Into That Darkness: From Mercy Killing to Mass Murder (45 page)

If we wish to put into perspective the actions of certain individual priests during and after the war, and instead of generalizing, attribute responsibility for attitudes and actions only where it belongs, the consideration of the “Vatican Escape Route”, which certainly existed, cannot be divorced from consideration of the Vatican’s attitude to the extermination of the Jews and Gypsies, the murder of millions of Russians, the martyrdom of the Polish Catholics – in fact of the whole atmosphere of the Holy See at the time, which if it did not induce the events which have thrown a shadow over the whole of the Catholic Church, certainly allowed them to take place. The resulting self-questionings and accusations may have been out of all proportion to the reality of the situation and the number of priests involved. It is to establish a more accurate perspective that we must again examine the attitude of Pope Piusxii, and of his inner circle.

I believe that there were four reasons for Pope Pius xii’s conduct in the fateful years 1939–45.

The first and foremost, as has been established beyond doubt, was his dread of Bolshevism as the arch-enemy of the Church. This rejection was so total that it led him virtually to hold the vast majority of Russians, who supported this system, to be unworthy of concern. (The Pope’s attitude was reflected in the reply Monsignor Godfrey, the Apostolic Delegate in Britain, gave to the Foreign Minister, Lord Halifax, when in the spring of 1939 the latter suggested that it seemed regrettable the Russians were not being included in a list of great European powers the Pope was inviting to attend a peace conference. Monsignor Godfrey replied that “in no circumstances would it be possible for the Pope to consider such an approach.”)
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We have heard a great deal of the Pope’s silence regarding the martyrdom under the Nazis of the Catholic Poles, and of course the extermination of the Jews. But very little has ever been said about his even greater silence. For on several occasions he did in fact address words of comfort, however conventional and ineffectual, to the starving and dying Poles. And on one notable date, December 24, 1942, he actually pronounced seven words which, however obliquely and obscurely, were intended to refer to the Jews (although it is doubtful whether anyone outside professional religious circles noticed them).
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I have thoroughly studied the five volumes of documents, published by the Vatican between 1967 and 1972. In letter after letter, in document after document, the Pope deplores the outrages of war, especially the aerial bombardment of innocent civilians. But not in one single place does he utter a word concerning the murder of millions of Russian civilians.

The editors of the Vatican publication have printed the heartrending letter to the Pope of August 29–31, 1942, from Archbishop Szeptyckyj of Leopol in Ruthenia (southern Ukraine). Not only does he tell the Pope that 200,000 Jews had already been murdered by then in that small province – and describe in some detail how – but he also speaks of the death of “hundreds of thousands of Christians”.

“Liberated by the German army from the Bolshevik yoke,” he writes, “we originally felt a certain relief, which however lasted no more than one or two months. Little by little, the government has instituted a truly unbelievable régime of terror and corruption.… Today the whole country feels that the German régime is if anything worse, almost diabolically worse, than the Bolshevists.”

This saintly man who three years earlier had asked the Pope’s permission to take his own life as a gesture of protest against the hardships imposed on the Catholic clergy and faithful by the Communists, thanks the Pope in this letter for having refused his permission. “The last three years,” he says, “have persuaded me that I am not worthy of this death which would have had less meaning before God than a prayer spoken by a child.”

In another letter, two weeks later, the Archbishop thanks the Pope for two letters he had meanwhile received from him; one sent on July 25, the other on August 26, the first to congratulate the Archbishop on the fiftieth anniversary of his entry into the priesthood; the second to commiserate with him on the suffering of the “pastors” in his territory. But in neither letter did the Pope mention with one word the suffering of the Russian people under the Nazi conqueror, nor does he appear to have replied to the Archbishop’s letter of August 29–31.

The Pope was certain – as indeed, up to a point, had been his predecessor Pope Pius xi (who was, however,
much
more critical of the Nazis) that the Germans under Hitler represented the main bulwark against Bolshevism in Europe. And this conviction – unshaken by the Russo-German pact which, with his diplomatic experience, he must have recognized as a stop-gap manoeuvre – determined the majority of his actions and inactions in the war years.

The second important influence on the Pope’s conduct seems to me to have been his fear that the Nazis intended to wipe out Catholicism in Germany. Imposing restrictive measures on Church organizations (both Protestant and Catholic), and constantly attempting to recondition the minds of the young by abolishing Catholic schools and publications, they moved carefully and gradually, but they moved. Although in fact very few German or Austrian priests and
not one Catholic bishop
in all Western Europe was ever arrested or harmed by the Nazis (unlike the great number of Polish clerics imprisoned), the measures the Nazis took from 1934 on were a clear indication of the direction in which they were moving.

The gravity of this threat is vividly illustrated by one of the last of the five hundred-odd books, reports, pamphlets and documents I read in the three years of preparing this book.
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It contains a résumé of a letter from Martin Bormann to Gauleiter Dr Meyer of Münster, dated June 6, 1941; a letter that seems to go a long way towards further explaining Pius xii’s silence in the face of Nazi horrors, and indeed even towards justifying some of his most deeply felt fears.

It existed in two forms: as Bormann first wrote it, apparently on his own initiative; and as subsequently edited (probably in the autumn of 1941) and sent out as a circular to all Gauleiters. Testimony at the Nuremberg trials indicated that these two versions, which differed slightly in wording, were both finally withdrawn and ordered to be destroyed.

It seems to have been an illegal copy of this letter made when a leaflet was being prepared, to be dropped by air, which was accepted in evidence by the court (Nuremberg Document D–75).
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The letter, entitled “Relationship between National Socialism and Christendom”, is a careful and clever analysis of all forms of Christian dogma, and a recommendation for the total abolition of all established religions, based on logic, patriotism and a kind of pantheism likely to appeal to many wavering minds. It is – to my knowledge, at least – the most outspoken denunciation of organized Christianity to emanate from any Nazi leader (and indeed, as we have seen, was considered premature and was withdrawn). However secret and restricted this letter was, there can be no doubt that it reached the Vatican. Equally, there can be no doubt that the Vatican already knew, long before it reached them, that the opinions it expressed were current among the Nazi leadership; the letter must therefore have heavily underlined the appalling danger to Catholicism in Germany.

Desperate concern about the very real danger to one of the most important Catholic strongholds in Europe therefore seems to me the second major reason for the Pope’s attitude. And fatally connected with this fear for Catholicism in Germany, there was also his evaluation of public opinion and mood among German Catholics.

Jaques Maudaule, in an article for
L’Amitié Judéo-Chrétienne
(December 1949), wrote that “…  it is almost impossible for the Pope to express an opinion unless he is forced to it by a kind of great
movement
of opinion arising in the masses and communicating itself to the priesthood from the faithful.” Because, he says, “…  (essentially) the Church is a democracy.”

This explanation is of crucial importance. If the German and Austrian episcopate were persuaded that Catholic opinion in Greater Germany was predominantly in favour of National Socialism, then according to this thesis the Pope’s possibilities of action, determined by this public opinion, would have been limited. We might argue – we would certainly wish to argue – that if this were so, the Pontiff was all the more obliged to influence attitudes tending finally towards the total abandonment of morality – but this argument would be bound to fail.

It would fail because German – Catholic or non-Catholic – sentiment in favour of National Socialism was by no means initially or primarily dictated by anti-Semitism or any other objectionable motivation. It was essentially the affirmation of a new political and economic system which – the vast majority of Germans believed – offered a “new order” representing integrity, national self-respect, and economic parity. Its pseudo-mystical elements were introduced to the masses only gradually, and primarily for the benefit of the young. The Vatican, theoretically, had no more right to interfere with the internal politics of Germany than it would have to interfere with the political organization of Great Britain, the
USA
or France.

If we connect this “great movement of opinion” which indicated to the Pope that the German Catholics accepted National Socialism, with his knowledge of the measures taken by the Nazis against the Church and of what these measures portended, then the Pope’s refusal to condemn Nazi atrocities becomes not more justifiable or palatable, but easier to understand.

The Pope’s attitude was thus determined first by his fear of Bolshevism and secondly by his fear of the Nazis’ plans eventually to abolish the Church. He must have felt that in view of the fundamental acceptance of National Socialism by virtually all Germans, and particularly of the unbounded enthusiasm of the young,
anything
he said in criticism of Nazi policies or actions would tend to alienate the Catholic Germans, and would add immeasurably to – and even precipitate – the long-range danger to the Church. (It will be remembered that the Pope waited to issue an encyclical condemning euthanasia until June 1943, by which time he was obviously assured that “the great movement of opinion” amongst German Catholics was definitely against euthanasia.)

These then, were the main reasons for the Pope’s attitude. But there were two others. One of them was quite simply that he had come to love Germany. It was in Germany – as he often said – that he had spent his happiest years, and it was with Germans that he had in his youth, and continued to have to his death, the closest emotional ties. Having known so many – and so many excellent – Germans, he must have found it almost impossible to believe the terrible stories he began to hear from the time when the Germans invaded Poland.

But well within a year, it was no longer just “stories”; he was sent detailed reports, painfully authenticated letters and documents, and this is where we have to accept the last – and most obnoxious – reason for his silence.

Anyone who has read Pius xii’s letters to the German bishops (and in the original German the phraseology is even more significant) must find it difficult to doubt that the Pope was anti-Semitic. I do not say that this determined his conduct; it is plain enough what his main motivations were. But this perhaps instinctive anti-Semitism must at least have contributed to his passivity on the many occasions when – as he used to say when referring to the Nazi atrocities, and as was no doubt true – he felt “deeply troubled”.

Having examined again the reasons for the silence of Pope Pius xii, and disregarding for a moment the indisputable moral obligation, we must ask the tragic question whether, if the Pope from the very beginning had taken a decisive stand against euthanasia, against the systematic debilitation by forced labour, starvation, sterilization and murder of the Eastern European populations, and finally against the extermination of the Jews, this could have affected the conscience of individual Catholics who were directly or indirectly implicated in these matters, enough to force the Nazis to change their policies.

I have deliberately put this question into a chronological sequence, because it can only be answered by considering one development after another.

We have seen in the preceding pages, on the basis of documents and events, how aware Hitler was of the importance of Catholic opinion. And we have seen in the statements of individuals concerned, such as Stangl and his wife, how much the tacit approval of the Church contributed to the pacification of their conscience. I think there is a valid comparison to be made between Stangl’s (one individual’s) and the Vatican’s (fundamentally another individual’s) step-by-step acquiescence to increasingly terrible acts. The very first failure to say “No” was fatal, each succeeding step merely confirming the original and basic moral flaw.

It is tragically true that by the time the extermination camps were ready for the murder of the mass of Polish Jews (the great nations of the world, one must not forget, having plainly shown their unwillingness and incapacity to come to grips with this monumental catastrophe) a Papal protest, while still imperative from a moral point of view, could have had no practical effect.

But there can be no doubt that a fully publicized, unequivocal moral stand, beginning with the first whisper of euthanasia, and accompanied by a threat of excommunication for anyone participating in any wilful act of murder, would have established the Vatican as a formidable factor to be reckoned with and would have had at least some – and perhaps a profound – effect on the events to come: the murder of millions of Russian civilians, both Christians and Jews; the martyrdom of the Polish Catholics; and finally of the Polish Jews.

The question of the Pope’s attitude unhappily also has a bearing on postwar events. For it is impossible to avoid the thought that it must have influenced the self-justifications and the actions of the priests in Rome who extended substantial aid to escaping Nazis.