The Pope at War, page 31
The next day the pope reviewed Tardini’s memo with its attached proposed text for a papal message to the Italian dictator. While acknowledging that some sign of papal initiative was called for, he balked at sending the Duce a formal letter, favoring the more modest step of a verbal communication via Ciano. On May 12 Ciano came to the cardinal’s office, where Maglione read him the pope’s message before handing him the page to read himself.
The message could hardly have been shorter, consisting of four sentences. As father of all the faithful, and concerned as he always was to spare civilians the scourge of war, said Pius XII, he was saddened by all the suffering the conflict was causing “to His beloved Children of Italy.” But he was even more worried about the future, which threatened to bring even greater sorrows and ruin. Given this situation, as bishop of Rome and primate of Italy, he wished “once more to declare to the Honorable Mussolini that He, as always, is ready to do whatever is possible to come to the aid of the people who are suffering.”[9]
Given the dramatic circumstances, a weaker message would be hard to imagine. Even Ciano said it seemed rather vague. Looking over the sheet Cardinal Maglione had handed him, Ciano read it again, taking notes, for the pope did not want Mussolini to have anything in writing. Ciano said he would bring the pope’s message to the Duce immediately, but he was not optimistic that his father-in-law would be pleased to receive it, with its implicit suggestion that something should be done to extract Italy from the war. While Ciano acknowledged that peace talks were indeed urgently needed, he said Mussolini opposed them, and in any case the Allies would never negotiate with him. Nor, Ciano added, was the king showing any signs of taking matters in hand.[10]
The pope would not have to wait long for the Duce’s response, as that same afternoon Mussolini dictated it to Ciano, who no doubt crafted some of the more respectful wording himself: “The Duce thanks the Holy Father…for the interest he has demonstrated for the sufferings that have been inflicted on the Italian people.” It was indeed likely, Mussolini told the pope, that the Allies would continue their attacks and so bring more ruin and more sorrow. But still eager to cast himself as the peacemaker, he added, “The Duce himself is suffering personally from this situation, given that between August and September 1939 he made every possible effort to avoid the conflict.” The dictator then got to the nub of his wholly predictable response: “The Duce thanks the Pope for his good intentions but given the current state of things there are no alternatives and therefore Italy will continue to fight.”[11]
The next day Ciano brought his father-in-law’s reply to the Vatican and read it aloud to Cardinal Maglione. He told the cardinal that Mussolini regarded the pope’s message as yet another attempt by the pope to burnish his own image at Mussolini’s expense.[12]
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While the Duce was fending off the pope’s carefully couched plea, the last Axis forces in North Africa were surrendering in Tunisia, and the Allies were taking prisoner another 120,000 Italians and 130,000 Germans. Meanwhile, in an effort to keep the Italians guessing about where they might land, Allied planes were dropping bombs on both coasts of Sicily as well as on Sardinia.[13]
With the Allied invasion nearing, those in the upper echelons of Italian society were frantically seeking a way to save themselves. For Italy’s military leadership, there could be only one point of reference, the king, to whom they traditionally pledged their allegiance and for whom they served. It was the king who retained the right to choose the head of government, a fact reflected in the requirement—never abandoned in the years of the dictatorship—that Victor Emmanuel sign all legislative acts before they could go into effect.
The pope was aware that secret meetings were being held at the Quirinal, the royal palace across the Tiber from the Vatican. Giuseppe Dalla Torre, the Osservatore Romano director, who had good contacts with the conservatives now scheming to save the salvageable, was keeping the pope up to date.[14]
The notoriously reclusive king, long under Mussolini’s spell, and fearful that the fall of Fascism might mean the end of the monarchy, was growing more nervous with each new approach. In early May his cousin, the count of Turin, a military commander in the First World War, urged him to act. The king refused. “There were still fifty thousand people there applauding the Duce in Piazza Venezia the other day,” he replied. “I don’t want to provoke a civil war.”[15] To his military aide-de-camp, Victor Emmanuel confided his fear that “at any moment the English and the King of England are going to turn to me directly to negotiate a separate peace. It would put me in a very embarrassing position. If this were to happen, I would act openly, I would speak with the Duce so that we could agree on the line to follow.”[16]
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Three months earlier President Roosevelt had asked the pope an awkward series of questions. What form did he think a new Italian government should take? Who should be entrusted to lead it? Should the Italian monarchy be retained or ended?[17]
The pope had delayed responding but now decided he could put it off no longer. Cardinal Maglione and Monsignor Tardini prepared three drafts before the pope, making final edits, agreed on the text. The most sensitive point was identifying potential leaders of a new government. Initially, Tardini omitted any names, deeming it too risky to list them. The pope called for a new draft. Because the Americans had asked for names, the pope thought they needed to provide some, but he cautioned that they not be put in writing. Rather, the names were to be conveyed orally and cast not as people whom the pope himself was proposing, but rather, as the pope phrased it, “putting everything in the mouths of informants and public opinion.”
Following these instructions, a new draft included the names of those the pope favored, albeit couched in a way that offered some distance: “large sectors of public opinion hold that, at least for an initial transitional period, those suited to lead the government, among others, are Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, Marshal Enrico Caviglia, and Luigi Federzoni.” The elderly Orlando had been Italy’s prime minister during the First World War, Caviglia was a similarly aged military hero of that war, and Federzoni a prominent, pro-church member of the Fascist Grand Council.[18]
Bringing this latest draft to the pope, Cardinal Maglione voiced his own uneasiness with the pope’s request that names be included in responding to the American president. There was always the danger the message might fall into the wrong hands. Nor was it only Mussolini they were worried about. Many men were eager to succeed the Duce, and were any of them to see they were not included on the pope’s list, the result could prove damaging. In the end, the pope agreed. The brief cable to Cicognani in Washington, in cipher, would go out with the names deleted. The pope focused on one issue only: his belief in the importance of retaining the monarchy. As for the matter of who might head a future government, the reply was curt. This matter, under the Italian constitution, was for the king to decide.[19]
While the pope’s reply to Roosevelt’s request was brief and sent through his apostolic delegate in Washington, he at the same time wrote directly to the president on a matter he thought more pressing. The intensified Allied bombardment of Italy’s cities, along with the realization that invasion might be near, led him to fear Rome might soon be the target of Allied air assault. He began his letter, as had become his custom in speaking of the war, by praising his own ceaseless efforts on behalf of peace: “And when the awful powers of destruction broke loose and swept over a large part of Europe, though Our Apostolic Office places Us above and beyond all participation in armed conflicts, We did not fail to do what We could to keep out of the war nations not yet involved and to mitigate as far as possible for millions of innocent men, women and children, defenseless against the circumstances in which they have to live, the sorrows and sufferings that would inevitably follow.” He asked Roosevelt to spare Italians from further tribulations and to protect “their many treasured shrines of Religion and Art—previous heritage not of one people but of all human and Christian civilization.”[20]
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On May 29 Winston Churchill and his foreign secretary, Anthony Eden, joined General Dwight Eisenhower and the Allied military command at their headquarters in Algiers to plan the invasion of Italy. Landing would take place on the shores of Sicily in an operation code-named “Husky.” The date of the invasion was not yet set, but it would come soon.[21]
At the same time, Myron Taylor, President Roosevelt’s emissary, paid a visit on the apostolic delegate in Washington, Monsignor Cicognani, with a message for the pope. Although Taylor said he was only speaking personally, Cicognani was convinced Roosevelt had sent him. Taylor said Italians faced a fateful choice. Should they not quickly depose Mussolini and renounce their alliance with Germany, the future would bring horrible ruin, death, and poverty, and in the end, they would suffer the fate of all conquered peoples.[22]
News of this conversation prompted anguished discussion between Cardinal Maglione and the pope. Clearly, if Pius XII wanted to play a role in bringing about Italy’s renunciation of its alliance with Hitler, he would need to encourage King Victor Emmanuel to remove Mussolini from power, for only the king had the legal authority to do so. In sketching what such an attempt might look like, Monsignor Tardini even drew up a lengthy text that the pope might send the king. It tried to finesse the matter by putting some distance between the pope and the American request, phrasing it as passing on Taylor’s message “solely as a matter of information.”
Tardini was himself conflicted. If the pope decided to say nothing to the king, he thought, “it would seem that the Holy See wanted, at any cost, to save Mussolini.” But for the pope to do anything that suggested Mussolini be deposed ran risks of its own.[23]
Despite the urgency of the American appeal, the pope decided to buy some time. He asked his delegate in Washington to find out from Taylor whether his message had the approval of the American government.[24]
On the same day as the pope sent this question to Washington, Monsignor Tardini prepared a new memo, this one outlining all the reasons why it would be unwise for the Vatican to do anything to help bring about Mussolini’s fall. The Allies wanted Italy to renounce its alliance with the Nazis, eliminate Fascism, and under the guise of offering Italy its protection, use the country as a convenient base for attacking Germany. The Allies’ threats of what they would do should Italy not comply—destroy Italy’s cities, massacre its population, ruin its economy—were outrageous. “Does this not seem,” asked Tardini, “a Nazi program?” And then, he thought, there was another consideration. The Germans had spies everywhere and undoubtedly had a plan ready to occupy Italy if the country made any move to replace Mussolini and disengage from the Axis. Indeed, he was convinced the Germans had “a great wish of striking against the Holy See.” It would be unwise for the Vatican to do anything to anger them.[25]
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The first Italian territory to fall to the Allies was the small island of Pantelleria, midway between Sicily and Tunisia. After three days of intensive air bombardment, the military garrison surrendered, its ten thousand soldiers taken prisoner. On June 11, following the surrender, Roosevelt broadcast a radio appeal urging Italians to depose Mussolini and cast off their German ally. Later that day Myron Taylor again visited the papal delegate in Washington, bringing a final ultimatum from Roosevelt. If Italy and its king would heed his call, the United States stood ready to aid the beleaguered country and support a new government. This was their last chance. The Allies were determined to bring down Fascism and National Socialism. They would bomb any target that would hasten that goal, whether military or nonmilitary. Not even Rome would be spared.[26]
Pius XII could put off contacting the king no longer. On June 17 he sent his nuncio to meet with the monarch, using the pretext of giving the king a series of medallions commemorating the pope’s twenty-fifth episcopal anniversary. The nuncio, Francesco Borgongini, perhaps the king’s match as a pedant, spent the first several minutes of their forty-minute meeting explaining the history of each item to him. The monarch reciprocated by offering his compliments to Pius XII, saying how much he admired the pope’s ability to craft his speeches in a way that ensured they would offend no one.
Roosevelt’s radio address of a few days earlier gave the nuncio the opening the pope had sought to raise the delicate subject. The American president had said the United States was not ill disposed toward Italy and it would be in Italy’s interest to withdraw from the war. If Italy did so, Roosevelt had promised the country would have America’s support. If it did not, the consequences would be terrible. In summarizing Roosevelt’s radio message for the king, the nuncio made no direct mention of Mussolini or the desirability of replacing him.
As the king failed to take the bait the first time and went off on a tangent, the nuncio tried another tack. He told the king the Holy See had learned that the president really did mean what he had said regarding the support the country would get if it withdrew from the war. Here the king showed a flicker of interest, but then again changed the subject, asking how the church was structured in the United States.
Once more the nuncio tried to move the conversation in the right direction: “The monarchy is well regarded and loved by the Italian people and the government depends on Your Majesty.”
The king, a coward but not a fool, could see what Borgongini was getting at. A wry smile appeared on his face. “I am not like the Pope.”
The king said the Allies would find it difficult to land troops in Sicily. It would take more men and more large ships than they had. More likely, he speculated, they would aim for Sardinia. Or they might well not be planning to invade Italian territory at all, but rather would head for Greece. In any case, the king assured the nuncio, no landing on Italian soil was imminent, as the military had been keeping a vigilant eye and saw no signs of it.[27]
Mussolini’s need for church backing for his faltering efforts to retain popular support had never been greater. The same day as the nuncio met with the king, the national head of the Fascist Party convened a meeting of thirty military chaplains, ten attached to the army, ten to the Young Fascist paramilitary groups, and ten to the Fascist militia. Present with them was the national head of the military chaplains, Archbishop Bartolomasi. The party secretary proposed holding a series of party-organized popular assemblies in cities throughout the country aimed at “inciting resistance” to the approaching Allied armies. Each event, scheduled for the first and third weeks of July, would consist of speeches by Fascist Party dignitaries, wounded veterans, and a local chaplain. The archbishop offered his strong support for the initiative and promised the Catholic clergy’s “loyal collaboration.”[28]
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While the pope had long been nervous about what a Europe under Nazi control would mean for the church, he also worried about what a resounding Allied victory might mean. A memo that Monsignor Tardini prepared for the British embassy offers a valuable glimpse into the thinking in the Vatican now that the war had turned so decidedly in the Allies’ favor. Christian Europe and Christianity faced two dangers: Nazism and Communism, both materialist, antireligious, totalitarian, tyrannical, cruel, and militaristic. In response to Vatican worries that an Allied victory would result in Communist domination in Europe and so produce no better result than a Nazi victory, the Allied diplomats had argued that the two situations were very different. While an Axis victory would mean control of Europe by the Nazis alone, there were three major powers behind the Allies, and in a postwar world the British and Americans would counterbalance Russia’s influence.
Tardini deemed this argument weak. There was in fact good reason to fear that an Allied victory would result in a Europe dominated by Russia and with it “the destruction of European civilization and Christian culture.” He predicted that once the fighting in Europe was over, the Americans and British would need to focus on the war in the Pacific. While they were busy dealing with Japan, Russia’s massive army would complete its occupation of much of Europe. Nor would their advance depend on military conquest alone, for Russia’s unexpected victories against the German army had greatly impressed the working classes of Europe. In the aftermath of the war, the western Europeans, living in hunger and misery, would be easy prey for the Communists, while the Slavs, thought Tardini, had a natural affinity for the Russians and for Communism. The Communist conquest would be made easier by the fact that even after Japan was defeated, a totalitarian regime like Russia could continue to mobilize for war, while the democracies, subject to the popular will, would be eager to reduce their armies and enjoy the fruits of peace.
The monsignor concluded that the ideal outcome of the war would be elimination of both dangers, Nazism and Communism. Should Communism survive—much as if Nazism were to survive—the result would be catastrophic.[29]
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Pius XII knew that neither the Italians nor the Germans had abided by the agreement to remove their military from Rome. But Roosevelt’s threat that, if Italy continued to fight on the Axis side, he would not spare the city led the pope to renew his earlier admonition. If the Allies bombed Rome, he would loudly protest. In a message for the president, he warned: “Those effecting such a bombardment will be held responsible by Catholics the world over and by the judgment of history.”[30]
Roosevelt and Churchill had given considerable attention to the question of whether Rome should be bombed, viewing the issue almost entirely in terms of Catholic sensitivities. But they had very different views. Foremost on the president’s mind was the domestic political fallout he would face from American Catholics. For the British prime minister, it was outrageous that the pope should shield Mussolini’s capital from attack after he had said nothing to protest the savage Axis bombing of London. In the end, as the Allied invasion of Italy neared, General Eisenhower in Algiers received new instructions, approved by both Roosevelt and Churchill, authorizing the daylight bombing of Rome’s railway yards, a major transit point for Axis troops and supplies. Prior to launching any such attack, all pilots were to be thoroughly briefed on Rome’s geography, with instructions to steer clear of Vatican City.[31]
