What would have happened if Pius XII had made strong, harsh statements condemnin

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Question:

Would Hitler have targeted the Vatican and tried to crush the Church!?

Or would such a rallying cry have caused people to turn against Hitler and the Germany brought to its knees much earlier!?

What would have happened if the Pope at the time had made strong, bold, crystal clear, and damning statements against Hitler and the Nazis!?Www@QuestionHome@Com

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:

The catholic church would have come out of Nazism with some honour at least instead of being condemned by history for appeasement to suit the interests of the church leadership!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

~Nothing whatsoever would have happened any differently!. The world knew what the National Socialists were doing and didn't particularly care!. The Evian Conference, the SS St Louis, US (anti-Semitic) immigration policies, British policy in the Mandate of Palestine and a myriad of other examples establish that!. The world was not too upset about the Nazi "racial purification" and "social cleansing" programs which targeted those other than the Jews, either, and the non-Jews comprise a vast majority of those killed by the Nazis (half of the Death Camp totals and 70 - 80% of the Concentration Camp totals were not Jewish!. Of the Jews sent to the camps of either type, many would have been sent for other reasons even if they had not been Jewish)!.

To hide behind the lie that the world didn't know what was going on is ludicrous and obscene!. When Jan Karski brought his photographs and first hand accounts out of the Warsaw Ghetto and Belzec in the spring of 1942 and delivered them to London and Washington, any possible excuse for denial and claims of ignorance was gone!.

More to the point, as Churchill told FDR in 1941, the only force on earth that could take on Germany in a war on the continent and have any hope of surviving, let alone winning, was the USSR!. History proved Churchill correct in that analysis!. Even if the world had wanted to do anything, it was powerless to do so!. Actually, Churchill and Roosevelt were perfectly happy to sit back and putter around in the easy sectors like Africa and Italy (and at Normandy, as far as that goes) and watch the Nazis and Communists kill each other off!. The bulk of the war in Europe was fought on the Eastern Front by the Red Army and the Wehrmacht and no platitudes out of Rome were going to change things at Stalingrad!. The Western Front, Italy and North Africa were minor skirmishes by comparison (compare the battle statistics and the quality of troops and weapons and leadership involved - the facts don't lie!.)

Given the good Hitler was doing for Germany before the war (Time Magazine named him Man of the Year, 1938, for a reason), the German people weren't about to get rid of him even if they had had the ability to do so, and given that the National Socialists had prevented a take-over of Germany by the Communists, the German people weren't about to take a chance on the alternative regardless of anything the Bishop of Rome might have said!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

Only 11 days before the death of Pius XI, Adolf Hitler made what is known as the "prophecy speech"!. Upon the election of Pope Pius XII a few weeks later he could have denounced the mindset behind this speech!. One would have thought that it might have made a difference!.
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"One thing I should like to say on this day which may be memorable for others as well for us Germans: In the course of my life I have very often been a prophet, and I usually been ridiculed for it!. During the time of my struggle for power it was in the first instance the Jewish race which only received my prophecies with laughter when I said I would one day take over the leadership of the State, and it that of the whole nation, and I that I would then among many other things settle the Jewish problem!. Their laughter was uproarious, but I think that for some time now they have been laughing on the other side of the face!. Today I will be once more the prophet!. If the international Jewish financiers outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the bolsheviszation of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!"Www@QuestionHome@Com

The problem is what exactly was he going to cry out against!? The political and military ideals!? Hardly the purview of the church!. The more heinous crimes against humanity were not publicly known until after the war!.

If the Pope had lashed out against the Nazis it likely would have been ignored!. It may even have reduced the status of the Pope if he was perceived to be interfering in secular matters!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

Italy might not have become facist!.

edit: Rome is technically speaking the holy city of christianity, and Rome is in italy!.

If that isn't good enough for you, please state so and i will remove myself from thy sight, oh almighty one!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

hello

i doubt that hitler would have paid much attention , the nazi armies controlled europe with an iron fist, and with their tanks/planes and bombs they would have slaughtered any poorly armed civilian uprising

at best , vocal condemnation would have resulted in the vatican being occupied, the pope becoming a puppet ruler, and possibly rome itself being bombed !. Furthermore it might have resulted in massive nazi reprisals against the german catholics

its important to remember that during the war, the pope was widely praised!. For example, Time Magazine credited Pius XII and the Catholic Church for "fighting totalitarianism more knowingly, devoutly, and authoritatively, and for a longer time, than any other organized power"!. During the war he was also praised editorially by the New York Times for opposing Nazi anti-semitism and aggression

Many Jews publicly thanked the pope for his help!. For example, Pinchas Lapide, a Jewish theologian and Israeli diplomat to Milan in the 1960s, estimated that Pius "was instrumental in saving at least 700,000 but probably as many as 860,000 Jews from certain death at Nazi hands

On September 21, 1945, the general secretary of the World Jewish Council, Dr!. Leon Kubowitzky, presented an amount of money to the pope, "in recognition of the work of the Holy See in rescuing Jews from Fascist and Nazi persecutions!."

After the war, in the autumn of 1945, Harry Greenstein from Baltimore, a close friend of Chief Rabbi Herzog of Jerusalem, told Pius how grateful Jews were for all he had done for them!. "My only regret," the pope replied, "is not to have been able to save a greater number of Jews!."

then post war, there were many articles attacking the pope, and his policies !.!.!. and many claims were made that he continually ignored the plight of the jews
http://en!.wikipedia!.org/wiki/Hitler%27s_!.!.!.

in my opinion, the pope was attempting to play a balancing act between saving people , and irritating a mad man

the pope also believed (rightly or wrongly) that the church should remain neutral in politics

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