World War II Day by Day

Rome, Italy · July 20, 1933

On this date in 1933 in Rome, represen­ta­tives of German Pre­si­dent Paul von Hin­den­burg (1847–1934) and Pope Pius XI (papacy 1922–1939), among them Vati­can Sec­re­tary of State Euge­nio Pa­celli (later Pope Pius XII), announced that a con­cor­dat (treaty) had been forged between the Holy See and the German Reich. The Reichs­kon­kor­dat was a major propa­ganda coup for the Nazis, in polit­ical power nearly 6 months. It gave the impres­sion that the Nazi regime of German Chan­cel­lor Adolf Hitler, who had acquired quasi-dicta­torial powers through the Enabling Act passed by the German Reichs­tag in Berlin on March 23, 1933, posed no threat to German Catholic churches, not­with­standing the omi­nous opening lines in the con­cor­dat that stated rela­tions between the two en­tities must be regu­lated “in a way acceptable to both parties.”

Within the week Pacelli, the chief author of the con­cor­dat, was forced to defend the Holy See in the first of two arti­cles in the Vati­can’s newspaper, L’Osser­va­tore Romano. Soon after rati­fi­ca­tion the Vati­can began reporting breaches of the con­cor­dat. Catho­lic critics with­in Germany were forced to mute their responses to the state’s inter­fer­ence in reli­gious matters and to mis­deeds Nazi radi­cals com­mitted against the Church and its organi­za­tions. In time the Holy See issued the papal encyc­lical Mit Bren­nender Sorge (“With Burning Con­cern”). Written in German, not the usual Latin, it was read in all German Catho­lic churches on Palm Sunday 1937, a day when church atten­dance was highest. Pius XI’s en­cyc­lical con­demned the pagan­ism of Nazi ideo­logy, the myth of race and blood, and the bas­tard­ized Nazi con­ception of God. It warned Catho­lics that the growing Nazi ideo­logy, which exalted one race over all others, was in­com­patible with Catholicism. Over 300,000 copies were circulated.

The day after Palm Sunday, bullies from the German secret state police (Geheime Staats­polizei, known by its acronym Gestapo) raided church offices and seized every copy they could lay their hands on. Pri­vately Pacelli fumed over “the actions of the German Govern­ment at home, their perse­cu­tion of the Jews, their pro­ceeding against poli­tical oppo­nents, [and] the reign of ter­ror to which the whole nation [is] sub­jected”—this to the British am­bas­sador to Rome. With the excep­tion of Pius XI’s 1937 en­cyc­lical, the Holy See’s dif­fer­ences with Nazi Germany were gen­er­ally not aired in public. Some histo­rians have char­ac­ter­ized Pacelli (Pius XII ) and his papacy (1939–1958) as having an “ambig­u­ous record” and responding weakly to the Holo­caust, which is what the newly opened Vati­can archives suggest according to the most recent visi­tors who have mined its con­tents. Despite the urgent pleas of priests, rabbis, and Allied diplo­mats during the war in Europe, Pius XII refused to con­demn, in the words of one of the pope’s most recent bio­graphers, “the Nazis’ ongoing exter­mi­na­tion of Europe’s Jews,” including the depor­ta­tion of more than 1,000 Roman Jews to the Auschwitz-Bir­kenau exter­mi­na­tion camp in 1943, of which only 16 survived.

Eugenio Marìa Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli (Pius XII), 1876–1958

Above: Cardinal and Vatican Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli (seated, center) at the signing of the Reichs­kon­kordat on behalf of Pope Pius XI, Rome, July 20, 1933. Seated to Pacelli’s right is German Vice-Chan­cel­lor Franz von Papen, who signed on behalf of Presi­dent von Hinden­burg and the German govern­ment. Between 1933 and 1939 Pacelli issued dozens of pro­test vio­lations of the Reichs­kon­kordat, which at the out­set he had hoped would pro­tect the rights of Catho­lics under the new German govern­ment of Adolf Hitler. Pacelli’s actions as sec­re­tary of state and later as Pope Pius XII have gen­erated con­tro­versy, par­tic­u­larly on the sub­ject of the Holo­caust. An entire library of books has been built either defending Pius XII’s papacy or taking him to task (the “Pius Wars”). His detrac­tors have accused him of every­thing from anti-Semi­tism to col­luding with the Nazis (“Hitler’s pope”). Based on newly opened Vatican archives and new explo­sive material, David Kertzer, author of The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler (2022), has con­cluded, “As a moral leader Pius XII must be judged a failure.” Other people insist the Catho­lic Church did more than any other reli­gious body to save Jewish lives, occa­sion­ally through Pius XII’s per­sonal inter­ven­tion; e.g., Pius in­structed papal diplo­mats to aid per­se­cuted Jews in Nazi-occu­pied nations, he contri­buted money to aid des­per­ate Jews, he opened Catho­lic facil­ities in the Vati­can and in other parts of Rome and Italy to shelter thou­sands of Jews from the Nazis, and he gave direct face-to-face orders to pro­tect Jews from the Nazis. In the end, with Pius XII’s help a remark­able four-fifths of the Jewish popu­la­tion of Catholic Italy escaped Hitler’s Final Solution.

Left: Pacelli, Apostolic Nuncio (ambas­sador) to Bavaria (1917–1925), pays a visit to a group of bis­hops in 1922. Pacel­li was simul­tane­ously Apostolic Nuncio to Germany (1920–1930).

Right: Pope Pius XII on his day of coronation, March 12, 1939. Pacelli (1876–1958) took the same papal name as his pre­deces­sor, a title used exclu­sively by Ital­ian popes. When Pacelli was elected pope, the Nazi regime regis­tered strong pro­tests and called Pius XII the “Jewish Pope” because of his ear­lier con­dem­nation of German race laws when he was Vatican secretary of state.

Coronation of Pope Pius XII (in Italian), March 12, 1939