Stephen Walker - Hide and Seek - The Irish Priest in the Vatican who Defied the Nazi Command. The dramatic true story of rivalry and survival during WWII.

Cradling his breviary, O’Flaherty would read and occasionally look up and watch as the Vatican buzzed with life. His daily devotion was an act of faith but it was also a display of defiance. And across the piazza his behaviour was being watched carefully. Beyond the white line that had been painted around the cobbled square to mark the Holy See’s neutral territory, Rome’s rulers looked on. Through field binoculars, armed German paratroops studied the priest. They were tasked to watch his every move. Each day the routine continued. O’Flaherty stood and looked out at his observers, who in turn carefully noted all his movements.

This was the monsignor’s territory. A Vatican veteran, O’Flaherty had first graced Rome’s streets in 1922 and was a well-known figure throughout the city. He was hundreds of miles from his birthplace, but he felt completely at home. St Peter’s Square was his open-air office. Nuns and priests would pass by and say a quick hello; others would pause and stop for a longer chat. To the casual observer these meetings and encounters seemed normal and harmless. In reality they were part of O’Flaherty’s operation to gather information and pass messages and money on to those harbouring Allied servicemen.

The vantage point was well chosen. From the steps O’Flaherty could see and be seen. He could keep a close eye on German soldiers at the Vatican’s boundary, by Bernini’s magnificent colonnade. The ever-present Swiss Guards, the Vatican’s loyal protectors, could quickly intervene if trouble arose. From his nearby study window Pope Pius XII could also look down and see the Irishman. It was a perfect spot.

Home to emperors, kings and cardinals, Rome had witnessed over 2,000 years of history. In 1944 it was a dangerous place. The final years of the Second World War were dark days of violence, fear and hunger. Rome was a racial and political mix: a world of German Nazis, Italian fascists and Resistance fighters, spies, diplomats, Catholics and Jews. Into this arena arrived British, American and French servicemen, escapees from Italian prisoner-of-war camps. The Allied landings in the south of the country had caused Italians there to surrender unconditionally and many POWs were simply walking out of the unguarded camps and making their way through the countryside. It was the biggest mass escape in history, but, without maps or guidance, many didn’t know where to go. Encouraged by BBC radio, some set out for the Vatican on the basis that it was free from Nazi interference. Many were caught quickly by the Germans, rounded up and transported to prison camps in Germany. Those who made it to Rome were hoping to be offered shelter by a secret underground unit headed by Monsignor O’Flaherty. Even though the Germans controlled the city, uncovering the Allied escape organization was proving very difficult for them because the Vatican was beyond their control. By the spring of 1944 the struggle was becoming increasingly personal.

One March morning a dark car pulled up at the entrance to St Peter’s Square and from it emerged three men. Two plain-clothed members of the Gestapo accompanied a suave, black-booted figure in his late thirties. With blue eyes, fair hair, and a three-inch duelling scar on his cheek, Obersturmbannführer Herbert Kappler was the face of the Nazis in Rome. The lieutenant colonel had a reputation for ruthlessness, and his word was not to be challenged on the city’s streets. An experienced SS officer, he had worked his way through the ranks after showing an early talent for secret police work. Handpicked to lead the Gestapo in Rome, Kappler was articulate, well-spoken and confident. He displayed his loyalty like a badge of honour, wearing on one finger a steel ring decorated with the Death’s Head and swastikas and inscribed ‘To Herbert from his Himmler’. In Rome Kappler was head of the Sicherheitsdienst, or SD, the security service of the SS and the Nazi Party. The SD was originally set up by Reinhard Heydrich and by 1944 it had effectively been merged with the state police and was universally known as the Gestapo.

On this particular morning Kappler hadn’t come to check on his subordinates but had journeyed to the Vatican’s boundary to cast an eye over his opponent and make final preparations for a kidnap. The target was Monsignor O’Flaherty.

The 46-year-old priest had become the organizer of the Allied escape operation in Rome by chance rather than by design. In the summer of 1943 a British soldier arrived at the Vatican seeking sanctuary and Hugh O’Flaherty helped him find refuge in one of the many Vatican buildings in which he would stay for the duration of the Nazi occupation. It was the start of an initiative which would eventually offer hundreds of men and women shelter and escape from occupied Italy.

A few weeks later three more British soldiers arrived and they too were given accommodation. By September the original trickle of escapees had turned into a flood. That autumn, St Peter’s Square became the main destination for Allied servicemen seeking safe accommodation in Rome, and their contact there was Hugh O’Flaherty.

It was an open secret what was happening inside the Vatican, and soon intelligence reports landed on Kappler’s desk. The Gestapo chief knew what O’Flaherty’s role was and he suspected that the priest was using rooms in the Vatican and other buildings across Rome to hide the escapees. He gave orders that O’Flaherty be followed and that suspected supporters of what came to be known as the Rome Escape Line be kept under surveillance. Raids were routinely carried out on the homes of Italians sympathetic to the Allies, in the hope of catching escaped soldiers, but Kappler was having little success.

By early 1944 Herbert Kappler and Hugh O’Flaherty were locked in a dangerous game of hide and seek. And it was a battle that the monsignor was winning. Kappler was in no doubt that the Irishman was at the centre of the escape organization, but he needed to catch him red-handed. However, in addition to plotting to stop the monsignor’s activities, he had plenty of other work to do. Kappler and his team spent a great deal of time tracking the movements of members of the Resistance, and the Gestapo were also heavily involved in the interrogation of Rome’s Jews and their deportation to concentration camps.

Kappler could claim to his superiors that he was enacting Nazi rule in Rome and keeping anti-fascist dissent at bay, but he knew he was making little progress with the Allied escape operation. He concluded that the only way to crush the organization was to remove the monsignor, and that meant killing him. Without O’Flaherty he was sure the entire network would crumble.

The daring and controversial move to seize the priest was fraught with difficulties, both political and practical. It would bring Kappler into conflict with the Catholic Church. By March 1944 68-year-old Eugenio Pacelli had just completed his fifth year as Pope Pius XII. He was worried about the impact of the war on the Church and the Vatican State. For much of the conflict the fighting across Europe had seemed distant. However, the arrival of Allied troops in Sicily in July of the previous year, and the air attacks on Rome some months before that, had brought the war to his doorstep.

The German occupation of Rome had created a dilemma for the Pope. Desperate to maintain the independence of the 2,000-year-old Catholic Church, he was fearful that the Nazis would invade the Vatican itself and prevent it functioning. Within days of capturing Rome, Adolf Hitler had promised him that he would respect his sovereignty and protect the Vatican from the fighting. But Pius XII knew Hitler’s guarantee was worthless, since the very presence of German troops in Rome led Allied bombers to regard the Eternal City as a target. The Pope was trying to keep both sides happy in the hope that the Church and its property would survive unscathed. He gained some reassurance from the fact that under international law the Vatican City and all its land and property constituted a neutral state which the Germans were forbidden to enter.