The Pope at War, page 29
While Mussolini was depressed, he had little to worry about as far as the Vatican went. At the beginning of the year, Francesco Borgongini sent in a review of his work as papal nuncio to the Italian government over the previous three years. While noting that not once in that time had Mussolini received him, following the Duce’s decision to meet with no ambassador other than Germany’s, his report reads like a paean to the Fascist leadership. The nuncio boasted that he had “entered into a practically intimate” relationship with Ciano, who was especially helpful in dealing with the ongoing problem of the anticlerical Farinacci and his newspaper, Il Regime Fascista. Giuseppe Bottai, the minister of education, reported the nuncio, was “always kind,” as was Guido Buffarini, undersecretary of internal affairs, whom he often met with in dealing with the racial laws. “Minister [of Justice Dino] Grandi was always very kind and openly professed that he was a believer.” Grandi, he added, had been particularly helpful in squelching any attempt to legalize divorce. Borgongini also had words of praise for the minister of finance who “has shown himself always well-disposed in the various measures allowing the Church to be exempted from various fiscal burdens.”
The nuncio’s report went on to chronicle many of the other areas of ongoing church-state collaboration: “In these three years there has been a noticeable relaxation in all conflicts with Catholic Action and a better attitude toward the Clergy.” The government had also shown its regard for the pope by acceding to his pleas to prevent Protestants from proselytizing in Italy. Indeed, the outbreak of the war had “favored the battle against Protestantism, because all the funding sources for the sects come from countries that are at war with Italy.” Even the church’s battle for morality had seen many successes thanks to government action, albeit this was an area in which Ciano and other Fascist leaders seemed less enthusiastic. Nonetheless, bowing to the church’s desires, Buffarini, along with the minister of popular culture and the police chief, had all cooperated in shutting down variety shows and seizing books and magazines the church found objectionable.[2]
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Early in January, in keeping with long Vatican tradition, Pius XII held the annual papal New Year’s reception for the Roman aristocracy. Speaking on behalf of the nobility, Prince Marc’Antonio Colonna, who bore the title Prince-Assistant to the Pontifical Throne, offered words of homage to the pontiff. The pope then gave a long speech, published by Italy’s leading Catholic newspaper under the title “The Mission of the Ruling Classes.”[3]
The day following the ceremony, Prince Colonna hosted a private lunch at his home, arranged at Ciano’s request. Italy’s foreign minister had something to communicate to the pope outside official channels, and so the prince invited Monsignor Montini to join them. After lunching with the prince and princess, Ciano and Montini were given a room to themselves. There they spoke privately for an hour.
The Duce’s son-in-law began by praising the pope’s recent Christmas radio address, which, “even if dense with doctrine and in erudite form,” was in keeping with “the dignity of the person who pronounced it.” Ciano also told the monsignor how pleased he was by the pope’s recently released film, Pastor Angelicus.
Ciano then turned to the subject of the war. He began by saying he had opposed Germany’s decision to launch the war in 1939 and claimed he had opposed Italy’s entry as well. He then came to the topic he was most eager to communicate to the pope. While the war would not end soon, when the time came, he hoped the Vatican might help broker an acceptable peace deal. He ended the unusual meeting by telling the monsignor of his deep faith in God, recounting how much he liked to visit his private sanctuary in Tuscany to pray in solitude.[4]
Ciano’s latest bid to win the pope’s favor and begin to plan for Italy’s exit from the war had come amid more bad news for the Axis. In the face of the Allied offensive in North Africa, German and Italian troops were abandoning the last pockets of Axis-occupied North Africa. The situation would only get worse for Italy over the next days as Allied planes flying out of North Africa began bombing the ferry facilities that linked Sicily to the mainland. Most disastrously of all for the Axis powers, on February 2, the Germans’ Sixth Army, with a quarter-million of its soldiers trapped at Stalingrad, surrendered to the Russians.[5]
In late January the Polish ambassador returned to the Apostolic Palace, having received new instructions from his government in exile in London stressing how important it would be for the pope to speak out. “In Poland,” the ambassador told the pope, “new events have taken place: their horrific character cannot be compared to anything known to history.” He then read a personal plea from the Polish president.
As he listened, Pius XII smiled nervously. “First of all,” said the pope when the ambassador finished, “I wonder if Monsieur le President has read my Christmas message. I am surprised, I am even hurt. Yes, I am, it pains me. Not a word of thanks, of recognition, I mean of recognition”—here the pontiff, not sure if the French word captured his thoughts, added the German term Anerkennung. “And yet I said everything. I was clear and distinct.” At this point the pope began to quote passages from his Christmas radio address from memory, pausing at his condemnation of the persecution of national minorities and races.
The ambassador responded that the Polish bishops had not found his words adequate, as he had nowhere mentioned the Nazis nor what, specifically, they were doing. The pope interrupted him: It was easy for the bishops living in exile to speak impudently, but those still in Poland would have to pay the price. The Germans were only waiting for a pretext for further persecution.
The Germans, replied the ambassador, had no need for pretexts. The Polish people had no patience for such excuses.[6]
Nor was it only the Germans who were engaged in a war of conquest and committing atrocities against civilian populations. Although few Italians would ever admit it, the Italians were as well. This was noted a couple of weeks later by the American Jesuit in Rome, Vincent McCormick, in his diary:
Holy See seems to manifest very keen interest in sufferings of civilian population when this population is Italian. They are fully aware of what cruel sufferings have been inflicted on civil population in Slovenia, Croatia and Greece, and this by Italians—burning of whole towns, murder of innocent hostages in revenge, and no letter of sympathy has been published as sent to Bishops of those parts. I am finding it more and more difficult, really impossible to defend the neutrality of the present-day Vatican. Catholicity is very much compromised.[7]
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News of the Axis debacle at Stalingrad, the defeat of Axis forces in North Africa, and the Allied bombing raids on Sicily, together with the worsening food shortages, with meat, dairy products, bread, pasta, and much else in short supply, was fast eroding popular support for the Fascist regime. Concluding that bold action was needed to deflect blame and regroup, Mussolini decided to dismiss nine of his twelve government ministers, as well as Guido Buffarini, who, as his own undersecretary, had in effect served as the powerful minister of internal affairs.
On the afternoon of February 5, the Duce summoned his son-in-law to his office. When Ciano arrived, Mussolini, ill at ease, surprised him by asking, “What would you like to do now?” The question would have seemed odd had it not been immediately followed by the dictator’s explanation that he had decided to change the entire government. Ciano was shocked, and Mussolini, embarrassed, and perhaps afraid of the reaction his mercurial daughter Edda would have to the sacking of her husband, quickly tried to turn the conversation to the question of what new post his son-in-law might like. Perhaps, the Duce suggested, he might want to be put in charge of Albania.[8]
Ciano had no interest in going to Albania. Instead, he surprised his father-in-law by naming the post he did want: ambassador to the Holy See. Eager to bring the awkward encounter to an end, Mussolini signaled his approval. Early the next morning Ciano, fearing his father-in-law might have second thoughts about the appointment, informed the Vatican of the decision.[9]
Ciano’s overnight transformation from Mussolini’s number two, responsible for foreign affairs in the midst of a world war, to ambassador to a postage-stamp-size state, triggered frenetic speculation in Rome’s diplomatic community. The German ambassador sent a telegram to Berlin arguing that Ciano had long been preparing the way for this “retreat” by his repeated efforts to win the pope’s sympathy. A British intelligence report suggested Mussolini might have designed the move “to pave the way for Italy’s withdrawal from the war and eventually to open negotiations for peace with the aid of the Vatican.” In his diary, the industrialist Alberto Pirelli speculated that Ciano was probably happy with the move, thinking it put him in a good position to detach Italy from Germany. Harold Tittmann offered a similar view to the American secretary of state: “Because of his reported pro-Ally proclivities,” Ciano “would be fitted to work through the Vatican on the United Nations representatives [i.e., the British and American envoys] in the Vatican City in favor of a compromise peace holding up to them the Russian danger.”[10]
The pope himself had mixed feelings about the news. As a lightning rod for Italians’ unhappiness with the war, Ciano was arguably the most unpopular man in the country. Making matters worse, his well-known playboy antics and widely rumored affairs were an embarrassment. Nor was the pope happy that Mussolini kept changing ambassadors. Ciano would be Italy’s fifth since he had become pope less than four years earlier. But the pope would see a positive side to the appointment as well. It would be hard to imagine an ambassador with easier access to the Duce, or one better placed to argue the pope’s cause.[11]
Among those pleased by the demotion was Clara, Mussolini’s lover, who saw Ciano, along with his wife, Edda, as enemies, conspiring to turn the Duce against her. But news that Buffarini too would lose his position infuriated her, for Clara viewed him as her most effective defender among the men surrounding the Duce. In the first of what would turn into a long series of letters to Mussolini casting Buffarini as his most loyal and able government servant, she urged him to create the new position of minister of the police for him. Later in the year, under dramatically different circumstances, her letters would become lengthy daily missives.
In increasingly offering “Ben” her political advice, Clara had something of a role model in Margherita Sarfatti, the Venetian Jewish woman who, during the time Mussolini came to power, had not only been his lover but had acted as an important political adviser as well. Indeed, Clara herself would later make oblique reference to the role her predecessor had played. “Ben,” she wrote, “I don’t know exactly how much you value what I tell you…. You are prejudiced, having had a sad experience with a woman, the ridiculous Jewess Sarfatti. But the difference is substantial, not only due to Race, to blood—a clear distinction to which I hold dear—but because her advice was not motivated by love, but by her own personal interests…out of an inordinate pride in wanting to be the Presidentessa. The Jewess, that is, who exploits the Great One for her own advantage.”[12]
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The change in Mussolini’s cabinet came only a few days before the anniversary of the Lateran Accords, an annual occasion for the Fascist and Catholic press to lavish praise on the Duce and highlight the regime’s strong ties with the church. Mussolini’s own newspaper featured a front-page article noting that, as each year on that date, Italian flags were hung festively both from public buildings and from private homes. “Italy, Fascist and Catholic,” the article concluded, “has, with the Conciliation, given new strength to its religious conscience, and, in the new climate created by the Revolution of the Blackshirts, rediscovered the road of its precise historical mission: defense of immortal Rome’s spiritual values and civilization.”[13]
The pope, until recently worried about the church’s fate in a Europe dominated by Hitler, was now increasingly worried about the impact of a German defeat.[14] Fears of the catastrophe that would befall Europe and the church should the Russians destroy the Axis army were being stoked by Italy’s own propaganda efforts, reflected daily in both the Fascist and the Catholic press. A February 21 editorial by Father Mario Busti, director of Milan’s Catholic daily, went so far as to quote approvingly Nazi propaganda czar Joseph Goebbels, long viewed in the Vatican as one of the Reich’s leading anticlerics. The priest hailed Goebbels for warning of the need “to eliminate the danger that is coming from the east, to Germany first and then to all of Europe…by the Bolshevik wave.” Quoting the Nazi leader again, Busti added, “only the German army and its allies possess the force to save Europe from this immense danger.”[15]
As the likelihood of Axis victory receded, speculation increased that Mussolini or other Fascist leaders would look for a way out of the war and in doing so would need to rely on the pope to broker a deal. In mid-February Harold Tittmann, from his apartment in Vatican City, informed Washington that the pope might be interested in supporting such an initiative. Perhaps, thought Tittmann, Ciano, as Mussolini’s new ambassador to the Holy See, “would be in a position to attempt through the Vatican to open negotiations with the Allies with a view to having Italy withdraw from the war through a separate peace.” The American envoy believed the interests of the Vatican and the Italian government were now converging, both eager to save Italy from destruction. Fearing that the fall of the Fascist regime might trigger a popular uprising, the Vatican would not want to risk any dramatic change in Italy’s government.[16]
What the Allied diplomats in the Vatican found wholly lacking, despite the turn in the war, was any indication that Italians would rebel against their government. The Allies had designed their bombing campaign with the aim of provoking just such a popular uprising. But as British foreign secretary Anthony Eden wrote in a confidential memo, the lack of any sign of popular revolt was no reason to halt the air attacks. On the contrary, he thought they should be intensified. Rather than pursue a separate peace with the Italians, he advised, “we should aim at provoking such disorder in Italy as would necessitate a German occupation. We suggest that the best means of achieving this aim is to intensify all forms of military operations against Italy, particularly aerial bombardment.” Forcing the Germans to send soldiers desperately needed elsewhere in Europe into Italy could, thought the British foreign secretary, only aid the Allied cause.[17]
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Hopes that Pius XII might help Italy break with Hitler and exit the war were not confined to whispered conversations among the foreign envoys at the Vatican. On February 22 General Ettore Bastico, who until the recent routing of the Italian army in North Africa had served as governor of Libya, came to see Pius XII. He hoped to enlist the pope’s aid for just this purpose, telling him it was the only way for the country to avoid ruin. Bastico would leave disappointed. “I tried to interest the Holy Father in the real situation in which Italy finds itself in this war,” he recalled, “but the Pope kept himself so far above it all, eager to avoid engaging the question, and leaving me without letting me know his august opinion.”[18]
With fears of an Allied invasion growing, other worried members of Italy’s elite were now making their way to the Vatican, hoping to find a lifeline. Notable among them was the rubber czar Alberto Pirelli. Long a pillar of the Fascist regime, he, like others of his class, was now among those desperate to find a way to avoid the popular uprising that he feared would follow military defeat. He met with Cardinal Maglione to test the waters.
Maglione asked the industrialist whether he thought Italy could negotiate a peace deal separately from Germany.
No, Pirelli replied. Not only would it be too humiliating for the nation to abandon its German partner that way, but if they attempted to do so, the Germans would make them “pay dearly” for their betrayal. Their only hope was to try to negotiate a peace that included Germany as well.
“Who,” asked the cardinal, “could take the initiative?”
“My people are looking to the Vatican, albeit understanding the difficulties.”
Maglione could not see how the Vatican could succeed in such a mission. The Allies had made clear they would not negotiate with either Mussolini or Hitler. While Italy had a king who, at least in theory, could replace the Duce, Germany had no king and so no obvious way to remove the Führer. “Besides,” the cardinal told the industrialist, “Germany has truly sown hatred in all of Europe…. As for the atrocities committed against the Jews in Poland and everywhere else, the proofs we have are terrifying!”
If Maglione had any encouraging news for Pirelli, it was his concluding thought. Italy might yet be spared. It seemed unlikely to him that the Allies would land their troops on Italian soil. More likely they would open their new front on the northern coast of France instead.[19]
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With the souring of the public mood, Mussolini was now all the more eager to avoid any criticism of the war by the Catholic clergy. As Easter approached, the prefects in each province, aided by local party officials and eager local Fascists, pored over the bishops’ annual Lenten messages. Authorities seized copies of the bishop of Verona’s Easter message, deemed guilty of calling the war a punishment inflicted by God for Italians’ obscenities and their profanation of the Holy Name. But for the most part the government would be pleased with the church, as both the Fascist and the Catholic press continued to trumpet messages by bishops stressing the importance of Axis victory.[20]
American warplanes were now joining the British as they stepped up their bombing raids. Each day as evening approached, in cities from Naples to Milan, long lines of people on foot, on bicycle, and on donkey-pulled carts headed out to the countryside seeking to escape the death that rained down from the nighttime sky. People looked back at the sky over the city, reddened by flickering flames rising from factories and fuel depots. Turin, center of Italy’s heavy industry, suffered over twenty massive bombardments. Much of the city lay in ruins, whole working-class residential areas destroyed, electricity, gas, and water lines repeatedly cut. In Naples, open-bed trucks with cadavers piled high headed to makeshift cemeteries where the bodies were dumped into common graves. A single cross stood atop each, bearing the hastily scrawled names of all those entombed below.[21]
