Pope Pius XII, Wartime Pope, Axis Powers March Across Europe

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.
Pope Pius XII led the Catholic Church under the rule of the fascist
leader Mussolini, ally and admirer of Hitler. Mussolini was a
friend and partner of the Catholic Church, though he was less of
a friend after he went full Nazi in 1938 and started actively
persecuting the Jews.

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.
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When David Kertzer wrote the Pulitzer Prize
winning book, The Pope and Mussolini, the
archives of Pope Pius XI had already been opened
and available to scholars, and the Vatican had
opened selected items from the archives of his
successor, Pope Pius XII. This timeline was
discussed in our video reviewing this book:

800: In the coronation of Charlemagne,
the pope crowned the emperor.
Imperial Coronation of Charlemagne, Friedrich Kaulbach, 1861

800: In the coronation of Charlemagne,
the pope crowned the emperor.
1804: In the coronation of Napoleon,
Napoleon seized the crown from the
pope and crowned himself.
Coronation of Napoleon, Jacques-Louis David and Georges Rouget, painted 1807

Allegory of the Concordat of 1801 with Napoleo
Pope Pius VII is arrested by Napoleon.
1801: Concordat between Napoleon and Pope Pius VII.
French Revolutionaries had seized church property and
martyred clergy, this Concordat recognized the Catholic
Church and agreed to pay clerical salaries.

This established the precedent that the Catholic
Church would sign Concordats with hostile and
often secular regimes.

Capture of Rome, Battaglia Museum
1801: Concordat between Napoleon and Pope Pius VII
1870: Rome captured by revolutionaries in the Italian Reunification.

1801: Concordat between Napoleon
and Pope Pius VII.
1870: Rome captured in the Italian
Reunification.
1922: Mussolini is appointed Prime
Minister by King Victor Emmanuel III.

You can argue that Mussolini’s rule was a continuation of
the history of reunification.

1870: Rome captured in the Italian Reunification.
1922: Mussolini is appointed Prime Minister by King Victor Emmanuel III.
1929: Lateran Treaty, Concordat between Mussolini and Pope Pius XI.

1870: Rome captured in the Italian Reunification.
1922: Mussolini is appointed Prime Minister by King Victor Emmanuel III.
1929: Lateran Treaty, Concordat between Mussolini and Pope Pius XI.
1933: Reich Concordat with Nazi Germany signed,
this was negotiated by Papen and Cardinal Pacelli, future Pope Pius XII.

In addition to discussing the sparks that led up to the
start of World War II in Germany, we discussed these
milestones:

1933: Reich Concordat with Nazi Germany signed.

Nuncio Pacelli, future Pope Pius XII, celebrates Mass in Germany.
March 1937: Palm Sunday Encyclical “With
Burning Concern,” released by Pope Pius XI,
condemned Nazism, and was read from German
pulpits, increasing the persecution of the Catholic
Church in Germany.

Cheering crowds greet the Nazis in Vienna, Austria.
March 1937: Palm Sunday Encyclical “With Burning Concern”
condemning Nazism read from German pulpits.
March 1938: Germany occupies Austria.

British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain after his meeting with
Adolf Hitler at Munich, proclaiming, PEACE IN OUR TIME.
September 1938: Munich Agreement and appeasement, when PM
Neville Chamberlain declared that there is “Peace in our time.”
German Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia is annexed.

Pope Pius
XI at his
deathbed.
September 1938: Munich Agreement, “Peace in our time,”
German Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia is annexed.
February 10, 1939: Pope Pius XI died.

The complete archives of Pope Pius XII were opened
in 2019, then were closed for Covid, and our favorite
author David Kertzer was waiting on the steps for
the archives to open so he could begin his next
enthralling book, The Pope at War, filling in much
detail on the years of the war. Maybe he should
have titled the book, The Pope Behind Enemy Lines,
but he did not ask me for my advice.

Cardinal Pacelli, former Nuncio or
ambassador to Nazi Germany, was crowned
Pope Pius XII, taking the same name to signal
that no major changes were planned in his
papacy, mere months before World War II
erupted in Poland.
February 10, 1939: Pope Pius XI died.
March 2, 1939: Cardinal Pacelli was crowned
as Pope Pius XII.
March 1939: Remainder of Czechoslovakia is
annexed.
September 1939: Germany invades Poland.
May 1940: Germany invades France and the
low countries.

We must remember one important fact: in 1939 and 1940, Hitler
had triumphantly conquered continental Europe, and nobody
could imagine how Churchill and England could once again
challenge Hitler in Europe after the evacuation of English and
French soldiers from the beaches of Dunkirk. The consensus was,
whether they liked it or not, that the Catholic and Protestant
Churches would have to learn how to live under the brutal
regime of Nazi Germany, no reprieve was expected, many felt
that the war would soon be over with the Nazis triumphant, all
across Europe. That probably would have been true had
someone other than Winston Churchill had been appointed
Prime Minister of Great Britain.

British troops line up on the beach at Dunkirk to await evacuation, May 1940

Troops evacuated from Dunkirk, May 1940

Troops evacuated from Dunkirk arrive at Dover, England, May 1940

(REPEAT) David Kertzer outlined in his Foreword and Prologue some of the challenges facing Pope
Pius XII early in his pontificate:
• “How the pope balanced his public stance of neutrality while presiding over an Italian church
hierarchy that enthusiastically supported the Axis war effort” and Mussolini.
• “How Italy’s Catholic clergy urged all good Catholics to fight on Hitler’s side, despite their
uneasiness with the Nazi regime.”
• The Pope and the Curia had real-time reports of the atrocities committed against both the Jews
and the Catholic clergy and intellectuals of Poland. How could the church both guarantee the
future of the church while also denouncing the evildoers? After the war began, Pope Pius XII
was wary, worrying that publicly criticizing the Nazis would have no other effect other than the
increased persecution of the church.
• Pope Pius XII also had to be careful not to antagonize the Catholic faithful in other countries, in
particular the United States, which helped fund the Vatican.
• How to respond to an evil Nazi regime that publicly sought to replace Christianity with a twisted
pagan racial cult?

David Kertzer outlined in his Foreword and Prologue some of
the challenges facing Pope Pius XII early in his pontificate:
• “How the pope balanced his public stance of neutrality
while presiding over an Italian church hierarchy that
enthusiastically supported the Axis war effort” and
Mussolini.
• “How Italy’s Catholic clergy urged all good Catholics to
fight on Hitler’s side, despite their uneasiness with the
Nazi regime.”
• How and whether to publicize the real-time reports of the
atrocities committed against both the Jews and the
Catholic clergy and intellectuals of Poland.
• Pope Pius XII also had to be careful not to antagonize the
Catholic faithful in other countries, in particular the United
States, which helped fund the Vatican.
• How to respond to an evil Nazi regime that publicly sought
to replace Christianity with a twisted pagan racial cult?

Which ideology was seen as the greatest danger to
the Catholic Church at the time? Of course, the
communists, who had martyred Christians by the
millions in Soviet Russia, and who had murdered
clergy by the tens of thousands in the Spanish Civil
War? Or was the brutal Nazi regime worse?

Lenin speaking, Bolshevik Revolution, 1930

Complicating this question is the reality that the Spanish
and Italian fascists, and later the regime of Vichy France,
had been both the sworn enemies of communism and
friends of the Catholic Church. Both sides in the Spanish
Civil War were brutal, both sides committed numerous
massacres. While the Communists on the Republican side
massacred priests, monks, and nuns by the thousands, the
Nationalists under the fascist leader Franco massacred
public schoolteachers and other liberals, socialists, and
communists.

Mussolini had negotiated the Lateran Treaty with the
Vatican, and he and Franco had encouraged the
Catholic Church to become involved in the public
education system in Italy and Spain. But while Franco
never persecuted the Jews, in contrast Mussolini
went full Nazi in 1938, adopting many of the Nazi
race laws, persecuting the Italian Jews.

.
Adolf Hitler and Mussolini walking in front of saluting military during Hitler's visit to Venice, June 1934

Why was Cardinal Pacelli selected to become
Pope Pius XII? The cardinals selected the pope
they thought would be most likely enable the
papacy to survive while behind enemy lines, they
selected a pope who was a careful, courteous,
and caution diplomat. The French ambassador to
the Vatican noted that, in Kertzer’s words,
“Pacelli had spent his entire adult life as a Vatican
diplomat and had never held a pastoral position.
This had left him with habits of reserve, of
prudence, of finding ‘balance’ that led him to
avoid offering any harsh words of criticism,”
which sometimes led to a lack of clarity, and
perhaps a lack of moral purposefulness.
Pacelli negotiating Serbian Concordat, 1914

Kertzer notes, “Having served as the
Vatican secretary of state for the past
nine years, Pacelli had indeed become
closely identified with his papal
predecessor. But the two men were very
different in both background and
personality. Pius XI came from a modest
northern Italian family; his father was a
textile factory manager. Pacelli came from
the so-called black aristocracy, the Roman
elites closely identified with the popes
since the times they had ruled the Papal
States as pope-kings.”

Kertzer has a Plutarchian observation reflecting
on the moral character of the new pope. Kertzer
notes that Pope Pius XII, unlike his successor the
jovial Pope John XXIII, preferred to eat alone in his
private dining room. “According to Sister
Pascalina,” his housekeeper, “the little canaries he
kept in a cage by his side when he ate sang a
particularly beautiful song on that propitious day”
when he was crowned as the new pope. “Ever
attuned to the birds’ moods, the pope
interrupted his meal to open the little door and
let them out. They flew onto the table and the
empty chairs, keeping him company until he
finished his meal. Then, one by one, he induced
them to perch on his finger as he returned them
to their cage and closed the little door.”

Pacelli was not an admirer of the Nazis. While in Munich,
he witnessed the Nazi attempted 1923 coup, the Beer Hall
Putsch, which tried to duplicate the success of Mussolini’s
March on Rome. This fiasco led to Hitler gaining publicity
and imprisonment, where he wrote his Mein Kampf
manifesto, known as My Struggle. When papal nuncio to
Berlin, he often hosted receptions attended by President
Paul von Hindenburg and members of the German cabinet.

Munich Marienplatz during the failed Beer Hall Putsch by Hitler’s Nazi Party

Blackshirts
with Benito
Mussolini
during the
March on
Rome, 28
October
1922.

GERMANS BLITZKRIEG THROUGH POLAND
What should be the response of the Vatican to the news that the German
army invaded Poland? The Vatican is an independent state, with a press
that is independent from the Italian government, although it is subject to
control by the pope. The first response was that the Vatican newspaper
reported that the German army was invading Poland. The Germans had
gone through a lot of trouble to arrange a false-flag operation, so they
could argue that the invasion was actually the fault of the Poles.
Mussolini was not happy, and arrested Guido Gonella, the offending
Vatican journalist. To get him released, the Vatican was compelled to
promise that they would no longer criticize the German invasion of
Poland.

Germans Blitzkrieg Through Poland
Hitler watching German soldiers march into Poland in September 1939.

September 1939 Hitler
invades Poland.
The long bloody war that
all Europe expected finally
commenced. In September
1939, the Nazis invaded
Poland, imprisoning and
murdering many Polish
Catholic priests.
Hitler invades Poland

Kertzer writes, “While the Italian dictator was
pressuring the pope to remain silent, the Polish
ambassador kept trying to convince him to
speak out. Reports from his country were
indeed alarming. As German forces moved
through western Poland, destined to be
absorbed into the Reich, hundreds of priests,
thought to be inspiring Polish nationalism and
Polish resistance, were being arrested. German
priests were being brought in to replace them.
In the end, more than half the priests in western
Poland would end up in concentration camps,
where many would die, while many seminaries,
church schools, monasteries, and convents were
shuttered. Church charitable institutions were
closed, and outdoor shrines, crosses, and other
church ritual sites dismantled.” Edith Stein and Maximilian Kolbe, by Alois Plum, 1984

Confronted by these pressures, Pope Pius XII pondered.
What to do? What to say? His little rowboat of a mini state
was bobbing about in a vast, churning totalitarian sea.
Maybe the pope could bless Poland, maybe the pope could
say he loved all people, but especially the people of
Poland. But this was a time of war, nothing he could say or
do could help the people of Poland, Germany cranked up
the martial music, much of Germany were cheering on
their soldiers. Anything the pope would say would crank
up the persecution of the church in Germany.

Hitler watching German soldiers march into Poland in September 1939

So, Pope Pius XII said nothing. The Vatican paper discontinued
commenting on the war situation. Let the facts speak for
themselves, the pope reasoned. But some after Guido had been
released, the Vatican paper, without editorial, reported how Jews
in Poland were forced to sew yellow cloth triangles to their
clothes, and how the Jews were being herded into a “reserve,” a
euphemism for the Warsaw ghetto. But being the skillful
diplomat, when Hitler survived an assassination attempt, the
pope picked up some compassion points when he sent the evil
dictator his congratulations.

Hitler attends a Wehrmacht victory parade in Warsaw, October 1939

But Pope Pius XII did not want to be silenced
indefinitely. Perhaps he did not want to seem weak,
perhaps he knew he needed to communicate to the
universal church how evil should be confronted.
After his predecessor Pope Pius XI had passed away,
an encyclical was found in his drawer that he was
planning to release that stridently criticized Nazism.
Pope Pius XII thought this encyclical was unwise,
thought that he was a bit too blunt in his
admonitions against Nazism, so he suppressed it.

But a month after the Germans invaded Poland,
Pope Pius XII released the encyclical Summi
Pontificatus, On the Unity of Human Society.
Kertzer’s description is succinct, this encyclical
“attributed the evils of the world to the
spurning of Christ’s teachings. True, Scripture
does exhort us to obey earthly authorities, but
this is not an absolute command: the pontiff
urged ‘the Soldiers of Christ’ to combat the
‘ever-increasing host of Christ’s enemies.’” “The
pope condemned any attempt by the state ‘to
attribute to itself that absolute autonomy
which belongs exclusively to the Supreme
Maker.” The state is not Almighty, the state can
never define morality.

NAZI BLITZKREIG OVERWHELMS FRANCE
The German generals had tried to convince Hitler that Germany was not
ready for a continental war. Mussolini needed no convincing, neither he
nor his generals, nor the Italian people, were itching for another war, and
Mussolini had not sent in Italian troops to assist in the conquest of
Poland, as Poland was on the other side of the Alps. During the Phony
War in the months after the conquest of Poland everyone was asking the
question: When would the invasion of France begin?
Mussolini was certain that invading France would be fatal to Germany,
predicting that a million soldiers from the Third Reich would be killed in
battle, with many more casualties. Ten months after the invasion of
Poland began, early in the morning Hitler’s ambassador to Rome
informed Mussolini that the invasion of France had begun.

Nazi Blitzkrieg Overwhelms France

May to June, 1940
Hitler invades France. In the spring
of 1940 Mussolini gleefully joined
with Hitler in their invasions of
France and all of Europe.
After a month of invading France in
World War I, the Germans get
bogged down in trench warfare
about forty miles from Paris.
In World War II, the Nazis blitzkrieg
to Paris in two weeks, and at six
weeks they reached the Pyrenees
mountains.
Hitler invades France

When reading history, we tend to view past events as inevitable.
But future events are never inevitable, the future has many paths
forking ahead, with decisions that could go either way. Future
military events are even more uncertain, in 1940 the last major
World War had ended decades prior, and the Polish invasion was
a resounding success, but how would the Germans fare when
battling the French army, by far the largest army with the largest
number of tanks in Europe? Perhaps it would have been more of
a slugfest had the Germans used the same invasion routes that
geography had dictated in World War I.

Keitel, Brauchitsch, Hitler and Halder studying map of France during 1940 campaign.

What is often forgotten was that the winning
flanking tank movements through the dense
Ardennes Forest, thought by many to be
impenetrable by tanks, was not favored by the
majority of the German war staff. Hitler
overruled them, the prospect of a decisive
victory appealed to him, despite the obvious
risks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manstein_Plan

The opening of World War II proved the effectiveness
of the new technology and tactics of combining swift
advance of the newly designed tanks and infantry
aided by the new Stuka dive-bombers.

In Kertzer’s words, “the Wehrmacht’s
advance went more swiftly than
anyone could have imagined. Within
four days, the Dutch resistance was
largely crushed, and the Belgians
were in retreat. The massive German
tank assault on France had begun.”
We know how the British were barely
able to rescue many of the
outflanked British and French troops
from the beaches of Dunkirk.
“Worried the Italians would soon join
the attack; the French saw the pope
as their last hope.”

The French ambassador to the Vatican
pleaded for the pope to condemn this
Nazi aggression. Kertzer tells us, “It was
clear to the pope that this was a war that
Germany was likely to win.” Furthermore,
“It is impossible to understand the
pope’s actions without recognizing he
had good reason to think the church’s
future would likely lie in a Europe under
the thumb of Hitler and his Italian
partner. Many were convinced the war
would be over in a matter of months, with
the continent in the hands of the Axis
powers and Britain suing for peace.”
Battle of France, Wikipedia

Even after the successful invasion of France, the Polish
ambassador to the Holy See continued to push for a
condemnation of Nazi Germany’s brutalities that continued in
Poland. Although he was hesitant to explicitly criticize the Nazis,
Pope Pius XII realized something needed to be said, so he held a
special mass honoring the victims of war in St Peter’s Basilica that
would be broadcast on the Vatican radio, appealing to order and
justice and equity, a consoling message that was not so specific
that it could not be spun to the favor of both the Axis and the
Allied powers. The pope was still convinced that the Axis powers
would win the war.

Pope Pius XI, his successor Pacelli
with the inventor Marconi, at the
founding of Vatican Radio in 1931. The gardens and the radio station of the Vatican City.

Fearing that the rapid German advance into France
would conclude before Italy could share in the spoils
of war, Mussolini hurriedly declared war on France,
without consulting his cabinet, invading the
mountainous passes on the French border. Here the
French army offered stiff resistance, Mussolini’s
troops managed only to win a sliver of territory. This
did not help the reputation of the Italian army.

Italian battalion invading France over the Alps in June 1940.

What was the pope’s response? Kertzer
says that the pope refused to pander
to Mussolini. “Mussolini had expected
Rome’s church bells to ring” festively,
“but they remained silent.” The pope
said he would never ring “Rome’s bells
to celebrate a declaration of war. If the
Fascists wanted to have them ring,
they would be able to do so only by
force. In the end, no one made such an
attempt. This was not a time to
antagonize the pope.”
Aeroritratto di Mussolini aviatore, Alfredo
Gauro Ambrosi, 1930

Who would be the next to fall? Kertzer
reports, “At the Vatican, virtually
everyone expected Hitler to launch his
invasion of Britain in July, and it
seemed likely he would succeed in
adding Britain to his conquests.
Meanwhile, Italy’s Catholic clergy and
church institutions continued to do
what they could to encourage popular
support for the war.” The pope would
not temper this patriotic enthusiasm.

The Pope Under The Nazi Thumb
Hitler and his generals at Eiffel Tower, June 1940

THE POPE AND CATHOLIC CHURCH, UNDER THE NAZI THUMB
Now that the Axis powers of Germany, Italy and
Spain had a firm grip on the European continent,
what news should the Vatican newspaper print?

Pope Pius XII asked Monsignor Montini, future
Vatican II Pope Paul VI, review options:
• “The Vatican daily could publish official war
communiques from both sides of the conflict,
but this would mean having the paper banned
in Italy, antagonizing Mussolini.”
• The paper could publish “only Axis war
communiques, but that would damage the
Vatican’s prestige abroad.”
• “Publication of the paper could be
suspended,” which was not a good option.
• “This left only one realistic option, having the
paper focus entirely on church business and
religious life.”

Today’s historical remembrances differ from the
remembrances of those Europeans so soon after the
Nazis seized control of the continent. Today we can
never avert our gaze of the bulging eyes of the
skeletal survivors of the Nazi concentration camps.

Prisoners in
Auschwitz
liberated by
the Soviet
Red Army,
January 1945

Although Europeans in 1940 remember the Kristallnacht and the
Night of the Long Knives, the death camps were still in the future.
Instead, Catholics remembered how the French Revolutionaries
martyred Christians and seized church property, and how these
horrors were repeated by the Russian communist revolutionaries
who martyred Christians by the millions, and by the communists
who likewise martyred clergy by the thousands in the Spanish
Civil War. Catholic clergy in 1940 distrusted both democracy and
communism, supporting the fascists who were the enemies of
communists and the friend of the church in Fascist Italy, Fascist
Spain, and Vichy France.

Kristallnacht, of Night of Broken Glass

When the Nazis overran France, the liberal socialist
ministers fled to form a French government-in-exile,
but the conservative ministers, led by the hero of
World War I, General Petain, formed the pro-
Catholic, anti-Semitic Vichy French regime that
collaborated with the hated Nazis. The French
Catholic Church interpretted this conquest as a
punishment from God and sought to increase the
role of the Catholic Church in French law and culture.

The pope approved. When Pope Pius XII met with the French ambassador, he “told
him how impressed he was with Marshal Petain. Having been worried in the past
that Communists might take over France, the pope welcomed the appearance of a
strong leader who could expunge that danger for good.
It had indeed been Communist subversion,
thought the pope, that had led to France’s
humiliating defeat. He told the ambassador of
a report he had heard that, as the German
army approached, a large number of French
troops deserted while singing the Communist
‘Internationale’ anthem. Perhaps the pope
even believed the implausible story. ‘What a
difference from the war of 1914,’ remarked
the pontiff.”
General Petain Greets Adolph Hitler

Today we find it difficult to understand how the
government officials in both Mussolini’s Italy and
Vichy France would cooperate with the Nazis in their
persecution of the Jews, sending many to the death
camps. Many Catholics in the interwar years were
deeply anti-Semitic, we had reflected on how the
pre-war Dreyfus Affair that split French politics for
over a decade revealed how deeply anti-Semitic
many devout Catholics were.

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.

Puck (to French Justice), So far, so good, Madame! You
have vindicated Dreyfus; but you must punish those
criminals who persecuted him, before your work is done.

The Vichy French
ambassador to the Holy
See commented that
“although the church
condemned racism, it
had long recognized that
a ‘Jewish problem’
existed, and indeed from
the time of the Middle
Ages, the popes
themselves had acted to
keep Jews from a variety
of occupations,” and had
established ghettoes to
house the Jews.
Roman Jewish Ghetto, by Ettore
Roesler Franz, 1880.
Jewish Ghetto of Florence, by T.
Signorini, 1882

To understand the pope’s ambivalence
towards fascism, we must remember
that many in the Curia distinguished
between good Fascists, those “loyal,
conservative Catholics who sought a
close, mutually respectful collaboration
between the church and the regime,
and bad fascists,” including Hitler, “who
were either actually left-wing anticlerics
or “bellicose, anti-religious fanatics who
were strong supporters of the Third
Reich and adversaries of the Holy See.”

There were many who, even after the
revelations about how Jews were
gassed in the death camps, praised
fascism and Nazism for opposing
communism. An editor of a Catholic
newspaper blessed the Italian
soldiers departing to oppose Russia
on the Eastern Front, these soldiers
“were on their way to do battle
against the murderers of Catholic
Spain, the ‘Godless,’ the irreducible
enemies of Christian civilization.”
Eastern Front Montage, Wikipedia

Mussolini was seen as a sometimes friend of
the Catholic Church, but the Church had
reason to fear the motives of Hitler and his
Nazi officials. Kertzer reports, “Amid the
growing certainty of German victory, the
pope was unsettled by a troubling rumor.
Ribbentrop was said to have told Ciano,”
Mussolini’s son-in-law, “that once the war
ended, the Axis powers should evict the
pope from Rome. The new Europe, the
German foreign minister was alleged to have
said, would have no place for the papacy.”
When asked about this, Ciano offered a
heated denial of this conversation.

The Tides of War Begin To Turn
Winston Churchill
summed up this
victory: "Never in
the field of
human conflict
was so much
owed by so many
to so few."

THE TIDES OF WAR BEGIN TO TURN
The tides of war started turning slowly against the Axis
powers. Hitler had hoped to invade the British Isles, but
first the Nazi Luftwaffe would need to gain mastery of the
air. The British had a secret weapon, they had developed
an effective radar system, and the RAF fighters were able
to counter the Nazi fighters and bombers, winning the
Battle of Britain. Winston Churchill summed up this
victory: "Never in the field of human conflict was so much
owed by so many to so few."

We compared Churchill’s remarkable speech praising
the brave pilots of the Battle of Britain to Lincoln’s
Gettysburg Address and Pericles’ Funeral Oration.

Mussolini had less success in establishing a new
Roman Empire. The Italian armed forces were the
laughingstock of Europe, both the Allies and the Axis
began to view Italy as the soft underbelly of Europe.
Mussolini fancied himself as a modern Roman
conqueror, he had earlier defeated the mighty
empire of Ethiopia in Africa, and early in 1939 he
added the mighty country of Albania to the Italian
conquests, which did not thrill the pope.

Group picture of
highly educated
and influential
members of the
Ethiopian Nobility
imprisoned at the
Asinara Island
prison by the
orders of
Mussolini.

Ethiopians
greeting the
depiction of
Mussolini at
Mekelle.

But Mussolini had less luck in North Africa, when the
British beat the Italians, Anthony Eden, the British
foreign secretary, quipped, “Never had so much been
surrendered by so many to so few.” The Italians lost
even though they greatly outnumbered the English.

Italian prisoners guarded and marched, Wikipedia
English RAF pilots
Anthony Eden, the British foreign
secretary, quipped, “Never had so much
been surrendered by so many to so few.”

The German army sent to save Mussolini had some
successes in North Africa, led by the famed tank
commander, General Rommel.

Rommel speaks with troops who are using a captured American M3 half-track, Tunisia.

With his plans to invade England thwarted, Hitler planned to invade the Soviet
Union, so he visited each of his allies to shore up support. Hitler had no luck in
drumming up meaningful support from either General Franco of Spain or General
Petain of Vichy France. Hitler knew Mussolini was itching to go into battle, he was
hoping that he could persuade Mussolini from invading Greece from his foothold in
Albania as his train pulled into the station in Florence, Italy. El Duce proudly
announced to the Fuhrer that his “troops victoriously entered Greece at six this
morning.” When Hitler fell silent, because he was too late, Mussolini reassured him,
“Don’t worry, in two weeks, it will be all over.” But the Greeks defeated the Italian
forces as soundly as had the French forces earlier in the war. Greece was too close
to the Romanian oil fields so important to the Nazi war effort; Hitler was forced to
come to the rescue of his hapless ally once again. This delay may have kept Hitler’s
panzers out of Moscow.

Greco-Italian War, late 1940, Wikipedia montage

Once the mighty Nazi war
machine had conquered first
Greece, then Yugoslavia,
securing the Balkan flank,
Hitler pivoted to invade the
Soviet Union in late June
1941, in Operation
Barbarossa. Kertzer reports,
“Before long, 3.5 million
German soldiers, joined by
700,000 German-allied
troops, including the Italians,
would face a Red Army
numbering 5.5 million men.”
Illustration of the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia, Wikipedia

At first, the invasion of Russia was
even more successful than the
invasion of France had been. “Hitler
thought the eastern campaign would
take no more than a few months.”
Kertzer continues, “At the Vatican,
news of the German attack on the
Communist state was greeted with
great relief, for the prelates had long
worried about the prospect of a
triumphant Russia sharing in an Axis
victory.”
Operation Barbarossa, Invasion of Russia, Wikipedia

We know the barbarity of the fighting on the Eastern
Front, during the course of the war both sides
together suffered tens of millions of military and
civilian casualties. By early December, the Germans
were within fifteen miles of Moscow when the bitter
winter blizzards and arctic cold stopped the German
army in its tracks, the Germans were utterly
unprepared for this subzero winter war, many
German soldiers froze to death.

Pope Pius XII, as did the pope in the first world war,
wanted to convene a peace conference. President
Roosevelt demurred, he insisted on unconditional
surrender to this evil dictator, he did not want the
German conquests validated.

Joseph Stalin, Franklin D Roosevelt & Winston Churchill, Teheran 1943, and Pope Pius XII, by Michael Pitcairn, 1951.

WHEN IS IT BEST TO SAY NOTHING?
Kertzer’s book is divided into four sections, in the first two
sections the Axis powers have conquered Europe and are
marching on the Soviet Union, in the last two sections the
Axis powers are in serious retreat. The last chapter of the
second section is titled, “Best To Say Nothing,” which
describes the dilemma the pope found himself in. Credible
eyewitness reports were coming across his desk on how
millions of Jews were exterminated in gas chambers in
death camps like they were so much vermin.

Young survivors at the camp, liberated by the Red Army in January 1945
When Is It Best To Say Nothing?

At one point the British
envoy urged the pope to
speak out. Kertzer reports
that Cardinal Maglione
responded that “there was
no point having the pope
protest the atrocities, as the
Germans would simply deny
that the charges were true.”
The British envoy notes,
“Papal timidity becomes ever
more blatantly despicable.”
Auschitz Crematoria II and III and their chimneys in the background.

Kertzer told a revealing story of a conversation
between a young German officer and a priest on how
the brutalities of the war deadened people’s sense of
morality. This officer “boasted of having learned how
to kill both a mother and her child with a single shot.”
He then showed the priest “a photo of his own wife
and children. Tears clouded the soldier’s eyes as he
spoke of his deep love for his family.” When the priest
shared this conversation with Pope Pius XII, the pope
“told the priest he occasionally thought of
excommunicating those who would commit such
atrocities, but had decided against it, believing it
would not stop the slaughter and might even spur
greater anger against the Jews.”

In the next video we will reflect on:
• The latter years of the war when the Allies rolled back the Axis
Powers, and when Hitler’s German Army occupied Rome for nine
months.
In other videos we will reflect on:
• The Secret Back Channel between Hitler and Pope Pius XII.
• Whether the pope should have protested Nazi brutalities more loudly.
• How the experiences of the Catholic Church affected the proceedings
and decrees of the Second Vatican Council, called less than two
decades after the end of the Second World War.

https://youtu.be/pjMa3JdjW48
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. He is Jewish
and has also reflected on the history of anti-Semitism, but
he is also a fair but skeptical historian, and he does not
have an anti-Catholic bias.
We will reflect further on Kertzer in our final video
covering the final years of the war when the Allied forces
triumph over Nazism.

To find the source of any direct
quotes in these blogs, please type
in the phrase to the search box in
my blog to see the referenced
footnote.
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Pope Pius XII, Wartime Pope, Axis Powers March Across Europe

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