The Pope at War, page 16
The Wehrmacht’s advance went more swiftly than anyone could have imagined. Within four days, the Dutch resistance was largely crushed, and the Belgians were in retreat. The massive German tank assault on France had begun. Worried that the Italians would soon join the attack, the French saw the pope as their last hope. “Nearly every member of the French Government and many French Senators have appealed to me today,” the American ambassador in Paris informed the U.S. secretary of state on May 14, “to ask you to make a final effort to keep Italy from entering the war as Germany’s ally.” The French officials had made clear, said the ambassador, “that the most powerful weapon to employ against Mussolini would be a statement by the Pope…denouncing the barbarities which Germany has inflicted on the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxemburg, combined with a papal edict excommunicating Hitler.”[9]
In their desperation, France’s leaders made the same plea more directly as well. Returning to the Apostolic Palace, Charles-Roux read the cardinal secretary of state a long telegram from Paris calling on the pope to pronounce “an explicit and formal condemnation of the German aggression.” He had no luck. The pope would do no more. It had already become clear to the pope that it was a war that Germany was likely to win.[10]
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Only a couple of weeks earlier Dino Alfieri had been sitting at his desk in the Italian embassy to the Holy See when he received an urgent summons from the Duce. Arriving at Palazzo Venezia, he was immediately ushered into Mussolini’s office, where the Duce and Ciano greeted him with a Roman salute. To Alfieri’s surprise, Mussolini told him to pack his bags. He was to leave immediately for Berlin to become Italy’s new ambassador to Germany. “I hope you’re satisfied,” said the Duce. “Today Berlin is the most important post in the world.”
On his way out the door, still trying to absorb the news, Alfieri turned to Ciano and said, “But I don’t speak any German.”
“Neither does Attolico,” replied Ciano.[11]
Mussolini knew the move would please the Germans, who had long suspected Bernardo Attolico, the current ambassador, of undermining their efforts to bring Italy into the war. In Alfieri they would have someone much more well-disposed to the Third Reich.[12]
Soon thereafter Alfieri went to the Apostolic Palace for his final papal audience as Italian ambassador to the Vatican. After an initial exchange of pleasantries, his tone grew serious. The telegrams sent to the three sovereigns, he told the pope, had greatly upset the Duce. He reminded the pontiff that he had often warned him against having the church get involved in politics, and indeed, with Italy now likely soon to join its Axis partner in war, the consequences for the church of doing so could be grave.
“The Pope,” Alfieri reported, “listened to my words with emotion and surprise, evidently not expecting my ceremonial visit of departure to have such serious contents.” Pius XII replied that he had heard no complaints about his telegrams from Germany, and so he did not see why the Italian government should be concerned. All he had done, he insisted, was to express well-known church principles. Speaking with growing emotion, “the Pope,” Alfieri recalled, “added that his well established and sincere attachment to Italy—an attachment that had not failed to lead to unhappiness with him in certain foreign quarters—could not prevent him from the essential exercise of his mission.”
“I am profoundly and firmly convinced,” said the pope, “that I have done my precise duty, taking care not to offend anyone, avoiding any particular references, indeed, studiously taking care to say the least possible. I certainly did not want to do something displeasing to Italy, which up to now is absolutely not involved, much less to the Duce.”
Warming to his theme, the pope added, “They can even come to take me to a deportation camp, I have absolutely nothing to regret, if not perhaps having been too discreet and too reserved in the face of what happened and what followed in Poland…. We must each answer for our actions to God.”
Telling Alfieri he was eager to maintain good relations with Italy’s government, the pope asked if having the Vatican newspaper publish Queen Wilhelmina’s response to his telegram would cause any problem. “As I expressed the view that it would be best if such a publication not happen,” Alfieri reported, “the Pope personally got up from his work table and telephoned a secretary, telling him to suspend its publication.”[13]
Before the ambassador left, the pontiff told him he was considering asking him to deliver a message to Hitler and Ribbentrop when he got to Berlin. He wanted to let the Nazi leaders know he was still hoping to reach an understanding with them. Religious pacification in Germany was possible, he believed, as long as the Reich protected the legitimate rights of the church.
Alfieri had barely left the Vatican when the pope began to have second thoughts about the mission he had just given him. Bombarded by pleas to denounce the Nazi leadership, perhaps now, three days after the massive German invasion of the western countries, was not the time to renew such an approach. After discussing the matter that evening with Monsignor Montini, the pope sent word to Alfieri not to raise the matter. Should a better moment come, he would let him know.[14]
The next night Alfieri boarded a train for Berlin.[15] There he gave the German Foreign Ministry a full briefing on his last encounter with the pope, telling them of the pope’s insistence that in drafting his telegrams to the three European sovereigns, “he had intentionally avoided using both the words ‘Germany’ and ‘invasion’ ” and “had promised to give instructions once more that [L’Osservatore Romano] should not take sides with England and France.” Alfieri advised the Germans that it was “in the interests of both Germany and Italy to be on good terms with the Vatican,” albeit adding the caveat, “at least for the duration of the war.” In one of Alfieri’s first official acts in Berlin, following an exchange of Roman salutes, he presented Hermann Göring, whom months later Hitler would name Marshal of the Empire, the Italian king’s Collar of the Most Holy Annunciation, the same honor that he had, on Victor Emmanuel’s behalf, bestowed on Cardinal Maglione less than half a year earlier.[16]
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As the German tanks rolled relentlessly toward the French capital, the American ambassador in Paris, William Bullitt, brought an urgent request to the papal nuncio there. The last thing the French needed now was for Italy to join the war and attack France from the south. The only way Mussolini could be prevented from entering the war, thought the ambassador, was for the pope to threaten to excommunicate Mussolini should he do so.[17]
Maglione’s response to the American request offers a glimpse at how successful Mussolini had been in intimidating the pope. The Holy Father, the cardinal told the nuncio, had done all he could. “Unfortunately, one doesn’t see what is still possible to do, all the more so given the continued opposition to the distribution of L’Osservatore Romano and the fact of the innumerable, regrettable incidents in that regard.”[18]
Pius XII was feeling pressure to prevent Italy’s entrance into the war from within Italy as well. A letter to the pope from Naples in mid-May told of the violent seizure of the Vatican newspaper by Fascists there. “Italy, which is an eminently Catholic people,” the man wrote, “should not sacrifice some millions of human lives for nothing or for the caprice of one man alone…. In Your power, Holiness, the Italian people seek protection from You, they do not want war nor civil war.”[19]
Another letter at the same time, its author identifying himself as “A civilized and Christian Italian,” sounded a similar note: “The Holy Father’s power could help our Italian people…not only to avoid war by threatening the King with excommunication but seeking to help them to liberate themselves from this cynical scoundrel who plunders us and leaves us in poverty, while he and his Pretorians accumulate thousands.” A man he knew who was reading the Vatican daily, he told the pope, had it torn from his hands and shredded into pieces that were made into balls he was forced to eat, washed down by castor oil. “We call on the Holy Father to help us. Have the King set the Army against these assassins and the people, the whole Nation will be with You…. Help us not only with prayers, but with facts.”[20]
Women, too, addressed their pleas to the pope, including one signed anonymously, if presumptuously, “The Catholic women of Italy”:
Holy Father, In every tormented and broken heart of Your faithful, Catholic people lives today one fervent hope, that Your Holiness prevent this monstrous, cowardly war that the fraternal friend of the criminal Teutonic vandal is preparing…. In past ages, the Holy Pontiffs excommunicated monarchs and potentates many times solely for having rebelled against the sacred laws of the church. Today…then, excommunicate these monsters or it will be too late.[21]
As far as we can tell from the Vatican archives, Pius XII never seriously considered excommunicating either Hitler or Mussolini, who were both nominally Catholic. But the Nazi leadership showed some concern he might. On May 22 Hermann Göring asked the Italian ambassador whether he thought it possible that the pope would excommunicate the Duce if he entered the war on Germany’s side. Alfieri replied he thought it highly unlikely. But he admitted, if the pope were to do so, “it would have a dangerous influence on popular opinion.”[22]
The prospect that Italy would soon enter the war was producing another kind of concern as well, worries for the safety of the pope himself and whisperings that the pontiff might be planning to leave Italy altogether. On the eighteenth, D’Arcy Osborne, the British emissary, received a surprising message from the London Foreign Office. Should Italy join the war, the French Foreign Ministry had advised them, the pope might move the Vatican Secretariat of State to a neutral country such as Switzerland, where foreign ambassadors to the Holy See would be expected to relocate, while the pope himself would remain in the Vatican. The British Foreign Office had also learned that President Roosevelt was considering offering the pope asylum in the United States. In response, members of the Foreign Office were toying with the idea of offering Pius XII refuge in Malta. Speculation about a possible papal relocation was rife in Rome as well, with one police informant reporting the rumor that if Italy joined the war, the pope planned to move to Lisbon.[23]
A few days after Germany launched its westward attack, Cardinal August Hlond, primate of the Polish church, asked the pope for permission to address a message to the Polish people via Vatican Radio. The cardinal explained that he had designed his message “to sustain the faith of the nation, a faith put to harsh test by both the religious persecution and by the very sad living conditions.” A week after receiving the request, the pope sent his response to the cardinal. “Taking into consideration the extremely delicate current circumstances, His Holiness does not believe that this is the opportune moment to deliver allocutions, even with the noble intent of lifting up the faith and the depressed spirits of a disturbed nation.” Having faced Fascist ire for sending his telegrams to the three European sovereigns, the pope was not inclined to do anything that might further provoke the Duce’s displeasure.[24]
It is impossible to understand the pope’s actions without recognizing he had good reason to think the church’s future would likely lie in a Europe under the thumb of Hitler and his Italian partner. Many were convinced the war would be over in a matter of months, with the continent in the hands of the Axis powers and Britain suing for peace.[1]
While most Italians had opposed joining the war, news of Germany’s surprisingly rapid advance, reported enthusiastically by the Fascist and Catholic press, was beginning to win some converts. A police informant in Genoa was among the first to report signs of the changing attitude: “public opinion is undergoing a major evolution, due to the impressive German victories. It is brought about by the fact that everyone is convinced that the war will only last a few months, and that victory will come easily, thanks to the defeats being suffered by the French and British.” The Ministry of Popular Culture reported that Italians were “stunned and amazed” by the resounding German victories and the rapid collapse of Allied resistance. German military might was frightening yet intoxicating. “Some are delighted; others, on the other hand (and there are more of them than the first kind) are upset, disoriented and alarmed.”[2]
Although popular opinion was mixed, Mussolini’s enthusiasm for joining the war was growing. By May 12, 1940, only two days after the invasion had begun, the German army, having marched through Belgium, was crossing into France at Sedan. Luftwaffe bombers were routing French troops, while German fighter planes were repelling the Allied air forces. Winston Churchill, having become British prime minister on May 10, asked Parliament three days later for a vote of confidence for his wartime cabinet. “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat,” he famously told them. Prospects were not looking good for the British. On May 20 German troops reached the English Channel on the northeastern coast of France at Abbeville and encircled the Allied armies. In a report Hitler sent the Duce on May 25, he boasted that his forces were encountering no serious opposition as they moved through France. The British, in full flight from the continent, were hurriedly boarding ships from the beaches of Dunkirk.[3]
The breathtaking speed and ease of the German advance had also made a great impression on the Duce’s son-in-law, who was beginning to rethink his opposition to joining the war. Ciano’s May 28 meeting with Monsignor Borgongini, the papal nuncio to the Italian government, was notable for the absence of his previous mantra that he was doing everything he could to keep Italy out of the fighting. That same day Ciano was even more frank with his friend, the fifty-eight-year-old industrialist Alberto Pirelli. Pirelli, who headed the eponymous rubber-producing company founded by his father, had often conferred with Mussolini over the preceding two decades. Having extensive contacts throughout Europe and the Americas, he was among the Italian business elite with the deepest knowledge of the world. No better exemplar could be found of the industrialists whose support—sometimes grudging, sometimes enthusiastic—had helped prop up the Fascist regime.[4]
Should they join their ally and declare war on France, said Ciano, they stood to gain not only Corsica but also Nice, on the coast near the Italian border. They could also acquire the entire northwest African coast including French Morocco and, with it, access to the Atlantic. Hitler, he told the industrialist, had agreed to let Italy replace England in Egypt and had assured the Italians he had no aspirations for Germany to gain a Mediterranean port. Nor did the formerly war-shy Ciano limit himself to this already long list of targets for Italian conquest. “We will take Crete and Corfu,” he told Pirelli, “and we ought to control all of Greece.”[5]
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As the day of Mussolini’s fateful declaration of war drew near, Bernardo Attolico, who until days earlier had been ambassador to Germany, presented his credentials at the Vatican as Italy’s new ambassador to the Holy See. People who met Attolico thought he had something of a professorial air, a serious man with thick glasses and a somewhat stooped posture. The move to Rome was one Attolico was happy to make. A conscientious career diplomat of considerable intelligence, he had never felt comfortable among the Nazis, and he was not in the best of health. The previous year, following the signing of the Pact of Steel, he had confided to a friend, “I am sick, I don’t have long to live, I’ve wanted to leave this horrible atmosphere. But I can’t.” Hitler himself had now helped grant Attolico’s wish, having let Mussolini know that Italy’s unfriendly ambassador was no longer welcome in Berlin.
The Vatican appointment had an added benefit for Attolico, for while he came from a middle-class southern Italian family, his wife, Eleonora, was a product of the Roman elites closely identified with the popes. She had strong family ties with the upper reaches of the church.[6]
Attolico’s new task, as he saw it, was to ensure harmonious relations between the Italian government and the Vatican. Unlike his predecessor, Dino Alfieri, a hard-line Fascist and strong supporter of the German alliance, Attolico was more typical of the conservative Italian elite who supported a Catholic Fascist state but had no love for Hitler or the Nazis. Aware of the recent tensions sparked by Fascist assaults on the vendors and readers of the Vatican newspaper, he urged the Duce to bring them to an end and avoid any other actions that might offend the pope. Next to these two points in the text of Attolico’s report, Mussolini himself wrote, in his colored pencil: “Yes, M.” It was just as well not to go too far.[7]
Pius XII himself was eager to do what he could to avoid further conflict over the Vatican newspaper. In exchange for a promise by the new Italian ambassador to allow L’Osservatore Romano to be distributed and read freely, the pope directed it not to publish any more pieces that were, as Attolico put it, “in apparent contrast with the supreme interests of the country.”[8] Italy’s new ambassador promised the pope that he would do all he could to eliminate any points of friction between the Vatican and the government and expressed hope that through the open exchange of information, he and the pontiff could be successful. The pope assured him that these were exactly his own thoughts.[9]
Ambassador Bernardo Attolico and Eleonora Pietromarchi Attolico with Adolf Hitler, Berlin, December 10, 1937
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“The decision has been made. The die is cast.” So Ciano recorded Mussolini’s decision on May 30 to enter the war at Hitler’s side. “The Italian people,” the Duce wrote in a letter to the Führer that day, “are impatient to be at the side of the German people in the struggle against the common foe.” Italy would be ready to enter the war in six days, said Mussolini. William Phillips, the American ambassador, sent a blistering letter to President Roosevelt: “We are dealing with an Italian peasant who has…not the imagination to see beyond the overwhelming power of German armaments.”[10]
