Goldhagen v. Pius XII

Tendentious attacks on Pope Pius XII (Eugenio Pacelli) are nothing new. Indeed, they have become commonplace. Yet Daniel Goldhagen’s recent 27,000–word essay for the New Republic, “What Would Jesus Have Done? Pope Pius XII, the Catholic Church, and the Holocaust” (January 21, 2002), calls for special attention. Based upon his forthcoming book, A Moral Reckoning (Knopf), Goldhagen’s essay is noteworthy both for the breathtaking scope of its claims and the air of righteous indignation that infuses it. Not content to argue that Pope Pius did less to save the Jews than he should have, as many other scholars have done, Goldhagen goes much further—to attack Pacelli as an anti–Semite and the Church as a whole as an institution thoroughly, and perhaps inextricably, permeated by anti–Semitism. In fact, he even argues that “the main responsibility for producing this all–time leading Western hatred lies with Christianity. More specifically, with the Catholic Church.” Such charges demand a thorough response.

In his most recent book, Hitler’s Willing Executioners, Goldhagen asserted that blame for the Holocaust should be placed on ordinary Germans and their unique brand of anti–Semitism. When contemporary historians from both sides of the Atlantic challenged him on this point, he eventually conceded that he had underestimated how factors other than anti–Semitism helped lead to the Third Reich’s crimes. “I skirted over some of this history a little too quickly,” he said. He has skirted again.

Goldhagen’s article is based on no original historical research. It is entirely dependent on secondary sources that are written in English. This contributes to what can only be judged an inexcusable number of errors, small and large. Several of the dates he provides relating to the establishment of European ghettos are wrong (one by more than fifty years). He is also wrong (by three decades) about the beginning of the process for Pius XII’s beatification, and he is wrong about the date that the so–called “Hidden Encyclical” was made public. He is wrong in calling the concordat with the Holy See “Nazi Germany’s first international treaty.” He is wrong to say that the Belgian Catholic Church was silent; it was one of the first national churches to speak out against Nazi racial theories. He is way off base to suggest that German Cardinals Michael von Faulhaber and Clement August von Galen were insensitive to or silent about Jewish suffering. Goldhagen says that Pius XII “clearly failed to support” the protest of the French bishops, when, in fact, he actually had it rebroadcast on Vatican Radio for six consecutive days. He charges that Pius XII never reproached or punished Franciscan friar Miroslav Filopovic–Majstorovic for his evil actions in Croatia, when, actually, the so–called “Brother Satan” was tried, laicized, and expelled from the Franciscan order before the war even ended (in fact, before most of his serious wrongdoing). Goldhagen also misidentifies the role of Vatican official Peter Gumpel (who is the relator or judge, not the postulator or promoter, of Pius XII’s cause for sainthood), and he is wrong to say that Gumpel was designated by the Vatican to represent it at a meeting with the recently disbanded Catholic–Jewish study group. He seems unaware that Catholic scholars on that committee disassociated themselves from statements issued by their Jewish counterparts following its collapse. He identifies the much–admired king of Denmark during the war as Christian II; it was Christian X. He refers to Pope Pius XI as having been Cardinal Secretary of State; it was actually his successor Pope Pius XII.

A few embarrassments like this might be accounted for by positing carelessness. However, Goldhagen’s graver errors—each and every one of which cuts against Catholics and the Pope—reveal something much more troubling at work in his essay.

The 1942 Christmas Statement

Goldhagen’s efforts to trivialize and diminish Pope Pius XII’s famous 1942 Christmas statement and its clear denunciation of Nazi ideology are representative of the one–sided, biased approach that permeates his work. In the 1942 statement, Pius said that the world was “plunged into the gloom of tragic error” and that the Church would be untrue to herself, she would have ceased to be a mother, if she were deaf to the cries of suffering children which reach her ears from every class of the human family. He spoke of the need for mankind to make “a solemn vow never to rest until valiant souls of every people and every nation of the earth arise in their legions, resolved to bring society and to devote themselves to the services of the human person and of a divinely ennobled human society.” He said that mankind owed this vow to all victims of the war, including “the hundreds of thousands who, through no fault of their own, and solely because of their nation or race, have been condemned to death or progressive extinction”.

In making this statement and others during the war, Pius used the word stirpe, which according to Zanichelli’s Italian and English Dictionary can mean stock, birth, family, race, or descent, but which had been used for centuries as an explicit reference to Jews. British records (British Public Records Office, FO 371/34363 59337 [January 5, 1943]) reflect the opinion that “the Pope’s condemnation of the treatment of the Jews and the Poles is quite unmistakable, and the message is perhaps more forceful in tone than any of his recent statements.” The Dutch bishops issued a pastoral letter in defense of Jewish people on February 21, 1943, making express reference to the Pope’s statement.

Moreover, a well–known Christmas Day editorial in the New York Times praised Pius XII for his moral leadership in opposing the Nazis:

No Christmas sermon reaches a larger congregation than the message Pope Pius XII addresses to a war–torn world at this season. This Christmas more than ever he is a lonely voice crying out of the silence of a continent. . . .

When a leader bound impartially to nations on both sides condemns as heresy the new form of national state which subordinates everything to itself; when he declares that whoever wants peace must protect against “arbitrary attacks” the “juridical safety of individuals”; when he assails violent occupation of territory, the exile and persecution of human beings for no reason other than race or political opinion; when he says that people must fight for a just and decent peace, a “total peace”—the “impartial judgment” is like a verdict in a high court of justice.

A similar editorial from the Times of London said:

A study of the words which Pope Pius XII has addressed since his accession in encyclicals and allocutions to the Catholics of various nations leaves no room for doubt. He condemns the worship of force and its concrete manifestation in the suppression of national liberties and in the persecution of the Jewish race.

Obviously, in contrast to what Goldhagen would have us believe, everyone knew to whom the Pope was referring, including the Axis powers.

According to an official Nazi report by Heinrich Himmler’s Superior Security Office (the Reichssicher­ heits­ hauptamt) to Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop’s office:

In a manner never known before, the Pope has repudiated the National Socialist New European Order. . . . It is true, the Pope does not refer to the National Socialists in Germany by name, but his speech is one long attack on everything we stand for. . . . God, he says, regards all people and races as worthy of the same consideration. Here he is clearly speaking on behalf of the Jews. . . . [H]e is virtually accusing the German people of injustice toward the Jews, and makes himself the mouthpiece of the Jewish war criminals.

An American report noted that the Germans were “conspicuous by their absence” at a Midnight Mass conducted by the Pope for diplomats on Christmas Eve following the papal statement. German Ambassador Diego von Bergen, on the instruction of Ribbentrop, warned the Pope that the Nazis would seek retaliation if the Vatican abandoned its neutral position. When he reported back to his superiors, the German ambassador stated: “Pacelli is no more sensible to threats than we are.”

Vatican Radio

Goldhagen asks rhetorically: “Why, as a moral and practical matter, did [Pius XII] speak out publicly on behalf of the suffering of Poles, but not of Jews? No good answer.” He then quotes a Vatican Radio broadcast of January 1940, trying to make the point that the Vatican was concerned only about Polish Catholics and could not spare a good word for Jews. In doing this, he badly misrepresents the truth.

As an initial matter, the quote cited by Goldhagen does not limit itself to Christian Poles. It merely refers to “Poles.” Of course, writings of that time sometimes distinguished “Poles” and “Jews,” using the former designation to refer to Polish Christians, but this was far from always the case. Moreover, Goldhagen implies that Jews were never mentioned on Vatican Radio. This is simply false.

Goldhagen seems to have taken his Vatican Radio quote from Pierre Blet’s Pius XII and the Second World War. That book presents itself as a synopsis. Had Goldhagen actually researched the Vatican Radio transcripts from January 1940 (the month upon which he focuses) he would have found that Jews were indeed expressly and clearly identified. A key passage states:

A system of interior deportation and zoning is being organized, in the depth of one of Europe’s severest winters, on principles and by methods that can be described only as brutal; and stark hunger stares 70 percent of Poland’s population in the face, as its reserves of foodstuffs and tools are shipped to Germany to replenish the granaries of the metropolis. Jews and Poles are being herded into separate “ghettos,” hermetically sealed and pitifully inadequate for the economic subsistence of the millions destined to live there.

Even Michael Phayer (another critic of the Pope) quotes this explicit defense of Jews in his book The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930–1965 (which is listed as one of the books that Goldhagen reviewed for his essay). On October 15, 1940, Vatican Radio denounced “the immoral principles of Nazism,” and on March 30, 1941 explicitly condemned “the wickedness of Hitler.” These broadcasts were among the first to break the news of the Nazi persecutions, but they were not the only such stories on Vatican Radio. They continued throughout the war.

The Catholic faithful heard these broadcasts and reacted accordingly. French priest–rescuer (and later Cardinal) Henri de Lubac paid tribute to the Pope’s radio station in his book Christian Resistance to Anti–Semitism, describing the profound impact it had upon the French resistance. Similarly, Father Michel Riquet, S.J., an ex–inmate of Dachau who was recognized for saving Jewish lives, stated: “Pius XII spoke; Pius XII condemned; Pius XII acted. . . . Throughout those years of horror, when we listened to Radio Vatican and to the Pope’s messages, we felt in communion with the Pope in helping persecuted Jews and in fighting against Nazi violence.”

The Hidden Encyclical and Summi Pontificatus

Early in his essay, Goldhagen discusses the so–called “hidden encyclical.” The story here is that in June 1938, more than a year before the outbreak of World War II, when Eugenio Pacelli was Vatican Secretary of State, Pope Pius XI commissioned a draft papal statement attacking racism and anti–Semitism. Unfortunately he died before it was completed. According to Goldhagen, Pius XI drafted it, Pius XII buried it, and it remained hidden until it was published in France in 1995.

This story, if true, would help to support Goldhagen’s depiction of Pius XII as a villain. But it isn’t true. For starters, there never was an encyclical or even a draft encyclical. Pope Pius XI asked for a paper from Fr. John LaFarge, S.J. The thought was that this might one day be used as the basis for an encyclical. LaFarge was not an expert theologian or historian, so he sought help from two other priests, one from France and the other from Germany. This resulted in three different papers, one written in French, one in English, and one in German.

The source upon which Goldhagen relies, Georges Passelecq and Bernard Suchecky’s The Hidden Encyclical of Pius XI, deals with the French and the English papers, but not the German one. That book also makes clear that—contrary to what Goldhagen reports—Pius XI was not the author of any of the documents. In fact, as that book further makes clear, there is no evidence that either he or Pius XII even saw these documents. A copy was sent to Pius XI, but by that time he was already gravely ill. When it was found after his death, there were no notations suggesting that he ever reviewed it. The book also explains that the paper disappeared immediately after Pius XI’s death, and the men who were working on the project believed (indeed were certain) that Pius XII had not seen it. He therefore could not have buried it. Finally, this matter was made public in 1972 by the National Catholic Reporter and again in 1973 by L’Osservatore Romano, not in 1995 when Passelecq and Suchecky’s book came out.

The primary author of the German draft, Professor Gustav Gundlach, S.J., helped Pius XII with his first encyclical, Summi Pontificatus, which was released on October 20, 1939, just after the outbreak of war. Not surprisingly, Summi Pontificatus (which expressly mentions Jews and urges solidarity with all who profess a belief in God) contains language that is similar to the paper on which Gundlach had worked. In fact, Fr. LaFarge wrote in America magazine that it was obvious that Summi Pontificatus applied to the Jews of Europe. He was concerned only that Americans might not realize that it also applied to racial injustice in the United States.

Because Goldhagen limited his research to a single and incomplete source, it is not surprising to find that his comments only magnify the errors about the “hidden encyclical.” (A much better book on the subject, edited by Anton Rauscher, recently appeared in Germany.) What is very surprising is that Goldhagen neglects even to mention Summi Pontificatus.

In January 2002, documents from the personal archive of General William J. (“Wild Bill”) Donovan, who served as special assistant to the U.S. chief of counsel during the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, were made public and posted on the Internet by the Rutgers Journal of Law & Religion. In a confidential report documenting Nazi persecution of the Church, prepared for the Nuremberg prosecution, the situation surrounding Summi Pontificatus is discussed as providing grounds for a separate count against the Nazis. The report notes that priests who read that document were reported to the authorities and that Nazi officials stopped its reproduction and distribution.

“This Encyclical,” wrote Heinrich Mueller, head of the Gestapo in Berlin, “is directed exclusively against Germany, both in ideology and in regard to the German–Polish dispute; how dangerous it is for our foreign relations as well as our domestic affairs is beyond dispute.” Reinhard Heydrich, leader of the SS Security Office in Warsaw, wrote, “This declaration of the Pope makes an unequivocal accusation against Germany.” The New York Times headline declared: “Pope Condemns Dictators, Treaty Violators, Racism; Urges Restoring of Poland.” Allied forces later dropped 88,000 copies of it behind enemy lines for propaganda purposes.

The Concordat

In 1933, the Holy See and the German government signed an agreement that assured the Church’s ability to hold services and function in general in the coming years. Goldhagen misleadingly reports that “Pacelli hastened to negotiate for the Church a treaty of cooperation, the concordat, with Hitler’s Germany.” He also incorrectly adds that this was “Nazi Germany’s first international treaty.”

Goldhagen was probably fooled by James Carroll’s Constantine’s Sword. Carroll artfully states that the concordat was Nazi Germany’s first bilateral treaty. In fact, the Four Powers Pact between Germany, France, Italy, and England preceded the concordat’s signing. Moreover, Hitler’s representatives were fully accredited and recognized by the League of Nations and took part in the disarmament discussions in Geneva, which also came before the signing of the concordat. The Soviet Union on May 5, 1933 (more than two months before the concordat was signed) renewed a trade and friendship agreement with Germany, and on that same day the British Parliament voted to accept an Anglo–German trade agreement. In other words, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and the whole League of Nations accredited the new German government before the concordat was signed. Carroll may have been technically correct, if misleading. Goldhagen is just plain wrong.

Goldhagen is also wrong to assert that a “secret annex” gave the Church’s approval to German rearmament. The concordat merely states that if Germany were to revive its army, Catholic soldiers would have access to chaplains. That is a matter of protecting the sacraments, not approving rearmament. For Goldhagen to transform it into something nefarious is explicable only as part of his determined effort to defame Catholics and the Pope.

The aforementioned recently released confidential report from the Nuremberg prosecution confirms that the concordat was a “Nazi proposition.” The Nazis accepted terms that the Church had previously proposed to Weimar, but which Weimar had rejected. The Nazis told the Vatican that the choice was to accept those terms (which assured that the Church would be able to function) or face severe persecution. In fact, to prove that they were serious, the Nazis severely persecuted German Catholics in the weeks leading up to the concordat. In a private conversation with the British chargé d’affaires to the Vatican, Pacelli said that the choice was “an agreement on their lines, or the virtual elimination of the Catholic Church in the Reich.”

The concordat, of course, came during the pontificate of Pope Pius XI. Like David Kertzer (The Popes Against the Jews), Goldhagen argues that Pius XI was an anti–Semite. This is a rare allegation. Pius XI is usually presented as the good, outspoken Pope, in contrast to the “silent” Pius XII. Not only did Pius XI condemn racism in major statements issued in 1928, 1930, and 1937, but on September 6, 1938, in a statement which—though barred from the Fascist press—quickly made its way around the world, he said:

Mark well that in the Catholic Mass, Abraham is our Patriarch and forefather. Anti–Semitism is incompatible with the lofty thought which that fact expresses. It is a movement with which we Christians can have nothing to do. No, no, I say to you it is impossible for a Christian to take part in anti–Semitism. It is inadmissible. Through Christ and in Christ we are the spiritual progeny of Abraham. Spiritually, we are all Semites.

In January 1939, the National Jewish Monthly reported that “the only bright spot in Italy has been the Vatican, where fine humanitarian statements by the Pope [Pius XI] have been issuing regularly.” When he died the following month, the Nazi press denigrated him as “Chief Rabbi of the Western World.”

Despite the ludicrous claim that Pius XI was an anti–Semite, Goldhagen twists the facts around so that he can “blame” Pius XII for drafting the concordat (which, of course, ultimately was the responsibility of the sitting Pope, not Secretary of State Pacelli). He also “blames” Pius XII for drafting the 1937 anti–Nazi encyclical Mit brennender Sorge.

Mit brennender Sorge

Of all Goldhagen’s outrages, none is less comprehensible than his depiction of the great encyclical Mit brennender Sorge—the Vatican’s powerful denunciation of German fascism and racism—as an anti–Semitic screed. Mit brennender Sorge, issued by Pope Pius XI when Pacelli was his Secretary of State, is one of the strongest condemnations of any national regime that the Holy See has ever published. It condemned not only the persecution of the Church in Germany, but also the neo–paganism of Nazi racial theories. The encyclical stated in part that:

Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the State, or a particular form of State, or the depositories of power, or any other fundamental value of the human community—however necessary and honorable be their function in worldly things—whoever raises these notions above their standard value and divinizes them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created by God; he is far from the true faith in God and from the concept of life which that faith upholds.

It took direct aim at Hitler and Nazism, saying:

None but superficial minds could stumble into concepts of a national God, of a national religion; or attempt to lock within the frontiers of a single people, within the narrow limits of a single race, God, the Creator of the universe, King and Legislator of all nations before whose immensity they are “as a drop of a bucket” (Isaiah 11:15).

The encyclical also praised leaders in the Church who had stood firm and provided a good example. It concluded that “enemies of the Church, who think that their time has come, will see that their joy was premature.”

Unlike most encyclicals, which are written in Latin, Mit brennender Sorge was written in German. It was dated and signed by Pope Pius XI on Passion Sunday, March 14, 1937, but it was smuggled into Germany, distributed to all parishes, and read from the pulpits on Palm Sunday, March 21, 1937.

The only reason Mit brennender Sorge was read to anyone was because the Nazis were caught off guard. It was not published in German newspapers. An internal German memorandum dated March 23, 1937 called the encyclical “almost a call to do battle against the Reich government.” The prosecution report for the Nuremberg trials explained the measures that the Nazis took in retaliation: all available copies were confiscated, twelve printing offices were closed, those convicted of distributing the encyclical were arrested, and the Church–affiliated publications that ran the encyclical were banned. Later on, the mere mention of the encyc­ lical was made a crime in Nazi Germany.

The day following the release of Mit brennender Sorge, the Völkischer Beobachter carried a strong counterattack on the “Jew–God and His deputy in Rome.” Das Schwarze Korps called it “the most incredible of Pius XI’s pastoral letters; every sentence in it was an insult to the new Germany.” The German ambassador to the Holy See was instructed not to take part in the solemn Easter ceremonies, and German missions throughout Europe were told that the German government “had to consider the Pope’s encyclical as a call to battle . . . as it calls upon Catholic citizens to rebel against the authority of the Reich.”

The persecution of Jews, unfortunately, did not lessen; it got worse following the release of Mit brennender Sorge. This reaction is but one of many examples of Nazi retaliation—against Jews and Christians—that Goldhagen denies ever happened. His attempt to convert this strong papal statement into an anti–Semitic, pro–Nazi screed is simply incredible.

Mystici Corporis Christi

Goldhagen also misrepresents Pope Pius XII’s 1943 encyclical, Mystici Corporis Christi. Since this was primarily a letter on theology, it contained no express references to Hitler or the Nazis. Still, it was an obvious attack on the theoretical basis of National Socialism. As Israeli diplomat Pinchas E. Lapide wrote in Three Popes and the Jews: “Pius chose mystical theology as a cloak for a message which no cleric or educated Christian could possibly misunderstand.”

In Mystici Corporis Christi, Pius wrote: “The Church of God . . . is despised and hated maliciously by those who shut their eyes to the light of Christian wisdom and miserably return to the teachings, customs, and practices of ancient paganism.” He wrote of the “passing things of earth,” and the “massive ruins” of war. He offered prayers that world leaders be granted the love of wisdom and expressed no doubt that “a most severe judgment” would await those leaders who did not follow God’s will.

Pius appealed to “Catholics the world over” to “look to the Vicar of Jesus Christ as the loving Father of them all, who . . . takes upon himself with all his strength the defense of truth, justice, and charity.” He explained, “Our paternal love embraces all peoples, whatever their nationality or race.” “Christ, by his blood, made the Jews and Gentiles one, ‘breaking down the middle wall of partition . . . in his flesh’ by which the two peoples were divided” (emphasis added). He noted that Jews were among the first people to adore Jesus. Pius then made an appeal for all to “follow our peaceful King who taught us to love not only those who are of a different nation or race, but even our enemies.” Mystici Corporis Christi also strongly condemned the forced conversions (to Catholicism) that were then occurring in Fascist Croatia, which Goldhagen wrongly claims enjoyed Vatican support.

Vatican Radio used the encyclical as the basis for a broadcast that stated: “He who makes a distinction between Jews and other men is unfaithful to God and in conflict with God’s commands.”

The 1919 Letter

At the center of Goldhagen’s anti–Catholic thesis is the piece of evidence that John Cornwell centrally relied upon in his deeply flawed book, Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII. It is a letter, written in 1919 by Eugenio Pacelli, the future Pope Pius XII, when he was papal nuncio in Munich. That year, Bolshevik revolutionaries temporarily took power in Bavaria. Many foreign dignitaries left Munich, but Pacelli stayed at his post and became a target of Bolshevik hostility. On one occasion, a car sprayed Pacelli’s residence with machine–gun fire. Another time, a small group of Bolsheviks broke into the nunciature, threatened Pacelli at gunpoint, and tried to rob him. Yet another time, an angry mob descended on Pacelli’s car, screaming insults and threatening to turn the car over.

When the Bolsheviks seized power, there was valid reason for concern. Their leaders occupied the royal palace and began operating what might best be described as a rogue government. Of particular concern to all diplomats in Munich was that the Bolsheviks violated the sovereign immunity of foreign missions and representatives. Two legations were invaded, and a car was requisitioned from another. The Austro–Hungarian Consul General was arrested without cause and held for several hours.

Alarmed by this behavior and concerned for the safety of people under his charge, Nuncio Pacelli sent his assistant, Monsignor Lorenzo Schioppa, to meet with the leaders of the new government. Schioppa, accompanied by a representative from the Prussian legation, met with the head of the Republic of the Councils of Munich, Eugen Leviné. Their purpose was to force Leviné (incorrectly identified as Levien in the later report), “to declare unequivocally if and how the actual Communist Government intends to recognize and oversee the immunities of the Diplomatic Representatives.”

The meeting did not go well. The only “commitment” that the representatives could get from Leviné was that the Republic of Councils would recognize the extraterritoriality of the foreign legations “if, and as long as the representatives of these Powers . . . do nothing against the Republic of the Councils.” Schioppa was warned that if the Nuncio did anything against the new government, he would be “kicked out.” Leviné made it clear that “they had no need of the Nunciature.”

Pacelli wrote a letter back to Rome, reporting on this meeting. John Cornwell translated a few sentences from that letter and set them forth as “proof” that Pacelli was an anti–Semite. The key passage, as translated by Cornwell (and accepted uncritically by Goldhagen), described the palace as follows:

. . . a gang of young women, of dubious appearance, Jews like all the rest of them, hanging around in all the offices with lecherous demeanor and suggestive smiles. The boss of this female rabble was Levien’s mistress, a young Russian woman, a Jew and a divorcée, who was in charge. . . . This Levien is a young man, of about thirty or thirty–five, also Russian and a Jew. Pale, dirty, with drugged eyes, hoarse voice, vulgar, repulsive, with a face that is both intelligent and sly.

To Cornwell and Goldhagen, these words (taken from Schioppa’s report to his superior, Pacelli) prove that Pacelli was an anti–Semite.

In truth, however, this translation is grossly distorted. It uses pejorative words, instead of neutral ones that are more faithful to the original Italian. For instance, the most damning phrase in the translation, “Jews like all the rest of them,” turns out to be a distorted, inaccurate translation of the Italian phrase i primi. The literal translation would be “the first ones” or “the ones just mentioned.” (Therefore Goldhagen’s statement that “the Communist revolutionaries, Pacelli averred, were ‘all’ Jews” is wrong. The word “all” appears only in the Cornwell/Goldhagen mistranslation.) Similarly, the Italian word schiera is translated by Cornwell as “gang” instead of “group,” which would be more appropriate. Additionally, the Italian gruppo femminile should be translated as “female group,” not “female rabble.” Finally, the Italian occhi scialbi should be translated as pale (asky, livid) eyes, not “drugged eyes.”

This letter was published in its original Italian in 1992. Church historian John Conway—an Anglican and a distinguished scholar—reviewed the book in which it was included for the Catholic Historical Review. Neither he, nor anyone else at that time, suggested that the letter was anti–Semitic. When the entire letter is read in an accurate translation, it is not anti–Semitic. The tone of anti–Semitism is introduced only by Cornwell’s dubious translation.

Many Bolsheviks were cultural Jews, of course, though alienated from the Jewish faith and very often from their own families. Pacelli (and Schioppa) were perfectly well aware of this. They perceived the threat to the Church as a threat from Bolshevism, not Judaism or Jews as such. It should also be noted that the message was written fourteen years before Hitler came to power and the Jewish persecution began. At this time, the people being described were not victims, but leaders of a revolutionary and oppressive regional government.

Rather than using unfair translations and fabricating an argument, Goldhagen could have looked to direct, relevant evidence from that same period. During World War I, the