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Alleged plot to kidnap Pope Pius XII

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Several authors have alleged a plot to kidnap Pope Pius XII by the Nazis when they occupied Rome during World War II. These have been dismissed by Owen Chadwick as a fiction created by British propaganda during the war.

Allegations

Kurzman

Dan Kurzman, a former foreign correspondent for the Washington Post alleges in A Special Mission that the planned kidnapping was "a most important and intriguing episode of World War II. Yet, it has been barely mentioned in even the most comprehensive history books about the war. And what has been reported is treated as inconsequential rumor".[1] Kurzman claims that the plot was intended to ensure that Pius XII remained silent during the Roman razzia, which deported over a thousand Jews to Auschwitz.[1]

Kurzman acknowledges that there are no German documents that refer in any way to the plot, and bases his book on personal interviews with Germans and Vatican officials.[1] Kurzman's principal source is SS General Karl Wolff, whom he interviewed only hours after his release from Allied custody, and who claimed to have personally been the one who foiled the plot; Kurzman acknowledges that Wolff was demonstrably untruthful in many aspects of his testimony.[2] Kurzman's other claimed interviewees include: Rudolph Rahn, German ambassador to the RSI, Eitel Mollhausen, Rahn's deputy, Albrecht von Kessel, the deputy of Ernst von Weizsäcker, SS Colonel Eugen Dollman, Wolf's liason to Field Marshall Albert Kesselring.[2] Finally, Kurzman cites a personal interview with Peter Gumpel, the Vatican's advocate for canonization of Pius XII, who claims that unpublished documents support such a plot.[2]

British propaganda

According to Owen Chadwick's study of the papers of D'Arcy Osborne, the British ambassador to the Vatican during the war, the British Political Warfare Executive "found it excellent propaganda to put it about that Hitler was just about to kidnap the Pope".[3] The British propaganda office fabricated to German wireless broadcasts in support of the theory.[3] First, on October 9, 1943 the British released a fake German broadcast claiming that all preparations had been made for such a kidnapping.[3] Then, two days later, another falsified transmission stated that the castle of Lichtenstein in Wurttemberg was ready to imprison the Pope and cardinals.[3]

Osborne himself considered the odds of such a kidnapping increadibly unlikely, as the Pope's presence in the Vatican prevented the British from bombing the key communications center of the German army in Southern Italy, which was adjacent.[4] Ernst von Weizsäcker, the German ambassador, had already ensured that the Vatican itself would be unoccupied when the Germans occupied Rome after the collapse of Mussolini's government.[5]

Notes

  1. ^ a b c Kurzman, 2007, p. ix.
  2. ^ a b c Kurzman, 2007, pp. x-xi.
  3. ^ a b c d Chadwick, 1988, p. 275.
  4. ^ Chadwick, 1988, pp. 275-276.
  5. ^ Chadwick, 1988, p. 276.

References

  • Chadwick, Owen. 1988. Britain and the Vatican During the Second World War. Cambridge University Press.
  • Kurzman, Dan. 2007. A Special Mission: Hitler's Secret Plot to Seize the Vatican and Kidnap Pope Pius XII. Da Capo Press.
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