Hitler, Mussolini and the Vatican: Pope Pius XI and the Speech That was Never Made
"Simply put, this is the most thorough and best documented study yet to appear on Pius XI."America Magazine"This excellent new book unearths and magisterially exposes new evidence - a key document for those interested in Europe's turbulent pre-war history."Hugh O'Shaughnessy, Review 31"A first-rate study."American Historical Review"Now the most comprehensive work on the Vatican’s relations with states and national churches in western and central Europe in the 1930s."European History Quarterly"Insightful, provocative and original. Fattorini's examination of Pius XI's evolving attitudes toward totalitarian states is complex and convincing."The Journal of Modern History"A revealing insight into European politics in the 1930s, and the first scholarly attempt to look at the Church's relationship with Fascism and the Nazis during that period."Birmingham Jewish Recorder"A crucial new perspective on the relationship between the Vatican, Mussolini's Fascism, and National Socialism. The tendency to focus exclusively on Eugenio Pacelli, the future wartime pope Pius XII, has obscured the troubled papacy of Pius X1 between 1922 and 1939. Professor Fattorini's narrative, in the light of the recent release of Vatican documents of the period, is sure to breathe new life into this controversial era of Church-state relations on the brink of world war."John Cornwell, University of Cambridge"Emma Fattorini's remarkable work extends our understanding of how the leadership of the Catholic Church grappled with fascism and Nazism. She does so by drawing on riveting documentation recently released from the Vatican Secret Archive and by focusing on the relatively overlooked pontificate of Pius XI. "Michael R. Marrus, University of Toronto"Fattorini's objective and scholarly volume helps to demolish the long-prevailing belief that Pius XI and his secretary of state Eugenio Pacelli - later his successor as Pius XII - concurred in the policy to pursue towards fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. She demonstrates, on the basis of solid documentation, that, while Pius XI increasingly perceived the need for confrontation with these regimes after 1936, Pacelli preferred conciliation and impartiality - policies he pursued during World War II and the Holocaust."Frank Coppa, St John's University"Emma Fattorini has produced an important work on the activities of the Vatican in the years leading up to World War II. She portrays a pope whose spirituality, rather than political views, led him increasingly to speak out against Nazism. Her book adds to a slowly increasing body of literature which illustrates that, while the Vatican may have been slow in speaking out about the persecution of the Jews, no one in the secretariat of state harbored any sympathy for Hitler."Gerald Fogarty, University of Virginia