The Pope at War, page 44
Abbey of Montecassino after the Allied bombing, 1944
Cardinal Maglione summoned Harold Tittmann, the American envoy, and gave vent to his anger. The Germans had maintained their word and honored the sacred status of the priceless abbey, said the cardinal, and the church had repeatedly assured the Allies it harbored no German troops. The bombing was “a piece of gross stupidity.”
“German propaganda is naturally making full use of this windfall,” an American intelligence report noted six days after the bombing. “A raging campaign has been let loose.” Osborne, unsettled by the disastrous attack, likewise recounted the propaganda use the Germans were making of it. The goal of “the present German Catholic campaign,” he told the British Foreign Office, was to cast the Allies as the enemies of the Catholic Church and the Germans as its defenders. “Its primary purpose is to put the screws on the Vatican by means of pressure by the clergy and the faithful in the hope of inducing the Pope to declare himself publicly against Anglo-Saxon powers. Thereby the Germans hope to swing the Catholic vote in the US against the President in forthcoming elections and also to work on public opinion in Catholic Spain and South America.”[37]
The men of Mussolini’s Italian Social Republic were also quick to use the Montecassino bombing to cast themselves as defenders of Roman Catholicism against Anglican England and its allegedly Jewish-run American ally. A small group of Fascist prelates in the north of the country had been recruited to the cause and launched a new journal, Crociata Italica (Italian Crusade), edited by a priest. The bombing fit neatly into their narrative.
But most Catholic clergy were keeping their distance from Mussolini’s Blackshirts. Indeed, many would aid the resistance. It was now clear to almost everyone that the rump Fascist government was going to be on the losing side of the war, while the violence of its goons was generating widespread anger.[38]
No man was more influential in the church hierarchy in northern Italy than the archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Schuster, and as the drama unfolded, he would play a highly visible role. An American intelligence report of late February offered a snapshot: “In Milan the Neo-Fascists are making desperate attempts to win over the clergy or to frighten them into collaboration, but with practically no success. The Cardinal Archbishop of Milan, Schuster, who at one time flirted with Fascism, has become soured now on Neo-Fascism, and the Catholic clergy among whom Fascist influence has been strong have now completely veered around.”[39]
To say Schuster had “flirted with Fascism” was putting the matter rather delicately. Schuster had long been central to the Fascist regime’s efforts to identify itself with the church in northern Italy, and the fact that he refused to bless the new republican regime sparked charges of betrayal among its leaders. In a front-page “Open Letter to His Excellency Cardinal I. Schuster,” Farinacci shed his own crocodile tears. Even before Schuster had been named archbishop of Milan in 1929, wrote Farinacci, he had found him “close to my spirit as an Italian and as a fascist Catholic,” pleased by the cardinal’s “words of admiration for our Duce and for the work that fascism was doing.” For many years subsequently, recalled Farinacci, his hopes had been fully realized by “your fascist activity, your participation in the most important [Fascist] ceremonies, your flights to visit our colonies, the pleasure of finding you in our midst.” What could have happened to cause the archbishop to turn his back on Fascism? How could he have been won over by Roosevelt, who had revealed himself to have the soul of a Jew and had “betrayed the Pontiff notwithstanding his solemn promises, betrayed the Catholics of the whole world? Today he is destroying the Churches, the seminaries, the convents, the religious institutions, he is massacring the clergy, he is killing thousands of women and children.” And how could it be, Farinacci asked the archbishop in his open letter, that “you are only concerned about threatening anathemas against those priests of Crociata Italica who want to save the Fatherland and save the Church from the Judaic and communist hordes?”[40]
Skip Notes
* General Harold Alexander was commander of the British forces trying to force their way up the peninsula.
On the first day of March 1944, a solitary plane flew over the Vatican and dropped six small bombs. Three months earlier four bombs had struck Vatican City. While none of the bombs hit inside this time, a number exploded just outside its walls. “Anglo-Saxon Bombs on Vatican City,” read Farinacci’s front-page headline in Il Regime Fascista.[1]
While the Allies blamed the Italian Fascists for the raid, it had been an Allied plane that dropped the bombs. The American and British chiefs of staff received the unwelcome report from British Royal Air Force headquarters later in the month. Visibility had been poor that night, and it added, in an apparent attempt at exculpation, “Captain of aircraft was P/O [pilot officer] McAneny who is of Roman Catholic faith.”
What to do? By the time this report was received in late March 1944, the Allies had spent weeks denying responsibility. A flurry of communication between London and Washington resulted in something of a compromise. In the future, they should immediately admit when such mistakes were made. “Nevertheless,” advised the British chiefs of staff, “it would be unwise to admit the particular mistake…gratuitously so long after the event. To do so would…invite the enemy to meet any future denials with the rather awkward taunt ‘wait a month or two and they will admit it.’ ” The Allies never did admit that it was their bombs that had come close to crashing through the roofs of St. Peter’s Basilica and the Apostolic Palace that day.[2]
Two days after those bombs fell, the Allies resumed their large-scale air assaults on Rome. On March 3 American warplanes flew low over the city and, facing little enemy fire, bombed their targets, among them an ammunition train, triggering a series of explosions that could be heard for another hour. The U.S. intelligence report on the operation boasted of its “perfect accuracy.” It expressed unhappiness over the Vatican newspaper’s account of the attack, which “overlooks the fact that the town is shamelessly used by the Germans as their main center of communications for all their military transport.” Although the bombing might have been accurate from the American military’s perspective, it resulted in hundreds of civilian deaths and many homes destroyed. The American analyst’s conclusion seems, in retrospect, to have been overly rosy: “Roman press attempts to gain a propaganda victory from the attack were meeting with no success” for “the Romans remain as usual completely indifferent; their main concern is always to get food and to avoid conscription.”[3]
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Eager to celebrate the fifth anniversary of his papal coronation on March 12, 1944, Pius XII decided to invite the faithful to St. Peter’s Square and address them from his balcony. Neither the Allies nor the local Fascist officials were pleased to learn of the event. The day before, Rome’s police chief warned that subversives were planning to take advantage of the crowd to provoke an anti-Fascist, anti-German demonstration. At the same time, the British envoy D’Arcy Osborne rebuffed the pope’s request that the Allies promise not to bomb Rome that day. He sent his reply to Maglione’s office:
You should inform the Cardinal Secretary of State that we very much regret not to be able to give any assurance that Allied planes will not fly over Rome during the afternoon of March 12. You should make clear to His Eminence that we cannot accept any responsibility for what could happen if large crowds assemble in the middle of an active war zone and that if the Pope goes ahead with his intention, it will be at his own risk and on his own responsibility.[4]
The pope was not to be dissuaded. Romans flocked to St. Peter’s, as rumors spread that he was planning to use the occasion to make an important announcement. Perhaps he had succeeded in convincing the Allies to stop the bombings of their city or had arranged to have additional supplies of food brought in, or perhaps he had even convinced the Germans to end their roundup of men for forced labor. For many, amid the devastating bombings by the Allies and the depredations of the Germans and Fascists, the pope seemed their only possible savior.
A crowd of tens of thousands filled the piazza facing St. Peter’s, enclosed by Bernini’s colonnade. Their eyes were fixed on the balcony over the basilica’s central door. In front of it stood a line of Palatine Guards, and near them a large contingent of priests and seminarians. In one of the loggias overlooking the piazza sat members of the Vatican diplomatic corps along with various dignitaries of the papal court. As they waited for the pope to emerge, the crowd sang sacred songs, their voices mixing with the pealing of the city’s church bells, which rang nonstop for five minutes.
At exactly three-thirty p.m., the white-robed pontiff and his entourage stepped onto St. Peter’s central balcony. After pausing to allow the applause and cheers that greeted him to subside, the pope began his speech. His first sentence, characteristically convoluted, was 116 words long:
In the desolation that has deprived you of domestic happiness, you, beloved sons and daughters, whom the present calamities have forced to scatter, without a home, perhaps separated from one and another of your own family, often ignorant and roaming, without news of them, to whom your blood and love bind you all the more, worried for their fate, just as they are worried for yours; you, however, to whom faith points to a heavenly Father, who has promised those who love him to turn all to the good, even the most oppressive and bitter things (cfr. Romans 8:28); you have come today, attracted and propelled by filial impulse, to receive from the Vicar of Christ a word of blessing and of comfort.
The pope continued at some length in the same vein, lamenting the people’s suffering while expressing faith that the Lord would one day restore their happiness. That the pope had nothing new to tell the Romans that afternoon, no new grounds for hope, was profoundly demoralizing. But as he completed his remarks, and the choir sang the hymn “Christus vincit” (Christ conquers), cries of Viva il Papa! rose from the crowd. Police fears of possible unrest at the papal event turned out to be not altogether unfounded. Following the speech, some scuffles broke out in St. Peter’s Square, while many from the disappointed crowd headed for the bridge over the Tiber to cross to the other side of the city. As they went, some hurled insults at a passing German car, while other brave souls handed out anti-German leaflets. Policemen shot their guns into the air to disperse the crowd and arrested several suspects before they succeeded in clearing the street.[5]
The German ambassador offered a glowing account of the pope’s speech to Berlin, writing that “the Pope publicly denounced the Allied raids on Rome with unusual harshness. The crowd in St. Peter’s Square applauded most wildly.” Weizsäcker was also pleased to convey what he termed the pope’s “grateful recognition of the aid provided by the German Command for Rome’s food supply.”
Indeed, there were signs that the Romans’ attitudes toward the Allies were souring, as Osborne reported to London. The continued bombing raids, he wrote, were “slowly but surely turning Italian opinion against us…. The destruction of civil life and property is altogether disproportionate to military results obtained.” All this “is leading the Italians to think that German occupation is almost a lesser evil, generally detested as the Germans are, than Anglo-Saxon liberation…. The Germans are effectively exploiting the bombing damage, especially in Rome.” Making matters worse, thought the British envoy, Communist propaganda was becoming ever more effective, with its argument that only Russia’s “people’s army” was strong enough to defeat the German military without at the same time wreaking destruction on civilian populations. Osborne warned that, with Allied forces still bogged down south of Rome, “I fear it will crystalise in anti-Anglo-Saxon feeling almost comparable to the existing anti-German sentiment, while sympathy for Russia will correspondingly increase, to the advantage of Italian Communist party.”[6]
As the front drew ever nearer, the pace of Allied bombings picked up. In all, before the Allies reached Rome, twenty-five bombing runs would leave more than 4,000 dead and 10,000 wounded, with 2,500 buildings destroyed or badly damaged. Even for those Romans whose homes remained standing, conditions were rapidly worsening, with water, gas, and electricity knocked out for prolonged periods and food scarce.
Eager to show their regard for the Vatican, as well as to burnish their image as cultured patrons of the arts, the German authorities enlisted the Vatican’s help in a hurried effort to save Italy’s artistic masterpieces from destruction. It was Buffarini who had proposed to Mussolini the previous month that they should work in cooperation with the Germans to send important art works to safety inside Vatican City. Nor was it only Rome’s wealth of historic art that was at risk. The city now housed much more, including priceless works of art moved from the Montecassino abbey before its destruction and from museums in Naples, Milan, and other cities that had long been under Allied bombardment. German military convoys moved truckloads of art to safety in Vatican City.[7]
The pope continued to do what he could to convince the Allies to stop bombing Rome, calling on the Vatican’s representatives abroad to enlist the local episcopate and loyal Catholics in each country to raise their voices in protest. Responding to the latest of these requests, Ireland’s prime minister, Eamon de Valera, no friend of the British, denounced the Allied attacks. The chargé d’affaires of the Irish embassy to the Holy See sent Maglione a copy of the prime minister’s protest and asked if the pope would like to see it published. The Irish leader, he said, would do whatever the pope wanted. Tardini’s notes record the pope’s instructions: “Respond: Thank you. If they want to publish it, go ahead…. I think that, given the importance the Irish have in the United States, and given the attachment they have to De Valera, the Irish Government could give special publicity to its Note in the United States. That you can say, but do not put it in writing.”[8]
Amid the anger in the Vatican for the Allies’ stepped-up bombing of Rome, President Roosevelt’s mid-March response to the latest protests did nothing to win him friends there. In the margin of the printed text of the president’s remarks, next to his assurance that “We have tried scrupulously and often at considerable sacrifice to spare religious and cultural monuments and we shall continue to do so,” Monsignor Tardini scribbled his own comment: “Declarations: in large part false, untrustworthy in themselves, dangerous for the future.” Roosevelt “tends to deny any responsibility and to open the way for the continual bombardment of Rome, following a system that is by now well known…. 1) exaggerate the military importance of Rome for the Germans…2) place priority on so-called military exigencies, and 3) place all blame on Hitler and on the Germans.”[9]
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If there was any chance Romans might view the German occupation as preferable to the treatment they were receiving from the Allies, the events of March 23 would have quickly put that to rest. An SS battalion, composed of men recruited from Italy’s German-speaking Bolzano region bordering Austria, was marching through a narrow Roman street when partisans detonated explosives planted in a garbage bin, killing thirty-three of them. The Germans, who had no success finding the partisans involved in the attack, vowed to execute ten Italians for every SS member who had died, and Hitler himself ordered the executions to take place within twenty-four hours. The Germans hurriedly assembled the victims, selected for the most part from those they had already imprisoned in Rome, including seventy-seven Jews. While most of the non-Jewish victims had been jailed for anti-Fascist activities, the Jews had been arrested for being Jewish and, unlike the others, arrested in family groups. The youngest, Michele Di Veroli, had celebrated his fifteenth birthday only the month before. He was selected along with his father. Another family group of six included the oldest victim, Mosè Di Consiglio, age seventy-four. Among those with Mosè was his seventeen-year-old grandson, Franco. The SS herded those chosen into trucks and drove them to man-made caves on the outskirts of Rome, known as the Fosse Ardeatine. There the unfortunate victims were led in groups of five into the caves, where the Germans shot each one in the back of the head. Belatedly, the Germans realized they had brought 335 to the killing ground rather than the requisite 330, but rather than return the additional five to Rome, they murdered them as well. When the Germans were finished, they planted explosives in the caves to bury the bodies and conceal the scene of the crime.[10]
The pope had been notified of the German reprisal plan no later than ten a.m. that morning and, it appears, managed to get a few people whom the church favored taken off the list of those to be executed, each to be replaced with someone lacking such Vatican connections. Neither the pope nor anyone else at the Vatican raised a voice in protest. On the contrary, that evening the Vatican newspaper published a denunciation of the partisans’ assault on the SS troops, admonishing the Romans not to engage in acts of violence against the occupiers. It was a message the Vatican would continue to repeat as long as the Germans remained in Rome.[11]
Over the following weeks, the anguished families of those murdered at the caves, unsure of what had happened to them, turned to the Vatican for help. A month after the killings, the pope had his secretary of state send an appeal to the German ambassador. It began by assuring Weizsäcker that the Holy See realized he bore no responsibility for what had taken place, yet it asked him to help answer the pleas of those who feared for the fate of their loved ones. While the ambassador sent the Vatican request on to Berlin, he would never reveal what had happened. The truth of the mass executions at the Fosse Ardeatine would come out only after the Allies had driven the Germans from the city.[12]
