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

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ with Kurtna’s observations.

      Kurtna’s personal journey to becoming an agent in Rome was a fascinating one. He was born in 1914 in Tsarist Estonia, where his father was a civil servant and his mother a teacher. After spending time in the Estonian Army he decided to become a Catholic priest. He converted from Russian Orthodox and attended a Polish seminary run by the Jesuits. He was then awarded a scholarship and went to Rome to study at the Pontifical Russian College, which educated priests who were to be sent on missions to the Soviet Union.

      But life in the holy orders was clearly not for Kurtna. Although he was academically gifted and fluent in several languages, including Russian and German, the Jesuits decided that the young Estonian was not suited for the priesthood. He left the Pontifical Russian College and managed to get work as a translator with the Congregation for the Eastern Churches, a Vatican department which looked after priests based in eastern Europe.

      Kurtna’s new job required him to translate letters and reports and brought him into contact with a small circle of priests, monsignors and Vatican officials. He became acquainted with Cardinal Eugène Tisserant and Monsignor Giovanni Montini.

      Before long Kurtna took on outside work, putting his language skills to greater use. Keen to develop his contacts, he began to make connections with Rome’s German community. He met Dr Ferdinand Bock, the director of the German Historical Institute, which officially supported a series of research projects and unofficially was a cover for a German spying network. Bock and the young translator got on well and the academic agreed to fund Kurtna to carry out research. It is clear Bock had other reasons to support a young student with good connections within the Vatican.

      Kurtna’s skills were now in demand. His frequent trips to Russian-occupied Estonia and his relationship with the Vatican had also been spotted by Soviet intelligence officers. The Russians were particularly interested in Kurtna’s relationship with Cardinal Eugène Tisserant, the director of the Congregation for the Eastern Churches, the group that Kurtna translated for. The cardinal was believed to be trying to smuggle priests into eastern Europe to promote Catholicism. Kurtna was asked to watch events in the Vatican and report back to a Russian diplomat based at the embassy in Rome. He agreed. The former seminarian was now living an exciting life and playing a dangerous game and it was about to become even more complicated.

      Dr Bock was a friend of one of the most important people in Rome: Herbert Kappler. It was a friendship that would ultimately benefit Kurtna. Within days he found himself sitting opposite Kappler in his office at the German embassy. As they talked the SS commander was impressed by the Estonian’s contacts and experience, and a deal was struck. Kurtna was quickly put to use by the police attaché and tasked with preparing reports on Vatican–German relations and in particular the activities of the Catholic Church in Poland and the Baltic States. Using his contacts in the Vatican and through his role as a translator, Kurtna was able to discover much confidential information on the Church’s work in German-occupied areas of eastern Europe.

      Kappler’s relationship with the young man was complex and problematic. He knew that Kurtna was a double agent and understood that whatever information the Estonian discovered about the Vatican would go straight back to Moscow. He also knew that Kurtna could report German activities as well, which meant he could get the translator to feed his Soviet handlers misleading information. Even though the entire exercise was difficult, Kappler clearly felt it was a risk worth taking. The former seminarian offered the police attaché an insight into the Vatican which to date no one else had been able to match.

      In his reports to Berlin Kappler did not hide Kurtna’s Soviet links and, while he did not identify his source, he put the Russian connection to good use, informing his boss that he had established links with the Soviet intelligence service.

      Kappler’s dossiers would be passed to the foreign ministry of the RSHA, based in Berlin. The RSHA was one of twelve SS administrations and had been set up in 1939 to bring together the Nazi Party and other similar government groups. It had a foreign-intelligence division, Amt VI, and Reinhard Heydrich, its overall head until his assassination in June 1942, had made the gathering of such intelligence a priority.

      Heydrich also had a track record of targeting the Vatican. In an instruction to staff in 1940 he had encouraged his agents in the field to exploit intelligence opportunities surrounding bishops and priests and to step up surveillance relating to theological students in Rome. In particular, Heydrich was keen to learn more about Cardinal Eugène Tisserant, one of Kurtna’s main contacts. In the wake of the German advance across eastern Europe, he was sure that the French-born cardinal wanted to spread the Catholic faith to Russia and other Baltic states. The RSHA firmly believed that the Vatican’s ultimate goal was to convert thousands of people so that Germany would eventually be surrounded by Catholic countries.

      The ambitious Kappler, keen to keep his boss Heydrich happy, used Kurtna’s information to the full. His star agent’s discoveries formed the basis for a series of his reports, and the police attaché felt that he was making great progress in infiltrating the Vatican and keeping tabs on its leading personalities. But it didn’t last for long, for Kurtna was unmasked by Italian military intelligence through a piece of old-fashioned detective work. Having placed a flat in Rome under surveillance, they raided it and discovered a transmitter hidden behind a radiator which was being used to communicate with Moscow. The Italians then intercepted radio messages from Russia. One transmission had directed the contact to go to another flat in the city to deliver a message to the occupants. The messenger was told that when he went to the apartment he would meet a couple, a blonde woman and a man dressed as a priest. The man who would have the appearance of a priest was in fact Kurtna; the woman was his wife, Anna Hablitz from Leningrad, whom he had just married. Members of Italy’s military intelligence arrested Hablitz outside her flat and then waited at the railway station for her husband, who was returning from Estonia. Kurtna’s arrest and incarceration in the summer of 1942 brought to an end Kappler’s drip-feed of quality information on figures within the Vatican. The Estonian had been his most important source inside the Vatican, so it was an enormous blow to the police attaché.

      Other contacts continued to pass on details of Church matters to Kappler, but their intelligence could not match that of the Estonian. Two German nationals provided occasional pieces of information. They were an academic called Engelfried and a woman, Frau Kühn-Steinhausen, who worked in the Vatican’s Archives.

      Kurtna’s detention by the Italians meant Kappler had to rely on a disparate and often bizarre group of potential informers who were motivated by politics, personal circumstances, and very often money. One such individual was Charles Bewley, who had served as the Irish Ambassador to Germany and the Vatican. Bewley had an impressive background and a close examination of his CV shows why he was of interest to German intelligence. A member of a Dublin family well known in business circles, he had been brought up as a Quaker and became a Catholic while a student at Oxford. He had a successful academic career in England and was the only Irishman apart from Oscar Wilde to win the Newdigate Prize for English verse. He returned to Dublin to practise law and became involved in politics, supporting Sinn Fein during its early years. Fervently anti-English and holding pro-Nazi views, he had gained experience of dealing with German officials during his years in Berlin.

      When Bewley was appointed as Ireland’s envoy to the Vatican one journalist prophetically wrote, ‘As a student of affairs he is well aware that the first representative of the Irish government will need to walk very warily if he is to avoid pitfalls.’ When Bewley left the Irish diplomatic service he retired to Italy and kept up his German and Vatican contacts. Kappler was informed by his bosses in Berlin that Bewley was an Amt VI agent and was paid monthly. The Irishman was a regular on the social scene and used such occasions to garner information which he included in the reports he sent to Berlin.

      For Kappler it may also have seemed an ideal way to target Hugh O’Flaherty. On paper it would have seemed logical that Bewley as an Irishman with what appeared to be good contacts СКАЧАТЬ