Features
- Cover Type: Hard Cover with 304 pages
- Published by: Da Capo Press May 7, 2007
- Written in: English
- ISBN 10 Number: 0306814684
- ISBN 13 Number: 978-0306814686
-
Book Dimensions:
9.1 x 5.8 x 1.3 inches
- Weighs: 1 pounds
From Publishers Weekly
Veteran popular historian Kurzman (
The Bravest Battle) relates how a Hitler-Himmler order in 1943 to kidnap the pope and seize Vatican files and treasures was twice delayed and finally undermined by a group of high German officers and officials in Rome. The foilers were headed by the SS leader in Italy, Gen. Karl Wolff, whom Kurzman interviewed before his death in 1984. Kurzman demonstrates that Hitler wanted the Vatican neutralized because he thought the pope had aided the overthrow of Mussolini in 1943 and feared that the Church's leader would denounce the Final Solution in general and the imminent deportation of Rome's Jews in particular. Wolff and others in Rome, meanwhile, hoped to use the pope as an intermediary for a negotiated peace and an Anglo-American-German campaign against the Soviets. Kurzman also touches upon such related topics as the 1933 Nazi-Vatican Concordat, how Pius's silence on the murder of the Jews was partly rooted in excessive fears of a Soviet takeover of the Vatican, and the curious role of Rome's chief rabbi, Israel Zolli, who ultimately converted to Catholicism. Kurzman does a good job of telling a suspenseful and little-known story of WWII intrigue.
(June) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
By September 1943, the tide of battle had turned against Germany. As the Russian army steadily advanced from the east, British and American bombers were reducing German cities to rubble. As Hitler's physical and mental condition deteriorated, he often proposed wildly reckless and impractical schemes. One of those involved invading the Vatican and seizing the pope. According to Kurzman, a former foreign correspondent, the plot was serious and was to be implemented by SS General Karl Wolff, who was Kurzman's principal source for this intense, absorbing, but not fully convincing tale. According to Wolff, he foiled the plan through delay while obtaining the pope's silence as the SS rounded up Italian Jews and transported them to the death camps. As seen here, Wolff is arrogant, cynical, and manipulative. Still, he seems to have been blessed with a degree of personal charm, not quite fitting the bill as a monster. Some of his claims seem credible, but others can never be verified; his account is a wild ride loaded with surprising twists and turns.
Jay FreemanCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Reader ReviewsIt's about time that somebody jumped off the bandwagon that blindly shouts that Pius XII didn't do enough about the holocaust, and actually took a look at historical evidence to see if such accusations are warranted. What's been said about Pius XII is a real assasination of character. Bravo for standing up for historical truth for once.
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