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? In this mindset, the archbishop and the pope looked forward, not toward what genocide might portend in the coming months but toward a Catholic Croatia that would be a province of Yugoslavia.

This was shortly after Ante Pavelic, established Croatia in 1941 with Hitler's backing after the German military campaign in Greece. While many of the clergy supported Pavelic's bloody "crusade," Archbishop Stepinac however persevered in criticizing Ustasa crimes. (See Goda, "The Ustasa: Murder and Espionage," 206ff.)

Coverred in our recent from Belgium to Kosovo case study, one obvious obstacle that stood in the way of Pavelic where over one million Serbs that lived in Croatia. Accordingly, the Ustashe mission was to correct this apparent problem by annihilating the Serbs in Croatia. The Ustashe believed in their ethnic uniqueness and based their policies on the fascist and Nazi movement in Italy and Gennany. They were hostile toward the Serbian population of Croatia, whom they viewed as allies of the government in Belgrade. Another testament that NDH was designed as a purely Croatian state is a clause dealing with defense ofthe country which states that anyone who violates the interests of Croatian people will be punished by death.

Following the assassination of King Aleksandar, Ustashe leaders went to live in exile in Italy where they were imprisoned or promoted by Mussolini depending on the interests of Italian foreign policy. When the new state of Croatia was declared in 1941, and after Macek had refused to collaborate with the Gennans, the Italians sent the Ustashe emigres back to Zagreb from Italy and Gennany to form a puppet fascist government in Croatia.On 10 April Ante Pavelic came to Zagreb and led the fonnation of the first Independent State of Croatia. Pavelic took the title of Poglavnik (Head) of the state, and became prime minister and foreign minister. Pavelic was welcomed by about 2,000 sworn Ustashe who have been working underground in the country. By May of 1941 there were 100,000 sworn Ustashe. This anny of extremists had most of their sympathizers among the less educated classes, and in some poor regions of the Dinaric Mountains where Serbs and Croats lived in adjacent settlements. On the day after they had established their government the Ustashe proclaimed the Zakonska Odredba za Obranu Naroda I Drzave (Legal Provision of the Defense of the People and the State) the basis for their system of political terror, which included, the institution of concentration camps and the mass shooting of hostages. They introduced irregular as well as regular courts. Only one week after the proclamation of the Croatian state, a law was enacted with its declared purpose: "to defend the people and the state." Severe punishment was introduced for all those who in any way offended "the honor and vital interests of the Croatian people" or who threatened the existence of the Croatian state. The main goal of this law was to provide the Ustashe with a legal framework broad enough to allow the encounter with all national "enemies" and revenge against the pre-war adversaries. Such laws were considered a natural element of the national state and a necessary precondition for its existence. Serbian Cyrillic alphabet was forbidden and only the Croatian Latin alphabet was allowed to be used. The right to political participation and citizenship in ISC was reserved exclusively for Croats. All power was in Ustashe hands, and the laws and legal system could be interpreted and applied in whatever way they desired.

Although there was some initial enthusiasm for the new government there were resistance movements in the Serbian areas of the Dalmatian hinterland around Lika and Knin, organized by the communist-led Partisans who were building up their support in Croatia. Bribery and territorial changes made for political gains on the part of Croatian politicians were a common practice and an exemplary indicator of the lack of legitimacy in the Croatian 'state'. Ante Pavelic, for example, granted most of the Dalmatian coast to the Italians in return for their support of the new government. There is evidence that the Ustashe were indeed controlled by the Italians in the 1930s and by the Germans in the 1940s. Pavelic in his book published in Germany in 1941 titled Die Kroatische Frage (The Croat Question) outlined the conflict between the Serbs and Croats and suggested that the "Croat Question" was in fact part of a carefully orchestrated plan on the part of the Germans and Italians which was unfolding as the Second World War was starting. Pavelic explained the long history of the Croat struggle for separation from the Serbs within the framework of a fascist dominated Europe. The Ustashe believed that the Croatian state had always been a legal entity, even when its incorporation in another state deprived it of international recognition. For them the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was illegal, because it had never been accepted by the majority of the Croatian people through democratic processes - neither elections, nor referenda. For the Ustashe, the purification of the nation and the creation of a homogeneous national state were supreme goals. They pursued this goal by organizing concentration camps and persecution of not only Serbs but also Jews, Gypsies and communists. Ustashe equated sovereignty with ethnic homogeneity. Some of the examples of this extreme belief were evident in the speeches given in Croatia at that time. Catholic priest Dionizije Jurcev proclaimed to his followers: "No people other than Croats may any longer live in this land, because this is Croatian land, and we will know what to do with anybody who is not willing to get converted. In those regions yonder, I arrange for everything to be cleared away everything from a chicken to an old man, and should that be necessary, I shall do so here, too, since it is not sinful nowadays to kill even a seven year old child, ifit is standing in the way of our Ustashi order.“

Pavelic and his close associates prepared their political programme as emigrants, and planned the most important laws, the form of administration while organizing the new political and state authorities. They established a new order which mirrored the contemporary Italian - German model and had the cult of the nation, the state and the leader as its centre. Their programme of June 1941 expressed the totalitarian idea: "In the Ustashe state, created by the poglavnik and his Ustashe, people must think like Ustashe, speak like Ustashe, and act like Ustashe. In a word, the entire life in the NDH must be Ustashe based.“ Soon, the Ustashe Corps (Ustaska Vojnica) was formed, in which only members of the Ustashe movement could serve. The Muslims of Bosnia and Herzegovina, of whom at that time there were just over 700,000 were incorporated into the Croatian nation. A special policy of winning them over was initiated. They were called the "flower of the Croatian nation" and Bosnia was called the "heart of Croatia".

Pavelic promised Muslims full realization of their material and religious aspirations. Gave them opportunities to hold high civil and military positions in the state, permitted Muslim units in the Croatian army. subsidized their schools, and even made them a huge mosque in the center of Zagreb. In the early summer of 1941 armed resistance broke out against the Ustashe authorities and foreign occupation. The main organizers were the Communists, but it was the Serbian population in central parts of Croatia and in other parts of the NDH that provided the main support. When Yugoslavia broke up in April 1941 the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Croatia issued a proclamation outlining the goals of the national liberation struggle as "liberation of the country from foreign rule and domination" and the establishment of a "new democratic Yugoslavia of free and equal peoples, with a free Croatia built on the basis of self-determination.“ With these slogans anti-Fascist armed resistance gradually spread to Croatian regions. In the autumn of 1941 resistance fighters organized themselves into companies, battalions and detachments called 'Partisans'. In liberated villages and small towns the partisans established Narodno Oslobodilacki Odbori (People's Liberation Committees - NOD) which as well as providing services behind the lines for the partisan anny also became the civilian authorities. This was accompanied by grave economic troubles. The sudden appearance and steady growth of political and anned resistance to the Ustashe regime and foreign occupation were clear indicators of the political disposition of the Croatian and non-Croatian population in the NDH.

Since 1928, the Yugoslav Communist Party had been led by a Croat, Josip Broz Tito. The Communists in recognition of the importance of the nationality question they established separate Communist Parties in Croatia and Slovenia, under the umbrella of the Yugoslav Communist Party. In the early years of the war, in particular, communications between the various branches of the Communist party were limited and the Croatian Party began to develop its own programme under the leadership of Andrija Hebrang, a Croat and a member of the Zagreb Party organization since the 1920s. Hebrang realized that the key to mobilizing support in Croatia was to appeal to the Croatian sense of independent statehood. He therefore argued in favor of a high degree of autonomy for the emerging socialist republic. The virtual government established within the liberated areas in Croatia was known as the Regional Anti-fascist National Liberation Council of Croatia (Zamaljsko Antifasisticko Vijece Narodnog Oslobodjenja Hrvatske ZA VNOH). ZA VNOH, placing emphasis on Croatian sovereignty, appealed to the soldiers in the Croatian militia force known as the Domobrani (Home Guard) by encouraging them to join the fight for the freedom and independence of Croatia and its homeland.“

Towards the end of the war the Partisans reached an agreement with Ivan Subasic,the former Ban of Croatia and leader of the royal government in exile, who was also a leading member ofthe Croatian Peasant party. An agreement was signed on 16 June 1944 on the Croatian island of Vis, which was occupied by the British, and where the partisans had by then set up their headquarters. A further detailed agreement on 1 November established that the Partisans would take the lead in forming a new government at the end of the war with the participation of three members of the government-in-exile. At its third session in May 1944, the ZA VNOH was constituted as the supreme representative legislative and executive body, and thus the highest body of state authority, in democratic Croatia. This was the first stage of creating the new federal Croatia in the' second' Yugoslavi Josip Broz Tito became Premier in the new post-war provisional government established in March 1945. In November a Constitutional Assembly abolished the monarchy and proclaimed the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia. The new state was established as a federation of six republics: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia.

Thus in short, the goal of Ante Pavelic's life was to establish a religiously and ethnically monolithic Croatian state in place of Yugoslavia, and in pursuit of this goal Pavelic murdered massacred hundreds of thousands of people during the war. In this manner Ante Pavelic had become one of the world's foremost war criminals by 1945.

Fortunately for the Ustasa dictator, Pius XII distinguished between those who committed political murder and those who murdered for other reasons. This distinction led the pontiff to protect Pavelic in Rome after he had made good his escape from the country he had ruthlessly ravished during the war. Because, like Pavelic, Pope Pius wanted to see a Catholic state in the Balkans in place of Tito's emerging Communist dictatorship, the Ustasa dictator found refuge in Vatican properties in Rome. In the end, Ante Pavelic was never captured and never brought to justice.

After hiding out in Rome, Pavelic made good his escape from Europe to a safe harbor in Argentina through the Vatican's ratline. Many other Ustasa criminals had already emigrated to Argentina through the same ratline before Pavelic did so in 1948. By that time the Cold War was developing rapidly, and the United States reversed its policy and joined in the Vatican's illegal emigration operation, even using the same Vatican ratline. In this way, Pope Pius led the west in an unethical fight against communism. Pope Pius did not hesitate to flout principles of justice in pursuit of a pragmatic goal that was necessary to protect the Catholic Church, or so the pontiff thought. To defeat communism, the pope protected Pavelic; appointed Hudal and, as we will see in the next part, Krunoslav Draganovic to the Pontifical Commission of Assistance; and sponsored the Italian and Spanish ratlines.

PaveliC's infamy was so great that most of the belligerents of the war wanted to capture him. Russian and Yugoslav spies joined Italian and American intelligence agents in Rome, all trying to corner and seize the Ustasa dictator. But the Vatican refused to obey the call to surrender war criminals. There were and are so many properties scattered around Rome that enjoy Vatican state's privilege of extraterritoriality, meaning that like an embassy they are protected-by law from foreign trespass, that Pavelic could hide out virtually indefinitely. Pope Pius probably believed that he was simply exercising the age-old Church privilege of asylum by protecting Pavelic from a Communist kangaroo court, but he knew that the dictator had already been tried and found guilty in democratic France for the murder of King Alexander. The Vatican broke the law by hiding Pavelic, unlike those who sought him. They complied with the law by not intruding into Vatican properties.

Ante Pavelic arrived in Rome in the spring of 1946, one year after the end of World War II. He remained in the Eternal City until close to the end of 1948. This was his choice. He could have emigrated to Argentina at any moment during his stay of nearly three years, but he was determined to return to his homeland to overthrow the government, as he had done, with Nazi help, in 1941. It was this intention, of course, that led Pius XII to shelter him. The pope was still willing to gamble on the creation of a Catholic Croatian state, just has he had gambled, and lost, during the war. Pope Pius would lose a second time, and when it became evident that Pavelic would not be able to return to power, his usefulness to Pius XII's geopolitical hopes dissolved. Then it was time for Pavelic to leave Rome and move on to South America.

Pavelic knew Rome well even before his postwar stopover there. The future dictator of Croatia fled to Italy after killing King Alexander (and the French foreign minister) in 1934 and remained there until he became Hitler's puppet dictator of Croatia in 1941. This layover of seven years came about because the fascist dictator of Italy, Mussolini, refused to extradite fellow fascist Pavelic to France. Thus, when Pavelic had to flee Croatia at the end of the war, he was well acquainted with the lay of the land and with the Vatican. In May 1941, just after becoming dictator of Croatia, Pavelic was received in a private audience by Pope Pius, who imparted the papal blessing on the murderer who was soon to become a genocidal killer.

Between the last months of the war and 1947, reports of the whereabouts of Ante Pavelic were infrequent and unreliable. In May 1945, Pavelic was determined to hold off Tito's Communist partisans until the Allies liberated Croatia. Instead, by the end of the year the new dictator of the country, Josip Tito, had petitioned for Pavelic's extradition so he could stand trial for mass murder. 1 At the end of the war Pavelic and his entourage made their escape, fleeing north toward Nazi Austria. From there the Croats split up, some going to Munich, some to Paris, and some to Rome. Even though they were apart, they weJ"e united for a period of time by their intention to return to their homeland and participate from 1945 to 1948 in the Krizari movement that sought to overthrow Tito. Pavelic, however, seems to have been intercepted by the British, from whom he escaped, or possibly was allowed to escape. Thereafter, until his return to Rome, Pavelic apparently hid out in an Austrian village near the Croatian border.2

As Pavelic and other Ustasa members hatched plans for invading Tito's Yugoslavia from their hideouts, the Vatican's relationship with Yugoslavia passed from frosty to frigid.3 As we have seen, Pius XII grew paranoid about Tito's threat to Italy, but he had reason to be fearful of what the Communist dictator was doing to the Church in Yugoslavia. The Vatican's motivation for harboring Pavelic grew in lockstep with its apprehension about Tito's treatment of the Church. Even though hostility toward Communist Yugoslavia was on the rise in the United States, the U.S. government maintained its intention of finding and extraditing Pavelic because of the enormity of his war crimes. Tito accused the Allies of protecting Croatia's greatest war criminal, but in fact, for months on end he simply could not be found.

In 1946, intelligence agents tried to figure out the whereabouts of Pavelic but got nowhere. Some thought he had escaped to Argentina, others thought he had returned to his hideout in Austria. Those who thought Pavelic was in Rome were not sure where. Some thought he was at the pope's summer residence in Castel Gandolfo, where he was reputed to be in close contact with Under-Secretary of State Montini.4 Italian intelligence also reported that Pavelic and Montini were in close contact.5 But others believed that he was in hiding with the dozens of refugees and war criminals in the Croatian San Girolamo degli Illirici, the seminary of St. Jerome, right in Rome. Counter Intelligence Corps agent William Gowen thought the chances of capturing Pavelic were slim unless officers broke the law and entered extraterritorial properties that belonged to the Vatican. 6

Agent Gowen is of particular interest in the Pavelic case. All intelligence agents involved in the case, regardless of nationality, believed by 1947 that Pavelic had found refuge in a Vatican property or properties. We can add to this the fact that Agent William Gowen's father, Franklin Gowen, was assigned at that time to the u.s. diplomatic mission to the Vatican. This leads one to suspect, even to conclude, that the twin posting of father and son to Rome could not have been an accident.? This implies that u.s. intelligence hoped that the father's inside connection to the Vatican might at last produce exact information for the son about PaveliC's whereabouts that would lead to his extradition to Yugoslavia to stand trial. But, as we will see, it implies much more, because it was precisely in the middle of 1947 that the United States backed off of the Pavelic case. This suggests, in turn, that the American intention to use the family relationship to finger the refugee dictator became reversed: the Vatican used the father-son relationship to induce the United States to forbear. But let us follow the story from its beginning.

A cluster of buildings stands at the top of the road leading up the main street of the Aventine Hill, one of the famed Seven Hills of Rome. One of them, Special Agent Gowen speculated at the beginning of 1947, housed Ante Pavelic. St. Anselmo's, the Benedictine church and seminary, occupied the top of the Aventine. Seminarians from many countries studied there, but of course they were much younger than Pavelic, who would have been about 60 years old by the end of the war. Although the public was allowed to visit the church, other buildings of the complex were off limits to anyone who was not a member of the Benedictine Order.

Adjacent to Saint Anselmo's is Santa Sabina, a Dominican property that commands extraordinary views of the city of Rome below. Here again, the general public could enter only the church, one of the most ancient of the city of Rome. Thus, the monastery afforded a safe hiding place. Certain that war criminal Pavelic hid out in one of the two complexes atop the Aventine, Agent Gowen drew a map of the district for the benefit of his intelligence superiors. In fact, however, the only reason Gowen seemed to have for his conjecture was the existence of a hidden or subterranean passageway (and perhaps more than one) leading from the religious complexes down the side of a steep cliff to the street some 150 feet below, where there was a breach in the wall that separated the church properties from public domain.

What is of interest is not Gowen's cloak-and-dagger guesswork-he even reported fresh footsteps at the hole in the wall-but the conclusion of his report. Pavelic, Gowen noted, has been "dodging around Europe as his own master for about 15 years. It would seem," Gowen continued, "that only direct action against the Via Cavour house, illegal entry into extraterritorial territory or action against such known Pavelic contacts as Draganovic, Krunoslav, can ultimately reveal the hiding place of Pavelic and lead to his apprehension. Observation continues."8 Clearly the chase was on, but as we will see, Gowen's recommendation would not last the year.

Robert Clayton Mudd, also a Counter Intelligence Corps agent assigned to the Pave lie case, filed a report from Rome headquarters at the same time Gowen filed his report. Since Gowen had already addressed the situation on the Aventine Hill, Mudd provided background on Pavelic's prior terrorist activity and then recommended, like Gowen, that the Croat dictator be brought to justice.

Pavelic tops the list of those that the state department and foreign office have agreed to hand over to Tito for trial. Recommendation: in view of the fact that this man is a criminal, as well as a political criminal, every effort should be made to apprehend him and ship him back to the Yugoslav government for trial. In doing so not only would the Yugoslav propaganda guns be silenced and the people of Yugoslavia forced to admit that their previous propagandas [sic] was all false, but also a serious threat to security would be removed and the position of the Anglo-americans strengthened with regard to those south Slav elements who were pro-allied before the war.9

Mudd's recommendation is of interest not only because he believed that catching and extraditing Pavelie was the right thing to do but also because he did not hesitate to address the issue of policy. The arrest of Pavelie was in principle the right action, he argued, and it also carried sensible foreign affairs gains. We see here that field agents were not automatons. This fact would have a bearing on the Pavelie case as it unfolded in the months ahead in 1947.

While intelligence agents were busy trying to corner Pavelie, the Vatican was busy trying to get Ustasa war criminals off the hook. As we will in the next part, the Vatican's constant pressure on the Allies to relent in the search for Ustasa criminals finally paid off in the middle of 1947. Ante Pavelie was the linchpin in the pope's effort. But up until the middle of the year, the Allies remained firm in their intention to extradite Pavelie. Since the end of the war, Marshal Tito had continually pressed the Allies to capture and extradite Pavelic. Tito's secret agents were searching for him "frantically," according to an American intelligence report, because much of the hope of Tito dissidents within Yugoslavia depended on the return of the former dictator. In 1946, anti-Communist forces in Yugoslavia were heartened when an airplane dropped pamphlets in Croatia signed by Pave lie saying that the Croats should continue fighting against the Tito regime until the final showdown between Pave lie and Tito took place.10 The Allies had intended to comply with Tito's request for extradition, but, as we have seen, for all of 1945 and 1946 and much of  1947 they did not know in which Vatican property Pavelic was hiding. The Americans and British advised Marshal Tito to apply directly to the Vatican for information about the elusive Pavelic. In 1946, a Yugoslav diplomat, Vladimir Stakic, did just that in an interview with Cardinal Eugene Tisserant, who assured him that neither he nor the Vatican knew where the fugitive Ustasa dictator was.11 Since the Vatican knew very well that wanted war criminals huddled in the Croatian seminary of St. Jerome's and elsewhere on Vatican properties, it seems likely that when it came to Pavelic's whereabouts a "don't ask, don't tell" policy prevailed between the Holy See and the superiors of the various religious houses concerned.

But it is just as likely that Cardinal Tisserant lied to Stakic. On April 7, 1946, Tisserant was emphatic in his interview with Stakic that the Holy See wanted to see justice done: "You may have my full assurance that we have the list of all the clergymen who participated in these atrocities and we shall punish them at the right time to cleanse our conscience of the stain with which they spotted US."12 On April 7, Tisserant insisted that the Catholic Church and the Vatican condemned the crimes of the Ustasa regime. Yet one month later, Tisserant pleaded with the Argentine ambassador to allow fugitive Germans to emigrate. "I have been looking after certain compatriots who have retreated from Germany to Italy and are living here in difficult circumstances," he wrote.13 While pretending to want to see justice done, Tisserant sought to have war criminals elude it.

The hunt continued for Pavelic, who did not materialize atop the elegant Aventine Hill nor far beneath it at the hole in the wall Agent Gowen spotted. Intelligence personnel began to look elsewhere. The search grew even more intense. Two more U.S. intelligence agents were assigned to the case in the spring of 1947. Pavelic, they determined, was not holed up in Vatican properties on the Aventine but in another papal institution on the via Giacomo Veneziano, number 17. The picture grew even more cloudy when the U.S. civil censorship agency intercepted a letter from Argentina to Germany that stated that Pavelic had arrived in that South American country; the letter provided details of his escape, such as the fact that he was dressed as a priest.14

Agents Gowen and Mudd did not buy this story. They insisted that Pavelic had no intention of leaving Europe. They were sure that he would never abandon his life's mission to return in triumph to Croatia. By mid1947 the two agents had determined that Pavelic was indeed residing on the via Giacomo Veneziano. They knew which stairwell led to his quarters and they knew the coded door-knocking routine to gain admittance to his residence. Pavelic now sported a goatee and his hair was cropped short in the style of a German army officer. A contingent of twelve Ustasa fascists acted as his bodyguard. When Pavelic left the property he was transported in an automobile with Vatican plates. Even with all this security, it would certainly be possible to nab the war criminal the moment he stepped off Vatican property. A trap was set by English and U.S. occupational authorities (not Agent Gowen).

What took place next is stunning. In a complete reversal of their recommendation at the beginning of the year, Agent Gowen advised in August 1947 that Pavelic be left alone in the Vatican's protective custody! Only half a year since he had said that Pavelic must be seized and repatriated, Gowen had adopted the Vatican's point of view on the Ustasa dictator. In the eyes of Pius XII, it would not be right to return Pavelic to Yugoslavia, where he would not get a fair trial. The result would be that the forces supporting atheism and aiding communism would be weakened. Pavelic's "crimes of the past," Gowen wrote, mirroring Vatican thinking, "cannot be forgotten, but he can only be tried by Croats representing a Christian and Democratic Government."15 The Vatican was disregarding the fact that Pavelic had already been tried by France, "a Christian and Democratic Government," but Agent Gowen disregarded that fact. He concluded his report by saying that the United States should appreciate the Vatican's view of Pavelic and not take direct police action against him.

What was going on? Only six months earlier, Gowen and Mudd had recommended that every "effort should be made to apprehend him [Pavelic] and ship him back to the Jugoslav government for trial." Why did Gowen change his mind so radically in the middle of 1947?

Because William Gowen's father, Franklin, worked in the U.S. diplomatic mission to the Vatican, the younger Gowen had access to information that was not available to other intelligence agents. The Vatican may actually have initiated this process. In the summer of 1946, Franklin Gowen had asked Robert Murphy, Truman's political adviser to zonal Germany, about the whereabouts of his son and learned that he was posted in the U.S. zone.16 Before the end of the year, Agent William Gowen was transferred to Rome. It would be naive to think that the father son appointments were happenstance. In fact, Agent Mudd said as much when he reflected in August 1947 that his colleague William Gowen worked inside the Vatican.17 Another army officer wrote similarly that Agent Gowen operated in the Vatican.18

Everyone in the Vatican knew of Pope Pius's fear of Communist Yugoslavia. Franklin Gowen heard about the pope's concern directly from Under-Secretary Montini.19 It appears that Agent William Gowen, whom the Counter Intelligence Corps had reassigned to Rome to worm information from the Vatican regarding Pavelic's whereabouts, fell under the influence of Monsignor Montini and the entourage surrounding hiss British minister D' Arcy Osborne and the American diplomats Harold Tittmann and Franklin Gowen-with the result that he changed his recommendation. Instead of advising that Pavelic be arrested, he said that he should be shielded from arrest.20 At this time the Vatican was urging the United States and Great Britain not to seize Ustasa war criminals hiding out in Rome. The British Foreign Office was unsympathetic, to say the least. D' Arcy Osborne was instructed in February 1947 to let the Vatican know that "the Pope's anti-Communist propaganda would be more convincing if he had a more positive line to show as regards the Nazis and Fascists. "21 But the Holy See, impervious to London's contemptuous tone, wanted to treat Ustasa blacks as innocent grays. By the spring of 1947, the Vatican was putting intense pressure on the United States and Britain not to send these criminals back to Yugoslavia.22 In Rome, Special Agent Gowen felt the same pressure from inside the Vatican regarding the number one black fugitive, Ante Pavelic.

If, as the national archive's Pavelic file reports, Agent Gowen picked up information from a "high Vatican source," we may assume that the senior Gowen relayed to the junior Gowen whatever information the Holy See, meaning the pope through Monsignor Montini, wished to divulge. Of course, Franklin Gowen would not divulge information that might allow Moscow, Zagreb, or Roman Communists to embarrass the Vatican by exposing its protection of war criminals. But by the middle of 1947 there was no longer any question of that happening. It became increasingly evident that Gowen was obtaining more and more details about the hitherto-elusive Pavelic. Agent Gowen now knew where he was to be found, what he looked like, and how to communicate with him. After Pavelic underwent a serious operation in September, Gowen believed he could actually arrange an interview with the convalescent at a location off Vatican property.23 Gowen recommended that no action against Pavelic be taken until such an interview could be made. This obviously implies that Gowen had found a way to communicate through Vatican intermediaries with the Ustasa dictator.

At this point, summer and fall of 1947, it remained to be seen whether resistance forces inside and outside Yugoslavia could succeed in unseating Tito. If they succeeded, then Pavelic would have to face up to his past in a court of law to which the Vatican would not object. "The ultimate disposal of Pavelic," agents Gowen and Louis Caniglia wrote in August, "is necessary if the Croat democratic and resistance forces are to ever be recognized by the U.S."24 Because of his contacts inside the Vatican, Gowen believed that he would be able to verify that British intelligence personnel were protecting Pavelic (in cooperation with the Holy See) in covert disregard of the directives of London's Foreign Office. In the event that a democratic government came to power in Croatia, Agent Gowen reasoned, the British could be forced to arrest and extradite him themselves.25 PaveliC's fate thus depended on whether the resistance-Vlatko Macek's Peasant Party-succeeded in Yugoslavia. Of course, this line of reasoning amounted only to pretense. If the Holy See truly cared about justice, Pavelic would have been extradited to France for his murders in Marseilles after World War 1. Furthermore, the chance of any new regime-other than PaveliC's Ustasa-replacing Tito's rule was slim to none.

By the middle of 1947, Agent Gowen had become well versed in the Vatican's thinking about Ante Pavelic. He was seen as a militant Catholic who had formerly fought against members of the Orthodox Church (indeed, he had murdered hundreds of thousands of them) and "today is fighting against Communist atheism. "26 This is why the Vatican protected Pavelic, Gowen reported. By September, the intelligence agent was pressing even more resolutely for an appreciation of the Vatican position. Gowen warned that Pavelic's "contacts are so high and his present position is so compromising to the Vatican, that any extradition of subject would be a staggering blow to the Roman Catholic Church. "27

This report has a dramatic and urgent ring, and it can be misunderstood for that reason. The embarrassment that could befall the Vatican was not because of its ratline. The U.S. state department had known about that since the Vincent La Vista report of July. And, of course, Pavelic had not yet fled via the Vatican's ratline to Argentina and may, at this time, have had no intention of doing so. Rather, the embarrassment would have come from Pavelic's trial in Yugoslavia, from which Marshall Tito would wring every drop of anti-West propaganda at the expense of Pius XII and the capitalist system. At the time of Gowen's September memo, not quite one year had elapsed since the trial of Archbishop Stepinac, which, as we have seen, presaged the Cold War. The U.S. government understood thatStepinaC's trial posed valid questions of guilt, but popular opinion in the west held that the archbishop's trial did not resolve these questions. A trial of Pavelic, by contrast, would lack the trappings of Stepinac's show trial; there was ample evidence to expose him as a mass murderer. Pius XII had given unofficial recognition to the Ustasa regime, had actually met with Pavelic subsequent to the murder of King Alexander, and had harbored him after the war. The embarrassment to the Vatican in terms of the nascent Cold War would indeed have been "staggering."

Agent Gowen's warning must be understood in the context of the Cold War; it was not meant in the first instance to ward off embarrassment to the Vatican. That, after all, was not what an American intelligence agent was all about. Rather, Agent Gowen wanted to parry a blow against the United States, the leader of the capitalist world whose economic system the Vatican found far superior to that of communism. Again and again over the half-century before 1945, the Vatican had condemned atheistic communism and its prohibition of private property. The Vatican, one of the last monarchical kingdoms with expansive land holdings in aristocratic Europe, became wholly committed to the stock market system of the capitalist world when it was forcefully deprived of its feudal property. As the Cold War began to develop in the second half of 1947, there was no question as to which side the Vatican was on, even though it officially continued to claim neutrality. With the reputation of Pius XII not yet impugned by the Holocaust, Agent Gowen saw that the moral authority of Pope Pius would be bankrupt if Marshal Tito was given the chance to put Ante Pavelic on trial. Gowen moved to preserve the integrity of his country's ally. Agent Gowen's memo had its intended effect on intelligence policy.

At about the time of Gowen's August and September memos, word got to Rome to leave Pavelic alone. This transpired with striking abruptness. Gowen's supervisor, Bernard J. Grennan, who was the Counter Intelligence Corps chief in zone five-Rome-received a message that instructed him to proceed with PaveliC's arrest, but suddenly the plan was halted in its tracks: the bottom of the message read "HANDS OFF! "28

Just at this time, the summer of 1947, the United States authorized the Central Intelligence Agency, successor to the Counter Intelligence Corps, to make a distinct change in goals. Now instead of collecting unsavory Nazi scientists for scientific work in the United States (Operation Paperclip), agents were to provide safe harbor for any and all persons the U.S. government felt would serve the national interest (Operation National Interest).29 As the authors of the Interagency Working Group of the U.S. and Japanese national archives wrote in U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis, "there was no compelling reason to begin the postwar era with the assistance of some of those associated with the worst crimes of the war."30 The Holy See thought otherwise and pressed the Allies explicitly and effectively to join them in ratline activity.

British intelligence, MI-6, and the Central Intelligence Agency got the word to leave Pavelic alone. Regular army and foreign affairs ministries in the United States and Great Britain, who were kept in the dark about the "hands off!" order, could not understand what developed in the ensuing months. In the fall, American and British army personnel pressed each other to arrest Pavelic. Neither was at liberty to do so because both Allied partners were using Ustasa fascists as informers. A plan therefore was hatched whereby the Allies would jointly alert the Italian police when Pavelie left Vatican property and the police would then detain the Croatian dictator as a war criminal. This plan was never enacted. "The Brits," an American officer complained in November 1948, "to this day have not called up to put the plan in effect."31

Allied diplomats in the field and at home offices were similarly nonplussed. Myron Taylor continued to be concerned as late as April 1948 about the blacks in Italy. He urged that their cases be adjudicated so that the remaining grays in detention could be released to go home.32 Ambassador John Moors Cabot complained bitterly in the summer of 1947 that "many Croats are escaping from detention, in Rome evidently, because they are not being properly guarded and these birds are then getting to Argentina."33 Cabot knew whereof he spoke, as he had just been reassigned from Argentina to Yugoslavia. Blacks were "slipping though our fingers," the ambassador implied, "in spite of our stated support for prosecution of war criminals." The guilty for whom irrefutable evidence of guilt exists should be ferreted out and returned to Yugoslavia. I suggest that in addition to taking urgent measures to remedy the above situation, we might ask Vatican in return for information we are transmitting for [a] list of Yugoslavs it is sheltering.34

Cabot knew, of course, that if such a list were forthcoming Ante Pavelic's name would be at the top. By the summer of 1948, the Ustasa resistance movement in Yugoslavia had collapsed. At the trials of those arrested at home or sent back to Yugoslavia as blacks from abroad, Father Krunoslav Draganovie and Ante Pavelie were identified as the leaders of the resistance movement against Tito's Communist regime. Once that movement ceased being viable, Pavelic was of no further use to the Vatican. In October 1948, Ante Pavelie, the assassin and mass murderer, boarded the ocean liner Sistriere and sailed to Argentina and freedom.35 In pursuit of its geopolitical vision for a Catholic state neighboring Italy, Pius XII had subverted justice twice by sheltering a bloody and ruthless dictator who had once been the ally of Europe's only other genocidal ruler, Adolf Hitler.
 

By adding English language sources, underneath we ad to the content of Pope and Devil (Papst und Teufel) by Herbert Wolf and "Nazis auf der Flucht" by Gerald Steinacher about the Nazi flight and its Vatican connection. The Vatican’s War P.1.

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.

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. Office of Secret Service report, May 11, 1945, Entry 21, L series, Box 443, File 56469, RG 226, location 190/4/32/7, NARA.

2. When American intelligence agents became intensely active in their search for Pavelic in 1947, they attempted from time to time to piece together where he had been prior to his arrival in Rome. The reports vary in their particulars, although all agree that the dictator's flight took him to Austria. One intelligence report said that Pave lie had been arrested by the British, who planned to return him to Yugoslavia to stand trial and recommended that the case be closed! See U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps report, August 25, 1945, Box 173, File IRR XEOOll09 Pavelic, RG 319, location 270/84/1/4, NARA, College Park, Maryland.

3. For an excellent distillation of Vatican policy in Eastern Europe, including Yugoslavia, see Peter C. Kent, The Lonely Cold War of Pope Pius XII (Montreal:
McGill-Queen's University Press, 2002).

4. Uki Goiii, The Real Odessa: Smuggling the Nazis to Peron's Argentina (London: Granta, 2002), 327ff.

5. Lt. Col. G. F. Blunda, Headquarters, Mediterranean Theater of Operations, to Co!. Carl Fritzsche, Assistant Deputy Director of Intelligence, November 8, 1947, Box 173, File IRR XEOOll09 Pavelie, RG 319, location 270/84/1/4, NARA.

6.  Ibid.

7.William Gowen graciously permitted me to interview him in 1999 in New York. Subsequently, we corresponded on several occasions regarding the Ustasa fascists in Rome. During the interview, former agent Gowen adamantly refused to discuss any connection between him and his father with reference to either the Pavelie ~ase in particular or the Ustasa in general.

8. Box 173, File IRR XEOOll09 Pavelie, RG 319, location 270/84/1/4, NARA. This box is the principal source on Pavelie. Many documents in it are anonymous U.S. intelligence reports.

9.  Ibid.

10. Agents William Gowen and Louis Caniglia, Counter Intelligence Corps Rome, August 29,1947, sent presumably to their commanding officer, Box 173, File IRR XEOOll09 Pavelie, RG 319, location 270/84/1/4, NARA.

11. Cardinal Eugene Tisserant, interview with Vladimir Stakic, April 7, 1946, Entry 1069, Box 28, File marked 1947, RG 59, NARA.

12.  Ibid.

13.The source for Goui's assertion in The Real Odessa, 99, is Tisserant's letter, which he found in the archives of the Argentine embassy, Rome.

14. Intercepted letter from Antonio E. Vucetich, EI Socorro, Argentina, to Olga Vucetich-Radic, May 6,1947, Entry 1068, Box 17, Folder marked "Political General 1947," RG 59, location 250/48/29/01-05, NARA.  

15.  Gowen and Caniglia to their commanding officer, August 29,1947.

16. File papers note Franklin Gowen's action; see Entry 1073, Box 32, RG 59, location 250/48/29/05, NARA.

17. Blunda to Fritzsche, November 8, 1947.

18. Ibid.

19. F. Gowen to Secretary of State James Byrnes, October 14, 1946, Entry 1071, Box 30, RG 59, location 250/48/29/05, NARA.

20. Jacques Maritain was also frequently with this clique, but it is unthinkable that as France's ambassador to the Holy See he would countenance talk of giving Pavelic his freedom. That is because a French court of justice had condemned Pave lie to death. Evidently, when Maritain was present, the Pavelie situation was not brought up.

21. Dianne Kirby, "Harry Truman's Religious Legacy: The Holy Alliance, Containment, and the Cold War," in Religion and the Cold War, ed. Dianne Kirby (New York: Palgrave, 2003), 79.

22.  Golli, The Real Odessa, 329££. For more detail, see chapter 11.

23. Memorandum of William Gowen, Special Counter Intelligence Corps Agent, to Counter Intelligence Corps [Headquarters] Rome, September 12,1947, Box 173, File IRR XE001109 Pavelic, RG 319, location 270/84/1/4, NARA.

24.  Ibid.

25.  Ibid.

26.  Gowen and Caniglia to their commanding officer, August 29,1947.

27.Gowen to Counter Intelligence Corps [Headquarters] Rome, September 12, 1947.

28. Bernard J. Grennan, Special Counter Intelligence Corps Agent, Mediterranean Theater Chief of Operations, to Supervising Counter Intelligence Corps Agent of Zone 5, undated memorandum, Box 173, File IRR XE001109 Pavelie, RG 319, location 270/84/1/4, NARA.

29. Linda Hunt, Secret Agenda: The United States Government, Nazi Scientists, and Project Paperclip, 1945-1980 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991), 125.

30. Richard Breitman, Norman J. W. Goda, Timothy Naftali, and Robert Wolfe, eds., U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis (Washington, D.C.: National Archives Trust Fund Board for the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Groups, 2004), 7.

31. Blunda to Fritzsche, November 8, 1947.

32. Myron C. Taylor, memorandum to James Dunn, April 14, 1948, Entry 1068, Box 21, RG 59, location 250/48/2901-05, NARA.

33. Ambassador John Moors Cabot, Belgrade, to Secretary of State George Marshall, June 25,1947, Box 3623, RG 59, location 250/36/19/6, NARA.

34.  Ibid.

35.  Golli, The Real Odessa, 223-224, gives the particulars of Pavelic's flight.
 

 

Bibliography and Works Cited

 

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