Pope Pius XII, Wartime Pope, Allied Powers Turn the Tide of War

Today we will learn and reflect on the latest book by
the Pulitzer prize winning author, David Kertzer, The
Pope at War, reflecting on how Pope Pius XII sought
to lead the Catholic Church through the difficult years
of World War II from behind enemy lines.

Soon after Cardinal Pacelli was crowned Pope Pius
XII, the Nazis blitzkrieged across Poland. In our prior
video we reflected on the difficult early years of the
war when the Axis Powers were on the march across
Europe, most expected the Nazis would invade
England and that the war would soon end with the
Nazis triumphant across Europe.

At the end of our talk, we will discuss the sources
used for this video. Please feel free to follow along
our PowerPoint script posted to SlideShare. Please,
we welcome interesting questions in the comments.
Let us learn and reflect together!

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Our thumbnail says that when the Allied Powers won the war,
that this was a victory for democracy. You might have questioned
the famous photograph of the Yalta Conference, where Winston
Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin were seated
together. What does Stalin have to do with Democracy? These
very same questions were on the mind of Pope Pius XII and many
Catholics who worried that Russian and communism would seize
control of continental Europe once Hitler was defeated. We must
remember, Stalin agreed that free elections would be held in
Eastern Europe, but when the Communists lost some elections,
Stalin changed his mind.

Yalta Conference in
February 1945.
British Prime Minister
Winston Churchill,
U.S. President
Franklin Roosevelt,
and Soviet leader
Joseph Stalin met to
discuss their joint
occupation of
Germany and plans
for postwar Europe.

When do the Italians first
realize that Mussolini and Hitler
might possibly lose the war?
Our beloved author gives us a
hint exactly halfway through his
book, The Pope At War, when,
“late on the night of October
22, 1942, wave after wave of
British bombers swooped
below the clouds over Genoa,
Italy, and released hundreds of
bombs.” Later, Milan and Turin
would be bombed.
USAF B-24s flying through flak and over the destruction
created by preceding waves of bombers, Romania, 1943

Soon after, Rommel’s Afrika Corps would be
defeated, and American soldiers waded ashore in
North Africa in Operation Torch.

November 1942: The
Allies invade French
North Africa in
Operation Torch.
There were multiple
landings in French
Morocco and Algeria,
and the better
equipped Allies
defeated the German
and Italian armies.
Operation Torch, Invasion of North Africa

What was the primary concern of the church during
World War II? The very survival of the church, of
course. The pope became very worried when in early
December 1942 he learned that a London broadcast
threatened that the Allies would bomb Rome. The
pope inquired through diplomatic channels whether
FDR would spare Rome, an American official
repeated the British question, Had Pope Pius XII
protested when London was bombed by the Nazis?

Buildings
destroyed in
Milan after the
August 1943
bombings.
Milan
Cathedral is in
background.

England was a Protestant nation and unsympathetic
to the pope, but FDR had many Catholic voters, so he
agreed to spare Rome if Mussolini would move all
military activities out of Rome, which he said he
would do, but never did. But the Allies would only
bomb the railyards and airports of Rome, the Vatican
would not be bombed intentionally, but some errant
explosives would wander into the Vatican City in the
confusion war brings.

Pope Pius XII visits
the Lateran after
the bombing of
Rome in 1943

Bombing raid on the Focke
Wulf factory, Marienburg,
Germany, 1943, and an Avro
Lancaster over Hamburg.

We ended our prior video with the German forces fifteen
miles from Moscow in December 1941. The Nazis would
get no closer, the winter blizzards had set in, the German
tanks were stuck in place, and the Nazi soldiers had
inadequate winter clothes, many froze to death. At the
beginning of the invasion, the Nazis had 209 combat ready
divisions on the Eastern Front, this had been whittled
down to 58 divisions by March 1942.

Germans battle Soviet defenders on streets of Kharkov, October 1941.

BATTLE OF STALINGRAD
The next year, facing fuel shortages, the Nazi armies raced to capture the
vast oil fields at Baku. But STALINGRAD stood in the way. We have read
about the horrors of Stalingrad, two evil empires with no regard for
casualties forced its soldiers to fight at gunpoint, shooting them if they
dared to retreat, with incredibly savage urban warfare on both sides,
soldiers shooting at each other through holes in walls and floors in ruined
buildings. The stories of this battle are legendary, civilians and women
taking up arms to fight the invaders, snipers sniping hundreds of soldiers,
some soviets hurriedly manufacturing tanks in their Stalingrad factories,
rolling them off the assembly line directly into battle. There were millions
and millions of casualties in over five months of brutal combat, ending in
Nazi surrender. After Stalingrad, the Nazis were in retreat.

Kertzer reports, “News of the Axis debacle at
Stalingrad, the defeat of Axis forces in North
Africa, and the Allied bombing raids on Sicily,
together with the worsening food shortages,
with meat, dairy products, bread, pasta, and
much else in short supply, was fast eroding
support for the Fascist regime.” Plus,
everyone was asking, Would the Allies invade
Sicily or Sardinia? Would the Allies then
invade Italy? The pope and all in the Vatican
had a more long-term worry, If the Russians
defeated Germany, would continental Europe
be conquered by the communists?
American Sherman tank greeted by
villagers of Belpasso Sicily, August 1943

MUSSOLINI IS DEPOSED
In reaction to the invasion of Italy, Mussolini is deposed. In early May British
bombers did fly over Rome, but instead of dropping bombs they dropped “flares
and leaflets that threatened the Italians with destruction if they did not renounce
the Axis alliance. It was the first time Allied planes had appeared in the skies over
Rome since the war began.” King Victor Emmanuel III and many ranking fascists
were concerned, the Allied soldiers who had invaded Sicily were greeted with
cheers and flowers from enthusiastic Italians. Mussolini’s longtime fascist colleagues
convinced him to call a meeting of the Fascist Grand Council, which had not met in
three years. The meeting was tense, many wondered if they would be arrested and
shot. Unexpectedly, one of the members denounced Mussolini at length to his face,
and a solid majority voted to return the position of military commander-in-chief to
the king. The next day the king deposed Mussolini, and at his generals’ urging, had
him arrested.

Invasion of Sicily,
July 1943, then
the boot of Italy.
As the Allies
bombed Rome,
the Grand
Council of
Fascism
deposed
Mussolini and
the king had
him arrested.
Allied Invasion of Sicily, then Italy

Battle of Monte
Cassino, by Peter
McIntyre, official
World War II
artist, May 1944

Italy’s new prime minister was the seventy-two-year-old
military man Pietro Badoglio, who was a key player in
many of the atrocities of the Italian campaigns. Churchill
was ambivalent about his past as long as joined the Allied
cause. But Badoglio was hesitant to switch sides, there
were tens of thousands of German troops in Italy, not to
mention hundreds of thousands of Italian troops fighting
on the Eastern Front, how could he safely extricate Italy
from the war?

Abyssinian warriors going to the northern front during the Second Italo-Ethiopian War

Mussolini
inspecting
Italian
troops
heading for
the Eastern
Front.

Badoglio dawdled; Hitler was resolute. German
troops poured across the Northern border, there was
little Italian resistance. After Badoglio finally signed
the Allied armistice, he agreed to have his Italian
forces guard Rome’s airport so the Allies could land
troops to take Rome. This did not happen, Kertzer
does not say why, perhaps the German troops
entered Rome too quickly. Or perhaps the Italian
troops simply melted away.

Disarmed Italian
soldiers marching to
captivity in Bolzano.

Kertzer recounts an Italian diary entry, “Our army melted like fog in the sunshine,”
“an army in ruin, without leaders, without arms, without discipline, with really only
one wish: not to fight anymore against anyone, for any reason.”
“Everywhere,
arms
abandoned,
camps
abandoned,”
even when
facing token
German forces.
Italian soldiers taken
prisoner by the
Germans in Corfu.

GERMANS SEND ITALIAN JEWS TO THE DEATH CAMPS
Under Mussolini, the Jews had been persecuted, and many foreign Jews
had been rounded up into concentration camps, but he had little
enthusiasm for the final solution. The Nazis, who occupied Rome for nine
horrible months, were much more enthusiastic about the Final Solution.
Barely two weeks after German troops seized Rome, the orders came to
start rounding up the Jews to transport to the death camps. There were
few who were willing to help the Jews, because the Nazi soldiers were
armed and brutal, but also because many devout Catholics held anti-
Semitic views, as we saw in our discussion of the Dreyfus Affair that tore
French politics apart in the interwar years.

Germans Send Italian Jews to Death Camps

Dreyfus Affair Timeline
1894: Alfred Dreyfus convicted of
treason, sentenced to Devil’s Island in
French Guiana.
1896: New evidence points to
someone else, but is suppressed,
army does not want to be
embarrassed.
Zola pens J’Accuse, creating an
uproar in the media.
1899: Dreyfus retried, loses.
Pardoned and released.
1906: Dreyfus reinstated in the
military, serves in WWI, retires.
France splits into pro-republican
Dreyfusards, and pro-Catholic, pro-
Army anti-Dreyfusards.

Kertzer surveys the history of anti-Semitism in
Rome. “Jews had been living in Rome for over
two thousand years. Four centuries earlier,
when Pope Paul IV first mandated that they be
confined to a walled ghetto, locked in at night,
2,500 Jews had lived in Rome. In good part
impoverished, they were subject to draconian
laws mandated by the popes to keep them in
their humble state and to limit all contact with
their Christian neighbors. They were further
humiliated by the requirement that they
regularly attend conversionary sermons at a
nearby Catholic church.”
Antisemitic agitators, Dreyfus Affair, FR

Kertzer continues, “They lived in fear as well
that church authorities would seize their
children. Church practice demanded that Jewish
children who were baptized, even without the
knowledge or consent of their parents, could
not be raised by Jews and so were taken from
their families. Under the thumb of the pope,
and at their mercy, the Jews in Rome came to be
known as the Pope’s Jews. The situation came to
an end only with the conquest of Rome by
Italian military forces in 1870, and with it the
end of the papal states.”
1819 anti-Jewish riots in Copenhagen

Over 1,200 Jews were gathered in the first roundup, and many of them
were sequestered a stone’s throw from the Vatican awaiting the arrival of
cattle cars at the train station to take them to Auschwitz, without food,
and without water. Pope Pius XII summoned Weizsacker, the German
ambassador, to protest. The pope was primarily concerned with the fate
of the Jews who had been baptized as Catholics, and the ambassador
said these converted Jews would be released. Weizsacker said he could
do no more, that these “instructions came from the highest source.”
These Jews were transported directly to Auschwitz. Most of them,
including the children, the elderly, the infirm, were sent directly to the
gas chambers, a few hundred were sent to the labor camps, most were
worked and starved to death, less than a few dozen survived the war.

Jewish
women and
children
walking
toward the
gas chamber,
Auschwitz II,
May/June
1944.

Prisoners in
Auschwitz
during
liberation by
the Soviet
Red Army,
January 1945

Many Jews had escaped the initial roundup, some simply
hid out in friends’ houses, suspecting something was up.
But now many Jews sought refuge. How eager was Pope
Pius XII to shelter the Jews? We know that Pope Pius XII
actively discouraged the religious houses in Vatican City
from sheltering the Jews, we also know that over six
thousand Jews were hidden in religious houses across
Northern Italy, including Rome. Regarding the thousands
of Jews sent to their deaths, Pope Pius judged that it was
best to say nothing.

Miami Beach Holocaust Memorial

Could Pope Pius XII done more to save the Jews from the death camps?
Should the pope have protested the treatment of the Jews, and the
Catholic clergy in Poland?
In this sister video we will reflect on these questions at length, plus
another related question:
Why did Hitler respect he neutrality of Vatican City when German troops
occupied Rome for nine long months? Certainly, his troops could have
marched into the Vatican and imprisoned the pope, there was precedent,
Napoleon had imprisoned the pope. Why didn’t Hitler simply send the
pope and his cardinals to the death camps at Auschwitz?

THE ALLIES LIBERATE ROME AND THE VATICAN
The Allies had landed troops on mainland Italy near Naples
in September 1943, but the Italian mountains were easily
defended, it would be nine long months before the Allied
forces entered Rome. The Germans transported six
hundred thousand Italian prisoners-of-war for forced labor
in Germany. But soon after the Germans advanced, Ernst
von Weizsacker, the German ambassador, assured the
pope that the Germans would respect Vatican neutrality.

The Allies Liberate Rome and Vatican City
Men of Wellington's Regiment march into Rome, Tanks of 13th Armored Regiment roll into Rome, June 1944.

Learning where Mussolini was being held, Hitler
arranged to “rescue” his fascist friend. He was being
held in a mountain resort, he was rescued by a small
contingent of troops led by the famed Oscar Skorzeny
who attacked the hotel, the Italian soldiers offered
no resistance.

Nazi troops under the famed Otto Skorzeny rescued Mussolini and flew him to Germany.

Hitler installed Mussolini as the head of the puppet
Nazi government, the Italian Socialist Republic,
guarded by Nazi troops, but he was more a prisoner
than a leader. Mussolini and his lover would be
executed by partisans when they tried to flee to
Switzerland, their bodies would swing from the
scaffolding of a gas station.

The dead body of Benito
Mussolini next to his
mistress Claretta Petacci
and those of other
executed fascists, on
display in Milan on 29
April 1945, in Piazzale
Loreto, the same place
that the fascists had
displayed the bodies of
fifteen Milanese civilians
a year earlier after
executing them in
retaliation for resistance
activity. The photograph
is by Vincenzo Carrese.

Pope Pius XII worried about the chaos that would occur as the American soldiers
fought their way into Rome. But remarkably, Kertzer reports that “Hitler himself
ordered Marshal Kesselring to prevent Rome from becoming a battlefield.” The
Germans proposed to the Vatican that Rome be declared an open city, and although
the Americans did not agree to do this, this tacit arrangement meant that the
German forces simply marched north out of the city. Shortly after, the Americans
marched into Rome from the South, sooner than authorized.
In his discussions with the American envoy, Pope Pius XII once again expressed his
fear that the Russians and communism would dominate post-war Europe. The pope
mistrusted democracy, hoped the Americans would occupy Italy for a time, and
thought that the monarchy should be restored. This Catholic fear of democracy
would not abate until the bishops convened for the Second Vatican Council several
decades later.

Allied Forces in Rome, June 1944

In sister videos we will reflect on:
• The wartime experiences of Cardinal Roncalli, the future Pope John XXIII, who
called the Second Vatican Council, and Father Montini, the future Pope Paul VI,
who wrapped up the Second Vatican Council after Pope John XXIII had died, and
how these experiences influenced the decrees of Vatican II.
• The Secret Back Channel between Hitler and Pope Pius XII.
• Whether the pope should have protested Nazi brutalities more loudly.
Previously, we recorded a video examining David Kertzer’s World War II history of
Mussolini and the Pope, plus some prehistory.

https://youtu.be/LvNynEdZFuM
https://youtu.be/ONnAcLLBNog https://youtu.be/6xdxvchkWyY

DISCUSSING THE SOURCES
The histories of David Kertzer read like historical novels;
they succeed in bringing you back so you can sense what
it was like to live in those years gone past. David Kertzer is
Jewish and has also reflected on the history of anti-
Semitism, including his well-regarded 2001 book titled
The Popes Against the Jews, The Vatican’s Role in the Rise
of Modern Anti-Semitism, but he is also a fair but
skeptical historian, and I do not think he has an anti-
Catholic bias.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Kertzer
https://www.davidkertzer.com/

The Vatican press published a criticism of Kertzer’s book, but it does not
appear that whoever was writing this criticism actually read the book,
that they were consulting with someone else who provided them with
quotes from the book. This includes criticism of his account of the
backchannel between Hitler and Pope Pius XII, which is rather
embarrassing to the Vatican, though the only “accomplishment” of
these talks was to possibly delay some Nazi persecutions and Vatican
criticisms. Kertzer’s portrait of Pope Pius XII confirms that he was not
naïve, the pope knew that Hitler could not be trusted to comply with the
terms of any treaty or agreement.

https://www.osservatoreromano.va/en/news/2022-07/ing-026/on-the-already-public-negotiations-between-the-holy-see-and-germ.html
https://www.davidkertzer.com/news/david-kertzer-publishes-rejoinder-losservatore-romanos-attack-pope-war

The Jesuit magazine “America” has a more balanced
review that follows closely with my reflections:

From the Jesuit “America” magazine: “Kertzer suggests Pius'
primary motivation was fear: fear for the church and Catholics
in German-occupied territories if, as he believed until the very
end, the Axis won; and fear of atheist Communism spreading
across Christian Europe if the Axis lost.”
The Jesuit “America” review also includes this interesting
reflection: “Marla Stone, professor of humanities at the
American Academy of Rome, said the book ‘takes a position
between the previous poles of historical interpretation.’”
“Previously, the choices were either Pius XII was ‘Hitler’s Pope,’
deeply sympathetic to the Nazis, eager for a Nazi-Fascist
victory, obsessed with the defeat of the Soviets at all costs, and
a dedicated antisemite,” she told a panel at the academy last
month. “The other historiographic position held that Pius XII
did everything within his power to help those suffering under
Nazi and Fascist oppression and that he was merely constrained
by circumstances.”
FILE - President Truman's envoy to the
Vatican, Myron C. Taylor, left, has an
audience with Pope Pius XII in 1947.
(AP Photo/Luigi Felici, File)

Also, from the Jesuit “America” review:
“The Rev. Peter Gumpel, the German
investigator who promoted Pius’ now-stalled
cause for sainthood, has argued that Pius
couldn’t speak out more publicly because he
knew it would enrage Adolf Hitler and result in
more Jews being killed. He cites the case of a
Catholic bishops in the Netherlands who spoke
out against the deportation of Jews and the
Gestapo’s response: deporting Jews who had
converted to Catholicism.”
FILE - President Truman's envoy to the
Vatican, Myron C. Taylor, left, has an
audience with Pope Pius XII in 1947.
(AP Photo/Luigi Felici, File)
https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2022/06/08/vatican-archive-pope-pius-holocaust-243120

This review also has an interesting recent account of how
scholars were given access to these archival materials.
The picture in the review shows the US envoy to the Vatican,
Myron Taylor, meeting with Pope Pius XII. During the war, Pope
Pius XII had extensive policy discussions with Myron Taylor,
appointed by FDR, who was the first American envoy to the
Vatican. Their talks are also an interesting narrative we did not
cover in our short reflections, we urge you to purchase the book
to read this account.

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quotes in these blogs, please type
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