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

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СКАЧАТЬ activities of his fellow countryman in Rome. However, there was a major problem with Bewley’s ‘intelligence’: it was mainly gossip he had picked up from parties or from Vatican contacts and he was unable to answer specific questions Kappler put to him.

      At one stage German intelligence chiefs thought it would be possible to use Bewley’s Irish connections to good effect. Kappler was told to ask the former ambassador to make contact with Irish theology students who were in the Vatican, in the hope of gaining some intelligence. Bewley was unable to provide a list of the students’ names and in the end the idea was abandoned.

      By now the war had entered its most frightening stage, for the Nazis had begun to put in place the Final Solution, an unprecedented plan to exterminate millions of Jews. Deportations from Germany began and death camps were established in remote areas of German-controlled Poland. By the summer of 1942 a million Jews within Nazi-controlled Europe had died. German military intelligence chiefs were anxious to know how Pope Pius XII would respond to the mass deportations of Jews. If he condemned the Nazi regime’s actions, how would this change its relationship with the Vatican? Berlin decided to put extra effort into intelligence-gathering in Rome and Kappler was now helped with extra staff, including Helmut Loos, who became his special assistant and had specific responsibility for organizing intelligence on the Holy See.

      The arrival of Loos aided Kappler’s efforts to penetrate the Vatican, for his new assistant had an exemplary track record. He had worked as a Vatican specialist for Amt VI, the RSHA’s foreign-intelligence section, and had experience of running agents. In Rome he quickly made contact with a series of people who had been recruited by Amt VI. They included people such as aspiring journalists, translators and publishers. Even so, the quality of information Loos was offered varied greatly. Some of it was of genuine interest, but, like the material offered by Charles Bewley, much of it was merely gossip and rumour. For Kappler and his assistant it was crucial to learn how to differentiate fact from fiction. Their intelligence-gathering operation received a boost when Berlin approved the installation of a radio transmitter on the roof at Via Tasso. It meant Kappler could send reports back to Germany in an instant. Previously he had used the German embassy’s radio transmitter, which was considered safer than the telephone. As Kappler and Loos’s fight against the Vatican entered a new phase, on the coast of Sicily dramatic events were about to change the course of the war.

      In the early hours of 10 July 1943 British, American and Commonwealth troops landed. The arrival of a 160,000-strong force raised hopes among the people of Italy that Mussolini’s men would surrender soon and that it would speed up an Allied march on Rome. The Italian capital was now in the sights of British and American commanders, but, worryingly for those in the Vatican, the Allies were looking at the city from the air and not the ground.

       Chapter Five THE END OF MUSSOLINI

      ‘At this moment you are the most hated man in the country’

      King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy to Benito Mussolini

       19 July 1943

      Pope Pius XII spent most of the day gazing at the sky through binoculars as wave after wave of Allied bombs pounded his beloved city. From a window in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace he watched as 300 bombers blitzed the south-eastern part of the capital. The attack killed nearly 1,500 people and injured many thousands more. As the Bishop of Rome, he had long feared and indeed predicted this moment. So grave were the Pope’s fears that back in June 1940, on the day that Italy entered the war, he had lobbied Sir D’Arcy Osborne to ask the British not to bomb Rome. The British government agreed to do its best to avoid damaging the Vatican City, but they could not guarantee that their bombers would avoid the surrounding area.

      Weeks before this first air raid on the city, Osborne met the Pope and the prospect of an aerial bombardment was raised again. This time the Pope was reported to be ‘worried sick’. He had every reason to be concerned. When the bombs came they tore through university buildings, houses, and struck the medieval basilica and the railway yards in San Lorenzo. The church there was held sacred as the burial place of Pope Pio Nono. The explosions also shook the earth at Campo Verano cemetery, where Pius XII’s brother and parents were buried. Late that afternoon, as the smoke still hung in the air and the light faded, the Pope did something he had not done since the summer of 1940. He called for a car and decided to leave the confines of the Vatican.

      Shortly before 5.30 p.m. a black Mercedes, decked out in the papal colours, left the Vatican City and took the Pope and one of his deputies, Monsignor Montini, across the city. They arrived at San Lorenzo to view the damage and meet the victims. Dressed in his skullcap and flowing white cassock, the Pope embraced the crowd that surrounded the car. Held back by policemen and troops, the people shouted ‘Long live the Pope.’ Amid the rubble and close to the bodies which had been pulled from the buildings, he knelt and prayed. He said the De Profundis and for two hours he talked with and walked among the survivors. As the Pope talked, Monsignor Montini handed out cash to the homeless and the bereaved. When the two men returned to the car, Pope Pius’s clothes were marked with blood.

      Back in the Vatican, the Pope took stock of what he had witnessed and heard. The city that he regarded as his own was shocked, bewildered and angry. The day marked a turning point in the war. The Eternal City was wounded and Romans were paralysed with fear. Many wondered when more Allied air attacks would happen and others were frightened that the Fascist police would use the opportunity to launch more raids on those who opposed them politically. Their predictions proved correct.

      The police believed an illegal radio was transmitting within the city and eventually it was traced to the home of one of Rome’s ancient families. Princess Nina Pallavicini, a widow who was opposed to Mussolini, lived in the Palazzo Pallavicini-Rospigliosi, near the Quirinale. Within hours of the Allied bombs ripping through the city a raiding party came looking for the princess and the radio. Fortune favoured the young woman and she heard the visitors arrive. She quickly prised open a window at the rear of the house and jumped to the ground and ran for her life. She hurried through the streets to the Vatican, where she asked to see her friend Hugh O’Flaherty. The monsignor took her in and hid her in the German College. The princess was the first person to be offered long-term sanctuary by O’Flaherty and would become one of the most useful members of the Escape Line. She would spend the remainder of the war making false documents for Allied escapees and would often escort them around Rome.

      Princess Nina was soon joined by another fugitive keen to escape the clutches of the authorities. Private Gino Rosati, a member of the Royal West Kent Regiment, listened to the sounds of the bombing of Rome in his cell in Regina Coeli prison, where the Italian authorities held many Allied prisoners. Born in England to Italian parents, Rosati had joined the British Army and seen action in North Africa at El Alamein in September 1942. He had been wounded and was transferred to Naples before being taken to Rome. Ironically his name may have aided the British soldier’s escape. In the Italian capital he was placed in the political prisoners’ section because the authorities were convinced he was an Italian citizen. Wearing British Army battledress, he had managed to slip past the guards and get outside the prison complex. He encountered a friendly Italian soldier who generously showed him the way to St Peter’s Square.

      He was taken into the barracks of the Vatican gendarmerie, where he was interrogated by an officer and then handed over to Sir D’Arcy Osborne. It was essential to establish, through close questioning, the bona fides of escaped prisoners who sought sanctuary in Vatican territory. In Rosati’s case, his name may have initially raised suspicions that he was a spy. But Osborne, ever conscious that he could become the victim of an Italian or German police trap, satisfied himself that the young soldier was genuinely on the run and allowed him to stay in the British legation.

      As a servant of the Church, O’Flaherty knew he had to keep his activities clandestine and could СКАЧАТЬ