Whilst I've no idea what Hitchens wrote, Steve, I have to agree with Joe in his judgement of XI & XII. Not sure why you have a down on XI at all. Yes he made a concordat with the Reich (he made quite a few concordats, all of them pretty much treated as "scraps of paper" by the other party when it suited). He also condemned them for betraying its terms. In fact, he wrote several protests against the Nazis, from 1933 onward, and turned against Mussolini when he started adopting Nazi racial policies in 1938.

XII is a bit more equivocal, but as Joe says, hindsight is a wonderful thing. Given XII's situation, what do you think you would have done? Spiritual authority is one thing, but it's not much of a weapon when the other side has weapons & no respect for said spiritual authority! Stuck inside one fascist state with another even bigger & nastier fascist state just over the border that's been persecuting your clergy & congregation for years... What do you do?

By the way, Big Al, I presume you mean Cranmer, not Cromwell! ;-)