THE SILENCE OF PIUS XII

Little, Brown, Boston, 1970, 1^st American Ed/former library book.  Hard cover, 430 pages including Appendix, Notes, Bibliography, and Index.  Heavy wear to spine ends, lower corners and lower edges, with some board exposed; binding sound with a slight lean.  Laminate covered dust jacket with label at lower spine taped to boards.  Some soil and age-spotting on outer page block.  Usual library identifiers within, pocket and date sheet removed from rear end paper.  Occasional pencil underlines in text.  ‘… is designed to counteract the error of earlier interpretations by the use of well-founded argumentation based on documents never before used.  Carlo Falconi reveals the reasons why a man of Pius XII’s courageous character and vast power maintained almost total silence, even though he knew the immensity of Hitler’s atrocities. … a chillingly convincing picture of Pope Pius XII, a devastating portrait of a man so caught up with diplomacy that he could not abandon it for more radical means of action.  It is the story of a man so tortured by his inability to act meaningfully against mass murder and violence that he made his postwar life into a kind of penance for his great sin of inaction.’ (from front flap)