The Pope at War, page 18
Mussolini was eager to get Italian troops into France before Germany’s conquest would deprive him of any claim to French territory. But despite the Duce’s years of bellicose bluster, the Italian military had no clear plan for an invasion, nor did its generals believe they were ready to launch one. The attack that finally did come, sending Italy’s antiquated tanks through Alpine passes, to the west of Turin, that were little more than mule tracks, would prove less than overwhelming.
On June 14, 1940, four days after the Duce’s declaration of war, the German army entered Paris. Still no significant movement of Italian troops across the border had occurred. A new French government, led by the aged Great War hero Marshal Philippe Pétain, was quickly formed and immediately asked for an armistice. Pétain sent his plea to Germany through Madrid, and the one to Italy through the Vatican. Informed of the French request for an armistice by his nuncio in France, the pope immediately passed it on to Mussolini.[1]
On June 17 Pétain publicly broadcast his call, il faut cesser le combat (the fighting must stop). Furious, Mussolini called on the Italian army to launch its assault. With the French military overwhelmed by the Germans farther north, he imagined it would have few troops free to resist the attack.
Following a series of confusing and contradictory orders by Mussolini and his generals, the Italian offensive was finally launched the morning of June 21, begun by air force bombardment of the French fortifications arranged along France’s mountainous southeastern border with Italy, known as the Little Maginot Line. The advancing Italian troops, three hundred thousand strong, largely ignorant of the location of French gun emplacements, were soon overwhelmed by enemy fire and ambushed by French soldiers hiding along the mountain mule tracks. Italian air force support was less than effective, partly due to the heavy fog and their outdated maps and partly due to lack of adequate pilot training. Indeed, some of the Italian planes ended up bombing their own troops. Much to the Italians’ dismay, the French stood and fought, and after only four days, the brief Franco-Italian war ended with Italy’s General Pietro Badoglio signing an armistice agreement outside Rome with the French general Charles Huntziger. In the end, the fighting at the French border had cost the Italians 642 dead, 2,631 wounded, and 616 missing, with another 2,151 soldiers suffering from frostbite. The Italian military had succeeded in occupying only a tiny sliver of southeastern France. The contrast with the German military’s rapid advance across the Netherlands, Belgium, and France was painfully obvious to all.
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French ambassador d’Ormesson, meeting with the pope while Italy’s troops were still fighting, found him open to the idea of helping to broker a peace deal between France and the Axis powers. But as often happened, the pope soon had second thoughts. The next day he informed the French ambassador he did not think it wise for him to get involved. The only chance France had of receiving relatively favorable terms, given its crushing military defeat, thought the pope, was for Mussolini to exercise a moderating influence on Hitler.[2]
Pius XII’s faith—or perhaps better put, his hope—in Mussolini’s moderating influence on the Führer had never been more misplaced. The Duce was in fact meeting with the German dictator in Munich at the time. Things had begun well enough for Mussolini there, a massive rally welcoming him on his arrival at the train station, but his mood soon soured. In their initial one-on-one meeting, Hitler lectured him for two hours on his plans for France. It would be advantageous, the Führer insisted, to ensure that the country had a functioning government of its own, for otherwise they risked having the French set one up in exile in London. In any case, he added, it would save the German military a great deal of manpower if it did not have to bother with the day-to-day administration of the country. For all this to happen, they would need to handle the French carefully. It would not do, as Mussolini proposed, to insist on an armistice that would give the Italians Corsica as well as the French colonies of Djibouti and Tunis. Such a demand, said Hitler, would make it politically impossible for Pétain to collaborate. In the end, all that Mussolini would get for his belated military efforts was the modest strip of French land at the Italian border that his troops had occupied. It contained fewer than 30,000 inhabitants; the only town captured was the small tourist city of Menton, on the French Riviera at the Italian border.[3]
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On the night of June 12, barely forty-eight hours after Mussolini’s declaration of war, the first group of thirty-six RAF bombers hit Turin, the center of Italy’s heavy industry, followed over the next few days by British bombardments of cities throughout the country. Milan, La Spezia, Livorno, Cagliari, Trapani, and Palermo were all bombed. Although damage was limited and victims few, the British succeeded in delivering a loud message.[4]
The attacks underscored what would become a constant preoccupation of the pope, preventing the Allies from bombing Rome. Within twenty-four hours of Mussolini’s declaration of war, the pope had his secretary of state summon the French and British emissaries to make this request. The French were no longer in a position to bomb anyone. The British, who were, assured the pope they would never bomb Vatican City, but for the rest of Rome, they would make no commitment.[5]
With Italy’s entry into the war, what friction still existed between the Vatican and the Fascist regime largely evaporated. “The Pontiff,” reported Mussolini’s ambassador to the Holy See, “has personally desired to suppress any center of possible anti-Italian and defeatist propaganda that might take root in the Vatican.” At his weekly general audience on June 19, Pius XII reminded his countrymen of “the duty they have to pray too for their Fatherland which, fertilized by the sweat and perhaps too by the blood of their ancestors, asks its children to be generous in serving her.”[6]
The speed of the Germans’ drive through France had made a deep impression on the pope and the cardinals of the Curia. Fear of where Germany’s seemingly unstoppable march would lead Europe and anxieties about the church’s future further reinforced the pope’s inclination not to expose himself to Fascist or Nazi retribution. Cardinal Maglione, for one, thought the war might soon be over, with France defeated and Britain likely to reach a deal with Germany to protect its empire. “He always finds the means to excuse Italy,” observed the French ambassador after his latest conversation with the Vatican’s secretary of state. Referring to the dramatic change that readers saw in the Vatican newspaper following Italy’s entry into the war, he added, “This silence is equivalent to submission. The Holy See is aware of this and is not proud of it.”[7]
Britain’s envoy, too, was struck by the change that had come over the Vatican. From the moment Italy entered the war, Osborne observed, “the moral prestige of the Papacy began to decline…. Axis methods of blackmail were used to good effect.” The pope was giving in to Mussolini’s and Hitler’s none-too-subtle pressures. By contrast, he recalled, Pius XI had “fearlessly pronounced the moral verdict of Christian civilization” against Nazi worship of the state. His successor carefully tailored his words “to the exigencies of an anxious neutrality.” Osborne attributed the change in part to a difference of personality. “The Pope,” he wrote, “sensitive and impressionable by temperament and naturally inclined to caution and compromise, bowed to what he conceived to be both duty and necessity.” But the British diplomat saw another motive behind the pope’s decision to remain silent, the desire to play a role in brokering an eventual peace. “He does not realize,” reflected Osborne, “that the abnegation of moral leadership in the interests of a strict neutrality is likely to hinder rather than to advance that ambition.”[8]
Pius XII indeed still hoped to play the role of peacemaker. In the wake of France’s defeat and the routing of British forces from the continent, Hitler was signaling a willingness to make a deal: in exchange for Britain’s acquiescence to Germany’s control of the continent, he would spare it from attack and allow it to keep its far-flung empire. In late June, the pope decided that such a peace deal might be possible. He sent a letter to the Italian and German ambassadors to the Holy See, as well as to his nuncios in Rome and Berlin and the apostolic delegate in London, asking them to sound out the governments in Berlin, London, and Rome to see if they would consider a peace conference. He did not want to make a formal proposal unless he could be sure it would be accepted by all three governments.
On the morning of June 28, Cardinal Maglione presented the pope’s idea to Diego von Bergen, Germany’s long-serving ambassador to the Vatican. Bergen sounded encouraging. The Führer, he told the cardinal, had always said he was open to negotiations. He promised to cable Berlin immediately. The Italian ambassador likewise promised to refer the proposal to his superiors without delay. It seemed that the two Axis powers might well support the papal plan.
Archbishop Godfrey, the papal delegate in London, met a far less friendly reception. Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax brusquely dismissed the pope’s idea of a peace conference and told Godfrey to leave Pius XII in no doubt of Britain’s “determination not to acquiesce in Hitler’s programme for making himself master of Europe.” Godfrey himself was sufficiently alarmed by the foreign secretary’s reaction that he urged the pope not to make his appeal public. Such a step, he advised “might easily be badly interpreted as if the Holy See was associating itself with the invitation to surrender, calling on Great Britain to sue for peace terms.” Pius XII’s tentative peace initiative would remain stillborn.[9]
While German troops now controlled a vast stretch of Europe, from France, Belgium, and the Netherlands through Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, Italian forces had at this point only poverty-stricken Albania and a skinny stretch of sparsely populated French Alpine borderland to show for their war efforts. At the same time as the Italians were struggling to conquer that meager territory, the Red Army had occupied all three Baltic states, soon to be incorporated as Soviet republics. Eager to have more to show for his efforts, Mussolini looked to North Africa and told his military command to plan for an invasion of Egypt from Italy’s Libyan colony. Hitler offered heavy bombers in support of an Italian assault on the British position there.[10]
At the Vatican, virtually everyone expected Hitler to launch his invasion of Britain in July, and it seemed likely he would succeed in adding Britain to his conquests.[11] Meanwhile Italy’s Catholic clergy and church institutions continued to do what they could to encourage popular support for the war. The pope, as primate of the church in Italy, could have put a stop to it, but he had no intention of doing so. Italian Catholic Action, the church’s vast, capillary organization of the faithful, was certainly doing its part. Not only had its leaders issued widely publicized calls for getting behind the war effort, but as the Italian embassy to the Vatican reported, “all the weekly publications of Catholic Action have…offered a ringing endorsement in their editorials. The Catholic daily newspapers have been second to none in voicing the highest notes of patriotism in this situation.” Likewise, the new issue of the Rivista del Clero Italiano, the journal devoted to Italy’s priests, carried a stirring call by Father Gemelli. “The time of war,” Milan’s Catholic University head said, “is not the time for discussion or for dissent, but for harmony, obedience, action.”[12]
As usual, Italy’s Catholic newspapers looked to the Vatican-supervised Jesuit biweekly, La Civiltà Cattolica, for papal guidance. An early July article on Italy’s decision to join the war immediately prompted front-page stories in the major Catholic dailies. Italian forces, the Jesuit author explained, were locked “in a giant struggle aimed at giving the world a new order.” He recalled that the pope, in his recent saint’s day speech, had highlighted a quote from Saint Augustine: “We do not seek peace in order to be at war, but we go to war that we may have peace.”[13]
The police chief of Borgo, the Roman district bordering the Vatican, responsible for surveillance of Vatican City, offered what he presented as further evidence of papal blessing for the war. In the most recent beatification ceremony held in St. Peter’s, he reported, the pope had instructed that members of the Italian armed forces be admitted without the need for the ticket that was normally required. The pope took this action, said the police chief, “due to an express desire…to see himself surrounded by many soldiers in order to be able, through them, to bless the entire Italian Army.”[14]
Ambassador Attolico was likewise pleased by the pope’s supportive attitude. “In private conversations,” he wrote Ciano in early July, “the Pope has expressed his favorable impression of Germany’s conduct in the war,” saying that “the German army was acting well, without excesses, trying to avoid destruction, respecting, as far as possible, civilian populations.” The ambassador was also pleased to point out that, along with the Vatican’s embrace of the Fascist slogan of peace with justice, the other much vaunted Fascist war goal, fighting to create a “new order,” seemed to be finding increasing favor there.[15]
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Repeatedly visiting Cardinal Maglione and his two deputies, France’s ambassador tried to impress on them “how much the Sovereign Pontiff’s silence and reserve, at such times, pained the French,” and he warned of the “dire consequences” that might result. Monsignor Montini offered a glimmer of hope in meeting with d’Ormesson on the last day of June, hinting that the pope was considering saying something soon. “Believe me,” added Montini, “the Holy Father is perfectly aware of the situation. I can even say that it is, for him, an acute concern.” For d’Ormesson, what that meant was not entirely clear. Perhaps the pope had in mind addressing a letter to the French cardinals or to the archbishop of Paris. “What is likely, however,” the ambassador feared, “is that this document will be written in the rather convoluted and overly flowery style in which Pius XII delights. What is certain…is that each of his phrases will be carefully weighed not to provoke any negative reaction on the part of Germany or Italy. Extreme prudence is now more than ever the order of the day at the Holy See.”[16]
The Frenchman saw in Attolico, the bland, courteous Italian ambassador to the Holy See, a dangerous tool of the Fascist regime, “all the more dangerous because he is himself Catholic and related, through his wife, to the Vatican milieu. He is a skillful, shrewd, cunning, wily man. His wife and he have entered into the good graces of the Secretariat of State.” Attolico knew the right button to push: the Vatican should stick to its religious mission. He was an effective complement to Bergen, his German colleague, both men conservatives of the old school. Attolico was no fervent Fascist and Bergen no zealous Nazi, but it was just this that made them so useful to the two regimes in preventing the pope from doing anything that might be harmful to the Axis cause.[17]
D’Ormesson’s flickering hopes that the pope would speak out would soon be extinguished. In his public audiences, the pope stuck to the familiar bromides, avoiding any attempt to cast blame. His July 10 address was typical, developed on the theme that Christianity teaches that one should not hate one’s enemy at a time of war or fall prey to feelings of revenge. As an example of the proper Christian attitude, he pointed to the virtue of caring for the wounded on the battlefield regardless of which side they were on.[18]
As for the Vatican paper, it paid remarkably little attention to the war. “To read it,” observed the French ambassador in July, “one would think that the missions to Paraguay or the concordat with Portugal were currently Christianity’s sole objects of concern.” The Fascist government’s campaign of intimidation, thought the French ambassador, had succeeded. The pope’s three telegrams to the sovereigns of the invaded countries and their publication in the Vatican paper had been met by violence against the paper’s vendors and readers. The pope, explained d’Ormesson, being “extremely sensitive,” was shocked at the time to learn that shouts of “Down with the Pope” had been heard on the streets of Rome. Indeed, the pontiff frequently remarked on the unsettling impression it had made on him.[19]
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In early July 1940, Mussolini sent his son-in-law to Berlin to plan the war’s next moves with Hitler and Ribbentrop. He wanted to impress on the Führer his eagerness to have Italian forces participate in what he expected to be the impending invasion of the British Isles. He also wanted to ensure that the moves Marshal Pétain, the head of France’s new collaborationist government, was making to cooperate with the Axis powers would not end up “defrauding” Italy of the French booty that, as he saw it, was Italy’s due.
Hitler, in a buoyant mood, took Ciano for a tour of the sites of Germany’s recent triumphs: the Maginot Line, which had been so easily breached; Dunkirk, from which the British troops had fled in chaotic retreat across the Channel; and Bruges, in northwestern Belgium. The tour ended in Salzburg, Austria, where they were met by a huge popular demonstration of support.[20]
The following week Pius XII, meeting with the French ambassador, told him how impressed he was with Marshal Pétain. Having been worried in the past that Communists might take over France, the pope welcomed the appearance of a strong leader who could expunge that danger for good. It had indeed been Communist subversion, thought the pope, that had led to France’s humiliating defeat. He told the ambassador of a report he had heard that, as the German army approached, a large number of French troops deserted while singing the Communist “Internationale.” Perhaps the pope even believed the implausible story. “What a difference from the war of 1914,” remarked the pontiff.[21]
Ambassador d’Ormesson asked Pius XII what he thought the Italians would demand of France. “Nice, Corsica, Tunisia,” replied the pontiff. Distraught, the Frenchman told him how much the French were counting on him to protect them. “The Pope listened to me attentively,” the ambassador later recalled, “approving my words, but nothing in his attitude or in his words left any hope that he was resolved to take a vigorous position in any near future. Pius XII has been crushed by recent events…. I fear that his personal character is not equal to the dramatic situation found in Europe today.” What seemed to worry the pope most in the negotiations then under way was that the Germans would try to take the Congo, home of a well-developed network of Roman Catholic missions, away from Catholic Belgium.[22]
