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Church of Spies
The Pope's Secret War Against Hitler
Contributors
Formats and Prices
- On Sale
- Sep 29, 2015
- Page Count
- 384 pages
- Publisher
- Basic Books
- ISBN-13
- 9780465061556
Price
$12.99Price
$15.99 CADFormat
Format:
- ebook $12.99 $15.99 CAD
- Trade Paperback $21.99 $28.99 CAD
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around September 29, 2015. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
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“A groundbreaking new history of the Vatican-German Resistance. . . . Writing with the craft of a novelist and the conscience of a meticulous scholar, Riebling has produced a masterly account.” —National Review
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, 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.
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“A page-turning book. . . . Fascinating.”Wall Street Journal
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“A groundbreaking new history of the Vatican-German Resistance. . . . Writing with the craft of a novelist and the conscience of a meticulous scholar, Riebling has produced a masterly account.”National Review
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“A remarkable book. . . . Riebling has written what is one of the more important books on intelligence of the year.”Washington Times
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“Church of Spies adds a mass of new evidence to what we know, now, about what the Pope and the Church did to deal with the mortal threat to civilization posed by Hitler and German National Socialism. . . . A great read.”George Weigel, First Things
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“Immensely well-informed and hugely engrossing.”Law and Liberty
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“Riebling, in thorough research and documentation, shows that Pius XII, rather than being an acquiescent enabler of the Nazi’s genocidal designs, was an active participant in an intrigue whose goal was the assassination of the Führer.”Jewish Week
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“Riebling recounts in a fast, readable style the fumblings, betrayals, and bad luck that plagued attempts to remove Hitler.”Joseph Bottum, Washington Free Beacon
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“An amazing book that combines the rigor of history with the storytelling of a novel.”War on the Rocks
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“Riebling’s compelling new evidence should put to rest the propaganda charging that Pius XII was at best a weak reed and at worst a Nazi sympathizer.”Crisis Magazine
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“By weaving together numerous storylines in a chronological fashion from 1939 to 1945, the history of this period reads more like an exciting popular fiction spy novel than an academic work. . . . An extremely readable and interesting work.”H-Net
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“Riebling’s book is beautifully written, and reads like a novel. . . . Riveting.”Catholic World Report
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“The wealth of detail the author has unearthed by his meticulous research . . . is impressive and absolutely damning against those who mendaciously have attacked Pius XII as either the silent Pope or even a sub rosa ally of Hitler. This book is highly recommended.”American Catholic
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“Fascinating . . . offers a compelling narrative of the actions taken by Pope Pius to stop Hitler from carrying out his campaign of world domination and ethnic cleansing.”Breitbart News
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“A revealing history of Pius’ wartime dealings with the German resistance to Nazi rule. . . . Readers will be surprised at the steady stream of anti-Hitler conspiracies, several of which reached the point where dates were set and bombs assembled.”HistoryNet
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“This is simply the finest work on the subject in print.”Contemporary Church History Quarterly
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“Crackles with suspense . . . serves up surprises. . . . This book inspires and cautions. . . . If World War II, the modern papacy, or the ‘Pius War’ interests you at all, get this book.”America Magazine
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“Church of Spies . . . truly is a treasure trove of surprising information.”Catholic News Service
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“Not only a dramatic disclosure of the Vatican’s covert actions, but also an absorbing, polished story for all readers of World War II history.”Kirkus Reviews
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“Clandestine organizations are hard to reconstruct and Riebling has mined an impressive array of archival sources to tell this fascinating story.”Library Journal
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“This gripping book, the product of extensive and fine-grained historical research, should change the course of the ‘Pius Wars,’ if both critics and defenders of Pius XII take its evidence seriously.”George Weigel, author of Witness to Hope
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“Mark Riebling documents how people of faith linked arms against evil that was Nazism and did not turn a blind eye against it. This is a fascinating, riveting, and a deeply important corrective to the false narrative about the Catholic church during World War II.”Eric Metaxas, author of Letter to the American Church
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“A fascinating contribution to the literature on the Holocaust, the history of the papacy, and the life of Pius XII.”Sam Harris, author of Waking Up
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“Without minimizing the complicity of individual Christians, or the role of Christian anti-Semitism, Mark Riebling shows that the Vatican took a very powerful stance against the Nazis. It is especially important for Jewish people—and I am Jewish myself— that this information is now being gathered for all to see.”Martin Gilbert, author of The First World War
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“In this exciting and original work, Mark Riebling has unearthed vital new sources, and he writes elegantly and persuasively on a fascinating subject that has remained hidden in history’s shadows.”Michael Burleigh, author of The Third Reich
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“In Church of Spies, Mark Riebling provides a groundbreaking and riveting account of Pope Pius XII’s secret war against Hitler. This richly documented book makes an important contribution to contemporary scholarship about Pius XII and to our understanding of the historical legacy of his pontificate.”Rabbi David Dalin, author of The Myth of Hitler’s Pope
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“Mark Riebling has set himself a high bar in turning conventional wisdom on its head. By combining new archival material with a lively and convincing narrative he has created a new account of a secret war previously overlooked. This is a highly original contribution to intelligence history.”Col. Rose Mary Sheldon, Virginia Military Institute
