By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

Nazi's And The Vatican’s War

Gerald Steinacher rejects the myth that the Nazy simpathies of Bischop Alois Hudal in Rome, the Archbischop Giuseppe Siri of Geneva or Ustascha- Krunoslav Draganovic were special cases. Instead Steinacher claims in his book that there was a larger system in what Steinacher calls a right-wing Christianising of Europe (Rechristianisierung Europas). And where Steinacher counts around 350 high level SS soldiers who received pasports in Rome for Argentinia, SS sympathisers from Croatia and Hungaria counted into the ten thousands.

In fact it was not his love of Nazis, but his fear of Communists that led the later Pius XII to subject religion and the Church to a political end. Thus during World War II, Pope Pius sought an end to the conflict at the expense of Communist Soviet Russia. The Austrian bishop Hudal in turn, who had been appointed rector of the German National Church in Rome in 1933, already got the former Pope, Pius Xl's ear, by claiming that Nazism injected with Christianity would become the vanguard against bolshevism. 1

Eugenio Pacelli should have known better. As nuncio to Germany, he had once written the Holy See that compromise with Nazis was impossible. As Vatican secretary of state during the 1930s, he could have shot down Hudal's wacky plan. Alarming evidence against the Nazis had accumulated daily. The ink on the concordat had not yet dried when the Nazis began ignoring it, most notably in 1934 when a racist sterilization law was passed that obviously contradicted Pius Xl's recent encyclical, Casti Conubii. On June 30th, the famous Night of Long Knives when the top echelon of the Sturm Abteilung (SA) was eliminated, the Nazis also murdered Erich Klausener, the most prominent lay Catholic in Germany.2 Neither the Vatican nor German bishops responded to this crime. Instead of denouncing national socialism, Pius XI assigned two Dutch Jesuits to investigate Nazi racism. The call for an investigation amounted to a nondecision on the part of Pacelli and Pius XI, neither of whom wanted to see the concordat with Germany broken.

The 1936 report of the Dutch priests on the Hitler regime found that racism was the heart and soul of Nazi philosophy. No compromise, they said, was possible with Catholicism. Hudal continued to say just the opposite. Hitler was a moderate, he said. German expansion into Eastern Europe, the Nazi program of Lebensraum, would drive Bolshevist Russia back. In their indecisiveness, Pacelli and Pius XI gave the study of the Dutch Jesuits to one in-house committee at the Vatican after another, which accomplished nothing except to kill time which, in Rome, seemed to stand still. In the meantime, Hitler unveiled the Nuremberg Laws in 1935. As the laws were being put into effect in 1936, the Vatican finally  concluded that the Holy See should uphold the "law of justice and love toward all races," by no means excluding the Semitic race. "Here, for the first time among the documents of the Holy Office, the problem of anti-Semitism is mentioned explicitly."3

Thus, Hudal's loopy ideas of Nazi Christians lost ground inside the Vatican, but the Austrian prelate fought back, publishing first an article and then a book in which he argued that Nazi antisemitism constituted a "special case" which was justified by Jewish purveyance of "soulless materialism."4 Hitler loved the book; Pius XI hated it. The pope wanted to put the book on the Index of Forbidden Books, but Pacelli persuaded him to have the Vatican's newspaper denounce it instead. Hudal, once considered for a cardinal's red hat, had done himself in. Pacelli, meanwhile, contented himself with doing battle on an ad hoc basis with Nazi violations of the concordat, avoiding an all-out confrontation. In the end, it was not the schemer Hudal who forestalled a blunt rejection of Nazi racism by the Holy See but the Spanish civil war.

From 1936 to 1939, Spain was the site of intramural ideological warfare in Europe. During the bloody civil war, Communists were responsible for murdering scores of priests and nuns among the over 30,000 total fatalities in the conflict. Insurgents under General Francisco Franco could not have prevailed had he not been assisted by thousands of soldiers and military hardware from Germany and Italy. In this way, the idea of Pius XI in the early 1930s for a coalition of Christian nations against communism became a reality in the latter years of that decade.5 Authoritarian regimes had demonstrated that they could effectively combat bolshevism.

In a three-hour meeting in Hitler's Obersalzburg redoubt in the Bavarian Alps, the Fuhrer taunted Cardinal Faulhaber with Hudal's idea that the Church and Nazis could work in tandem to destroy communism. Spain was the proof, and the Fuhrer waved the little bishop's book in the cardinal's face. Hitler lectured Faulhaber about the danger that communism would spread from Spain to France and insisted that only Germany could stop the Bolshevist menace.6 Pius XI and Pacelli needed little convincing about the significance of the war in Spain, which led them to a fateful decision. In 1937, the pope issued two encyclicals. In Divini Redemptoris, he harshly condemned communism once again, while in Mit brennender Sorge he criticized racism in carefully measured words. As Peter Godman has pointed out, this was a political decision that ignored the immorality of Nazi racism as it had been discerned by in-house committees at the Vatican.7 Although the Holy See had abandoned Hudal's ideas, the Spanish civil war confirmed that fascism could indeed be used to fight bolshevism. This was a lesson in practical politics that neither Hudal nor Pacelli would forget, which explains why after World War II, they would engage in ratline activity.

Equivocating about their conviction regarding the evil of antisemitism, Pacelli and Pius XI, working with several German prelates, produced Mit brennender Sorge in 1937. Smuggled into Germany and read simultaneously from Catholic pulpits in March, it infuriated the Nazis because it decried racism. But in fact, the encyclical stepped lightly around the issue of racism so as to keep the concordat intact. Cardinal Pacelli's fingerprints are on Mit brennender Sorge, for, as Gerhart Besier has reasoned, the cardinal secretary's chances of succeeding Pius XI would have been greatly diminished had Hitler done away with the concordat, the cardinal's handiwork.8

Time passed, and the tentacles of Nazi antisemitism penetrated ever more deeply into the German social fabric, ripping Jews apart from it. Though the oppression in Italy was not as extreme as it was in Germany, Italian Jews also found themselves increasingly the targets of state-sponsored prejudice. Probably aware that he had not dealt acutely enough with fascist antisemitism, Pius XI commissioned yet another study of racism in 1938. Three Jesuits, this time a German, an American, and a Frenchman, were asked to draft an encyclical. Because of in-house Vatican subterfuge, the encyclical, Humani Generis Unitas (The Unity of Humankind), never came to light.9 Had it been given, Humani Generis would have clearly delineated the immorality of racism. "All the rhetoric of 'racial impurity ... ends by being uniquely the struggle against the Jews.''' The papal edict would have deplored the situation of the Jews who were denied "legal protection against violence and robbery, exposed to every form of insult and public degradation, innocent persons [who] are treated as criminals ... traitors ... outlaws."10 A moment of truth slipped by.

Clearly, the notion that western European fascism would do battle with communism grew to be commonplace in the 1930s. Only Hudal carried the idea to the extreme, believing that top Nazis, whose antisemitism he justified, would be infused with Christianity and then do battle with bolshevism. Pius XI eventually scoffed at Hudal's naivete, but the irksome bishop held fast, waiting for another day to breathe life into his theory. That day would come at the end of World War II. During that conflict, the Vatican consistently thought of Soviet bolshevism and its primary enemy. Starting from this outlook, Pope Pius XII entertained various schemes that in one way or another worked against the spread of communism. But because the war concluded with the Soviet Union threatening Western Europe, what evolved from these schemes was the Vatican's postwar effort to use Nazi fascists to combat communism. The idea that Hudal had unsuccessfully floated in the 1930s came full circle. The Vatican sparked new life into Hudal's plan when Pius XII's close advisor Father Leiber wrote to the Austrian bishop at the time of Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union, telling him that in some sense he could look at the mission as a crusade.11 Here, the Vatican was simply leading Hudal on, for the pope himself did not subscribe to the crusade notion.12 What Pius XI had eschewed Pius XII took up under quite different circumstances, and Hudal's dream of the 1930s became the Holy See's postwar ratline in the 1940s. To see how this linkage came into place we must briefly review diplomatic intrigue at the Vatican during the war.

Early in the war a coterie of German army officers, hoping to avoid a two-front war, plotted to overthrow Hitler and come to terms with Germany's western enemies. The officers saw Pope Pius as the best intermediary and enlisted a Munich lawyer, Josef Muller, to engage the Vatican.13 The prospect of eliminating Hitler while preserving a strong anti-Soviet Germany was too good to be passed up. Pius XII, breaking all rules of neutrality, accepted the role of intermediary. The pope's willingness to go along with the plot can be reckoned, historian Klemens von Klemperer, quoting Harold C. Deutsch, pointed out, as "among the most astounding events in the modern history of the papacy."14 Although the negotiations had realistic possibilities, they eventually fell through. Pius XII made a dangerous gamble. When German intelligence uncovered the plot including the pope's role, only Hitler's irresponsible rejection of sound German intelligence saved Pope Pius from dire consequences.15 History can be fickle; had Hitler had the good sense to rely on competent German intelligence, Pius XII would now stand out in the record of World War II as a hero.

As the war progressed, the Vatican remained flexible but steadfast in opposition to bolshevism. From Rome's perspective, matters took a turn for the better in the summer of 1941 when Germany attacked its ally, the Soviet Union. At least now Europe's two main enemies of Christianity were not aligned. In the view of a high-ranking Vatican diplomat, Archbishop Filippo Bernardini, a Nazified Europe would lead to only a temporary persecution of the Church, which, like metal in fire, would purify Catholicism.16 Pius XII and President Roosevelt went round and round in the fall of 1941 regarding the wisdom of the United States arming Stalin's army through the lend-lease program.17 Both sides exaggerated, the president postulating freedom of religion under Stalin and the Holy See emphasizing Soviet abuses in eastern occupied Poland when it certainly knew that German atrocities in western occupied Poland far exceeded those in the east.18 Monsignor Tardini suggested giving the Soviets enough help to keep Hitler's army busy far away in Eastern Europe but not enough to allow Stalin's army into the heartland of Europe.19 Clearly, the Vatican had no love of Hitler's Germany, but its fear of Bolshevist Russia offset its contempt for Nazism.

By the summer of 1942, a powerful Germany held sway over a Nazified Europe. In the judgment of Pope Pius, Germany's grasp on the continent could not be successfully challenged, at least not in the foreseeable future. Harold Tittmann sent word to the State Department that Pius did not think the Allies would prevail in the war. The pope, Tittmann reported, expected that whichever side emerged victorious from the coming struggle for Moscow, Stalingrad, and Leningrad would sue for an advantage'ous peace.20 This would present Pope Pius with the opportunity to play the peacemaker, a role he would certainly relish.21 The Vatican newspaper promoted the aptness of the pope for peace negotiations.

Such was the war's status when Argentina came forward with a harebrained design for peace with Pius XII playing a central role. Spain, Portugal, Argentina, and the Vatican together with Germany would be the nucleus of an Iberio-American bloc that would sponsor a worldwide political realignment. Archival records from Argentina that have been exploited by Uki Goiii disclose that in the spring of 1942, Juan Carlos Goyeneche, accompanied by Spain's ambassador to Germany, Adrian Escobar, was sent by the Argentine government to engage top Nazis, Foreign Minister Ribbentrop and Reichsminister Himmler, in peace talks based on the continuance of the status quo-that is, a Nazified Europe. After concluding talks with the Germans, Goyeneche traveled to Rome to meet with Vatican officials. Goyeneche had sound family and official credentials. The foreign minister of Argentina, Enrique Ruiz Guiiiazu, and his close advisor, Mario Amadeo-both of whom had formerly served as ambassadors to the Holy See where they had been close to Under-Secretary of State Montini-authorized Goyeneche's mission.22 The Argentine envoy had a private audience with Pius XII and the Argentine ambassador met with Secretary of State Maglione to discuss the peace plan. Afterward, Goyeneche returned to Germany for a follow-up conference with Ribbentrop.

The 1940 peace plan-the plot to overthrow Hitler-and the 1942 peace plan had one thing in common: both victimized the Soviet Union. But besides being scatterbrained, the 1942 peace plan differed from the 1940 plot to overthrow Hitler in that the top Nazis would not be eliminated. A nazified Europe would remain intact, a situation which promised persecution of the Christian churches. Most likely for this reason in June 1941, Pius XII proposed open borders for would-be emigrants.23 The Vatican succeeded in getting the Argentinians to agree that after the war, European Catholics who felt themselves in mortal danger from the Nazis could emigrate to their country. The Argentine foreign minister cabled his ambassador to the Vatican suggesting that the two neutral states, Argentina and the Vatican, mediate a peace. On October 6, 1942, Ambassador Llobet replied to the foreign minister that he had met with Monsignor Maglione, who "suggested to me that the pontiff would be interested in knowing the willingness of the government of the Argentine Republic to apply its immigration laws generously, in order to encourage at the opportune moment European Catholic immigrants to seek the necessary land and capital in our country."24 Subsequently, a German priest stationed in Rome, Father Anton Weber, who headed the Rome branch of the St. Raphael Society, an organization that gave assistance to Catholic emigrants, traveled to Portugal with plans to continue on to Argentina, presumably to lay the groundwork for immigration of Catholics.25 This was the innocent origin of what would become the Vatican ratline.

Germany, which by this time was at war with the United States, gained a bridge to the western hemisphere through the proposed peace plan. Argentina would be allowed to seize the Falkland Islands and the Vatican would be named the governor of the city of Jerusalem. A worldwide political realignment indeed.

Argentina continued its talks with Germany and the Vatican in 1943. Juan Peron, who had done military training under Mussolini in 1942, came to power in Argentina in the spring of 1943, assisted by Fifth Column activity organized by Walter Schellenberg, head of German foreign intelligence.26 When the Soviet Union inaugurated diplomatic relations with Uruguay and Colombia (and with Chile in 1945), the Argentines feared a "Bolshevist penetration of our Continent. "27 Peron wanted to build a South American fascist coalition to oppose communism. The Vatican, naturally, backed him completely. For the same reason-to thwart communism-Pius XII urged Bolivia not to break diplomatic relations with Germany.28 The issue that had hitherto snagged Iberio-Vatican-Argentine talks with Germany was Christianity. The Nazis had been inflexible in 1942, at which time they persistently deflected discussions about Christianity, but they were not so sure of themselves in 1943. In a meeting with Himmler, Goyeneche stressed the indestructible roots of Catholicism in Argentina and asserted that if Europe fell to communism, South America would follow. In other words, if the two countries were to team up against bolshevism, religion had to be part of the bargain. Himmler, the man who had been responsible for the death of tens of thousands of Catholic Poles, told Goyeneche to let Pope Pius know that he was "very approachable" on religious matters.29 After discussions with Himmler, Goyeneche orchestrated understandings with Vichy France, Hungary, Rumania, Slovenia, Italy, Spain, and Portugal, the purpose of which was to organize the Christian order of postwar Europe.

The absurdity of these proceedings need not be belabored. What is of significance in trying to search out the ratline's beginnings is the shift in emphasis from 1942 to 1943. When the Nazis were winning the war in 1942, Christians were at risk. When that superiority came into doubt after Soviet victories at Stalingrad and Kursk in 1943, the fascists understood the potential peril of their future. Although by then many fascists had innocent blood on their hands, they were no longer in a position to scorn religion. So it was that by the fifth year of the war, Hudal's notion that Christian Nazis would do battle with communism came full circle. But in 1944 it was not yet time for Hudal's regrettable reappearance in the pages of history.

The postwar interrogation of German foreign intelligence chief Walter Schellenberg by the Allies makes clear the central role the Vatican was playing in the Iberio-Vatican-Argentine scheme. As Germany's fortunes took a turn for the worse in 1943, Schellenberg intended to use the close contacts that Ambassador Escobar, Goyeneche, and Amadeo had with the Vatican to put out peace feelers. The Argentines made it clear, Schellenberg testified, that the Nazis would have to accept the Catholic element if cooperation was to go forward. Although the Argentines and Spaniards took the diplomatic lead, Schellenberg believed that the Vatican's involvement was essential. Once again the Vatican was hoping that some sort of accord between Nazism and the Church could work against bolshevism.30

In the last two years of the war, Spain, not Rome, became the first center of ratline activity that facilitated the escape of Nazi fascists. The Vatican, nevertheless, took part in planning the exodus of fascists from Europe. From the outset, the governments of Iberian nations and the Vatican agreed essentially that Europe was involved in two wars-one an intramural war, the other a war against bolshevism.31 When the former war ended, the war against communism would continue-if not conducted by Germany, then by the United States and Great Britain. By 1944, it appeared more certain that it would be the United States and Great Britain, not Germany, that would lead the battle against communism. For the previous two years, Spain, Argentina, and the Vatican had been discussing peace and emigration strategies with Germany. In addition, at the Vatican secretariat of state, Monsignor Montini had participated closely as early as 1943 with a Madrid group whose purpose was to "save Europe from bolshevism, prevent communism in Germany and ... keep in touch with the German military circles and after the collapse of Germany and the fall of the Nazis, help the military right wing together with a capitalist government seize power" (italics added).32 Thus, from the outset the Vatican worked to provide Nazi fugitives with a base of operations.

For a number of reasons Spain offered the best base for such operations for Nazis, both for anti-Communist plots and for hideaways. Though Spain was supposedly neutral, Franco sent the Spanish Blue Division to Germany to fight bolshevism during World War II. Falangists, who were predominant in Spain after the civil war, identified with Nazi ideology, though not with its antireligious policies. Spain's foreign minister, Serrano Swier, had allowed German military personnel to direct Falangists in anti-Communist "Nazi-fascist activities in those South American countries who have broken off from the Axis. "33 Furthermore, economic cooperation between Germany and Spain had increased during the war, with, as we have seen, much-needed tungsten going to Germany and wheat and gold going back the other way. A number of large German companies had established branches in Spain, where they succeeded in cloaking their operations and identities under an umbrella organization called Sofindus.

Franco, who saw the benefit for Spain's economy, welcomed the Germans and neglected to report them to the Allies, just as during the war he had frustrated the SS by allowing thousands of Jews to find sanctuary in his country. Safehaven, the name the American intelligence community gave to its efforts to deny a safe haven for any stolen Nazi funds, could not successfully track much of the flow of German capital to Spain.34 Toward the end of the war the transfer of funds out of Germany became substantial; Safehaven was aware that the Iberian Peninsula served as an "underground route for transfers to Latin America. "35 In Schellenberg's opinion, the Church played a central role in Spanish-German-Argentine economic planning that would facilitate emigration to South America. U.S. intelligence corroborated this view: "In 1945 the apostolic nuncio to Argentina reported to the Holy See that financial experts from Argentina and from Spain had conferred in Buenos Aires to plan financial collaboration between the two countries and other Spanish-American countries. The nuncio stated that German financial specialists were also present at the conference."36 A Senor Chaves, who had been involved with emigration from Europe to Argentina as early as 1943, participated in the transfer of capital. In 1945, Chaves visited the Vatican, possibly to arrange money-laundering through the Vatican-owned South American banking chain, Sudameris.37 In 1945 and 1946, Safehaven personnel repeatedly complained about Franco's protection of Sofindus companies and funds. The Falange-Nazi link and the liquidity of German capital in Spain and Argentina made Spain the ideal country for ratline activity.

Charles Lesca, a French citizen, and Pierre Daye, a Belgian, organized the first Spanish ratline. In December 1944, Walter Schellenberg flooded Lesca with cash and worked with Spanish intelligence to coordinate the emigration of German fascists. Daye, working out of Madrid, used his government contacts to get German displaced persons and prisoners of war out of detention and find them employment in German firms. By the summer of 1944, the Allies had caught on to the ratline activity. The American embassy notified all consulate personnel to be alert to the whereabouts of war criminals as defined by the Hague conventions in 1907.38 Both Lesca and Daye were rabid antisemites. Both wrote occasionally for the viciously antisemitic journal Ie Suis Partout. Lesca was a member of Action Franc;aise, an organization that Pius XI had condemned in 1926. Pius XII had lifted the ban in 1939; he liked the anticommunism of Action Francaise more than he disliked its antisemitism. In January 1943, Pius XII gave Daye his papal blessing during a private audience. The benediction did not help Daye; he was condemned to death by a Belgian court in 1946 for collaboration with the Nazis. Daye escaped to Argentina, where Lesca and Amadeo, Monsignor Montini's confidant, received him.39 Uki Goni discovered that it was "through the personal intercession in Rome of French cardinal Eugene Tisserant and the newly consecrated Argentine cardinal Antonio Caggiano that [Lesca and Daye] were first able to flee Europe."40 Many more war criminals would make use of the ratline that Daye and Lesca, working with Caggiano, had opened. For Cardinal Caggiano, who in 1960 denounced Israel's capture of Adolf Eichmann, no perpetrator of Holocaust atrocities was so heinous as to be undeserving of forgiveness.41

By 1946, American intelligence had acquired a clear idea of just whom they were dealing with regarding the influx of Germans into Spain. U.S. agents compiled a list of Nazis in the Miranda POW camp that showed that a great number of war criminals had successfully fled Germany at the war's end. The partial alphabetical list-partial because it breaks off at the letter "E"-showed that the refugees had helped run a number of notorious concentration camps, including Mauthausen, Ravensbriick, Flossenberg, Dachau, Buchenwald, Natzweiler, Stutthof, and Auschwitz. Several of the men had been officers in the camps.42 Using the list as a rule of thumb, one may conclude that there were hundreds of war criminals in Spain in 1946. In addition, we can reckon on the presence of thousands of diehard Nazi fascists there.

Although these Germans were obviously on the run, the Vatican was prepared to offer asylum to any and all refugees. As a neutral state, the Vatican had "played no favorites" when Germany occupied Italy, and it continued this policy after the war. But in August of 1943 the Allies had requested that neutral countries not give asylum to war criminals, and the Vatican, among other neutrals, had been notified of this request.43 After the war the Allies asked that all Axis aliens residing outside of their country of origin be turned over to occupational authorities, who would then ascertain whether such persons would have to stand trial for war crimes. The policy was obviously based on the reaction to the horrors of the Holocaust, which had come to light in news and film media around the world. However, there was no hard-and-fast definition of war crimes. Some formerly neutral countries, Sweden and Switzerland, for example, announced that they would "refuse admission to those aliens whose acts had offended the civilized world. "44 U.S. Secretary of State James Byrnes told Robert Murphy, President Truman's political advisor for occupied (zonal) Germany, that Vatican cooperation in turning over aliens was "negligible."45 Nevertheless, offering asylum was the Church's policy. While "playing no favorites" during the war made sense for the Vatican, a neutral state, the reality of the Holocaust made such a policy by a church-run state a moral farce in the postwar era.

In fact, the Vatican not only offered asylum to refugees, including fugitives, but it also helped them escape to South America. What had in previous years been only potential "peace and emigration" schemes, and rather loony ones at that, now became definite programs, and the Vatican took the lead. Early in the summer of 1946, Monsignor Montini of the Vatican secretariat told the Argentine ambassador that the Holy Father was interested in helping Catholics of whatever nationality emigrate who for whatever reason found that they were not able to find a livelihood in Europe.46 The ambassador replied that Argentina would be a good solution to the problem of where to relocate such individuals and learned that the Vatican wanted to set up the technical apparatus to inaugurate and carry out a program of emigration. The specification that the emigrant be Catholic would not turn out to be a sine qua non, as we will see; what mattered had to do with the emigrant's politics, and the bigger the Nazi the greater the anti-Communist became the rule.

The Vatican's assistance to emigrating fascists was not a stand-alone operation. It was folded into help for emigrants in general through its Emigration Bureau. Contemporaries estimated that there were about 400,000 mostly Eastern European Catholic displaced persons in zonal Germany, Austria, and Italy after the war. This was just an educated guess. In reality there were well over 1 million, many of whom the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration was able to repatriate before its charter expired in 1948.47 That still left nearly 1 million displaced persons seeking to emigrate from Europe to avoid the harsh treatment they would certainly encounter if they were repatriated to their homelands. The Vatican wished to help the Catholic displaced persons, both to avoid cruel treatment of them if they were repatriated and to make use of them in South America to offset Communist propaganda and activity there. If among these hundreds of thousands of displaced persons a relatively small number of fascist war criminals should also find their way across the ocean, the Vatican had no objection. In fact, the Holy See helped them escape. The ratline was the shady side of a larger and, by any reckoning, quite legitimate and constructive program under the auspices of the Vatican Emigration Bureau.

To finance the emigration of hundreds of thousands of people, the Holy See turned to the U.S. Catholic Church. The bishops responded by setting up an agency called War Relief Services under the organizational roof of the National Catholic Welfare Committee (NCWC). In taking this step, the bishops understood that its basic function was to assist the bishops in Latin American countries in carrying out the instructions included in the letter of Monsignor Montini, addressed to the nuncios of these countries on September 27, 1946. This letter was the clear expression of the mind of the Holy Father in regard to the responsibility of the church throughout the world to assist in finding new homes for the very large number of people forced to leave Europe.48

Thus, the U.S. bishops thought that they were part of a worldwide movement operating under the guidance of the Holy See in a great work of international charity. And so they were. "Any success that the mission had in its work," Monsignor John O'Grady, who was the bishops' point man in South America, reported, "had been due, more than anything else, to the fact that it carried out a program that had been formulated by the Holy See and in which the Holy See had a definite and vital interest. "49

Pius XII wanted the North American Church to provide his South American emigration enterprise with money, but he also wanted organizational and political savvy. The purpose of Monsignor O'Grady's trip to Latin America was to marshal a system for receiving refugees from abroad into the churches of those countries. At home in the United States, American bishops could use the NCWC as a powerful lobby that reached the president and the highest branches of government. Increasingly after 1946, the bishops found a ready audience in Washington when they voiced their fears about the spread of communism. But without money, especially for maritime transport of displaced persons, Rome's emigration program could not function. The Vatican, which had no intention of using its own money for the project, turned to U.S. Catholics, whose response appears to have been more than adequate. My research of the NCWC archives shows that the U.S. Church expended at least $5 million (nearly $72 million in 2006 dollars) between 1946 and 1950.50 Some of these dollars supported refugees stuck in displaced persons camps or indigent Germans, but most of it was funneled to Rome. Pope Pius expressed his gratitude to U.S. Catholic leaders in 1948, saying that the bishops were a "shining example of charity" whose efforts made it possible to repair "the ruined fortunes of displaced persons in Europe. "51 The Vatican's Emigration Bureau worked hand in glove with the U.S. bishops' War Relief Services office.

The O'Grady mission produced uneven results. He reported that for the most part the Latin American churches lacked an organizational structure at the diocesan level that would allow them to address the difficulties large-scale immigration would pose. The country that was the exception to the rule was, not surprisingly, Argentina, whose diplomats had interacted with the Vatican on immigration schemes, as we have seen, since the middle years of the war. O'Grady was received by the nuncio, by top Argentine cardinals (including Cardinal Caggiano who, as we have seen, had already been a key organizer in the original Spanish ratline), and by President Peron himself. "The best indication of the results of these negotiations with Argentina," O'Grady reported to the NCWC, "is the fact that more than 5,000 visas have been issued to people in camps in Italy and who are actually waiting for transportation." Neither O'Grady nor the U.S. bishops, who were footing the bill, had control, however, over who those visas were issued to. In setting down policy with the NCWC, the Holy See had let it be known that "in Italy, it is understood that the national committee[s] for emigration [ are] in charge of emigration with the Pontifia Commissione d' Assistenza [Pontifical Commission of Assistance] responsible for the resettlement of non-Italians."52 (The Pontifical Commission of Assistance was what u.s. bishops called the Vatican's Emigration Bureau.) Clearly, U.S. bishops had no control over which displaced persons would be sent on their way to South America.

It would be interesting, but idle, to speculate about what would have occurred had the bishops known that Nazi and Ustasa fascist war criminals would be on the receiving end of u.s. Catholic largess. The bishops had no idea that the Vatican had been working a Latin American ratline since late in the war. In December 1947, the NCWC set up a National Catholic Resettlement Council, which organized immigration into the United States. When the resettlement council met to organize itself, it summoned representatives of various American Catholic ethnic groups, one of which was Croatian. One of its delegates was Adolf (aka Ante) Doshen. After three months and three meetings, the bishops found out who Doshen was-a convicted felon. As secretary-general of the Croatian Homeguard, a pro-fascist organization in the United States, Doshen had collected funds for Ante Pavelic, the Ustasa puppet ruler of Croatia, which was at war with the Allies. The federal district court of the western district of Pennsylvania fined Doshen and sent him to jail on the charges of illegal entry and perjury.53 As soon as Doshen's identity became known, he was removed from the council. Little did the bishops realize that at that very time of their discovery of Doshen's past and his ties to Pavelic, the Vatican was sheltering Ante Pavelic in Rome. As we will see, Pavelic eventually made his way to Argentina with one of the visas Peron handed out.54

At the same time that the Vatican was engaging the U.S. Church, Monsignor Montini was carrying out the discussions with the Argentine ambassador to the Vatican so that emigration of displaced persons could begin. The undertaking sounded legitimate, but it left unsaid the fact that the program was also a cover for "anti-Communist agents who intend to combat the activities of the Communists in South America."55 Even though Montini had said that the Vatican was interested only in Catholic refugees, American intelligence reported that "the Holy See is specifically in agreement with the Argentine government regarding this emigration project as a cover to allow for counteractive operations against both Communist infiltration and [their] operative objectives in South America."56 The apprehension of Peron and Pius about communism taking root in South America was not just fantasy. Intelligence reports noted in 1944 that the Soviets were trying to step up their presence and to "cultivate the idea of USSR being the leader in progressive development. "57 As far as Pius XII was concerned, the first order of business was to put down communism; that is why he preferred to see fascist war criminals on board ships sailing to the New World rather than rotting in POW camps in zonal Germany. The North American bishops, completely unaware of the ratline aspect of the Vatican's emigration work, agreed wholeheartedly that communism in Latin American was "spreading everywhere" and had to be curbed.

U.S. Catholic Church leaders did not suspect that the Vatican's emigration work which they funded helped war criminals along with the thousands of innocent displaced persons.58 O'Grady assured the bishops that all of the displaced persons in European camps were "a fine type of people ... the best people of the countries of their origin." Proof thereof, O'Grady said, was that they are the ones who stood "up and offer[ed] the stiffest resistance to Communistic forces in their respective countries. "59

The bishops needed little convincing. They were appalled that the British occupational forces had recently forced 15,000 Croats to return to Yugoslavia, where they would face Tito's cruelty. This was in addition to 12,000 who had been repatriated in 1945, all of whom the bishops believed to have been executed. U.S. bishops, who feared for displaced persons if they were returned to Communist countries, worked with a sense of urgency. They had no idea that fascists with shady backgrounds were working for the Holy See's Emigration Bureau, but U.S. intelligence did. Agent Henry Nigrelli provided a detailed account of the Vatican's activity in June 1946: The Holy See is involved in a plan to organize emigration to South America. Don Aurelio Torrazza, secretary to Archbishop Siri of Genoa, is in charge. Torrazza will lead a pontifical mission to South America. Baron Robert Faucon de Tourenne will assist Torrazza. The cost of emigration will be determined. The project will be "nursed by the Holy See." The project will be administered by the pontifical mission [Emigration Bureau). The actual purpose of the project is to fight communism in South America.60

U.S. bishops did not know about Tourenne, who had been a Petain collaborator with the very suspect position of secretary to the minister of refugees and prisoners-in other words, Jews. "Despite the shady political past of Tourenne," Nigrelli reported, "the Holy See is persistent about employing him."61 That he did not have a passport and could not get one without returning to France to face an uncertain fate because of his handling of Jewish refugees did not bother the Holy See. He would travel as a citizen of Vatican state.

Such is the bizarre history of the origin of the Vatican's ratline, from its emergence in a helter-skelter manner from Bishop Hudal's fanciful convictions in the 1930s to the nebulous schemes of 1942 and 1943 to the Nazi escape routes of 1945 and thereafter. The Vatican's emigration setup was centered in Italy and controlled by the Holy See. A second emigration scheme operated out of Spain. Although fostered by the Vatican, it appears to have been run more independently of Rome than the Italian operation of the Vatican Emigration Bureau. There was, nevertheless, as we will see, a link between the Spanish and Italian setups.

When Nazis on the lam crossed over the Pyrenees into Spain, they were taken into custody by Spanish authorities, who then passed them on to a network of nonmilitary German nationals who had funds at their disposal to care for the fugitives. The funds came from German accounts that the Allies wanted but were unable to block. In 1946, Father Mohr, a German priest who was unsympathetic toward Hitler's regime visited a German POW camp in Spain and came away disgusted: he "found camps being administered in the old true Nazi spirit. [He] thinks they get money from blocked German accounts in Spain. Spanish authorities treat Nazi prisoners well and non-Nazi prisoners badly. Nazis get very good food, the others very bad food. Mohr returned indignant from his tour of inspection."62 The fugitive Nazis were outfitted with new clothes and given a weekly allowance.63 Since the Allies had not occupied neutral Spain during the war, they could do little more than sit by and watch the refugee operation.

In the jargon of the day there were three kinds of refugees, whites, blacks, and grays. Whites were Jews heading mostly for Palestine, blacks were atrocity perpetrators-war criminals heading for South America, and grays were the rest, most but not all of whom were guiltless. When word from U.S. intelligence about escaping blacks reached the State Department, it touched off concern. State sent operative Vincent La Vista to Rome to investigate because there were so many whites, grays, and, reputedly, blacks flowing to and through Italy. La Vista soon reported that he had been able to visit all "the welfare offices in Rome that participate knowingly or unknowingly in illegal emigration. The only person I was unable to contact was the notorious Dr. [Willy] Nix."64 He reported that there were two principal emigration agencies in Rome, the American Joint Distribution Committee (AJDC) and the Vatican. The AJDC handled whites. The Vatican served blacks and grays without distinguishing between the two. The La Vista report stunned the State Department. It told J. Graham Parsons, its intelligence agent assigned to the Taylor mission at the Vatican, to verify La Vista's work. Relying on information obtained inside the Vatican, Parsons confirmed everything La Vista had written.65

When discussing the work of Krunoslav Draganovic, one of the Vatican's principal ratline agents in Italy, we will return to the La Vista report.66 Its importance here lies in the fact that La Vista identified Genoa as the port of embarkation for blacks. German blacks traveling to Spain used the Genoa-Barcelona ship line.

In the same month that La Vista filed his report, May 1947, American intelligence in Spain identified Jose La Boos, a German Catholic priest, as the leader of the Spanish ratline. In April, Boos met with the cardinal primate of Toledo; the papal nuncio to Spain; Franco's foreign minister, Serrano Suner; and another Catholic priest, Karl SauerY The meeting took place in Madrid in Suner's office. Boos's work consisted of shipping relief goods from Spain to impoverished postwar Germany and shipping German blacks to South America. Boos had liaised with the Swiss and German Caritas organizations, the Church's continental charity organization, or so he said. To legitimize his work, Boos claimed to be an authorized agent of the German bishops. Given the high rank of the individuals who attended the April meeting, American intelligence believed that they were engaged in carrying out the anti-Communist emigration plan that the Monsignor Montini had previously set up with Argentina. The embassy official who filed the report on Boos concluded that "right now we can only watch and wait. "68

Boos had in fact already established the organization in Spain to help fascists, meaning blacks, emigrate. American intelligence had become aware of Boos's group in January 1946, more than a year before the meeting he had requested in Madrid. Since the end of the war, Boos had tended to German refugees who had fled to Spain across the Pyrenees. At some point in 1946 Boos extended his operation in order to help Nazi blacks who had fled to Italy emigrate from there. Boos had been traveling to Rome to coordinate the escape of these Germans. In all likelihood he met there with Bishop Hudal, or Hudal's assistant, Reinhard Kops, who had set up an organization like Boos's in Rome to shelter runaway Nazis on their way to South America.69 But in January 1947, Boos had arranged to go directly to Genoa, where he met with Father Weber, who, it will be recalled, was working during the war for the St. Raphael Society (to assist German emigrants) at the time of the 1942 Iberio-Vatican-Argentine emigration scheme. In Genoa, Weber and Boos worked together "in order to give the last touches to the magnificently working organization in that place providing German escapees with money and false documents."7o These German blacks embarked from Genoa en route to Barcelona, there to be received by Boos's Spanish-based operation. In April, the high-ranking churchmen met in Madrid with Foreign Minister Suner to coordinate the flow of Germans coming from Italy. Suner agreed to the plan but insisted that the "refugees" be called Central Europeans rather than Germans.71

Boos's relief work gained a great deal of publicity in major Spanish newspapers and on national radio (which was run by a Falangist) but not, naturally, his ratline activity. Financing for Boos's operation came from the major pools of German money in Spain-AEG (the Allgemeine Electrizitiits Gesellschaft, the German equivalent of General Electric) and Sofindus. Both Herbert Hellmann, head of AEG-Madrid, and Johannes Bernhardt, overseer of Sofindus, took part in the emigration work in addition to providing money. 200,000 pesetas had been made available for the POW work, of which 65,000 had already been spent for new clothing. Hellmann promised to try to get additional monies from AEG, Siemens, and Telefunken, even though those funds were supposedly blocked.72 This ample support and the Spanish government's connivance allowed Boos to travel extensively in Europe, bring black Germans by ship from Italy to Spain, hire a staff of about ten people, and open centers of operation at several locations in the country.

The Germans who poured over the Pyrenees into Spain included blacks and grays. Those whom Boos brought from Genoa were only blacks. It fell to Boos's staff, which was headed by the very industrious Clarita Stauffer, to separate the grays from the blacks. The grays-those who had never been Nazis or whose enthusiasm had evaporated with Hitler's suicide-were to be sent back to Germany; the blacks-diehard Nazis-were destined for a South American port. For the moment, however, there was no need to hurry them out of the country. Boos and his group thought that war between the Allies and the Soviet Union would erupt any day. In this case, both grays and blacks would serve against the Bolsheviks in the great continental showdown between Christian fascism and communism. If that day did not come, the blacks would head out to Argentina far from their homeland and prosecution as war criminals, there to enlist once again in the struggle against bolshevism. One way or another, Bishop Hudal's fantasy would come alive. When the continental showdown with communism failed to materialize, Spain, which had been the Jews' highway of exodus from Europe until 1943, became the route of escape for the Jews' tormentors after the war.

Clarita Stauffer's work illustrates how Boos's organization sifted through the grays and the blacks. In February 1947, she visited the Miranda POW camp, from whence she escorted prisoners to Salamanca, a more comfortable facility but still under Spanish custody. Some grays had double identity papers; they would be placed in jobs here and there across the country and " disappear forever." Blacks and those lacking such papers numbered 180. Of that number, 150 qualified as grays in Stauffer's eyes and would return to Germany. "The rest," said an American intelligence report, "has its reasons for not returning. "73

The Spanish government under dictator Francisco Franco had no objections to having industrious Germans remain in its country. This made it possible for Stauffer to arrange with local authorities for a Spanish person to act as a "guarantor"-one who provided food and lodging-for individual German paws, who would then be released. This scenario played out at the Salamanca, Barcelona, and Valladolid detention camps. In fact, most of the "guarantors" were fictitious or were Spaniards acting as fronts whose money came from Bernhardt of Sofindus. SS members were among those released. A German woman, Mariane Witte, a former secretary in the Gestapo, looked after the released POWS.74

All of this was made possible because Franco liked having fascists who had the German work ethic in his country. The government did nothing to extradite some 500 "priority Germans." Nor did the government act on the seventy paws, probably all blacks, who were on a mostwanted list, even though the Spaniards had agreed to arrest and extradite them.?5 The Allies complained that the government would not suppress transplanted German industry and would not cooperate in repatriating blacks. But their dissatisfaction did not stop there. The American embassy complained that above all the schools have been allowed to continue to operate and relay raw Nazi propaganda to pupils. Nazi culture is practiced in these schools, i.e. holidays, celebrations, military stuff, doctrine, pagan religion. The United Nations regard German schools as the very fountainhead of the evil influence which resulted in the present war, the destruction of Europe and the horrors exemplified by the German concentration camps.76

In June 1947, Father Karl Sauer (who had accompanied Boos to the Madrid meeting with the nuncio and Foreign Minister Suner) paid a courtesy visit to the American embassy. It seemed that Sauer disliked being associated with Boos and wished to make this clear. Hudson Smith of the embassy mentioned that Sauer's name appeared on the letterhead of the Boos organization's stationery. That, Sauer asserted, had happened without his knowledge and he regretted it. Smith then told Sauer that the Allies disapproved of Boos's exaggerations, for example, that 50 percent of German children were starving to death. Sauer asserted that he also disapproved and said that he would stop them. After his visit such statements did indeed cease. Smith concluded that Sauer was a bona fide representative of Swiss Caritas and that Boos only claimed such affiliation. Sauer had produced a letter from Monsignor Montini which said that the pope praised his work, meaning the work of sending relief goods to indigent Germans.77 Smith concluded from the meeting that Sauer was legitimate and did not accuse or associate him with Boos's work with black German fugitives from justice.

It came as a surprise, therefore, when the American embassy in Buenos Aires notified the embassy in Madrid that Boos and Sauer were working together to ship the fugitives to South America. Early in 1948 the Buenos Aires embassy requested an investigation of two Spanish ratline organizations. One was that of the Caritas association, "of which father Saurer [sic] and Rektor Boos appear to be the leaders. "78 The Jesuit provincials of Seville in Spain and of Buenos Aires in Argentina operated the second ratline on both sides of the ocean with the cooperation of Falangists. All of emigrants were black Nazis with falsified identification papers,79 At the receiving end in Argentina, cells were established to organize the immigrant fascists into anti-Communist groups. By 1948, five such groups of an unknown number had been formed. "A Miss Goyeneche leads [one] group. She is the head of the Accion Catolica and member of the Juan Carlos Goyeneche family, prominent in Argentine diplomatic circles. "80 Miss Goyeneche was in fact the wife of Juan Carlos Goyeneche, the negotiator with top Nazis and the Holy See in the IberioVatican-Argentine scheme of 1942-1943.

The Madrid embassy must have wondered why Sauer had attended the Madrid meeting with Boos and the top church and state officials if he was not working in the Boos enterprise. An investigation began. Almost a year after Sauer's visit with Smith at the American embassy, the Allies discovered the truth-Sauer's Caritas work was a cover to hide his efforts to aid black Germans. Sauer, who turned out to be a Spanish Jesuit, was associated closely with the "Nazi fanatic Clarita Stauffer organization which aids Nazi youth in Spain to escape to the western hemisphere. "81 Sauer, American intelligence discovered, had around half a million pesetas at his disposal, money which he had collected by appealing for funds for the destitute in Germany.

That Father Sauer managed for a while to pull the wool over the eyes of the United States is of little importance. More compelling is the letter of the Buenos Aires embassy testifying to the fact that the scheme that Juan Carlos Goyeneche hatched in 1942 and in modified form in 1943 had become a reality at the end of the war. From the beginning, the Vatican had involved itself closely in this project. There is no doubt that it embraced the policy of using Nazi fascists, including blacks, during the postwar years. As we will see in subsequent chapters, the Spanish ratline was only one of several operating under the aegis of the Vatican. One month after the June 1947 meeting in Madrid of Boos, Sauer, the papal nuncio, the cardinal primate of Toledo, and the foreign minister of Spain, an American diplomat who had been working in the Buenos Aires embassy before being transferred to the embassy in Yugoslavia wrote to the State Department deploring the fact that "the Vatican and Argentina [are conniving] to get guilty people to haven in latter country."82 A second U.S. diplomat, Hiram Bingham, IV, had earlier notified state of the Vatican-Argentina ratline. Disobeying his American state department superior during the war, Bingham had helped thousands of Jews escape, for which reason he was demoted and posted to Argentina. As early as 1946, Bingham notified Washington of illegal Nazi immigration into that country, "but the state department quashed his efforts to investigate. "83

A tangle of ideas, human emotions, and changing circumstances generates history. Who would ever imagine that the ratline had evolved from the Vatican's hope for an escape route for Catholics from a nazified Europe? Who would ever expect that different circumstances after the war would lead the Vatican to adopt Bishop Hudal's ludicrous prewar idea of Christianized Nazis battling Communists? What Pius XII dreaded, the war ending with Communist Russia in the center of Europe, had become reality. Giving in to his fear of communism, Pope Pius chose to ignore the distinction between refugees and fugitives, between grays and blacks. Aggressively anti-Communist American Church leaders, ignorant of the ratline, backed the pope with U.S. dollars. Pope Pius may have believed that with Hitler removed from the scene, Nazis would see the light and return to church. Some did. But in the end all that mattered to the pope was that they were anti-Communist fascists. The fear of Pius XII rescued Bishop Hudal from the dustbin of history, truly his rightful place.

Where on 11 October 2007 the BBC reported 'Dirty War' trial puts spotlight on Church; we instead will be able to point out why an ideological affinity with Hitler became possible, and in the case of the Vatican-- had to do with political self interest. The Vatican’s War P.2.

In Mystici Corporis Christi of 1943, the Vatican indicated that if Jews did not convert, their destiny layout of the reach of the Church because they had broken the covenant. Thus when the Archbishop of Belgium was asked to "pls.say something" in regards to the more than twenty five thousand Jews that were incarcerated around the corner from his own palace, in order to be gassed in Auschwitz; that this was "not the Church's business".* The Vatican’s War P.3.

First mentioned in our From Belgium to Kosovo Research, we also will present the final information regarding among others, Ante Pavelic and so on. The Ustasa's gold: The Vatican’s War P.4.

In 1942 Pius XII counting on a envisioned a postwar Eastern Europe anchored by a bloc of countries-a constellation like that of the AustroHungarian Empire, which earlier in the century had embraced Croatia. Hungarians, Austrians, and Croats had once been the bulwark of Europe that held off the infidel Muslim. Might not they now form a bulwark against the new infidel-the atheist Soviets? The Vatican’s War P.5.

During the years after World War II, Pius XII believed that a military showdown between the Soviet Union and the west would occur. If that were to happen, it would have his blessing. The Nazi/Vatican Connection P.6.

1. Peter Godman, Hitler and the Vatican (New York: Free Press, 2004), chapter 5, especially 50f£.

2. Kevin P. Spicer, Resisting the Third Reich: The Catholic Clergy in Hitler's Berlin (Dekalb, Ill.: Northern Illinois University Press, 2004), chapter 2.

3. Godman, Hitler and the Vatican, 104. The Holy Office is the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

4. Ibid., chapter 11, esp. 120-122. Hudal published Deutsches Volk und christliches Abendland in 1935 and Die Grundlagen des Nationalsozialismus in 1937.

5. Peter C. Kent, The Lonely Cold War of Pope Pius XII: The Roman Catholic Church and the Division of Europe, 1943-1950 (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2002), 144-145, points out that the Vatican did not initially favor Italian intervention in Spain.

6. See Michael Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), 231n85.

7.  Godman, Hitler and the Vatican, 131-132.

8.Gerhart Besier, zusammenarbeit mit Francesca Piombo, Der Heilige Stuhl und Hitler-Deutschland. Die Faszination des Totalitaren (Munich: Verlagsgruppe Random House, 2004), 263.

9. For a brief account of the doomed encyclical, see Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 3--4; for a complete account, see the excellent study of Georges Passelecq and Bernard Suchecky, L'encyclique cachee de Pie XI. Une occasion manquee de l'eglise face a antisemitismus (Paris: La Decouverte, 1995).

10. As quoted in Paul Damian O'Shea, "Confiteor. Eugenio Pacelli, the Catholic Church and the Jews. An Examination of the Responsibility of Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust, 1917-1943" (Ph.D. diss., Macquarie University, 2004), 237. Peter
Godman, while admitting Pius Xl's emotional personality, does not think that Humani Generis would have been a sharp rebuke; see Godman, Hitler and the Vatican, 165-166. Most commentators are in agreement with Godman, but O'Shea's argument cannot be overlooked.

11. Hansjakob Stehle, Geheimdiplomatie im Vatikan. Die Papste und die Kommunisten (Zurich: Benziger, 1993), 198.

12. J. G. Parsons, memo of a conversation with Maritain, July 15, 1947, Entry 1068, Box 15, RG 59, location 250/48/29/01-05, NARA.

13. As a graduate student at the University of Munich, I was able to meet Dr.Josef Muller. At that time, Holocaust studies did not exist and I was engaged in social history. Dr. Muller patiently answered whatever questions I put to him, thinking, no doubt, that they were completely inane. For my part, it was an opportunity of a lifetime, a lost opportunity of a lifetime.

14. Klemens von Klemperer, German Resistance against Hitler: The Search for Allies Abroad, 1938-1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 172.

15. David Alvarez and Robert A. Graham, S.]., Nothing Sacred: Nazi Espionage against the Vatican (London: F. Cass, 1997), 24ff.

16. Harold H. Tittmann, Jr., Inside the Vatican of Pius XII: The Memoir of an American Diplomat during World War II, ed. Harold H. Tittmann, III (New York:
Palgrave, 2004), 37.

17.   Ibid., 60-61.

18. Michael Phayer, "The Genocides of Polish Catholics and Polish Jews," Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte 15, no. 1(2002): 238-262. On the Vatican's exaggerations, see Susan Zuccotti, "L'Osservatore Romano and the Holocaust, 1930-1945," Holocaust and Genocide Studies 17, no. 2 (2003): 15-16.

19.  Stehle, Geheimdiplomatie im Vatikan, 201.

20. Harold H. Tittmann to state, Vatican City, June 1942, Box 23, RG 84, location 350/68/25/02, NARA.

21. In his memo to state, Tittmann reported that Francis Osborne believed that Pius was preparing the ground for a peace initiative; Harold H. Tittmann, Vatican City, to state, July 11,1942, Box 23, RG 84, location 350/68/25/02, NARA.

22. Uki Gofii, The Real Odessa: Smuggling the Nazis to Peron's Argentina (London: Granta, 2002), chapter 1, "War Games."

23. See the pope's speech in Catholic Mind: "The Social Question in the New Order," 39, no. 923 (June 8, 1941): 1-16.

24. Ambassador Llobet to Ruiz Guifiazu, October 6,1942, Guerra Europea, File 1, vol. 4, Cable 1272, Archives of the Foreign Minister of Argentina. I am indebted to Uki Gofii for forwarding the contents of the cable to me.

25. OSS report, December 23,1942, Reel 6, Italy-Vatican City, RG 226, location 190/10/12/06, NARA.

26.   Gofii, The Real Odessa, chapter 2, "Peron Leaps to Power."

27.OSS intercept of Argentine correspondence, April 7, 1943, Entry 210, Box 419, RG 226, location 250/64/29/06, NARA. The Vatican disapproved, of course, of Catholic Chile's relations with the Soviet Union; see the OSS report of January 10, 1945, Entry 134, Box 219, File 1372, RG 226, location 190/7/32/2, NARA.

28. Papal Nuncio, La Paz, to Vatican Secretariat of State, January 30, 1942, Entry 16, File 12103, Reel 39, RG 226, NARA.

29. Gofii, The Real Odessa, 13.

30. Signed statement of Schellenberg, February 7, 1946, Entry 1088, Box 25, RG 226, location 250/48/30/07, NARA.

31. R. Henry Norweb, Lisbon, to state, January 28, 1944, Box 92, File 851, RG 84, location 350/68/17/7, NARA. W. Butterworth of the U.S. embassy in Madrid sent a copy of Franco's speech of May 13, 1944, which expressed the "two wars" notion, to the U.S. State Department; see Entry 3162 Box 38, File 800, RG 84, location 350/67/27/01, NARA. See also Goiii, The Real Odessa, chapter 7, "Cardinal Recommendations. "

32.   OSS report, Entry 210, Box 236, RG 226, location 250/64/26/01, NARA.

33. Intelligence report on the Falange, 3 Entry 451B, Box 16, File 4, RG 59, location 250/46/9, NARA.

34. Bernard Baruch, Lisbon, to U.S. State Department, August 13,1945, Box 6, Class #112, File #01-237, RG 65, location 230/86/17/4, NARA.

35. OSS report, October 1944, Entry 451B, Box 16, RG 59, location 250/46/9/3, NARA.

36. Earl Brennan, Chief, Italian Section Office of Special Investigation, report on all intelligence for Italy/Albania by Office of Special Investigation, September 1945, Entry 210 Box 319, RG 226, location 250/62/28/02, NARA.

37. Caffery to U.S. State Department, May 8, 1945, Entry 1069, Box 28, RG 59, location 250/48/29/5, NARA.

38. Madrid, August 22, 1944, Entry 3162, Box 37, File 711, RG 84, location 350/67/27/04, NARA.

39. For more on Lesca and Daye, see Goiii, The Real Odessa, chapter 6, "The Nazi Escape Begins."

40.   Ibid., 93.

41.   Ibid., 96.

42.OSS report on the Miranda de Ebro POW camp, Entry 210, Box 35, RG 226, location 250/64/21/06 NARA.

43. "Neutrals Warned on Asylum Access," New York Times, August 1, 1943,12.

44. E. L. Pad berg, Legal Attache, U.S. Embassy, Portugal, to J. J. Wagner, Lisbon, April 10, 1946, Box 4080, RG 59, location 250/36/29/02, NARA.

45. James F. Byrnes to Robert Murphy, January 2, 1946, in U.S. State Department, Foreign Relations of the United States 1946 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1969), 5:794.

46. Ambassador, the Argentine embassy, Rome, June 13, 1946, to Juan A. Bramuglia, Minister for Exterior Relations, AMRECIC Political Division, Holy See 2/1946, National Archives, Argentina.

47. Michael Marrus, The Unwanted: European Refugees in the Twentieth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 323.

48.   Report of Monsignor O'Grady, July 1, 1947, 10/37/8, ACUA.

49.   Ibid.

50. Comparative budget statement of War Relief Services-NCWC for February 1, 1948-January 31,1949,10/3/5, Records of the National Catholic Welfare Council, ACUA. (Hereafter NCWC Records.) Other contributions for emigration are to be found among the NCWC Records, but I found no cumulative record.

51. Pius XII to John T. McNicholas, archbishop of Cincinnati and chairman of the NCWC, December 24, 1948, 10/37/6, ACUA.

52. File papers in 10/37/14, ACUA.

53. File notes pertaining to the setting up of the National Catholic Resettlement Council, December 1947, 10/37/10, ACUA.

54.  See below, chapters 9 and 10.

54.Report of Captain Henry R. Nigrelli, June 5, 1946, Entry 212, Box 5, RG 226, location 250/64/33/5, NARA. Nigrelli's source was a person whom Father Torrazza had contacted to participate in the program.

55.  Ibid.

56. Interdivisional Area Committee on Latin America, November 13, 1944, Entry 451B, Box 9, RG 59, location 250/46/9/3, NARA.

58. On the anticommunism of the American Church, see especially Kent, The Lonely Cold War of Pope Pius XII, 55 and passim.

59. Address by Rt. Rev. John J. O'Grady, executive secretary, NCWC, January 10, 1948, 10/37/10, ACUA.

60.  Nigrelli report, June 5,1946, Entry 212, Box 5, RG 226, NARA.

61.  Ibid.

62. Intelligence report, Entry 210, Box 35, RG 226, location 250/64/21106, NARA.

63. W. Bonsai, charge d'affaires, American embassy, Madrid, Barcelona, November 21, 1946, to Richard Ford, American consul general, copies to U.S. State Department, Entry 127; Box 8, File 74, RG 226, location 190/7/2111, NARA.

64. Vincent La Vista to Herbert J. Cummings, filed May 15, 1947, Box 4080, RG 59, location 250/36/29/02, NARA.

65. J. Graham Parsons, Vatican City, to Walter "Red" Dowling, August 13, 1947, Box 4080, RG 59, location 250/36/29/02, NARA.

66.  See chapter 11.

67. OSS report, Madrid, to state, May 29, 1947, Entry 127, Box 8, File 74, RG 226, location 19017/2111, NARA.

68.  Ibid.

69. See chapter 8. There is no record of a meeting between Hudal and Boos, however.

70. OSS intelligence report of January 29, 1947, Entry 127, Box 8, File 74, RG 226, location 19017/2111, NARA.

71. OSS report of May 29, 1947, Entry 127, Box 8, File 74, RG 226, location 19017/2111, NARA.

72. OSS report of February 17, 1947, Entry 127, Box 8, File 74, RG 226, location 190/7/21/1, NARA.

73. OSS report of February 13, 1947, Entry 210, Box 35, RG 226, location 250/64/21/06, NARA.

74. OSS report of February 3, 1947, Entry 210, Box 35, RG 226, location 250/64/21106, NARA.

75.  Ibid.

76. Embassy report of February 13, 1947, Entry 127, Box 8, RG 226, File 74, location 190/7/2111, NARA.

77. Monsignor Montini's letter to Father Karl Sauer is mentioned by W. o. Taites of the Madrid Embassy in a communication to Mr. Culbertson. See Entry 127, Box 8, File 74, RG 226, location 190/7/21/1, NARA.

78. Circular letter no. 5 to all American consular offices in Spain, Madrid, February 3, 1948, Entry 210, Box 35, RG 226, location 250/64/21106, NARA.

79. Ibid.

80.  Ibid.

81.W. O. Taitus to Mr. Culbertson, March 4, 1948, Entry 127, Box 8, File 74, RG 226, location 190/7/21/1, NARA.

82. John Moors Cabot, Belgrade, to U.S. State Department, June 11, 1947, Box 3623, RG 59, location 250/36/19/6, NARA. In his memo, Cabot says that the United States was involved in the Vatican-Argentine ratline, a fact he deplored. This is in fact the case. We will deal with the Cabot memo in detail in the chapter 11 below on Krunoslav Draganovic.

83. See the obituary of Bingham in the Washington Post, May 25, 2006, A27.  
 

Bibliography and Works Cited

 

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