Pope Pas I 12th took his place upon the papal Throne mere months before the second world war erupted under his watch Europe and the world was plunged into the greatest conflict in history and with it came crimes and atrocities beyond anything seen before the pope has been accused of Silence cowardice even sympathy with the Nazis his critics say he abdicated his moral duty and stood silent as Millions were marched to their graves his actions allowed the Nazis to get away with the Holocaust and he chose not to use his power to save those who needed
it but Pas the 12 has many Defenders who insist that he was as staun a protector of the persecuted as anyone could be behind the seemingly neutral facade they claimed that the pope did more than anyone else to save Europe's Jews and that hundreds of thousands of survivors owe their lives to his actions today on a in history will try to find the truth was Pas I 12th Hitler's Pope or was he really one of the Nazis most formidable opponents our story of Pas I 12th must begin before he ascended to the papacy his real
name was Eugenio pachelli and he had a long career in the church as a diplomat from 197 to 1929 he served as the papal Nuno or ambassador to Germany where he saw the rise of the Nazis first hand pachelli had been in Munich during Hitler's failed be Hall p in 1923 and criticized them for their violent methods and extreme views in letters to colleagues butelli had no reason to expect what they would become in 1929 he was recalled to Rome to act as Secretary of State to Pope Pas the 11th in this role pachelli was
the second most powerful man in the Vatican he paid close attention to the rise of the Nazis and did not lose his skepticism of them on April 4th 1933 mere weeks after Hitler took power pachelli wrote to the pap Nuno in Berlin cesare or Seno to quote ask for his intervention against the danger of anti-Semitic excesses in Germany he was one of the first if not the very first foreign diplomats to make such interventions against Nazi anti-semitism soon after it was pachelli who negotiated the 1933 concordat between Germany and the Vatican concordat were a standard
piece of Vatican diplomacy they'd signed 38 of them with different countries between 1919 and 1933 and it was by no means a special Alliance or sign of special favor as critics have charged in the king cordette Hitler promised not to persecute the church and allowed its organizations to continue but in exchange the church would not become involved in political Affairs naturally Hitler broke his promises immediately Banning Catholic youth groups putting vocal clergy on trial and cutting off funding to Catholic private schools in 1934 during the night of the Long Knives several leading German Catholics were
wiped out in the SS Purge the Vatican privately protested these offenses but they did not openly condemn the regime this often seems confusing to people but the Vatican had long sworn out of political Affairs these were not the Middle Ages neither the Vatican nor the other nations of Europe believed the pope had the authority to take sides in political events there was also the issue of Germany's 30 million Catholics who could be targeted if the pope made an enemy of the Nazis while the Catholics who sympathize with the Nazis might break away from the Vatican
if forced to choose between them there was also the the obvious fact that the Vatican sat in the heart of Rome surrounded by the forces of melini's fascist Italy history offered a long list of popes who had been deposed or even killed by their enemies while the Vatican could not openly speak out its actions in the late 1930s led by Pas the 11th and pachelli were clearly antagonistic towards Hitler in 1937 Pas issued the in cyclical with burning anxiety which condemned the regime's treatment of Catholics and alluded to its wider persecutions the Pope ensured that
it was secretly distributed to every Catholic Church in Germany and read aloud from the pulpit on Palm Sunday which infuriated Hitler pachelli made his own views known writing in one letter to the bishop of cologne in 1935 that the Nazis were false prophets with the pride of Lucifer a US state department report based on diplomatic meetings with pachelli in 1937 also concluded that he quote regarded Hitler not only as an untrustworthy scoundrel but as a fundamentally Wicked person when Hitler visited Rome in 1938 Pas and pachelli snubbed him by leaving the city and refusing to
meet with him they even ordered the Vatican Museum closed and the exterior lights turned on off so Hitler could not see it in all its glory in a famous speech in Belgium that same year 1938 Pi condemned anti-Semitism as incompatible with Christianity famously stating spiritually we are all semites a phrase that pachelli repeated many times in his own speeches by 1939 the Vatican and the fascists were practically enemies The vatican's Daily Newspaper which but ell personally oversaw warned that the Nazis want to destroy the Catholic church and even eradicate Christianity itself musolini spies in the
Vatican also discovered that Pas the 11th Was preparing a scathing and public condemnation of racism and fascism to be read at a gathering in Rome on February 11th that year however fate intervened the Aging pius's Health failed and he died the day before the speech was due to be given upon hearing the news musolini was relieved at long last he's gone he exclaimed that stubborn old man is dead pachelli was the obvious choice for successor after an unusually brief three rounds of voting he received the required 2/3 support and became Pope pest I 12th far
from opening a new chapter in papal Nazi relations the new pope was seen as Inseparable from his predecessor Germany was the only European nation who didn't send a representative to his coronation the Berlin morning post wrote that Germany did not approve of his election because he was always opposed to Nazism a sentiment echoed by the frankfur zun which said he did not fully grasp the political and ideological motives which have begun their Victorious March in Germany this attitude was shared at the highest levels of the Nazi government with Hitler and Geral discussing the prospect of
formerly abandoning the concorded because of belli's record of anti-nazi actions Pas the 12's goal in his first 6 months was to be a peacemaker tensions were already high between the major powers and the new pope felt he was in a rare position to reach out to all sides in may he proposed a peace conference with Britain France Germany Italy and Poland but the countries declined to participate with the signing of the pact of Steel between Germany and Italy he sent representatives to musolini to plead with him to councel Hitler against War but was told bluntly
that war was practically inevitable also in may he began secret meetings with Hitler's close friend Prince Philip Von hessen who was also married to an Italian Princess where he urged the prince to raise issues of Peace in Catholic persecution with the feuda like Chamberlain Pas I 12th was convinced that Hitler might be plated with enough concessions in August he sent an unprecedented message to the Polish government suggesting that they seed the disputed danig Corridor in a lasage effort to avoid war which was ignored as late as August 31st mere hours before The Invasion he summoned
um the ambassadors of Britain France Germany Italy and Poland to the Vatican for one final doomed appeal to avoid war Pi's efforts to secure peace were sincere but misguided in this he shared the flaws of men like Chamberlain but it is too easy to condemn him with the hindsight of History to be The Peacemaker he wanted to be Pas could not be seen to take a political side in these events for this reason he did not condemn Nazi invasions for fear he would lose his ability to reach out to Germany and alienate its Catholics when
German tanks rolled into Poland this political neutrality risked becoming political complicity Poland was a Catholic Nation now being crushed by an aggressive expansionary power despite this Pi refused to directly condemn it Catholics in Poland were waiting for papal intervention Catholic priests became a Nexus of anti-nazi resistance but their letters to the Vatican begging for support were met with official silence citing political neutrality the pope expressed his Sympathy for the polls but refused to denounce the invasion in principle privately the pope did at least send messages to the German government demanding better treatment for the poles
stories of persecution of Catholics and non-catholics alike flowed out of Poland and many of them naturally came to the Vatican the Vatican even compiled a report on the religious persecution of poles which it sent to the German foreign office but they did not receive a reply papal reticence continued even as the death tolls piled up an estimated 20% of Polish clergy did not survive the war in vtea Province alone five of its six Bishops and 500 of its priests were sent to concentration camps half of the clergy in rock laaw and Helo were killed 37%
in Vu and 31% in bnan to some Polish Catholics the vatican's silence wasn't just disappointing but traitorous according to one diplomatic assessment by 1941 the attitude of the population towards the holy sea is reported to be reserved D even openly hostile by this point discussing Poland virtually required the Vatican to lie by a mission about the persecution there in one egregious example the Vatican newspaper reported on a tragic death of Polish Bishop Leon vitm manky in October 1941 failing to mention in the article that he had died a prisoner in aitz Pas managed to regain
some credibility among polish Catholics in late 1942 when he circulated a letter of support for the polls through polish churches however the almost simultaneous switch in Nazi strategy from persecuting the church to weaponizing it against the Soviets who had just started turning the tide on the Eastern Front might also explain the renewed optimism of Polish Christians it is indisputable that the Vatican was aware of mass killings of Jews in Europe between the clergy Catholics and diplomats writing to the Vatican it would be fair to say the Vatican knew more than anyone else about the Holocaust
as it was transpiring not only did the Vatican not publicly circulate information about the Holocaust but they also neglected to tell their clergy and diplomats around Europe about what they knew privately for example in 1941 a regretful SS officer named Kurt gin approached the Nuno cesare or Seno in Germany with information about the mass murder of hundreds of Jews in Lithuania the Nuno refused to see him oreno has been criticized for downplaying and excusing Nazi atrocities more broadly but even when garin's story reached the Vatican through other Bishops information about it was not spread in
Poland where persecution of the Jews was was at its most intense the Vatican was aware that by early 1943 perhaps a 100,000 of Poland's Jews still survived polish Catholics were proactive informing the Vatican about atrocities but by late 1944 the pope had apparently heard enough according to the Polish Ambassador kmir Papi after at least 10 visits to the pope to discuss the matter the pope became annoyed I have listened again and again to your representations about our unhappy children in Poland must I be given the same story yet again critics have not claimed that the
pope openly supported or caused the Holocaust the most frequent charge leveled at Pious is Silence by refusing to openly condemn it and refusing to circulate information about atrocities that could have moved public opinion against the Nazis the pope was guilty of enabling and obscuring the Holocaust had he spoken out more forcefully would more Catholics have stepped up to defend Jews would more people have been inspired to resist would Germans have risen up against the Nazis to stop the persecution what ifs are difficult to answer the Vatican defended its action by arguing that speaking out explicitly
against the Nazis would only place more of a Target on victims and could cause Catholics to be targeted too when Bishop Clemens August vong Galan of monster called on PAs to speak out more directly against the persecution of the Jews it was the city's Jewish leaders who begged him not to many Jews at the time and after the war agreed with the vatican's assessment the direct condemnation would only make them more of a Target and make the persecution worse indeed exactly that had happened in the Netherlands where protests against anti-semitic policies driven largely by Catholic
clergy was met with the harshest persecution in Western Europe with 80% of the country's Jews and almost 100 of its Catholic clergy being murdered although the pope never made an explicit condemnation of the Holocaust Pas was talented in weaving indirect criticism into his speeches in fact rather than being an example of silence and denial P's reputation during the war was as one of the few moral voices willing to speak out against their actions modern critics claim his condemnation was too mild or just non-existent but people at the time thought quite differently his very first encyclical
during the war Sumi pontificus called for peace and condemned anti-Semitism the Pope's statements were cleverly worded in them he condemned evil in explicit terms while leaving implicit the perpetrators of that evil he did not need to name the Nazis for his audience to know that he was criticizing them and the euphemistic language also meant that the Nazis could not publicly object without accepting his characterization of them this strategy was not lost on the Nazis nor their enemies the Allies knew it and a dropped almost 990,000 copies of the Sumi pontificus text into Germany to anti-nazi
sentiment meanwhile head of the Gusto Hinrich Müller said the encyclical was directed exclusively against Germany how dangerous it is for our Foreign Relations as well as our domestic affairs is beyond despair such a disconnect between modern and contemporary responses to the Pope's wartime speeches is evidenced elsewhere his Christmas address of 1941 has been criticized for not making explicit condemnation of Nazi crimes in Eastern Europe but once again contemporary audiences did not share those objections as the New York Times wrote the voice of Pas I 12th is a lonely voice in the silence and darkness enveloping
Europe This Christmas Pas I 12th left no doubt that the Nazis aims are also irreconcilable with his own conception of a Christian peace in his 1942 Christmas speech he spoke unequivocally in support for those who quote without any fault of their own only by reason of their nationality or race are marked down for death or Progressive extermination it might seem a tempid obvious criticism now but not at the time the German foreign office lamented that the speech was quote one long attack on everything we stand for and angrily called the Pope the mouthpiece of Jewish
War CRI criminals but P's opposition to the Nazis went far beyond carefully chosen words across Europe Catholics credited Pas with direct and indirect support to their efforts to save hundreds of thousands of lives in the Netherlands Catholics were prominent among the voices condemning Jewish deportations in M treatment 92 Dutch Bishops ended up in aitz for their opposition to the Nazis but that did not stop some 40,000 Jews being sheltered by the church despite or perhaps because of the resistance the Nazis increased deportations and the Netherlands had the highest death rate for Jews in occupied Western
Europe the Bishops and Catholics who spoke out consistently credited Pas I 12's condemnation of anti-Semitism as an inspiration for their work on re de luak the celebrated Jesuit priest who acquired false identity papers for thousands of Jews which earned him a death at daal similarly spoke of Pious the 12's example inspiring him in Hungary the heroic work of tibo Baranski and the pap Nuno Angela Rota saved tens of thousands of hungary's Jews they were honored by Israel as righteous among the Nations and in his acceptance speech rot made sure to tell them that everything he
did he did on the orders of the Holy Father Archbishop Angelo ronali later Pope John the 23rd also helped to arrange the Escape of Jews from Hungary to Palestine and similarly insisted that he did so with the full knowledge and support of the Pope similarly the French monk Pierre Mari benoir credited Pas for both inspiration and support in his efforts to smuggle thousands of Jews out of France according to benois P secured them $4 million in financial support that kept their operation alive but Pi went further still wielding a more direct hand that saved thousands
of lives on October 16th 1943 German forces in Rome began the deportation of the city's Jews over 1,200 of them were rounded up and held just outside Vatican City most of those 1200 were loaded onto to trains and deported to death camps never to be seen again this episode has been held up as proof of Pi's cowardice and failings the pope offered no public condemnation of the deportation and as the critics claim allowed it to happen despite knowing beforehand the truth is far more nuanced and exonerating firstly there is no evidence that the pope knew
about the deportations beforehand the assumption rests upon the idea that the German ambassador would have notified the pope which is a bizarre assumption since the German ambassador was later convicted of war crimes relating to the Holocaust and never claimed to have notified the pope at all in reality Pas found out the morning after the roundups began and immediately did two things first he summoned the German ambassador to protest second and more importantly he sent out instructions to every Catholic institution in the city to open their doors for the Jews every church every Monastery every papal
property was to be opened to Jewish refugees at that time there were over 6,000 Jews in Rome while those 12200 or so fell into Nazi hands almost all of the remaining 5,000 escaped by hiding with the Catholic Church 3,000 of them alone were given Sanctuary at the Pope's summer residence at Castel Gandolfo and the Pope's personal Apartments were converted into a hospital for them there were around 500 Jews sheltered within Vatican City itself in the opinion of Mikel tagak Koto a scholar of the Holocaust and himself a Roman Jew who escaped the deportations those 5,000
Jews owed their survival entirely to the pope and his fellow Catholics it was Pas 2 who regularly ordered clergy to protest of various authorities about the persecution of Jews across Europe for example in June 1942 Pas ordered his Nuno in France to confront the vishy government on quote the inhuman arrests and deportations of Jews and he had Nuno Angela Rota speak to the Hungarian government on numerous occasions over the same issue speaking of Hungary the pope reached out directly to the country's functional dictator Admiral miklos HTI on June 25th 1944 with a telegram begging for
him to stop deporting the country's Jews Days Later Hy suspended the policy citing the vatican's intervention as his reason for doing so and thus sparing 170,000 Hungarian Jews from extermination perhaps the greatest evidence that Pas I 12th was not Hitler's Pope comes from the Nazis themselves we have seen how the two had a mutual hatred from the start and the Nazis were under no Illusions about where the Pope's opinions lay the fact is that the Nazis viewed the Vatican as a formidable opponent in July 1943 Hitler held a meeting to discuss the idea of invading
the Vatican and kidnapping the pope and passed orders to the esss to do so if circumstances aligned Adolf akman responsible for overseeing the Deport and transportation of Jews to extermination camps recognized the Vatican as one of their most Troublesome enemies Who quote vigorously protested the arrest of Jews the antagonism of the Vatican was similarly recognized by Linhart Mastermind of the final solution who told his subordinates in no uncertain terms that quote the Pope in Rome is a greater enemy of national socialism than Churchill or Roosevelt similarly powerful is the praise laid upon Pi by Holocaust
Survivors and Jewish leaders Albert Einstein a long-standing skeptic of the church changed his tune after the war acknowledging that quote only the Catholic Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler the church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand Israel's second prime minister Moshe sharet agreed and upon meeting Pas after the war said it was his first d duty to thank the pope and all the Catholic church for what they had done to rescue Jews a view echoed by another Israeli Prime Minister goldm Mayer Who said when fateful martyrdom came to our people
in the decade of Nazi Terror the voice of the Pope was raised for the victims if the Jews considered him a protector and friend Catholics cited him as the inspiration and director of their efforts to save Jews and the Nazis themselves considered him a mortal enemy how did the the idea of Hitler's Pope becomes so popular history is written by The Victors and in Eastern Europe that was Soviet Russia the Soviets despised the Catholics and the Loyalty of Eastern European Catholics to Rome rather than Moscow was a constant point of anger for them the 1963
East German played the deputy by communist playright rol hu first portrayed Pas as a complicit Nazi stoe a view that the Soviet propaganda machine embraced and propagated to drive a wedge between the ussr's Catholics and the Vatican from covering up Stalin's purges to denial about The Killing Fields of Cambodia Soviet propaganda found an eager audience in the West's academic journalistic and cultural Elite many of whom were Communists and even more of whom were anti- Catholics and who propagated Soviet talking points like the Hitler Pope myth to their audiences the Hitler Pope myth had a strong
following in certain circles by the 1990s and exploded into the mainstream with John Cornwell's 1999 book Hitler's Pope the fact that much of the evidence exonerating the pope was only made public after these ideas were popularized has also made it hard to dislodge the myth but many have tried David gdan pended a 2005 book entitled The Myth of Hitler's Pope where he directly challenged Cornwell's book and highlighted misrepresentations omissions and mistranslations that contributed to the myth Jewish Holocaust historian William D Rubenstein was similarly critical calling Cornwell's book a malign exercise in defamation and character assassination
ultimately the discussion around Pas the 12th is a useful reminder that history and the past are not the same thing history is what we tell ourselves happened and what we tell ourselves happened is by no means what actually happened our retelling of history is shaped by the evidence we have the narratives and values promoted by those telling it our own values and ideals and our hindsight which gives us the privilege of judging the past with information that the people in it simply didn't have the truth is that Pope Pas I 12 did speak out and
took action that directly or indirectly saved hundreds of thousands of lives from Hungary to Rome from the Netherlands to vishy France the Pope's influence was felt as Catholics and non-catholics alike credited him with inspiration leadership and protection in Europe's Darkest Days knowing as we do the full scale of Nazi atrocities anything less than a crusade against them seems not to be good enough however acting within the constraints of his position and without the benefit of our hindsight Pope Pas I 12 still did what he could and earned the scorn of the Nazis the Adoration of
their victims and the Gratitude of so many of their survivors if you enjoyed this video you're in luck because we delve into difficult historical topics like this all the time subscribe to our channel to keep up to date with these videos and we'd appreciate a like to show your support
