The Pope at War comes after a Brown University scholar plowed through thousands of pages of Vatican documents newly released by Pope Francis, and it helps us sort out the question of whether the pontiff was a silent collaborator with the dictators or a quiet conspirator against them — and whether by his silence he promoted antisemitism or whether by his actions he mounted a subtle campaign to aid the Jews at the hour of their greatest peril...The answer, David I. Kertzer tells us in nearly 500 pages of spellbinding detail, is far more nuanced than the usual narrative, with the result that his book is far more interesting, far more revelatory, and far more relevant to today’s struggles than the many scores of earlier volumes that set out to resolve one of history’s most persistent and perplexing questions...Kertzer shows us, through documents and prodigious outside research, how Pius XI swiftly developed a strategy for addressing an embattled continent at a time of military and moral conflict: Stay steady, stay quiet, focus on matters of faith rather than matters of state, emphasize the uplifting virtues of peace as a 'sublime Heavenly gift that is the desire of all good souls' and as the 'fruit of charity and justice'...The pope’s difficulties multiplied with the German invasion of Russia, as he naturally felt rancor for the godless Communist country but wondered, 'If I were to talk about Bolshevism — and I would be very ready to do so — should I then say nothing about Nazism?'...It is such tortured, tortuous handwringing that led to no action at all at a time when silence was complicity and when not to act was in fact to act decisively...It was a start, though Kertzer tells us that that statement was a 'well-buried passage' in a long, 24-page speech and that 'the pope nowhere mentioned either Nazis or Jews'...It was one of the missed opportunities of the ages, and while it may not have caused the calamity of the rage and ravages of the dictators and the industrialized death of the Holocaust, it did nothing to impede them.
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