Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII: Amazon.co.uk: John Cornwell: Books

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In the early 1990s, John Cornwell undertook a study of one of the most controversial Popes in Catholic history: Pope Pius XII. Known as the "icebox Pope", Pius XII, the Roman born Eugenio Pacelli, was elected Pope on the eve of the Second World War and ruled with unprecedented power and autocracy until his death at the height of the Cold War in 1958. Pacelli refashioned the role of Pope as a position of unrivalled absolutist power, in his papal edicts and dealings with the most influential figures in 20th-century history, from Hitler and Stalin to Roosevelt and Churchill. Most controversially, Pius was accused of contributing to the fate of the Jews under the Nazis in his sympathetic dealings with Hitler as papal nuncio to Germany throughout the 1920s.

The result of Cornwell's decision to write about Pius is his magnificent and shocking book Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII.The author explains that he had initially set out to vindicate Pius's career and as a result obtained access to hitherto restricted documents held at the Vatican. The results of his research, however, left him "in a state I can only describe as moral shock." Cornwell's study "told the story of a bid for unprecedented papal power that by 1933 had drawn the Catholic Church into complicity with the darkest forces of the era ... from an early stage in his career Pacelli betrayed an undeniable antipathy towards the Jews ... his diplomacy in Germany in the 1930s resulted in the betrayal of Catholic political associations that might have challenged Hitler's regime and thwarted the Final Solution." The subsequent account is an engrossing read, revealing a picture of a fascinating but repellent figure, who fashioned an aura of saintliness in the pursuit of ever greater power and authority.

Wherever an authoritarian or reactionary decision was taken by the Church Pacelli was there, signing the Serbian Concordat that aided the onset of the First World War, signing the Reich Concordat with Hitler in 1933, trivialising the Holocaust and even supporting Croatian Fascism throughout the Second World War. Hitler claimed that the Concordat of 1933 would help the Nazis "in the developing struggle against the international Jewry", a situation compounded by Pius's destruction of Catholic opposition to Nazism and refusal to speak out against the Holocaust.

Hitler's Pope brilliantly captures the ascetic, fastidious Pius, from his hypochondria and querulousness to his offhand anti-semitic and racist remarks--such as his request that the Allies should desist from deploying "coloured" soldiers in the relief of Rome in 1944. Cornwell is "convinced that the cumulative verdict of history shows him not to be a saintly exemplar for future generations, but a deeply flawed human being from whom Catholics, and our relations with other religions, can best profit by expressing our sincere regret." -- Jerry Brotton

Product Description

This biography discusses Pope Pius XIII's wartime silence over the Holocaust and exposes the patent anti-Semitism that led to his fateful concordance with Hitler - a partnership that smoothed the Nazis' path to power and saw the Vatican immensely enriched, financially and politically. In examining Eugenio Pacelli's early career and subsequent rise to papal apotheosis, the author firmly indicts a Pope whom many regard as the most powerful churchman in modern history; one never held to account for the conduct of himself or his church during one of humanity's darkest hours.

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

A lop-sided account 20 Mar 2012

By KC

Format:Paperback

This is so one sided. It makes a very saleable title but is not unbiased. Even the author has now admitted he didn't see all the evidence before putting pen to paper!

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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful

Hard questions on piety and moral abdication 23 July 2008

By Brian Griffith TOP 1000 REVIEWER

Cornwall's book is a tremendous research effort and highly readable. He starts out trying to disprove accusations that Pope Pius XII stopped his church from protesting Nazi atrocities. But the research leads to a far more painful truth. For any who promote the separation of government from religious values, this book poses hard questions. The Church's agreements with fascist rulers involved a trade: government support for religious institutions, in exchange for church silence on political affairs. As the 1933 Concordat with Nazi Germany said,

"In consideration of the guarantees afforded by the conditions of this treaty, and of legislation protecting the rights and freedom of the Catholic Church in the Reich ..., the Holy See will ensure a ban on all clergy and members of religious congregations from political party activity."

Cornwall explores the unfolding implications of this split between loyalties. As Hitler later said, "When they attempt by any other means -- writings, encyclicals, etc. -- to assume rights which belong only to the state, we will push them back into their proper spiritual activity." And as Pope Pius XII would later explain, the Church must avoid "being compromised in defense of Christian principles and humanity by being drawn into purely man-made politics ... the Church is only interested in upholding her legacy of Truth. ... The purely worldly problems, in which the Jewish people may see themselves involved, are of no interest to her."

Cornwall is the best kind of scholar, driven by a personal and spiritual need to understand the truth. The questions he pursues are directly relevant today, for Christians, Muslims, or anyone. To what extent has the goal of protecting religion from the world served to protect governments from moral opposition? What have we learned about the role and aim of religion in the world?

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13 of 17 people found the following review helpful

Absorbing, but not wholly convincing 13 April 2000

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

Take two subjects of perennial interest - World War Two and the papacy - and combine them. You should be on to a winner. John Cornwell almost does it here - but not quite. To take the positive side first, the book is awesome in its detail and the apparent thoroughness of its research. The negative side is that this isn't a "warts and all" picture, but one that concentrates almost exclusively on the "warts". Hindsight is used far too often and John Cornwell makes the fatal mistake of judging one period by the standards of another. The picture of Pius XII that emerges to the reader who can pick his or her way through all this is one of a rather sad man whose priorities were in entirely the wrong order at a time when it was vitally important to have them right. I'm not sure that that's what John Cornwell intended.