Pope Pius XII, Wartime Pope, Back Channel to Hitler

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.
When Pope Francis opened the complete archives of Pope Pius
XII to scholars, there were some surprise revelations. These
surprises included the existence of a back channel of discreet
direct communications between Hitler and the Pope that was so
secret that not even the German ambassador to the Vatican
knew about it.

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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How was this back channel between Hitler and Pope Pius XII setup? Hitler
and Mussolini when, after the death of the troublesome Pope Pius XI,
who had publicly criticized the Nazi regime and their persecution of the
Jews, Cardinal Pacelli was crowned as the next Pope Pius XII. When he
was cardinal, Pope Pius XII had negotiated the Reich Concordat between
Nazi Germany and the Vatican.
Early in the pontificate of Pope Pius XII, Hitler summoned the Nazi Prince
Phillip von Hessen to his headquarters to initiate secret talks to see if a
deal could be reached with the new pope. Hessen was an ideal
intermediary, he had married the daughter of King Victor Emmanuel III,
Princess Malfada. Prince Phillip even joined the SA, the Nazi storm
troopers, and was appointed governor of his home province in Prussia.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/pope-pius-xii-negotiation-hitler-catholic-church/639435/

Near the end of the war, in a tragic turn of events,
after the King deposed Mussolini, Hitler’s forces
managed to capture Princess Malfada, and she died
in the Buchenwald concentration camp.

Miami Beach Holocaust Memorial

Why did the pope participate in these secret back-channel talks
with Hitler? Likely to safeguard the survival of the church in those
dark times. The history of both the Catholic and the Protestant
Churches in Nazi Germany, and elsewhere, suggests the primary
goal of the church is to guarantee its survival, freedom of
worship, and the freedom to educate the youth in the faith.
The record shows that the pope was eager to reach an
agreement with Hitler to safeguard not only the rights of the
church and its members not only in Germany but in all Catholic
lands of the Third Reich. Even after the invasion of Poland, he
was eager to open up talks with Hitler.

What did Pope Pius XII demand from Hitler before he
would give Hitler the propaganda victory of another public
agreement? Kertzer lists these demands:
• “Ending the attacks against Christianity and the Church
in Party and State publications, and the withdrawal of
particularly offensive past publications.”
• “Cessation of anti-Christian and anti-Church propaganda
targeted at youth, in the school and beyond.”
• “Restoration of religious education in schools in
accordance with the principles of the Catholic Church
and led by Church-approved teachers, in most cases
Catholic clergy.”
• “Restoration of the Church’s freedom to defend itself
publicly against public attacks against Church doctrine
and Church organization.”
• “Cessation of further sequestrations of Church
property.”

MEETING BETWEEN POPE PIUS XII AND RIBBENTROP
Importantly, the pope wanted these talks to continue, and we get the
impression that neither Hitler nor Pope Pius XII were eager for these talks
to end. One of the goals of the secret talks was to setup a meeting
between Pope Pius XII and a problematic visitor, Joachim von Ribbentrop,
who was in Hitler’s inner circle, in March 1940, shortly after the invasion
of Poland.
As can be expected, Hitler wanted the pope to offer concessions and live
up to his obligations under the Concordat, while Hitler was content only
to make promises. Like Napoleon, Ribbentrop was not going to kneel
before the pope, but offered to speak frankly.

Meeting of Ribbentrop and Pope Pius XII

Kertzer quotes him,
as saying that “Hitler
believed settling their
differences ‘was quite
possible’ but
depended on first
ensuring ‘that the
Catholic clergy in
Germany abandon
any kind of political
activity,’ that is, not
offer any criticism,
explicit or implicit, of
government policies.”
Nazi Corruption: German Christian Rally, 1933

Ribbentrop noted that Hitler
“had quashed no fewer than
7,000 indictments of Catholic
clergymen, charged with a
variety of financial and sexual
crimes,” and was continuing
the government’s policy of
subsidizing the church,
including paying the clerical
salaries. The pope responded
by saying that much “was also
being taken away from the
church, including its
educational institutions and its
properties.”
PM Neville Chamberlain and Ribbentrop at Munich Conference, 1938

This meeting between Ribbentrop and Pope Pius XII lasted
about an hour, the pope brought up the dreadful
restrictions placed on the Catholic Church in Poland. The
pope said he did not deny Hitler’s good intentions, but the
fact was that the German state was waging a war against
the Catholic churches, and how many Catholic schools had
been closed. For his part, Ribbentrop predicted that
Germany would surely win the war by the end of 1940.

Public execution of Polish priests and civilians in Bydgoszcz's Old Market Square in September, 1939.

Afterwards, Ribbentrop told
a cardinal how “pleased he
was that Pope Pius XII was
eager to reach a ‘solid, long-
lasting understanding with
Hitler,’ as the Fuhrer wished
for the same thing.” We
could find no pictures of
Pope Pius XII posing with
Ribbentrop, suggesting that
the Vatican had no desire to
publicize these talks.
Cardinal Pacelli, future Pope Pius XII, with Pope Pius XI, 1931

David Kertzer speculates the obvious, that Hitler was stringing the pope
along so he would not criticize the Nazi regime, and these talks continued
after the Ribbentrop visit. But who was stringing along whom? Pope Pius
XII had no love for the Nazis, the ugly reports of the Nazi brutalities
streamed across his desk in real time. You could also forcibly argue that
Pope Pius XII was stringing along Hitler, hoping to temper the active
persecution of Christians as long as he could. They were both stringing
the other along, for opposing reasons. What is true is that this back
channel fizzled out when the tides of war started turning against the
Third Reich and the Axis powers, the last secret meeting was in 1941.

Hitler greets the
Protestant
Archbishop of
Nuremberg,
Ludwig Müller,
and Benedictine
Abbott Albanus
Schachleitner at
the Reich Party
Rally of 1934.

In our main videos on Pope Pius XII, The Pope At War, we reflected on:
• How the Axis Powers blitzkrieged across Europe in the early years of
the war, when many expected Germany to quickly defeat England and
win the war.
• How in the Allies turned the tide in the last years of the war, when
Hitler’s German Army occupied Rome for nine long months.
In other videos we reflected on:
• Whether the Pope Pius XII should have protested Nazi brutalities
more vehemently.
• 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/L1bkOQNrlzg https://youtu.be/pjMa3JdjW48
https://youtu.be/ONnAcLLBNog

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 David Kertzer and his book, The Pope at War, in our
final video covering the final years of the war when the Allied forces triumph
over Nazism. The Vatican press published a criticism of his account of the back-
channel between Hitler and the pope, this we will also discuss this last video.
Some of our slides are photos of the Holocaust Memorial, posted in an album
on the Flickr website.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/193480080@N04/albums/72157719778759885
https://holocaustmemorialmiamibeach.org/

To find the source of any direct
quotes in these blogs, please type
in the phrase to the search box in
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footnote.
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