Kertzer’s superbly documented book tells a dispiriting story—familiar in its basic outlines but augmented by the recent opening of Pope Pius XII’s personal archives—about the Pontiff’s silences in the face of Nazi conquests and the Holocaust and Italian fascist collaboration with German policies during World War II. As is well known, the pope refused to utter any criticism of Hitler’s war, claiming publicly that the Catholic Church could not legitimately intervene in political questions. He also cited, unofficially, his fear that German Catholics would be placed in grave conflicts of conscience and that National Socialist anti-Catholics would make German Church life impossible and ultimately move against the Vatican itself. Kertzer repeatedly, but without laboring denunciations, refers to papal silences and to recommendations from the curia and the episcopate to say nothing as the all-too-accurate reports of mass murder reached the Vatican.
The book is constructed as a page-turner—a highly engaging...