Pressing for Peace after Pearl Harbor: American Catholic Newspapers’ Dilemma

Throughout the Nazi era, the Vatican maintained its stance in favor of neutrality and against war. American Catholic newspapers, most of which were controlled by dioceses, did not have much difficulty hewing to the Vatican line during the first nine years of Nazi rule. They enthusiastically published the Vatican’s entreaties for peace. They editorialized against Americans Jews supposedly dragging the United States toward war with Germany. They remained firmly isolationist even as Germany marched into Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland and then much of Western Europe and the Soviet Union. Once the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and Germany declared war on the U.S., however, Catholic newspapers struggled to find equipoise. They did not want to appear unpatriotic to their fellow Americans, but they also could not buck the Vatican’s continued push for peace, nor its outright hostility to a new U.S. ally, the Soviet Union. This paper explores how American Catholic newspapers followed the Vatican line even when it conflicted with U.S. policies, and yet managed to avoid accusations of dual loyalty that bedeviled American Jews during this same period.