Hubert Wolf's subtle and understated book shows that the writing of good history requires access to good sources. In 2006 Benedict XVI opened to researchers all files in the Vatican Secret Archives relating to the pontificate of Pius XI (February 1922 to February 1939). This is a vast cache: by Wolf's estimate, it includes about 100,000 “archival units, each containing up to a thousand pages” (17). Of course Wolf could not examine all or even much of this enormous collection, but he saw enough to present what he calls a “double perspective” on relations between the Vatican and Germany in the prewar years of National Socialist rule: “the view from Rome and the consultations within the Vatican about German affairs” (18). By sticking close to his sources Wolf uncovers many surprises and reveals that the devil in its modern, totalitarian guise is, as ever, in the details.

Wolf's approach is selective. Rather than attempting a comprehensive account, he hones in on five sets of issues and the paper trails they generated. Each of his topics speaks to debates about the Vatican in a later and more contested period: the years of World War II and the Holocaust, during the pontificate of Pius XII.Footnote ¹ One chapter focuses on Eugenio Pacelli as papal nuncio in Munich and subsequently Berlin, using the numerous and extensive reports he sent back to Rome between 1917 and 1929. Chapter two grapples with antisemitism in the Church hierarchy by investigating the 1928 internal debates around Amici Israel, the priests’ association of the Friends of Israel, and its request to revise the Good Friday liturgy to remove, or at least reduce, the insults to Jews. Analysis of the Reich Concordat of 1933 follows in chapter three, and the fourth chapter examines Vatican correspondence from and about Jews and converts from Judaism who were persecuted in Nazi Germany. A two-page reproduction of Edith Stein's undated letter to Pius XI (probably from April 1933) takes a central place here and indeed in the book as a whole (185–86).

The final chapter uses records of debates regarding Nazi ideology within the Supreme Sacred Congregation, the political section of the Curia and the Holy Office “responsible for all matters relating to faith and dogma” (224). Major initiatives involved the ecumenical movement in Germany and the Index of Forbidden Books, in particular Alfred Rosenberg's The Myth of the Twentieth Century and Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf. Years of wrangling resulted in suppression of the German ecumenical group Una Sancta and condemnation of Rosenberg's book along with some other Nazi classics, but no naming of names when it came to Germany's head of state. Diplomacy did not exactly trump dogma, to use Wolf's terms, but it shaped the forms that defense of dogma took.

Wolf avoids heavy-handed judgments and for the most part lets his evidence speak for itself. But in the process he assesses, reassesses, and demolishes assumptions that have become standard, indeed ossified, in the voluminous literature, scholarly and popular, on the papacy and Nazi Germany. First to go is the myth of silence. What silence, one wonders while reading this book? Already in the 1920s the Vatican was intensely engaged with National Socialism, preoccupied with antisemitism and bitterly divided over its impact on the church, and busy producing mountains of letters, decisions, publications, and proclamations on every aspect of modern political life.Footnote ² By the time Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, the buzz of Vatican activity had become a roar. In 1937, after three years of effort, the consultors of the Holy Office agreed to ten propositions on National Socialism. This list was to lay the foundation for a solemn condemnation of racism and “other errors of the time” including Communism, “hypernationalism,” and totalitarianism. Also on the table was a public condemnation of Hitler's Mein Kampf (259–62). Though never released, the syllabus and the discussions around it reflected a sophisticated understanding of what historians, decades later, would dub the “racial state.”Footnote ³

The accusation of silence, aligned with passivity, indifference, and complicity, is leveled in countless books, articles, movies, and conferences on the papacy and the Holocaust.Footnote ⁴ Its counterpart is a furious backlash of efforts to prove that Pius XII was not silent, or if he was, it was only because to speak out would have jeopardized more lives; besides, he was among the Righteous and maybe even the greatest rescuer of Jews of them all.Footnote ⁵ Both sides of this polemic feed on conspiracy theories: on one extreme, the ahistorical charge that the pope's silence stemmed from a hateful drive to see Judaism and Jews disappear from the earth; on the other, fantastical claims that the pope masterminded a secret network that saved as many as 860,000 Jews.Footnote ⁶ Both sets of assertions are impossible to verify; in fact, some proponents of these positions construe the absence of evidence as itself a form of proof, on the logic that obviously no one would or could leave records of such things.

Wolf gets past these stultifying positions by stretching the chronology back and by analyzing Vatican relations with Nazi Germany as a combination of internal action and external restraint. The book neither condemns, vindicates, nor celebrates Pius XI and Pacelli. Instead it shows them as historical actors with their own priorities (the institutional health of the Church), limitations and blind spots, insights and achievements. Still, there are moments in Pope and Devil when a dagger of light seems to pierce the fog of postwar exculpation and puncture cherished illusions. For instance, Wolf reveals the pope's 1928 repudiation of antisemitism to have been nothing more than a preemptive cover for dissolution of the Amici Israel (113–14). After a discussion with Pius XI in April 1933 on the subject of antisemitism in Germany, then Cardinal Secretary of State Pacelli made a note to himself: “The day may come when we will have to be able to say that something was done about this matter” (179). Edith Stein's plea on behalf of the persecuted Jews of Germany was shown to the pope, but Wolf finds no evidence that Pius XI gave instructions for a response. Pacelli sent only a brief acknowledgment to the arch-abbot who had conveyed the letter, telling him it had been “dutifully presented to His Holiness” (189–90). But at the same time, in a 1933 statement, Pacelli affirmed that it was “in the tradition of the Holy See to fulfill its universal mission of peace and love for all human beings, regardless of their social status or the religion to which they belong” (180).

As these particulars indicate, although shattering the myth of silence may weaken some accusations of Vatican complicity, the impact is more devastating for would-be champions of the papacy. Familiar defenses—that it is anachronistic to expect the pope to have seen himself as a guardian of human rights; that the pope could not have known what was happening to Jews; that Pius XII carefully calibrated his wartime responses to save Jewish lives; that the worst offense of Catholics across Europe was to “do nothing” to help Jews (rather than to participate in persecution, theft, and murder)—depend for their plausibility on the notion of “silence.”Footnote ⁷ Perhaps some readers will detect a note of apology in parts of Wolf's book, but on the whole its effect is a balanced and informed criticism. From time to time one catches a glimpse of the author's disappointment, verging on disillusionment. However, these flashes of grief are fleeting enough that they might be explained as projections. In any case, what we see here is more interesting and infinitely more complex than can be captured by the static and by now clichéd notion of “silence.”

One of the standard tools of a historian is chronology, putting things in order. This simple exercise often proves rewarding, and Wolf's book is a case in point. The detailed chronology provided at the end reminds readers that Pius XI and the Duce “took office” the same year, 1922; Achille Ratti in February and Benito Mussolini in October. So with the exception of its first nine months, Pius XI's entire pontificate occurred under Fascist rule. For him the crucial point of reference in assessing Hitler was not Stalin but Mussolini.Footnote ⁸ Seeing the Vatican from this angle raises new questions; among them, how did the pope react to the killing of hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians during the Italian invasion of 1935 and the subsequent occupation?Footnote ⁹

Wolf does not say much about Ethiopia, but he turns up some surprises about Mussolini. Who knew—I for one did not—that in April 1938 Mussolini urged Pius XI to take “decisive action against Hitler” including excommunication (270)? This suggestion may seem oddly timed in the midst of Nazi-Fascist cooperation in Spain and the same year as the Kristallnacht pogrom in Germany and the introduction of anti-Jewish laws in Italy. According to Wolf, Mussolini wanted to “force Hitler to make peace with the Church” for the sake of fighting Communism. But in the wake of Germany's annexation of Austria a month earlier, perhaps Mussolini also wanted papal support against his “frenemy” and erstwhile rival in the Tirol.

Wolf's book pays significant attention to southern Europe, not only Italy but Spain. The Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939, now overshadowed by the even more horrific World War that followed, was a turning point in twentieth-century history and, as Hilari Raguer, Beth Griech-Polelle, and others have shown, in the Roman Catholic Church.Footnote ¹⁰ Wolf alerts readers to the valuable contribution of work in progress on this topic by one of his co-investigators, Martin Baxmeyer. Wolf's view from Rome reminds us that the violence ripping through Spain in those crucial years drew the eyes of the world away from German aggression and provided a real-life testing ground for ideologies, weapons, and warriors. Hitler understood this dynamic. In a November 1937 meeting with heads of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and other agencies, he explained his preference for a prolonged conflict in Spain: “Our interest,” he claimed, lies “in a continuance of the war and in the keeping up of the tension in the Mediterranean.”Footnote ¹¹ As for the papacy, it withheld approval of Franco until the Republic was incontrovertibly lost—further evidence for Wolf's argument that Pius XI was willing to deal with the “devil” in whatever form he might take (264).

Wolf's book gently troubles the widespread view of Ratti as the “good” Pius and Pacelli as the “bad” one. This contrast has proven convenient at times, somewhat like the notion, now debunked in most quarters, that if only Lenin had lived longer, the ravages of Stalin could have been avoided. The rediscovery in the 1990s of the unfinished encyclical on racism and antisemitism, commissioned by Pius XI and drafted by the Jesuit John La Farge but never released, added credence to the “good pope/bad pope” dichotomy. But Ratti, too, Wolf shows, had feet of clay. Vatican sources reveal Pius XI and Pacelli to have been of one mind on major issues, even if the former's impulsiveness contrasted with the latter's calculated control. After all it was not the future Pius XII but his predecessor who crushed Amici Israel and blocked reform of the Good Friday liturgy (109–11).

Still, as Wolf demonstrates, in the final year of his pontificate Pius XI resolved to do more against Nazi and Fascist persecution of Jews—more than his chief diplomat, Eugenio Pacelli, would accept. There is a palpable sense of loss in Wolf's terse account of the pope's death and the demise of his encyclical against racism. Pacelli, Wolf tells us, could have proclaimed “continuity with the spirit of Pius XI.” But he chose otherwise (210).

Wolf's book is not all bad news for those who believe the Vatican has been unfairly maligned. Bishop Alois Hudal, notorious for helping Nazis escape postwar justice through the so-called ratline,Footnote ¹² turns up here as an early and vociferous critic of National Socialism, at least its “dangerous” proponents (248–54). Although Wolf questions Hudal's diary as a reliable source on his role in the campaign to condemn Nazi racism, he finds that the archives support a number of the bishop's claims. This revision does not cancel out Hudal's postwar behavior but it does underscore the point that the popes and the people around them acted from a firm base of knowledge about Nazism, what it was and what it did. Another revelation is the pope's response to Bishop von Galen's 1941 protest against murder of the disabled. Far from indifferent, Wolf shows, Pius XII knew parts of Galen's sermons by heart. As “supreme shepherd of all Catholics,” however, he felt his hands were tied (221–22).

Wolf quietly explodes the assumption that the Vatican response to Nazism was guided by the perception of Hitler as a bulwark against Communism. During the 1920s, Wolf reminds us, Pius XII offered three times to open diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union (9). References to Communism are rare in Wolf's sources, and Pius XI and those close to him seem to have regarded Hitler and Stalin as two sides of the same demonic coin more than they tried to drive out the devil with Beelzebub. The Kulturkampf newsletters, written by German Center Party exiles in France in the 1930s, took the same stance. Their authors explicitly rejected the contention that the Roman Catholic hierarchy settled for Hitler as the “lesser of two evils.” National Socialism was totalitarian, they insisted, and as an ideologically conceived religion or substitute for religion, it posed an absolute and mortal threat with which there could be no compromise.Footnote ¹³ Of course anti-Communism was a factor, though its role was exaggerated in Cold War hindsight.Footnote ¹⁴ But in any case, after announcement of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact in August 1939 and the dual German-Soviet invasions of Poland a month later, Pius XII and others could have denounced both Communism and Nazism, forces that cooperated in the murder and deportation of Catholic Poles, including thousands of priests. Even though that opportunity existed until mid-1941, the pope let it pass.Footnote ¹⁵

Wolf's striking title—Pope and Devil—deserves some attention. When a copy of the German edition appeared in my mailbox, I have to confess I initially set it aside. Because of the title I assumed, wrongly, that here was just another version of Hitler's Pope. I read the “and”—an ampersand in the German original—as a marker of equivalence joining two descriptions of the same person. This meaning of “and” structures many locutions: wife and mother, barrister and solicitor, a gentleman and a scholar. But, as Wolf's introduction with its emphasis on the battle between good and evil makes clear, here “and” connotes “against,” as in the pope versus the (d)evil of modernity. This usage, too, is well-known: think of David and Goliath or the classic war game, Axis & Allies. Still another use of “and” connotes two distinct yet entangled elements of a narrative or process. Examples include Adam and Eve, divide and conquer, Crime and Punishment. Pope and Devil has no conclusion, but its final sentences tip the balance in this direction: “Hitler remained a member of the Catholic Church until the day he died. Like the pope, even the devil could be Catholic” (271). With his choice of a title, it appears, Wolf embraced the ambiguity of the humble conjunction “and.” Pope and Devil may invite projection but, more to the point, it demands reflection.