More Evidence Pius XII Was Not Hitler's Pope - German Files Point to a Russian Plot

Zenit News Agency ^ | April 2, 2007

[NYer]

ROME, APRIL 2, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Adolf Hitler's No. 1 enemy was the Vatican's secretary of state, Eugenio Pacelli, future Pope Pius XII, according to documents recently found in Europe.

In an article published last Thursday by La Repubblica, reporter Marco Ansaldo announced that he has a dossier on Pius XII that complements documentation found in the Vatican Archives.

According to the newly discovered documents, Pius XII was considered an enemy of the Third Reich. Memos and letters unearthed at a depot used by the Stasi, the East German secret police, show that Nazi spies within the Vatican were concerned at the Pope's efforts to help displaced Poles and Jews.

One document from the head of Berlin's police force tells Joachim von Ribbentrop, the Third Reich's foreign minister, that the Catholic Church was providing assistance to Jews "both in terms of people and financially."

Russia's motives

In a commentary on the new documents, Sister Margherita Marchione, author and expert on Pius XII, explains the campaign against the Pope was the work of the Soviets.

"Russia's plans were to control Europe after the war. The only outspoken obstacle to Russia's plan in Europe was the Catholic Church," Sister Marchione wrote.

"The first attacks claiming that the Church had endorsed silently the atrocities of the Nazis came from Communist Russia," she explained. "Soon to control Poland, and other vast areas in Eastern Europe, Russia saw the need to break the loyalty to the Pope of Catholic majorities in those countries.

"The plan was a simple one: convince everyone that the Pope supported the hated Nazis during the war and, therefore, neither he nor the Church could be trusted after the war. The destruction of the Church would leave the field wide open for Russian influence and control."

[OLD REGGIE]

You have been corrected over and over again, yet you repeat the same slanders.

There is no hope for you. You are too invested in your view of the Church.

Interestingly this is exactly what I would have written to you.

BTW (Please make allowances for me if you have answered the following questions. I am a feeble old man and prone to forgetfullness.)

Have you read Hitler's Pope?
Do you have a copy?

[AnAmericanMother]

I have read it.

Don't have a copy - I checked it out from the local library. I had no intention of putting money in Cornwell's pocket.

It's not very well written, btw, and it's not very scholarly. I write for a living, I read history as an undergraduate, and I'm published in a couple of historical magazines, so I am qualified to make a judgment on that.

[OLD REGGIE]

Let's do a historically correct recap:

30-Jan-1933 Hitler named Chancellor

27-Feb-1933 Reichstag Fire Decree Signed

23-Mar-1933 Enabling Act Signed

Mar-Apr-1933 Massive Defections from the Catholic Center Party

07-Jul-1933 Weakened Catholic Center Party dissolves itself due to Gleichschaltung (and after all the other parties had been dissolved or banned)

20-Jul-1933 Reichskonkordat Signed.

Since the concordat was not agreed to until July (and negotiations didn't even begin until April), it is impossible for the concordat to have resulted in the passing of the Enabling Act of March.

Your recap is seriously flawed.

Let's make a minor correction to your recap:

Soon after his promotion as Secretariat of State in 1930, Pacelli began negotiations with Germany regarding the Concordat which has sparked much controversy over the years pertaining to the motives of the Vatican.

Pacelli - Concordat Negotiations With Germany

Plenty of time now isn't there?

Note: This is a large Adobe document. If you are interested in the pertinent chapter it would be wise to search on a key sentence contained in my excerpt. (If you don't have Adobe Acrobat and/or know how to use it I can't help you.) :-) Plenty of time now isn't there?

[OLD REGGIE]

Citing www.ianpaisley.org when arguing with Catholics will really demonstrate to them that you don't hate the Catholic Church, don't hate Catholics as individuals, and are an eminently fair-minded and impartial seeker of truth.

Of course you wouldn't cite a pure Catholic Apologetics site such as Catholic Answers or the like would you?

[Running On Empty]

Catholic Answers doesn’t spread a message of bigotry.

It is an apologetics organization that provides answers about Catholicism but it is not a center of bigotry.

[Running On Empty]

I’ll bet your’re not that old and certainly not feeble. :-)

No pity here. :-)

Now, I’m REALLY old.

[Petronski]

From your source:

Contrary to popular belief, Pope Pius XII, supported by the Vatican, was consistently opposed to National Socialism throughout his entire career; what began as a determined quest for peace as Papal Nuncio, eventually evolved into the outspoken denunciation of Hitler’s growing Nazi regime in the late 1930s. From the commencement of his nunciature in Germany in 1917, Pius XII, then known as Eugenio Pacelli, worked tirelessly towards peace, ultimately concluding twenty- seven concordats within Prussia, Germany, and Bavaria. 1921, he began warning Germans about the dangers of National Socialism, delivering forty out of forty- four addresses clearly and openly criticizing aspects of this emerging ideology which Pacelli was convinced would result in the harmful indoctrinating of a once strong and proud society.

Throughout the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Vatican shared Pacelli’s negative views of Nazism and actively condemned the political party with speeches, as well as statements in the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano. On the twenty-fifth of March, 1928, the Holy Office issued a decree that “…the Holy See is obligated to protect the Jewish people against unjust vexations and, just as it reprobates all rancour and conflicts between peoples, it particularly condemns…the hatred that commonly goes by the name of anti-Semitism.”

Two years later, the Vatican and Eugenio Pacelli published two articles n l’Osservatore Romano which emphatically expressed the disparity between Catholicism and National Socialism and that “belonging to the National Socialist Party of Hitler [was] irreconcilable with the Catholic conscience.”

[Dr. Eckleburg]

Since the concordat was not agreed to until July (and negotiations didn't even begin until April), it is impossible for the concordat to have resulted in the passing of the Enabling Act of March.

I'm well aware of the chronology, but apparently "your recap is seriously flawed." At least according to the guy who wrote "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich." --

"For example Pacelli negotiated a Concordat with Nazi Germany. As part of that deal, the huge Center Party (the Catholic party) reversed its long-term opposition to the Nazis.  As late as March 5, 1933, the eve of the last democratic elections, the former Chancellor and Parliamentary leader of the Catholic Center Party, Heinrich Bruening, proclaimed that his party would resist any overthrow of the constitution and urged President Hindenburg "to protect the oppressed against the oppressors."...

"Its five brief paragraphs took the power of legislation, including control of the Reich budget, approval of treaties with foreign states and the initiating of constitutional amendments, away from Parliament and handed it over to the Reich cabinet for a period of four years. Moreover the act stipulated that the laws enacted by the cabinet were to be drafted by the Chancellor and 'might deviate from the constitution.'"...

"It was this Enabling Act alone which formed the legal basis for Hitler's dictatorship. From March 23, 1933, Hitler was the dictator of the Reich, freed of any restraints by parliament or, for all practical purposes, by the weary old President [Hindenburg]." -- William L. Shirer, "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. A History of Nazi Germany" (New York, Fawcett: 1950, 1962)

I guess Shirer doesn't know what he's talking about either.

[OLD REGGIE]

Don't have a copy - I checked it out from the local library. I had no intention of putting money in Cornwell's pocket.

Hmmmmmmm. I thought I remembered a similar reply from someone else. "I did not buy it. It was a library book. I was not about to enrich the liar."

I hope you put the money you saved into the poor box.

Incidentally, they are cheap on Half.com.

Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII: John Cornwell
Hardcover, 1999 - Buy it for $0.75 (Save 97%)

Cornwell wouldn't get a penny of it and you'd have the actual book in front of you for "research" purposes.

[Dr. Eckleburg]

If all these library lurkers would simply buy this book for six bits they could see for themselves just how lax Cornwell really was on Pacelli.

Non-Catholic historians have not been so lenient.

[OLD REGGIE]

I mean, what difference does the sequence of events make when you're on a mission to "expose the Papacy"?

See #788

[OLD REGGIE]

I don’t suspect there will be a correction or admission of error - just more bluster and diversion.

See #788

[Petronski]

You seem to be contending that, without the Enabling Act, there would have been no war or Holocaust.

[Petronski]

I hope you put the money you saved into the poor box.

Just like Cornwell, right? I mean, he donated proceeds to Holocaust charities, right? He wasn't just out to cash in on the Holocaust, was he?

[AnAmericanMother]

I've already read it, I don't need a copy. Not enough shelf space in the house as it is.

It's not a scholarly work to be maintained in a historian's library. It's merely a "non-fiction" mass market book. Which is of course why it's being remaindered in the dollar bin. Its 15 minutes is (thankfully) almost up.

[OLD REGGIE]

Since the concordat was not agreed to until July (and negotiations didn't even begin until April), it is impossible for the concordat to have resulted in the passing of the Enabling Act of March.

Forget for a moment that the Concordat negotiations began several years before April 1933 and use your imagination to speculate at the Quid pro quo in the Concordat.

Certainly there is no person naieve enough to believe Hitler signed a one sided treaty, one that had nothing which he wanted. Is there?

I remember the Cuban missle crisis in 1962 which resulted in the Russians removing all their missles from Cuba. Did the Russians do this out of the goodness of their heart or did the United States give them something in turn?

Six months later the United States removed all their missles from Turkey. Missles aimed at Russia. Quid pro quo? You betcha! Written or unwritten it happened and was no coincidence.

Was it a coincidence that the Catholic Centrist Party ceased to exist? Written or unwritten it happened.

[Petronski]

The weight of evidence continues to support the Pontiff’s cause, he said, citing the words of the British historican Martin Gilbert, who concluded: “I believe, all things considered, morally and politically, Pius XII acted appropriately and made the right decisions.”

Link.

[Petronski]

Which is of course why it's being remaindered in the dollar bin.

Next stop, the pulp house (and the ash heap of history).

[OLD REGGIE]

It's not a scholarly work to be maintained in a historian's library. It's merely a "non-fiction" mass market book. Which is of course why it's being remaindered in the dollar bin. Its 15 minutes is (thankfully) almost up.

The two books featured on the mysterious site Hitlerspope.com:

The Myth of Hitler's Pope (Hardcover, 2005) Author: David G. Dalin Best Price: $4.75 ____________________________________________________________

Hitler The War and the Pope $5.60 Used - Very Good +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Maybe 20 minutes left?

[Petronski]

Nothing from Ian Paisley, eh?

LOL