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

Courage, Like All of Life, is Non-Linear

Sir Lewis Hamilton, 7-time Formula 1 World Champion

Courage, like so much of life, is non-linear.  Lewis Hamilton has won more races than any driver in the history of the Formula 1 World Championship. Several times in his 15-year career he has had crashes that shredded and splintered his 1100-pound arrow shaped car at speeds well above 100mph.  Most recently his title rival, Max Verstappen, caused a crash that end with with Verstappen's car on top of Hamilton's car. 

After every crash, Hamilton was back in the car the next week, racing at speeds over 200mph into corners with 5-g side loads. 

But Hamilton is very afraid of spiders.  Very afraid. 

In this month's cover story in Vanity Fair magazine about Hamilton, he tells the interviewer that during the race each year in Australia, he insists on a high floor in the hotel, to make extra sure no big Australian spiders are in his room.  Hamilton says he watched the movie Arachnophobia as a child and has been afraid of spiders ever since.  

All of us are complex accumulations of genetics, experience, motives and attitudes so there should be nothing surprising that a person who is very brave in one situation is afraid in another.  And yet, that ideal of the Medieval Knight says the brave person should be afraid of nothing. It lingers in our imaginations.

My Dad was a boxer. He wasn't afraid of facing another man and fighting with his fists. His last fight was in a warehouse with a 30-year-old truck driver who took a swing at him. Dad was 62 years old. He knocked the younger man out.  Yet Dad was afraid of doctors and hospitals.  I lost every fist fight I was in and love hosptials.

Recently, I was talking to a friend about his recent trip to several countries in Europe.  He had a seven-hour layover in Helsinki and decided to go and see the city.  

I could never do that. Ride the Alps and Pyrenees and hills in Israel above 50mph on descents--awesome.  Leave the airport and have to pass back through security and customs?  Not me. I would be worried the moment I left the security area. 

Riding across Paris in traffic is pure excitement. I don't imagine what could go wrong.  But dealing with bureaucracy, I can't easily imagine things going right. 

Is it years in the Army that makes me distrust bureaucracy? I don't know.  Nothing in my childhood could have done it.  Until I flew to Basic training at 18 years old, I had never been in an airplane.  Our family never traveled further from Boston that a couple of trips to Cleveland, Ohio. 

On the other hand, I have a fear of needles that is physical and deep. I don't look at needles when I get IVs and blood drawn. But that fear is straight out of childhood.  In the basement of our home was this horrible torture device.

Vintage Singer Sewing Machine and Terror Device

One day, I was alone in the basement and stepped on the treadle of this terrifying machine, got the wheel spinning fast then (I have no idea why) slid the first finger of my five-year-old right hand into the path of that needle.  I screamed. So when my guts tighten up for a routine blood draw, I know where it comes from.  

I walked to my most recent bone-repair surgery feeling really happy. I was going to see old friends who had treated me before.  And walked home just as happy.  But I did not look at the needles during my stay the hospital.

Life-Long Bike Obsession Began with a Trike Trip

"Suicide Cycling Around the World"

That's the title a former co-worker said I should use for a memoir.  Another friend was encouraging me to write about deploying to Iraq for a year, landing in country on my 56th birthday. 

But Daria was sure the better book would be about biking.

I love bikes of all kinds: bicycles, motorcycles, scooters, and the various three-wheeled varieties.  I love the sensation of speed, especially leaning into corners.

My first bike was a red tricycle.  I mostly rode it in the driveway and on the sidewalk on the fairly busy street we lived on I was four--when we moved to an even busier street in another part of Stoneham, Massachusetts.  

One afternoon, I was, according to a story my parents told for years after, riding in the driveway on a Saturday. I was three years old. Dad was at work. Mom went in the house with my then one-year-old sister.  While speeding up and down the driveway on Hancock Street, I decided I could ride to the bakery in Stoneham Square.  

They had jelly doughnuts!  

All of my life, I have been able to see a route in my head that I traveled only once or twice.  In this case, my mother had walked with me to the doughnut shop just a half mile away. Our house on Hancock Street was on the east side of Route 28. The doughnut shop was on the west side.

In the 1950s, Route 28 was the main road north from Boston to central New Hampshire including the state capital, Concord.  I had to ride four blocks to Route 28, cross the four-lane highway and ride past the library and up the hill past the fish store to the middle of Stoneham Square.  

Somehow I did it.

I got my doughnut.  The baker told the owner of the drugstore next door about the little boy on the tricycle. Al Pullo, the owner of the drugstore, called my mom. She came to get me and was not pleased about my trip.  

The next year we moved to Oak Street in Stoneham. At some point I got a Columbia 24-inch 2-wheel bicycle and was riding much further. At eight years old, I rode from Stoneham to Sullivan Square on Route 28 and took a subway to Boston and back. I hid the bike behind a dumpster and, surprisingly, it was there when I returned.

In the six decades since, I have ridden a bicycle in 41 countries and ridden roughly 200,000 miles. I did not ride bicycles between ages 13 and 36, but owned a dozen motorcycles.  

Daria was right. Now I have to actually write it.

The Last Interview and Other Conversations by Hannah Arendt: Book 26 of 2022

Hannah Arendt was very much a public intellectual. She was willing to speak and be interviewed on radio and TV and in public settings.  The interviews collected in this book are from the last decade of her life.  

The first interview occurred on October 28, 1964, with the German TV personality Gunter Gaus. World War II and the Holocaust ended with German Surrender just 19 years before the interview.  Twelve years before that, Hannah Arendt fled to France when persecution of Jews began with Hitler's rise to power.  

The interview covers Arendt's life in Germany, life as a refugee, and as an American scholar.  Arendt and Gaus also talk about the Eichmann trial and Arendt's very controversial reporting on the trial.  

On the rise of Hitler to power she said, 

People often think today that German Jews were shocked in 1933 because Hitler assumed power. As far as I and the people of my generation are concerned, I can say that is a curious misunderstanding. Naturally, Hitler's rise to power was very bad. But it was political. It wasn't personal. We didn't need Hitler's assumption of power to know the Nazis were our enemies! That had been completely evident for at least four years to anyone who wasn't feebleminded. We also knew a large number of the German people were behind them. That could not shock or surprise us in 1933.

Gaus then asks,  

You mean that the shock in 1933 came from the fact that events went from the generally political to the personal?

Arendt responds,

Not even that. Or that too. First of all, the generally political became a personal fate when one emigrated. Second...friends "coordinated" or got in line. The problem, the personal problem was not what our enemies did but what our friends did.

Arendt describes an "empty space" that formed around her and other Jews as "friends" followed the Nazi Party and abandoned her and other Jews. 

In an interview in October 1973, shortly before Arendt's death in 1975, she was interviewed by Roger Errera or ORTF TV, France.  In the interview, which covered many topics and was filmed over several sessions, Errera made a comment that Arendt answered and I could see why I was so taken with Arendt's thinking and felt compelled to read all of her major works.

Errera:  

Our century seems to me dominated by a mode of thinking based on historical determinism.

Arendt:  

We don't know the future, everybody acts into the future, and nobody knows what he is doing, because the future is being done. ... Action is a "we" not an I...Now this makes it look as though what actually happens is entirely contingent, and contingency is indeed one of the biggest factors in all of history. Nobody knows what is going to happen simply because so much depends upon an enormous amount of variables; in other words on simple hasard.  On the other hand, if you look back through history retrospectively, then you can--even though all this was contingent--you can tell the story makes sense. How is that possible? How is it possible in retrospect it always looks as though it couldn't have happened otherwise? All the variables have disappeared, and reality has such an overwhelming impact upon us that we cannot be bothered with what is actually an infinite variety of possibilities.

There is much more in these interviews.  If you have already read one or more of her books, these interviews will give you more perspective.   

I first read Hannah Arendt after I returned from deployment to Iraq in 2010. A new friend Sara Rouhi who was studying philosophy said, "You have to read Arendt." I did. Became obsessed and read all of her major works.  Sara was one of the people I was thinking about when I recommended making friends of all ages.

I wrote about her here.  

Books 8 and 20 in the list below are by Arendt. 

I brought up Arendt at a conference I attended in June on the subject of claiming territory in space.

Just before COVID, I went to my first conference at the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College.

First 25 books of 2022:

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

Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut: Book 25 of 2022

In 1986, the human race was wiped out, except for a dozen people who escaped from Ecuador to the Galapagos island of Santa Rosalia.  From those dozen ill-matched survivors, after a million years, the human race was reborn as something close to fish.  

The end of the human race in 1986 was the direct result of our brains being too big.  Page after page throughout this very funny story, we learn that our oversized brains lie, are prone to self-deception, to self-regard and all sorts of self-destructive behaviors.  

The Virgil in this tour through the self-created Hell of modern life is a Vietnam War veteran who is the child of a terrible science fiction writer who has one fan in the entire world.  And that fan, a Swedish doctor in Thailand, treats the Vietnam War veteran for syphilis--and sends him to Sweden to be cured. He lives there until he is decapitated in a boatyard and becomes the ethereal guide of the book.

 To quote my last Vonnegut book, "If This Isn't Nice, What Is?"  

You could run out and buy or download the book.  

I got my copy of the book from a barista named Joe who works at The Coffee Bar in Avenel, NJ.  

Thanks Joe! It was as good as you said it was.    

First 24 books of 2022:

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

Marching Back to Health

Fifty years ago on February 1, I started Basic Training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio. The skill I use the most from that eight weeks of learning to be part of a team is marching. In the past two decades I have been busted up pretty badly. 

In recovering from those injuries, I would square my shoulders, look straight ahead, take that 30-inch step and move out. After knee replacement surgery three years ago, my physical therapist was a young Marine. He taught me to walk again using cadence. 

In 2007 I smashed C7 and broke nine other bones in a bicycle race. For three months I wore a neck and chest brace. I walked at least three miles every day after I left the hospital. When I didn't feel motivated I would sing cadence in my head and walk very straight and tall. 

For an aging amateur athlete recovering from injuries and body repairs, marching the road to recovery has helped me recover more quickly.

The Echo of Greece by Edith Hamilton Book 24 of 2022

Edith Hamilton wrote a series of books on Greece and Rome.  This is the third I have read. The first two:  The Roman Way and The Greek Way are about the culture of these two empires at their height and their influence through the last two millennia.  

This book could a "WTF Happened?" to the the great culture of Greece. How did it fall so far so fast never to rise again?  The book answers the question by explaining 4th Century BC Greece in sharp contrast to the glories of the century before.  

The book begins by explaining the freedom that came into being in Athens in the 5th Century, something unique in the world up to that time.  Then she explains how Athens fell, the death of Socrates coming at about the same time as the defeat of Athens by Sparta.  

Then there is a chapter or part of a chapter on Isocrates, Plato, Aristotle, Alexander, Demosthenes, the stoics and finally Plutarch--a lovely homage to Plutarch's very famous Lives. 

Hamilton is witty, brilliant, and loves the ancient world. I recommend her books to anyone who cares about the culture of Greece and Rome. 

On freedom:  

Responsibility was the price every man must pay for freedom. It was to be had on no other terms.

Fundamental to everything the [ancient] Greeks achieved was their conviction that good for humanity was possible only if men were free, body, mind, and spirit, and if each man limited his own freedom. A good state or work of art or piece of thinking was possible only through the self-mastery of the free individual, self-government.

Freedom was born in Greece because there men limited their own freedom.... The limits to action established by law were a mere nothing compared to the limits established by a man's free choice. 

On God:

Through Plato, Aristotle came to believe in God; but Plato never attempted to prove His reality. Aristotle had to do so. Plato contemplated Him; Aristotle produced arguments to demonstrate Him. Plato never defined Him; but Aristotle thought God through logically, and concluded with entire satisfaction to himself that He was the Unmoved Mover.

First 23 books of 2022:

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