The Myth of Hitler’s Pope: How Pope Pius XII Rescued Jews from the Nazis by Rabbi David G. Dalin, first published in 2005, is a brief but substantial defense of Eugenio Pacelli’s actions as pope during WWII.
The main text is organized into seven chapters spanning about 160 pages. The acknowledgements, notes and index span about forty pages. The layout is nice with generous line spacing.
Although short, it has weight because this is not written by a Catholic but rather by a historian and rabbi. The apparent aim of this book leans towards breadth rather than depth, presumably to make it more accessible to as many as possible.
Dalin frames the topic not merely in terms of “anti-Semitism” but as part of the wider “culture war”. He begins by reminding the audience that Pope Pius XII “enjoyed an enviable reputation amongst Christians and Jews alike” until at least five years after his death in 1958. It is today’s liberal media that perpetuates the calumnies, first propagated in 1963 by The Deputy, a play penned by left-wing German writer Rolf Hochhuth.
In short, the attack on Pius XII is basically an attack by left-wing liberals (including liberal and/or lapsed catholics) on not merely the papacy and Catholicism but tradition as a whole. The “Holocaust” and “anti-Semitism” are simply cheap and easy tactics.
The author dedicates the opening chapter briefly discussing the slander against Pius XII promoted by the likes of Garry Wills, John Cornwell and Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, amongst others. He counters their claims with the pope’s defenders such as Catholic and professor of law Ronald J. Rychlak, Jewish historian Jeno Levai and Sir Martin Gilbert, the official biographer of Winston Churchill.
Gilbert estimates that Christian churches saved up to half a million Jews during WWII, the majority of these by the Catholic Church. Israeli historian and diplomat Pinchas Lapide estimates “at least 700,000, but probably as many as 860,000”. Of the books that defend Pius XII, Dalin considers Rychlak’s Hitler, the War, and the Pope to be the best as it is well-researched.
The second chapter briefly reviews some history of Christian and Jewish relations. Every pope, including Pius XII, has his Jewish detractors and no one denies that popes in the past have expelled the Jewish population.
Of course, the author mostly does not go into the reasons behind those expulsions except for mentioning Jewish ritual murders which he denies just as some popes did. The point is not the intrigue behind the conflict between Christians and Jews but rather that both ancient and more recent popes have defended Jews, thus refuting the simplistic claim that Catholicism is by definition inherently and totally anti-Semitic.
Moving from the general to the specific, the author then continues his defense of Pius XII with a certain focus on the pope’s Jewish defenders and reviews Pacelli’s youth and early career.
Pacelli was a “gifted linguist” who was fluent in at least nine languages including Latin, Greek, Aramaic and English. He earned a doctorate in theology and then a second doctorate in canon and civil law.
In 1917, at age 41 years, Pacelli was named papal nuncio to Bavaria. He was consecrated bishop and was made archbishop before he left for Germany, his rapid rise in rank an indication of the hierarchy’s recognition of his abilities and potential.
Whilst stationed in Germany, Pacelli was already quite sympathetic to Jews except for the communists which he had to deal with and never backed down from.
At a more personal level, and this is typically not mentioned by both his detractors and defenders, he was friends with Munich Opera conductor Bruno Walter. According to Walter’s memoir, his Jewish friend and musician Ossip Gabrilowitsch was wrongly imprisoned during one of the pogroms. As Walter’s efforts to secure Gabrilowitsch’s release through the authorities failed, he sought help from Pacelli. The next day, Gabrilowitsch was released. Walter later converted to Catholicism and Gabrilowitsch became the musical director of Detroit Symphony Orchestra.
Even before he became pope, the nazis already dubbed Pacelli a “Jew-loving” cardinal which was probably in part due to his criticisms.
Of the forty-four speeches Pacelli gave in Germany as papal nuncio between 1917 and 1929, forty denounced some aspect of the emerging Nazi ideology.
The above are merely a few examples that Dalin discusses. There is a long chapter devoted to Pacelli’s actions as pope, the conflict between the Vatican and Berlin obviously intensified but is also a testament to Pius XII’s ability to be subtle.
The most “controversial” chapter is the discussion on Islamic anti-Semitism. It is not that in itself or even the history which Dalin briefly reviews that is controversial, it is the collaboration between radical Islam and German nazism during the war that is intriguing. Dalin puts it simply:
“Hitler’s mufti” is truth. “Hitler’s pope” is myth.
Hajj Amin al-Husseini was born in Jerusalem in 1893 to a wealthy Palestinian Arab family. He became the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in 1922 and had some record of violence against the Jews. He approached the German consul general in Jerusalem in 1933 but it was not until 1938 before there was an official response, thus forming a type of alliance.
For al-Husseini, he was against international Jewry as well as Jewish immigration to Palestine and the establishment of a Jewish state. He was eventually invited to Berlin to establish a base of operations and arrived in late 1941. On November 28, he had a meeting with Hitler for the first time.
According to Adolf Eichmann’s deputy Dieter Wisliceny at the Nuremberg trials: “The mufti was one of the initiators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry and had been a collaborator and adviser of Eichmann and Himmler in the executions of this plan.” Joseph B. Schechtmann considers the beginning of the destruction of European Jewry which coincided with the mufti’s arrival to be “hardly accidental”.
After the defeat of Germany, al-Husseini escaped to Egypt in 1946. There he met Yasser Arafat to whom he was related. Arafat considered al-Husseini a hero and the latter no doubt had an influence on Arafat’s tactics.
The above being the case, this chapter’s weakness is that the sources seem to be mostly Jewish although there are no few.
More generally, the strengths of this book are also, in different ways, its weaknesses. As expected, this is written from a Jewish perspective. This is a strength when it comes to defending Pius XII as no one can accuse the author of bias. It is a limitation and therefore a weakness when reviewing the historical antagonisms between Christians and Jews and Muslims and Jews.
Whilst discussing Pius XII and Hajj Amin al-Husseini is not mainstream, Dalin seems to accept some things without question. For example, he does not question details regarding the Holocaust, he considers the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to be a fabrication [which may or may not be], and he praises John Paul II whose views are not always in tune with tradition. Of course, these issues are outside the scope of this text so although it is simplistic and in that sense a weakness, the simplicity and accessibility are also its strengths.
Like Dalin, this reviewer recommends Hitler, the War, and the Pope by Ronald J. Rychlak if one is interested in the subject and does not mind a much longer text.
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