An Overly Biased Debunking of the 'Black Legend' Cover Image

Až příliš zaujaté vyvracení "černé legendy"
An Overly Biased Debunking of the 'Black Legend'

Author(s): Marek Šmíd
Subject(s): History, Political history, WW II and following years (1940 - 1949), Fascism, Nazism and WW II
Published by: AV ČR - Akademie věd České republiky - Ústav pro soudobé dějiny
Keywords: WWII;Vatican City State;nazism

Summary/Abstract: Guiducci, Pierluigi. Oltre la leggenda nera: Il Vaticano e la fuga dei criminali nazisti. Milan: Mursia, 2015, 430 pp., ISBN 978-8842555483.The book under review, by an Italian historian and lawyer, is about the attractive topic of the role of the Roman Catholic Church, particularly the Vatican, in helping Nazi war criminals to avoid justice after the Second World War and to escape to countries of Western Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America. This dense work, which skilfully places the Vatican into international events after the Second World War, is based on the author’s many years of research in the archives not only of the Vatican, but also of other countries in Europe and America. The result is a well-supported argument against the surviving ideological clichés used by some historians and against the black-and-white way of looking at things used by journalists. The author absolutely rejects the idea that senior members of the Vatican consciously helped Nazi officials. This might make his approach seem too much like apologetics, but the final judgement, according to the reviewer, can only be made after the relevant records of the Vatican Secret Archives have been made public.

  • Issue Year: XXIII/2016
  • Issue No: 3
  • Page Range: 483-486
  • Page Count: 4
  • Language: Czech