We specialize in hard to find items
All Categories
Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII
Share Tweet
*Price and Stocks may change without prior notice
*Packaging of actual item may differ from photo shown
- Electrical items MAY be 110 volts.
- 7 Day Return Policy
- All products are genuine and original
About Hitler's Pope: The Secret History Of Pius XII
Amazon.com Review This devastating account of the ecclesiastical career of Eugenio Pacelli (1876-1958), who became Pope Pius XII in 1939, is all the more powerful because British historian John Cornwell maintains throughout a measured though strongly critical tone. After World War II, murmurs of Pacelli's callous indifference to the plight of Europe's Jews began to be heard. A noted commentator on Catholic issues, Cornwell began research for this book believing that "if his full story were told, Pius XII's pontificate would be exonerated." Instead, he emerged from the Vatican archives in a state of "moral shock," concluding that Pacelli displayed anti-Semitic tendencies early on and that his drive to promote papal absolutism inexorably led him to collaboration with fascist leaders. Cornwell convincingly depicts Cardinal Secretary of State Pacelli pursuing Vatican diplomatic goals that crippled Germany's large Catholic political party, which might otherwise have stymied Hitler's worst excesses. The author's condemnation has special force because he portrays the admittedly eccentric Pacelli not as a monster but as a symptom of a historic wrong turn in the Catholic Church. He meticulously builds his case for the painful conclusion that "Pacelli's failure to respond to the enormity of the Holocaust was more than a personal failure, it was a failure of the papal office itself and the prevailing culture of Catholicism." --Wendy Smith Product Description An award-winning Roman Catholic journalist presents a shocking record, drawing from secret archives, of the career of Pope Pius XII, showing his long-term collaboration with the Nazis and his anti-Semitism, and discusses his continuing influence. 40,000 first printing. Tour. From Library Journal Relying on exclusive access to Vatican and Jesuit archives, an award-winning Roman Catholic journalist argues that through a 1933 Concordat with Hitler, Pope Pius XII facilitated the dictator's riseAand, ultimately, the Holocaust. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. Review "A superb lesson in Catholic Church politics." -- San Francisco Chronicle, August 26, 1999"Cornwell's valuable book is extremely timely." -- Chicago Sun-Times, October 3, 1999By combining the painstaking research of other scholars with his own new documentation ... Cambridge makes a case in Hitler's Pope that is very difficult to refute. -- The New York Times Book Review, V.R. BerghahnIn May 1940, some 14 months after the election to the papacy of Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, who took the name Pius Xii, the French cardinal, Eugene Tisserant, wrote privately to the cardinal archbishop of Paris, Emmanuel Suhard: "I fear that history will reproach the Holy See for having practiced a policy of selfish convenience and little else." Among Catholics, Tisserant's dim view of Pius XII was that of a small minority only, at least until the pope's death in October 1958. Since the early 1960's, however, when Rolf Hochhuth's play "The Deputy" caused a worldwide scandal and triggered passionate debate, the controversy regarding Pius XII's attitude toward Nazi Germany, and particularly his silence in the face of the extermination of the Jews, has sporadically erupted among Catholics and in the Christians world. For Jews, the subject has remained of major importance, linked as it is not only to the past but also to ongoing relations between the two faiths. John Cornwell's book is illuminating in the analysis of Pacelli's formative years, in the assessment of his personality, in the discussion of German political Catholicism for the sake of the concordat with Hitler and in the description of Pacelli's unrelenting efforts to centralize all major initiatives in the pope's hands. In dealing with the war years and particularly with Pius XII's silence in the face of extermination of the Jews. It is the section of Cornwell's book dealing with the war period that will certainly rekindle the strongest contr
