The Pope at War, page 34
In sharing these suggestions with d’Acquarone, Pirelli said the Vatican would be their best bet for brokering any negotiations with the Allies. Both men agreed it would be wise to notify the Vatican only a few minutes before the king acted, lest news of the plan to depose Mussolini leak out prematurely.[14]
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The Fascist leaders who arrived at Palazzo Venezia for the five p.m. meeting of the Grand Council that Saturday, July 24, had ample reason to be nervous. More than one wondered whether, when they next exited the building, they would be arrested, if not summarily shot. None had ever dared to challenge the Duce in this way. In the hours before the meeting, Ciano and Bottai had both worked with Grandi on his draft resolution and lobbied other members of the council for their support.
At five-fifteen p.m., dressed in his black Fascist militia uniform, the Duce entered and took his usual place at the head of the long U-shaped table. He began by launching into a history of the war. True, he admitted, Italians were now unhappy with it, but all wars were unpopular. He went on to outline his plan for a new line of defense against the Allied assault.
After Mussolini finished, Dino Grandi stood up to make his motion, but first he did the unthinkable, delivering a long, impassioned denunciation of the Duce. He accused him of turning the early comradely ideal of Fascism into a personal dictatorship and of failing to convene the Grand Council or to seek its advice before making the decision to go to war. Having for seventeen years retained for himself the ministries of all three branches of the armed forces, charged Grandi, Mussolini had failed to prepare the country for the war, and the disastrous consequences were there for all to see. Throughout Grandi’s speech, Mussolini remained silently in his seat. His face betrayed no emotion.
He remained silent as well when his son-in-law then got up to speak. Ciano turned to his favorite argument: Germany had constantly deceived its Italian ally. It had plotted its attack on Poland without consulting them, and the Germans had decided on all their subsequent invasions—Norway, Denmark, Belgium, France, Russia—without any consultation. Far from being guilty of betrayal in wanting to separate their fate from Germany’s, they were the ones who had been betrayed.
The debate would last many hours, the session adjourning only at two-thirty a.m. In the end, nineteen of the twenty-seven members voted in favor of Grandi’s motion calling for the return of the position of military commander-in-chief to the king and, more ambiguously, the return of constitutional powers to the crown, the Fascist Grand Council, the government, and parliament. What exactly the nineteen Fascist leaders who voted for the motion thought would result from this vote remains, even today, unclear. That they still hoped to save themselves from the coming reckoning seems to be the only thread that tied them together.[15]
At seven a.m. Alberto De Stefani, one of the Grand Council members who had voted for Grandi’s motion, appeared unannounced at the quarters of a high Vatican official he knew. He said he had urgent news to convey to the pope.[*] His next stop would be the royal palace to inform the king, but it was the pope whom he wanted to notify first.
Summoned by phone, Monsignor Montini quickly joined them. On his arrival, De Stefani explained that the Grand Council had just approved a resolution that could mean the end of the dictatorship. Yet Mussolini still seemed confident the king would never countenance any effort to relieve him of his position.
Although saying that what the king would do remained unclear, De Stefani wanted to let the pope know what he thought needed to be done. In this, he said he was confident he spoke for the majority of the Grand Council. Two sets of negotiations had to begin immediately, one with Germany and the other, brokered by the Vatican, with the Allies. They would need to convince Germany it was in its own interest to allow Italy to withdraw from the war. The rationale they would give the Germans was that by no longer having to defend Italy, the Germans could redirect desperately needed troops to their eastern and western fronts. In Italy’s negotiations with the Allies, it was clear that the country would be required to disarm, but the key, said De Stefani, was to have the Allies grant the country neutral status and forswear military occupation.[16]
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Word of the Grand Council vote served to hasten the decision the king had already taken to replace Mussolini as head of government with Italy’s former military leader, General Pietro Badoglio. At the time, Badoglio was best known for leading the Italian army in its conquest of Ethiopia, for which he had been awarded the title Duke of Addis Ababa. A longtime member of the Fascist Party, he had led Italy’s military at the start of the war and overseen its invasion of France, but then, blamed for the debacle in Greece, he had been replaced in late 1940. A proud man, he would not forgive the Duce for that humiliation.[17]
At three forty-five a.m., shortly after the Grand Council meeting ended, Mussolini phoned Clara. She warned him not to trust the king. Still nursing the wounds from her recent exclusion from Palazzo Venezia, she added, “Remember who loves you and who never tires of giving herself to you.” On his return home, Mussolini’s wife would give him much the same advice, albeit without a profession of love.[18]
Mussolini arranged to see the king later in the day, hoping somehow to explain away the Grand Council vote. Clara wrote him a long tear-soaked letter. Again, she mixed her injured love for him with her unsolicited political advice: “You don’t want to see me, to let me embrace you again after so much drama, to let me tell you that I love you all the more now that you have been betrayed…. It is all as my blood had told me: you have been betrayed, by your son-in-law first of all. Ben, you push away my love and my words, you keep humiliating me, but it doesn’t matter.” She begged him, belatedly, not to go see the king. “What must I do to get you to listen to me! Does history not teach you anything!! Listen to me…. Believe me it is the king who has wanted this. It is the king who betrays you with the whole Military Command, and he made use of those vile, timid, fatuous reptiles. Ben, arrest them! Ben, kill them and then let the king know you have brought justice to those who betrayed the Fatherland at war.”[19]
The fainthearted king had initially thought he could simply inform Mussolini of his decision to appoint a new head of government and then let him go free. Only at the last minute did the generals convince him that the Duce would have to be arrested and removed from Rome. At his awkward half-hour conversation with Mussolini that afternoon, the king made no mention of the fact he had ordered his arrest. Only when the deposed dictator walked back toward his car in the courtyard did an awaiting carabiniere captain approach him.
“Duce, in the name of His Majesty the king we ask you to follow us to protect you from any possible violence by the crowd.”
“But there’s no need!” responded Mussolini.
“Duce, I have an order to carry out.”[20]
The radio announcement of Mussolini’s “resignation” and the king’s appointment of General Badoglio as head of a new military government came shortly before ten p.m. on July 25. The Vatican newspaper announced the news the following day with a small headline buried beneath its “International News” rubric. There it also published Badoglio’s address to the Italian people. For the many who hoped the change in government would mean Italy’s swift exit from the war, Badoglio’s words were disappointing: “The war continues. Italy, hit hard, its provinces invaded, its cities destroyed, keeps its word, jealous custodian of its age-old traditions.” No public demonstrations of any kind would be tolerated.
Two days later L’Osservatore Romano added more detail, attributing the change in government to the Grand Council vote and the king’s subsequent action, and adding a note on Germany’s positive reaction to Badoglio’s statement that the war would continue. It also listed the new members of the government, beginning with the new foreign minister, Raffaele Guariglia, who, until his replacement a few months earlier by Ciano, had been the Fascist government’s ambassador to the Vatican. In a further sign of the repackaging of men who days earlier had been stalwarts of the Fascist regime, Gaetano Azzariti, the man who headed the special Fascist court overseeing the racial laws, was named Italy’s new minister of justice. He would later become chief justice of the country’s highest court.[21]
General Pietro Badoglio
Corriere della Sera, which for years had been filled not only with paeans to the Duce but with the vilest antisemitic attacks, greeted news of his overthrow with big photos of the king and Badoglio, along with an article titled “Milan Exults.” Fascists who had proudly worn their black shirts now found places to hide them. One man, slow to see the way the winds had shifted, was forced off a tram, his black shirt torn from his chest and set afire. Elsewhere, images of the Duce and Fascist symbols were ripped from walls and shredded. Monsignor Costantini went out walking toward the Vatican on the day following the announcement of the change in government. “Everywhere there is lively gaiety, everywhere joyful voices,” he wrote in his diary, “everywhere the fluttering of the tricolor.” What the Monsignor did not mention is that shouts of “Death to Father Tacchi Venturi” could also be heard on Rome’s streets. It would be a warning to the pope. The time had come for the Vatican to begin rewriting its own history as well.[22]
The pope, though, had a more immediate problem on his mind. Although the new government had publicly announced its intention to remain at Hitler’s side, behind the scenes it would clearly be looking for a way to extract Italy from the war. As the Vatican had good relations with the Allies, and the pope’s eagerness to play the role of peacemaker was well known, the new government seemed likely to call on the Vatican to act as intermediary to arrange Italy’s exit from the war.
Following the king’s dismissal of the Duce, the pope had Monsignor Tardini prepare a memo on the urgent question he expected soon to face. Tardini drafted it even before the Italian public learned what had happened and gave it to Cardinal Maglione that same evening. Now come to light with the recent opening of the Vatican archives, his handwritten brief offers a clear view of how the pope’s closest advisers saw the dramatic choices he faced.
Tardini’s advice was clear: the Holy See should refuse any request by the new government to serve as intermediary in its efforts to leave the Axis. The Allies had made clear they would accept only Italy’s unconditional surrender, and the pope could do nothing to change that. If the Vatican got involved in arranging such a painful exit from the war, it might well “greatly damage the prestige of the Holy See in the eyes of the Italian people who would have earlier placed many hopes in the papal intervention and would then remain bitterly disappointed.” The fact that the Allies would subsequently proceed to occupy Italy “will humiliate the Italians and diminish the Holy See’s prestige in their eyes.” Nor were the reasons for the pope to refuse to help the Italians make peace with the Allies limited only to potential damage to the pope’s reputation in Italy: “The Germans might blame the Holy See for their defeat.” True, many Germans would be happy to liberate themselves from Hitler, “but it is also true that the Allies will treat Germany in such a harsh and inhumane way that all Germans, even the good ones, will remain embittered and indignant. This bitterness and indignation of theirs might well be directed, in part, against the Holy See, should it have acted to facilitate Italy’s peace with the resulting abandonment of Germany.”
After recalling the bitterness produced in Germany by the Treaty of Versailles, at the end of the previous war, Tardini came to his recommendation:
Because the humiliations and the punishments inflicted on the Germans this time will be even worse than those that followed Versailles; because the Allies, blinded, unfortunately!, by hatred, will commit countless arbitrary and unjust actions against the Germans without any sense of proper measure; because (even if unjustly) a hostile attitude of the Germans to the Holy See would make the future conditions of Catholicism very difficult in Germany (where the Church needs to make up for the losses already suffered), it would seem opportune for the Holy See now to avoid any gesture that might in any way lend itself to being used one day to accuse it of having taken part (if only minimally) in Germany’s defeat.
The next morning Cardinal Maglione discussed Tardini’s memo with the pope. Pius XII felt torn. Tardini had certainly captured his own worries, the pope mused aloud, but after all the times he had hailed the value of peace, how could he refuse a request from Italy’s new leaders if they asked for his help?[23]
That evening, buffeted by a potent mixture of elation, apprehension, and disorientation, large numbers of Romans made their way to St. Peter’s Square, hoping the pope would come out to bless them and so share in their joy and their hopes. The pope must have been tempted to come onto his balcony to bathe in their acclaim, but he was a cautious man. It would be more prudent not to take part in what could be construed as a celebration of the end of the Fascist dictatorship. Despite the calls from below, Pius XII remained inside, his window closed.[24]
Skip Notes
* De Stefani, formerly one of the Catholic Center Party’s pro-Fascist members, had served as minister of finance during Mussolini’s first years in power. It was Monsignor Costantini, secretary of the Vatican congregation of Propaganda Fide, whom he came to see.
The Duce’s arrest was cause for celebration in Washington and London. Writing to Churchill, Roosevelt insisted they demand an unconditional surrender from the Italians. “It seems highly probable,” replied Churchill, “that the fall of Mussolini will involve the overthrow of the Fascist Regime and that the new government of the King and Badoglio will seek to negotiate a separate arrangement with the allies for an armistice.”
But the nature of Italy’s new government remained unclear. As an American intelligence report put it, “There is no indication that the forces which supported the Mussolini regime—namely, the monarchy, the armed forces, the Vatican, the Catholic Church in Italy, and the industrial and agricultural backbone of the Fascist party—have relinquished their power or their principles in accepting Mussolini’s resignation.” The newly announced slate of government ministers was filled with men from its Fascist predecessor.[1]
Italy’s new prime minister, the seventy-two-year-old Pietro Badoglio, had himself been far from a minor player in the two decades of Fascist rule. As head of the military chiefs of staff from the time Mussolini proclaimed the dictatorship in 1925, he had overseen the fascistization of the armed forces. As governor of the North African colonies of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica in 1930, he had employed brutal measures to put down the Libyan resistance, herding the native population into camps where sixty thousand died. In 1940 he oversaw Italy’s invasion of France and was forced out of his position only as a result of the humiliating defeat in Greece.[2]
Churchill thought the Allies should not be overly particular about who was in Italy’s new government. What mattered was that whoever they were, they be in a position “to deliver the goods.” There was also the question of what should be done if Mussolini and “his partners in crime,” as Roosevelt called them, were captured. Churchill reviewed the options: “One may prefer prompt execution without trial except for identification purposes. Others may prefer that they be kept in confinement until the end of the war in Europe and their fate decided together with that of other war criminals. Personally I am fairly indifferent on this matter.” What was of concern was that prominent Fascists would seek refuge in neutral countries. Roosevelt and Churchill sent a joint telegram to the states they were most worried about, including the Vatican, warning them against assisting such individuals “in any effort to escape their just deserts.” Britain’s envoy gave the message to Cardinal Maglione. At the bottom of his official request was a one-word handwritten note by Monsignor Tardini: “Wait…”[3]
From Algiers, Eisenhower urged rapid diplomatic action while there was still an authority in Italy with the ability to surrender: “If the King of Italy remains for more than a very short time as head of a country still at war with the Allies, full odium in our 2 countries now concentrated on Duce will be transferred to the King. Situation might therefore arise where it will be impossible to arrange an honorable capitulation with the King and we may be left without any other responsible authority.” Eisenhower proposed broadcasting a message to the Italian people, commending them on ridding themselves of Mussolini, “the tool of Hitler,” and calling on them to cease all activities in support of the Germans. Roosevelt and Churchill tweaked Eisenhower’s text before authorizing its broadcast. On July 28 Roosevelt wrote Churchill: “It now appears possible that by skillful handling of the situation we may be able to get Italy out of the war without the sacrifice of large numbers of our soldiers and sailors.” In retrospect, the president’s forecast appears tragically naïve.[4]
Unlike the Americans, who had joined the war late, the British had a significant number of prisoners of war in Italy, and their fate was much on Churchill’s mind. Forty-two thousand British soldiers and another 26,000 from elsewhere in the British Commonwealth were imprisoned in seventy different locations scattered through the Italian Peninsula, from reconverted orphanages to newly built prison camps. “Discarding etiquette,” he wrote Roosevelt on July 29, “I have sent a direct message to the King of Italy through Switzerland emphasizing our vehement and savage interest in this matter.” When Churchill had earlier raised the issue with Roosevelt, the president volunteered to use his good relations with the pope to help. “I am most grateful for your promise to put the screw on through the Pope or any other convenient channel,” Churchill responded. But he added a warning, “If the King and Badoglio allow our prisoners and keymen to be carried off by the Huns without doing their utmost to stop it, by which I mean using physical force, the feeling here would be such that no negotiations with that Government would stand a chance in public opinion.”[5]
