The general was on his feet, frowning at his wrist watch, before Kurt had time to spring to attention.
“Luncheon will be in twenty minutes,” he snapped. “If I’m not able to join you, one of my adjutants will do the honors. Guten tag, Herr Armbrecht!”
Stiffly erect now, Kurt followed the tall aristocrat’s brusque exit from the room with as much satisfaction as if he had just had a medal pinned on him by the general.
It was an extremely harassed-looking Benito Mussolini who greeted the German Fuehrer at Ciampino Airport on September 30, 1944. They drove together into the city at the head of a heavily escorted motorcade, with Donati, Goering, Himmler and Ribbentrop directly behind, and the heads of the German diplomatic and military missions bringing up the rear. There were no Romans lining the streets this time to cheer the uniformed and bemedaled Duce and his black-suited, clean-shaven companion —only long cordons of the Leibstandarte Waffen SS division and detachments of the Carabinieri manning the roadblocks at every intersection along the route to the Palazzo Venezia. Hitler seemed surprisingly unperturbed by the absence of cheering crowds, merely inquiring whether it was the curfew or the “political crisis” that was keeping them off the streets.
“Neither,” Mussolini muttered. “The curfew doesn’t start for two hours, and I remain at the helm of the state. The people are staying indoors because that’s what their priests and the Vatican Radio have told them to do.” He stared glumly through the side window, his hands toying nervously with the ornamental Fascist dagger dangling from his belt.
“I underestimated those priests!” Mussolini blurted out at last. “I beg you not to make the same mistake, Fuehrer!”
“Mistake?”
“This demand for another audience of the Pope. The whole of Italy now knows what it’s all about. I’ve kept the news of the Ciano-Badoglio ultimatum out of the press, of course, and the Vatican Radio hasn’t dared break the concordat by giving it publicity. But the Italian broadcasts from London keep pumping away at what they describe as ‘the Vatican’s courageous resistance’ and calling on the Catholics of Europe to rally behind their Pope.” The Italian dictator shook his head dolefully. “I stand foursquare beside you, Fuehrer, as always. But I urge you to do nothing rash should Pacelli persist in his obstinacy. I can think of circumstances in which the loyalty of my Home Army and police force could no longer be counted upon.”
“Such as, for example?”
“The arrest of Pacelli, for one.”
“You are worrying unnecessarily, Duce. The religious problem is going to be settled once and for all during this visit, for we have both of us—Pacelli and I—already consulted the Almighty and He has made his choice.”
Mussolini turned his stricken face away, closed his eyes and moved his lips silently, as in prayer. He took leave of Hitler inside the main entrance to the Palazzo and was escorted at speed to the Villa Torlonia, where he ordered his bodyguard to be redoubled.
A short time later, Giovanni Donati presented himself in the private apartments of Pope Pius XII. The pontiff, sitting alone, received him in his study and after accepting the papal legate’s obeisance, invited him to give his report.
“The whole world trembles for you, Your Holiness, and I myself am cast down.”
“Say what you have to say, in the plainest of words.”
“I am asked by Herr Hitler to advise Your Holiness either to accept his proposals for doctrinal reform or to make way immediately for a new pontiff who will.”
A faint expression of disgust flitted across Pacelli’s ascetic face. He said, “You have, of course, informed Herr Hitler that such ‘advice’ is totally unacceptable.”
“I did my duty, as I see it, Your Holiness. I now fear for your personal safety.”
“Are you telling Us that if We reject Hitler’s demands he will invade the Vatican and take Us prisoner?”
“He has the power to do that, Your Holiness, and I believe it to be his intention.”
Pope Pius drew a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Go back to your new master, Giovanni Donati, and tell him We have nothing further to say on the subject of his absurd demands and that We are unmoved by his threats. And tell him something else—”
Donati, who had lowered his head at the reproach, raised it to meet the Pope’s contemptuous eyes.
“Tell him that We are aware of his intentions, particularly as they concern you yourself, and that they are doomed to ridicule and failure. And inform him, that, as of this moment, both he and yourself are excommunicated from the Church. The audience is ended.”
The papal chamberlain, waiting to escort Donati from the Pope’s apartments, stared in astonishment at the stooped, short figure emerging from the study. Tears were streaming down the chunky face. The chamberlain, falling into step beside Donati, murmured one of the conventional platitudes of his calling. But there was no response from the man who plodded on beside him, mute, one hand clamping the gold filigree cross to his corpulent midriff.
The limousines carrying Adolf Hitler, Donati, Goering, Bormann, Himmler and Ribbentrop drew up alongside the Palazzo Ceci in the Via della Conciliazione at precisely eight forty-five that evening. A three-hundred-strong corps of the Leibstandarte, armed with automatic weapons and under the command of Werner Voegler, came to rigid attention as the black-suited Fuehrer descended from his car and, with Donati at his side and the four Nazi chiefs walking abreast behind, strode to the head of the troops and stood still for a while, gazing across the vast and completely deserted expanse of St. Peter’s Square toward the towering facade of the Basilica. His head moved slightly to take in the severer lines of the Vatican Palace, rising above the curving Bernini colonnade to the right of the Basilica. No light shone from any of the windows. An eerie stillness lay over the smallest state in the world, as if some gigantic clock which had measured the centuries of Christianity’s growth had now suddenly stopped.
Hitler said, without turning around, “How many years ago was it, Goering, when you and I led the march on the Feldherrnhalle?”
“Twenty-one,” the Reichsmarschall replied promptly.
Hitler nodded. “We both of us nearly paid with our lives at that time. Now we march again.” His voice rose. “If I should not be so lucky this time, I want it understood that my successor as Fuehrer of the Reich will be Hermann Goering!”
The fat Reichsmarschall bowed his head in a theatrical gesture of humility. Bormann’s puffy cheeks turned a dark red, and Himmler’s face remained completely expressionless.
With his SS bodyguard forming a great black echelon behind him, Hitler began the oblique 250-yard march across the piazza, heading for the Bronze Doors, which gave access to the Apostolic Palace. A few paces short of the broad stairway leading up to the doors, he stopped. Eight of the Swiss Guards stood shoulder to shoulder at the head of the steps barring the way with their bodies and their seven-foot-long medieval halberds. Their young officer stood a pace forward at the center, left hand resting on the hilt of his sheathed sword. At a nod from Hitler, Werner Voegler ran up the steps and engaged the officer in a brief, clipped conversation, conducted in German. Then he ran back down to salute the Nazi leader.
“He says they won’t give way, my Fuehrer, unless we can produce our invitation to an audience with the Holy Father.”
Giovanni Donati spoke up quickly over the belligerent growls from Goering and Bormann. “It’s a purely token resistance. The entire corps has been ordered to stay in its barracks, but these men are obviously making their own personal gesture. Let me talk to them.”
Hitler shook his head. “They are armed soldiers, Monsignor, and this is soldierly business.” He snapped his orders to Voegler. “Dispatch half of your forces to the Saint Anne Gate to seal off the barracks! Then give those fools up there one minute to step aside!”
The lay Italian press offered conflicting versions next day of what happened then on the steps below the Bronze Doors. All agreed that a warning was given to the young Swiss Guard
officer and that he rejected it. According to one Roman newspaper —closed down by Himmler’s orders within an hour of the story’s publication—Obersturmbannfuehrer Voegler then seized one of his troopers’ automatic weapons, sprang halfway up the steps and emptied the magazine into the unresisting little cordon of guards. Other versions had it that Hitler had already started to climb the steps when the Swiss Guard officer drew his sword and took a menacing pace forward—straight into Voegler’s fire. Not in dispute was the fact that nine young Swiss Guards wearing the white ruffles and blue, yellow and red uniforms designed for them by Michelangelo were left dead or dying on the threshold of the Bronze Doors as Hitler walked through, one hand tightly clamped to the arm of a shaken Giovanni Donati.
There were no guards to be seen in the long, narrow hall leading to the Royal Stairway, but twenty paces along on the right at the foot of the Stairway of Pius IX stood the Bishop-Prefect of the Casa Pontificia flanked by two of his assistants. All three maintained a stony silence as Hitler halted a few yards short of them and asked for the whereabouts of the Pope.
“You are being addressed by the Fuehrer of the Third Reich!” Goering bellowed. “Speak up or take the consequences.”
Donati, in a voice trembling with emotion, said to Hitler, “If there is one more murder committed in this place I shall abandon you. The Pope is not in his apartments. We shall almost certainly find him in the Sistine Chapel.”
The march was resumed, up the Royal Stairway, through the Sala Regina and into the 140-foot-long rectangular chapel built for Sixtus V and famed for its Michelangelo ceiling and altar-wall frescoes. Here, Pope Pius XII awaited them, seated in the pontifical throne on the far side of the marble balustrade dividing the presbyterium from the nave. Around him were gathered the cardinals in the Curia, a dozen or so purple-robed dignitaries of the various Congregations and Tribunals—all of them Italian, except for the youngest among them, the French Cardinal Tisserand. As Hitler paused inside the chapel’s entrance to take in the scene, Heinrich Himmler edged closer and whispered in his ear. The Fuehrer murmured a few words back, then straightened his shoulders and started to walk. Donati followed, in line with Goering, Bormann and Ribbentrop. Behind them came Himmler and Voegler. Voegler still carried the gun. His SS troops remained outside the chapel.
Hitler came to a halt. “Your time is come, Eugenio Pacelli,” he said. “I call upon you to serve God and the Church by stepping down from that throne.”
“And We call upon you, Adolf Hitler, to withdraw with your soldiers from these sacred precincts and to pray that God may forgive this desecration.”
“It is you who must pray, Pacelli, for you have fallen from grace. You will have ample time in the monastery already prepared for you in Germany. I call on you once more to step down.”
The Pope, visibly agitated, remained seated while his cardinals clustered closer around the throne. Twenty long seconds elapsed before Hitler turned and motioned Werner Voegler forward. As the officer’s gun came into firing position, Cardinal Tisserand stepped in front of the papal throne. Behind him the other cardinals were closing their eyes and moving their lips in prayer.
“Be it on your own head, Adolf Hitler.” Pope Pius rose slowly to his feet and, gently urging Tisserand aside, stepped from the presbyterium into the nave. Here he turned to give the pontifical blessing to his kneeling cardinals, several of whom were now openly weeping.
“Remember,” he added softly, “they are not taking the Pope, only Cardinal Pacelli.”
As soon as Pius XII, with Voegler closely escorting him, had passed into the Sala Regina, Hitler drew a folded sheet of paper from an inside pocket.
“Which among you,” he asked, “is the Cardinal Camerlengo?”
The elderly prelate who had been standing closest to the Pope advanced slowly toward the balustrade.
“In the proper exercise of your office you will immediately convoke the Sacred College of Cardinals in order to choose a successor to Pius the Twelfth.” Hitler handed the sheet of paper to the Camerlengo. “This will guide you and your colleagues in the selection of a pope acceptable to the New Order in Europe.”
The Camerlengo glanced at the paper, stiffened, then stared incredulously from Hitler to Donati and back again. “Only one name,” he breathed.
“Precisely,” Hitler nodded. “It will make your task all the more easy.”
Cardinal Tisserand stepped forward to the Camerlengo’s side, took the sheet of paper from him and without even looking at it screwed it into a ball and tossed it to the floor.
“Pope Pius lives, Herr Hitler,” he said. “But if he should die, his successor can only be elected by the Sacred College, which consists not merely of us present here but also of all other cardinals throughout the world.” The Frenchman made a contemptuous gesture toward Donati. “Your puppet of an ex-priest should have told you that. He might also have advised you that it is from among the members of the Sacred College that a new pope is elected.”
Not since the early days of internecine Nazi Party conflict had anyone stood up like this to the Fuehrer, and Goering, Bormann and Ribbentrop could hardly have shown more consternation if the Michelangelo ceiling had started to collapse upon them. Himmler, tight-lipped, took a threatening step forward, but was stilled by a brusque gesture from the Fuehrer, who, incredibly, was now smiling.
“I was waiting to hear from you, Eugene Tisserand, and you haven’t disappointed me. You shall be rewarded in due course. In the meantime, allow me to clarify this matter of the election. The Vatican State is now under German occupation and no foreign-based cardinals will be permitted entry. Therefore the Sacred College will be convened without them, and it will be the duty of seventeen Italians and one Frenchman to elect the new Pope. As for the question of who is papabile—as our Italian friends put it—you appear to be inadequately instructed in the laws of the Church. Let us remind you that the Sacred College is not limited in its choice of a pope to the cardinal members of that august body. Any male who has been baptized in the Church is in fact eligible.” Hitler turned to Heinrich Himmler. “Have all these saintly gentlemen escorted to the Borgia Apartments, where they will remain until the Master of Ceremonies and Marshal of the Conclave have made their arrangements for an election.” Then, turning to Donati: “Come, my dear Monsignor. We shall find a quiet place somewhere until our valets have made the papal apartments ready.”
Voegler’s instructions were to get Pope Pius XII out of the Vatican Palace without delay and to rush him to Ciampino airport, where he would be joined, in due course, by his confessor, his doctor, his valet and his assistant (the “powerful virgin”) Sister Pasqueline. On the way, he was to be relieved of the Fisherman’s Ring and, at the airport, searched to make sure he was not carrying any of the papal seals. Thus, within ten minutes of Hitler’s invasion of the palace the tall thin figure of the Pope passed through the Bronze Doors, with Yoegler a couple of paces behind.
At the approach to the steps leading down to the piazza, Pius XII stopped to gaze with anguish upon the limp and blood-soaked bodies of his Swiss Guards. He closed his eyes for a few moments, then reopened them to focus on the SS detachment lined up at the foot of the steps and the black Mercedes limousine waiting for him in the square beyond. He then started to go down the steps.
If Yoegler had not been so intent on covering the frail descending figure with his gun, he might have observed that the butchered young Swiss slumped on his knees at the base of the marble Tuscan column a few paces to his right was in fact not quite dead but was staring fixedly at him over the slender glinting spearhead of the halberd still tightly grasped in his hands. Voegler whirled swiftly as the dying guard lunged, and his shriek, as the steel pike tore into the femur muscle of his right leg, rang out over the vast piazza, momentarily drowning the clatter of automatic fire from the foot of the steps.
Eugenio Pacelli had sunk to his knees when the gun barrels below him snapped up, a second before Voegler’s scream, and the reflex—born of a
certainty that it was he who was the target —put him out of the line of fire and saved his life. When the firing stopped he rose to his feet and looked back up at the sodden, tattered remains of the young Swiss Guard and the writhing, cursing Werner Voegler. His blessing embraced both of them.
Benito Mussolini sat at his desk in the library of the Villa Torlonia staring at the notes he had made for his radio broadcast to the Italian people. His shoulders were slumped, and his face was gray with fatigue. With a sudden savage motion of his hand he swept the notes to the floor, got up and started to pace the room, muttering to himself. Three days had passed since the arrest and exile of Pius XII and already, in that brief span of time, the repercussions had been spaventoso. A general strike of workers throughout Italy had paralyzed all industry and transport, and the Home Army and Air Force had barricaded their barracks and bases and imprisoned all loyal Fascist officers. There were reports of naval mutiny on the high seas, of warships changing course and heading for Alexandria and of other warships leaving port in Naples and La Spezia for the same destination. The Carabinieri were staying off the streets and in two northern cities—Bologna and Ferrara—had arrested their own commanders and locked up the Fascist mayors and councilors. Overnight, almost, it seemed that Mussolini’s famed March on Rome of October 1922 had been a pipe dream, the symbolic bundle of fasces an emblem written in quicksand. There were no Blackshirt legions dedicated to death-or-glory, only rebellious monarchists making common cause with outraged Catholics and militant republican-socialists.
Across the Adriatic, in Yugoslavia, Mussolini’s old fascist friend Ante Pavelic, now dictator of the independent and fiercely Catholic state of Croatia, had added his voice to that of the Archbishop of Zagreb, Monsignor Stepinac, in a denunciation of Hitler’s actions and a reaffirmation of loyalty to Pope Pius XII. From Madrid and Lisbon, the Italian ambassadors reported in virtually the same terms the horrified reaction of the two Catholic dictators to the violation of the Holy See and their formal demands that the Duce intervene with the Fuehrer “before all that we hold dear lies in ruins.”
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