Into That Darkness: From Mercy Killing to Mass Murder (48 page)

“So far as episcopal pronouncements are concerned,” the Pope continues, “we leave to the [senior] pastors on the spot the task of assessing whether, and to what extent, the danger of reprisals and pressures and, perhaps, other circumstances due to the length and psychological climate of the war, counsel restraint – despite reasons that might exist for intervention – in order to avoid greater evils. This is one of the motives for the limitations We impose on Ourself in Our proclamations.…

“For the Catholic non-Aryans as well as for unconverted Jews,” the Pope then writes, “the Holy See has charitably done whatever was in His powers, materially and morally.
It has required, on the part of the executive branches of Our relief organization, a maximum degree of patience and self-effacement, to comply with the expectations-one must really say the demands – of those seeking help, as well as in overcoming the diplomatic difficulties. Of the very great sums which, in American currency, we spent on overseas travel for emigrants, we do not wish to speak; we gave this aid for the love of God and did well not to expect earthly gratitude.
†
Still, even Jewish organizations have warmly acknowledged the rescue operation of the Holy See.…”

Thus spoke Pius
XII
in reply to the German Bishop’s entreaty for his help for the Jews, and he added that he had said

“a word about the things that are presently being done to non-Aryans in German-controlled territory in our Christmas message. It was short, but it was well understood.
‡
It is superfluous to say that Our paternal love and solicitude are greater [than before] towards non-Aryan or semi-Aryan Catholics [whatever that means], children of the Church like the others, when their outward existence is collapsing and they are in spiritual distress. In the present situation we can unfortunately not offer them any effective help outside Our prayers. We are, however, determined to raise Our voice anew on their behalf as circumstances indicate and permit.…”

Returning to the subject of the Pope’s threatened position, Father Schneider asked whether I had read General Karl Wolff’s recently published claim that he had received orders that, under certain conditions, he was to arrest the Pope and bring him to Germany.
*
Father Schneider said he had known of this contingency plan for a long time. (Indeed, a statement by Father Robert Graham, one of the three Jesuit historians working with and under Father Schneider on the Vatican documents, had appeared in the press on February 26, 1972, following General Wolff’s “disclosure”, only a few days prior to this conversation. In this statement Father Graham had said that in 1943 Vatican personnel had been advised to keep a packed bag ready for possible departure.)

Father Schneider obviously intended to emphasize – as did Father Graham in his statement – that the Pope was under tremendous pressure, in constant personal peril, and never free to act as he would have chosen had he been a free agent.

There is, of course, a wealth of published material on Pius
XII
, his personality, motivation, actions and inactions during the war years. One of the two or three most authoritative books on the subject is Carlo Falconi’s
The Silence of Pius XII
;†
in which reference is made to the plan described by Father Schneider. “But if the Nazis avoided open conflict with the local hierarchies,” says Falconi, “still more did they avoid attacking the Church in its central stronghold, however great was their secret desire to do so. Proof of this – besides the evidence of the facts – can be found in Goebbels’
Diary
and Hitler’s
Table Talk.
In any case, the only period in which such an attack would have been possible was between July 25, 1943 and June 4, 1944. Directly after Mussolini’s arrest on the first of these dates, a project for an attack on the Vatican [held co-responsible with King Victor Emmanuel for the arrest], so as to capture the diplomats in refuge there, make a haul of documents and ‘take the Pope into safe custody’ in Germany
;‡
was really entertained. But common sense soon prevailed over such a harmful plan.”

The entry in Goebbels’ diary for October 1943 provides conclusive proof: he writes about a “momentary idea” – following Mussolini’s arrest – to “include the Vatican” in the planned arrests of a number of Romans. He reports that Ribbentrop, Himmler and he himself immediately opposed it. “I don’t think it is necessary to break into the Vatican,” he writes, “and I also consider that such a step could have fatal effects on world opinion.… Everyone, including the Führer, now agrees that the Vatican must be exempted from any measures we will take.”
*

When the Germans occupied Rome, the Pope was personally informed by the German Ambassador, Baron Weizsäcker, that “the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Vatican will be respected and … that the Germans … undertake to conduct themselves in such a way as to protect the Vatican City from the fighting.”

The Vatican City was then ringed by German troops, giving rise to broadcast reports by the Allies that the Nazis were holding the Pope prisoner. On October 29 Vatican Radio broadcast a statement (also published in
Osservatore Romano
) to put an end to “unfounded rumours abroad” regarding the conduct of German troops towards the Vatican, which, it was indicated, had in fact been above reproach.

One of the people with whom I discussed this matter was Dr (formerly Standartenführer
†
) Eugen Dollmann, who was Hitler’s interpreter in Italy at the time, and Himmler’s representative, and confidant. “Yes,” he said, “I did hear of a half-hearted plan to arrest the Pope and take him to Germany. But it was only one of – no doubt – a number of contingency plans. There is not a word of truth in General Wolff’s assertion that there were actual orders drawn up to that effect. If there had been, it would have been absolutely impossible that I wouldn’t have known about it – I say this categorically. It simply didn’t happen. All communications with the Duce or the Holy See, or regarding either, went through me, except for routine matters. I arranged all Hitler’s programmes on all his Italian trips, and attended all official German audiences with the Pope.”

I asked Dr Dollmann why he thought General Wolff now claimed that such an order had existed.

“Because he wants to make money,” he replied coldly. “I can imagine what the papers paid him for this story.”

Father Schneider, like everyone else connected with the Church in Rome, was at pains to point out that religious organizations and individuals in Rome during and after the war helped Jews as much as Christians. We then discussed at great length the matter of help given to the particular group of escapers Stangl belonged to.

Asked if he knew whether the money for aid to refugees – including that particular group – was contributed from a special fund, or had been centrally administered, Father Schneider said: “No money came from the Vatican. The Vatican
has
no money for such purposes. You have no idea how limited the Vatican’s resources really are. Whatever was done financially for these people, was done individually, by individual Orders.”

I asked him whether he meant to say that it was also done upon individual responsibility.

“Certainly Bishop Hudal had his own convictions and activities,” he said dryly, raising the suspicion in my mind that the late Bishop was fated to be thrown to the lions by Vatican officialdom.

I suggested that the idea of the Vatican’s being poor was novel.

“Well, of course,” said Father Schneider, “if people count paintings by Michelangelo and Raphael as the Vatican wealth … but what does that sort of thing really mean in terms of money? It can’t be traded – can’t be sold.” He laughed.

I asked about the Vatican bank.

“Well, one has to have a bank,” he replied. “It is in fact because of the bank that the Vatican got into the financial side of refugee aid.” He then added, “You mustn’t forget that the Vatican bank was the only source of foreign currency – so the refugee funds almost
had
to go through it.”

I said that what Father Schneider appeared to be claiming was that individual religious orders paid out of their own funds for people like Stangl – and there were a large number of them – to travel to South America and the Near East; gave them money to restart their lives and, of course, provided for their stay in Rome. I asked him whether, looking at it realistically, it didn’t seem a trifle unlikely. Taking Bishop Hudal and the Anima as an example: supposing he had helped no more than one hundred
SS
men to go abroad – there were, no doubt, many more, but supposing it had been merely one hundred – what would that have amounted to in actual cash? Did Father Schneider consider $100,000 – one thousand for each man – a likely estimate? I understood that the Anima was one of the poorest religious institutions in Rome and that Bishop Hudal had no private means of any consequence, so how had it been possible for him to pay out such a large sum? Not to mention the fact that keeping the men in Rome before sending them abroad would have been a great additional expense – and that presumably there were in fact many more than a hundred of them. Were there no accounts kept, from which Father Schneider could ascertain these facts for me? Or was it not at least possible to find out how much the Vatican had contributed towards refugee aid
in general
in any one period?

“I don’t know,” said Father Schneider, and then repeated: “But I think there are no such accounts and there were no such contributions. I can only tell you that the Vatican did not provide any money for this purpose; indeed, again, that the Vatican
has
no money available for such purposes.… People are always going on about the enormous wealth of the Vatican,” he said a little later. “The Vatican State Secretariat, with all its vast responsibilities, is probably run with about fifty people. And of course by comparison to what men in positions of similar responsibility are paid in lay life,
no one
in the Church earns any money – one must not forget that.” He paused for a long moment, then said, as if he had arrived at a decision, “In 1939 three Jewish organizations in New York got together and sent the Vatican $100,000 – no, $125,000,” he corrected himself. “If you saw in the account books how
glaringly
conspicuous this huge sum is, and with what minute care it was administered.…”

I interrupted to say that $125,000 seemed very little in comparison with what Jewish organizations in the us raised for Polish Jews alone in 1942–3.

“Perhaps,” he said. “To the Vatican it was an enormous sum. Proof is that it wasn’t just administered by the usual department, but went ‘way up to the top’. And every cent of it was considered separately, to be sent to where it could do the most good: $3,000 to the Cardinal of this place; $2,000 to the Archbishop of that; $1,000 to one town; $2,000 to another.…”

If, I suggested, that particular sum had been so carefully recorded in the accounts, then the same care would presumably have been taken with other sums. Therefore, if the Vatican had indeed contributed no money for refugee aid in the years following the war, the absence of entries in the books would confirm it. Could this be checked? No, he said, it could not. I suggested that I thought his main reason for maintaining that the Vatican had contributed no such funds was because he wished to establish that it had not contributed towards the escape of the
SS
personnel we were particularly concerned with. I pointed out that I thoroughly appreciated that these men were very few compared with the huge number of other refugees helped by Catholic institutions, and helped with every justification. No one could question in any way the Vatican’s motives in giving money towards helping refugees in general – on the contrary. The controversy lay in the money that appears to have been contributed by the Vatican for the specific benefit of one specific group of men; in the motivations of the priests who distributed these funds; and above all, in the question how much did they know and how much did the Vatican know, about the records of the men on whom such considerable, and it would appear clandestine, efforts were expended, and who received such substantial aid.

“Bishop Hudal,” said Father Schneider, “was not at all close to the Vatican. He was very much on the fringes. And certainly not close to the Holy Father. He was … how shall I put it … even then slightly suspect – not taken seriously. He desperately
wanted
to be taken seriously.… Of course, he was not a
Nazi,
you know. As an Austrian, he had lobbied many years for Austria’s federation with Germany – not an unreasonable proposal, after all. But eventually he went a step further; he thought there was a possibility of collaboration between the Nazis and the Church. And that he might become the means – the liaison man – to achieve this collaboration.” An aspiration, Father Schneider’s tone implied, which, to say the least, was naïve.

*
As of September, 1973.

*
Under these laws the population was divided into two categories, “Reichs Citizens”, with full civic rights, and “State Subjects”, whose rights were severely curtailed; and marriage between Jews and Germans (and all other so-called Aryans) was prohibited.

*
Subsequent to the English publication of this book, the author learned that Bishop Piquet of Clermont-Ferrand, France, was arrested and sent to Dachau by the German occupation authorities. (See:
The Nazi Persecution of the Churches,
John S. Conway, page 297, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1968.)