Forgive and Forget. The Vatican and the Escape of Nazi War Criminals from Justice
Forgive and Forget. The Vatican and the Escape of Nazi War Criminals from Justice
Author(s): Gerald J. SteinacherSubject(s): Christian Theology and Religion, Military history, Studies in violence and power, WW II and following years (1940 - 1949), Fascism, Nazism and WW II, History of the Holocaust
Published by: Wiener Wiesenthal Institut für Holocaust-Studien
Keywords: The Vatican; Nazi War Criminals; Justice; The Third Reich; the Holocaust;
Summary/Abstract: The Vatican and other Catholic leaders’ ideas about crime and punishment were different from those of the Allies. The leadership of the Catholic Church – Pope Pius XII, his closest advisors, and many cardinals and bishops – opposed the Allied war crime trials and denazification efforts after World War II, and their opposition intensified over time. This included criticism of war crime trials as well as rejections of widespread administrative purges. Catholic organisations assiduously provided moral, financial, and material support for accused and convicted Holocaust perpetrators. By 1948, the efforts of saving Nazis from the gallows had turned into a full-blown Catholic crusade against Nuremberg. The Vatican Secretariat of State and the Pope himself obstructed Allied justice by violating international agreements for the extradition of war criminals to the countries where they had committed their crimes (e.g. the Moscow Declaration). By using archival sources, I illustrate this second point with the case of the Croatian war criminals and quislings hiding in Italy – some of them inside the Vatican – which were circumstances that did not escape the attention of the Allies. Also, I make it clear that the Papal Aid Commission was extensively involved in helping Nazi war criminals escape justice by channelling them overseas, to places where they could not be extradited. Very few studies investigate in tandem the Vatican responses to Nuremberg justice and the issues of the so-called “Ratline”. In my view, these two – often separately discussed – topics are closely intertwined, and establishing the link between them is one of the major contributions of this paper. While actively aiding Nazi escape and shielding perpetrators from prosecution represent different points on a spectrum, it is often unclear where one ends and the other begins.
Journal: S:I.M.O.N. Shoah: Intervention. Methods. Documentation.
- Issue Year: 9/2022
- Issue No: 1
- Page Range: 4-28
- Page Count: 25
- Language: English
