long tradition of defending Jews (although the teachings of the popes were often ignored by the broader culture– some things never change). Pius XII’s career and legacy are next evaluated, the recalcitrance of the liberal media to accept his exoneration follows, the enduring effects of Muslim anti-Semitism come next, and the book concludes with Pope John Paul II’s work at improving Christian/Jewish relations.
Dalin has created a highly readable and interesting book, but this is not the definitive exoneration of Pius XII. There are many other studies, some of which dig far deeper into the KGB’s attempts to slander the Catholic Church through the dissemination of false history, or provide much more extensive refutations of the “scholarship” condemning the Pope, but anyone interested in the subject ought to turn to Dalin for a brief but thorough introduction.
One question Dalin never answers is what it will take to smother the anti-Pius XII slanders for once and for all. Evan though Cornwell renounced his own work once dedicated scholars disproved all of the central claims of Hitler’s Pope, mainstream intellectual currents have thoroughly ignored the truth. Dalin suggests that individuals who wish to advance an antireligious agenda, as well as Catholics who want to reshape the Church into something radically altered from its current state, perpetuate the false image of the frosty, bigoted Pope in order to score political points. The mass media has shown no interest in setting the record straight, and Pius XII’s defenders are often tarred with the charges of anti-Semitism themselves.
The miscomprehensions started with a play; perhaps another play is the answer to rehabilitating Pius XII’s image. I have an idea for a trilogy of plays revolving around Pius XII’s life and legacy. The first play would be a refutation of The Deputy, depicting Pius XII’s true actions and character during the Holocaust. The second play would be based on the production of The Deputy, fueled by the KGB’s propaganda wing. The final piece of the trilogy would revolved around a group of present-day scholars and how a university would try to suppress pro-Pius XII scholarship in the name of political correctness. It might work, but given the tendency to believe the worst of other people in order to cushion one’s own prejudices, I’m pessimistic about the effectiveness of such a project.
