The Deputy by Rolf Hochhuth: Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust

Introduction: The Controversy of The Deputy

Discussing The Deputy by Rolf Hochhuth is perhaps one of the most difficult critical tasks imaginable — comparable in its sensitivity to engaging with Nietzsche's The Antichrist or other deeply controversial works from any period. It is not easy to discuss a play that accuses a pope — the representative of Christ on Earth — of tolerating genocide and ethnic cleansing, of tacitly approving them, and of thereby becoming a party to one of the most terrible events humanity has ever witnessed.

Modern culpability has, in one way or another, been associated with the extermination of Jews during the Second World War. Over six million Jews perished during that period. The number alone is overwhelming, yet we must also consider that these deaths were the result of a systematized and concerted process of extermination. Over twenty-five million Russians also died during the war, though a large portion of those died in combat. To systematically slaughter six million people because of their religion is a stigma that no institution wishes to be associated with.

And yet, somewhere in the early 1960s, Rolf Hochhuth stepped forward and, in his play The Deputy, openly accused Pope Pius XII of having tacitly approved the genocide and, most importantly, of keeping silent. The entire play is centered on the idea that the pope — the "deputy" of Christ on Earth, which is precisely why the play bears that title — remained silent about something he was morally obligated to condemn.

The Play's Central Accusation Against Pius XII

The first act of the play makes the author's position unmistakably clear. SS officer Kurt Gerstein rushes to inform the Papal Nuncio, Count Cesare Orsenigo, that Jews have been exterminated at Belzec. It is historically significant that this event is set in 1942, when the extermination program was still in its early stages. The Final Solution had not yet been fully systematized and would only take its definitive shape in 1943.

The Papal Nuncio conveys the news to Pope Pius XII. Though the Pope neither denies the facts nor overtly approves of them, he refuses to condemn them. The reason Hochhuth offers is stark: the Vatican's financial interests in Germany outweigh any moral imperative to speak out. As pope, Pius will not damage his relationship with the Nazis — a relationship the play presents as central to Vatican finances — by denouncing their crimes. The accusation is thus not only moral but institutional: it implicates the Church as an organization with worldly interests capable of overriding its spiritual responsibilities.

The Hand-Washing Scene and Its Allegorical Power

The most striking moment in the play — and, in many respects, its most powerful — is the allegorical gesture the Pope makes at this juncture. Having spilled ink on his hands, he calls for water and washes them. The act is mundane in itself, but its symbolic resonance is extraordinary: without placing a single explicit word of self-exoneration in the Pope's mouth, Hochhuth makes him wash his hands of the entire matter. The allusion to Pontius Pilate is unmistakable and devastating.

From this moment in the first act, the reader knows precisely where the author stands. For Hochhuth, the historical Pius XII had likewise washed his hands of the genocide and proceeded to maintain his silence. This is the crux of the controversy. The play's staging across Europe in the 1960s provoked fierce debate among Catholics, historians, and Jewish communities alike, a debate that has never fully subsided.

Conclusion: Seeking Historical Truth

In my opinion, when discussing this controversy, we should always try to base our arguments on historical facts. However, the problem is that these facts are generally produced either by supporters or adversaries of the Pope, making it difficult to find accounts that belong to neither camp — and therefore hard to determine where the truth actually lies.

The Vatican Archives, for instance, are widely regarded as carrying a significant degree of institutional bias, and their reliability on this subject is contested. On the other hand, Hochhuth's play does not appear to rest entirely on hard documentary evidence either. The one point that is not disputed is that the Pope did not speak out publicly. Catholics do not contest this fact; they merely seek to explain it. Hochhuth, however, finds those explanations inadequate.

For the playwright, the moral arithmetic is simple: people were murdered, deported, and arrested on account of their religion, within what might be called the Pope's own jurisdiction, and he did not protest. That silence is, in Hochhuth's judgment, sufficient grounds to try Pius XII before the tribunal of history for tacit complicity in mass murder. Pope Pius XII is guilty, in his account, of having tolerated terrible crimes in his capacity as the "deputy" of Christ on Earth — crimes that occurred, quite literally, below his windows. Whether that judgment is ultimately fair remains one of the most contested questions in the history of the Catholic Church and the Holocaust.