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Soviet KGB falsly linked WW2 Pope with Nazis

It seems to come up with annoying regularity - the myth that Pius XII supported the Nazis. You've got to wonder how a myth of such ferocity could be born, and yes, it wasn't accidentally. The KGB wanted to destroy the moral authority of the West and what better target than the Catholic war time Pope? As they said, dead men can't defend themselves.
KGB intent on linking Pius XII with Nazis, says former spy

Washington DC, Jan 26, 2007 / 04:18 pm (CNA).- A former high-ranking officer with the KGB claims that the Kremlin and the Russian intelligence agency in the 1960s were set on executing a smear campaign against the Catholic Church, and the main target was Pope Pius XII.

In a recent issue of the National Review Online, Lt. General Ion Mihai Pacepa, who eventually defected from the former Soviet bloc, recounts how the KGB and the Kremlin designed the deliberate campaign to portray the Pius XII “as a coldhearted Nazi sympathizer.”

“In February 1960, Nikita Khrushchev approved a super-secret plan for destroying the Vatican’s moral authority in Western Europe,” writes Pacepa. “Eugenio Pacelli, by then Pope Pius XII, was selected as the KGB’s main target, its incarnation of evil, because he had departed this world in 1958. ‘Dead men cannot defend themselves’ was the KGB’s latest slogan.”

The code name for this operation against Pope Pius XII was “Seat-12.”

The KGB used the fact that Archbishop Pacelli had served as the papal nuncio in Munich and Berlin when the Nazis were beginning their bid for power against him. “The KGB wanted to depict him as an anti-Semite who had encouraged Hitler’s Holocaust,” says Pacepa.

To do this, the KGB wanted some original Vatican documents to “slightly modify”. So they called in Pacepa, who was working for the Romanian intelligence service.

Pacepa says he became the Romanian point man. He was authorized to falsely inform the Vatican that Romania was ready to restore its broken relations with the Holy See, in exchange for access to its archives — in order to find historical roots that would help the Romanian government publicly justify its change of heart toward the Holy See — and a one-billion-dollar, interest-free loan for 25 years.

Between 1960 and 1962, the Romanian spy sent hundreds of archival documents connected in any way with Pope Pius XII to the KGB. Pacepa says none of the documents were incriminating in themselves, but they were sent to the KGB in any case.

The KGB used these documents to produce a powerful play attacking Pope Pius XII, entitled The Deputy. It eventually saw the stage in Germany in 1963, under the title The Deputy, a Christian Tragedy. It proposed that Pius XII had supported Hitler and encouraged him to go ahead with the Jewish Holocaust. The German director claimed to have 40 pages of documentation attached to the script that would support the thesis of the play.

The play ran in New York in 1964 and was translated into 20 languages. The play then led to a flurry of books and articles, some accusing and some defending the pontiff.

“Today, many people who have never heard of The Deputy are sincerely convinced that Pius XII was a cold and evil man who hated the Jews and helped Hitler do away with them,” Pacepa writes in the National Review Online. “As KGB chairman Yury Andropov, the unparalleled master of Soviet deception, used to tell me, people are more ready to believe smut than holiness.”

Pacepa says the truth has finally begun to emerge with the canonization process of Pius XII, which was opened by Pope John Paul II.

“Witnesses from all over the world have compellingly proved that Pius XII was an enemy, not a friend, of Hitler,” says Pacepa.

He also refers to the book The Myth of Hitler’s Pope: How Pope Pius XII Rescued Jews From the Nazis, by David G. Dalin, which has compiled further proof of Archbishop Pacelli’s friendship for the Jews.

“At the start of World War II, Pope Pius XII’s first encyclical was so anti-Hitler that the Royal Air Force and the French air force dropped 88,000 copies of it over Germany,” he concludes.
Related Link: Catholic News Agency

Other links:
The Real Story of Pius XII and the Jews
Hitler's plan to kidnap the Pope
More articles from the Catholic League

Comments

  1. Maybe this "myth" as you call it grew because :

    a) It was actually true,
    b) All myths contain a germ of truth,
    c) The Pope was not seen to oppose Nazism in the same way many who could lay claim to much less "moral authority" did.

    Remind me again how often he stood in Hitler's way. Remind me again of how he used the pulits to bring down Mussolini.

    If you want an example of catholics who put their faith and belief to work in opposing mass murder and war, try Daniel and Philip Berrigan; none of you precious Popes can hold a candle to these two.

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  2. From my article: “At the start of World War II, Pope Pius XII’s first encyclical was so anti-Hitler that the Royal Air Force and the French air force dropped 88,000 copies of it over Germany,” he concludes.

    Before WW2 started, there was a letter from the Pope read out in every Church in Germany. Many Priests were arrested afterward and never seen again.

    Then there's another article somewhere that goes into Hilter's planned assassination attempt on the Pope because Hitler was so annoyed at what the Pope was doing to thwart him.

    But you need a more complete list, don't you? Let me go find one.

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  3. The Myth of Hitler's Pope: How Pope Pius XII Rescued Jews from the Nazis ~ a review of the book mentioned in the article above.

    Israeli diplomat Pinchas Lapide, cited to this day by those who defend the Pope, wrote in his Three Popes and the Jews (1967) that Pius "was instrumental in saving at least 700,000, but probably as many as 860,000 Jews from certain death at Nazi hands."

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  4. Fugley, what is wrong with you? How on earth are Vietnam war protestors not able to hold a candle??? On the one hand, we have Pius XII who most likely directly saved 700,000 - 860,000 Jews from certain death at Nazi hands and then you give me Vietnam war protesters?

    Oh, I get it. You were a Vietnam war protester, therefore anyone who was a Vietnam war protester is exalted in your eyes.

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  5. The Pope was not the absolute ruler of the Holy Roman Empire before WW2 so how could he command total obedience and single handedly defeat Hitler?

    Then as now, modern Popes are limited to issuing letters and applying diplomatic pressure but the effeciveness depends on the receptivity of the target doesn't it? For an effect people's religious sentiment has to be greater than their attachment to social mores and momentum.

    Stalin quipped, "How many divisions does the Pope have?" Hitler and Mussolini and many citizens probably thought the same.

    So, with no army why didn't Pius "do something", "do more"? Like what exactly? Send in the Swiss guard? Unleash the albino assasins?

    Rather than considering revisionist history consider a current issue where Popes are out of side with the wisdom of society: abortion. Popes have issued letters on that until blue in the face but noone takes any notice. So, to be consistent, in a way we too are pre-war Germans. Congratulations.

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