In August 1939, while he was finalizing his plans for the invasion of Poland, Adolf Hitler was also engaged in negotiations with Pope Pius XII, so subtle that even the German ambassador to the Holy See did not know about them. The existence of these talks was a secret that the Vatican wanted to keep long after the death of Pius XII, and indeed it succeeded for nearly eight decades.
The 12 volumes of the Holy See's documents on World War II, compiled in 1981 and still the official record of Vatican activity during that period, contain no mention of these negotiations. Their knowledge has just now come to light after the recent opening of the archives of Pius XII in the Vatican.
The criticism leveled by historians at Pius XII's decision to avoid direct public criticism of Hitler and to remain silent about the Holocaust is great.
Many conservatives in the Church portray Pius as a staunch, courageous enemy of Hitler and fascism. However, others harshly criticized him for not denouncing the Nazis' aggressive war and Hitler's attempt to exterminate all of Europe's Jews. Even when the SS rounded up more than a thousand Jews in Rome itself on October 16, 1943, the pope refused to speak publicly . The prisoners spent two days in a compound near the Vatican, and were then sent to Auschwitz.
In 2000, Pope John Paul II was reportedly preparing to canonize Pius XII, but backlash, especially from Rome's Jewish community, forced him to postpone the decision. His successor, Benedict XVI, asked that they wait until the Vatican archives for the war years were opened before making a final decision. However, he agreed to declare Pius XII "venerable", an important step on the road to sainthood.
Finally, in 2019, Pope Francis authorized the opening of Pius XII's archives, which became available to scholars a year later. In the two years since then, no new discovery has been as dramatic as the discovery that, shortly after becoming pope, Pius XII entered into secret negotiations with Hitler, a story told here for the first time.
The previous pope didn't even want to see Hitler
In the last months of his life, Pius XII's predecessor, Pius XI', had become a real headache for Hitler . The Pope was outraged by the fact that Hitler had suppressed the influence of the Church in Germany, had replaced Catholic schools with state schools, had closed many religious institutions, while replacing Christian teachings with Nazi doctrine.
In 1937, Pius XI issued an encyclical condemning the Nazi government for persecuting the Church and defending a pagan ideology. Hitler was enraged.
A year later, when the Führer visited Rome, Pius XI left the city for his summer retreat. In remarks that angered Benito Mussolini, Hitler's host, he said he could not stand the glorification of the swastika, which he called "a cross that is not the cross of Christ".
the "friendly" new pope
To the relief of Hitler and Mussolini, Pius XI died in early 1939. In his place was elected Eugenio Pacelli, who took the name "Pius XII", and Hitler thought that now was his chance to improve relations with the Vatican, or at any rate, to prevent the new Pope from openly criticizing in his regime.
As his secret mediator with the Pope, he chose the 36-year-old Prince Philip von Hessen, son-in-law of the king of Italy. He was a highly trusted figure, being one of the first members of the SA, the Nazi Party soldiers.
Shortly after the election of the new Pope, Hitler called von Hessen into his office. Given the new Pope's apparent willingness to turn the page on the Vatican's difficult relationship with the National Socialist regime, Hitler had decided to explore the possibility of an agreement. Von Hessen was asked to see if he could arrange a secret meeting with the Pope in order to begin discussions.
To preserve secrecy, conversations between von Hessen and the Pope would have to take place through unofficial channels. For the next two years in these "unofficial channels" a leading role would be played by a "greedy fascist" named Raffaele Travaglini, brother of von Hessen's wife and deeply networked in the Vatican.
The Vatican's first secret meeting with the Nazis
In April 1939, just a month after Pacelli became Pope, von Hessen invited Travaglini to the Italian royal residence in Rome. There he explained that Hitler had asked him to open negotiations with the new pontiff outside of normal diplomatic channels. Travaglini would in turn immediately write to Cardinal Lorenzo Lauri, a man close to the Pope, asking for his help in arranging a meeting between von Hessen and Pius XII.
The Pope met Hitler's envoy for the first time on May 11 in a third party's apartment to ensure secrecy. What was said recently surfaced..
At this first meeting, the Pope read the letter sent to him by the Führer to congratulate him on his election and the reply he had sent him. "I was very careful and the answer of the Reich Chancellor was very kind. But the situation since then has worsened", he will say.
As examples, he cited the closing of Catholic schools and seminaries in the Third Reich, the publication of books attacking the Church and the papacy, and the cutting of state resources for the benefit of the Church in Austria. He told the prince that he was willing to come to an agreement with Hitler and he was ready to compromise as far as his conscience would allow, “but for that to happen, there must first be an armistice... I am sure that if peace between Church and State is restored, all will be happy. The German people are united in their love for the Fatherland. As soon as we make our peace, the Catholics will be devoted to you, more than anyone else."
Von Hessen explained to him that the Nazi party was divided into pro-Church and anti-Church factions, asking him to help the former prevail, but the Pope replied that he had no interest in getting involved in party politics.
"Look at Italy," he told him. "And here there is an autocratic government. And yet the Church can provide for the religious education of the young. No one here is anti-German. We love Germany. We are glad that Germany is big and strong".
Von Hessen asked if the Pope was willing to put in writing the Church's commitment to stay out of politics. The problem, Pius XII replied, avoiding the question, was to be clear about what politics meant. The religious education of young people, for example, should not be considered political.
The accusations of sexual crimes by priests
Von Hessen then brought up what was another sore spot in the Vatican's relations with the Reich, the much-publicized"morality" trials of German priests. Hundreds had been charged with sex crimes , including child abuse.
"Such mistakes happen everywhere," the Pope will say. "Some remain secret and some are exploited. Whenever we are told about such cases, we intervene immediately". But most historians almost agree that the Catholic Church used to cover up these cases.
After the meeting, von Hessen traveled to Berlin to convey to Hitler what the Pope had said. Three weeks later, having returned to Rome, von Hessen conveyed a message from the Nazis, which, in order to reach the Pope, passed through the hands of Travaglini and Cardinal Laurie.
The message read that the Führer “was very pleased with the secret discussion von Hesse had with His Holiness (…) After this meeting, various talks took place in Berlin with the Führer and Göring and Ribbentrop", which resulted in:
a) The Pope's meeting with von Hessen had changed Ribbentrop's attitude towards reaching an agreement between the Reich and the Vatican, which he had previously opposed but now supported.
b) The German press has been ordered since May 25 to stop attacking the Catholic religion and Catholic priests in Germany and, instead, to speak well of them.
c) Hitler invited various regional officials to send reports on the religious situation in their regions in order to be able to negotiate with the Vatican about its concerns.
d) It was decided to send Von Hessen to Rome accompanied by concrete proposals, to initiate formal contacts through the respective diplomatic channels for the expected agreement.
His message went on to emphasizethe importance Hitler attached to keeping the negotiations secret.
The silence about the holocaust
During the summer of 1939, as Hitler prepared to invade Poland, he continued to use his secret channels to entice the Vatican. However, Hitler in a meeting with von Hessen told him that he had not had time to "study sufficiently the current complex problems of the Catholic Church in the Reich" and that he would do so soon, confident that all would be well.
Von Essen's next secret meeting with Pius XII took place on August 26, less than a week before Hitler sent German troops into Poland, starting World War II.
And here they spoke for the first time about the "racial issue". Von Hessen told him that Hitler believed that the "most important issues" that needed to be resolved, if an agreement was to be reached, were the "racial question" - referring to the Nazis' campaign of persecution and terror against the Jews - and what Hitler saw as clergy meddling in Germany's domestic politics. Hitler, von Hessen said, believed that the first of these obstacles, the "racial question," could be "reached," possiblyby continuing the new Pope's policy of remaining silent on the matter.
The Pope, regarding Hitler's concerns about the political activity of the German clergy, said there should be no cause for concern because the Church had no inclination to get involved in party politics. In all his conversations with von Hessen, the Pope never expressed any concern about the Nazis' anti-Jewish campaign.
Even after the conquest of Poland, the Pope did not stop contacts and continued to want to come to an agreement with Hitler. In fact, in a meeting he had with von Hessen again, he asked him about the health of the Führer and the state of the army, without criticizing them for anything.
Von Ribbentrop in the Vatican
The Pope's next meeting would be with the German Foreign Minister himself, von Ribbentrop, and not in secret this time, but with all solemnity, having first settled what the subjects would be discussing.
On March 11, 1940, von Ribbentrop and his entourage arrived with all ceremony at the Vatican. The 46-year-old foreign minister, one of the Fuehrer's most trusted men, entered Pius XII's private library and, after refusing to kneel as protocol demanded, opened the conversation by delivering Hitler's greetings. In response, the Pope spoke of the many years he spent in Germany, which he described as "perhaps the happiest of his life".
Von Ribbentrop said he hoped they could talk frankly. Hitler believed that a settlement of their differences was "very likely to happen", but it depended on first ensuring "that the Catholic clergy of Germany give up all political activity".
Of course, wartime was not the time for making new formal agreements, the German minister told him, but "in the Führer's opinion, what mattered for the moment was maintaining the existing truce between Church and German state and if possible, to expand it".
Hitler, said von Ribbentrop, had taken his own step of goodwill in reaching this agreement. He had dropped at least 7,000 charges against Catholic clergy for various financial and sexual crimes, and continued to give a large annual financial grant to the Catholic Church. He also told him that the Pope had many reasons to be grateful to Hitler, since if the Church still existed in Europe, it was because of the Nazis who had eliminated the Bolshevik threat.
The "concern" about Poland
This is where the German and Vatican accounts of the conversation begin to diverge. According to the German version, “the Pope showed full understanding of the Foreign Minister's statements and admitted without reservation that the specific events were as stated. It is true that he tried to direct the discussion to some specific problems and grievances, but he did not insist on continuing."
The document, which has only recently come to light, shows that the Pope, in addition to the persecutions against the church - from propaganda against it through the press to its exclusion from education - also touched on other side but important issues. The list was long and even included the cases of "high officials of the Church, including bishops, investigated by the Gestapo". He asked for these actions to stop, while raising the sensitive issue of Poland:
"The Holy See has great concerns about the current situation of the Church in Poland, especially because of the extreme restrictions imposed on bishops and priests; the restrictions on Church activities, even on Sundays, which prevent priests and the faithful from performing the most necessary religious acts and the closing of many religious institutions and Catholic private schools”.
the pontiff's Christmas message
After the meeting, thePope described von Ribbentrop as a fairly dynamic young man, but who turned into a fanatic when he spoke.
In reply to von Ribbentrop's complaint that the Pope's predecessor had used bad words against Germany, Pius pointed out that in his own first encyclical, issued the previous October, he had taken care not to offend the Germans. He then did the same in his Christmas speech, making it clear that his reference to the suffering of a "little people" was not Poland, as some claimed, but Finland, which the Russians had recently conquered.
Von Ribbentrop tried to impress the Pope with his certainty that the Germans would win the war before even the end of 1940, a claim he would repeat over and over again.
Two months after the Pope's meeting with von Ribbentrop, the German army began its rapid march westward, conquering the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France in a shockingly short time. Poland was already dismembered. However, the pope's secret meetings with von Hessen continued. The last one took place in the spring of 1941.
In the end, no formal agreement emerged from the meetings, and thus in a narrow sense they could be considered failures. What the meetings actually did was to keep the Pope quiet. Hitler never intended to restore the privileges of the Church in Germany.
The Pope never spoke out against the Third Reich's campaign against the Jews, not even those arrested on Italian territory. Ταυτόχρονα, αν δεν ήταν εκείνος που είπε στους Γερμανούς κληρικούς να σωπάσουν, σίγουρα πάντως δεν τους ζήτησε και να αναλάβουν κάποια δράση.
Αν ο πρωταρχικός του στόχος, ως επικεφαλής ενός μεγάλου διεθνούς οργανισμού, ήταν να προστατέψει τα προνόμια της Ρωμαιοκαθολικής Εκκλησίας στο Τρίτο Ράιχ, τότε οι προσπάθειές του θα μπορούσαν να κριθούν έως και επιτυχείς σε κάποια σημεία. Αλλά για εκείνους που βλέπουν το αξίωμα του Πάπα ως μια θέση μεγάλης ηθικής ευθύνης, οι αποκαλύψεις των μυστικών διαπραγματεύσεων του Πίου ΙΒ' με τον Χίτλερ πρέπει να αποτελούν μια μεγάλη απογοήτευση.
Καθώς περνούσαν τα χρόνια του πολέμου και η φρίκη γιγαντωνόταν, ο Πίος ΙΒ' δέχτηκε μεγάλη πίεση για να καταγγείλει το καθεστώς του Χίτλερ και τη συνεχιζόμενη προσπάθειά του να εξοντώσει τους Εβραίους. Θα αντιστεκόταν όμως να το πράξει μέχρι τέλους.