Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust: A Reply to Daniel Goldhagen (Comment) (Critical Essay)

THE LAST SEVEN YEARS have witnessed renewed interest in the controversy over Pope Pius XII's actions during World War II. His critics condemn him for his "silence" during the Holocaust and for his "collaboration" with the Nazis. By contrast, the Pope's defenders assert that he forcefully resisted the Nazis, spoke out many times, and saved many Jewish lives. One of the more vile takes on Eugenio Pacelli, the Vatican Secretary of State who became Pius XII on March 2, 1939, comes from Daniel Jonah Goldhagen in a long essay published in the New Republic (January 21, 2002). (1) Goldhagen condemns Pope Pius XII as an anti-Semite and Nazi sympathizer who sat by as six million Jews went to their deaths. Goldhagen, who accuses the Catholic Church of covering up its anti-Semitic past and the failures of Pius XII, concludes by asking "what should be the future of this Church that has not fully faced its antisemitic history, that still has antisemitic elements embedded in its doctrine and theology, and that still claims to be the exclusive path to salvation?" Goldhagen first came on the public scene in 1996 with the publication of his book, Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, an adaptation of his doctoral thesis at Harvard. Goldhagen argued that most, if not all, Germans were driven by a fanatical "elimi-nationist anti-Semitism" and wanted to rid Germany of the Jews. The book was an international best seller and thrust the author into the public spotlight. Although Hitler's Willing Executioners earned substantial praise in the mainstream press, many scholars faulted Goldhagen's methodology and research. Several books appeared that refuted Goldhagen's thesis and exposed his misuse of primary and secondary sources, including Hyping the Holocaust: Scholars Answer Goldhagen (1997), a collection of essays edited by Franklin H. Littell; Anti-Semitism, Fascism, and the Holocaust: A Critical Review of Daniel Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners (1997) by David North; and A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth (1998) by Norman G. Finkelstein and Ruth Bettina Birn.