A Tale of Two Popes: Pius XI, Pius XII and the Rome-Berlin Axis

Abstract

As the German armies swept across France in June 1940, Cardinal Tisserant, a senior member of the Curia, wrote from Rome to Cardinal Suhard, the Archbishop of Paris, expressing his concern about the moral reserve of Pope Pius XII when faced with the racist nature of the war and the systematic destruction of the victims of nazism. 'I'm afraid,' wrote Tisserant, 'that history may be obliged in time to come to blame the Holy See for a policy accommodated to its own advantage and little more. And that,' continued the cardinal, 'is extremely sad above all, when one has lived under Pius In the studies which seek to explain Pius XII's silence in the face of certain knowledge of Hitler's extermination policies during the second world war,2 little attention has been paid to this contrast between Pius XII and his predecessor, Pius XI. Much is made of Eugenio Pacelli's career as Nuncio to Bavaria and Weimar Germany from 1917 to 1930 in explaining his special affinity for Germany and his later reluctance to speak against the Germans. Much is also made of Pacelli's abhorrence of communism, which has been dated from the moment in April 1919 when he personally faced down those Bolsheviks who had invaded the Munich nunciature brandishing their pistols. Little, on the other hand, has been made of his equally long career as Secretary of State for Pius XI from 1930 to 1939. Achille Ratti, the future Pius XI, had a similar antipathy to communism, reputedly founded, as in Pacelli's case, on his personal experience as Nuncio to Poland during the Russo-Polish War of 1920-1. What was most notable about the latter part of Pius XI's pontificate from 1933 until his death in 1939, however, was that it was dominated not so much by his anti-communism as by an intense hatred of nazi Germany. Pius XI denounced Hitler and the nazi regime at every opportunity for violating the German Concordat, for their 'statolatry', and for their racism. These attacks reached a