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Church Of Spies
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Download or read book Church of Spies written by Mark Riebling and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2015-09-29 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The heart-pounding history of how Pope Pius XII -- often labeled "Hitler's Pope" -- was in fact an anti-Nazi spymaster, plotting against the Third Reich during World War II. The Vatican's silence in the face of Nazi atrocities remains one of the great controversies of our time. History has accused wartime pontiff Pius the Twelfth of complicity in the Holocaust and dubbed him "Hitler's Pope." But a key part of the story has remained untold. Pope Pius in fact ran the world's largest church, smallest state, and oldest spy service. Saintly but secretive, he sent birthday cards to Hitler -- while secretly plotting to kill him. He skimmed from church charities to pay covert couriers, and surreptitiously tape-recorded his meetings with top Nazis. Under his leadership the Vatican spy ring actively plotted against the Third Reich. Told with heart-pounding suspense and drawing on secret transcripts and unsealed files by an acclaimed author, Church of Spies throws open the Vatican's doors to reveal some of the most astonishing events in the history of the papacy. Riebling reveals here how the world's greatest moral institution met the greatest moral crisis in history.
Download or read book God's Spies written by Elisabeth Braw and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2019-09-17 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The real-life cloak-and-dagger story of how East Germany’s notorious spy agency infiltrated churches here and abroad East Germany only existed for a short forty years, but in that time, the country’s secret police, the Stasi, developed a highly successful “church department” that—using persuasion rather than threats—managed to recruit an extraordinary stable of clergy spies. Pastors, professors, seminary students, and even bishops spied on colleagues, other Christians, and anyone else they could report about to their handlers in the Stasi. Thanks to its pastor spies, the Church Department (official name: Department XX/4) knew exactly what was happening and being planned in the country’s predominantly Lutheran churches. Yet ultimately it failed in its mission: despite knowing virtually everything about East German Christians, the Stasi couldn’t prevent the church-led protests that erupted in 1989 and brought down the Berlin Wall.
Download or read book Hitler's Pope written by John Cornwell and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2000-10-01 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The “explosive” (The New York Times) bestseller that “redefined the history of the twentieth century” (The Washington Post ) This shocking book was the first account to tell the whole truth about Pope Pius XII's actions during World War II, and it remains the definitive account of that era. It sparked a firestorm of controversy both inside and outside the Catholic Church. Award-winning journalist John Cornwell has also included in this seminal work of history an introduction that both answers his critics and reaffirms his overall thesis that Pius XII fatally weakened the Catholic Church with his endorsement of Hitler—and sealed the fate of the Jews in Europe.
Book Synopsis The Pope and Mussolini by : David I. Kertzer
Download or read book The Pope and Mussolini written by David I. Kertzer and published by Random House. This book was released on 2014-01-28 with total page 593 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE From National Book Award finalist David I. Kertzer comes the gripping story of Pope Pius XI’s secret relations with Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. This groundbreaking work, based on seven years of research in the Vatican and Fascist archives, including reports from Mussolini’s spies inside the highest levels of the Church, will forever change our understanding of the Vatican’s role in the rise of Fascism in Europe. The Pope and Mussolini tells the story of two men who came to power in 1922, and together changed the course of twentieth-century history. In most respects, they could not have been more different. One was scholarly and devout, the other thuggish and profane. Yet Pius XI and “Il Duce” had many things in common. They shared a distrust of democracy and a visceral hatred of Communism. Both were prone to sudden fits of temper and were fiercely protective of the prerogatives of their office. (“We have many interests to protect,” the Pope declared, soon after Mussolini seized control of the government in 1922.) Each relied on the other to consolidate his power and achieve his political goals. In a challenge to the conventional history of this period, in which a heroic Church does battle with the Fascist regime, Kertzer shows how Pius XI played a crucial role in making Mussolini’s dictatorship possible and keeping him in power. In exchange for Vatican support, Mussolini restored many of the privileges the Church had lost and gave in to the pope’s demands that the police enforce Catholic morality. Yet in the last years of his life—as the Italian dictator grew ever closer to Hitler—the pontiff’s faith in this treacherous bargain started to waver. With his health failing, he began to lash out at the Duce and threatened to denounce Mussolini’s anti-Semitic racial laws before it was too late. Horrified by the threat to the Church-Fascist alliance, the Vatican’s inner circle, including the future Pope Pius XII, struggled to restrain the headstrong pope from destroying a partnership that had served both the Church and the dictator for many years. The Pope and Mussolini brims with memorable portraits of the men who helped enable the reign of Fascism in Italy: Father Pietro Tacchi Venturi, Pius’s personal emissary to the dictator, a wily anti-Semite known as Mussolini’s Rasputin; Victor Emmanuel III, the king of Italy, an object of widespread derision who lacked the stature—literally and figuratively—to stand up to the domineering Duce; and Cardinal Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli, whose political skills and ambition made him Mussolini’s most powerful ally inside the Vatican, and positioned him to succeed the pontiff as the controversial Pius XII, whose actions during World War II would be subject for debate for decades to come. With the recent opening of the Vatican archives covering Pius XI’s papacy, the full story of the Pope’s complex relationship with his Fascist partner can finally be told. Vivid, dramatic, with surprises at every turn, The Pope and Mussolini is history writ large and with the lightning hand of truth.
Book Synopsis Spies in the Vatican by : David J. Alvarez
Download or read book Spies in the Vatican written by David J. Alvarez and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ranging across two centuries of world history, Alvarez's fascinating study throws open the Vatican's doors to reveal the startling but little-known world of espionage in one of the most sacred places on earth.
Download or read book The Entity written by Eric Frattini and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2008-11-25 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The International Bestseller "A true story that surpasses any novel by John le Carré."—El País (Spain) For five centuries, the Vatican—the oldest organization in the world, maker of kings and shaper of history—has used a secret spy service, called the Holy Alliance, or later, the Entity, to carry out its will. Forty popes have relied on it to carry out their policies. They have played a hitherto invisible role confronting de-Christianizations and schisms, revolutions and dictators, colonizations and expulsions, persecutions and attacks, civil wars and world wars, assassinations and kidnappings. For the first time in English (following the bestselling Spanish and French editions), Eric Frattini tells the comprehensive tale of this sacred secret service. The Entity has been involved in the killings of monarchs, poisonings of diplomats, financing of South American dictators, protection of war criminals, laundering of Mafia money, manipulation of financial markets, provocation of bank failures, and financing of arms sales to combatants even as their wars were condemned, all in the name of God. The contradiction between God's justice and Earth's justice, Christian beliefs and Christian power all fall before the motto of the Entity: With the Cross and the Sword.
Book Synopsis Spies in the Vatican by : John Koehler
Download or read book Spies in the Vatican written by John Koehler and published by . This book was released on 2009-08-04 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Evaluates the Soviet Union's espionage campaign against the Catholic Church, drawing on previously unseen documents to reveal an assassination order against Pope John Paul II and a Russian spy network intent on infiltrating church infrastructure.
Download or read book Wedge written by Mark Riebling and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-06-15 with total page 598 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prophetic when first published, even more relevant now, Wedge is the classic, definitive story of the secret war America has waged against itself. Based on scores of interviews with former spies and thousands of declassified documents, Wedge reveals and re-creates -- battle by battle, bungle by bungle -- the epic clash that has made America uniquely vulnerable to its enemies. For more than six decades, the opposed and overlapping missions of the FBI and CIA -- and the rival personalities of cops and spies -- have caused fistfights and turf tangles, breakdowns and cover-ups, public scandals and tragic deaths. A grand panorama of dramatic episodes, peopled by picaresque secret agents from Ian Fleming to Oliver North, Wedge is both a journey and a warning. From Pearl Harbor, McCarthyism, and the plots to kill Castro through the JFK assassination, Watergate, and Iran Contra down to the Aldrich Ames affair, Robert Hanssen's treachery, and the hunt for Al Qaeda -- Wedge shows the price America has paid for its failure to resolve the conflict between law enforcement and intelligence. Gripping and authoritative -- and updated with an important new epilogue, carrying the action through to September 11, 2001 -- Wedge is the only book about the schism that has informed nearly every major blunder in American espionage.
Book Synopsis Dr. Benjamin Church, Spy by : JOHN A. NAGY
Download or read book Dr. Benjamin Church, Spy written by JOHN A. NAGY and published by . This book was released on 2017-09-22 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dr. Benjamin Church, Jr. (1734-1778) was a respected medical man and civic leader in colonial Boston who was accused of being an agent for the British in the 1770s, providing compromising intelligence about the plans of the provincial leadership in Massachusetts as well as important information from the meetings of the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia. In Dr. Benjamin Church, Spy: A Case of Espionage on the Eve of the American Revolution, noted authority John A. Nagy has scoured original documents to establish the best case against Church, identifying previously unacknowledged correspondence and reports as containing references to the doctor and his activities, and noting an incriminating letter in the possession of the Library of Congress that is a coded communication composed by Church to his British contact. Nagy shows that at the cusp of the revolution, when the possibility--let alone the outcome--of an American colonial rebellion was far from assured, Church sought to align himself with the side he thought would emerge victorious--the British crown--and thus line his pockets with money that he desperately needed. A fascinating investigation into a centuries-old intrigue, this well-researched volume is an important contribution to American Revolution scholarship.
Book Synopsis The Pope at War by : David I. Kertzer
Download or read book The Pope at War written by David I. Kertzer and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-11-17 with total page 664 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Filled with discoveries, this is the dramatic story of Pope Pius XII's struggle to response to the Second World War, the Holocaust, and the Nazi domination of Europe.The Pope at War is the third in a trilogy of books about Pope Pius XII's response to the rise of Fascism and Nazism. It tells the dramatic story of Pope Pius XII's struggle to respond to the Second World War, the Holocaust, and the ongoing Nazi attempts to exterminate the Jews of Europe. It is the first book dealing with the war to make extensive use of the newly opened Vatican archives for the war years. It is based, as well, on thousands of documents from the Italian, German,French, British, and American archives. Among the many new discoveries brought to light is the discovery that within weeks of becoming pope in 1939, Pius XII entered into secret negotiations with Hitler through Hitler's emissary, a Nazi Prince who was married to the daughter of the King of Italy and who was veryclose to Hitler. The negotiations were kept so secret that not even the German ambassador to the Holy See was informed of them. The book also offers new insight into the thinking behind Pius XII's decision to maintain good relations with the German government during the war, including keeping the Germans happy while they occupied Rome in 1943-1944. And throughout, David I. Kertzer shows the active role of the Italian Church hierarchy in promoting the Axis war while the pope, who as bishop ofRome was responsible for the Italian hierarchy, offered his silent blessings and cast his public speeches in such a way that both sides could claim support for their cause.
Book Synopsis The Myth of Hitler's Pope by : David G. Dalin
Download or read book The Myth of Hitler's Pope written by David G. Dalin and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-03-28 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Was Pope Pius XII secretly in league with Adolf Hitler? No, says Rabbi David G. Dalin, but there was a cleric in league with Hitler: the grand mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini. As Pope Pius XII worked to save Jews from the Nazis, the grand mufti became Hitler’s staunch ally and a promoter of the Holocaust, with a legacy that feeds radical Islam today. In this shocking and thoroughly documented book, Rabbi Dalin explodes the myth of Hitler’s pope and condemns the mythmakers for not only rewriting history, but for denying the testimony of Holocaust survivors, hijacking the Holocaust for unseemly political ends, and ignoring the real threat to the Jewish people.
Book Synopsis Catholics Confronting Hitler by : Peter Bartley
Download or read book Catholics Confronting Hitler written by Peter Bartley and published by Ignatius Press. This book was released on 2016-09-21 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written with economy and in chronological order, this book offers a comprehensive account of the response to the Nazi tyranny by Pope Pius XII, his envoys, and various representatives of the Catholic Church in every country where Nazism existed before and during WWII. Peter Bartley makes extensive use of primary sources letters, diaries, memoirs, official government reports, German and British. He manifestly quotes the works of several prominent Nazis, of churchmen, diplomats, members of the Resistance, and ordinary Jews and gentiles who left eye-witness accounts of life under the Nazis, in addition to the wartime correspondence between Pius XII and President Roosevelt. This book reveals how resistance to Hitler and rescue work engaged many churchmen and laypeople at all levels, and was often undertaken in collaboration with Protestants and Jews. The Church paid a high price in many countries for its resistance, with hundreds of churches closed down, bishops exiled or martyred, and many priests shot or sent to Nazi death camps. Bartley also explores the supposed inaction of the German bishops over Hitler's oppression of the Jews, showing that the Reich Concordat did not deter the hierarchy and clergy from protesting the regime's iniquities or from rescuing its victims. While giving clear evidence for Papal condemnation of the Jewish persecution, he also explains why Pius XII could not completely set aside the language of diplomacy and be more openly vocal in his rebuke of the Nazis.
Download or read book Ratline written by Peter Levenda and published by Nicolas-Hays, Inc.. This book was released on 2012-04-17 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ratline is the documented history about the mechanisms by which thousands of other Nazi war criminals fled to the remotest parts of the globe—including quite possibly Adolf Hitler. It is a story involving Soviet spies, Nazi priests, and a network of Catholic monasteries and safe houses known as the ratline. The name of one priest in particular, Monsignor Draganovic, was discovered by the author in a diary found in Indonesia. Why would this name turn up in a document written in a spidery German hand in a remote island in Indonesia? As famed author Peter Levenda began his research, more information came to light: In December of 2009, it was revealed that the skull the Russians claimed was Hitler’s—salvaged from the bunker in 1945—was not that of Hitler! In 2010, files from the Office of Special Investigations of the Justice Department were declassified, revealing a history of American intelligence providing cover for Nazi war criminals. The mystery deepened, and the author returned to his own roots hunting Nazis in North America, South America and Europe. He revisited old contacts, made some new ones, and gradually the explosive story was revealed: there is no forensic evidence to prove that Adolf Hitler died in the bunker in April 1945!
Book Synopsis Spies of Mississippi by : Rick Bowers
Download or read book Spies of Mississippi written by Rick Bowers and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2010-01-12 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Spies of Mississippi is a compelling story of how state spies tried to block voting rights for African Americans during the Civil Rights era. This book sheds new light on one of the most momentous periods in American history. Author Rick Bowers has combed through primary-source materials and interviewed surviving activists named in once-secret files, as well as the writings and oral histories of Mississippi civil rights leaders. Readers get first-hand accounts of how neighbors spied on neighbors, teachers spied on students, ministers spied on church-goers, and spies even spied on spies. The Spies of Mississippi will inspire readers with the stories of the brave citizens who overcame the forces of white supremacy to usher in a new era of hope and freedom—an age that has recently culminated in the election of Barack Obama
Book Synopsis Double Crossed by : Matthew Avery Sutton
Download or read book Double Crossed written by Matthew Avery Sutton and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2019-09-24 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The untold story of the Christian missionaries who played a crucial role in the allied victory in World War II What makes a good missionary makes a good spy. Or so thought "Wild" Bill Donovan when he secretly recruited a team of religious activists for the Office of Strategic Services. They entered into a world of lies, deception, and murder, confident that their nefarious deeds would eventually help them expand the kingdom of God. In Double Crossed, historian Matthew Avery Sutton tells the extraordinary story of the entwined roles of spy-craft and faith in a world at war. Missionaries, priests, and rabbis, acutely aware of how their actions seemingly conflicted with their spiritual calling, carried out covert operations, bombings, and assassinations within the centers of global religious power, including Mecca, the Vatican, and Palestine. Working for eternal rewards rather than temporal spoils, these loyal secret soldiers proved willing to sacrifice and even to die for Franklin Roosevelt's crusade for global freedom of religion. Chosen for their intelligence, powers of persuasion, and ability to seamlessly blend into different environments, Donovan's recruits included people like John Birch, who led guerilla attacks against the Japanese, William Eddy, who laid the groundwork for the Allied invasion of North Africa, and Stewart Herman, who dropped lone-wolf agents into Nazi Germany. After securing victory, those who survived helped establish the CIA, ensuring that religion continued to influence American foreign policy. Surprising and absorbing at every turn, Double Crossed is the untold story of World War II espionage and a profound account of the compromises and doubts that war forces on those who wage it.
Book Synopsis A Parliament of Spies by : Cassandra Clark
Download or read book A Parliament of Spies written by Cassandra Clark and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2012-01-31 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abbess Hildegard may consider herself "just a nun with no useful skills or connections," yet her loyalty and intelligence have brought her to the attention of King Richard II himself--not the safest place to be, when the king has enemies on all sides.
Book Synopsis Hitler and the Vatican by : Peter Godman
Download or read book Hitler and the Vatican written by Peter Godman and published by Free Press. This book was released on 2007-07-27 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For years, the policies of the Catholic Church during the rise and terribly destructive rule of the Nazis have been controversial. Pope Pius XII has been attacked as "Hitler's Pope," an anti-Semitic enabler who refused to condemn Nazism, much less urge Catholics to resist the German regime. The Church has been accused of standing by while the Nazis steadily revealed their evil designs. Yet all such arguments have been based only on sketchy evidence. The Vatican has kept its internal workings secret and locked away from scrutiny. Until now. In February 2003, the Vatican opened its archives for the crucial years of the Nazi consolidation of power, up until 1939. Peter Godman, thanks to his long experience in Vatican sources and his reputation as an impartial, non-Catholic historian of the Church, was one of the first scholars to explore the new documents. The story they tell is revelatory and surprising and forces a major revision of the history of the 1930s. It is a story that reveals the innermost workings of the Vatican, an institution far more fractured than monolithic, one that allowed legalism to trump moral outrage. Godman's narrative is doubly shocking: At first, the Church planned to condemn Nazism as heretical, and drafted several variations of its charges in the mid-1930s. However, as Mussolini drew close to Hitler, and Pope Pius XI grew more concerned about communism than fascism, the charge was reduced to a denunciation only of bolshevism. The Church abandoned its moral attack on the Nazis and retreated to diplomacy, complaining about treaty violations and delivering weak protests while the horrors of religious persecution mounted. As Godman demonstrates, the policies of Pius XII were all determined by his predecessor, Pius XI. The Church was misled not so much by "Hitler's Pope" as by a tragic miscalculation and a special relationship with the Italian government. Mussolini toyed with the Church, even proposing that Hitler be excommunicated. Yet in the end, when presented with further evidence of Nazi depredations, Pius XI could only comment, "Kindly God, who has allowed all this to happen at present, undoubtedly has His purpose." Reproducing the key Church documents in full and quoting verbatim conversations between Pius XI and his bishops, Hitler and the Vatican is the most extraordinary look inside the secretive Vatican ever written.
