David I. Kertzer – The Pope at War: Book Review & Audio Summary

Book Info

• Book name: The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler
• Author: David I. Kertzer
• Genre: History & Politics
• Pages: 416
• Published Year: 2022
• Publisher: Random House
• Language: English

Audio Summary

Synopsis

In 2020, the Vatican unsealed millions of documents that had remained hidden for decades, revealing the secret history of Pope Pius XII during World War II. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David I. Kertzer examines these previously classified files to expose a complex web of secret negotiations between the Pope, Hitler, and Mussolini. Through the intermediary role of a “Nazi prince,” Philip von Hessen, the Vatican engaged in clandestine diplomacy that shaped its response to the Holocaust. This groundbreaking work challenges our understanding of the Pope’s wartime silence and reveals how institutional self-preservation often trumped moral courage during humanity’s darkest hour.

Key Takeaways

• Pope Pius XII engaged in secret negotiations with Hitler through an intermediary known as the “Nazi prince,” Philip von Hessen, prioritizing the Church’s institutional interests over speaking out against Nazi atrocities.
• The newly released Vatican documents reveal that Pius XII agreed to remain silent on Germany’s persecution of Jews in exchange for promises to protect Catholic institutions and clergy in German-controlled territories.
• The Pope’s predecessor, Pius XI, had prepared a strong denunciation of Nazism and anti-Jewish laws, but Pius XII destroyed these documents immediately after his election, signaling a dramatic shift in Vatican policy.
• The Vatican’s neutrality during World War II was not true neutrality—by choosing silence in the face of genocide, the Church effectively sided with the perpetrators of mass murder.
• The book demonstrates how powerful institutions can prioritize self-preservation over moral responsibility, a lesson that remains relevant for understanding institutional failures today.

My Summary

A Secret History Finally Revealed

I’ve read a lot of World War II history over the years, but David I. Kertzer’s “The Pope at War” genuinely shocked me. And I don’t say that lightly. When the Vatican finally opened its archives in 2020—after decades of keeping them sealed—it unleashed a flood of documents that fundamentally changed our understanding of Pope Pius XII’s role during the Holocaust. Kertzer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, was among the first scholars to dive into these millions of previously classified files, and what he found is both fascinating and deeply disturbing.

What struck me most about this book is how it moves beyond the simplistic “Hitler’s Pope” versus “savior of the Jews” debate that has dominated discussions of Pius XII for decades. Instead, Kertzer presents us with something more nuanced and, frankly, more damning: a portrait of a man who prioritized institutional preservation over moral courage at a moment when the world desperately needed the latter.

The book centers on secret negotiations that took place between the Vatican and Nazi Germany through an intermediary—Prince Philip von Hessen, whom Kertzer aptly calls the “Nazi prince.” These clandestine meetings, completely expunged from earlier Vatican document releases in 1965, reveal a pope far more engaged with protecting the Church’s interests than with speaking out against genocide.

The Pope Who Destroyed His Predecessor’s Courage

The story really begins not with Pius XII but with his predecessor, Pope Pius XI. By early 1939, the elderly and ailing Pius XI had finally had enough of Mussolini and Hitler. He was preparing both an encyclical and a major speech that would take a hard line against Nazism and Italy’s fascist racial laws. This wasn’t going to be diplomatic hedging—this was going to be a full-throated denunciation.

But on February 10, 1939, just days before he was scheduled to deliver this speech, Pius XI died. Enter Eugenio Pacelli, the Cardinal Secretary of State who would become Pius XII. What happened next tells you everything you need to know about what would follow.

Mussolini’s representatives immediately approached Pacelli with a request: destroy all copies of his predecessor’s planned speech. And Pacelli agreed. He didn’t just shelve it or delay it—he actively worked to destroy the evidence of his predecessor’s courage. When I read this, I had to put the book down for a moment. This wasn’t just a policy disagreement; this was an active suppression of what might have been one of the Catholic Church’s finest moral moments.

The papal conclave that followed elected Pacelli as Pope Pius XII, and while he took his predecessor’s name, the two men couldn’t have been more different. Where Pius XI had grown increasingly confrontational with fascism, Pius XII was determined to be “the pope of peace”—a peace that, as it turned out, would come at an unconscionable cost.

The Secret Channel to Hitler

Here’s where Kertzer’s research really breaks new ground. Using the newly released documents, he reconstructs a series of secret meetings between Pius XII and Hitler’s trusted envoy, Prince Philip von Hessen. This Nazi prince—married to Princess Mafalda, daughter of the Italian king—served as a perfect intermediary, with connections to both the German and Italian leadership.

The first secret meeting set a troubling pattern. The Pope raised concerns about the treatment of Catholics in Germany—not Jews, mind you, but Catholics. Nazi propaganda was damaging the Church’s reputation, and Catholic education had been suppressed. The Pope wanted these restrictions lifted. Hitler agreed to consider the request, but only if all future negotiations went through this secret channel with von Hessen.

And here’s the kicker: after this first meeting, Hitler did ease up on anti-Catholic propaganda in Germany. The system worked—for the Church’s institutional interests, anyway.

What really got under my skin was learning about how the sexual abuse scandal played into these negotiations. The Nazi party had been exposing cases of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests in Germany and Austria. Rather than addressing this moral crisis head-on, Pius XII ordered records of such cases in Austria to be destroyed. He assured Hitler that the Church would handle these cases internally and asked that Germany keep quiet about them. It’s a chilling preview of the institutional cover-ups that would plague the Church for decades to come.

The Price of Silence

The second secret meeting revealed the true cost of the Vatican’s diplomatic approach. Von Hessen came with specific requests from Hitler: the Pope should remain silent on Germany’s policies toward Jews, and he should rein in German clergy who were speaking out against Nazi atrocities. And Pius XII agreed to both requests.

Let that sink in for a moment. The spiritual leader of over 300 million Catholics worldwide, a man who commanded enormous moral authority, agreed to remain silent about genocide in exchange for promises to protect Church institutions. It’s one of the most profound moral failures in modern history, and Kertzer documents it with devastating clarity.

By the third meeting, the war was in full swing, and Hitler had already broken many of his promises regarding the treatment of German Catholics. Yet the Pope continued to request that the Church’s freedoms be restored rather than speaking out forcefully about the mass murder of Jews, Roma, disabled people, and others deemed undesirable by the Nazi regime.

The Myth of Neutrality

One of Kertzer’s most important contributions is his demolition of the neutrality defense. Throughout the war and in the decades since, defenders of Pius XII have argued that he maintained neutrality to protect the Church and possibly save more lives through quiet diplomacy. But as Kertzer makes abundantly clear, there’s no such thing as neutrality in the face of genocide.

By choosing silence, the Pope was effectively choosing a side. His pattern throughout the war was to leave room for the Church to operate in Nazi-controlled territories, even if that meant turning a blind eye to atrocities happening all around him. This wasn’t neutrality—it was complicity through inaction.

I found myself thinking about this concept a lot while reading. In my own life, I’ve faced moments where staying quiet felt like the safe option, the diplomatic choice. But this book drove home for me how silence from those in positions of power isn’t neutral—it’s a choice that has consequences. When you have a platform and you choose not to use it, you’re making a statement about what you value most.

What the Documents Reveal

The most fascinating aspect of Kertzer’s research is how he traces the Vatican’s own cover-up of these negotiations. When the Vatican first released files on Pius XII in 1965, four Jesuit editors worked systematically to expunge all evidence of the Pope’s secret dealings with Hitler. They created a sanitized version of history that portrayed Pius XII in the most favorable light possible.

It wasn’t until 2020, when the Vatican finally unsealed the original documents, that scholars like Kertzer could access the unedited truth. This raises uncomfortable questions about institutional transparency and accountability. If the Church was willing to hide these documents for over 75 years, what else might still be hidden in its archives?

As someone who values historical accuracy, I appreciate that Kertzer doesn’t approach this material with an axe to grind. He’s not writing a hit piece or a defense—he’s simply following the documentary evidence wherever it leads. His previous book, “The Pope and Mussolini,” won the Pulitzer Prize, and you can see why. His research is meticulous, his writing is clear and engaging, and he has a gift for making complex diplomatic history accessible to general readers.

Applying These Lessons Today

Reading “The Pope at War” isn’t just an exercise in understanding World War II history—it’s a master class in how institutions fail when they prioritize self-preservation over moral courage. And unfortunately, these lessons remain deeply relevant today.

Think about how many institutions—churches, universities, corporations, governments—have faced moral reckonings in recent years over their past failures to speak out or take action against injustice. The Catholic Church’s ongoing sexual abuse crisis, corporate silence on human rights abuses, university responses to discrimination—all of these echo the same pattern we see in Pius XII’s papacy.

When an institution’s primary concern becomes its own survival and reputation rather than the people it’s supposed to serve, moral compromises become inevitable. I work with various organizations through my writing, and this book has made me more alert to the warning signs: when leaders prioritize “not rocking the boat,” when they emphasize diplomatic relationships over ethical stands, when they counsel patience and quiet work rather than public accountability.

On a personal level, this book challenged me to think about my own moments of silence. When have I prioritized my own comfort or security over speaking up? When have I told myself that quiet diplomacy was more effective than public stands, when really I was just avoiding conflict? These are uncomfortable questions, but they’re necessary ones.

The Broader Context of Wartime Choices

To be fair, Kertzer does provide context for understanding why Pius XII made the choices he did. The Pope genuinely believed that maintaining the Church’s institutional presence in Nazi-controlled territories might allow for more good to be done quietly than could be accomplished through public denunciations. Some Catholics did risk their lives to hide Jews, and some of this happened with local Church support.

But here’s the thing: those brave individuals were acting despite the Pope’s silence, not because of it. And we’ll never know how many more lives might have been saved if the Pope had used his enormous moral authority to speak out forcefully and consistently against the Holocaust. Would it have stopped the genocide? Probably not. But it would have provided moral clarity at a moment when the world desperately needed it, and it might have emboldened more people to resist.

Kertzer also places Pius XII’s actions in the context of the Church’s longstanding anti-Semitism. While the Pope wasn’t personally orchestrating the Holocaust, the Church had spent centuries promoting anti-Jewish attitudes that created the cultural soil in which Nazi ideology could flourish. The Pope’s silence wasn’t just a wartime failure—it was part of a much longer institutional failure to confront the Church’s own role in perpetuating hatred.

How This Compares to Other World War II Histories

I’ve read extensively about World War II—from William Shirer’s “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” to Timothy Snyder’s “Bloodlands”—and “The Pope at War” fills a crucial gap in our understanding of this period. Most World War II histories focus on military strategy, political leadership, and the experiences of victims and survivors. Fewer examine the role of neutral institutions and the moral calculations of those who chose not to resist.

In this way, Kertzer’s book reminds me of Daniel Goldhagen’s controversial “Hitler’s Willing Executioners,” which examined how ordinary Germans participated in the Holocaust. Both books force us to look beyond the obvious villains to understand how systems of complicity work. The difference is that Kertzer’s research is so thoroughly documented that it’s much harder to dismiss or debate his core findings.

For readers interested in the Vatican’s role in World War II, this book is an essential companion to Kertzer’s earlier work, “The Pope and Mussolini,” which focuses on Pius XI. Together, they provide a comprehensive picture of how the Vatican navigated the rise of fascism and the war years. I’d also recommend reading these alongside Susan Zuccotti’s “Under His Very Windows,” which examines the Pope’s response to the deportation of Rome’s Jews.

Strengths and Limitations

The book’s greatest strength is its foundation in primary source documents. Kertzer isn’t speculating or relying on secondhand accounts—he’s working directly from Vatican files, diplomatic cables, and personal correspondence. This gives his arguments tremendous authority. His writing is also remarkably clear for an academic historian. He has a gift for narrative that makes even complex diplomatic maneuvering read like a thriller.

However, the book does have some limitations. Because it focuses so heavily on the secret negotiations and diplomatic history, we get less insight into Pius XII’s personal psychology and spiritual life. What did he really think about the Holocaust? Did he struggle with his decisions, or did he sleep soundly at night? The documents don’t always reveal these interior dimensions.

Additionally, while Kertzer is scrupulously fair in presenting the evidence, readers looking for a more sympathetic treatment of Pius XII may find the book difficult. The facts speak for themselves, and they’re damning. If you’re someone who wants to believe that the Pope was doing his best in impossible circumstances, this book will challenge that view.

Questions Worth Wrestling With

After finishing “The Pope at War,” I found myself sitting with some difficult questions. What would I have done in Pius XII’s position? It’s easy to judge from the safety of 80 years later, but would I have had the courage to speak out if I believed it might lead to even more persecution of Catholics under my care? Would I have prioritized institutional survival over moral witness?

I’d like to think I’d have been brave, but I honestly don’t know. And that uncertainty is part of what makes this book so powerful. It’s not just about judging a historical figure—it’s about understanding how good people can make terrible moral choices when they’re caught between competing obligations and uncertain outcomes.

Another question that stayed with me: How should we evaluate institutions that have failed morally in the past but continue to exist and claim authority today? The Catholic Church is still here, still claiming moral leadership on various issues. Does its failure during the Holocaust permanently compromise that authority? Or can institutions acknowledge their failures, make amends, and move forward?

These aren’t questions with easy answers, and Kertzer wisely doesn’t try to provide them. He gives us the history and lets us wrestle with the implications.

Why This Book Matters Now

I started this review by saying that “The Pope at War” shocked me, and I want to return to that. In an era when we’re constantly confronting institutional failures—whether it’s the Church’s sexual abuse crisis, corporate malfeasance, or government corruption—this book provides a historical case study in how institutions fail and why.

The pattern is always similar: prioritize institutional preservation over moral courage, maintain silence to preserve diplomatic relationships, hope that quiet work behind the scenes will accomplish more than public stands. And the result is always the same: the institution survives, but its moral authority is compromised, sometimes irreparably.

For those of us who care about justice, accountability, and moral leadership, “The Pope at War” is essential reading. It’s a reminder that silence is never neutral, that institutional interests and moral obligations often conflict, and that history judges harshly those who choose self-preservation over speaking truth to power.

Final Thoughts and an Invitation

David I. Kertzer has given us a masterful work of historical scholarship that reads like a spy thriller while grappling with profound moral questions. “The Pope at War” is meticulously researched, clearly written, and deeply important. It’s not always comfortable to read—in fact, it’s often quite disturbing—but it’s necessary.

Whether you’re interested in World War II history, the Catholic Church, or the broader questions of institutional responsibility and moral courage, this book deserves your attention. It’s the kind of history that changes how you see not just the past, but the present as well.

I’d love to hear your thoughts if you’ve read this book or plan to pick it up. How do you think we should evaluate historical figures who faced impossible moral choices? What do you think institutions owe to the truth about their past failures? Drop a comment below and let’s continue this conversation. History isn’t just about understanding the past—it’s about learning how to do better in the future.