September 7, 2025 • 27 mins
Newt talks with Michael Knowles about his new four-part docuseries, “The Pope and the Führer: The Secret Vatican Files of World War II,” which explores the controversial legacy of Pope Pius XII during Hitler's reign. Utilizing declassified Vatican archives made public in 2020, the series offers unprecedented insights into the Pope's actions and correspondence during World War II. Historically accused of silence or complicity with the Nazis, the series aims to correct the narrative by presenting evidence of Pius XII's opposition to Hitler and his efforts to protect Jews. The docuseries, available on DailyWire+, features contributions from leading historians and Vatican scholars, highlighting the complex political and spiritual challenges faced by the Pope. Their discussion also touches on the broader implications for the Catholic Church's role in history and its ongoing influence in contemporary society.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
On this episode of Newts World. The Pope and the
furor The Secret Vatican Files of World War Two is
a four part documentaries available to stream now on Daily
Wire Plus. Narrated by the Daily Wires Michael Knowles, the
series pulls back the curtain and one of the most
controversial figures of the twentieth century, Pope Pious the twelfth.
(00:26):
Through on precedent access to declassified wartime archives, the Vaticans
won Secret Files Republic in twenty twenty by Pope Francis,
revealed the private correspondence and long buried testimony that reshaped
the legacy of a pope long accused of silence during
Hitler's reign. Knowles is joined by a range of leading
(00:47):
historians and Vatican scholars, offering new insight into the man
who led the Catholic Church through one of history's darkest chapters.
I'm really pleased to welcome my guest to Michael Knowles.
He is the celebrated host of the Michael Knowles Show
at Daily Wire and the book Club at Prager You.
His first book, Speechless, became a number one national bestseller,
(01:10):
and in twenty twenty five, Ave Maria University awarded Michael,
an honorary doctor of Humane Letters. Michael, welcome and thank
you for joining me on.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Newtworld speaking Engrish. Thank you so much for having me.
It's an honor to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Michael, you're a devout Catholic. We knew when she was
the Amvestador of the Vatican what an important story this was
and how the Pope was moving towards releasing previously secret documents.
But I'm curious what drew you to this story.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Well, I think that the venerable Pope Pius the twelfth
is one of the most calumniated men in history, certainly
in recent history. I remember, even when I was growing up,
there was this spate of book boks that was coming
out attacking the man, going so far is to call
him not merely silent or even complicit, but Hitler's Pope.
As a kid, I just took this to be true,
(02:10):
and I who was actually somewhat scandalized by how distorted
the historical record could be. And why Also because I
think that the battle over the legacy for pot Pious
the twelfth is really in many ways a battle for
the political order and for the future of the Catholic Church.
What's So funny about the supposedly controversial pontificate of pot
(02:33):
Pious the twelfth is that it really wasn't controversial at
all until after he died, until really nineteen sixty three,
with the publication not of a work of history, not
of some correspondence, but of an eight hour long work
of fiction, a play by a playwright ing Rolf holkhouth
(02:53):
I always mispronounced his name, called The Deputy, which accused
him of being complicit with Hitler. This play promoted by
the KGB reportedly, and it's just nonsense. You know, the
historical record, even at the time of Pius's pontificate, reveals
him to be not only not complicit, but a personal
enemy of Hitler, a great hero to Christians and everyone
(03:15):
around the world, and specifically a great hero to Jews.
So it's just one of the worst smear jobs I've
ever seen, and I think it's about time that the
historical record is corrected.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
I think it's fascinating on a sign of modern technology
that you could turn this into a docu series revenues
of say a book. What led you to decide to
go the route of the docu series.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Well, there were some other really great historians and teams
had been working on this sort of thing. We were
approached with some of this material. I said, this is
really really good. We took to you know, writing a
narrative about it, which could have been a book. But
no one reads anymore, mister speaker, as you're probably aware,
So we live in the age of new media. This
is the way to reach people. We conducted, you know,
a little extra interviewing, packaged it, released it on daily
(03:59):
wire places. Because the other kind of funny aspect I
guess about Signs of the Times is a docuseries about
the Vatican or about the Pope would not always be
the most scintillating content for popular media. But right now
we're in this period where we have reached the end
of the Francis Pontificate. There was a conclave, the Vatican
was very much in the news. We have a new pope,
(04:21):
we have the first American pope, and there's a battle
even over the future of the church going on right now.
And I think in many ways the fight over Pious's
legacy is an intra Catholic battle over whether the future
of the church will be some radical break with her tradition,
or whether it will be a continuity and a reacquaintance
(04:41):
with her tradition. So I think that's why Pius has
become this figure of controversy in polemics. And now's the time,
so we wanted to make Haseball sunshines.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Were you surprised when Pope Francis officially opened the archives?
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Not really, because there was this caricature Pope Francis in
the media that he was this radical liberal. And look,
I'm not saying that there weren't many confusing and confounding
aspects of the Francis Pontificate, but he would also say
many things that would be considered downright reactionary by the
modern culture. Even further, you know the Vatican's secret archive.
(05:19):
The word secret comes from the older use of the
word secret. It's not that the Vatican was really hiding anything.
In many ways, they were allowing Pious to suffer a
kind of white martyrdom. Pius knew that at the time
when he was opposing Hitler and was acting in some
ways as a spy for the Allies, and when he
was protecting personally protecting thousands of Jews and broadly throughout Europe,
(05:41):
protecting some eight hundred and sixty thousand Jews by even
Israeli estimates. The word secret, you know, also relates to
the word secretary. You know, it means private, it means
these personal documents. And Francis did call for, you know,
open church and diminishment of clericalism and a greater voice
for the laities. So I'm not terribly surprised by that.
Though the documents that have been released, even in just
(06:02):
the last five years, it's not that they upend the
historical narrative for people who've been paying attention. It's just
that I think this is the final blow to this
smear job, this calumny that was advanced by enemies of
the Church, notably the Communists. It's ridiculous, and I don't
think any serious person today could maintain the lie that
Bias was a supporter of Hitler.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Before it became Pope Pious twelve, Eugenio Pacelli was the
Vatican's representative in Berlin, so he was there he saw
the rise of Hitler. From what you understand, how did
that shape his later decisions as Pope.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Well, Eogenio Pacelli certainly had Hitler's number very early on.
As you point out, he was the papal nuncio in Germany.
He then rose to become the top diplomat for the Vatican.
And I think you have a personal connection to some
diplomats around the Vatican, Is that right, mister speaker. You're
pretty well acquainted with this. So even at that time,
you know, in the nineteen thirties, Hitler did not like
(06:59):
Pacelli and opposed Pacelli's rise to become pious the twelfth.
They were furious about it. Hitler wrote a letter to
Francisco Franco in which he said that Pius was his
personal enemy. He considered him a personal enemy. And even
going back to when Pacelli is the Secretary of State,
you have multiple encyclicals being written against the rise of
fascism and communism and Nazism. You have non abiamo bisogno,
(07:22):
which is an encyclical written in Italian, not in Latin.
This is written for a very direct, immediate connection to
the people that was opposing the rise of fascism. In
nineteen thirty seven, still under the pontificate of Piaus the eleventh,
but with a great deal of input from Pacelli, who
is at that time Secretary of State, helping to draft
these encyclicals.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
They wrote the.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Encyclical against Communism and the Encyclical against Nazism, which is
mit Brenando Sorga, which is pushed around Germany somewhat surreptitiously
because the Nazis didn't like that encyclical getting around. And
then finally nineteen thirty nine, Pacelle becomes pious the twelfth.
Both he and Hitler know that they are enemies, and
(08:02):
it seems the only people who aren't confounded by this
fact are liberals. Long after the fact mel.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Has has struck me Nazism was a religion, and Nazism
saw the Church as a mortal enemy, because you couldn't
have both loyalties and the church. It seems to me
the Catholic Church actually had a pretty darn good experience,
better than most of the Protestant churches in the same period,
(08:28):
in understanding that Nazism was a direct threat to the
core beliefs of Catholicism and to the integrity of the
structure of the church. You know much more about this
than I do. How would you view all that.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
The Catholic Church had a very clear view about this.
Now that we can read documents like the Diaries of Gerbels.
Now that we can read table talk, you know, the
transcriptions of offhand speeches given by Hitler, we know that
the Nazi party viewed the Church with great ire and
hatred sought to destroy it. This builds on earlier themes
(09:02):
that had been coming up. I even think of Nietzsche.
Nietzsche who was a great influence on Hitler. Nietzsche viewed
Christianity as being wicked because it brought the slave morality,
in Nietzsche's view, to Europe, you know, and created a
whole civilization of unta mentioned these under men, and Hitler
himself would muse that it would have been much better
(09:22):
had Islam taken over Europe. That was a religion much
more befitting the German spirit. And Nazism also took part
in all sorts of folk religion. They tried to create
their own version of Christianity, called positive Christianity, and of
course positive Christianity was just Christianity ripped of Christ, denied
the divinity of Christ, and making an idol out of
(09:43):
the state. You saw a little bit of that in
Italian fascism, the state as the highest possible good. But
the Italians, I don't know they're a little lazier or
something than the Germans. The Germans took it to quite
radical extreme.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
They also had the Vatican and this extraordinarly deep Catholicism. Conceivably,
if the Vatican had been located in Berlin, you'd had
more confusion there too. But I'm curious because Pacelli went,
he's Cecter of State in thirty three, he does sign
the right concord dot with Nazi Germany. I mean, what's
that all about.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Pacelli is a diplomat, and the Vatican, though it had
been almost all of its territory going back to the
nineteenth century and then finally with Mussolini. The Vatican always
has to deal with the political realities of the world,
so there's nothing new about that. In the twentieth century,
there's nothing uniqu about the Nazi regime. They sought a
kind of agreement with the Communists in the Soviet Union.
(10:40):
And this goes all the way back to the Roman Empire.
There's always a tension between the Church and the secular authorities,
certainly through the Middle Ages of the Holy Roman emperors,
the local kings, and at various times the Church has
tried to claim both secular and spiritual authority. At other
times they've been forced or even somewhat voluntarily seated secular authority,
(11:00):
but there's always that tension there, and so Pacelli is
really a man standing alone. You mentioned his position in Rome,
and I think that's really illustrative because as the war
goes on, Pacelli, as Pie's the Twelfth, remains the sole figure.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
Really in Rome.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
You have the King of Italy flees, you have Mussolini
taken out, and Pacelli refuses to flee because if he
were to leave the Vatican, it would deal a brutal
blow to the Church and he wouldn't do it. So
he has the fascists all surrounding him, who are spying
on all of his communications. That is in part I
think why he's accused of silence is because he has
to communicate in a way that is clandestine, otherwise all
(11:37):
of his messages will be received by the Axis. But
he won't leave. Hitler at one point plots to abduct him,
probably to kill him in Liechtenstein, and Pius understands that
this will likely happen. He prepares to renounce the papacy
as a letter in his desk. So if he's ever
taken out of the Vatican, he will renounce the papacy.
The only thing the Nazis will have on their hands
is a simple priest, and the cardinals will then elect
(11:59):
a new hope elsewhere. So this is another argument made
for his supposed complicity, is that he wants to be
a diplomat. You have to recall the man has at
this point essentially no temporal power. He has to protect
the Church all around the world, especially around Europe, and
he has to bear this cross that all of the
popes have had to deal with across millennia, which is
he has to deal with the secular authority in the
(12:21):
best way possible. But of course the Nazis didn't really
care at all about the Reichs Concord. Immediately after its
signed they began violating him.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
By nineteen thirty seven, Corni Bachelli helps write a secret
and cyclical there was smuggled into Germany read in every
Catholic parish on Marsh twelfth, written on usually in German
rather than Latin, because normally cyclicals come out in Latin.
There's an amazing operation that somebody thought up, and that
(13:05):
took a heck of a lot of work to get
it to work right, and they infect distributed by hand
because they didn't trust the postal service because they'll be
intercepted by the Nazis. What was that all about?
Speaker 2 (13:17):
He is, obviously, in the use of the vernacular language,
is communicating that this is urgent. This is to be
read immediately by the people. This is not necessarily a
document for all time, as some cyclicals are. This is
really responding to urgent needs. The Nazis immediately understood what
it was.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
This was a.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Declaration of hostility and spiritual war on the Nazi regime.
Pious the twelfth, or Pacelli at the time, because he
was the Secretary of State, knew this. Even choosing the
name Pious shows the continuity with his predecessor, Pious the eleventh.
Pious the eleventh, who also had the number of the
Nazis very well. They understood that this was his spiritual war.
In fact, when Pious the twelfth becomes pope, we now
(13:57):
know that he attempted a long disc since exorcism of Hitler.
Exorcisms are really supposed to be done in person, and
so clearly it didn't work all that well.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
It would have been better for the world had it work.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Yes, it certainly would have. Pious was clear that Hitler
was under demonic influence, if not outright possessed. I even try,
I try to be fair minded on this and think,
what would be the argument on the other side. You know,
what more could Pious the twelfth have done, and the
argument as well, rather than merely helped to smuggle a
German and cyclical in against the Nazis, we did make addresses,
Christmas addresses and things that were broadly condemnatory of the Nazis,
(14:33):
defending the people of God, specifically defending the Jews. Actually,
what more could he have done? In The answer is nothing,
Because while we might want a Monday morning quarterback and say, well,
he should have just gone out there and said Hitler
is the damn devil you know, and called him out
by name constantly, let's not forget that the bishops tried
to do that in the Netherlands. And when the bishops
tried to do that in the Netherlands, it led only
(14:54):
to greater persecution. It led to the Nazis clamping down.
It led to the deportations and deaths of me any
more people, especially many more Jews, And we now know
this from what Pius the twelfth was saying to his
associates close around him. When you get to the deportation
of the Jews in Rome, Pius was helping to protect them,
literally hiding Jews in monasteries in Castel Gandolpho, the Papal Palace,
(15:17):
the retreat, helping Jews to escape to go to Brazil,
which caused a tensions with the Brazilian government, passing fake papers,
that sort of thing. He understood that if a handful
of bishops in the Netherlands could make the suffering all
that much more worse, could lead to the deaths of
hundreds or thousands, then if the Pope himself undertook a
similar strategy, it could lead to the increased suffering and
(15:38):
deaths of hundreds of thousands or millions. And so he
chose wisely, prudently, and in great humility to suffer this
white martyrdom of being accused of silence, rather than make
the problem worse to I don't know, run some good
pr for himself.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
One of those you brought up that I never heard
of was that Pious the eleventh. Well, he was so pope,
and in April of thirty eight, Mussolini writes him, urging
him to excommunicate Hitler. Now why would Mussolini want an
ex communicate Hitler.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
The Italians have a bit stronger Catholicism, at least a
more immediate attachment to the Vatican. There was another odd
connection between Mussolini and po Pius the eleventh, namely that
the father of Mussolini's mistress was the doctor for po
Pious the eleventh, which has led to all sorts of
conspiracy theories that when Pius the eleventh died, he was
actually killed. I don't take that very seriously, because Pius
(16:32):
the eleventh was an elderly man who was in poor
health and his death didn't help anything. But of course
there were tensions between Hitler and Mussolini, and certainly between
the two of them and Francisco Franco. Hitler certainly didn't
trust Franco either, And even when it gets to the
question of the deportation of Jews, the situation in Italy
was really not comparable to what was going on in Germany,
(16:53):
and it was really only when Hitler forced Mussolini's hand
that you saw real persecution tick up. So even there,
and especially there, you see that Hitler was a singular figure.
He was advancing a particularly dangerous and wicked ideology, and
Pius the twelfth saw that from the days as a diplomat, all.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
The way up to the Seed of Peter, the Church.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Had a very active effort to help Jews avoid the
Guestapo and avoided Germans, and most of the Italians were
not particularly helpful to the Germans in trying to round
up Jews. It was a very different environment than you
had in Nazi Germany.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
To me, the sole piece of evidence that would suffice
to vindicate Pius the twelfth is what happened immediately after
the war among the Jews of Rome, because the chief
rabbi of Rome Israel, converted to Catholicism. And not only
did he convert to Catholicism, he took the name as
his baptized Christian name, Eogenio Eogenio Mario. He took Pius
(18:11):
the Twelfth's name because he so admired the Poke for
what he did for the whole world and especially for
the Jews during the war, because his heroism was so apparent,
that he took this name. He converted incidentally, he said,
because of a mystical experience with Christ, which many books
could be written on that in itself, but just on
the purely political matter. It shows you, in addition to
(18:32):
the laudatory statements from Gold of my year, like Albert Einstein,
this man was a great hero. The fact that the
calumny comes long afterward, the war ends in forty five,
Pius the twelfth dies in fifty eight. The fact that
the stupid play, this propaganda from a long standing enemy
of the Church comes only in sixty three, and then
(18:52):
the big pious battles really spout off again in the
nineteen nineties. That is what to me makes me think
this is in in any ways an intra Catholic battle,
because highs the twelfth is the symbol of the old
school pope. He wears the papal tiara, he extends his
arm in a paternal and aristocratic way to the people.
(19:15):
And then after Pious the twelfth, you have John the
twenty third, a great man in a different way, but
he inaugurates the Second Vatican Council. His successor, Paul six,
closes the Second Vatican Council. And then you have the
reforms that follow the Council. And all of this friction
between the conservatives and the traditionalists in the church, and
the people who want rupture and the people who want
radical change, and so in many ways, I think that
(19:36):
Pius the twelfth is just catching stray fire. He happens
to be in the wrong historical place at the wrong
time to be used as an object to fight a
basically disconnected ecclesiastical and political battle. Whatever one wants to
say about the liturgy, wars and the battles after the
Second Vatican Council, it really doesn't have much to do
with Pius the twelfth, and the man deserves his dignity.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
It seems to me that there's a desperate passion on
the left to do whatever it can to undermine the Church.
The left, intuitively, much like Hitler, understands that the Church
is the mortal enemy of relativism. A world in which
the Church is strong is a world in which the
left has a very limited role, in a very limited
(20:21):
amount of authority. Piast became in that senso seemed to
me a battering ram by the left to try to
discredit the entire Church.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Yes, because there was a line during the Second World
War that the crooked cross of the Nazis would fall,
that would eventually perish, and the Cross of Christ would remain.
And now we're living in a strange moment when the
decline of Christianity seems to have leveled off, maybe even reversed,
and there is a massive surge in Catholicism of all things.
Even in America, which we think of as a Protestant country,
(20:52):
we're seeing a surge in particular in adult conversions. And
some people are noticing that in the West there is
one institution, and one institution alone that has survived from antiquity,
and that's the Catholic Church. All of the others have
fallen away, all the tyrants have fallen away, all of
the attempts to make a God out of man and
uber mensh, that's all gone. The Church remains, and some
(21:15):
people are kind of puzzled by it. I'm reminded of
the line by Hilaire Bellock. He has to take it
as a matter of faith that the Catholic Church is
divinely instituted. But for those who doubt it, one proof
is that no other organization conducted with such knavish imbecility
would have lasted a fortnight. I think people are beginning
to notice that.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
There's a sense that at a time when Western civilization's
under assault, both from a secular relativism and from radical Islam,
that the one institution big enough and deep enough to
sustain Western civilization is in fact the Catholic Church.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
The position you see at highus in this era, in
the era leading up to the war, really, I think
shows you the position of a Christian in a world
that has fallen, where principalities and powers and spiritual wickedness
and high places seem to have a lot of sway
is that you can have one error all the way
on the left of communism, a terrible error seducing many.
(22:15):
You can have another error ostensibly on the right, though
it does share a lot of aspects with the left too,
of Nazism. You can have an error of hypernationalism, which
is fascism, an error of anti nationalism, you know, international communism,
All of these errors around you, and then you have
the Church standing alone above all of these ideologies which
are so reductive, which are so contrary to the human spirit,
(22:38):
and you have the Church standing alone. And in the
case of the Second World War, you have essentially one
man standing alone, surrounded by enemies who fearlessly stands them
all down because he believes in the God that will
sustain and protect him.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
Correct me if I'm wrong, But isn't that pious a
twelve who authorizes the excavation under Saint Peter's because there
was a belief, which turned out to be true, that
they would find the burial site of Saint Peter. But
the pope's view was that we can't be sure that'll happen,
but we have to have a commitment to the truth.
(23:13):
And therefore the archaeologists can go forward and we'll see
what they find, and the Church will have to adjust
to the truth. And I thought at the time it
was actually, in a way a very courageous commitment to
letting the facts fall where they might.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Of course, the only position that a Christian can have
is not to fear the truth. Not There are some
flavors of religion that are afraid of scientific discoveries. Some
people are overly credulous, and they'll believe anything that a
guy on a lapco tells them, even if it quickly
turns out not to be true. But in the broad sense, no,
we're not afraid of the truth. We're not afraid of
archaeological findings, historical findings, or scientific development. I mean, let's
(23:55):
not forget that many of the great scientific advancements have
been brought about not only by members of the church,
but even by the clergy theorists behind the Big Bang
Father George Lametra Mendel, Mendelian genetics and so on and
so going back to Copernicus anyway, So that's never been
a fear, and it really it goes back to Saint
Paul who says, look, Christ has to be resurrected from
(24:16):
the dead. This can't be wishy washy, This can't be abstract,
this can't be purely figurative. If Christ is resurrected from
the dead, then we are sustained and redeemed by the
God who lives. If not, we're the biggest dopes on earth.
And it's just as simple as that. You really can
test faith.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
And I would say to anybody who's listening to us,
if you had the chance to go to Rome and
you can have what's called a scavi tour, which is
under Saint Peter's and you're right there and you actually
realize you are looking at a burial area and Ultimately
you are looking at the burial site of Saint Peter,
and here is this great, magnificent church literally right where
(24:54):
Saint Peter was buried, and it sort of gives you
a sense of the continuity of the church for two
thousand years.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
Yes, I would also recommend if you want to take
this Scaby tour book. It early. A lot of people
want to go see it, but it's an amazing fact,
a part of the incarnational aspect of the faith, you know.
I mean, it's a faith that believes that God became
man and was incarnate during a particular empire in a
particular time, and like roiled fish and actually like did
things with real people. I think that that is an
(25:22):
especially Catholic sense of things. That's part of why Catholics
believe that Christ has apostles and they have successors, and
he gives Peter the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven.
And it is why bringing it all the way back
to pious, it's why it's so important what he did,
what he said, where he was, how he behaved, because
we believe in the irreducible humanity of the men who
(25:46):
run Christ's Church. Staying in Rome, staying on this place
above the burial site of Saint Peter of really standing
firm against the purely fleshy powers that we're trying to
dominate the world.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
Michael, I want to thank you for joining me. Your
new four part docuseries, The Pope and the Furer The
Secret Vatican Files of World War Two is available now
on Daily Wire. Pruss and our listeners can access it
by going to Daily Wire dot com and click on
the shows and Movies tab at the top of the page.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
Well, thank you, sir, it's always a pleasure to be
on with you.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Thank you to my guests. Michael Knowles. You can learn
more about his new docuseries, The Pope and the Furer
The Secret Vatican Files of World War Two on our
show page at Newtsworld dot com. Newsworld is produced by
Ginglishtree sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producers Guarnsey Sloan. Our
researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show was
(26:49):
created by Steve Penley. Special thanks to the team at
Ginglishtree sixty. If you've been enjoying Newtsworld, I hope you'll
go to Apple Podcast and both rate us with five
stars and give us a review so all this can
learn what it's all about. Right now, listeners of news
World can sign up for my three free weekly columns
at gingwishtree sixty dot com slash newsletter. I'm newt ginglish.
(27:13):
This is newtwork.
On this episode of Newts World. The Pope and the
furor The Secret Vatican Files of World War Two is
a four part documentaries available to stream now on Daily
Wire Plus. Narrated by the Daily Wires Michael Knowles, the
series pulls back the curtain and one of the most
controversial figures of the twentieth century, Pope Pious the twelfth.
(00:26):
Through on precedent access to declassified wartime archives, the Vaticans
won Secret Files Republic in twenty twenty by Pope Francis,
revealed the private correspondence and long buried testimony that reshaped
the legacy of a pope long accused of silence during
Hitler's reign. Knowles is joined by a range of leading
(00:47):
historians and Vatican scholars, offering new insight into the man
who led the Catholic Church through one of history's darkest chapters.
I'm really pleased to welcome my guest to Michael Knowles.
He is the celebrated host of the Michael Knowles Show
at Daily Wire and the book Club at Prager You.
His first book, Speechless, became a number one national bestseller,
(01:10):
and in twenty twenty five, Ave Maria University awarded Michael,
an honorary doctor of Humane Letters. Michael, welcome and thank
you for joining me on.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Newtworld speaking Engrish. Thank you so much for having me.
It's an honor to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Michael, you're a devout Catholic. We knew when she was
the Amvestador of the Vatican what an important story this was
and how the Pope was moving towards releasing previously secret documents.
But I'm curious what drew you to this story.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Well, I think that the venerable Pope Pius the twelfth
is one of the most calumniated men in history, certainly
in recent history. I remember, even when I was growing up,
there was this spate of book boks that was coming
out attacking the man, going so far is to call
him not merely silent or even complicit, but Hitler's Pope.
As a kid, I just took this to be true,
(02:10):
and I who was actually somewhat scandalized by how distorted
the historical record could be. And why Also because I
think that the battle over the legacy for pot Pious
the twelfth is really in many ways a battle for
the political order and for the future of the Catholic Church.
What's So funny about the supposedly controversial pontificate of pot
(02:33):
Pious the twelfth is that it really wasn't controversial at
all until after he died, until really nineteen sixty three,
with the publication not of a work of history, not
of some correspondence, but of an eight hour long work
of fiction, a play by a playwright ing Rolf holkhouth
(02:53):
I always mispronounced his name, called The Deputy, which accused
him of being complicit with Hitler. This play promoted by
the KGB reportedly, and it's just nonsense. You know, the
historical record, even at the time of Pius's pontificate, reveals
him to be not only not complicit, but a personal
enemy of Hitler, a great hero to Christians and everyone
(03:15):
around the world, and specifically a great hero to Jews.
So it's just one of the worst smear jobs I've
ever seen, and I think it's about time that the
historical record is corrected.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
I think it's fascinating on a sign of modern technology
that you could turn this into a docu series revenues
of say a book. What led you to decide to
go the route of the docu series.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Well, there were some other really great historians and teams
had been working on this sort of thing. We were
approached with some of this material. I said, this is
really really good. We took to you know, writing a
narrative about it, which could have been a book. But
no one reads anymore, mister speaker, as you're probably aware,
So we live in the age of new media. This
is the way to reach people. We conducted, you know,
a little extra interviewing, packaged it, released it on daily
(03:59):
wire places. Because the other kind of funny aspect I
guess about Signs of the Times is a docuseries about
the Vatican or about the Pope would not always be
the most scintillating content for popular media. But right now
we're in this period where we have reached the end
of the Francis Pontificate. There was a conclave, the Vatican
was very much in the news. We have a new pope,
(04:21):
we have the first American pope, and there's a battle
even over the future of the church going on right now.
And I think in many ways the fight over Pious's
legacy is an intra Catholic battle over whether the future
of the church will be some radical break with her tradition,
or whether it will be a continuity and a reacquaintance
(04:41):
with her tradition. So I think that's why Pius has
become this figure of controversy in polemics. And now's the time,
so we wanted to make Haseball sunshines.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Were you surprised when Pope Francis officially opened the archives?
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Not really, because there was this caricature Pope Francis in
the media that he was this radical liberal. And look,
I'm not saying that there weren't many confusing and confounding
aspects of the Francis Pontificate, but he would also say
many things that would be considered downright reactionary by the
modern culture. Even further, you know the Vatican's secret archive.
(05:19):
The word secret comes from the older use of the
word secret. It's not that the Vatican was really hiding anything.
In many ways, they were allowing Pious to suffer a
kind of white martyrdom. Pius knew that at the time
when he was opposing Hitler and was acting in some
ways as a spy for the Allies, and when he
was protecting personally protecting thousands of Jews and broadly throughout Europe,
(05:41):
protecting some eight hundred and sixty thousand Jews by even
Israeli estimates. The word secret, you know, also relates to
the word secretary. You know, it means private, it means
these personal documents. And Francis did call for, you know,
open church and diminishment of clericalism and a greater voice
for the laities. So I'm not terribly surprised by that.
Though the documents that have been released, even in just
(06:02):
the last five years, it's not that they upend the
historical narrative for people who've been paying attention. It's just
that I think this is the final blow to this
smear job, this calumny that was advanced by enemies of
the Church, notably the Communists. It's ridiculous, and I don't
think any serious person today could maintain the lie that
Bias was a supporter of Hitler.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Before it became Pope Pious twelve, Eugenio Pacelli was the
Vatican's representative in Berlin, so he was there he saw
the rise of Hitler. From what you understand, how did
that shape his later decisions as Pope.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Well, Eogenio Pacelli certainly had Hitler's number very early on.
As you point out, he was the papal nuncio in Germany.
He then rose to become the top diplomat for the Vatican.
And I think you have a personal connection to some
diplomats around the Vatican, Is that right, mister speaker. You're
pretty well acquainted with this. So even at that time,
you know, in the nineteen thirties, Hitler did not like
(06:59):
Pacelli and opposed Pacelli's rise to become pious the twelfth.
They were furious about it. Hitler wrote a letter to
Francisco Franco in which he said that Pius was his
personal enemy. He considered him a personal enemy. And even
going back to when Pacelli is the Secretary of State,
you have multiple encyclicals being written against the rise of
fascism and communism and Nazism. You have non abiamo bisogno,
(07:22):
which is an encyclical written in Italian, not in Latin.
This is written for a very direct, immediate connection to
the people that was opposing the rise of fascism. In
nineteen thirty seven, still under the pontificate of Piaus the eleventh,
but with a great deal of input from Pacelli, who
is at that time Secretary of State, helping to draft
these encyclicals.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
They wrote the.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Encyclical against Communism and the Encyclical against Nazism, which is
mit Brenando Sorga, which is pushed around Germany somewhat surreptitiously
because the Nazis didn't like that encyclical getting around. And
then finally nineteen thirty nine, Pacelle becomes pious the twelfth.
Both he and Hitler know that they are enemies, and
(08:02):
it seems the only people who aren't confounded by this
fact are liberals. Long after the fact mel.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Has has struck me Nazism was a religion, and Nazism
saw the Church as a mortal enemy, because you couldn't
have both loyalties and the church. It seems to me
the Catholic Church actually had a pretty darn good experience,
better than most of the Protestant churches in the same period,
(08:28):
in understanding that Nazism was a direct threat to the
core beliefs of Catholicism and to the integrity of the
structure of the church. You know much more about this
than I do. How would you view all that.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
The Catholic Church had a very clear view about this.
Now that we can read documents like the Diaries of Gerbels.
Now that we can read table talk, you know, the
transcriptions of offhand speeches given by Hitler, we know that
the Nazi party viewed the Church with great ire and
hatred sought to destroy it. This builds on earlier themes
(09:02):
that had been coming up. I even think of Nietzsche.
Nietzsche who was a great influence on Hitler. Nietzsche viewed
Christianity as being wicked because it brought the slave morality,
in Nietzsche's view, to Europe, you know, and created a
whole civilization of unta mentioned these under men, and Hitler
himself would muse that it would have been much better
(09:22):
had Islam taken over Europe. That was a religion much
more befitting the German spirit. And Nazism also took part
in all sorts of folk religion. They tried to create
their own version of Christianity, called positive Christianity, and of
course positive Christianity was just Christianity ripped of Christ, denied
the divinity of Christ, and making an idol out of
(09:43):
the state. You saw a little bit of that in
Italian fascism, the state as the highest possible good. But
the Italians, I don't know they're a little lazier or
something than the Germans. The Germans took it to quite
radical extreme.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
They also had the Vatican and this extraordinarly deep Catholicism. Conceivably,
if the Vatican had been located in Berlin, you'd had
more confusion there too. But I'm curious because Pacelli went,
he's Cecter of State in thirty three, he does sign
the right concord dot with Nazi Germany. I mean, what's
that all about.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Pacelli is a diplomat, and the Vatican, though it had
been almost all of its territory going back to the
nineteenth century and then finally with Mussolini. The Vatican always
has to deal with the political realities of the world,
so there's nothing new about that. In the twentieth century,
there's nothing uniqu about the Nazi regime. They sought a
kind of agreement with the Communists in the Soviet Union.
(10:40):
And this goes all the way back to the Roman Empire.
There's always a tension between the Church and the secular authorities,
certainly through the Middle Ages of the Holy Roman emperors,
the local kings, and at various times the Church has
tried to claim both secular and spiritual authority. At other
times they've been forced or even somewhat voluntarily seated secular authority,
(11:00):
but there's always that tension there, and so Pacelli is
really a man standing alone. You mentioned his position in Rome,
and I think that's really illustrative because as the war
goes on, Pacelli, as Pie's the Twelfth, remains the sole figure.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
Really in Rome.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
You have the King of Italy flees, you have Mussolini
taken out, and Pacelli refuses to flee because if he
were to leave the Vatican, it would deal a brutal
blow to the Church and he wouldn't do it. So
he has the fascists all surrounding him, who are spying
on all of his communications. That is in part I
think why he's accused of silence is because he has
to communicate in a way that is clandestine, otherwise all
(11:37):
of his messages will be received by the Axis. But
he won't leave. Hitler at one point plots to abduct him,
probably to kill him in Liechtenstein, and Pius understands that
this will likely happen. He prepares to renounce the papacy
as a letter in his desk. So if he's ever
taken out of the Vatican, he will renounce the papacy.
The only thing the Nazis will have on their hands
is a simple priest, and the cardinals will then elect
(11:59):
a new hope elsewhere. So this is another argument made
for his supposed complicity, is that he wants to be
a diplomat. You have to recall the man has at
this point essentially no temporal power. He has to protect
the Church all around the world, especially around Europe, and
he has to bear this cross that all of the
popes have had to deal with across millennia, which is
he has to deal with the secular authority in the
(12:21):
best way possible. But of course the Nazis didn't really
care at all about the Reichs Concord. Immediately after its
signed they began violating him.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
By nineteen thirty seven, Corni Bachelli helps write a secret
and cyclical there was smuggled into Germany read in every
Catholic parish on Marsh twelfth, written on usually in German
rather than Latin, because normally cyclicals come out in Latin.
There's an amazing operation that somebody thought up, and that
(13:05):
took a heck of a lot of work to get
it to work right, and they infect distributed by hand
because they didn't trust the postal service because they'll be
intercepted by the Nazis. What was that all about?
Speaker 2 (13:17):
He is, obviously, in the use of the vernacular language,
is communicating that this is urgent. This is to be
read immediately by the people. This is not necessarily a
document for all time, as some cyclicals are. This is
really responding to urgent needs. The Nazis immediately understood what
it was.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
This was a.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Declaration of hostility and spiritual war on the Nazi regime.
Pious the twelfth, or Pacelli at the time, because he
was the Secretary of State, knew this. Even choosing the
name Pious shows the continuity with his predecessor, Pious the eleventh.
Pious the eleventh, who also had the number of the
Nazis very well. They understood that this was his spiritual war.
In fact, when Pious the twelfth becomes pope, we now
(13:57):
know that he attempted a long disc since exorcism of Hitler.
Exorcisms are really supposed to be done in person, and
so clearly it didn't work all that well.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
It would have been better for the world had it work.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Yes, it certainly would have. Pious was clear that Hitler
was under demonic influence, if not outright possessed. I even try,
I try to be fair minded on this and think,
what would be the argument on the other side. You know,
what more could Pious the twelfth have done, and the
argument as well, rather than merely helped to smuggle a
German and cyclical in against the Nazis, we did make addresses,
Christmas addresses and things that were broadly condemnatory of the Nazis,
(14:33):
defending the people of God, specifically defending the Jews. Actually,
what more could he have done? In The answer is nothing,
Because while we might want a Monday morning quarterback and say, well,
he should have just gone out there and said Hitler
is the damn devil you know, and called him out
by name constantly, let's not forget that the bishops tried
to do that in the Netherlands. And when the bishops
tried to do that in the Netherlands, it led only
(14:54):
to greater persecution. It led to the Nazis clamping down.
It led to the deportations and deaths of me any
more people, especially many more Jews, And we now know
this from what Pius the twelfth was saying to his
associates close around him. When you get to the deportation
of the Jews in Rome, Pius was helping to protect them,
literally hiding Jews in monasteries in Castel Gandolpho, the Papal Palace,
(15:17):
the retreat, helping Jews to escape to go to Brazil,
which caused a tensions with the Brazilian government, passing fake papers,
that sort of thing. He understood that if a handful
of bishops in the Netherlands could make the suffering all
that much more worse, could lead to the deaths of
hundreds or thousands, then if the Pope himself undertook a
similar strategy, it could lead to the increased suffering and
(15:38):
deaths of hundreds of thousands or millions. And so he
chose wisely, prudently, and in great humility to suffer this
white martyrdom of being accused of silence, rather than make
the problem worse to I don't know, run some good
pr for himself.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
One of those you brought up that I never heard
of was that Pious the eleventh. Well, he was so pope,
and in April of thirty eight, Mussolini writes him, urging
him to excommunicate Hitler. Now why would Mussolini want an
ex communicate Hitler.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
The Italians have a bit stronger Catholicism, at least a
more immediate attachment to the Vatican. There was another odd
connection between Mussolini and po Pius the eleventh, namely that
the father of Mussolini's mistress was the doctor for po
Pious the eleventh, which has led to all sorts of
conspiracy theories that when Pius the eleventh died, he was
actually killed. I don't take that very seriously, because Pius
(16:32):
the eleventh was an elderly man who was in poor
health and his death didn't help anything. But of course
there were tensions between Hitler and Mussolini, and certainly between
the two of them and Francisco Franco. Hitler certainly didn't
trust Franco either, And even when it gets to the
question of the deportation of Jews, the situation in Italy
was really not comparable to what was going on in Germany,
(16:53):
and it was really only when Hitler forced Mussolini's hand
that you saw real persecution tick up. So even there,
and especially there, you see that Hitler was a singular figure.
He was advancing a particularly dangerous and wicked ideology, and
Pius the twelfth saw that from the days as a diplomat, all.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
The way up to the Seed of Peter, the Church.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Had a very active effort to help Jews avoid the
Guestapo and avoided Germans, and most of the Italians were
not particularly helpful to the Germans in trying to round
up Jews. It was a very different environment than you
had in Nazi Germany.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
To me, the sole piece of evidence that would suffice
to vindicate Pius the twelfth is what happened immediately after
the war among the Jews of Rome, because the chief
rabbi of Rome Israel, converted to Catholicism. And not only
did he convert to Catholicism, he took the name as
his baptized Christian name, Eogenio Eogenio Mario. He took Pius
(18:11):
the Twelfth's name because he so admired the Poke for
what he did for the whole world and especially for
the Jews during the war, because his heroism was so apparent,
that he took this name. He converted incidentally, he said,
because of a mystical experience with Christ, which many books
could be written on that in itself, but just on
the purely political matter. It shows you, in addition to
(18:32):
the laudatory statements from Gold of my year, like Albert Einstein,
this man was a great hero. The fact that the
calumny comes long afterward, the war ends in forty five,
Pius the twelfth dies in fifty eight. The fact that
the stupid play, this propaganda from a long standing enemy
of the Church comes only in sixty three, and then
(18:52):
the big pious battles really spout off again in the
nineteen nineties. That is what to me makes me think
this is in in any ways an intra Catholic battle,
because highs the twelfth is the symbol of the old
school pope. He wears the papal tiara, he extends his
arm in a paternal and aristocratic way to the people.
(19:15):
And then after Pious the twelfth, you have John the
twenty third, a great man in a different way, but
he inaugurates the Second Vatican Council. His successor, Paul six,
closes the Second Vatican Council. And then you have the
reforms that follow the Council. And all of this friction
between the conservatives and the traditionalists in the church, and
the people who want rupture and the people who want
radical change, and so in many ways, I think that
(19:36):
Pius the twelfth is just catching stray fire. He happens
to be in the wrong historical place at the wrong
time to be used as an object to fight a
basically disconnected ecclesiastical and political battle. Whatever one wants to
say about the liturgy, wars and the battles after the
Second Vatican Council, it really doesn't have much to do
with Pius the twelfth, and the man deserves his dignity.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
It seems to me that there's a desperate passion on
the left to do whatever it can to undermine the Church.
The left, intuitively, much like Hitler, understands that the Church
is the mortal enemy of relativism. A world in which
the Church is strong is a world in which the
left has a very limited role, in a very limited
(20:21):
amount of authority. Piast became in that senso seemed to
me a battering ram by the left to try to
discredit the entire Church.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Yes, because there was a line during the Second World
War that the crooked cross of the Nazis would fall,
that would eventually perish, and the Cross of Christ would remain.
And now we're living in a strange moment when the
decline of Christianity seems to have leveled off, maybe even reversed,
and there is a massive surge in Catholicism of all things.
Even in America, which we think of as a Protestant country,
(20:52):
we're seeing a surge in particular in adult conversions. And
some people are noticing that in the West there is
one institution, and one institution alone that has survived from antiquity,
and that's the Catholic Church. All of the others have
fallen away, all the tyrants have fallen away, all of
the attempts to make a God out of man and
uber mensh, that's all gone. The Church remains, and some
(21:15):
people are kind of puzzled by it. I'm reminded of
the line by Hilaire Bellock. He has to take it
as a matter of faith that the Catholic Church is
divinely instituted. But for those who doubt it, one proof
is that no other organization conducted with such knavish imbecility
would have lasted a fortnight. I think people are beginning
to notice that.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
There's a sense that at a time when Western civilization's
under assault, both from a secular relativism and from radical Islam,
that the one institution big enough and deep enough to
sustain Western civilization is in fact the Catholic Church.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
The position you see at highus in this era, in
the era leading up to the war, really, I think
shows you the position of a Christian in a world
that has fallen, where principalities and powers and spiritual wickedness
and high places seem to have a lot of sway
is that you can have one error all the way
on the left of communism, a terrible error seducing many.
(22:15):
You can have another error ostensibly on the right, though
it does share a lot of aspects with the left too,
of Nazism. You can have an error of hypernationalism, which
is fascism, an error of anti nationalism, you know, international communism,
All of these errors around you, and then you have
the Church standing alone above all of these ideologies which
are so reductive, which are so contrary to the human spirit,
(22:38):
and you have the Church standing alone. And in the
case of the Second World War, you have essentially one
man standing alone, surrounded by enemies who fearlessly stands them
all down because he believes in the God that will
sustain and protect him.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
Correct me if I'm wrong, But isn't that pious a
twelve who authorizes the excavation under Saint Peter's because there
was a belief, which turned out to be true, that
they would find the burial site of Saint Peter. But
the pope's view was that we can't be sure that'll happen,
but we have to have a commitment to the truth.
(23:13):
And therefore the archaeologists can go forward and we'll see
what they find, and the Church will have to adjust
to the truth. And I thought at the time it
was actually, in a way a very courageous commitment to
letting the facts fall where they might.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Of course, the only position that a Christian can have
is not to fear the truth. Not There are some
flavors of religion that are afraid of scientific discoveries. Some
people are overly credulous, and they'll believe anything that a
guy on a lapco tells them, even if it quickly
turns out not to be true. But in the broad sense, no,
we're not afraid of the truth. We're not afraid of
archaeological findings, historical findings, or scientific development. I mean, let's
(23:55):
not forget that many of the great scientific advancements have
been brought about not only by members of the church,
but even by the clergy theorists behind the Big Bang
Father George Lametra Mendel, Mendelian genetics and so on and
so going back to Copernicus anyway, So that's never been
a fear, and it really it goes back to Saint
Paul who says, look, Christ has to be resurrected from
(24:16):
the dead. This can't be wishy washy, This can't be abstract,
this can't be purely figurative. If Christ is resurrected from
the dead, then we are sustained and redeemed by the
God who lives. If not, we're the biggest dopes on earth.
And it's just as simple as that. You really can
test faith.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
And I would say to anybody who's listening to us,
if you had the chance to go to Rome and
you can have what's called a scavi tour, which is
under Saint Peter's and you're right there and you actually
realize you are looking at a burial area and Ultimately
you are looking at the burial site of Saint Peter,
and here is this great, magnificent church literally right where
(24:54):
Saint Peter was buried, and it sort of gives you
a sense of the continuity of the church for two
thousand years.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
Yes, I would also recommend if you want to take
this Scaby tour book. It early. A lot of people
want to go see it, but it's an amazing fact,
a part of the incarnational aspect of the faith, you know.
I mean, it's a faith that believes that God became
man and was incarnate during a particular empire in a
particular time, and like roiled fish and actually like did
things with real people. I think that that is an
(25:22):
especially Catholic sense of things. That's part of why Catholics
believe that Christ has apostles and they have successors, and
he gives Peter the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven.
And it is why bringing it all the way back
to pious, it's why it's so important what he did,
what he said, where he was, how he behaved, because
we believe in the irreducible humanity of the men who
(25:46):
run Christ's Church. Staying in Rome, staying on this place
above the burial site of Saint Peter of really standing
firm against the purely fleshy powers that we're trying to
dominate the world.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
Michael, I want to thank you for joining me. Your
new four part docuseries, The Pope and the Furer The
Secret Vatican Files of World War Two is available now
on Daily Wire. Pruss and our listeners can access it
by going to Daily Wire dot com and click on
the shows and Movies tab at the top of the page.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
Well, thank you, sir, it's always a pleasure to be
on with you.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Thank you to my guests. Michael Knowles. You can learn
more about his new docuseries, The Pope and the Furer
The Secret Vatican Files of World War Two on our
show page at Newtsworld dot com. Newsworld is produced by
Ginglishtree sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producers Guarnsey Sloan. Our
researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show was
(26:49):
created by Steve Penley. Special thanks to the team at
Ginglishtree sixty. If you've been enjoying Newtsworld, I hope you'll
go to Apple Podcast and both rate us with five
stars and give us a review so all this can
learn what it's all about. Right now, listeners of news
World can sign up for my three free weekly columns
at gingwishtree sixty dot com slash newsletter. I'm newt ginglish.
(27:13):
This is newtwork.
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