The official Catholic response to WWII was pretty disappointing -- supporting Mussolini and the Fascists to preserve the Lateran Treaty establishing the Vatican City, not condemning Germany's invasion of Poland (and other Christian countries like France and Greece), silence (except for baptized Jews only in Italy) while the Jews (and others) were exterminated, etc. The Pope seemed more concerned that the Communists be defeated and the Church survive the Axis powers winning. ( )

Kertzer has written an interesting book which has major drawbacks both from structure and content. I knew that this book would probably be negative about the Pope Pius XII. It was only to be determined just how negative it would be. It turns out that Kertzer concludes the only person worse than Pope Pius XII was Hitler himself. Somehow Stalin, Franco, and Mussolini all come in for lesser condemnation than the former Pope, now titled honorifically Venerable. Kertzer argues that Pacelli only played both sides of the Axis powers against each, and then, as the war momentum shifted, played to the Allies strong suit as the preserver of Roman Catholicism as a religion and European civilization in Italy.
In the acknowledgements, Kertzer says that his father was a Jewish chaplain serving in the US Army. No identification where he was other than at the Anzio landings and then moving with troops toward Berlin. Since Kertzer does not mention this during the main section of the book, we are given the impression that this makes him objective and the book free from partiality. Any reader can read into this what they want. I’m happy his father served in the war and was able to minister to Jewish soldiers during that time of great rescue.
Kertzer is not an actual historian, so the book suffers from that limitation of structural orientation. He is an authority on Italian Studies at Brown University. Brown is not known for published work accurately detailing the US Military during any of the previous wars however Kertzer was one of the first to get inside the Secret Vatican Archives and publish a book on what he was able to discover about Pius XII.
This seems to be the reason for this book as well as enlarging Kertzer’s own scholarly conversation post publication of his earlier work The Pope and Mussolini (2014). That work was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.
One of the major flaws this book is that like John Cornwell’s book Hitler’s Pope there is no citation of Hitler’s sole book Mein Kampf. How you can write a purported academic book without including Hitler’s own words is beyond me. By doing this, a critical judgement can be made against Pacelli without recourse to the actual plans laid out by Hitler himself. This saves a lot of time and effort if the goal is to smear the Pope for all the lunacy that happened during the war. Kertzer never blames the British and French for anything that led up to the war. This is bizarre and par for the course in this revisionist history. I can still picture in my head the news photo of Hitler and appeaser Chamberlain standing side by side as great diplomats for the world to see.
This book is worth reading for the smaller details that are covered during the papal city state’s minimal functioning for years. The Vatican as a land mass is the size of a typical Italian villa. Vatican City is insignificant as a force for war since the loss of the Papal States. The pope will nevermore have anything more than symbolic influence over world events. The Swiss Guard (a gift of Sweden) is a personal security detail for the pope alone and works exclusively within the Vatican or in collaboration with the Italian police and military forces.
This book is untrustworthy for estimating major pivot points of World War II but it is valuable to see what diplomats and other hangers-on were communicating about events on the ground. There is a lot self-aggrandizement in what Kertzer reports but he retells it to the readers with a straight face. If diplomats were so good at their job, wars would never be fought.

This is a most disturbing read for it describes how in Aug 1939, Hitler and Pius XII engaged in secret negotiations which only came to light when the complete archives of Pius XII’s Vatican Secretary of State were ordered released by Pope Francis I. Pius ordered the burning of any archival material relating to immoral behaviour of priests and nuns for as part of the secret negotiations, the Roman Catholic church would be safe if it did not engage in any negative political behaviour concerning Germany. In return, Catholics to the most part were allowed to continue to follow their faith. Pius XII was scrupulously true to his word for step by devious step, he did all in his power to block negative news reports on Axis leaders Hitler and Mussolini. Hitler’s non aggression pact with Stalin meant Pius XII could make no comment about the invasion of Poland or the idea of Hitler and Russia sharing Poland after the war. Pius XII told Frances’ ambassador at the Vatican that Hitler wasn’t to blame for invading France for France had brought it upon herself with her strict enforcement of the separation of church and state, and Catholic and Vatican newspapers in Italy were told by the Pope to vigorously support Italy’s and Axis war efforts. Pius believed there were good racists and bad Fascists and honestly thought the war was a battle between a Jewish-Masonic clique vs Hitler and Fascism. He believed the Axis powers would win up until the American invasion of Italy at Anzio in 1944. He didn’t want to offend Hitler or the Axis for he believed they were the only ones who would keep Russia from invading Europe. 1000 Jews who lived in Rome were rounded up in Oct 1943 and kept for two days at the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican before being shipped to Auschwitz and Pius XII did nothing to intervene nor did he condemn Hitler’s minions for rounding up and later murdering these innocents. He was a timid church mouse afraid to upset Hitler by making any pronouncements against Hitler’s actions. When asked for public statements, Pius XII’s responses were indecisive, ambiguous, inconclusive, and couched in opaque theological language, replete with bromides, rarified language, and of such Byzantine circumlocution that supporters of both Axis and Allies were sure the Pope was on their side. From 1945 onward, Pius XII emphasized how his cooperation with the Fascists and later the German government allowed the Catholic church to survive but no mention was made of the Holocaust or how Fascist racial laws had hurt Jews. No mention was made of Italians helping round up Jews for the death camps. A nationwide amnesia covered Italy. After the war, a country wide revisionist policy covered up the Pope’s crimes. Cardinal Montini (later Pope Paul vi) did everything in his power to maintain this revisionism of Pius’ deeds. Several priests, archbishops, cardinals who were Fascist and antisemite supporters were elevated to higher positions withing the church. In 2020 the bishops in Germany acknowledged Germany’s bishops had failed to oppose the Nazi attempt to exterminate Jews in Europe. The Vatican has yet to do so. Pius XII was a colossal failure as a moral leader and this book leaves the evidence for all to see. ( )

Pope Pius XII has been a controversial figure since the end of WW2, seen as either the Pope who saved the Church from the Nazis, or one of moral failings for not condemning the Nazi atrocities, including the Holocaust. Pius XII’s archives were sealed after his death, compounding the issue. Pope Francis recently unsealed these records, and Mr. Kertzer had the opportunity to research these archives.

What emerges is an unflattering portrait of Pius XII. According to the archives, and unbeknownst to historians, he entered into a secret agreement with the Nazis, in which he would not criticize them, and in return, the Catholic Church in Germany would be left alone. This agreement was censored from a Vatican summary of the war years. Pius XII was also deferential to Mussolini.

Pius XII’s failure to condemn atrocities committed against the Jews is also examined at length in the book. He was only interested in saving those who had converted to Catholicism. Compounding this were the antisemitic views of many of his advisors, and others advisors who felt that condemning the atrocities would endanger the Church.

Incredibly well documented (1/3 of the book is made up of the citations), The Pope At War is a new look at Pius XII, making for both fascinating and grim reading.

My thanks to Random House and to Netgalley for providing an ARC of this important book. ( )

I am a bit surprised at how low the rating is for this book. This is the follow up to David I. Kertzer's Pulitzer Prize winner "The Pope and Mussolini". I have not read that title, but it is on my list to do so, especially after reading this book. Together the two books cover Pope Pius XI and Pius XII's times at the head of the Catholic Church, and based on this book alone I am fairly certain that Kertzer handles both in a dispassionate manner.

It would be easy to imagine a book attacking the Catholic Church, or covering up for its actions, but this one does neither. Instead the reader is provided an impartial treatment, discussing what happened, and the author never assigns motivation to the Pope's actions, though he does speculate as to what those motivations might be. This makes it much easier for the reader to consider the different aspects and perspectives of the events, and that makes the book a very important read.

There is a tremendous amount of fantastic research done by the author, and while clearly the opening of the Vatican archives for this period of time allows Kertzer to do what earlier authors were not able to, Kertzer does not make the mistake of relying solely on those archives, and instead he pulls information from numerous sources and merges it to provide the most complete look at the this period of history to date with regard to the interactions between the states involved.

Perhaps the horrible events that this book covers has resulted in lower ratings than it should have, but I would consider this a must read. ( )