The Pope's Last Crusade

by Peter Eisner

  Franklin Roosevelt shared Pius’s view of the Munich Agreement. He even told Ambassador Phillips that Chamberlain’s peace treaty was no better than “a temporary postponement of what looks to me like an inevitable conflict within the next five years.” Roosevelt had listened angrily to Hitler’s speech from the Sportpalast, and as the rhetoric heated up, Roosevelt threw his pencil at the wall. He also agreed with Churchill that appeasing Hitler would likely lead to war.

  The Czech prime minister, Edvard Beneš, so maligned by Hitler in the Sportpalast speech, remembered and praised Pius, who, among leaders of Europe, steadfastly refused to endorse the Munich accord. “I cannot forget the very sympathetic attitude of His Holiness Pope Pius XI toward Czechoslovakia during the crisis,” Beneš recalled in 1943 in a letter he wrote to the Vatican. Critics of the appeasement knew very well—the pope realized that Hitler was the greatest menace facing Europe.

  The pope kept up his criticism of the Nazi victory at Munich and the resulting march into Czechoslovakia. Osservatore Romano editorialized that Hitler’s strategy was to avoid “attacking the Catholic Church until the population had been brought within the Reich, and then proceeding to impose an anti-Catholic program in the region.” U.S. ambassador William Phillips, monitoring the Vatican position and informed by his friend Joseph Hurley, said the Vatican wrote the editorial in response to the publication of “an anti-Catholic article in the Schwarze Korps [the official newspaper of the Nazi SS],” affirming that “priest politicians” were plotting against the Third Reich. The Nazis considered Pope Pius XI to be the leader of “criminal priests” operating in Nazi territory.

  Paris, September 30

  A day or two after listening to Hitler’s speech with Ledóchowski, John LaFarge had managed to book a steerage class ticket on the Statendam for its October 1 departure from France. He gathered up his baggage as soon as he could and left Rome for Paris. He had become increasingly worried about his health and his family. Most likely, he was also scared that war could break out at any moment, leaving him stranded and uncertain when he could travel again.

  When he got to Paris on September 29, he wired home to America magazine headquarters and informed Talbot of his travel schedule. His brief message read: “SAILING OCTOBER 1 STATENDAM. LAFARGE.” He would regret his hasty decision to leave Rome for years afterward and the rest of his life.

  On September 30, 1938, his last night in Europe, LaFarge heard the news that the leaders of Britain, France, and Germany had signed the Munich Agreement to cede the Sudetenland to Hitler, with Mussolini in attendance as the guarantor. LaFarge had been gathering impressions about these last historic days on the continent and began mapping out an article about the meaning of the Munich Agreement. He took a month to turn those thoughts into an article for America. He could sense both in Rome and now in Paris that there was an undercurrent of “preparations for the worst.” He thought this was his value as an analyst, allowing impressions to settle before writing. “War-scares, like hurricanes, are best appreciated when they are over,” he finally wrote in an article published on November 5. In both Rome and Paris, people held up a front of normality to stave off panic, he said.

  LaFarge wondered what “breathing-space” was afforded by the agreement. He answered his own question: he could see little more in Munich than a time “for re-armament . . . for the liquidation of the Treaty of Versailles . . . for more shame, and wider plans of aggression . . .,” all placing Germany in position to wage war.

  “The impression of a foreigner in Paris during those days was that the French were agonized over the prospect of war to an extent that we of the overseas [sic] can never appreciate. They knew what war meant and what this war would mean for them . . . they had a right to be alarmed.” Similarly, “in Rome, during those two weeks one heard no auto horns; there was much marching and bravado, much more open acknowledgment of unusual times; but there was the same anxious concern. . . . One glance at the grave faces of elder army officers as they huddled with the populace intent over the radio broadcasts in the Via Nazionale; a look at the crowds that prayer for peace in the churches sufficed to show where people’s minds, not to speak of their hearts, were directed at that moment.”

  ON OCTOBER 1, 1938, LaFarge took the three-hour train ride from Paris to the docks at Boulogne-sur-Mer on the English Channel. The Statendam was jam-packed with more than eleven hundred passengers, a quite different situation from his eastward crossing from New York four months earlier, when he was joined by only several dozen other passengers.

  Also this time it was not a pleasant passage—the steerage cabins were small and located on a middle deck that was not comfortable. Perhaps because of his station as a priest, he managed to obtain an upgraded stateroom for the eight-day voyage.

  London, October 1, 1938

  Hours after the Munich Agreement, the Wehrmacht marched into Sudetenland in the first phase of the occupation and annexation of the region. German-Czechs hailed them as liberators; socialists, government opponents, and Jews fled. There were small skirmishes and people died in the Czech military retreat from the region. In the Sudetenland, Austrians who supported the Nazis marauded through newly occupied villages and attacked Jewish businesses and houses. Hitler had succeeded in a gambit he could not have won militarily. At that moment in 1938, the combined forces of Britain, France, Czechoslovakia, and Poland were stronger than the German military. Once again as in Austria, the Western powers stood by idly as Hitler marched on.

  The British-sanctioned occupation of western Czechoslovakia was based on Neville Chamberlain’s trust of Hitler’s goodwill, that this would give Germany the Lebensraum it desired to leave in peace. Chamberlain had already been criticized for his fostering of the Munich Agreement.

  Chief among his critics was Winston Churchill, who rose to speak from his customary seat in the front row at Parliament and proclaimed: “There can never be friendship between the British democracy and the Nazi power, that power which spurns Christian ethics, which cheers its onward course by a barbarous paganism, which vaunts the spirit of aggression and conquest, which derives strength and perverted pleasure from persecution, and uses, as we have seen, with pitiless brutality the threat of murderous force. . . . We have passed an awful milestone in our history, when the whole equilibrium of Europe has been deranged. . . . And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning.”

  Hitler had already confessed in private that he preferred a military invasion and takeover of Czechoslovakia. “That fellow [Chamberlain] has spoiled my entry into Prague,” he said. The führer wanted all of Czechoslovakia, Poland, France, and England for that matter. As Churchill and the pope realized, he would stop at nothing.

  The Vatican, October 1, 1938

  In keeping with his and LaFarge’s plan, Gustav Gundlach caught a train southward from Geneva, where he had been resting, and arrived in Rome on Saturday, October 1. He went straight to the Jesuit residence at Gregoriana University, where he was to meet LaFarge and finish up their work on the encyclical. But his American colleague was nowhere to be found.

  By that time, LaFarge was waiting to get on the Statendam in Boulogne for his trip home. Gundlach tracked down the rector of the university, Vincent McCormick, who confirmed that LaFarge had left in a hurry a few days earlier. His destination was not clear. No one was exactly sure when and why LaFarge had left.

  Finally then, on Monday, October 3, Gundlach received a letter LaFarge had sent to him from Paris, confirming the obvious, that he had decided to return to the States. LaFarge had broken their agreement, had not waited to say good-bye, and had not seen the pope. Instead he had relied on Ledóchowski’s promise to deliver the encyclical to the pope right away. Gundlach was upset though not particularly surprised. He knew LaFarge had been feeling ill and that he had sick relatives in America. He also knew LaFarge was timid in dealing with Ledóchowski and that LaFarge put a great deal of faith in obedience and trust in his superiors. This was the way of
the Jesuits. In this case, Gundlach was certain LaFarge’s trust was misplaced.

  Gundlach was also aware that Ledóchowski would be happy to have LaFarge out of the picture.

  Gundlach sought out Ledóchowski to see what could be done to push along the process. He tried to make an appointment but the Jesuit superior general would not receive him. Gundlach was insulted because he was a trusted Jesuit who customarily had easy access. This affront made him concerned and skeptical, and he continued his efforts to find out what was happening with the encyclical. But he was unable to find out any information, and he had no copy of the encyclical at all. The document seemed to have disappeared. Gundlach was troubled by the atmosphere at the Vatican, particularly when people warned him not to use the telephone or even to write letters.

  Instead of panicking, he made off-the-record inquiries with members of the Jesuit general’s staff and learned that Ledóchowski had not yet spoken to any of his assistants about the encyclical and nothing had happened. By now, it had been more than a week since LaFarge delivered the document.

  Next, he wrote a letter to John Killeen, a fellow Jesuit and one of Ledóchowski’s assistants, asking for help. He hoped for a sympathetic response, because Killeen was a colleague of LaFarge’s from New York. On Sunday, October 10, Gundlach finally tracked down Killeen, who said that two or three days earlier, Ledóchowski had sent the encyclical and accompanying documents to Father Enrico Rosa at the magazine Civilta Cattolica.

  A longtime editor and commentator at the Jesuit magazine, Rosa was qualified to provide an opinion about the encyclical, although there was no sign that Ledóchowski was authorized to seek commentary before sending the encyclical directly to the pope. He wasn’t supposed to hold on to the encyclical at all. There was no precedent for having members of the Jesuit curia review draft encyclicals en route to the pope, according to a Jesuit archivist, Edmond LaValle, who worked for Ledóchowski.

  Ledóchowski and presumably Gundlach also knew that Rosa had authored various anti-Semitic articles and was unlikely to be sympathetic to the encyclical. In a commentary in June 1938, Rosa had agreed with the substance of Mussolini’s campaign against the Jews. “The Jews are merely guests of other nations,” he had written. “They reside there as foreigners, but although they are foreigners, they conduct themselves so as to usurp the best positions in every field, and not always by legitimate means.”

  On October 16, two weeks after arriving in Rome, Gundlach decided it was time to write to LaFarge. Just in case the letter would be tampered with, Gundlach used a basic code for his message. The pope was “Mr. Fisher,” a lightly veiled reference using the image of the pope as a fisherman—to St. Peter, the first pope, and the fisherman’s ring worn by popes after him. Ledóchowski, according to the code, was “our boss,” and the encyclical was “our affair.” Gundlach had taken a few weeks to gather information and also to calm down. Still, he showed irritation and a bit of sarcasm in the opening of his letter to LaFarge.

  “I was here on the first of October, as was arranged,” he told LaFarge. “Who could describe my astonishment when I learned upon my visit with the rector that you had departed?”

  He then told LaFarge that Ledóchowski had done nothing with the encyclical in the three weeks since LaFarge delivered it. “[John Killeen] told me that our boss had given the text . . . to Signore Rosa of the well-known magazine for inspection,” Gundlach said. Killeen promised there would be no changes that were not in keeping with what the authors had written and that he would let Gundlach know if anything happened.

  Gundlach chided LaFarge for having been naive and overly earnest:

  This is the situation; since then I have heard nothing more. Dear Father LaFarge! You see that your intention not to let the document get into other hands was not accomplished. Your loyalty as regards the boss, for which I had shown complete understanding in P[aris], but which even there appeared to me too extreme, has not been rewarded. Yes, the accusation could be made against you that due to that loyalty, the loyalty to Mr. Fisher [to the pope] has suffered. If one considers besides that the boss needed fourteen days to give the thing to the so-called “reviewer,” and since then has remained himself in silence, one gets odd ideas. An outsider could see in all this the attempt for reasons of tactics and diplomacy to sabotage the task given directly to you by Mr. Fisher through delay.

  Gundlach’s letter raised the possibility of a conspiracy against the pope. He also accused LaFarge of not having been more alert to what had been happening around them—a plot to block publication of the encyclical. Gundlach believed that there was only one person who could reach out directly to the pope: LaFarge. Gundlach asked LaFarge to do what he thought he should have done originally—contact the pope directly and tell him what had happened. He cast the idea as a suggestion, but with the strong tone of believing this was LaFarge’s obligation.

  “You—and no one else—received the task at that time,” Gundlach wrote. “I suggest that you write (that) you gave the text to our boss to hand on.” Now, more than ever, Gundlach continued, LaFarge should tell the pope it was obvious that conditions in Europe were deteriorating and the encyclical meets “actual and urgent needs.”

  Ledóchowski had gotten what he wanted. All copies of the encyclical had been delivered to him, and LaFarge, the naive American Jesuit, had left for home. He could now decide what to do in his own time. Or perhaps decide nothing at all. He perused the document and decided this was the wrong time for it to be made public. Portions were overly specific and strong—for example, the criticism of Hitler’s racial policies. Was this the time to be issuing bellicose statements directed at Germany that might further disintegrate the church’s position in Germany—and now in Austria and Czechoslovakia? Many at the Vatican felt that instead it was a time to be waging peace.

  Ledóchowski dealt with the encyclical by ignoring it for a while. He then further delayed the process by sending the encyclical to Enrico Rosa. Rosa was gravely ill and his inability to act helped Ledóchowski—whether or not he knew that Rosa was sick—in his effort to delay the process. Rosa died in late November with the encyclical still on his desk.

  Killeen followed Gundlach’s letter to LaFarge with one of his own and said that he himself had been ordered by Ledóchowski to send a copy of the encyclical to Enrico Rosa. “Father General [Ledóchowski] sent an accompanying note,” Killeen told LaFarge, “but did not advise me of its contents.”

  Killeen also told LaFarge he was determined to preserve the portion of the text about anti-Semitism—and would do everything possible “in order to safeguard your wishes in the matter, in case Fr. Rosa did think of proposing any changes.” However, he added, “I have heard nothing further, and that is where things stand at present.” He promised to keep LaFarge posted.

  The pope was worsening physically, but he was determined to continue his opposition to totalitarianism. This was becoming increasingly challenging as he kept having problems controlling the chess pieces around him. No one had told him that Rosa had received the encyclical and it was doubtful he would have accepted changes from such a source.

  Pius considered the Nazi drive against the Jews such a pervasive issue he planned to make a blanket statement that would redirect the entire view of the Roman Catholic Church. And that was what Ledóchowski was acting to slow down, knowing the pope’s days were numbered.

  Hoboken, New Jersey, October 9, 1938

  Three to four transatlantic passenger vessels carrying thousands of people arrived at New York Harbor every day. Then they quickly made the turnaround back to Europe. LaFarge’s eight-day crossing had begun on October 1 with heavy rains that had been inundating the continent from England to Spain for several days. He complained of discomfort and rolling seas, but it could have been much worse. The Statendam was steaming westward in a lull between storms. The rain on the continent was the remnant of a hurricane that had raced across the Caribbean and up the Atlantic Coast a week earlier.

  LaFarge hadn�
��t heard about the severity of the storms, but he knew his stomach. “The steerage trip back to New York was anything but comfortable,” he recalled, “especially as I was not a good sailor.” His last-minute ticket was steerage class, but somehow he was listed in first class; his name must have been a late addition. Regardless the class of service, he did not mention ever having left his bunk to officiate at daily Mass. The passenger manifest showed that many people on board were likely fleeing the conflagration: Mr. and Mrs. Emanuel Feuermann and daughter; Dr. and Mrs. Julius Heilbrunn and their two young sons; the Oppenheimer family, the Rosenbaums and the Buchbinders and the Strausses and the Fursts—hundreds of what appeared to be Jewish surnames. There were other less likely names on the manifest, people named Franklin and Grant and Hoskins.

  Unknown to LaFarge and most of the other passengers, European governments and banks fearing the outbreak of war had shipped millions of dollars in gold bullion on the Statendam for deposit in the United States. The Statendam and three other ships delivered $112 million in bullion that weekend—more than $5 billion at the 2012 value of gold.

  The weather was clear and mild on Sunday afternoon, October 9, as the Statendam passed the Statue of Liberty on the Hudson River. Tugs guided the ship to a berth at the Holland-America Lines’ Fifth Street pier with the new Empire State Building visible to the stern, gleaming in the glowing evening light across the harbor.

  The scene onshore was bedlam. The dock area swarmed with passengers and longshoremen and motor coaches and taxis. Francis Talbot, John LaFarge’s editor and friend, waited for him amid the chaos and, as a surprise, had brought along LaFarge’s niece, Frances Childs, to greet her uncle. But when they looked at that same passenger manifest, they did not see the name LaFarge.