Sydney
7 September 2003
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Pius XII – Hitler, the Holocaust and ‘Canossa’
Pope Pius XII ... ‘wanted to cry out aloud in a strong voice’
By Fr Paul Stenhouse
Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury in Wiltshire was a political theorist who died in 1679. He described the papacy, which was [and still is] supreme over the Christian Church spread throughout the world by Jewish fishermen, a tax-collector and a Pharisee from Tarsus, and systematised [as Richard Aldington put it] by Greeks, as “the ghost of the Roman Empire sitting crowned on the ruins thereof”.
Hobbes was no friend of the papacy and he meant his description to be insulting. There is a truth inherent in it, however, that throws some light on the question of Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust.
It was, and to a certain extent still is, true that some externals of the old Roman empire have continued on in the Catholic Church, which inherited them by default and has spiritualised them.
Some critics of the Pope’s alleged ‘silence’ over Hitler’s ‘final solution’ regarding the Jews, write and speak as if the papacy were trapped in a time warp: as if the political and social turmoil in the wake of the Reformation never occurred; as if the Papal States still existed; as if Pope Pius XII in 1939 were Pope Gregory VII in 1076, and Hitler were the recalcitrant young [26-year-old] German Emperor Henry IV – able to be called to heel by being excommunicated by the Pope and forced to do penance outside his aunt’s castle at Canossa in Reggio Emilia in Northern Italy.
There was nothing static or time warpish about the Germany in the 1920s and 1930s that ushered in the horrors of Hitler and the Third Reich. The Catholic Church, with its Pope in Rome, was targeted along with the Jews, in the Nazi obsession with Aryan ‘racial’ purity and patriotism. And German Catholics were still trying to recover from 19th century accusations of ‘loyalty to a foreign power’, that marked the Kulturkampf against the German Catholic Church and the authority of the papacy, under the ‘Iron Chancellor’ Bismarck.
William Rubenstein, in his recent book The Myth of Rescue, concludes that: “In all likelihood – a likelihood probably amounting to a near-certainty – Hitler would have paid no heed whatever to any pronouncement on the Jews made by the Vatican [which had denounced Nazi anti-Semitism before the war began].”
Hitler, consciously or unconsciously, modelled himself on the Prussian nationalist Otto von Bismarck. He entitled his manifesto Mein Kampf (My Struggle) after Bismarck’s Kulturkampf or ‘culture struggle’ with Pope Pius IX [allegedly defending Germany against ‘foreign’ elements]. Hitler would have been familiar with Bismarck’s defiant phrase about having no intention of going to ‘Canossa’.
Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli inherited the keys of St Peter at a time when other ghosts were rising from other ashes. Secularism and atheistic Nazism and Communism had risen wraith-like out of the ruins of the Byzantine, Russian and Prussian empires, and were not only invading the Catholic sanctuaries – but desecrating and attempting to supplant them. The tiny Vatican City State [0.44 sq km] was all that was left to the Pope of the physical glory that was the old Rome, besieged by evil forces that held the Pope and his cardinals prisoners.
As I write we find Pope Pius XII [as Eugenio Pacelli became] and the Catholic Church accused of not having done enough to help the embattled Jews escape the horrors of Dachau, Belsen, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Buchenwald, Ravensbruck and many dozens of other death camps.
If the Protestant reformers, the Deists, the Encyclopaedists, the Rationalists, the Materialists and Secularists, along with the forces of nationalism, socialism and anarchy, had not worked steadily at undermining the authority of the Pope and the Church; if the moral authority of the Catholic Church had been better accepted by Christians; if the Treaty of Versailles had been less harsh; if the Allies had worked harder at avoiding war; if the Allies had supported opposition movements in Germany; if there had been a Jewish State in Palestine in the 30s; if the Jews in Poland and elsewhere had voted to emigrate; if ... then just maybe some effective deterrent to war and its concomitant horrors might have existed; and the tragedy of Nazi Germany might have been averted.
Like Roger Whittaker, at the risk of seeming to be flippant, “I don’t believe in If anymore. If’s an illusion”. “If I knew then what I know now”. “If I could have my time over again”. “If only things had been different”.
Nominal Catholics, along with protagonists of secular and atheistic states, have vied with one another for generations in trivialising the Church’s moral author-ity while appealing to it, perversely, when they find their own authority proves to be ineffectual. Martin Luther’s appeal to the authority of the Pope and the Catholic Church against the Sacra-mentarians [who refused to obey him] is one example, that comes to mind.
Today, as I write, when the Catholic Church takes a stand in matters that concern how particular States deal with their citizens or their neighbours, she is accused of interfering in politics. When she holds back, she is accused of cowardice for allegedly standing by and doing nothing.
When she takes a stand on moral issues such as abortion, contraception or euthanasia, to say nothing of divorce, in-vitro fertilisation, stem-cell research or homosexuality, she is not only not listened to; she is pilloried in the media, and ignored by other religious and moral bodies. Yet she does what she has to do – even if her actions are misconstrued, or seemingly ineffectual.
Pope Pius X was denounced because he was ‘apolitical’ and allegedly did nothing to prevent World War I. His predecessor, Pope Pius IX, was de-nounced because he was ‘too political’.
When Pope Benedict XV offered the Allies and Central Powers a seven-point peace plan on August 1, 1917, the French and British rejected it because they regarded it as too favourable to the Germans. The Germans rejected it because, among other things, it was regarded as interfering with plans to pick up the spoils in a fast collapsing Russia.
After the war the Pope pleaded for reconciliation, but the victorious Allies by the secret Treaty of London [April 26, 1915] had already deliberately excluded the Vatican from the infamous Treaty of Versailles that was to sow dragons’ teeth in the furrows it dug through a defeated Germany and lead inexorably to Hitler and Nazism.
GK Chesterton commented at the end of World War I that the Catholic Church was the only voice that did not say that war would not break out; and when it inevitably did, everybody turned on her and blamed her for not stopping it.
Secular governments that have consistently weakened the Church’s authority, lessened her credit in the eyes of her members and others, excluded her from education and attacked her at every level of public life cannot reasonably complain that her authority is not stronger when their own authority crumbles away and they are looking somewhere for help.
Expectations that excommunicating Hitler would have helped ignore the fact that Hitler had been ipso facto excommunicated years before war broke out. He was only known to have entered a church once during his political career – at the funeral for von Hindenburg; he had no religion.
“Whether it is the Old Testament or the New – it’s all the same old Jewish swindle,” he complained.
Those who suggest that formal excommunication might have worked should reflect on the effect of excommunication on the ‘Catholic’ members of the IRA.
Pope John Paul II appealed to George W Bush not to go to war against Iraq. He offered the same counsel to George Bush senior in 1990. His appeals fell on deaf ears. If otherwise decent people won’t listen when sound counsel is offered them, what reasonable hope would there have been that Hitler would have ceased his ‘Final Solution’ at the behest of the Pope?
Would Hitler be likely to “go to Canossa” when Bismarck’s proud boast was that Germany would never again defer to the Pope.
Elected Pope on March 2, 1939, Pope Pius XII appealed unsuccessfully for an international conference to settle differences peaceably on May 3; and on August 24, he begged the world’s leaders over the radio not to go to war.
He begged the Allies to take early opposition to Hitler seriously, and to support the German military in any coup; he pleaded with them not to demand unconditional surrender of the Germans at Casablanca – his voice went unheeded.
Rumours of gas chambers and extermination camps were met with incredulity by Jews and non-Jews alike. As late as August 30, 1943, the American Secretary of State could declare: “There is insufficient proof to justify a statement regarding execution in gas chambers.”
Reports of the death-camps began filtering through to the West after mid-1941 and the first description of the gas-chambers reached the West in mid-1942. The Pope had received reports of ‘severe measures’ taken against the Jews by October 10, 1942, “but up till now it has not been possible to verify the reports”. In 1943 the Pope had his Nuncio in Berlin, Cesare Orsenigo, approach Hitler directly to protest at the persecution of the Jews in Germany and the occupied territories.
“A few days ago I finally was able to go to Berchtesgaden where I was received by Hitler. As soon as I touched upon the Jewish question our discussion lost all sense of serenity. Hitler turned his back on me, went to the window and started to drum on the glass with his fingers ... while I continued to spell out our complaints.
“All of a sudden Hitler turned around, grabbed a glass off a nearby table and hurled it to the floor with an angry gesture. Faced with this kind of diplomatic behaviour, I thought my mission was over.”
Innumerable Jews alive today can testify to the fact that there was much effective intervention on their behalf on the part of the Catholic Church and the Pope. That it was not enough is obvious, tragic and regrettable.
But in a world that didn’t recognise any role for the Catholic Church and her Pope up to the declaration of war, how can the Pope be criticised for not exerting more influence on events over which he had absolutely no control, and that occurred despite his protests?
Roosevelt was as acquainted as the Pope with the plight of the Jews and his dilemma was as acute. It was his considered judgment that “... we cannot treat these matters in normal ways. We are dealing with an insane man, Hitler, and the group that surrounds him represents an example of a national psychopathic case. We cannot act towards them by normal means. That is why the problem is very difficult”.
Had the Pope publicly called Hitler to go to his ‘Canossa’, the consequences would have been only too easy to predict: The Vatican would have been occupied by Nazi forces; the Pope killed or imprisoned; all nunciatures closed; all Catholic institutions in the occupied territories would have been seized and those Jews, Allied or Axis soldiers or others fleeing persecution hidden in them would have lost their lives.
As William Rubenstein puts it: “Neither the West’s Jewish leaders in late 1942 nor the American Government had the slightest power to stop Hitler’s genocide, and knowledge of the Holocaust in the West did not – and could not – have halted or diminished the death toll given Hitler’s psychotic monomania.”
However frustrated those who wanted Pius XII to speak out may have felt, his own frustration and sorrow equalled and probably surpassed theirs. The Pope wrote in 1941 that “every time he wanted to cry out aloud in a strong voice, sadly, it was waiting and silence that were imposed; every time he wanted to do something and to help, he found himself obliged to wait patiently”.
He knew that nothing could be done to save those trapped in Hitler’s far-flung net of terror. He dedicated himself to saving those who had escaped that net and were still alive.
In his book The Last Three Popes and the Jews, Pinchas Lapide, himself a Jew, responds to critics who claim that the Pope should have done more, and done it differently. He notes that Pius XII tried, and had others try, every avenue to help the victims of Nazi brutality – but found that explicit references to atrocities provoked more horrible reprisals.
It is estimated that 55 million people died during World War II. Of these, 15 million or so were military personnel. The deaths of all, and especially of the 39 million non-combatants, lie heavily upon the consciences of all who played any role in the events that led up to or occurred during the war.
What, if anything, could be done for the Jews trapped in Hitler’s vast killing fields? William Rubenstein points out in his book The Myth of Rescue that the Jews of the Holy Land could do little more than remain passive onlookers in both the war against the Nazis and the struggle to save European Jewry. Only a few dramatic gestures were possible; for the most part these proved to be fruitless.
The most tragic and famous of these gestures was the parachuting of Jewish volunteers behind Axis lines in mid-1944. The heroine, Hannah Senesh who was captured, tortured and judicially executed at the age of 23 went with the group to try to help her mother escape from Budapest. Her mother survived the war.
I recall the stories of Jewish friends who took all kinds of measures to save their children or their other family members, only to discover to their horror that their actions were ill-advised: they themselves survived, while their children and other family members did not.
It is too easy to have 20-20 vision post factum. Winston Churchill, whose situation was entirely other than that of the Pope, has nevertheless been criticised for condemning Hitler’s atrocities and not mentioning the Jews. That he did not speak out reflects the degree of difficulty facing him, and the need to choose his words carefully, so as not to enflame an already nightmarish situation.
Like the Pope “every word uttered ... to the competent authorities, and every public gesture had to be agonisingly weighed and measured in the interests of the victims themselves so as not to render their situation, inadvertently, more serious and unbearable”.
As we face a politically uncertain world future, the resurgence of anti-Semitism in some countries, and among certain groups of people [especially on the internet] is a cause of great concern.
Catholics should read and ponder the 1998 document, We Remember: a Reflection of the Shoah, by the Commission for Relations with the Jews, and the 1965 Declaration of Vatican Council II, Nostra Aetate that inaugurated a new age of Catholic Jewish relations.
The Holocaust and forgiveness are complex and difficult topics for all – Jews and Christians – to confront.
Some weeks ago I shared a podium with Rabbi Pesach Schindler from Jerusalem. We were discussing the topic: The Holocaust and the Existence of God. Naturally one’s attitude towards suffering, and towards forgiving one’s enemies came up.
The Talmud points the way. It describes the Egyptian soldiers of Pharaoh perishing in the Red Sea; and has God rebuking the angels for rejoicing at the death of the Egyptians: “My handiwork [the Egyptians] are drowning in the sea; would you utter song before me?”
On the seventh day of Pesach (Passover), when according to tradition the Egyptians drowned, only half the Halleluia Psalms are recited in the Syn-agogue service out of respect for God’s rebuke to the angels.
Can we all – Catholics and Jews – try to take that rebuke to heart and try to see things from God’s perspective? In the words of St Francis, let us try to sow love where there was, or is, hatred.
Hatred is a deadly virus. Inexorably it destroys all who embrace it. It was not just the millions of Jews and other innocents who were destroyed by the hatred engendered by the Third Reich. The very hatred that fired the gas chambers of Belsen destroyed Hitler and his henchmen, along with his Reich.
Love and its other face, forgiveness, are our most effective response to racists and revisionists, to hate-mongers and war-mongers. It is the only way to ensure that no one is ever forced again to make the sacrifices and decisions that were so cruelly imposed on the millions of innocent victims, the perpetrators and those obliged to stand on the sidelines helpless to prevent the carnage – during the Holocaust and the war that made it possible.
Reprinted from Annals Australasia July 2003. Fr Paul Stenhouse, MSC PhD, is editor of Annals