Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII

Written by John Cornwell

Narrated by Michael Page

The "explosive" (The New York Times) bestseller—now with a new introduction by the author



When Hitler's Pope, the shocking story of Pope Pius XII that "redefined the history of the twentieth century" (The Washington Post) was originally published, it sparked a firestorm of controversy both inside and outside the Catholic Church. Now, award-winning journalist John Cornwell has revisited this seminal work of history with a new introduction that both answers his critics and reaffirms his overall thesis that Pius XII, now scheduled to be canonized by the Vatican, weakened the Catholic Church with his endorsement of Hitler—and sealed the fate of the Jews in Europe.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Release date: Apr 19, 2022
• ISBN: 9781666184686

John Cornwell

John Cornwell is an award winning journalist and author. Hitler’s Pope was an international best-seller, and he won the non-fiction Gold Dagger Award for Earth to Earth, the story of a West Country family tragedy. His recent history, Hitler’s Scientists: Science, War and the Devil‘s Pact, won the Science and Medical Network book of the year prize for 2005.

Reviews for Hitler's Pope

[mmorangtz · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Where was Pius XII during the Holocaust? (Translated from Spanish)

[dinadansfriend · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a well researched dissection of the diplomatic Career of Egenio Pacelli, who called himself Pius XII. The impression given is that Eugenio was no friend of the Jews. Cornwell's research seems to indicate that Eugenio made an arrangement with the Nazis in the 1930's and carried out his part, which was to keep the involvement of the Roman church as low key as possible when it might involve interfering with the Nazi solution to the Jewish problem. There's a lot of footnotes.
Current opinion, including the author's, holds that Pius was no so pro-Nazi, or anti-semitic as he wrote in this book.

[miaculpa-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Whether Pope Pius XII, who was Pope during World War II, was complicit in crimes against Jewish people during the Holocaust remains a heated question.

The author presents us with the case that Pius XII was instrumental in the rise to power of the Nazi Party and refused to speak out against the Holocaust and other Axis atrocities leading up to and during World War II. Additionally, Cornwell argues that the future Pope, Eugenio Pacelli, played a significant role in the build up to World War I.

While Cornwell makes a powerful case against Pius XII, further reading on the topic shows other writers who have defended the Pope, arguing that a number of Jewish people have praised his role during WWII protecting Jewish refugees in the Vatican and his instruction to churches to assist Jewish people hiding from Axis soldiers. While I recommend reading "Hitler's Pope", it is with the rider that the reader seek out other works that defend the Pope's work during World War II.

[ecw0647 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The beatification process has begun to make Pius XII (Eugenio Pacelli) a saint. Aside from whatever we might think about how saints are created by the church as an institution, I suspect everyone would agree that any saint should have a reasonably spotless reputation.

John Henry Newman, a famous British convert to Catholicism in the eighteenth century, once wrote that “It is not good for a Pope to live twenty years. It is an anomaly and bears no good fruit; he becomes a god, has no one to contradict him, does not know facts, and does cruel things without meaning it.” The papacy alters a man’s consciousness. He becomes a solitary individual. Paul VI recognized this solitude and penned a note to himself that described this loneliness and power, “assume every responsibility for guiding others, even when it seems illogical and perhaps absurd. And to suffer alone. . . Me and God.”

Cornwell, aware of the rumors surrounding Pius’s actions during WWII with regard to the Jewish problem in Germany, decided to do the definitive research into these accusations. He was given unprecedented access to Vatican files. He was sure that Pius would be vindicated. What he discovered surprised and saddened him. The secret files revealed a man obsessed with power who maneuvered with Hitler and the German Catholic Church in such a way that helped to bring Hitler to power. It’s important to remember that the papacy as we know it today is very different from that which preceded the nineteenth century. It is an invention. Prior to the rise of almost instant world-wide communication, power was distributed through great councils and a hierarchy that left much discretion to local control. It was “more a final court of appeal than a uniquely initiating autocracy.”

Pacelli played a key role in strengthening the central authority of the papacy. This was in part a reaction to the oppression the Catholic Church had suffered at the hands of the state in the early nineteenth century. There was also a struggle between those who urged more central authority for the pope and those who were anxious to decentralize and distribute more authority to the bishops. The centralists won at the First Vatican Council of 1870 when the pope was declared “infallible” in matters of faith and morals and the undisputed leader of the church. Pacelli, as a Vatican lawyer, played a substantial role in redrafting the Church’s laws in such a way as to grant future popes “unchallenged domination.” The Code of Canon Law was initiated in 1917 and distributed to Catholic clergy. Pacelli received special dispensation to study at home for his seminary training. Ostensibly, this was because of his nervous stomach’s inability to handle seminary food. Whatever the case, the influence of his mother remained very strong.

Following his ordination, he began work on his doctorate, studying with the Jesuits. This was at the time of the Dreyfus trials in France, and— despite his subsequent pardon and evidence of innocence—Jesuit publications continued to warn of the dangers of Jews: “wherever Jews had been granted citizenship the outcome had been the ruination of Christians.” Anti-Semitism had a long history in the Catholic Church, and it was the sixteenth century pope Paul IV who instituted the ghetto and required Jews to wear a distinctive yellow badge.

In the 1920s, Germany had one of the largest — and best-educated — Catholic populations in the world. As papal nuncio, it was Pacelli’s role to create a pact between the German state and the Church, a pact resisted by Protestants and many Catholics who believed his vision was too authoritarian. Pacelli remained pro-German all his life. He failed to publicly condemn any of the mass killings the Germans had begun. Even the slaughter of Catholic priests in Poland and the handicapped under the euthanasia program were never condemned. Cornwell shows that Pacelli was Hitler’s best ally. Despite appeals from many, including some top German commanders in Italy, he refused to condemn Hitler’s acts, self-righteously concluding that Hitler was preferable to Stalin since Hitler was willing to pay lip service to Christianity. In return, Pius XII received full control of the Church in Germany. Cornwell documents how Pacelli had been fully informed of the “persecution unleashed against the Jews at the very point when he was to enter into substantive negotiations for a concordat with its perpetrators.” Hitler even justified the concordat by suggesting that it would be “especially significant in the urgent struggle against international Jewry.”

It is unclear whether Pacelli understood the wider implications of his diplomatic maneuvers that led to Hitler’s supremacy, but he supported Hitler to the very end, sending Hitler his personal congratulations following the unsuccessful bomb assassination attempt in 1939. His failure to condemn the persecution of the Jews rendered Hitler invaluable aid. Cornwell’s ultimate judgment of Pacelli is that his life was a “fatal combination of high spiritual aspirations in conflict with soaring ambitions for power and control. . . not a portrait of evil but of fatal moral dislocation – a separation of authority from Christian love. The consequences of that rupture were collusion with tyranny and ultimately violence.”

Anti-Semitism alone does not explain Pacelli’s silence, although clearly he regarded the Jews as a contemporary as well as ancient enemy of his church. He placed papal power and the accumulation of even more power to the papacy as the highest value. Cornwell answers in the affirmative to the question he poses, “Was there something in the modern ideology of papal power that encouraged the Holy See to acquiesce in the face of Hitler’s evil, rather than oppose it?”

The move to beatify Pius XII should come to a screeching halt. The sanctification of someone whose moral authority has been documented to be considerably less than holy would render the entire concept of sainthood as meaningless if not foolish – if it isn’t already. If Pius were to be beatified, his policies would be confirmed, “endorsing the modern ideology of papal power and justifying Pacelli’s wartime record.”

[denmoir · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This book is on the borderline of conspiracy theory and history. Cornwall views Pacelli through glasses of a modern colour and over-eggs the evidence against the pope doing his memory a grave injustice.

[devil_llama · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book is a history of Pope Pius XII, the pope sometimes referred to as Hitler's pope. As a papal nuncio, he had established close ties with Hitler, and has been sharply criticized for failing to speak out as the Jewish population in Germany was systematically eliminated. The author, a Catholic himself, does not stint his subject nor try to excuse his behavior, but instead seeks to understand the perplexing behavior of a man he had grown up admiring.

[oreillynsf_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A great book to read in conjunction with The Myth of Hitler's Pope. Whatever your view on the topic, the book is well written and well documented. After reading both books, I think that both authors make a strong case for their POV, and that each provides ample evidence for his perspective.

Extremely well researched and documented. Hoever, it seems plain that the title was a bit sensationalistic. If one accepts the author's arguments, Pius 12 seems more weak than diabolical. And reading this in conjunction with the Myth of Hitler's Pope seems a good idea as a way of exploring both sides. For the accusation in the title is rather severe.

[atomicmutant · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The information in this book should be known! I'll recommend it, for its content, but the writing is really pretty dry. For a shorter, but more eloquent treatment of this sordid tale, I'd recommend [Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews, A History] by James Carroll.

The gist of the tale is that an inferred anti-semitism, combined with a relentless drive for papal power, and a myopic self-interest, drove Pius XII into a position of at the very least, inaction and more incriminatingly, shadow compliance with the Nazis in the Holocaust.

It is a sad and sobering tale, and the heavy lifting of the research had to be done, (and has been done well) by John Cornwell, I just wish his prose was a bit more evocative.

[jbd1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A reasonably persuasive case for the involvement (and/or tacit complicity) of Pius XII with the Nazi regime and the Holocaust.