The Pope at War, page 14
His Holiness hopes that such an encounter will yield clarity and, potentially, agreement on those issues that should feature most prominently in the upcoming settlement.[17]
On February 18, 1940, the Nazi prince returned to Rome, where Travaglini gave him the pope’s message. Travaglini’s account of his conversation with von Hessen, which Pius XII received via Cardinal Lauri, featured the prince’s latest enticements for the pope. The Führer and Ribbentrop were “cautiously and discreetly applying the five points of [the pope’s] Note.” They planned to complete that task and potentially do even more to please the pope following Ribbentrop’s visit. To make all this possible, the Nazi leaders had agreed that, while the foreign minister’s visit could be considered “private,” it was important that it be accompanied by all the ceremony appropriate for an event of such importance. Von Hessen’s message for the pope ended on an optimistic note: “After the visit and the Holy Father’s open, frank discussion with von Ribbentrop, a new era of pacification of Catholicism in Germany may dawn.”[18]
None of the secret correspondence involving Cardinal Lauri, Travaglini, and von Hessen appears in the twelve-volume compendium of documents dealing with the Second World War prepared by the Vatican. The thousands of pages of documents found there, published between 1965 and 1981, make only oblique reference to them.[19]
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On Friday, March 8, Prince von Hessen sent word to Pius XII that Ribbentrop hoped to meet the pope three days later. Only after getting a phone call from von Hessen later in the day, communicating the pope’s approval, did the German foreign minister board the train for Rome.[20]
It was a tense weekend for the pope, as the notes Monsignor Tardini, the deputy secretary of state for international affairs, jotted down that Saturday make clear. Those notes have become accessible to researchers eighty years later:
Monday, the 11th, von Ribbentrop will come to see the Holy Father. The audience has been prepared secretly for some time. Through Prince von Hessen and Travaglini. The Holy Father gave him five points which are desired by the Holy See (all prepared by him personally and until now unknown to the [Vatican secretary of state] office). The German government declared that they could constitute a basis for an agreement.
Tardini added that it was only the previous day that Ambassador Bergen, ignorant of the secret talks between von Hessen and the pope, had finally been told what was going on and had come to see Cardinal Maglione with the formal request for the audience.[21]
The pope’s negotiations with Hitler over the first year of his papacy remained unknown outside a small circle, but his encounter with the Führer’s foreign minister, coming after months of preparation, was now about to become known to the world.
On Monday morning, March 11, 1940, four black Vatican limousines pulled up in front of the palazzo housing the German embassy to the Holy See. Two colorfully clad Vatican attendants, each with a sword strapped to his side, emerged from one of the cars to greet the pope’s guest, Hitler’s foreign minister. Forty-six-year-old Joachim von Ribbentrop, the “boundlessly vain, arrogant and pompous former champagne salesman,” had become one of the Führer’s closest confidants, although looked on with contempt by most of the top Nazi leadership.[1] After Ribbentrop and his entourage boarded the limousines, they set off for the Apostolic Palace, entering Vatican City through the Porta Sant’Anna in the imposing protective wall that stretched to the right from St. Peter’s Square. There Harlequin-striped Swiss Guards saluted them before the cars made their way into the San Damaso Courtyard, surrounded by the tall walls of the fifteenth-century Apostolic Palace.
Awaiting the German delegation at the foot of the grand ceremonial stairway that led into the Apostolic Palace was Carlo Pacelli, the thirty-six-year-old prematurely balding, mustachioed son of the pope’s brother. Having taken over his father’s law firm, specializing in canon law, Carlo was one of the handful of laymen in whom the pope had complete confidence. The pope regularly called on him to represent his interests with the outside world. Now, dressed in a dark double-breasted diplomatic uniform with golden epaulets and a silver cross hanging from his neck, he greeted Ribbentrop, who wore a formal, if somewhat less impressive, dark uniform. Escorted by a phalanx of Swiss Guards, the men then formed a procession as they climbed the stairway. On their arrival at richly frescoed Clementine Hall, a double line of Swiss Guards paid tribute to Ribbentrop, who was then led by a prelate to the antechamber of the papal apartments where the pope’s master of ceremonies and several high-ranking prelates greeted him.
Ribbentrop entered Pius XII’s private library, with its large carved desk, set near one wall, with a white statue of the Madonna, her arms outstretched, standing along the adjoining wall. The foreign minister, who declined to kneel as was the custom in approaching Pius XII, began the conversation by conveying Hitler’s greetings. In response, the pope spoke of his many years in Germany, which he said had perhaps been the happiest of his life.
Ribbentrop said he hoped they could speak frankly. Hitler believed that settling their differences “was quite possible” but depended on first ensuring “that the Catholic clergy in Germany abandon any kind of political activity,” that is, not offer any criticism—explicit or implicit—of government policies. Of course, wartime was not the moment for entering into any new formal agreements, said the German, but “in the opinion of the Führer, what mattered for the time being was to maintain the existing truce [between church and state] and, if possible, to expand it.” Hitler, said Ribbentrop, was doing his part in bringing this improvement about. He had quashed no less than seven thousand indictments of Catholic clergymen, charged with a variety of financial and sexual crimes, and was continuing the National Socialist government’s policy of giving a large annual financial subsidy to the Catholic Church. Indeed, the pope had much to be thankful to Hitler for, suggested Ribbentrop, for if the church still existed in Europe, it was only thanks to National Socialism, which had eliminated the Bolshevist threat.[2]
Here the German and Vatican accounts of the conversation begin to differ. According to the German version, “The Pope showed complete understanding toward the Foreign Minister’s statements and admitted without qualifications that the concrete facts were as mentioned. True, he attempted to turn the conversation toward certain special problems and complaints of the Curia, but he did not insist on going on.”
The pope’s account of the conversation was prepared by Monsignor Tardini, based on what the pope told him shortly after Ribbentrop departed. We also now have further insight into the conversation thanks to a lengthy German-language memo prepared in advance of the meeting as a guide to what Pius XII intended to say. The memo, which only recently came to light with the opening of the Vatican archives, offered a reminder of the five points the pope had sent to Hitler via the prince in January and outlined the steps the pope had asked the Führer to take to improve the atmosphere for negotiations. It included as well other important issues the pope hoped to bring up.
The list was long: “There have been cases of offices of high Church officials, including bishops, being searched…by the Gestapo.” Such actions violated the provisions of the concordat the pope had negotiated with the German government shortly after Hitler had come to power. It had to stop. Claims that the German clergy were working against the National Socialist government were groundless. “The storm against Church and priests notwithstanding, the clerics always knew how to restrain themselves and adhere to the law. This suggests an extraordinary amount of loyalty to the state on their part.” Then there was the sensitive issue of Poland. The pope’s concern focused on the negative impact the German conquest was having on the freedom of the church and the welfare of its clergy:
Give Us the opportunity to look for the truth in Poland. If this truth is positive for Germany, We are willing to clear up any misunderstandings…. The Holy See has the gravest concerns over the current situation of the Church in Poland, especially because of the extreme restrictions imposed on the bishops and priests; the restrictions on Church activities, even on Sundays, that prevent priests and the faithful from executing the most necessary religious acts; and the closing of many religious institutes and Catholic private schools.[3]
Following the meeting, the pope remarked that Ribbentrop had struck him as a rather vigorous young man, but one who railed like a fanatic when he spoke. Ribbentrop had told the pope he had once been a wine merchant with little interest in politics. He believed in God, he said, and had been born a Protestant but belonged to no church. In response to Ribbentrop’s complaint that the pope’s predecessor had used strong words against Germany, Pius XII pointed out that by contrast in his own first encyclical, released the previous October, he had taken care not to offend the Germans, and in his subsequent Christmas address, his mention of the suffering of a “little people” had referred not to Poland, as some had claimed, but rather to Finland, which the Russians had recently overrun.
Ribbentrop tried to impress the pope with the Germans’ certainty of winning the war before the year’s end, a claim he kept repeating. “I had never seen a man of ice until I had met with von Ribbentrop,” Giuseppe Bastianini, Mussolini’s undersecretary for foreign affairs, had observed, and now the pope was seeing the famously warmongering Nazi in action. Every German, said Ribbentrop, stood with Hitler.[4]
Eager to turn the subject back to the situation of the church in Germany, the pope, diplomatic as ever, told the foreign minister that while he did not doubt Hitler’s good intentions toward the church, the facts showed that a war was being waged against it. Here he cited various examples, highlighting the widespread closing of Catholic schools. When Ribbentrop then returned to his argument that the Third Reich was giving the church a great deal, emphasizing the large financial subsidy it provided the church each year, the pontiff replied that much was also being taken away from it, including its educational institutions and its properties.
The audience lasted a little over an hour. The pope, surprisingly, said that it had been quite friendly. Apparently the German foreign minister had the same impression. “In the antechamber,” observed Monsignor Tardini, “they say that von Ribbentrop entered the Holy Father’s chamber a little worried and nervous. He left with a satisfied air.”[5]
Ribbentrop also met twice that day with his Vatican counterpart, Secretary of State Maglione, an hour-long meeting at the Apostolic Palace and then a shorter one when the cardinal returned the visit by going to the German embassy. Maglione memorialized his conversations in notes later in the day. Ribbentrop had recalled that he had seen Pacelli, the future pope, when he was nuncio in Berlin in the 1920s and knew how much people admired him. When he had first heard the news of Pacelli’s election to the papacy, he had remarked, “Now, there’s a true Pope!”
Ribbentrop told Cardinal Maglione how pleased he was that Pius XII was eager to reach a “solid, long-lasting understanding with Hitler,” as the Führer wished for the same thing. He then repeated much of what he had told the pope, about Germany now being in the midst of a great war that would decide the nation’s future, and how every German stood with the Führer, certain of victory. The problem, said Ribbentrop, was that the Catholic Church, and the Protestants, too, had inappropriately strayed into the political sphere.
The cardinal interrupted him. “Can you now say,” he asked the Nazi leader, “that the clerics, bishops, priests, members of the orders are mixing themselves in political party matters?…If it were true, you would only need to give us their names.” The fact is, argued the cardinal, they were not. Having listened impatiently to Ribbentrop’s long monologue, he now offered his own litany of complaints: the closing of almost all Catholic schools in Germany and Austria, the suppression of religious classes in many elementary schools, the removal of crucifixes from classrooms, and replacing the teaching of the Christian catechism with the Nazi Weltanschauung. “Who can believe,” asked the cardinal, “that all this has been done because the Catholics are mixing in politics?”
Unintimidated by Ribbentrop, the cardinal continued his attack: the National Socialist government had closed many seminaries, big and small, had suppressed religious houses, abbeys, and Catholic charities, and jailed many priests.
“I have no knowledge of that,” replied the German foreign minister.
Incredulous, the cardinal suggested that Ribbentrop read the reports the Vatican had been regularly sending the German embassy. Ribbentrop countered by handing him a German publication describing the many atrocities that Poles had allegedly inflicted on Germans and asking him to give it to the pope. Maglione seized on the subject to complain about Germans’ treatment of the Catholic Church in Poland.
In concluding his account of their conversations, the cardinal noted that the German foreign minister had twice told him he had long abandoned any religion. “He believes and says naively that he can be objective in evaluating religious matters just because he has no religious ideas himself!” The conversation had been civil enough, thought the cardinal, but “I have the impression that one can expect very little to come from the Foreign Minister’s visit to the Vatican.”[6]
Indeed, the newly opened Vatican archives reveal that the Nazi leader was himself none too pleased with the cardinal secretary of state. Later recounting his Vatican meetings to Jozef Tiso, the priest who led the pro-Nazi Slovakian state, Ribbentrop offered his impressions: “On the orders of my Führer I went to the Vatican to clarify various things with the Holy Father, and I found him to be cordial, conciliatory, educated and well informed. He made an extraordinary, I would say almost mesmerizing impression on me. By contrast, I found in the Cardinal Secretary of State an enemy of German National Socialism.”[7]
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Although the primary reason for the Nazi foreign minister’s trip to Rome was to see the pope, his meetings with Mussolini and Ciano while in Italy’s capital were important as well. Indeed, if a date were to be given for Mussolini’s ultimate slide toward war, it might be during this visit. On Ribbentrop’s arrival at Rome’s train station, Ciano had met him rather icily, unhappy that the Germans had notified him of his planned visit only a couple of days earlier. Ribbentrop’s previous encounter with his Italian counterpart had been their uncomfortable meeting in Salzburg the previous August when he told Ciano of Hitler’s decision to invade Poland.[8]
Meeting with Mussolini at Palazzo Venezia, Ribbentrop handed him a letter from Hitler. Mussolini’s decision not to enter the war up to that point, wrote the Führer, was certainly understandable. Indeed, perhaps it had been for the best. “But, Duce, I believe that of one thing there can be no doubt: the outcome of the war will also decide Italy’s own future.” Playing on Mussolini’s vanity, his lust for the limelight, his resentment over Italy’s secondary status in world affairs, and his envy at Germany’s military successes, Hitler had struck the right chord. The letter ended with a stirring call: “Sooner or later destiny will force us to struggle together. That means that You too will not be able to keep yourself out of the conflict…. It means all the more that your place will be at my side, just as I will be at yours.”[9]
Hitler’s letter to the Duce was linked to the message that Ribbentrop had come to deliver. The Führer had decided to launch an attack on France and Britain, certain of being able to defeat the French army by some time in the summer and chase the English forces from the continent before the fall. The Führer had studied the military situation carefully, Ribbentrop told the Duce, and he knew the battle would not be as easy as the conquest of Poland had been. But he was convinced that both France and England would be not only defeated but annihilated. Ribbentrop acknowledged that at Salzburg he had downplayed the likelihood France and Britain would back up their pledge to come to Poland’s aid, but, he said, it was all working out for the best. A final showdown with the western democracies was inevitable. There was not a soldier in Germany, said the foreign minister, who did not believe that victory would come before the end of the year.
When the Duce responded by observing that the morale of French troops did indeed seem low, given all the Communist propaganda there, Ribbentrop smiled. A number of those French Communist papers, he boasted, were being printed in Germany.[10]
Mussolini took advantage of the meeting to ask how Ribbentrop’s audience with Pius XII had gone. The pope, replied the German, agreed with the Führer that it was possible for the two sides to come to an understanding. The Duce, eager as always to offer the Nazi leadership his own advice on the church, remarked that it was best to avoid antagonizing a pope. It could, he said, be “quite troublesome.”[11]
Waiting at Berlin’s train station along with other dignitaries to meet Ribbentrop on his return late the next evening was Monsignor Cesare Orsenigo, the papal nuncio. He proudly reported back to Rome that the foreign minister, on descending from the train, had made a point of greeting him first. After then greeting the others, Ribbentrop made his way back to Orsenigo to tell him how pleased he was with his meeting with the pope. “In general,” reported Orsenigo, “both among the diplomats and the men of government, even those least enthusiastic about the regime, a sense of relief prevails. Many also told me of their satisfaction, interpreting Signor von Ribbentrop’s step as, if not the beginning of a new orientation for the religious policy in Germany, at least as a clear distancing from all those revolutionary elements who would have liked to eliminate any trace of Christianity.”[12]
Nuncio Cesare Orsenigo with Adolf Hitler at Reich Chancellery, Berlin, 1936
