Pius Xii And The Second World War: According To The Archives Of The Vatican. - Review - book reviews

National Catholic Reporter, Nov 19, 1999 by Arthur Jones

PIUS XII AND THE SECOND WORLD WAR: ACCORDING TO THE ARCHIVES OF THE VATICAN By Pierre Blet, S.J. Translated by Lawrence J. Johnson Paulist Press, 289 pages, $29.95

In contrast to John Cornwell's you-are-there Hitler's Pope, this is a strange and rather subdued book. With painfully honest Jesuit Fr. Pierre Blet, one is wandering in the Vatican archives where, despite its nation-by-nation format, Blet seems an almost reluctant guide. Not driven toward a one-two-three summary, his conclusion is: "Pope Pius XII's high ideals, transcending as they did opposing interests and rival passions, will always make difficult the task of understanding his policy and personality."

What then, in 289 pages, has been learned that wasn't already known?

Mainly good background. Blet gives his "take" on the 12 volumes of Vatican research he edited with Robert A. Graham, Angelo Martini and Burkhart Schneider. It suggests that the Allies didn't (and by extension today's Western European and North American readers don't) understand the situation from the pope's perspective.

Here's Blet as Myron Taylor, Roosevelt's personal representative to the Vatican, meets Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Domenico Tardini.

"The American first spoke to him about 'the advisability and the necessity of the pope coming out against the atrocities committed by the Nazis.'" This desire, said Taylor, has been expressed by many. In fact, just before Taylor's arrival, the ambassadors of Poland, Belgium and Brazil, as well as England's minister (to the Vatican) and Roosevelt's charge d'affaires (Harold Tittman), joined together asking that the pope issue a solemn condemnation of Nazism and its crimes.

"Tardini, who had endured many attacks from diplomats, repeated to Myron Taylor that the pope had already spoken on numerous occasions condemning crimes no matter who their authors might be. Some wanted Hitler condemned by name, but this was impossible.

"Taylor replied: 'I never asked for that, I never asked that Hitler be named.'

"And when Tardini replied that in this case the pope had already spoken, Taylor's rejoinder was: 'He can repeat it.' Tardini agreed."

If this book could be taken out of the context of the atrocities of War World II, it would read like a political novel that revolves around an imperial court, told from the point of view of the courtiers and ambassadors but rarely the emperor. A novel based on a diary with neither authors nor readers able to summarize the plot.

The central character is a shadow. And as the history of the period fades, the shadow undeserved becomes sinister.

World War II at the outset was not quite as cut and dried as it looks 60 years later. Blet reports that the 1939 Berlin Vatican diplomatic view was that "the Holy See had reason to hope that German [Hitler's] government would do everything possible to avoid provocation, to avoid any incident that would lead to conflict."

That was not only the Vatican's view. That view was held by many in Britain. Not by Churchill and his coterie, but certainly by pacifists like Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, fascists, and many undecideds.

Blet writes there is only one way of "returning from the friction to reality, from legend to history, and that is by going back to the original documents, for these directly reveal what the pope said and did."

Any historian knows, and Blet acknowledges, that documents reveal only some of what any person says or does. The winks and nods, the agreements, hints, suggestions and silences over the dinner table and the desk, in the corridor and on the stairs, is where political history takes place. What is recorded is what someone chooses to record. This isn't a problem limited to papal archives.

Yet this book is expected to bear the burden of proof, a proof that could only be shown had Eugenio Pacelli, that most meticulous of men, kept a personal daily diary.

The first quotation in this book -- in Paulist Thomas Stransky's preface -- is not from the Vatican archives but from The Tablet of London (June 29, 1963). Cardinal Giovanni Battista Montini (the future Paul VI) took "The Deputy" playwright Rolf Hochhuth to task for "an inadequate grasp of the psychological and political realities" in those "appaling conditions of war and Nazi oppression" during which Pius XII tried "so far as he could fully and courageously to carry out the mission entrusted to him."

It's axiomatic in journalism (though many writers ignore it) that "a quotation isn't proof." And Stransky isn't proving anything by quoting Montini, except perhaps Montini's own anguish.

Next, the reader is teased by the question Stransky raises at the outset that Blet never answers, because Pius XII never answered it. Stransky mentions Pius XII's May 1952 address to nurses when the pope asks himself. "What should we have done that we have not done?"

The fact that the question was still plaguing the pope -- when Blet tells us that the "wave of systematic disparagement" did not begin until 1963-64, 12 years later and five years after the pope's death -- speaks volumes.