PRISONER OF THE VATICANPRISONER OF THE VATICAN
“THE MOUTH OF A VOLCANO HAD OPENED,” CARDINAL CELSO Constantini recalled. On 19 July 1943, he was on a train outside Rome when it stopped with a jolt. The cardinal jumped out with other passengers to find himself in a cloud of smoke, fighting to see and breathe. He stumbled over telegraph wires, a broken crib, and a dead horse as he groped his way back to the Vatican, where he learned that American bombers had killed more than a thousand people and razed treasured monuments. As Constantini lamented, “even the ruins have been ruined.”1
When Albrecht von Kessel arrived in Rome the next day, it smelled like burning grass and heated stone. Officially, Kessel was the new First Secretary at the Reich Mission to the Holy See; secretly he was the new Josef Müller. For the next year, he would link Stauffenberg to the pope. As shouts of “Down with the Duce!” rose beneath Kessel’s hotel window, he thought that the American attack would not only doom Fascism, but undermine Nazism. He was right about these effects, but wrong about their cause. The plot that soon removed Mussolini had in fact been hatched through Vatican channels years before.2
“It went something like this,” Müller said. “Marshal [Pietro] Badoglio had been Chief of the Italian General Staff and had vigorously opposed Italy’s [November 1940] attack on Greece. He was a decided opponent of Mussolini and Hitler.” Through a contact in the Vatican Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, Müller learned that Mussolini circulated a petition to Italian officers, calling for Badoglio’s court-martial. Mussolini’s maneuver spurred Badoglio to explore contacts with the German resistance. As Müller related, “I was allowed to hope—I must express myself carefully—that we could deal with Badoglio.” The marshal declared himself ready to overthrow Mussolini, so long as the king and the pope backed him. Müller brokered a “connecting” agreement between the Italian and German plotters: if one side should pull off a coup, the other would follow in train.3
For nearly two years, Badoglio stalled. He waited for the Germans to move first. Finally, the American invasion of North Africa, in November 1942, forced his hand. With the Allies now less than a hundred miles’ sail from Sicily, Mussolini’s position became insecure. On 24 November, Badoglio sent the Princess of Piedmont to discuss regime change with the pope’s deputy Montini. At almost the same time, Canaris met Müller in Munich’s Hotel Regina and, after their surreal dinner with Kaltenbrunner, the admiral told Müller “to try to see eye to eye with Badoglio.” A month later, on 21 December, Badoglio secretly sent his nephew to meet Cardinal Secretary of State Maglione, seeking the pope’s blessing for a treasonous approach to Victor Emmanuel the Third, the Italian king. Through these intrigues, Allied diplomats began to talk peace terms with Badoglio. As Müller remembered:
At the end of 1942, I received the news, not from Leiber, but from a party from the Vatican sphere, that a renowned Italian personage had extended a peace feeler, a suggestion or a query regarding the terms of a peace, a peace that would be a separate peace with Italy. . . . The answer [to the query]—I believe, it came from Washington, not from London—was: 1. [Italian cession of] the North African Italian colonies. 2. Pantelleria [an Italian island near Tunisia] to England. 3. An offer regarding [Italian evacuation of] Albania. . . . 4. was exciting for us in a certain sense. The wording ran something like this: The [Italian] Tyrol was to become part of a new southern German state. That had concerned not only us [in the Canaris circle] but, as I had informed Leiber, also him. . . . He had hit his head with his hand, because the partition of Germany [by the Allies] broke sharply with all our [earlier] discussions with England. I had asked Leiber to try to find out from his contacts how the idea was viewed in America, whether they essentially disagreed with it there, or whether they thought the same as England.
The prospect of German dismemberment alarmed coup planners in Berlin. Working through Father Leiber, Müller was still trying to “come up with a definitive reading” of Allied terms of when he was arrested in April 1943.4
A month later Pius had the threads of the Badoglio plot in his own hands. While Roosevelt publicly advised Italy to leave the Axis, his personal representative to the Holy Father, Myron Taylor, took a parallel secret action with Pius. “You will recall your constant touch over the Vatican Radio from Washington with His Holiness,” Taylor later reminded Roosevelt. “The first preparation for the extinction of Mussolini was the day that I brought to you the secret message, in response to one of my own regarding Mussolini’s fall and the retirement of Italy from the war, which you characterized ‘as the first break in the whole Axis organization’ and which came to me through that [papal] channel.”5
Vatican preparations for Mussolini’s “extinction” began on 12 May. Maglione summoned the Italian ambassador to the Holy See, Count Ciano, and handed him a verbal note. The Pope suffered for Italy and with Italy, Maglione said, and would “do everything possible” to help the country. The pope thus meant to let Mussolini know his mind, while avoiding direct intervention. But as the Vatican’s expert on Pacelli, Father Gumpel, later said with a chuckle: “Of course, this is a discreet way of saying: Can we be of any assistance as a mediator?” Reading that subtext, Ciano said abruptly, “Well, the Duce won’t go for that at all.” Mussolini vowed to fight on, but Pius had opened a channel for further talks.6
On 20 May, Pius wrote Roosevelt, asking him not to bomb Italian cities. Although he did not say so outright, he saw both Allied and Axis bombing as terrorism; it killed women and children, in London as in Berlin, for political rather than military reasons. The pope’s letter revealed his deeper game, however, when he asked Roosevelt to have mercy on Italy in future peace talks—indicating that the Vatican expected the Allies to win the war. Pius had discreetly positioned himself between two opposed parties, to whom he asked the same question: “How can I help?”7
Though Pius worked with FDR to remove Mussolini, the Vatican claimed that he had not been an active plotter. “One has to be very careful when speaking about involvement or direct influence,” Father Gumpel would later say. “Because it is not the place of the Vatican to meddle so much in the affairs of foreign states. . . . Their way is very discreet. . . . They are more diplomatic, and they act more prudently, to avoid exposing themselves to severe accusations.” The 1929 Lateran Treaty banned the Vatican from intervening in foreign politics, and how would Hitler react if Italy, through papal intrigue, quit the war? “The Holy Father is of the opinion that something must be done,” his deputy Tardini recorded after receiving a ciphered American message on regime change. “He cannot refuse intervention, but must be segretissimamente [secret].”8
On 11 June, Pius received some important political intelligence. From an informant he learned that Victor Emmanuel had secretly received two non-Fascist former Italian statesmen. That even the king, a notorious idler, realized he must act, suggested the status quo would soon erode. Six days later, the apostolic nuncio to Italy called on the king and told him the Americans would give no quarter unless Rome stood down first. Pius had intelligence from the highest level, from Roosevelt himself, about what would happen. The king remained unsure what to do.9
A month later, on 10 July, the Allies invaded Sicily. Three German divisions fled to the Italian mainland, posing the immediate possibility that Allied troops might follow them. That prospect unnerved not only the Italian people, but also the pope. Neither he nor his aides Maglione, Montini, and Tardini wanted Italy in the war to begin with; and now they worked harder to get Italy out of it. The pope arranged to be informed of Fascist Grand Council proceedings against Mussolini. On 18 July, Cardinal Constantini wrote in his diary, “Italy is on the edge of the abyss.”10
When Rome was bombed the next day, the die was already cast. Italy had lost the war, and its leaders crossed the secret bridge that Pius built to peace. Six days later, the king had Mussolini arrested, and named Marshall Badoglio to rule in his stead. Pius made no public statement, but an American diplomat thought he seemed “not at all unhappy.” He spent the next month as the secret host of talks between Badoglio and the Allies, which led to an Armistice on 8 September. In response, Hitler decided to place Italy under German protection and invade Rome.11
Marshall Badoglio and Victor Emmanuel fled the next day at dawn. On the morning of the tenth, an Italian officer warned Monsignor Montini that a division of German paratroopers was moving up the Via Aurelia toward the Vatican. They marched in ruler-straight formations with ringing boots and took up positions by St. Peter’s Square. Behind them lurked SS men in a limousine, as one witness remembered, with “their jackboots gleaming, and the skull-and-crossbones insignia leering hideously from their lapels.”12
The Holy See now bordered Hitler’s Reich. A white line marked the frontier between the arms of Bernini colonnades. On one side stood German soldiers in black boots and steel helmets, with carbines on their shoulders and Lugers on their hips. On the other side were the Pope’s Swiss Guards, in ruffled tunics and plumed hats, holding medieval pikes in white gloves.
At 10 p.m. on the eleventh, the Vatican received a report that the Germans would put the pope under their “protection.” The tip came from Albrecht von Kessel, who said that Hitler blamed Pius for the fall of Italy, because “the Pope had long talked by phone with Roosevelt.” Father Leiber began to hide the pope’s files under the marble floors of the Apostolic Palace. Key staffers in the Secretariat of State were ordered to keep their suitcases packed, so that they could go with Pius if SS commandos seized him and took him to Munich.13
HITLER HAD VOWED TO INVADE THE VATICAN TWO HOURS AFTER HE heard of Mussolini’s fall. Just after midnight on 26 July, Ribbentrop’s liaison officer Walther Hewel asked how they should handle the Holy See in any plans to restore Fascist Rome.
HEWEL: Shouldn’t we say that the exits of the Vatican will be occupied?
HITLER: That doesn’t make any difference. I’ll go right into the Vatican. Do you think the Vatican embarrasses me? We’ll take that over right away. For one thing, the entire diplomatic corps are in there. It’s all the same to me. That rabble is in there. We’ll get that bunch of swine out of there . . . Later we can make apologies. That doesn’t make any difference. . . .
HEWEL: We will find documents in there.
HITLER: There, yes, we’ll get documents. The treason will come to light.14
By the next night’s conference, however, Hitler’s advisors appeared to have talked him out of the move. “All of us, including the Führer, now agree that the Vatican is to be exempted from the measures we are contemplating,” Goebbels recorded in his diary, after a “debate that lasted until far after midnight.”
The Führer intends to deliver a great coup. In this manner: A parachute division now stationed in southern France is to land all around Rome. This parachute division is to occupy Rome, arrest the King with his entire family, as well as Badoglio and his entire family, and fly them to Germany. . . . According to the reports reaching us the Vatican is developing feverish diplomatic activity. Undoubtedly it is standing behind the revolt [against Mussolini] with its great world-embracing facilities. The Führer first intended, when arresting the responsible men in Rome, to seize the Vatican also, but Ribbentrop and I opposed the plan most emphatically. I don’t believe it necessary to break into the Vatican, and, on the other hand, I would regard such a measure as exceptionally unfortunate because of the effect our measures would have on world opinion.15
Another witness, however, claimed that Hitler had reactivated the plan. The SS commander in Italy, Karl Wolff, said that the Führer had summoned him in September to give him a job of “world-historical importance.” He wanted a study made of how troops could occupy the Vatican, secure the archives, and remove the pope, together with the Curia, so that they could not fall into Allied hands. Hitler would then decide whether to bring these Catholic dignitaries to Germany or intern them in neutral Liechtenstein. He thought taking the Vatican would prove difficult, and asked Wolff how quickly he could prepare the operation.16
Wolff reportedly said he could not commit to a date, and tried to discourage the plan. The war had stretched his SS forces in Italy to the very limits, and, further, the pope might resist; they might have to kill him. Nevertheless, Hitler said, he placed great personal importance on the operation. He ordered Wolff to study the problem and make a report.17
“WHAT WILL HAPPEN IN GERMANY? HITLER’S TIME WILL NOT BE far off,” Cardinal Constantini reflected on the day that top Nazis debated Pius’s abduction. Mussolini’s fall climaxed the setbacks that had begun with the surrender at Stalingrad, and continued with the loss of Tunisia. By midsummer 1943, the Axis faced defeat both in the south and the east. This was the psychological moment for a revolution.
The Nazis knew it. “Knowledge of these events might conceivably encourage some subversive elements in Germany to think they could put over the same thing here that Badoglio and his henchmen accomplished in Rome,” Goebbels noted after his marathon meetings in late July. “The Führer ordered Himmler to see to it that the most severe police measures be applied in case such a danger seemed imminent here.”
Canaris turned those orders into his final master stroke. Hitler feared an uprising of foreign workers in Germany. On 31 July, the Wehrmacht therefore approved Canaris’s counterinsurgency plan, code-named Valkyrie. It provided the perfect cover for Stauffenberg’s coup: the designated preventers of the revolution would be the ones preparing it.
As summer turned to fall, Stauffenberg reinvigorated planning for the ghost government. Father Delp wrote new plans for decentralizing power to local vocational groups, and became Stauffenberg’s liaison to underground Catholic labor leaders in Cologne. Moltke met Delp and other Munich Jesuits in St. Michael’s cathedral in Munich to draw a new map of postwar Germany for Allied approval. Moltke’s cousin Peter Yorck briefed Stauffenberg on the Jesuits’ political planning; and Yorck briefed the Jesuits, in turn, about Stauffenberg’s contacts with the generals.
Müller and Dohnanyi pressed for action in notes smuggled from their jail cells. Dohnanyi underscored the plotters’ “moral duty” to Badoglio’s government. Müller impatiently awaited his return to the Vatican, to coordinate peace talks with the Allies. In the meantime, a Franciscan seminarian, Gereon Goldmann, would carry messages from Canaris to Albrecht von Kessel in Rome.
Himmler was watching, even if Roeder’s treason probe had stalled. A Gestapo probe later found that Stauffenberg “positioned clergy for the purpose of their use as connection to church circles [and] the Vatican.” The SS underscored that “to the pope especially, the planners sent trusted agents, the most adroit diplomats, to facilitate the closest connections.” Yet though Hitler’s secret police would identify Stauffenberg’s emissaries in other cities, in Rome they could detect only “an unnamed person to negotiate with the pope.”
Actually, Stauffenberg had two cutouts with Pius in Rome. The first was Kessel; the second was Abwehr agent Paul Franken. Ostensibly as a history teacher for the German-language school on the Via Nomentana, Franken had dealings with the Vatican and had established discreet contacts with British and US diplomats. To cover his military-intelligence activities, Franken received a stipend from the German Research Association in Rome to edit papal nunciature reports. In reality, the Catholic Franken took over Müller’s Vatican contacts.18
Like Müller, Franken kept a low profile. He avoided the haunts where German agents working against the Vatican might be found: the Reich embassy, the Gestapo offices, and the German ecclesiastical college. Instead, Franken took rooms in a clinic run by German nuns, the Grey Sisters. Twice a week Kaas visited the clinic for treatment of a stomach disorder, and before leaving, he would pay a friendly call on Franken. On Sunday mornings, Franken would take coffee at Kaas’s Vatican apartment, often with Father Leiber.19
In these meetings, Franken briefed the Vatican on plans to remove Hitler. By autumn 1943, Leiber knew of Stauffenberg’s plans. An American intelligence officer who debriefed him in 1944 reported Leiber’s knowledge of a plot “c. September-October, 1943. Of this third plot, Father Leiber received a[n] . . . outline from a colonel responsible for cultural affairs in Rome. The attempt was to have taken place by October 15 at the latest, but was to be dependent on a previous stabilization of the Russian front. The absence of such a stabilization evidently resulted in the abandonment of the conspiracy.”20
Franken laid out the plotters’ thinking for the Vatican. If General Olbricht’s Home Army could block Hitler’s communications center, then only a full-fledged SS counterassault could stop them. To prevent that, the plotters must disarm the SS with lightning speed. Regional military commanders would arrest local party leaders. To ensure secrecy, only one or two men would know every element of the Valkyrie plan. Generals not in the know at X-hour would check with headquarters in Berlin—where Stauffenberg would take their calls. Stauffenberg would free Josef Müller and send him to Rome to ask the pope to call for a worldwide armistice after Hitler’s death. The pope should know that this time they would do it.21
Relaying these plans to Rome gave Franken pause. His fears crested in an October 1943 meeting, in which Father Leiber made written notes for briefing the pope. Franken warned that Leiber’s notes might send them all to the gallows. The next day Leiber reassured him that Pius, after reading the notes in Leiber’s presence, had held the papers to a candle on his desk, saying, “You can tell him you saw the pope burn the pages with his own hand.”22
IN EARLY DECEMBER 1943, HITLER SUMMONED SS OFFICER KARL Wolff. Three months had passed since he had asked Wolff to propose a plan to seize the pope. Hitler wanted a straight answer: Why had nothing happened?23
Wolff said that seizing the pope would require an extensive operation. It might create a backlash in Rome. Under German occupation, Italy had so far kept calm. The Church provided Italy’s only uncontested authority; Italian women remained devoted to it. Abducting the pope could also spur unrest among French and German Catholics. It would cost Berlin dearly in international opinion.24
Hitler postponed the plan, at least until he could stabilize the Italian front. He ordered Wolff to remain ready to act on a moment’s notice.25
ON 19 JANUARY 1944, CLAUS STAUFFENBERG CALLED AT THE BERLIN home of Moltke’s cousin Peter Yorck, who served as a liaison to Father Rösch and the Orders Committee. The SS had just arrested Helmuth von Moltke; someone had carelessly mentioned his name. Through his work with the Committee, Moltke had met with Josef Müller and had known about the Vatican connection. Stauffenberg could only hope that Moltke held out long enough for the rest of them to act.26
After Moltke’s arrest, Committee priests left his circle and joined Stauffenberg’s cell. Through Father Rösch’s Jesuits, Stauffenberg began coordinating his operations with Count Preysing, the bishop of Berlin. Stauffenberg met Preysing at least once that spring, at Hermsdorf, reportedly for more than an hour.27
They discussed the necessity for a regime change, and at least alluded to the moral case for an assassination. Some later suggested that the meeting played an important part in Stauffenberg’s decision to kill Hitler. More likely, they discussed Preysing’s role as a papal delegate after the coup, when Josef Müller would seek an armistice through the pope. Perhaps to that end, Father Leiber wrote Preysing in April to discuss the need for better communication by “confidential means.”28
By all accounts, Preysing sanctioned the plot. Apparently, he said he could not absolve Stauffenberg in advance from what he meant to do. Yet as he later wrote to Stauffenberg’s mother, he had not withheld his “personal blessing as a priest.”29
ON 3 MARCH 1944, MÜLLER STOOD TRIAL AT THE SUPREME COURT in Berlin. He wore his gray three-piece suit and his green tie. The proceedings became a showdown between the military and the SS.30
The chief military judge, Dr. Sack, presided. Lieutenant General Biron headed the high-ranking generals on the Senate of Judges. SS Inspector Sonderegger represented the SS. Counselor Roeder led the prosecution.31
Roeder alleged that Müller abused his authority as a military spy to conspire, through his Church friends, with the enemy. Müller thereby committed high treason and must die.32
Judge Biron said that before they hanged a man with such a good military record, on whose behalf even the chief of Hitler’s bodyguard had testified, the court must have solid proof.33
Roeder stood on the testimony of witnesses, particularly the Benedictine Brother Hermann Keller. He warned the court that “the highest leadership circles would monitor” the court’s proceedings.34
Biron retorted that his court would retain its independence. It would not rubber-stamp decisions made “elsewhere.” Biron asked Müller what he had to say in his own defense.35
Müller said the accusations rehashed hearsay from discredited figures with personal grudges against him. An inquiry investigated and rejected their charges years ago. How, otherwise, could Müller have continued to occupy a most sensitive and confidential intelligence post? He had acted on the orders of his superiors, in the interest of his country, as his bosses had testified. The prosecution had produced no proof to the contrary. If the court recognized this much, then it must set him free.36
The panel found Müller innocent. The SS, however, announced its intention to arrest him on new charges. To keep Müller out of Gestapo custody, the Wehrmacht re-arrested Müller and returned him to the Lehrterstrasse prison.37
Claus von Stauffenberg sat alone in the gallery as an army observer. He walked down toward Müller as the bailiffs placed him in handcuffs. Seeing the maimed officer, the court guards made way. It took a moment for Müller to recognize Stauffenberg with his eye patch. They shared a knowing glance.38
IN LATE MAY 1944 COLUMNS OF SMOKE ROSE FROM THE ALBAN HILLS of Rome. From the top of the Vatican Gardens, Pius and his deputies could see Allied patrols. But Vatican intelligence gave Pius no inkling whether the Germans would defend the city or withdraw. Fearing that Roman civilians and Vatican clergy could die in the crossfire, Pius warned in a 2 June address that “whosoever raises his hand against Rome will be guilty of matricide before the civilized world and the eternal judgment of God.” Near midnight, Tiger tanks rumbled past St. Peter’s in a long column, headed north. With the Allies approaching, the Germans had started to leave.39
As dawn broke the next day, American and German forces still dueled south of Rome. “I remember vividly that in the late afternoon of June 3, we could see that a tank battle was in progress near Lanuvio in the plains below the Alban Hills,” recalled American chargé d’affaires Harold Tittmann. From vantage points along the walls of the Vatican Gardens, he saw “a great cloud of smoke and dust [hanging] over the battlefield. . . . A tank would lumber out of the cloud into the open, followed by another, both firing at each other at a great rate. After a few minutes, tanks would return to the melee inside the cloud. One could hear at all times the continual roar of the guns.” Vatican residents did not sleep well on the night of 3 June, as Tittmann’s son wrote in a diary, because of the ruckus made by the retreating troops. “Then began the dive bombing. Dozens of our planes came over and started bombing the Germans just outside of Rome, near enough for us to see the bombs falling out of the planes. We could also see the little spurts of flame on their wings as they began machine gunning the road. It was rather sickening to see tired German boys walking past us and then watch them dive-bombed and strafed.”40
Late on the night of 4 June, the first Allied patrols entered the city. They slipped like shadows up the pitch-dark streets, cautiously, guns ready. The need for caution soon passed. Morning’s light revealed Romans massing in the streets, cheering madly. American tank treads passed over roads pink with rose petals, thrown by the women who swarmed over the jeeps and trucks.41
“I found myself having to hold tight to my emotions,” the conquering general, Mark Clark, wrote later of his entry into Rome. “The Piazza di Venezia was jammed with a monstrous crowd, and our jeep proceeded at a snail’s pace, while flowers rained upon our heads, men grabbed and kissed our hands. . . . I felt wonderfully good, generous, and important. I was a representative of strength, decency, and success.” Clark and his men soon lost their way, and, “as generals are last among men to ask directions,” they ended up in St. Peter’s Square. A priest had to point them to the Capitoline Hill.42
Perhaps no one in Rome seemed more unburdened that day than the pope. So certain did he feel that he no longer had anything to fear that he strenuously protested Allied violation of the Vatican grounds. At 10:00 a.m. on 5 June, when he came to his study window to bless the faithful, he saw an American tank parked near one of the Bernini colonnades. After two decades of fascism, the right to vent his unhappiness made Pius happy.43
Later that Sunday it seemed that all Rome came to St. Peter’s Square. To the peal of church bells, 300,000 people packed the square by five o’clock. “The afternoon’s sun slanted across the roof of the Basilica,” an American nun recorded in her diary, “spilling torrents of golden light on the sea of color below.”44
The windows on the balcony opened. Everything stopped and everyone hushed. Pius in his white gown walked out on the parapet alone. The crowd roared. Romans waved and held their children up and cried “Viva Papa!”45
Pius then gave one of the shortest and plainest speeches of his reign. He thanked Saints Peter and Paul for protecting the city. Calling on Romans to put aside all thirst for vengeance, he cried, “Sursum corda!”—Lift up your hearts!46
After he left the balcony, throngs hailed him as the “savior of Rome.” Hard-boiled American radio reporter Eric Sevareid could not keep his eyes from misting. Although he disclaimed any feelings of awe toward the Vatican, which he regarded as “inclined to fascism,” Sevareid found himself moved by the pope’s ability to express the grief and hope of the whole human family.47
In the next days, Pius gave mass audiences to Allied soldiers. An American officer mentioned a number of Jewish soldiers in his group, so Pius gave a blessing in Hebrew. The gesture was so well received that in future audiences Pius inquired for soldiers of Jewish faith to bless them.48
During the German occupation, the SS had arrested 1,007 Roman Jews and sent them to Auschwitz. Fifteen survived. Pius said nothing publicly about the deportations. Over the same period, 477 Jews had hidden in Vatican City, and 4,238 received sanctuary in Roman monasteries and convents.49