The Vatican is clueless.

[cyber_andyy]

I guess you could even call this PR

*Warning, article contains a graphic picture, so I will post the article, and link at the end*

The Vatican has accused Britain and the U.S. of complicity in the Nazi extermination of Jews.

It claims the Allies deliberately did nothing to either rescue Jews or destroy the death camps.

An article in L'Osservatore Romano, the official Vatican newspaper, says Allied governments knew the Nazis were planning to exterminate the Jews as early as 1942.

But instead of bombing the concentration camps and the railways supplying them, they reacted by first suppressing eye-witness reports and then claiming they were exaggerated.

Britain opposed offering sanctuary to Jewish refugees, said the article, which will be seen as having the support of the highest Vatican figures.

L'Osservatore Romano draws on the diaries of former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, who said his country's officials 'dodged their grim responsibility, procrastinated when concrete rescue schemes were placed before them, and even suppressed information about atrocities'.

Mr Morgenthau claimed that when the U.S. began to rescue Jews the project met resistance from British officials.

The Foreign Office warned of 'the difficulties of disposing of any considerable number of Jews should they be rescued'.

Mr Morgenthau called this 'a satanic combination of British chill and diplomatic doubletalk, cold and correct and adding up to a sentence of death'.

The article will be seen as part of the Vatican's drive to restore the reputation of the wartime Pope, Pius XII.

[url"http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1207001/Allies-ignored-extermination-Jews-claims-Vatican.html"]Daily Mail[/url]

It seems the Vatican are clueless when it comes to history at least. Heres why nothing was done:

This was discovered by listening in on secret Enigma transmissions at Bletchly Park (UK). After the brits rescued an Enigma machine and code book of a sinking U-boat then we had started listening into every transmission and decoding it(Also done by Bombe mahcines). We found out about the messages mentioning the extermination of jews, this was taken to Churchill, who said ignore it.

Why? Because if we did do something, the germans would KNOW we were listening in on them, and start using a new code machine or change the rotor settings for the years, meaning we would have to go back to testing all of the rotor settings before breaking a code. That could have been disaster.

I'd also like to point out, that this information was only released a few years ago, because of the level of secrecy on it. (In fact, soon even higher level info will be realesed, which should be cool)

The article says that the British stopped the Americans doing anything. They don't mention of course the above reasons.

With out our access to the german communications network, D-day would have failed.


I wish people would get their facts straight.

[small](oh the irony if somethings wrong in this thread )[/small]

But yeah, /discuss I guess.

 

[RetiarySword]

Ergh.. They should just stop trying to get involved with politics, they are no good at it. All their history books are from like 2000 years ago, and not exactly proven. They should stick to Sunday school.

 

[gentleben]

Pretty rich coming from someone who was a member of the Hitler youth.


(Let it be known that I have nothing against children who were members of the Hitler youth, but seriously, people in glass houses?)

 

[Panzer_God]

Wasn't it the Vatican who were accused of letting the Holocaust slide?

 

[Gooble]

Even ignoring the fact, as the OP mentioned, that bombing the concentration camps/rail networks would give away that we knew their codes, the Germans would simply move the camps to other areas, or find simpler ways to killing the Jews (i.e. shooting them on the spot).

 

[dontworryaboutit]

I don't trust them...I've seen Angels & Demons.

In all seriousness though, the Vatican really has no right to criticize the actions of anyone. I seem to recall them promoting and blessing the brutality and genocide of the Crusades. But hey, they were just Muslims right? And some Jews too I guess but still they weren't European so it's ok. They should be looking towards their own ranks instead of condemning the acts of others...they seem to be having some difficult with their clergy when it comes to Holocaust denial and the like.

 

[Pillypill]

The current pope is so so so clueless. I can say that about the rest of the Vatican too.Besides isn't the pope an anti-semite?

 

[Eskay]

Ergh.. They should just stop trying to get involved with politics, they are no good at it. All their history books are from like 2000 years ago, and not exactly proven. They should stick to Sunday school.

Actually they wrote them 1600 years ago, filling in the four hundred years they'd missed with a load of stuff they made up..... like the legtimacy of the pope.

Strikes me the current popes after his hypocrisy scout badge. Turns out he missed that one in the hitler youth having focussed on his 'shooting down allied planes' badge instead.

See I can take cheap shots too.

 

[LongAndShort]

One, the Vatican helped thousands of Jews escape Europe. Two, even when actual escapees arrived telling their stories the British refused to send bombers and the Americans refused to believe them. The Vatican is spot on. The Enigma excuse went out the window when the eye-witnesses and victims arrived.

 

[The Infamous Scamola]

Because god knows the pope was doing everything in his power to save Jews from concentration camps and oppose Mussolini's fascist regime.

*cough*

Also, wasn't the current pope part of the Hitler Jugend? Yeah...

 

[cyber_andyy]

Pretty rich coming from someone who was a member of the Hitler youth.

"The article will be seen as part of the Vatican's drive to restore the reputation of the wartime Pope, Pius XII."

I think they have failed don't you?

Ergh.. They should just stop trying to get involved with politics, they are no good at it. All their history books are from like 2000 years ago, and not exactly proven. They should stick to Sunday school.

Actually they wrote them 1600 years ago, filling in the four hundred years they'd missed with a load of stuff they made up..... like the legtimacy of the pope.

Strikes me the current popes after his hypocrisy scout badge. Turns out he missed that one in the hitler youth having focussed on his 'shooting down allied planes' badge instead.

See I can take cheap shots too.

Although *Can't remeber his name right now* did tranlate the books of the roman doctor *Can't remeber his name either* which was a good thing.

 

[Koeryn]

I don't trust them...I've seen Angels & Demons.

In all seriousness though, the Vatican really has no right to criticize the actions of anyone. I seem to recall them promoting and blessing the brutality and genocide of the Crusades. But hey, they were just Muslims right? And some Jews too I guess but still they weren't European so it's ok. They should be looking towards their own ranks instead of condemning the acts of others...they seem to be having some difficult with their clergy when it comes to Holocaust denial and the like.

Not to mention with trouble with small children!*bah-dum-tish!*

But yeah, more or less agree with the OP. And the quoted post. Not to say that the Vatican is the only power that has issues with taking the blame for their own actions, seein' as how that's a fairly universal issue, and can be easily chalked up to "Humanity is innocent always.", but yeah.

Also: Does this mean we're going to have to have a new style of WWII game come out? "Call of Duty XX: Truth of the Vatican" or something?

 

[Hutchy_Bear]

Wasn't it the Vatican who were accused of letting the Holocaust slide?

I thought that aswell. I thought the Vatican didn't want to get involved.

 

[rdaleric]

Typical vatican stupidness like still maintaining contraception is immoral which is contributing ti the AIDS problem in Africa.

Also not to excuse what the allies did at all, in WWI so many over the top horror stories about German atrocities meant that a lot of people honestly didn't think the holocaust was happening

 

[daxter101]

no preist will admit it (trust me iv tried) but the vatican FUNDED hitler and the nazis in WW2
a little known fact

not directly mind you, they paid hitler off when the nazis controlled italy

 

[Federalist92]

woops!
i'm a catholic.
er...i think i took a wrong turning into the alley belonging to the "lets hate the church" gang.
Sure the pope was in the hitler youth, but if you were catholic like me, you would find that he was bullied into it by his parents, if you werent in the hitler youth then you were repeatedly beatan, and the thoughts of how he had joined the hitler youth convinved him to be a priest because he was sorry for what he had done.
Dont dis the pope for that. i doubt when you join a gang that does wrong things, you appologise by joining th priesthood.
that was really brave of him, and look where its got him. good for that guy who was bullied into being a nazi.

 

[Agema]

To be fair to the pope, children were conscripted into the Hitler Youth so the Fuhrer could send boys off to war when he ran out of men. I don't know there was much choice involved.

I don't know what the allies were supposed to do. Bomb the camps and do the Germans' work for them? Bomb the rail links - sure, like the Germans couldn't rebuild railway tracks a few hours later.

 

[Therumancer]

The Vaticon is actually right when you get past the propaganda. Or at least to a large extent. People tend to forget that Hitler was massively popular as were his policies, he was an international man of the year. That popularity extended to the United States even though we act like it was otherwise. This is one of the reasons why such a powerful propaganda/information control "engine" was brought into play, as well as exagerrated war crimes such as the human flesh lampshades.

Anti-Semiticism was reasonably powerful in The United States, and through the rest of the world. Getting rid of the jewish ownership of property (gained through money lending/loansharking over a long period of time, and then only sold or traded within the religion/ethnicity) was one of their big selling points. Romania for example was heavily sold by the idea of the "Re-Romanianization of land" which was code for "kill all the Jewish land owners, and distribute the land back to the people".


The thing is though that after the fact when our attitudes changed (we're arguably the biggest ally the Jews have ever had) people got into the position of denying that anyone they knew or were related to during the time period was heavily against The Holocaust and an "exception".

So really, the Vaticon coming up and going "oh yes, The US and Britan were complicit with this at least for a long time" is ridiculous. Their hands are dirtier than anyone. They certainly were willing to take stuff recovered by the Nazis at the expense of Jewish lives. They also seemed to take the role of a neutral banking institution holding funds for both sides during the conflict.

But hey, in the case of the US, it's true. There WAS a massive amount of anti-semiticism in the US, and tons of people supported Hitler especially before the propaganda campaign. He didn't get to be international man of the year by winning a contest on the back of a cereal box. It's simply that we choose to remember history differantly, and write outselves into the history books a lot more heroically than we actually were. It's sort of like how we try and portray The Civil War as being about racism, and people like to think that all of their anscestors from the North were the equivilent of ultra-liberal democrats before their time. It's simply not true.





What to do with The Jews was a big contreversy at the time, and an even bigger contreversy was the Homosexuals (who were branded with a purple triangle allegedly, which is how that became a symbol of the gay rights movement, leading to the criticism of characters like Tinky Winky from The Teletubbies for being gay rights Icons).

The point being that I am saying that just as the majority of people in the US were racist against blacks (including the North in The Civil War), back around World War II there were a ton of anti-semites.


Of course The Vaticon itself is not immune to criticism. Back during World War II one of the more morally ambigious aspects was that in persecuting the Jews many long-lost art treasures with religious themes were recovered. Basically the Jews felt (or used to feel pre-holocaust) that as God's chosen people anything related to God is their rightful property, thus they stole a lot of famous artworks and stockpiled them under Synagogues and in private collections. One of the truer criticisms that the Nazis made to justify themselves is that there is no real excuse for why a Jew would have a bunch of solid gold altar ware, or a 12' gilded cross carried as a battle standard in the crusades. The fact that a lot of this stuff was lost to bandits, pirates, or in "battle" over the years. The Jews being money lenders and loan sharks had one of the first (if not the first) ethnic based organized crime syndicate.

At any rate The Vaticon had absolutly no problem taking back a lot of these art treasures and supporting their recovery. Without the Nazis a lot of their museums and displays would be a lot less fancy.

There is also the issue of money. The Vaticon was willing to pretty much store money for all sides. During The Holocaust they were willing to take money from The Jews to keep it safe, and with the war winding down they also took money from The Nazis to keep safe (which is a cornerstone to the conspiricy of some of these guys retiring in luxury in places like Brazil). One of the big issues with The Vaticon is various Jewish groups demanding money from them claiming various descendents left money with the Vaticon, and/or that money in their keeping left by The Nazis should rightfully be the property of the Defamation league. In some cases the trail of money is very dubious and the distinction is not clear and the arguements basically come down to who stole the money first. It can be quite a mess when your dealing with descendents of say a Jewish landowner who ran an infamous organized Loan Sharking scheme, demands money (or perhaps gold after a conversion) back because it was seized by the Nazis. Of course not only is the money dirty, but believing everyone involved to be dead The Vaticon also wants to keep it for themselves.

The point is that despite the stereotype of priests and nuns heroically protecting Jews, The Nazis were for the most part a Christian army (despite Hitler's leaning to the occult). They covered their stuff with crosses and Christian symbology in a lot of cases. The themselves had a degree of support (even if not overtly or public property) from The Vaticon and benefitted it greatly.

When it comes to The Nazis The Vaticon is pretty much knee deep in the muck.

At any rate someone needs to tell The Pope "let he who is without sin cast the first stone".

 

[Shaoken]

One, the Vatican helped thousands of Jews escape Europe. Two, even when actual escapees arrived telling their stories the British refused to send bombers and the Americans refused to believe them. The Vatican is spot on. The Enigma excuse went out the window when the eye-witnesses and victims arrived.

One: No they didn't. The Vatican helped the holocaust. It was individual priests and catholics who risked their lives to help smuggle out Jews and the other targets of the holocaust.

Two: What exactly could the British have done? They were being bombed, the Nazi's had a good air force, and they were too busy fighting the war on the front lines to worry about what was going on all the way back in the heart of Germany.

And seriously, you are a moron. You think sending bombers to the concentration camps is a good idea? What, you think the British had magical, Nazi-seeking bombs that wouldn't have killed all the Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, communists etc. etc. that were being held prisoner there? That the Nazis wouldn't have changed their code and moved the camps, hence nullifying the Allies advantage and prolonging the war? Bottom line; the Allies did the right thing. Had they tried to put a stop to the Holocaust then and there they would have only ended up blowing their advantage over Germany and instead condemended more people to die in the concentration camps.

Bottom line; the Vatican is trying to hide their own shame at basically rolling over and giving the Nazis lots of victims, so now they're laying the blame on the countries that actually put a stop to it.

 

[jasoncyrus]

Firstly: its the daily mail, what kind of idiot believes the shit they print? The group they are in (along with news of the world) have been sued countless times for lieing.

but its also the vatican...whya re we surprised by the shit they pull these days? They did a lot worse tbh.