PiusXII-war criminal?

[edvader]

Everyone knows Pius' activties or lack on behalf of the Jewish people especially in Italy where he did little or anything.Remember 350 Roman Jews were killed in a cave out of Rome. Also he requested no black troops enter Rome when it was open and did nothing against priests in Italy who helped SS criminals leave for South America. WI there was strong evidence revealed against him and a few Cardinals(Stepinak, for example)? Would there be a trial and what would happen further if he was convicted at trial?

[tom]

This is borderline. You may want to be careful.

[MerryPrankster]

I think Pius made some very belated efforts to help the Jews...he did exhort the Hungarians not to cooperate with the Germans in disposing of the Hungarian Jews, who, due to Hungary's alliance with Germany, were not subject to (much) difficulty until 1944-45.

Of course, he could have done much more.

[Grey Wolf]

Everyone knows Pius' activties or lack on behalf of the Jewish people especially in Italy where he did little or anything.Remember 350 Roman Jews were killed in a cave out of Rome. Also he requested no black troops enter Rome when it was open and did nothing against priests in Italy who helped SS criminals leave for South America. WI there was strong evidence revealed against him and a few Cardinals(Stepinak, for example)? Would there be a trial and what would happen further if he was convicted at trial?

There is a hell of a lot of evidence against the Papacy regarding the Ustase leader - they were hiding him in Rome and arranged for his escape. This is not in dispute, it was openly known to the Americans but in post-war Italy it was obvious that such a scandal against the Papacy could cause complete chaos so Truman ordered the lid to be kept on it

Grey Wolf

[zoomar]

If we consider Pius a war criminal, we might as well throw in the wartime government of Sweden who provided the Nazis with esential war materials and returned Danish Jews to the Nazis. All those Swiss bankers too.

My answer is absolutely not to all three. Like it or not, people surrounded by the 3rd Reich and ultimately dependent on German goodwill for their survival have to make compromises. In all three instances I mentoined, the parties also did things to help Jews and other people being enslaved by the Nazis. They may not be saints, but they not war criminals.

[Grey Wolf]

If we consider Pius a war criminal, we might as well throw in the wartime government of Sweden who provided the Nazis with esential war materials and returned Danish Jews to the Nazis. All those Swiss bankers too.

My answer is absolutely not to all three. Like it or not, people surrounded by the 3rd Reich and ultimately dependent on German goodwill for their survival have to make compromises. In all three instances I mentoined, the parties also did things to help Jews and other people being enslaved by the Nazis. They may not be saints, but they not war criminals.

You don't address the post-war issues when they no longer have the fear factor to mitigate. It also has to be said that ustase Croatia had a VERY heavy Vatican presence durng its existence

Grey Wolf

[zoomar]

You don't address the post-war issues when they no longer have the fear factor to mitigate. It also has to be said that ustase Croatia had a VERY heavy Vatican presence durng its existence

Grey Wolf


I'm not sure what your point is. Fascist Croatia ceased to exist with the end of WW2. You're saying we should consider the Swedes, Swiss, and Pius war criminals?

[wkwillis]

They let off Hirohito too. He also was a religious leader. Perhaps he could have stopped the invasion of China by threatening to curse the rice harvest. He did not, but he was not arrested and tried.
On the other hand if they do make Pius whatever a saint I would support cutting off diplomatic relations with the Vatican. That is way, way, too far to go.

[Melvin Loh]

IMHO it would've been very unlikely, however regrettable this omission and my own belief that the Vatican should have answered for its failures and omissions to speak out against the Holocaust or do more to protect the Jews from the Nazis, for Pope Pius XII to have been tried for war crimes after WWII, given his huge symbolic importance to the Catholic community.

[Grey Wolf]

I'm not sure what your point is. Fascist Croatia ceased to exist with the end of WW2. You're saying we should consider the Swedes, Swiss, and Pius war criminals?

The word also denotes the beginning of a second point. The first point was the post-war issue, the protection of former Ustase members, the smuggling of the leader out through Rome etc

The second point was that the Vatican had been ACTIVELY SUPPORTING and INVOLVED in Ustase Croatia, which is rather different from simply doing your best to not piss off a super-power in Nazi germany

Grey Wolf

[Michael Canaris]

Everyone knows Pius' activties or lack on behalf of the Jewish people especially in Italy where he did little or anything.Remember 350 Roman Jews were killed in a cave out of Rome. Also he requested no black troops enter Rome when it was open and did nothing against priests in Italy who helped SS criminals leave for South America. WI there was strong evidence revealed against him and a few Cardinals(Stepinak, for example)? Would there be a trial and what would happen further if he was convicted at trial?

Depends on who controls Italy (the likes of De Gaspari would never stomach such a thing.)

[Prunesquallor]

There was no way Pius XII would have been put on trial. By the end of the war any "strong evidence revealed" would have been dismissed as communist fabrication by true believers and those who knew better and were in positions of power found him too useful as a counterbalance to the Left. By and large, I'm afraid, in the case of Pius, it was a business of "Thou shalt not kill, but needs not strive/ officiously to keep alive."

[carlton_bach]

First of all, I'm not sure Pius' conduct merits being called 'war crimes',. Courts let off people with plenty more guilt, including German industrialists who knowingly used slave laborers and starved them literally till they dropped. Europe in the 30s and early 40s was the kind of place where moral deciasions were weighed in view of your own survival, and while I believe that the lweader of a religious organisation with the prestige of the Catholic church ought to act according to different standards than the CEO of a corporation, the chairman of a bank, or the president of a neutral country, I can understand why he chose not to. Chickening out is no crime (unless you're in the military).

Secondly, you *can't* put Pius on trial. At least, not without either rewriting international law or declaring war on the Vatican. He was the absolute ruler of a sovereign state guiaranteede by defense treaties with another sovereign nation at the time allied with the United States, Britain, and the USSR. I know some presidents have less regard for the niceties of international law than others, but saying 'we have the right to enter your territory, arrest your leader, put him on trial and punish him as we see fit' after having fought a war dedicated to the proposition that you can't do that kind of thing is a bit rich.

However - imagine the evidence against the church (its cooperation with the nazis, its involvement with the Ustase, its complicity in helping Nazi leaders escape etc) came to light and looked credible, that could be an awful public relations day for the Vatican - akin to or worse than the currentchild abuse scandals, depending on the media's take. With Pius continuing to live until 1958 there might be pressure on him to step down (there is precious little precedent for any pope abdicating, and none after the ground rules were changed in Vatican I). I doubt he would. The decline in the church's moral suasion might be exacerbated by the staunch support it continues to receive from Franco's Spain - whether it wants it or not :) Could you see a secession movement by the American Catholic Church? It was seriously considered after Vatican I. I doubt the churches in most European countries would secede from Rome - France has a Concordate that leaves the pope precious little control anyway, West Germany was built with far too much church power in the media to allow for such a movement to emerge, Spain and Portugal approved of the policy anyway and Italy - heh, imagine the Italian church renouncing the pope? Never happen. But even without this, Pius' successor has a lot of fence mending to do (and something tells me a morally beleaguered and defensive church would not go with John XXIII, who was good at that kind of thing...)