Henry Kissenger and The Nazi Pope: Long Lives Addicted to Power

Two terrible twins in my mind and probably no one else's are Henry Kissenger and Pope Pius XII, the pope who bowed to the Nazis to preserve the Vatican and ignored the pleas of Catholics in France, England, Poland and other countries. He also never said the word Jew or acknowledged The Holocaust during World War II. The Pope's wretched performance in World War II is well documented in The Pope at War by David I. Kertzer. 

Eugenio Pacelli, Pius XII, chose preservation of The Vatican over preservation of Catholic lives.  

In 1957, Henry Kissenger wrote his best book, A World Restored--arguably the book that defined his life's work.  In that book Kissenger wrote about the Treaty of Ghent in 1814 and how it restored stability to Europe.  Kissenger decided stability was the proper goal of diplomacy. No moral considerations could stand in the way of stability: the same reasoning that Pius XII used to put the preservation of The Vatican over the lives of Catholics and Jews in Nazi-dominated Europe.

Kissenger was in his mid-30s when Pius XII died in 1958 at 82 years old.  Kissenger lived longer, reaching 100 years, but both men clung to power and relevance until their last breath.  

After his pro-Nazi war years, Pius XII conspired with surviving Nazis by supporting the "Rat Line" that got Nazis and their looted wealth out of Europe to South America after World War II.  

Kissenger in his preference for stability opened relations with China and brought great prosperity to the communist nation, assuming that the world would benefit by bringing China into the world economy.  Fifty years later, China has the second largest economy in the world and is using it to build it its Navy and Army and threaten its neighbors, most notably Taiwan.  Building up a totalitarian country leads to a more powerful totalitarian country. 

Kissenger's path to the Vietnam peace deal includes abandoning our allies and giving consent to dropping more bombs on Cambodia and Laos than America dropped on Nazi Germany and its allies during World War II. 

In his 90s, Kissenger still craved relevance. He insinuated himself into the Trump administration through Jared Kushner--giving credibility to the biggest abuser of power for personal wealth ever to work in the White House. Kushner's Saudi Sovereign Wealth deal may exceed Trump himself in abuse of power.  

Both men chose power over every moral consideration. Both strove for relevance until their dying breath. Each made the world a better place by breathing no more. 

The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini and Hitler. Book 27 of 2022

 

Pope Pius XII has had an ambiguous history until the opening of the Vatican archives this book was based on. The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler  ends the ambiguity about the record of Pius XII during World War II and makes clear he chose to preserve the Vatican and the institution of the Church and never condemn Nazis or Fascists while they were in power.

Beginning in June 1945, when the guns were silent, the Vatican relentlessly defended Pope Pius XII. The task was easier until March 2020 when the archives of Pius XII were opened.  Access to the archives would have to wait several months until COVID restrictions were relaxed, but when the doors were opened, David I. Kertzer was there. 

The result is a 500-page story of a Pope, the leader of the Catholic Church beginning in March 1939, who chose to preserve the Church as an institution and the Vatican itself rather than exercise moral leadership.  

His predecessor, Pius XI, was, by Kertzer's account, a man who saw evil in Fascism and Naziism. He was set to publicly denounce both regimes in February of 1939 when he fell ill. His remarks were printed in 150 copies for distribution to Church leaders. When Pius XII became Pope, he had every copy of his predecessor's attack on Fascists and Nazis destroyed.

By March of 1939, Catholics in Germany, Austria and other lands the Nazis occupied were being persecuted.  Pius XII was secretly negotiating the Nazis for better treatment for Catholics, but he believed the Nazis and Fascists would win the coming war.  

Further, Pius XII, like the Germans who supported Hitler, were more afraid of communism than anything else.  

Then in September 1939, the Nazis conquered Poland and divided the demolished country with the Soviets.  Hitler and Stalin were persecuting and killing Polish Catholics. Church leaders were clamoring for the Pope to condemn the Nazis. Later they were joined by French, Dutch, Belgian, and other Catholic leaders. Pius XII never condemned the Nazis publicly.  

By 1941, the reports of extermination of the Jews reached the Pope through his own envoys and Italian military leaders.  He knew in considerable detail that a million Jews were dead and the pace of slaughter was accelerating.  Pope Pius XII never said the word Jew during the entire war.  He never went further than to regret the death of minorities. 

In 1943 when the fascist government in Italy failed and the Nazis occupied Italy, Pius XII did his best to protect Rome and the Vatican. With the Nazis in charge, the Jews who were already in fascist camps and ghettos were deported to death camps.  Pius XII made some effort to save Jews who were converts, but nothing for Italian Jews. During his papacy, the Vatican newspaper published justifications for keeping Jews away from Christians in ghettos that were Church policy hundreds of years before. 

In 1941, Pius XII spoke to a Catholic youth group about maintaining morality and staying away from movies and other temptations.  It is sadly funny to hear the moral leader of a world Church talking about morality when he has a perfect record of never condemning persecution, death and murder. 

Pius XII also made passionate pleas to stop the bombing of Rome in 1943 and 44 and not to bomb the Vatican.  Winston Churchill was especially vehement in rejecting the Pope's pleas. Pius XII had never condemned the Nazi bombing of London nor spoke out about the suffering of British Catholics under the Blitz. 

The Pope and the Vatican survived the war. When the shooting stopped the rationalizing began. The Pope who never said Jew and never condemned Nazis stayed in office until 1958.  Then his canonization process began.  Hopefully, the archives that are the basis of Kertzer's excellent book will stop the sainthood of a man who chose to save the Vatican and the Church and never condemn evil. His place in eternity is better described in Canto 19 of Inferno by Dante Aligheri. 

First 26 books of 2022:

The Last Interview and Other Conversations by Hannah Arendt

Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut

The Echo of Greece by Edith Hamilton

If This Isn't Nice, What Is? by Kurt Vonnegut

The War That Made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleopatra, and Octavian at Actium by Barry S. Strauss. 

Civil Rights Baby by Nita Wiggins

Lecture's on Kant's Political Philosophy by Hannah Arendt

Le grec ancien facile par Marie-Dominique Poree

The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen

Perelandra by C.S. Lewis

The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay

First Principles by Thomas Ricks

Political Tribes by Amy Chua 

Book of Mercy by Leonard Cohen

A Brief History of Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters by Andrew Knoll

Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall

Understanding Beliefs by Nils Nilsson

1776 by David McCullough

The Life of the Mind by Hannah Arendt

Civilization: The West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson

How to Fight Anti-Semitism by Bari Weiss

Unflattening by Nick Sousanis

Marie Curie  by Agnieszka Biskup (en francais)

The Next Civil War by Stephen Marche

Fritz Haber, Volume 1 by David Vandermeulen