Notes

• [1]
  If not stated otherwise, all translations from German and Italian are my own.
• [2]
  Moscow Declaration, November 1, 1943, see Bradley F. Smith, The American Road to Nuremberg: The Documentary Record 1944–1945 (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, Stanford University, 1982), 13 f.
• [3]
  For more on this topic, see Hans Woller, Die Abrechnung mit dem Faschimus in Italien (Munich: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 1996). See also Roy Domenico, Italian Fascists on Trial, 1943–1948 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991).
• [4]
  Memorandum entitled “List of Major War Criminals,” August 29, 1945, Harry S. Truman Library, Collection: The War Crimes Trials at Nuremberg, Series: War Crimes File, www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/research-files/memorandum-entitled-list-major-war-criminals (accessed November 28, 2021).
• [5]
  Kevin Jon Heller, The Nuremberg Military Tribunals and the Origins of International Criminal Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2011), 17.
• [6]
  Frank M. Buscher, The U.S. War Crimes Trial Program in Germany, 1946–1955 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1989), 31.
• [7]
  Hans-Christian Jasch and Wolf Kaiser, Der Holocaust vor deutschen Gerichten: Amnestieren, Verdrängen, Bestrafen (Stuttgart: Reclam 2017) 28; See also John Mendelsohn, “War Crimes Trials and Clemency in Germany and Japan,” in Americans as Proconsuls: United States Military Government in Germany and Japan, 1944–1952, ed. Robert Wolfe 226–59, here p. 228.
• [8]
  See Richard J. Evans, Rituals of Retribution: Capital Punishment in Germany, 1600-1987, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 744.
• [9]
  Durwood “Derry” Riedel, “The U.S. War Crimes Tribunals at the Former Dachau Concentration Camp: Lessons for Today?” Berkeley Journal of International Law, 24, no. 2 (2006): 554–609, here p. 559.
• [10]
  Norbert Frei, Vergangenheitspolitik: Die Anfänge der Bundesrepublik und die NS-Vergangenheit (Munich: Beck, 1996), in its English translation: Adenauer’s Germany and the Nazi Past: The Politics of Amnesty and Integration (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002).
• [11]
  Philip Pullella, “Church ‘not afraid of history’: Pope Francis to Open Secret Pius XII Archives,” Reuters, March 14, 2019, www.reuters.com/article/us-pope-archives-idUSKCN1QL11Q (accessed November 9, 2021). Nina Valbousquet, “L’ouverture des archives du Vatican pour le pontificat de Pie XII (1939–1958): controverses mémorielles, apports historiographiques et usages de l’archive,” Revue d’histoire moderne & contemporaine, 2022/1 (no. 69-1), 56–70.
• [12]
  See e.g. most recently on this topic: Gerald J. Steinacher, “Forgive and Forget? The Vatican and the Escape of Nazi War Criminals from Justice,” S:I.M.O.N. – Shoah: Intervention. Methods. Documentation, 9 (2022), 1, 4–28. https://simon.vwi.ac.at/index.php/simon/article/view/218.
• [13]
  See David Kertzer, The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe (New York: Random House, 2014).
• [14]
  See Robert Ventresca, Soldier of Christ: The Life of Pope Pius XII (Cambridge, MA and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013), 180–84. See also David Kertzer, Un Papa in Guerra: La storia segreta di Mussolini, Hitler e Pio XII (Milan: Garzanti, 2022) and Jacques Kornberg, The Pope’s Dilemma: Pius XII Faces Atrocities and Genocide in the Second World War (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015).
• [15]
  Mark Riebling, Church of Spies: The Pope’s Secret War against Hitler (New York: Basic Books, 2015), 25.
• [16]
  “Missione materna,” Osservatore Romano, June 4, 1944, 1.
• [17]
  Domenico Cardinal Tardini, Memories of Pius XII (Westminster, MD: The Newman Press, 1961), 169. See also Kertzer Un Papa in Guerra, 343.
• [18]
  “Radiomessaggio di Sua Santità Pio XII ai popoli del mondo intero,” Sunday 24 December l944, Discorsi e Radiomessaggi di Sua Santità Pio XII, VI, 5th year of the Pontificate, March 2, 1944–March 1, 1945, (Vatican City: Tipografia Poliglotta Vaticana), 235–5l, www.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/it/speeches/1944/documents/hf_p-xii_spe_19441224_natale.html (accessed June 5, 2021).
• [19]
  “Allocuzione di Sua Santità al Sacro Collegio [dei cardinali presenti a Roma] in risposta agli auguri per il Suo onomastico. Il Sommo Pontefice, delineata la natura e i caratteri del sistema nazionalsocialista e le sue persecuzioni contro la Chiesa Cattolica, indica all’umanità la via sicura per eliminare ogni violenza brutale e traccia per i reggitori dei popoli le note essenziali di una vera pace,” Osservatore Romano (June 3, 1945), 1; “Text of Pope Pius XII’s Address to the Sacred College of Cardinals,” New York Times (June 3, 1945), https://www.nytimes.com/1945/06/03/archives/text-of-pope-pius-xiis-address-to-the-sacred-college-of-cardinals-i.html (accessed June 3, 2021). On its importance for the Catholic postwar apologetics see also Mark Edward Ruff, The Battle for the Catholic Past in Germany 1945–1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), chapter 1, here p. 21.
• [20]
  “Allocuzione di Sua Santità al Sacro Collegio.”
• [21]
  “For the Ambassador, June 4, 1945,” Harold H. Tittmann, Inside the Vatican of Pius XII: The Memoir of an American Diplomat during World War II (New York: Doubleday, 2004), 213.
• [22]
  Telford Taylor, The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials: A Personal Memoir (New York: Knopf, 1992), 94.
• [23]
  For the Vatican’s views on “good” and “bad” Germans and especially in the case of ambassador Ernst von Weizsäcker, see Kertzer, Un Papa in Guerra.
• [24]
  Archivio Apostolico Vaticano (AAV), Arch. Nunz. Berlino 159, fasc. 42, Fasc. Kriegsgefangene 1950–1959 II – A – C – 15, fols. 109r, 110r.
• [25]
  Archiv des Erzbistums München und Freising (AEMF), NL Faulhaber, Signatur 8504 (Entnazifizierung – Dr. Hans Frank, Bekehrungen von Kriegsverbrechern), “Reichsminister Dr. Hans Frank, Minister im Regime des Nationalsozialismus,” short summary of his background, no date. See also Niklas Frank, Meine deutsche Mutter (Munich: C. Bertelsmann Verlag, 2nd edn, 2005),. 378.
• [26]
  For Faulhaber and Frank, see Gerald J. Steinacher, “Vergeben und Vergessen: Kardinal Faulhaber, der Vatikan und die Prozesse gegen NS-Kriegsverbrecher,” in Katholizismus im Umbruch? Michael Kardinal von Faulhaber und die katholische “Ordnung” in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts (Münchner Kunsthistorische Studien), ed. Matthias Daufratshofer, Peer Volkmann, and Moritz Fischer (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2024).
• [27]
  Notes dated October 10, 1946 and October 11, 1946, AAV, Segr. Stato, Commissione Soccorsi 259, Tedeschi Civili Germania fasc. 366 Circa la condanna del Gauleiter Frank. The diplomats were Gowen (United States), Osborne (Great Britain), and Bourdeillette (France).
• [28]
  AEMF, NL Faulhaber, Signatur 8504 (Entnazifizierung – Dr. Hans Frank, Bekehrungen von Kriegsverbrechern), Montini to Faulhaber, dated October 4, 1946 (with original signature Montini).
• [29]
  The Vatican Secretariat of State was asked for comment by a Polish Monsignore after a press article in the Giornale della Sera reported on the Vatican’s intervention. In response, an official of the secretariat denied that any action was taken on Frank’s behalf. Handwritten note from the State Secretariat [signed only with initials G. B.] dated October 12, 1946. See also the relevant newspaper article “Anche Fritsche è stato arrestato. I morituri corretti e depressi,” in Giornale della Sera, October 11, 1946, 1, AAV, Soccorsi 259 – fasc, 366, Frank, fol. 007r. For the Vatican’s dementi see also “Alle Gnadengesuche abgelehnt,” in Vaterland, October 11, 1946, Entnazifizierung – Dr. Hans Frank, AEMF, NL Faulhaber (Entnazifizierung – Dr. Hans Frank), Signatur: 8504.
• [30]
  Pius XII to Faulhaber dated March 1, 1947, cited in Frank, Meine deutsche Mutter, 390.
• [31]
  “Il comunicato ufficiale sull’esecuzione di Norimberga,” Osservatore Romano, October 17, 1946, 1. I assume that Alfred Rosenberg and Julius Streicher did not receive the sacraments.
• [32]
  See Suzanne Brown-Fleming, “The German Pope: Pius XII and German War Criminals,” in War and Genocide, Reconstruction and Change: The Global Pontificate of Pius XII, 1939-1958, ed. Simon Unger-Alvi and Nina Valbousquet (Berghahn, forthcoming). See also Felix Bohr, Die Kriegsverbrecherlobby: Bundesdeutsche Hilfe für im Ausland Inhaftierte NS-Täter (Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag AG, 2018).
• [33]
  Muench to Montini, May 1, 1954, AAV, Arch. Nunz. Berlino 159, fasc. 42, Fasc. Kriegsgefangene 1950–1959 II – A – C – 15, fol. 40; Montini to Muench, May 11, 1954, AAV, Arch. Nunz. Berlino 159, fasc. 42, Fasc. Kriegsgefangene 1950–1959 II – A – C – 15, fol. 41.
• [34]
  Historische Archiv des Erzbistums Köln (AEK), CR II 25.18,7 “Rechtsbewusstsein und Rechtsunsicherheit” [1946].
• [35]
  Suzanne Brown-Fleming, The Holocaust and Catholic Conscience: Cardinal Aloisius Muench and the Guilt Question in Germany (University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), 83. See also Suzanne Brown-Fleming, “Granting Absolution: Vatican Nuncio Aloisius Cardinal Muench and the Catholic Clemency Campaign,” in Neue amerikanische Perspektiven auf die Geschichte der Kirchen in Deutschland im ausgehenden 19. und 20. Jahrhundert / New American Perspectives on the History of the Churches in Germany at the End of the 19th and in the 20th Century, Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte, 19, no. 2 (2006), 359–67, here p. 361.
• [36]
  Michael Phayer, Pius XII, The Holocaust, and the Cold War (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), 164.
• [37]
  See e.g. Daniel Utrecht, The Lion of Münster: The Bishop Who Roared against the Nazis (Charlotte, NC: Tan Books, 2016).
• [38]
  Galen’s diocese denied the cardinal’s authorship early on. [Kapitularvikar Franz Vorwerk], “Rechtsbewusstsein und Rechtsunsicherheit,” Kirchliches Amtsblatt für die Diözese Münster, 80, no. 20 (1946), Art. 149, 91, dated June 26, 1946, Archives of the diocese of Münster. The statement is dated June 14, 1946 and appeared on the front page of this edition of the Amtsblatt. The pamphlet is also not listed in Peter Loeffler (ed.), Bischof Clemens August Graf Galen: Akten, Briefe und Predigten 1933–1946, 2nd edn (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schoeningh, 1996).
• [39]
  Brown-Fleming, The Holocaust and Catholic Conscience, 139–57. For the full English text see Appendix C, One World in Charity (Fargo, 1946). See also Frederic Spotts, The Churches and Politics in Germany (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1973), 83.
• [40]
  AEK, CR II 25.18,10 / 99 Aufzeichnung Besuch Frings am October 6, 1946.
• [41]
  AEK, CR II 25.18,8 / 188 [Delegation], Cologne at Cardinal Frings’ House, October 17, 1946, 17.20 hours.
• [42]
  AEK, CR II 25.18,8 / 187 [Delegation], Cologne at Cardinal Frings’ House, October 17, 1946, 17.20 hours.
• [43]
  AEK, CR II 25.18,8 / 188 [Delegation], Cologne at Cardinal Frings’ House, October 17, 1946, 17.20 hours.
• [44]
  Frings (für den deutschen Episkopat) an den Alliierten Kontrollrat, Köln, October 23, 1945, in Akten deutscher Bischöfe seit 1945: Westliche Besatzungszonen 1945-1947, ed. Ulrich Helbach, Vol. 1 (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schoeningh, 2012), 281–3.
• [45]
  AEK, CR II 25.18,8 / 190 First Joint Meeting at Rheinbahn Haus, Düsseldorf, October 16, 1946 10.30 hours. Mgr. Boehler.
• [46]
  For Christian “clemency” campaigns and interventions for Nazis and Nazi collaborators see Gerald Steinacher, Nazis on the Run: How Hitler’s Henchmen Fled Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Phayer, Pius XII; Uki Goñi, The Real Odessa: How Perón Brought the Nazi War Criminals to Argentina (London and New York: Granta Books, 2002); Frei, Vergangenheitspolitik; Bohr, Die Kriegsverbrecherlobby; Brown-Fleming, The Holocaust and Catholic Conscience; Suzanne Brown-Fleming, “Pope Pius XII, Vatican Neutrality and the Holocaust: Case Studies from the Newly Opened Vatican Archives,” in The Vatican and Permanent Neutrality, ed. Herbert R. Reginbogin and Marshall J. Breger (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2022), 105–18.
• [47]
  Steinacher, Nazis on the Run, 1. Published in French as Les Nazis en Fuite: Croix Rouge, Vatican, CIA (Paris: Editions Perrin, 2015). Most recently on this topic: Steinacher, “Forgive and Forget?”
• [48]
  “Forgive Germany, Pope Urges World,” New York Times, April 16, 1948, 10.
• [49]
  See Steven P. Remy, The Malmedy Massacre: The War Crimes Trial Controversy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017).
• [50]
  As a close confidant of Cardinal Faulhaber and defender of the Church’s rights, Neuhäusler was imprisoned by the Nazis in the Dachau concentration camp for over four years, only to be liberated by the Americans in May 1945.
• [51]
  Util the Second Vatican Council, the relationship between the Catholic and Protestant churches was tense. The two churches acknowledged each other’s baptisms in principle, but they believed baptisms could be repeated in dubious cases (sub conditione). That is normally very rare. To my knowledge, I was the first one to document this not so uncommon Catholic practice regarding Nazi war criminals in the postwar years. On this topic see my chapter “Denazification through Baptism,” in Steinacher, Nazis on the Run, 148 ff. For the Catholic charity and deathbed conversions of Nazi war criminals in Poland see Jack Leociak’s very recent book, Zapraszamy do nieba: O nawróconych zbrodniarzach (Warsaw: Czarne 2022).
• [52]
  The Nazi terminology “gottgläubig” is difficult to define, as it is vague – it could mean deist, atheist, or a believer in Nazi-paganism (Germanic gods). In any case, it is a clear indication that somebody broke with their traditional Christian religion, left the Lutheran or Catholic Church, and was fully committed to the Nazi Weltanschauung.
• [53]
  Oswald Pohl, Credo: Mein Weg zu Gott (Landshut: Girnth, 1950).
• [54]
  Karl Morgenschweis to the bishop of Augsburg, January 8, 1950, “Betreff: Aufnahme in die Kirche des ehemaligen SS-Generals Oswald Pohl.” Archiv des Bistums Augsburg (ABA), Bestand, Pfarreiakten/Landsberg am Lech – Mariae Himmelfahrt/Gefangenenanstalt/Personalia 1933–1960, (192).
• [55]
  AEK, CR II 25.18,27/53 Frings to McCloy, February 12, 1951.
• [56]
  Muench to Montini, April 2, 1951, “Oggetto: Oswald Pohl,” AAV, Arch. Nunz. Berlino 159, fasc. 42, Fasc. Kriegsgefangene 1950–1959 II – A – C – 15, fol. 81.
• [57]
  Muench to Montini, April 3, 1951, AAV, Arch. Nunz. Berlino 159, fasc. 42, Fasc. Kriegsgefangene 1950–1959 II – A – C – 15, fol. 82.
• [58]
  Muench to Montini, April 25, 1951, AAV, Arch. Nunz. Berlino 159, fasc. 42, Fasc. Kriegsgefangene 1950–1959 II – A – C – 15, fol. 83.
• [59]
  Bishop Aloisius Muench to John J. McCloy, US High Commissioner for Germany, 19 December 1949, NARA, RG 466 HICOG, McCloy papers, Entry 1, 1950, box 6, folder D (50) 57. For more on Muench, see Brown-Fleming, The Holocaust and Catholic Conscience.
• [60]
  John McCloy to Aloisius Muench, January 11, 1950, NARA, RG 466 HICOG, McCloy papers, Entry 1, 1950, box 6, folder D (50) 57.
• [61]
  On this topic, see Björn Krondorfer, Katharina von Kellenbach and Norbert Reck, Mit Blick auf die Täter: Fragen an die deutsche Theologie nach 1945 (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2006). See also Katharina von Kellenbach, Mark of Cain: Guilt and Denial in the Post-War Lives of Nazi Perpetrators (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). Thomas Brudholm, “On the Advocacy of Forgiveness after Mass Atrocities,” in The Religious in Responses to Mass Atrocity: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, ed. Thomas Brudholm and Thomas Cushman (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press 2009), 124–53, here p. 126.
• [62]
  Pascalina Lehnert, Ich durfte Ihm dienen: Erinnerungen an Papst Pius XII (Würzburg: Verlag Johann Wilhelm Naumann, 1982), 111.
• [63]
  Michael Phayer, “Canonizing Pius XII. Why Did the Pope Help Nazis Escape?” Commonweal Magazine, June 23, 2004, 23.