Summary
The Pope and the Devil - The Vatican Archives and the Third Reich
"The silence of Pius XII" remains a contentious issue among historians studying the Third Reich and the Holocaust. Based on documents released by the Vatican Secret Archives over the past decade, Wolf offers an analysis of Pius XI's pontificate. (1922-1939). He carefully sketches the Vatican's view of Germany during the years when Eugenio Pacelli, the future Pius XII, was Nuncio to Germany and then Cardinal Secretary of State. Wolff's analysis of these documents reveals the historical environment in which Pacelli developed his perspective on Germany, and thus helps explain his future "silence." The documents offer new insights into the sometimes convoluted policies of the Vatican regarding anti-Semitism, racism, the 1933 Concordat negotiations and the always tense and problematic relationship between politics and dogma within the Roman Catholic Church. This book also opens windows into the Vatican's perception of German bishops' reactions to Hitler's ideology and to issues such as euthanasia policy. Hubert Wolf's book, The Pope and the Devil, is an indispensable and valuable contribution to the literature on the relationship between the Church and Nazi Germany. Hubert Wolf (Wört, Baden-Württemberg, 1959) is a German church historian and professor at the University of Münster. He won the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Award in 2003. He studied Roman Catholic theology at the University of Tübingen and the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. He was ordained a priest in 1985, and in 1992 he became a professor at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt, and since 1999 he has been teaching at the University of Münster.
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