AFTER MONTHS OF BACK-CHANNEL DIPLOMACY, PIUS HAD LINKED the Reich’s internal and external enemies. In March 1940, he refereed their parley. Each side made seven statements. The negotiations unfolded in a tense atmosphere, for Hitler might attack in the West at any moment.1
The pope established an intricate communications chain. Oster submitted yes-or-no questions to Müller, who passed them to Pius, who shared them with Osborne, who cabled them to London. The British answers flowed back in reverse. The Vatican remained the crossroads in the plot to kill Hitler: all roads truly led to Rome, to the desk with a simple crucifix overlooking the fountains on St. Peter’s Square.2
As cutouts, Pius relied on his closest deputies. Father Leiber managed the German channel, meeting with Müller on the roof of the Jesuit College or obscure Roman churches. Typically, Leiber passed him oral messages. But when Leiber saw the pope late at night, and Müller needed to leave the next day, Leiber would leave notes on block paper, initialed “R.L.” (Robert Leiber), at Müller’s hotel. That practice did not strike the Jesuit as risky. In most cases, he could encapsulate the British answers in brief replies under the numbered headings of the German questions, and Müller burned the messages after reading them.3
Monsignor Kaas handled the British end. His apartment abutted Ambassador Osborne’s, on the Vatican Gardens, so they could meet without great fear of detection. By late February they had begun direct talks.
One point Kaas made struck Osborne as important. If, after eliminating Hitler, the plotters accepted humiliating peace terms, their position would become precarious. Osborne recorded: “The elimination of the furor Germanicus of Hitlerism will leave particularly among the younger and restless generation, a spiritual vacuum which will have somehow to be filled if another explosion is to be avoided.” As an alternative order-principle, the Vatican proposed European unification. An economic federation, Kaas argued, would prevent autarchy, exacerbated patriotism, aggression, and war.4
Some in London remained skeptical. On 28 February, Foreign Office Undersecretary Alexander Cadogan slammed the “ridiculous stale story of a German opposition ready to overthrow Hitler, if we will guarantee we will not ‘take advantage.’” He said it was “about the 100th time” he had heard that story. Four days later, the Foreign Office warned against another Venlo: “We have reason to believe that the Gestapo have a hold on Mgr. Kaas.” London sent Osborne a Most Secret warning that the monsignor might have come under Nazi influence through German seminarians in Rome.5
“I know Mgr Kaas quite well,” the envoy shot back, and “there is little doubt that he is strongly anti-Nazi.” Osborne thought Kaas too busy managing St. Peter’s to see German seminarians, who seemed unlikely spies: “They are dressed in the brightest possible scarlet from head to foot, which does not conduce to the work of secret agents.”6
Pius received London’s final terms about 10–11 March. The conditions the British required to negotiate with a post-Hitler Germany included the conditio sine qua non: “elimination of the National Socialist regime.” Leiber handed Müller a full-page summary on Vatican stationery, watermarked “P.M.,” for “Pontifex Maximus,” and, in the upper-left corner, the sign of a fish, after Saint Peter, a former fisherman.7
Leiber expected Müller to burn this paper after making coded shorthand notes on it. But Müller thought the whole plan might hinge on the impact Britain’s terms produced in Germany. Believing the world perhaps hung in the balance, he made a snap decision to keep rather than burn the watermarked document. About 14 March, he took the pope’s notes with Leiber’s calling card to Abwehr headquarters, where Hitler’s would-be killers rejoiced. Müller considered that moment the climax of his Vatican intrigues.8
“Your slips of paper [Zettel] have been very useful to me,” Müller told Leiber when next in Rome. The Jesuit lost his temper. “But you promised me that you would destroy them,” he protested, and demanded their return. Müller said that he had passed them on and no longer had control over them. Because of these materials, he said, he felt more sanguine about the impact in Berlin: “The results of the mediation are regarded as most favorable in Germany.” The coup could occur as early as mid-March. Müller sounded so positive that Leiber felt reassured. The pope and the initiated few in the Vatican settled down to wait.9
THE PLOTTERS PREPARED A FINAL ACTION PACKAGE FOR THE GENERALS. Father Leiber’s single page and an oral presentation would scarcely suffice for the decisive gambit. A supreme attempt to propel the military into mutiny merited a final report covering the entire operation.
The paper emerged from a frenzied all-night effort. Müller holed up in the house of Oster’s deputy, Hans von Dohnanyi. In the guest bedroom, Müller spread the results of the pope’s maneuvers on the bed usually reserved for Dohnanyi’s brother-in-law, evangelical pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Besides Father Leiber’s paper, Müller had his own coded notes in Gabelsburg shorthand on paper towels, as well as a half-inch stack of Dohnanyi’s notations. Dohnanyi dictated a report to his wife until late into the night. The next morning Müller reviewed the result, which totaled about twelve typed pages.10
For security reasons, the document lacked heading, date, and signature, and it referenced Müller only as “Herr X.” It became known among the plotters as the “X-Report.” The report delineated the British conditions for peace talks with “the Decent Germany.” There were seven: (1) removal of Hitler; (2) “rule of law” in Germany; (3) no war in the West; (4) Austria stays German; (5) Poland is liberated; (6) other territories self-determine by plebiscite; and (7) an armistice through the pope. The subtext of these protocols later became the subject of debate: Moscow would allege, for instance, that the report contained a Vatican-Anglo-German deal to smooth the way for an attack on the Soviet Union. But on one point, all who saw the report agreed. The pope, as one reader noted, had “gone astonishingly far” to help the conspirators. Pius had coaxed London to meet the plotters more than halfway, and covered the British terms with the mantle of his authority. He had brought the plans to the edge of action. General Halder began hiding a pistol in his pocket when he saw Hitler.11
Yet by late March Hitler was still alive. On the 27th Osborne saw Kaas, whose “German military contacts seem to have abandoned their peace plans for the time being,” the envoy recorded. A dejected Kaas portrayed his countrymen as too obedient to organize a revolt.12
Three days later, the pope summoned Osborne. When the envoy asked whether His Holiness had heard anything from the conspirators, the pontiff said that he had heard nothing since relaying the final British terms, about twenty days before. Pius said he sensed that London had begun to lose hope. Osborne admitted that only Hitler’s removal could now assure “the bona fides of the German principals.” Still, he insisted that London “would always receive with interest, and treat with respect,” any messages the plotters sent through Vatican channels. Osborne sensed that Pius “was much disillusioned.”13
During the meeting, Osborne received a message from Halifax. He conveyed it to Pius, who seemed “very pleased,” and asked Osborne to send his best wishes and thanks. This note, perhaps later destroyed on the Vatican’s request, may have simply repeated London’s willingness to deal with the German military after Hitler’s death. Three days later, just such an assurance reached the plotters through Müller.14
At that pivotal point, however, the Protestant plotters wavered. Christian scruples moved their hearts but stayed their hands. Chief of Staff Halder fingered the pistol in his pocket, but “as a Christian” he could not shoot an unarmed man. To loosen Lutheran strictures, Müller asked former Saxon crown prince George Sachsens, now a Jesuit priest, to speak with Halder. Sachsens, known for clicking his heels in front of the Communion host, stressed the Christian moral right to rebellion and seemed to put some spine into the general. After rebuffing initial approaches, Halder finally agreed to read the X-Report.15
A snag then occurred over who would bring and brief the text. The plotters first chose Ulrich von Hassell, a former German ambassador to Rome, who had known of coup plans since before the war. On 16 March, as Hassell wrote in his diary, he saw “extraordinarily interesting papers about talks of a Catholic confidential agent with the Pope. . . . The general assumption naturally is a change of regime and a commitment to Christian morality.” Yet Hassell just then came under SS suspicion, and the plotters had to put him aside.16
The task of lobbying Halder fell instead to General Georg Thomas. On 4 April, Thomas carried the documents to Halder. The package by now included a statement from the Vatican that the British still adhered to their terms, as well as a memorandum by Dohnanyi stressing the need to disassociate the army from SS crimes.17
These materials intrigued but perplexed Halder. The report struck him as long-winded, and yet vague on key points. He felt unable to assess the credibility of the German figures involved, since the report did not identify them or their Vatican cutout, “Herr X.”18
Still, Halder felt the X-Report deserved a hearing. He took the package to his superior, the army commander in chief, Walther von Brauchitsch, and asked him to read it overnight.
The next morning Halder found his boss in a bad mood. “You should not have shown this to me,” Brauchitsch said, handing the paper back. “We are at war. That one in time of peace establishes contact with a foreign power may be considered. In war this is impossible for a soldier.” Indicating the X-Report, Brauchitsch said: “What we face here is pure national treason.” [Landesverrat].” As Halder recalled, Brauchitsch “then demanded that I have the man who had brought this paper arrested. . . . I replied to him at that time: ‘If there is anyone to be arrested, then please arrest me.’”19
Brauchitsch grew quiet and pensive. Looking at the X-Report, he sighed: “What am I to do with this scrap [Fetzen] which is without date and without signature?” After some fretting, he and Halder decided to study the Vatican materials for another ten days. During that period, the prospects for action dramatically changed.20
HITLER HAD FOR SOME MONTHS PLANNED TO INVADE NORWAY. Foreseeing a long war against the Allies, especially after he invaded France, Hitler wanted secure access to Scandinavian metals and other strategic resources before the British could. The nascent Norway crisis presented the coup planners with a new opportunity: a warning to the Allies might prompt a British show of naval force that might deter Hitler or deal him a defeat. Joey Ox therefore warned the pope about Hitler’s plans through a guarded telephone call to Monsignor Johannes Schönhöffer. At the end of March, Kaas warned Osborne about a possible German move against Norway, and Osborne relayed the information to London. But the English did not respond before 9 April, when Hitler struck.21
At Abwehr headquarters, Josef Müller and others studied a map of the North Sea. They made bets among themselves as to just where the British fleet would blow German ships out of the water. Canaris, however, predicted that the British would never stake their fleet until an existentially critical moment had arrived. Events proved Canaris correct: the English did not react in force.22
Hitler’s popularity soared. He had won yet another victory at almost no apparent cost. Veteran generals who had dismissed Hitler as a Bohemian corporal began to revise their judgment. Halder lost his nerve and entangled himself in a glutinous web of second guesses. In the middle of April, he returned the X-Report to General Thomas without comment.
Around that time, a dejected Müller returned to Rome. The generals, he said, lacked the will for a coup. “All was ready,” he told Father Leiber. “The other day I sat at my desk at five o’clock and waited for a call. But none came.”23
The news disillusioned Pius. Months of intrigue had produced nothing. But in the last days before Hitler finally attacked in the West, the plotters risked a bold new mission to restore the Holy Father’s trust.24