GUERRA MONDIALE, II. - On 1 September 1939 Germany attacked Poland: this was the date on which the Second World War began. France and England immediately intervened on the side of the attacked power; Italy and Russia, respectively bound to Germany by the so-called Pact of Steel and by a non-aggression treaty, did not move. After occupying Poland in a lightning campaign as far as the Vistula and the San, the German army remained inactive during the following winter, then resumed the offensive in the spring of 1940 and occupied Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, and France.
After the capitulation of the French army (the Compiègne armistice, 21 June 1940) and Italy’s intervention on Germany’s side (10 June 1940), the German military initiative was shattered by the resistance of the British Empire. In 1941 the Axis Powers occupied Yugoslavia and Greece and, in June of that same year, supported by Finland, Hungary, and Romania, declared war on Russia. In December 1941 Japan too, allied with Germany and Italy, intervened in Asia against the United States (which then entered the war) and against the democratic powers, and occupied the Philippines, Indonesia, Indochina, the Malay Peninsula, and Burma. After the failure of the German attack against Russia in 1942, the Axis powers’ adversaries went over to the counteroffensive: the battles of el-Alamein (October 1942) in Egypt and of Stalingrad (28 July 1942–1 February 1943) in Russia marked the beginning of this new phase of the conflict. The landings in North Africa, Sicily, and the Italian Peninsula (July–September 1943), in France (June 1944), and the Russian offensives of 1944 and 1945, together with the systematic bombing of enemy industrial centers by the Allied air forces, decided the fate of the Second World War. Germany too (Italy had already signed the armistice on 8 September 1943) was forced to capitulate unconditionally on 8 May 1945. In the Far East, the war against Japan continued until August of that same year.
Upon learning of Germany’s denunciation (28 April 1939) of the Treaties with Poland and Great Britain, the Holy See began feverish diplomatic activity in the various European capitals, with the aim of persuading the powers concerned to resolve the disputed issues by common agreement and renounce the scourge of a new world conflict. The mediation efforts of Pius XII nevertheless encountered the intransigence of Germany and Poland: the former determined at all costs to unleash the conflict if it did not obtain satisfaction in the question of Danzig, the latter likewise unwilling to make any concession to the other side. Thus the words spoken by the Pontiff in his radio message of 24 August 1939 fell on deaf ears: «It is through the power of reason, not that of arms, that justice makes its way. And empires not founded on justice are not blessed by God. Politics emancipated from morality betrays those same people who will it so... Nothing is lost through peace. Everything may be lost through war. Let men return to understanding one another. Let them resume negotiations. By negotiating in good will and with respect for one another’s rights, they will realize that sincere and constructive negotiations are never denied an honorable success». Every exhortation was in vain. Once war broke out, the Holy See immediately established an information office for prisoners of war and requested the respective governments to transmit lists of prisoners. Germany alone, claiming that such lists were already being communicated to the International Red Cross in Geneva, did not accept this request. This was one of many indications of the policy unfavorable to the Holy See pursued by the government of the Third Reich. Between the National Socialist conception and the Catholic one there existed an irreconcilable conflict of principles, a conflict that intensified from day to day during the war. The abandonment of the law of truth and love of Jesus Christ, and the preference given to religious and moral agnosticism—not only in Germany but throughout the world—these were the moral causes of the outbreak of the new conflict, analyzed by Pius XII in his first encyclical, Summi pontificatus, of 20 October 1939. Although unable to bring the carnage to an end, the Holy See nevertheless sought in some way to alleviate the fate of peoples and of individuals particularly affected. Spiritual and material assistance (the dispatch of food and medicines) knew no restraint. The task was particularly difficult because, as the Pope said in an address to the Sacred College on 2 June 1942, «the prolongation of the armed conflict, the feverish increase of the instruments of war, and the progressive intensification of methods of warfare mean that the supernatural and peace-making mission of the Church encounters opposition, difficulties, and misunderstandings of a kind and on a scale unknown and unsuspected in past times, and which become dangers for her and for her work». Although relations with Hitlerian Germany became increasingly difficult because of the obvious measures of hostility toward the Catholic Church implemented under the pretext of the state of war, the Holy See never abandoned its strictly neutral attitude. First and foremost solicitous of his mission of charity, Pius XII received favorably the news of the arrival of a personal envoy of the President of the United States at the Vatican «to promote and direct our common efforts for peace and for the consolation of the afflicted» (letter from President F. D. Roosevelt to Pius XII, 23 December 1939). The strictest neutrality did not, however, exclude fidelity to the doctrines of the Church and of Catholicism, and during the conflict the Pontiff never refrained from condemning certain political conceptions contrary to these principles. The Italian armistice of 8 September 1943 and the subsequent German occupation of Rome did not alter the international status of Vatican City. The Germans respected it, as did the Allies afterward. Political refugees found a secure refuge there, although on the night of 3–4 February 1944 units of the Republic of Salò forcibly entered the buildings of the Basilica of S. Paolo and violated the rights of extraterritoriality guaranteed by the Lateran Treaty. This was an isolated incident, as was the dropping of bombs by an aircraft on 3 March 1944 over areas adjacent to Vatican City. Meanwhile, the charitable activity of the Holy See intensified further through the establishment of the Pontifical Commission for Assistance, which extended its work indiscriminately to all categories of indigent persons who were victims of the war. As during the First World War, the missions were particularly tested in this conflict as well, especially those in East Asia.
The end of the conflict left behind it an immense field of ruins. Spiritual and material ruins, which laid bare in all its harshness the profound crisis of human society: a world awaiting an economic and social renovatio which, without a spiritual and religious rebirth, remains a flatus vocis; man placed at a crossroads between spirit and matter, between awareness of himself and the dispersal of his own self in the amorphousness of the mass. This was the present crisis of civilization, powerfully portrayed by Fr. Delp on New Year’s Eve 1944, while he was awaiting death imprisoned in the Nazi jails. And at the end of the Second World War, the Church’s mission is that indicated by Fr. Delp: to resolve human problems concretely, and to help all humanity rediscover the way indicated by Christ.