Professor Ronald J. Rychlak is an expert on the “Hitler’s Pope” controversy surrounding Venerable Pope Pius XII.
But despite being a defender of Pius XII’s wartime record in saving Jewish lives from the Holocaust, the American law professor at the University of Mississippi was initially skeptical of claims, first disclosed by former Romanian intelligence chief General Ion Mihai Pacepa in 2007, that efforts to blacken Pius’s name were driven by a Soviet plot.
Yet after two years of research and regular contact with Pacepa, his perception changed, and he is now convinced that the KGB played a key role in framing Pius XII by promoting The Deputy – Rolf Hochhuth’s 1963 play that gave birth to the “Black Legend” of Pius as a Nazi sympathizer. He has now co-written a new book with Pacepa on the plot, called Disinformation, due to be published soon.
Below is Professor Rychlak’s own account of how he changed his mind. My recent two-part interview with Pacepa can be read here and here:
Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa and the Plot Against the Pope
Ronald J. Rychlak
The 2007 revelations from Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa about the theatrical play, The Deputy, were new to all of us who had studied Pius XII and the Holocaust. According to Pacepa, that play, which was the source of the false charges of papal indifference to Jewish suffering, was a Kremlin-directed plot. When I first heard this claim, I did not simply trust Pacepa; I decided to investigate.
At first I engaged in some long email exchanges with friends and colleagues. Most of us did not know where or how to look into these claims. Bill Donohue of the Catholic League offered to fund travel to Russia or elsewhere if that would help, but I could not figure out where to look. It would have been a waste of money. Some of my colleagues said just to forget it – it would be a “footnote” in the Pius XII debate. Pacepa’s account, however, deserved at least some attention.
I went back to the place I began my original work on Pius XII some 15 years earlier: the local public library. Within 15 minutes I found an interesting book written by a former KGB officer that told of how he had obtained control over a small but influential periodical. I was also able to confirm that the periodical in question had promoted the play The Deputy, which Pacepa had just said was a Soviet plot. That made things interesting.
I spent the next two years researching Pacepa’s claim, and bit by bit all the pieces fell in place. The new picture answered many questions and made sense out of things that had previously been inexplicable. Consider:
1. The German and American producers of the play, the American publisher, and the French translator, were all Communists.
a. Throughout his life, the German producer produced plays under orders from the Communist Party.
b. The German theater at which The Deputy opened was overtly dedicated to pro-Communist propaganda. In fact, this was its first play.
c. The American Producer had been fined and given a suspended criminal sentence by the House Un-American Activities Committee.
d. The American publisher considered Communism to be his “religion.”
e. The French translator was a member of the Spanish Communist Party’s politburo and had for several years organized clandestine activities for that organization.2. The play was promoted with Soviet-style propaganda.
a. Many of the early positive reviewers had Communist ties.
i. At least one was paid by the KGB.
ii. Another was a former KGB spy
iii. Others were at the time or had previously been members of the Communist Party
b. The play would not have opened on Broadway but for support from a “Catholic” magazine that was falling under Communist influence at the time.
i. The magazine also set forth the Soviet line on the Vietnam War, the Kennedy Assassinations, the CIA’s funding of student groups, and other issues.
ii. The CIA came to believe that Soviet money funded the magazine.3. Rolf Hochhuth, known to the world as the author of The Deputy, was a likely target for a KGB-style operation.
a. He was an unknown writer.
b. His research methods were sloppy at best (resulting in a significant legal verdict against him for his work on a different play).
c. He has been caught in outright lies.
d. After The Deputy was written, he worked closely with his life-long friend David Irving, a noted Holocaust denier whom Hochhuth has frequently defended.
e. In 1969, British Intelligence prepared a report noting its suspicion of his efforts to advance ideas designed to undermine the West.
f. Hochhuth lived in fear of being assassinated by British spies of “the Old Firm.” It made no sense to those around him, but it makes sense when it is realized that he was engaged in Soviet actions against the West.
Eventually I wrote a chapter on these and other findings, and I included it in the new edition of my book: Hitler, the War, and the Pope: Revised and Expanded (Our Sunday Visitor, 2010).
Before that book got into print, I was able to make contact with Pacepa. (More accurately, I suppose, is that he got in touch with me after I sent the chapter to an editor he knew). Pacepa brought even more clarity to these issues, including correcting a mistake in my book. I had attributed the inexplicable anti-Semitism found in The Deputy to Hochhuth. As we explain in our new book, Disinformation, the anti-Semitism was a clear fingerprint of the KGB authors.
There were several things that Pacepa told me about Soviet bloc intelligence that surprised me. Each time, however, I did independent research and verified his account. Moreover, he was intellectually honest. One time, for instance, I found a book that verified a claim that had seemed far-fetched when I heard it (it related to admissions made in KGB publications). As we worked on our manuscript, I thought that the citation I had found would be important to prove a controversial point. Pacepa stopped me, however, saying that the source could not be trusted. I told him that we needed support on this point. He still refused to use it. Instead he found another source that also verified what he had told me.
After corresponding with Pacepa for three years now, and after having read his books and many of his articles (and articles about him), I know that he has never steered me wrong. My 2007 reaction was the natural, cautious comment of someone exposed to a new and unfamiliar proposal. After two years of careful research, I changed my mind. In 2010, I published my reasons, and I am now working with him on our upcoming book, Disinformation. I am proud to be associated with him.
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This turn around in the view of Pius XII does my heart good. I am so happy that the truth about him is finally being retold!
Yes, I am so grateful too for yourTemperance not accept everything at face value, your Prudence to search out the truth and the Wisdom to know the truth in this case concerning our Venerable Pope Pius XII. God always brings out the true light. I too am so happy for the truth about him is finally coming to light. Thank you! Praise God!
Perhaps because Pius XII was Pope when I entered the Church, and because I studied his pontificate and its documents, he became my favorite Pope surpassing high regard for Leo XIII. I was deeply moved years later when I could pay my respects at his tomb. I was incredulous when The Deputy and Hitler’s Pope began their corrosive defamation. How soon many forgot that Golda Meir, The Prime Minister of Israel, praised him highly for saving 870,000 Jews during the war, or that that the Chief Rabbi of Rome had converted to the Catholic Church because of his aid to the Jews. I am so glad for the attempts to clear has name so the cause for Canonization can finally be realized. For that I pray.
My mother grew up in Italy during WWII. She used to tell me about her friend, Lilletta, a Roman Jew, who had told her she had been hidden in the Vatican during the Nazi occupation. Lilletta went on to marry a Gentile, had two sons, and had both baptized into the Catholic church.
Mr. Penton, might it not have been more useful to reflect on the history of anti-Semitism throughout our Christian history and how that influenced the continuance of this desire to scapegoat others? There can be denying that it led to the eventual extermination of 4 -5 million Jews during WWII. Do you not find it remarkable that anti-Semitism is still rife today among many Christians when we consider that Jesus was born, lived and died as a Jew?
What is more important to understand about Pius XII is why we continue to harbor the desire to find scapegoats to hide our sins.
the history of anti-Semitism throughout our Christian history and how that influenced the continuance of this desire to scapegoat others? There can be denying that it led to the eventual extermination of 4 -5 million Jews during WWII.
Hitler’s Final Solution was not a *religiously* motivated endeavor, but one based in part on the pseudo-science of eugenics.
Whereas in all previous instances of pogroms by Christian rulers against the Jews, the Jewish victims might avoid the consequences of religious persecution by converting to Christianity (hence the _conversos_ of Spain, for example), in the view of Hitler’s Nazi Party, a person of Jewish heritage was allegedly *biologically* deficient and undesirable. There was no religious conversion from Judaism to Aryanism: If you were of Jewish (or Gypsy, or Slav) heritage, you were ethnically undesirable and needed to be wiped out for the good of the Aryan race.
Thus, under the Nazis, the Carmelite nun Saint Teresia Benedicta, born Edith Stein, was not safe in her convent, as she would have been under a strictly *religious* persecution of Jewish persons.
The Nazi persecution was a pseudo-scientific one: Edith Stein had Jewish DNA, and so had to die.
The difference doesn’t make religious persecution of Jews any better than that of the Nazis, but I would argue that the Nazis’ persecution sprang from very different roots, and had very different motivations.
If we are eager to avoid another Holocaust, as well we should be, it would seem we would have reason to view with suspicion any pseudo-scientific endeavors that denigrate the integrity and the dignity of the human person be he or she of any heritage, background, or ethnicity.
Pius XII could have saved 6 million Jewish lives if he had threatened Catholics who took part in the holocaust with excommunication. He did no such thing. Many top Nazi officials were practicing Catholics who could and did attend mass and receive the sacraments. There is no excuse for this.
“Pius XII could have saved 6 million Jewish lives if he had threatened Catholics who took part in the holocaust with excommunication.”
Contrary to popular belief, excommunication is not a weapon or threat of a prison sentence such as is wielded by the civil authorities. It is not a method by which the Church attempts to force her children to do or to stop doing something. Excommunication is a way for the Church to drive home to persons who aren’t clear that what they are doing is contrary to the law of God, that the Church condemns what they are doing, and they need to stop.
Catholic (as well as Lutheran and neo-pagan) Nazi were well aware that the Nazi Party had long since taken steps to silence the Holy Father’s denunciations of their mistreatment of the Jews, along those of other Catholic bishops who had publicly denounced the mistreatment of the Jews. See _Mit Brennende Sorge_ .
As we see in the United States today, with many so-called Catholic figures in public life continuing to support abortion, and “attending Mass and receiving the sacraments,” the Church will not drive tanks over nor clap handcuffs on such persons. Evildoers continue to do exactly as they please, cooperating with evil, as they always have done. All the Church can do is what she had done all along: preach, teach, and propose that her children choose the good.
I am getting sick and tired of hearing people criticize Pope Pius for “not doing enough” to stop the killing of the Holocaust. Case in point is what happened in Holland when the Bishops there spoke out very strongly and what ended up happening? More Jews were rounded up and killed, and this might be the reason why the Pope did not do more. I think he did the BEST HE COULD and to me that should be enough. This may be the reason the Yad Hashem Memorial was recently changed in Israel to include the views of the supporters of Pius XII. If he did not do enough than why at the time of his death in 1958 he was highly praised by prominent Jews including Golda Meir, and Albert Einstein. Do not base your view of the Pope Pius and the Church simply based on this stupid German Play from 40 years ago?
Quite right, Joannie. Pius XII framing, whether intentional, or not, by the KGB and their successors, and those who may unknowingly parrot them, is what has been happening for many years.
The enemies of the Church will do or say anything - *anything* - to injure her reputation. Doesn’t have to be true; only has to stick.
All of the Jewish persecutions, pogroms,inquisitions can be attributed to either the communists or faulty eugenics? Remarkable.
Dear Trebert, you seem determined to misread comments that you don’t like. Yes sadly there have been pogroms against Jews in number of countries over the centuries of both Catholic and Protestant Christian backgrounds. Those who commented noted this but pointed out that it was the Nazis who persecuted the Jews on pseudo-eugenic grounds.
As far as Communism is concerned there were pogrom style persecution of Jews in Russia, but the article refers to attempts by the KGB to blacken Pius 12 as a pro-Nazi for political reasons to discredit him. The historical facts are that no matter how Quisling some German Bishops may have been, that Pius as Pope, with no military, and little political power during the WW2 was able to provide a life line to so many Jewish refugees.
John Lauder and others,
What I am saying is that anti-Semitism existed long before communism and eugenics. History teaches that the persecution of Christians in Roman times was quickly followed by the persecution of the exiled Jews. It seems that every age needed a ‘scapegoat’ to hide or cast their sins upon. What happened during WWII to the 5 - 6 million Innocent Jews was merely a culmination of the continued anti-Semitism that already existed. Whether Pius XII was framed or not the question we should be asking. It part of a much bigger issue - one that seems to be overlooked in articles such as these - and that is one Jesus would ask: why do you still hate your brother? Or why do you still need to scapegoat others?
Trebert,
Nobody is scapegoating anybody. You are part of the crowd that wants the church to bow down before the spirit of this age and are furious, furious that they refuse to do so. So you launch endless attacks on them.
The gates of hell will not prevail, not matter how much you distort theology and complain about how radical liberals are the poor victims, when they are vultures trying to destroy the church.
You can please leave and take. Kung, and Richard Rohr with you.
How Christian! Four to six million Jews were exterminated during WWII. Tens of thousands of homeless survivors, from various German concentration camps, tried to emigrate to western Europe and America but their borders remained closed for many years afterwards adding to their pain and suffering. A considerable number and variety of international agencies (perhaps even the Catholic Church) worked to assist the Jewish displaced persons in these temporary displacement camps. But it was not until 1948 after these refugees formed their own organizations, and labored for the establishment of an independent Jewish state in Palestine and a lot of survivors found a permanent home. (can they claim occupation of Israel from its former occupants, I don’t know. God is not in the Real Estate business. But, it was perhaps a convenient way to get these victims out of the way.
And all anyone can say is there was no ‘scapegoating’ despite its documented historical roots, leading back centuries, which eventually lead to the Nazi atrocities and continues to this day.
National Socialism (Nazi) is a belief system established by Adolph Hitler (a Catholic who still has not been excommunicated by the Church and signed a concordat with Pius XI and still on the books today) He successfully promoted some very strong historical anti-Semitic feelings and seduced a nation which was almost ninety percent were Catholic to follow him.
And all anyone can say is there was no ‘scapegoating’ despite its documented historical roots, leading back centuries, which eventually lead to the Nazi atrocities and continues to this day.
This subject remains an extremely painful experience for many of its victims including those who remained silent. Trying to explain Pius XII position on this matter, first raised by this website, is not the real issue, and misleads and avoids those who suffered the most from our continued ways of ‘scapegoating’ others.
As for the future of the Church, kindly reconsider the matter in this context: Hans Kung (a German), Richard Rohr, a Franciscan, (of German descent) along with one of the greatest Saints in Church history all called for a healing of the Church in this way : “Francis, Francis, go and repair My house which, as you can see, is falling into ruins”. Icon of Christ Crucified speaking to Francis of Assissi.
Trebert,
All your theories have been proved to be false. ALL national Socialists were excommunicated. Pope Pius supported a state for the Jews, very early on.
Germany was majority Lutheran.
Kung and Rohr have nothing in common with the saints, since their views represent the New Age movement and not Christianity.
I have no time for those who deny the Apostles Creed!
Savvy,
You have proved that scapegoating is still alive and not a theory.
Trebert,
Telling the truth is not scapegoating, but since you are convinced that anybody who disagrees with you or your gurus is the victim, there is nothing more I have to say.
Pius XII was a worthy Pope.
This is precisely why he was hated by the anti-theist Marxists.
Ultimately it was only the Catholic Church and some Protestant Pastors (eg the heroic priests and pastors of Luebecke) who dared to oppose Hitler’s Nazis and Gestapo; as can be seen from the statement made by the Physicist Albert Einstein in “Time” magazine December 23, 1940:
“Being a lover of freedom, when the revolution came in Germany I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the case of truth; but no, the universities immediately were silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love of freedom. But they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks. Only the Church - only the Church - stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess, that what I once despised, I now praise unreservedly. Albert Einstein”
… and this was virtually a universal perception of Pius XII, with good reason. Despite deliberate hostile dis-information by Christophobes, and professional liars with their own agenda - people who were direct witnesses to history, saw first hand how devoted The Pope was to integrity, truth and genuine compassion.
If Hitler was a Christian as atheists like Richard Dawkins insists …
>> WHY did he slaughter 7.5 million Christians alongside about 6 million Jews?
>> WHY did Jewish historian Max Isaac Dimont say the following:
“ ‘If one believes the anti-Semitic, one should also believe the anti-Christian, for both had a single purpose‘... because Hitler’s aim was to eradicate all religious organizations within the state and to foster a return to paganism” (Jewish historian, Max Isaac Dimont, 1994, p. 397).
The fact is, official Nazi works taught BOTH anti-Semitic AND anti-Christian doctrines
>> WHY did Ronald Rychlak, associate dean at the University of Mississippi School of Law, (a Jew) say that Pope Pius XII was rightly lauded in the days after World War II for his efforts to save Jews from extermination.
>> WHY did “Pinchas Lapide, the Israeli consul in Italy, who said, ‘The Catholic Church saved more Jewish lives during the war than all other churches, religious institutions and rescue organizations put together,’” he said. “[Lapide] put the number at 850,000.”
>> WHY did The 1943-1944 American Jewish Yearbook report that Pius XII “Took an unequivocal stand against the oppression of Jews throughout Europe.”
Following the war, the Jerusalem Post reported that: “Thousands of Jews in
Italy owe their lives to Italian citizens and the and the Catholic Church.”
Pope Pius XII was clearly one of the most inspiring unsung heroes of history.
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