Rabbi David G. Dalin - The Myth of Hitler’s Pope: Pope Pius XII And His Secret War Against Nazi Germany

Praise for The Myth of Hitlers Pope

Whatever your views on the controversial issues of Pope Pius XIIs papacy, you will profit from David Dalins engagingly written and cogently argued study. Dalin provides a valuable corrective to the farrago of recent criticism leveled against Pius XII and the Catholic Church for its actions (or non-actions) during World War II and places this criticism in the context of the culture wars.

MARSHALL J. BREGER, professor, Columbus School of Law, Catholic University

After the misrepresentation, slander, and prejudice that have marked books on Pope Pius XII in recent years, David Dalins calm and judicious scholarship will do much to clarify the historical record.

ROBERT WILKEN, William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of the History of Christianity, University of Virginia

Rabbi David Dalin has written an admirable defense of Pope Pius XII from a religiously committed Jewish perspective. He effectively answers the vicious, distorted charges that portray Pius XII as a Nazi sympathizer who did nothing to help save Jews from Nazi genocide. Dalins meticulous scholarship shows just what an effective enemy of Nazi racism Pius XII really was, both before and during his papacy, and the personal and collective risks he took to rescue as many Jews as he could under the most dangerous conditions imaginable. Jews, especially, should not only be wary of the calumny against the pope, they should remember his life and career with gratitude. Dalins important book gives Jews good reason for such gratitude.

DAVID NOVAK, J. Richard and Dorothy Shiff Professor of Jewish Studies, University of Toronto

Courage is contagious, so clutch this book close to your heart. Righting great wrongs requires great courage, and that is what The Myth of Hitlers Pope delivers. With devastating effectiveness, Dr. Dalin exposes their motives and subdues the assailants who with rashness and folly attempt posthumously to assassinate Pope Pius XII. This restoration of a good mans good name is a mitzvaha Jewish good deed.

RABBI DANIEL LAPIN, president, Toward Tradition

Although he was warmly praised in his day, and upon his death, by Jewish leaders for his efforts to protect and defend the victims of Hitlers genocidal madness, Pope Pius XIIs reputation as a friend of the Jewish people has suffered since Rolf Hochhuth depicted the pontiff as silent in the face of Nazi atrocities in his 1964 play The Deputy . Today, Pius is regarded in some circles as an anti-Semite and even a Nazi sympathizer. His more fevered critics have constructed the fable that he was Hitlers pope. In his superb book The Myth of Hitlers Pope , Rabbi David Dalin buries this slanderous tale under an avalanche of facts. Far from being condemned as an enemy of the Jewish people, Pius should be honored, the rabbi forcefully argues, as a righteous gentile.

ROBERT P. GEORGE, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, Princeton University

Copyright 2005 by David G. Dalin

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.

First ebook edition 2012

eISBN 978-1-59698-185-0

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

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For my mother, Bella Dalin, and in memory of my father, Rabbi William Dalin

C ONTENTS

I T IS IRONIC THAT SIXTY YEARS after the Holocaustwith anti-Semitism virulent among Islamic fundamentalists and growing rapidly among secular Europeansthat the liberal media in the West has tried to blame Pope Pius XII (and even the Catholic Church as a whole) for anti-Semitism.

No one believed this at the time. From the end of World War II until at least five years after his death in 1958, Pope Pius XII enjoyed an enviable reputation amongst Christians and Jews alike. He was hailed as the inspired moral prophet of victory, and enjoyed near-universal acclaim for aiding European Jews. He was, as one historian has aptly put it, universally praised by Catholics and non-Catholics alike, as the spiritual leader not only of Catholicism but of Western civilization itself. an assessment shared by many other Catholics and Jews who hailed the pope for his many efforts to save Jewish lives during World War II.

The Slander of a Pope

The rhetorical campaign against the popes conduct in World War II began as easily dismissed Communist agitprop against the strongly anti-Communist pontiff. But the campaign of vilification became a major issue after the 1963 Berlin premiere of a play called The Deputy , written by a young left-wing German writer (and former member of the Hitler Youth) named Rolf Hochhuth. Hochhuth vilified Eugenio Pacelli (who became Pope Pius XII in 1939) as a Nazi collaborator and as an icy and avaricious pontiff guilty of moral cowardice and inexcusable silence as Europes Jews were murdered by the Nazis. Promoted as the most controversial play of our time, The Deputy was fictional, highly polemical, and offered no historical evidence. It nevertheless became a sensation and ignited a firestorm of controversy in the media and among intellectuals.