--:-- [Sound of a morning news theme song fades out]
--:-- Georgia Howe: Welcome to Morning Wire, I'm Georgia Howe.
--:-- John Bickley: And I'm John Bickley, the executive editor of Daily Wire. It's Sunday, August 17th.
--:-- Georgia Howe: History is written by the victors. But what if the victors got it wrong?
--:-- John Bickley: For 80 years, the world has condemned one man as the Pope of Silence, the man who stood by in the face of shocking evil.
--:-- Georgia Howe: But can we trust the popular narrative, even after all these years?
--:-- John Bickley: This is not just a story about Hitler and the Holocaust. One of the worst lies ever told about the Catholic Church is what she did or did not do in one of modernity's darkest hours.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Now, for the first time, the Vatican's secret archive is open, and the truth is far more shocking than the fiction.
--:-- John Bickley: Propagandists have peddled one story for decades, but now we can definitively know better.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Joining us now is our dear colleague and producer of this fantastic new series, Michael Knowles.
--:-- Michael Knowles: Thank you so much for having me on.
--:-- Georgia Howe: This is my first time on the Morning Wire set. This is fun.
--:-- Michael Knowles: Don't take that personally.
--:-- Georgia Howe: I know. It's weird because it's always locked when I try to come in. It's so strange. My key doesn't work.
--:-- Michael Knowles: It's weird how that happens.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Well, you're here because you just dropped a new docu-series. For people who haven't heard about it at all, tell us, what is it about? And what's it called?
--:-- Michael Knowles: The series is called The Pope and the Führer, The Secret Vatican Files of World War II.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And I think I basically told you what it's about. But it's about this figure, who is probably the most slandered of any figure of the 20th century.
--:-- Michael Knowles: So you've got the seminal event, the key event of the 20th century is the Second World War. Pius XII has been maligned as the silent pope, complicit in Hitler's rise.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Some people, some propagandists have called him Hitler's pope. They've suggested that he was actually supportive of Hitler and encouraging of the Nazi regime.
--:-- Michael Knowles: And it's not true. If anything, the church has been too silent in defending him.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Now a new documentary series for the Daily Wire called The Pope and the Führer, The Secret Vatican Files of World War II, explores the untold story of Pius.
--:-- Michael Knowles: I'm here to discuss the controversy at the heart of the series.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Michael, thank you so much for coming on.
--:-- Michael Knowles: It's great to be here.
--:-- Georgia Howe: This is my first time on the Morning Wire set. This is fun.
--:-- Michael Knowles: Don't take that personally.
--:-- Georgia Howe: I know. It's weird because it's always locked when I try to come in. It's so strange. My key doesn't work.
--:-- Michael Knowles: It's weird how that happens.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Well, you're here because you just dropped a new docu-series. For people who haven't heard about it at all, tell us, what is it about? And what's it called?
--:-- Michael Knowles: The series is called The Pope and the Führer, The Secret Vatican Files of World War II.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And I think I basically told you what it's about. But it's about this figure, who is probably the most slandered of any figure of the 20th century.
--:-- Michael Knowles: So you've got the seminal event, the key event of the 20th century is the Second World War. Pius XII has been maligned as the silent pope, complicit in Hitler's rise.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Some people, some propagandists have called him Hitler's pope. They've suggested that he was actually supportive of Hitler and encouraging of the Nazi regime.
--:-- Michael Knowles: And it's not true. If anything, the church has been too silent in defending him.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Now a new documentary series for the Daily Wire called The Pope and the Führer, The Secret Vatican Files of World War II, explores the untold story of Pius.
--:-- Michael Knowles: I'm here to discuss the controversy at the heart of the series.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Michael, thank you so much for coming on.
--:-- Michael Knowles: It's great to be here.
--:-- Michael Knowles: This is my first time on the Morning Wire set. This is fun.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Don't take that personally.
--:-- Michael Knowles: I know. It's weird because it's always locked when I try to come in. It's so strange. My key doesn't work.
--:-- Georgia Howe: It's weird how that happens.
--:-- Michael Knowles: Well, you're here because you just dropped a new docu-series. For people who haven't heard about it at all, tell us, what is it about? And what's it called?
--:-- Michael Knowles: The series is called The Pope and the Führer, The Secret Vatican Files of World War II.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And I think I basically told you what it's about. But it's about this figure, who is probably the most slandered of any figure of the 20th century.
--:-- Michael Knowles: So you've got the seminal event, the key event of the 20th century is the Second World War. Pius XII has been maligned as the silent pope, complicit in Hitler's rise.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Some people, some propagandists have called him Hitler's pope. They've suggested that he was actually supportive of Hitler and encouraging of the Nazi regime.
--:-- Michael Knowles: And it's not true. If anything, the church has been too silent in defending him.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Now a new documentary series for the Daily Wire called The Pope and the Führer, The Secret Vatican Files of World War II, explores the untold story of Pius.
--:-- Michael Knowles: I'm here to discuss the controversy at the heart of the series.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Michael, thank you so much for coming on.
--:-- Michael Knowles: It's great to be here.
--:-- Michael Knowles: This is my first time on the Morning Wire set. This is fun.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Don't take that personally.
--:-- Michael Knowles: I know. It's weird because it's always locked when I try to come in. It's so strange. My key doesn't work.
--:-- Georgia Howe: It's weird how that happens.
--:-- Michael Knowles: Well, you're here because you just dropped a new docu-series. For people who haven't heard about it at all, tell us, what is it about? And what's it called?
--:-- Michael Knowles: The series is called The Pope and the Führer, The Secret Vatican Files of World War II.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And I think I basically told you what it's about. But it's about this figure, who is probably the most slandered of any figure of the 20th century.
--:-- Michael Knowles: So you've got the seminal event, the key event of the 20th century is the Second World War. Pius XII has been maligned as the silent pope, complicit in Hitler's rise.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Some people, some propagandists have called him Hitler's pope. They've suggested that he was actually supportive of Hitler and encouraging of the Nazi regime.
--:-- Michael Knowles: And it's not true. If anything, the church has been too silent in defending him.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Now a new documentary series for the Daily Wire called The Pope and the Führer, The Secret Vatican Files of World War II, explores the untold story of Pius.
--:-- Michael Knowles: I'm here to discuss the controversy at the heart of the series.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Michael, thank you so much for coming on.
--:-- Michael Knowles: It's great to be here.
--:-- Michael Knowles: The series is about this figure, who is probably the most slandered of any figure of the 20th century.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So you've got the seminal event, the key event of the 20th century is the Second World War. Pius XII has been maligned as the silent pope, complicit in Hitler's rise.
--:-- Michael Knowles: Some people, some propagandists have called him Hitler's pope. They've suggested that he was actually supportive of Hitler and encouraging of the Nazi regime.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And it's not true. If anything, the church has been too silent in defending him.
--:-- Michael Knowles: Now a new documentary series for the Daily Wire called The Pope and the Führer, The Secret Vatican Files of World War II, explores the untold story of Pius.
--:-- Georgia Howe: I'm here to discuss the controversy at the heart of the series.
--:-- Michael Knowles: Michael, thank you so much for coming on.
--:-- Michael Knowles: It's great to be here.
--:-- Michael Knowles: The series is about this figure, who is probably the most slandered of any figure of the 20th century.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So you've got the seminal event, the key event of the 20th century is the Second World War. Pius XII has been maligned as the silent pope, complicit in Hitler's rise.
--:-- Michael Knowles: Some people, some propagandists have called him Hitler's pope. They've suggested that he was actually supportive of Hitler and encouraging of the Nazi regime.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And it's not true. If anything, the church has been too silent in defending him.
--:-- Michael Knowles: Now a new documentary series for the Daily Wire called The Pope and the Führer, The Secret Vatican Files of World War II, explores the untold story of Pius.
--:-- Michael Knowles: I'm here to discuss the controversy at the heart of the series.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Michael, thank you so much for coming on.
--:-- Michael Knowles: It's great to be here.
--:-- Michael Knowles: The series is about this figure, who is probably the most slandered of any figure of the 20th century.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So you've got the seminal event, the key event of the 20th century is the Second World War. Pius XII has been maligned as the silent pope, complicit in Hitler's rise.
--:-- Michael Knowles: Some people, some propagandists have called him Hitler's pope. They've suggested that he was actually supportive of Hitler and encouraging of the Nazi regime.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And it's not true. If anything, the church has been too silent in defending him.
--:-- Michael Knowles: Now a new documentary series for the Daily Wire called The Pope and the Führer, The Secret Vatican Files of World War II, explores the untold story of Pius.
--:-- Michael Knowles: I'm here to discuss the controversy at the heart of the series.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Michael, thank you so much for coming on.
--:-- Michael Knowles: It's great to be here.
--:-- Michael Knowles: So you've got the seminal event, the key event of the 20th century is the Second World War. Pius XII has been maligned as the silent pope, complicit in Hitler's rise.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Some people, some propagandists have called him Hitler's pope. They've suggested that he was actually supportive of Hitler and encouraging of the Nazi regime.
--:-- Michael Knowles: And it's not true. If anything, the church has been too silent in defending him.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Now a new documentary series for the Daily Wire called The Pope and the Führer, The Secret Vatican Files of World War II, explores the untold story of Pius.
--:-- Michael Knowles: I'm here to discuss the controversy at the heart of the series.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Michael, thank you so much for coming on.
--:-- Michael Knowles: It's great to be here.
--:-- Michael Knowles: The argument is that he didn't get up and give a daily speech every day on the evils of Adolf Hitler.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Even that, I think, is a sort of unfair charge, because if you go back to the pontificate before Pius XII, Pius XI, the papal encyclical Mit Bernendo Sorga came out.
--:-- Michael Knowles: And at this point, the man who becomes Papias XII, Eugenio Pacelli, he's a top Vatican diplomat. He's actually a diplomat in Berlin.
--:-- Michael Knowles: And so he's intimately involved in all of this. And it's unusual. Even that name, Mitbrunendus Orga, is unusual because papal encyclicals tend to come out in Latin.
--:-- Michael Knowles: Mitbrunendus Orga was in German to appeal directly to the German people, had to be smuggled in and around Germany.
--:-- Michael Knowles: And so even before he rises to take on this continuation of Pius XI's pontificate, he was well aware of the problem, working hard to stop the rise of Hitler.
--:-- Michael Knowles: And then when Hitler takes power, you also have to put yourself in the historical context.
--:-- Michael Knowles: It's not as though the Pope had the papal states anymore. It's not as though this were the Middle Ages and the Pope had armies to command and a major temporal power.
--:-- Michael Knowles: After Mussolini and the Lateran Treaty, the Pope is confined to Vatican City.
--:-- Michael Knowles: And that had really been true since the 19th century since Blessed Pius IX.
--:-- Michael Knowles: So you know he had an obligation to the faithful of course but he's, in the Catholic understanding, the vicar of Christ on earth.
--:-- Michael Knowles: He's the head of the universal church.
--:-- Michael Knowles: And so, the relationship between temporal and spiritual authority, that conflict goes all the way back to antiquity.
--:-- Michael Knowles: That is what I think the propagandists have honed in on, is they say, well, this man tried to find a way diplomatically to mitigate Hitler's rise.
--:-- Michael Knowles: And to them, I would ask, first of all, what was the alternative?
--:-- Michael Knowles: And two, what came of that? What was the fruit of that?
--:-- Michael Knowles: And the fruit of that was saving tens or hundreds of thousands, really, of people's lives.
--:-- Michael Knowles: And how did they do that? What did the smuggling efforts look like to get Jews out of Germany?
--:-- Michael Knowles: Well, there's Urbi at Urbi. You know, there's what Pius was able to do in Rome, and there's what Pius was able to do throughout Europe.
--:-- Michael Knowles: And so in Rome, he was working very hard to get Jews in particular to not be loaded onto the boxcars.
--:-- Michael Knowles: And he was largely successful at that.
--:-- Michael Knowles: He was largely successful at protecting Rome's Jewish population.
--:-- Michael Knowles: Then in Germany, there were multiple attempts to take out Hitler.
--:-- Michael Knowles: The most famous one is, of course, Operation Valkyrie didn't work.
--:-- Michael Knowles: But there were networks of spies and informants.
--:-- Michael Knowles: The Vatican was really a meeting grounds for a lot of this information.
--:-- Michael Knowles: But even, so look, you had hundreds of thousands of people who were saved because of the work of the Catholic Church and up to the pontificate.
--:-- Michael Knowles: But he also was speaking. He also was writing. He also had moral clarity. He also had radio addresses.
--:-- Michael Knowles: So, I think of all the calumnies, of all of the historical figures that have been slandered, with Pius XII, it's the most preposterous.
--:-- Michael Knowles: And it's no surprise because the Second World War was a war in large part between two enemies of the church, the communists and the Nazis.
--:-- Michael Knowles: So, when the belligerents were largely made up of the enemies of the church, it's no wonder that the church was so maligned.
--:-- Michael Knowles: In terms of the initial public statements, was there a fear from the Pope that he's actually putting Catholics at risk in Germany?
--:-- Michael Knowles: Or was that part of the equation?
--:-- Michael Knowles: Of course. I mean, you know, again, going back to antiquity, because the church does not measure her time in days and weeks or years, but in centuries and millennia.
--:-- Michael Knowles: Of course, you know, the shepherd has a responsibility to his flock.
--:-- Michael Knowles: He also had to deal with clergy and even bishops who were a little more open to the Nazi regime.
--:-- Michael Knowles: So one in particular who comes up is Bishop Hudall.
--:-- Michael Knowles: Bishop Hudall, who in his own way, actually, I think has been somewhat unfairly maligned.
--:-- Michael Knowles: Hudall famously wrote a book that's been called A Defense of Nazism.
--:-- Michael Knowles: It's really not that.
--:-- Michael Knowles: The Vatican, and we can see this in some of the files, understood that Bishop Hudall was not the most balanced person in the world.
--:-- Michael Knowles: But what Huddall's book was attempting to do was pull whatever good can come out of the Nazi movement out of it and get rid of the bad stuff.
--:-- Michael Knowles: So he condemned explicitly the racial laws and the cruelty and the sins.
--:-- Michael Knowles: Now, you can say, well, that was a stupid strategy that never was going to work.
--:-- Michael Knowles: But even there, you know, it shows you the difficult position that the Pope is in when he even has to corral priests and bishops and make sure that everyone is seeing with great moral clarity that Pius XII possessed what exactly was going on.
--:-- Michael Knowles: Now, one document that you highlighted in the first episode of the series was that in some letter or something, Hitler referred to the Pope as, or Pope Pius, as his number one enemy or his personal enemy.
--:-- Michael Knowles: Tell us a bit about that and why he identified the Pope as his enemy.
--:-- Michael Knowles: Well, there have been attempts to rehabilitate Hitler as some kind of Christian or something.
--:-- Michael Knowles: And I think it's ridiculous when you look—
--:-- Georgia Howe: I'm going to ask you about that, too.
--:-- Michael Knowles: Yes.
--:-- Michael Knowles: I mean, look, Hitler was right when he said that the pope was his enemy, you know, give the devil his due.
--:-- Michael Knowles: Hitler had an idolatrous ideology of the state as being above everything else.
--:-- Michael Knowles: And so you heard the church understand that the crooked cross, the cracked cross of the Nazi swastika would perish and the cross of Christ would remain.
--:-- Michael Knowles: These two ideologies were incompatible.
--:-- Michael Knowles: They were incompatible for many reasons because of the racial cruelty, but ultimately because Hitler recognized that the chief threat to his power, to his Reich, was the church.
--:-- Michael Knowles: And that's been true for tyrants also going all the way back to antiquity.
--:-- Michael Knowles: So one thing that the Nazis tried to do was to create their own version of Christianity, positive Christianity, a Christianity that ultimately would be subservient to the state.
--:-- Michael Knowles: Many tyrants, many states have tried to do that over the years, but that was never going to work.
--:-- Michael Knowles: And so Hitler saw it clearly, Pius saw it clearly.
--:-- Michael Knowles: There might have been some confusion in between, but these two great men, protagonist and antagonist of the war.
--:-- Michael Knowles: In their own way, they understood what the stakes were.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Well, you may have already addressed all you want to say on this topic, but you do hear people making connections today between Christian nationalism and Nazism.
--:-- Michael Knowles: And just wondering, what do you think the connection is there? Or is that just completely propaganda at this point?
--:-- Michael Knowles: No, the connection is that heresy is choosing.
--:-- Michael Knowles: I don't need to tell a scholar such as Mr. Bickley here that you know it comes from the Greek word for choice.
--:-- Michael Knowles: So often, Chesterton wrote wonderfully about this and more eloquently than I will speak, often what a heresy is, is not the promotion of a vice to the exclusion of virtue.
--:-- Michael Knowles: It's the promotion of one virtue to the exclusion of all of the others.
--:-- Michael Knowles: So, patriotism is good. That's actually a virtue.
--:-- Michael Knowles: It's an extension of filial piety.
--:-- Michael Knowles: However, when we make an idol out of the state, we fall into statism, which ignores the other virtues and which in itself becomes vicious.
--:-- Michael Knowles: And so, even ethnos, even having an affinity for people who look like you, you know, or have a shared kind of culture and history, that's not wrong in itself.
--:-- Michael Knowles: What is wrong is when you make an idol out of that to the exclusion of the other virtues.
--:-- Michael Knowles: And so, what the commonality that people draw is, they say, well, Christian nationalism and national socialism draw on kinds of love of nation.
--:-- Michael Knowles: Yes, the difference though is that Christian nationalism, or let's just say a Christian understanding of nationalism, puts nation in its proper place.
--:-- Michael Knowles: And its proper place cannot be above all other considerations, but it has to understand man as a political animal, as a social creature, but as a spiritual creature as well.
--:-- Michael Knowles: We have homes on this earth. We come from a family. We live in homes. We have a home country, but we're also pilgrim wayfarers and we're going to the eternal home, which is not going to be found in this dust.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Now in 2020, the Washington Post reported that there were these newly opened Vatican archives and that they found evidence supposedly that the World War II era pope knew about the mass killing of Jews from his own sources, but kept that matter from the U.S. government.
--:-- Michael Knowles: They also issued somewhat of an apology for providing succor for Nazi soldiers.
--:-- Michael Knowles: What did you make of those documents that supposedly have an apology?
--:-- Michael Knowles: Yeah, it's a bunch of nonsense.
--:-- Michael Knowles: I mean, the one controversial area for a sort of apology would be the rat lines.
--:-- Michael Knowles: And this once again involves Bishop Hudall, who's probably the most prominent of the bishops who were seen to be sympathetic to Nazism.
--:-- Michael Knowles: And I don't mean to paper over it.
--:-- Michael Knowles: I mean, these are very legitimate historical controversies that don't really touch on Pius XII, who, again, to accuse Pius XII of withholding information or intelligence.
--:-- Michael Knowles: First of all, he was a chief diplomat, and he's one of the great heroes of saving the victims of World War II, so spare me.
--:-- Michael Knowles: But one can see all of the important documents in the series, the Pope and the Fuhrer.
--:-- Michael Knowles: But on the rat lines, you know, giving succor to the Nazi war criminals, even that, I think, could be understood as coming from at least a good place, at least a good intention, which is that the war was over.
--:-- Michael Knowles: And Hudall, in perhaps his mistaken understanding of ethics and morality, said, well, okay, these people are now escaping their own persecution, and I'm going to allow them, or I'm going to facilitate their fleeing to Latin America.
--:-- Michael Knowles: Didn't turn out very well for a lot of the Nazi war criminals.
--:-- Michael Knowles: But even that, I think it's reductive and unfair to say that this man was, you know, a Hitler fanatic.
--:-- Michael Knowles: Even someone like Hudal, because you can read him in his own words.
--:-- Michael Knowles: And this is what I think a lot of this comes down to.
--:-- Michael Knowles: It is not possible to look at the documents in the Vatican Secret Archive, and even documents that we knew about decades ago.
--:-- Michael Knowles: It is not possible to read Pius XII in his own words, or read testimony about documents that actually no longer exist, because, as the Vatican knew going back to Pius XI, the fascist government was tapping all the phone lines.
--:-- Michael Knowles: So everything that they were communicating was being intercepted by the Axis.
--:-- Michael Knowles: It's not possible to read what they said and hear what they said and come to the conclusion that the Vatican was in any way sympathetic toward Nazism.
--:-- Michael Knowles: It's not possible.
--:-- Michael Knowles: And on the point of the fascists intercepting the cables, it's also important to remember that the Vatican had had its territory stolen by the Italian state, which was in control of Hitler's chief, one of Hitler's chief allies.
--:-- Michael Knowles: And so, even down to the point that there were questions about Pius XI's death, the event that precipitated Pius XII rising to the seat of Peter, because the doctor for Pius XI was a relative of Mussolini's mistress.
--:-- Michael Knowles: I had never heard that before, and I saw it in the first episode.
--:-- Michael Knowles: It's kind of amazing.
--:-- Michael Knowles: One of the things, and this is, again, this is not an apologist perspective, but the fog of the 1930s, it's hard for us with the clarity of the events playing out and we get to look back at them in history and see where all this was going.
--:-- Michael Knowles: It's very clear to us how evil Nazism is, of course, but how you can't trust Hitler, that he was always playing the game.
--:-- Michael Knowles: It was always going to be war, all that stuff.
--:-- Michael Knowles: But it was, I think a lot of people in the 30s leading up to the beginning of World War II and even into the beginning stages of it, could not believe how evil, how evil Hitler was and how many people were following such an overtly evil force.
--:-- Michael Knowles: Can't, if this many people back it in Germany, this is a reasonable country.
--:-- Michael Knowles: 50 million Frenchmen can't be wrong.
--:-- Michael Knowles: In fact, 50 million Frenchmen are always wrong.
--:-- Michael Knowles: In the case of the Second World War, they mostly just lay down and let the tanks come in.
--:-- Michael Knowles: But the other aspect of the context of the 30s that people can't really understand today, and in part this is because of propaganda that occurred during the Second World War, is the evil of communism.
--:-- Michael Knowles: So you have in Germany throughout Europe rampant communism.
--:-- Michael Knowles: You have immediately preceding the Second World War you have the communists almost conquering Iberia.
--:-- Michael Knowles: You know, you have a Spanish civil war that pits communists against monarchists and Catholics and fascists and this kind of assemblage of people.
--:-- Michael Knowles: And communism is an avowed enemy of the church that predates fascism that the church has been dealing with at this point, you know, since the 19th century.
--:-- Michael Knowles: It's an overt enemy.
--:-- Michael Knowles: I mean, it's an open enemy, right?
--:-- Michael Knowles: As opposed to the early stages of Nazi propaganda where they tried to downplay a lot of these elements.
--:-- Michael Knowles: Even Hitler, and this is again in episode one, Hitler downplays the Jew part when he's openly campaigning and starting to gain leadership roles.
--:-- Michael Knowles: He also downplays his aversion to the church.
--:-- Michael Knowles: Now, this comes out more clearly later on, but he's a pretty crafty politician, that Hitler.
--:-- Michael Knowles: And the situation in Europe was awful.
--:-- Michael Knowles: Again, something else we haven't mentioned is we're dealing with the aftermath of the First World War.
--:-- Michael Knowles: So you've got a terrible problem in Europe.
--:-- Michael Knowles: And then if you put yourself in the position of the Vatican with, in my view, apostolic authority, divinely instituted authority, great moral clarity, but also looking at political realities, there is a war that is breaking out between two people that want to see you destroyed.
--:-- Michael Knowles: And so, given that context, when you see baptismal certificates given to Jews en masse to have them avoid being shipped off to the camps, to allow them to escape to other countries, including in Latin America.
--:-- Michael Knowles: One criticism is, well, why didn't the Vatican issue more?
--:-- Michael Knowles: Put yourself in the political situation.
--:-- Michael Knowles: Had the Vatican just given a carte blanche of baptismal certificates to every single Jew in Europe?
--:-- Michael Knowles: Save no one.
--:-- Michael Knowles: You save no one.
--:-- Michael Knowles: You save no one because it's not as though Pius XII is sitting on his throne, you know, up in the sky.
--:-- Michael Knowles: He has Mussolini breathing down his neck right around the corner.
--:-- Michael Knowles: He's got Hitler breathing down his neck not so far away.
--:-- Michael Knowles: And Hitler had a plan, you know.
--:-- Michael Knowles: I mean, when we say that people were downplaying Hitler's seriousness early on in the rise of the Nazis, that is true from a popular understanding.
--:-- Michael Knowles: But Hitler kind of always knew what he was about.
--:-- Michael Knowles: And so, you know, the Germans are known for their efficiency.
--:-- Michael Knowles: And with Pius XII, the fact that the Vatican was able to do as much good as it was, to me, that's the real story, which has been inverted by other enemies of the church.
--:-- Michael Knowles: Obviously, there's a lot of defense of Pius XII in this for a good reason, because he's been painted in such a negative light.
--:-- Michael Knowles: But what are the lessons to take away from this in terms of the things he should have done, that he could have done more of?
--:-- Michael Knowles: Maybe he should have been more public in some key moments.
--:-- Michael Knowles: Did you have some moments you felt like this is a legitimate qualm you can have with him in this particular instance or maybe trends in terms of how he led through this period?
--:-- Michael Knowles: No, really. I don't.
--:-- Michael Knowles: I mean, I don't really have a criticism of him.
--:-- Michael Knowles: I have criticisms of other bishops.
--:-- Michael Knowles: I have criticisms of some of the clergy or even some of the laity.
--:-- Michael Knowles: I have, with retrospect, the ability to look back and say, well, you know, had church teaching been clearer before, say, Mit Bernander Sorga, you know, fine.
--:-- Michael Knowles: But you're dealing with such a tumultuous period, such a period of massive change in the teens, 20s, and 30s, that I think even that is sort of an unfair criticism.
--:-- Michael Knowles: The takeaway lesson for me, though, is the uneasiness of living in a fallen world and aiming at spiritual Jerusalem in a world of political powers and principalities and powers.
--:-- Michael Knowles: Because it's astounding to me in many ways that the church could have walked this via media.
--:-- Michael Knowles: The church really had the Nazis' numbers from the beginning and was able to maintain that moral clarity and surreptitious clarity, you know, down to the Scavi, all the way up to attempting to save people around Rome and around the rest of Europe, even amidst all the intense political pressure to pick a side.
--:-- Michael Knowles: But you don't, actually.
--:-- Michael Knowles: A lot of people think that we have to pick a side between the brown shirts and the red shirts and the black shirts in Italy.
--:-- Michael Knowles: You don't.
--:-- Michael Knowles: You don't.
--:-- Michael Knowles: You can pick the white cassock of the Holy Church.
--:-- Michael Knowles: You strike me as pretty eloquent.
--:-- Michael Knowles: You should, I don't know, have your own podcast or something.
--:-- Michael Knowles: You know, that's a great idea.
--:-- Michael Knowles: Daily Wire will green light stuff.
--:-- Michael Knowles: It takes a few years.
--:-- Michael Knowles: That's good, because I told years ago, you know, when I met Ben Shapiro, he told me my check would be arriving in the mail any day now.
--:-- Michael Knowles: That was in 2015.
--:-- Michael Knowles: It's coming, Ben.
--:-- Michael Knowles: I'll check with the accounting department.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Yeah, okay.
--:-- Michael Knowles: Well, Michael, thank you so much for coming on, and now we know who our Catholicism expert's going to be.
--:-- Michael Knowles: Andrew Klaben. Great.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Great.
--:-- Michael Knowles: Great. Thank you for having me.
--:-- Michael Knowles: It's great to be in here.
--:-- Michael Knowles: So fun, man.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Let's do it again.
--:-- Michael Knowles: I walk by this place all the time.
--:-- Georgia Howe: All you got to do is host a whole other documentary series.
--:-- Michael Knowles: You can come back on.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Who should we do next?
--:-- Michael Knowles: I don't know.
--:-- Georgia Howe: John XXIII?
--:-- Michael Knowles: Paul VI?
--:-- Georgia Howe: That's somebody.
--:-- Michael Knowles: Oh, yeah.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Yeah.
--:-- Michael Knowles: Urban II?
--:-- Georgia Howe: That'd be a good one.
--:-- Michael Knowles: Urban II.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Okay.
--:-- Michael Knowles: That was Michael Knowles discussing his new Daily Wire documentary series, The Pope and the Führer, The Secret Vatican Files of World War II.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And this has been a weekend edition of Morning Wire.
--:-- John Bickley: Thank you.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Thank you.
--:-- John Bickley: Thank you.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Thank you.
--:-- [Sound of a morning news theme song fades in]
--:-- Georgia Howe: Morning Wire is presented by Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief, John Bickley, and co-host Georgia Howe.
--:-- John Bickley: Get daily coverage of the latest developments in politics, culture, education, sports, and more.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Wake up with Morning Wire and get the facts first on the news you need to know.
--:-- John Bickley: Trust in the media is at an all-time low.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And there's a reason—endless virtue signaling and manufactured outrage.
--:-- John Bickley: Finally, there's an alternative.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Morning Wire is presented by Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief, John Bickley, and co-host Georgia Howe.
--:-- John Bickley: Get daily coverage of the latest developments in politics, culture, education, sports, and more.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Wake up with Morning Wire and get the facts first on the news you need to know.
--:-- John Bickley: Trust in the media is at an all-time low.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And there's a reason—endless virtue signaling and manufactured outrage.
--:-- John Bickley: Finally, there's an alternative.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Morning Wire is presented by Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief, John Bickley, and co-host Georgia Howe.
--:-- John Bickley: Get daily coverage of the latest developments in politics, culture, education, sports, and more.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Wake up with Morning Wire and get the facts first on the news you need to know.
--:-- [Sound of a morning news theme song fades out]
