God and the Fascists: The Vatican Alliance with Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and Pavelic - Karlheinz Deschner [epub]

 In the decade preceding the outbreak of World War II, the Vatican made a devil's bargain with fascist leaders. Anticipating that their regimes would eliminate a common enemy - namely Marxist-Leninist communism - two popes essentially collaborated with Hitler, Mussolini, and the fascist dictators in Spain (Franco) and Croatia (Pavelić).

This is the damning indictment of this well-researched polemic, which for almost five decades in Germany has sparked controversy, outrage, and furious debate. Now it is available in English for the first time. 

Many will dismiss Deschner - who himself was raised and educated in a pious Catholic tradition - as someone who is obsessed with exposing the failings of the church of his upbringing. But he has marshaled so many facts and presented them with such painstaking care that his accusations cannot easily be ignored. 

The sheer weight of the evidence that he has brought together in this book raises a host of questions about a powerful institution that continues to exercise political influence to this day.

Karlheinz Deschner is the author or editor of forty-six books including novels, literary criticism, essays, aphorisms, and, above all, critical history of religion and the church.  He is best known for his multivolume Criminal History of Christianity, the tenth volume of which was published in March 2013. He has enthralled and provoked his audiences over the years with more than two thousand public lectures. In 1971 he was called before a court in Nuremberg, charged with “insulting the Church.” He is the first German to be recognized with the International Humanist Award. Among his other awards are the Arno Schmidt, Alternative Büchner, Erwin Fischer, and Ludwig Feuerbach Prizes.

Paperback: 282 pages
Publisher: Prometheus Books (October 8, 2013)