Church of Spies: The Pope's Secret War Against Hitler.

• Author: Smith, Anthony
• Position: Book review

CHURCH OF SPIES: the Pope's Secret War Against Hitler

Author. Mark Riebling

Published by. Scribe Publications, Brunswick, Victoria, 2015, 375pp, $35.

In what is billed as a 'radical reinterpretation of the wartime Pope, Mark Riebling seeks to rebut the notion that Pius XII could be accurately described as 'Hitler's Pope' (a reference to the 1999 tide of a bestselling book by journalist John Cornwell). Riebling's account takes advantage of new documentation to show that Pius XII was not only actively anti-Nazi, making use of the Church's intelligence channels, but also involved in support for the German Resistance's attempt to kill Hider himself. Riebling also highlights a pre-war encyclical 'Darkness over the Earth', in which Pius XII denounced attacks on Judaism; something other scholars have sometimes neglected to mention. The Papacy would then remain silent on questions like this until 1945, causing many (like Cornwell) to wonder if it could have done far more to prevent the Holocaust.

Unfortunately, amateur historians have dominated much of the debate around the role of Pius XII. Riebling, who has a background as a writer and consultant on police intelligence after 9/11, is no exception. Riebling does have in his corner the endorsements of some noted historians. One of them, the late Sir Martin Gilbert (official biographer of Sir Winston Churchill), has this to say at the start of Church of Spies-. 'Without minimising the complicity of individual Christians, or the role of Christian anti-Semitism, Mark Riebling shows that the Vatican took a very powerful stance against the Nazis. It is especially important for Jewish people--and I am Jewish myself--that this information is now being gathered for all to see.'

The official stance of the Vatican during the Second World War was neutrality. Selected in March 1939, Eugenio Pacelli (who would take the name Pius XII) had previously headed the Holy See's diplomatic efforts as secretary of state--the appointment of an experienced diplomat (although Riebling prefers to bill him as an intelligence chief) with the prospect of the Second World War looming. While the Catholic Church and Nazi Germany entered into a form of accommodation before and during the war, each tried to gnaw at the foundations of the other. Hider thought Christianity's traditions got in the way of his attempts to create a racially pure' and highly martial society; 'we do not want any other God but Germany. Hider had plans to...