Edmond Paris - The Secret History of the Jesuits

Just a few secret meetings persuaded the revolutionist to enlist bag and baggage under the Holy Father's standard, to carve out the brilliant career we know so well, and the well known former minister Carlo Sforza could write:

"One day, when time will have attenuated the bitterness and hatred, it will be recognised we hope, that the orgy of bloody brutalities which turned Italy into a prison for twenty years, and ruins through the 1940-1945 war, found its origin in an almost unique historical case: the utter disproportion between the legend artificially created around a name and the real capacities of the poor devil who bore that name, a man who was not obstructed by culture".(122)

This perfect formula is applicable to Hitler, as well as Mussolini: same disproportion between the legend and capacities, same lack of "culture" in those two mediocre adventurers with almost identical pasts; their lightning careers can find an explanation only in their gift for haranguing the masses, a gift which brought them before the glare of publicity.

That the legend was "artifically created" is evident enough when we know that, today, the Fuhrer's retrospective apparition on the screens of Germany provokes nothing more than a huge laugh.

But was not the obvious inferiority of these "providential men" the very reason for which they were chosen to be elevated to power? The fact is that the same lack of personal qualities can be found in all those the papacy elected to be its champions.

In Italy and Germany, there were some "real" statesmen, "real" chiefs, who were able to take the helm and govern without having to resort to this delirious

"mystic". But these were too bright intellectually and not sufficiently pliable. The Vatican, and especially the "black pope", von Ledochowski, could not have held them "as a baton in his hand", according to the fiery formula, and made them serve his aims at all costs until catastrophe struck.

We have seen how the revolutionist Mussolini was turned inside out, as (122) Count Carlo Sforza: "L'ltalie telle que je l'ai vue", (Grasset, Paris 1946, p.158).

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one would do with a glove, by the Holy See's emissaries who promised him power.

The unbending Hitler was to prove just as malleable. The Ledochowski's plan was, originally, to create a federation of the Catholic nations in central and eastern Europe, in which Bavaria and Austria (governed by the Jesuit Seipel) would have had the pre-eminence. Bavaria had to be separated from the German Republic of Weimar—and, as by chance, the agitator Hitler, of Austrian origin, was then a Bavarian separatist.

But the chance to realise this federation and place a Hapsburg at its head became more and more slim, whilst Monseigneur Pacelli, the nuncio who had left Munich for Berlin, became the more conscious of the German Republic's weakness because of the poor support the Allies gave it. The hope to get hold of Germany as a whole was then born at the Vatican and the plan was modified accordingly:

"The hegemony of Protestant Prussia had to be prevented and as the Reich was to dominate Europe—to avert the Germans' federalism—a Reich had to be reconstituted in which the Catholics would be masters".(123)

This was enough. Turning completely round with his "brown shirts", Hitler, who had been until then a Bavarian separatist, became overnight the inspired Apostle of the Great Reich.

(123) Mercure de France: "Pius XI and Hitler", 15th of January 1934.

172 Section V

Chapter 6

The Death Camps and the Anti-Semitic

Crusade

To what extent the Catholics were masters of Nazi Germany soon became apparent as also did the severity with which some of the "Papacy's high principles" were applied.

The liberals and Jews had plenty of spare time to find out that these principles were far from out-dated, as the most orthodox voices confirmed it.

The right the Church arrogates herself to exterminate slowly or speedily those who are in the way was "put into practice" at Auschwitz, Dachau, Belsen, Buchenwald, and other death camps.

The Gestapo of Himmler, "our Ignatius of Loyola", diligently performed these charitable deeds; civilian and military Germany had to submit

"perinde ac cadaver" to this all-powerful organisation.

No need to say that the Vatican washed its hands of these horrors. When giving an audience to Dr Nerin F. Gun, a Swiss journalist who had been deported himself and who wondered why the pope had not intervened, at least by providing some assistance to so many unfortunate people, His Holiness Pius XII had the affrontery to answer:

"We knew that, for political reasons, violent persecutions were taking place in Germany, but We were never informed as to the inhuman character of the Nazi repression".(124)

And that at the time when the speaker of Radio Vatican, the R.P.

Mistiaen, was declaring that "overwhelming documentary proof"

concerning the cruelty of the Nazis had been received".(125) Without any doubt, the Holy Father was not informed either on what was going on in the "Oustachi" concentration camps, in spite of his own legate's presence in Zagreb.

(124) "Gazette of Lausanne", 15th of November 1945.

( 1 2 5 ) R.P. Duclos: "Le Vatican et la seconde guerre mondiale", (Ed. Pedone, Paris 1955.

p.255) Imprimatur 1955.

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Once, though, the Holy See was seen to take some interest in the fate of certain people condemned to deportation. They were 528 Protestant missionaries, survivors of all those who had been taken prisoners, by the Japanese, in the islands of the Pacific and interned in concentration camps in the Philippines. M. Andre Ribard, in his excellent book "1960 and the secret of the Vatican", reveals the pontifical intervention on behalf of these unfortunates.

The text appears under No.1591, dated: Tokio 6th of April 1943, in a report from the Department for Religious Affairs in occupied territories, and I quote the following extract: it expressed the wish of the Roman Church to see the Japanese pursue their politics and prevent certain religious propagators of error to regain a freedom to which they were not entitled".(126) From the "Christian" point of view, this charitable step needs no comment, but is it not most significant, politically speaking? In Slovakia— as we know—Monseigneur Tiso, the Jesuit Gauleiter, was also free to persecute the "separated brethren" even though Germany, to which his State was a satellite, was mainly Protestant. It says a lot about the influence the Roman Church had in the Hitlerian Reich!

We have also seen the part played in Croatia by the representatives of that Church, in the extermination of Orthodox believers.

As for the anti-Jewish crusade, the Gestapo's masterpiece, it may seem superfluous to mention again the part played in it by Rome, as we have already related the exploits of Monseigneur Tiso, the first provider of Auschwitz's gas chambers and crematoria furnaces. We will just add a few characteristic documents to this dossier.

First of all, here is a letter from M. Leon Berard, ambassador of the Vichy government to the Holy See:

Marshall Petain, Sir,

In your letter dated 7th of August 1941, you honoured me in asking certain information touching the questions and difficulties which could arise, from the Roman Catholic point of view, out of the measures your government took concerning the Jews. I have the honour to answer that nothing has been said to me, at the Vatican, which could be interpreted as a criticism or disapproval of the laws or directive deeds in question..."(127) The periodical "L'Arche", when mentioning this letter in an article entitled "The Silence of Pius XII", tells of a subsequent and (126) Andre Ribard: "1960 et le secret du Vatican", (Librairie Robin, 38, rue de Vaugirard. Paris 1954, p.80) and Frederic Hoffet: "Politique romaine et demission des Protestants" (demission des laiques) (Fischbacher, Paris).