Is this you? As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.
Claim your profile
Josef Müller was a self-made lawyer of sturdy peasant stock, a beer-loving Bavarian with sky-blue eyes, and an Iron Cross hero of the Great War. Because he worked his way through school driving an oxcart, friends ribbed him as Ochsensepp, Joey Ox. The nickname aptly captured Müller’s robust build, his rural roots, and the strong will that brought him such bad and good fortune. His life was a wild mix of exploits.
Newly unsealed files on Nazi war crimes show that the godfather of the European Union was not only a CIA agent, but a Vatican spy who linked controversial wartime Pope Pius XII with dissident Germans plotting to kill Hitler. During the Nazi years, Müller was a godfather figure in Catholic Munich. Through his legal work he came to sit on boards and control companies: he was by turns a brewer, printer, banker, book publisher, and importer of tobacco.
In histories of the Second World War, the Vatican has not fared well. Pope Pius XII has been condemned as “Hitler’s Pope ” and the Church castigated for not doing enough to avert war and save the victims of the Third Reich. Enter Mark Riebling’s new book, Church of Spies: The Pope’s Secret War Against Hitler.
At six in the morning on Sunday, 12 March, a procession snaked toward the bronze doors of St. Peter’s. Swiss Guards led the line, followed by barefoot friars with belts of rope. Pius took his place at the end, borne on a portable throne. Ostrich plumes stirred silently to either side, like quotation marks. Pius entered the basilica to a blare of silver trumpets and a burst of applause. Through pillars of incense he blessed the faces.
As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.
