From Library Journal
Aarons and Loftus make a valiant effort to untangle the complex trails of diplomatic and intelligence operations in postwar Europe, focusing on Vatican participation. They document the Vatican role in British and American smuggling of Nazis to Latin America and in sending Nazi "Freedom Fighters" to Eastern Europe, noting the key role of Giovanni Montini (later Pope Paul VI). The authors conclude that Western intelligence was heavily infiltrated by double agents who harnessed many operations to Moscow's ends. Though perhaps less startling to historians than the authors suggest, this deliberately provocative account will undoubtedly stir up controversy. Buy it if you have interested patrons.- Nancy C. Cridland, Indiana Univ. Libs., BloomingtonCopyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Kirkus Reviews
Head-spinning documentation of how Vatican immunity shielded Nazi war criminals from just punishment--and unwittingly aided the Communist cause. Aarons is an Australian expert on Nazi fugitives; Loftus (The Belarus Secret, 1982) is the former chief prosecutor of the Justice Department's Nazi War Crimes Unit. Vatican accommodation of Nazi escapees is well known. Less known is that by 1944 Soviet intelligence had penetrated German intelligence and was using the Vatican, which was smuggling tens of thousands of Nazis to Argentina and elsewhere via diplomatic immunity, to infiltrate the Nazi escapees with large cadres of Communist spies. Similarly, Red spies joined the German scientists being swept off to Britain and America immediately after the war (without standing trial for war crimes); thereafter, the Soviets were privy to atomic secrets firsthand. Much of this activity, according to the authors, sprang from an episode in which Papal Nuncio Eugenio Pacelli (later Pope Pius XII) was attacked by Communists in Munich on May Day 1919 and became a fervent, lifelong anti-Communist. Thus came about his ties with the Nazis, who during the Nazi occupation of Italy threatened the Vatican's very survival. Referring to the infiltration of British intelligence at its top levels by Soviet spies, Aarons and Loftus proclaim that ``behind the Nazis were the Vatican, behind the Vatican were the British, behind the British were the Communists.'' One old spy, though, told the authors, ``Forget the Communists. Trace the money.'' Doing this, they report briefly--perhaps as a teaser for their promised follow-up book--on clever international banking concerns outwitting WW II politicians, militarists, and intelligence services for their own aggrandizement. Much that is new, all of it disturbing. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Review
"Meticulously researched, carefully documented...The shadow of these accusations still hangs heavy and dark over the twentieth-century Church." --Morris West, author of The Shoes of the Fisherman

"Impossible to put down." --Publishers Weekly

"Head-spinning documentation of how Vatican immunity shielded Nazi war criminals from just punishment." --Kirkus Reviews

"[Unholy Trinity] is an important and meticulously researched piece of work and deserves the sort of massive readership reserved for books that the British government ham-fistedly attempts to ban." --The Literary Review



Review
"Meticulously researched, carefully documented...The shadow of these accusations still hangs heavy and dark over the twentieth-century Church." --Morris West, author of The Shoes of the Fisherman

"Impossible to put down." --Publishers Weekly

"Head-spinning documentation of how Vatican immunity shielded Nazi war criminals from just punishment." --Kirkus Reviews

"[Unholy Trinity] is an important and meticulously researched piece of work and deserves the sort of massive readership reserved for books that the British government ham-fistedly attempts to ban." --The Literary Review



Review
"Meticulously researched, carefully documented...The shadow of these accusations still hangs heavy and dark over the twentieth-century Church." --Morris West, author of The Shoes of the Fisherman

"Impossible to put down." --Publishers Weekly

"Head-spinning documentation of how Vatican immunity shielded Nazi war criminals from just punishment." --Kirkus Reviews

"[Unholy Trinity] is an important and meticulously researched piece of work and deserves the sort of massive readership reserved for books that the British government ham-fistedly attempts to ban." --The Literary Review



Book Description
Written in rivetings fashion by the coauthors of The Secret War Against the Jews, Unholy Trinity tells one of the darkest tales of World War II. After the war had ended, fearing a surge of Soviet growth, the Papacy entered into an espionage alliance with British and American intelligence agents. Subsuming justice to the nascent Cold War ideology, these three powers ferreted Nazi criminals out of Europe so that they could be used in the supposedly greater fight against Communism. The Vatica's Nazi smuggling network was penetrated by Prince Anton Turkul, the great Soviet double agent who turned the operations into a sting for his masters in the Kremlin. Unholy Trinity exposes Turkul's "Red Nazi" operation for the first time and shows how Kim Philby, the infamous British-Soviet double agent, and his network were nearly sacrificed to preserve Turkul's Vatican operation.

Exploring the Vatican's role in aiding Nazi criminals to escape punishment for their crimes, this book, originally published in 1991, first revealed the Vatican--Swiss bank connection to Nazi gold and documented the hidden links to Western investors in Nazi Germany. Since 1991, major revelations about the role of Swiss banks have confirmed Unholy Trinity's expose of the flight of the Nazi's stolen treasures; the new introduction and new final chapters, written by Aarons and Loftus for this edition, bring the book completely up to date and show how the media have missed the vital Vatican connection in the Swiss-bank story. Among other things, the authors demonstrage that U.S. and British code-breakers were fully aware of the Holocaust as early as 1941 but lied to the Western press; that the code-breakers bugged the Swiss banks and then buried secrets of Nazi gold transfers to protect U.S. intelligence chief Allen Dulles; and that the Australian, Brisih, and Canadian governments are still waging a campaign to keep their citizens ignorant about the Nazi war criminals living among them.

Covers all these topics and more, Unholy Trinity is the definitive history of a series of profoundly disturbing cover-ups involing the Holy See, Allen Dulles, the Swiss banks, and the remnants of the Third Reich.



About the Author
Mark Aarons is an international award-winning investigative reporter and the author of several books on intelligence-related issues. He exposed Nazi war criminals in Australia, where he lives, and prompted changes to Australian federal law.

Attorney John Loftus is the author of four histories of intelligence operations. As former prosecutor with the U.S. Justice Department's Nazi-hunting unit, he had unprecedented access to top-secret CIA and NATO archives. He lives in Florida. Together Aarons and Loftus are the authors of The Secret War Against the Jews.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Written in riveting fashion by the coauthors of The Secret War Against the Jews, Unholy Trinity tells one of the darkest tales of World War II. After the war had ended, fearing a surge of Soviet growth, the Papacy entered into an espionage alliance with British and American intelligence agents. Subsuming justice to the nascent Cold War ideology, these three powers ferreted Nazi criminals out of Europe so that they could be used in the supposedly greater fight against Communism. The Vatican's Nazi smuggling network was penetrated by Prince Anton Turkul, the great Soviet double agent who turned the operation into a sting for his masters in the Kremlin. Unholy Trinity exposes Turkul's "Red Nazi" operation for the first time and shows how Kim Philby, the infamous British -- Soviet double agent, and his network were nearly sacrificed to preserve Turkul's Vatican operation.

Exploring the Vatican's role in aiding Nazi criminals to escape punishment for their crimes, this book, originally published in 1991, first revealed the Vatican -- Swiss bank connection to Nazi gold and documented the hidden links to Western investors in Nazi Germany. Since 1991, major revelations about the role of the Swiss banks have confirmed Unholy Trinity's expose of the flight of the Nazis' stolen treasures; the new introduction and new final chapters, written by Aarons and Loftus for this edition, bring the book completely up to date and show how the media have missed the vital Vatican connection in the Swiss-bank story. Among other things, the authors demonstrate that U.S. and British code-breakers were fully aware of the Holocaust as early as 1941 but lied to the Western press; that the code-breakers bugged the Swiss banks and then buried secrets of Nazi gold transfers to protect U.S. intelligence chief Allen Dulles; and that the Australian, British, and Canadian governments are still waging a campaign to keep their citizens ignorant about the Nazi war criminals living among them.

Covering all these topics and more, Unholy Trinity is the definitive history of a series of profoundly disturbing cover-ups involving the Holy See, Allen Dulles, the Swiss banks, and the remnants of the Third Reich.

SYNOPSIS

A startling exploration of the links between the Vatican and the Nazis that redefines the role of the Catholic Church's role in 20th-century history. Includes 16 pages of photos.

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal