Part III GERMAN AGGRESSIONS THE ELECTION OF PIUS XII AND THE SECOND WORLD WAR
CHAPTER I THE ANSCHLUSS AND CARDINAL INNITZER

THE reactionary politics of the Austrian clergy prepares the ground for Nazism. — Mgr. Seipel, Jesuit, or the “merciless cardinal chancellor”. — The democratic resistance stifled in blood. — Synchronism of the German and Austrian concordats. — Assassination of Chancellor Dollfuss by order of Hitler. — His successor, the devout Schuschnigg, outwitted by Franz van Papen, the Pope’s chamberlain. — The Berchtesgaden trap: the Nazi Seyss Inquart imposed as Minister of the Austrian State Security Force, to paralyse the regime. — German ultimatum on 10 March 1938. Seyss-Inquart heads the Government. Entry of German troops into Austria on 12 March. — Eight million Austrian Catholics thus join the Reich. — Enthusiastic attitude of Cardinal Innitzer and of the Austrian Episcopate:”The priests and their flock will unreservedly follow the great German State and its Fuhrer. . . . Und, heil Hitler!”.— Mercure de France writes:”. .. it is the Holy See that has laid down a line of conduct and they merely followed it.”— The Pope, civilization’s last autocrat.

IT must be remembered that, by a truly “providential” synchronizaItion, just as Mussolini was seizing power in Italy thanks to don Sturzo, Chief of the Catholic Party, Mgr. Seipel, a Jesuit, became Chancellor of Austria. He occupied this position until 1929, with a two-year inter-regnum, and it was during these decisive years that he set the internal politics of Austria on the reactionary and clerical path along which his successors followed him—a path that was to e ad to the country’s absorption into the German bloc.

The merciless cardinal

The correspondent of the Times in Vienna, G. E. R. Gedye, writes:

“The Chancellor, Mgr. Seipel, was slowly playing a subtle and well-thought-out game. . . . Mgr. Seipel had such good cards in his hand; they were not numerous, but were played with redoubtable dexterity. … He was playing a double game, and his insistence on introducing foreign capital into his country was only the first half of a manoeuvre whose second was . . . the anti-Socialist policy with which Seipel’s successors triumphed in 1934; and it was this policy which, in destroying Austrian democracy, cleared the way along which Nazism had but to march its goose-step.

“The Seipel Government’s tremendous analytical error, the mistake which, by one repetition after another, destroyed every ounce of Austrian resistance to Nazism, was bearing its first fruits. The bloody ‘Fifteenth of July’ (1927) was beginning. Henceforth the Chancellor-Prelate was to be known by the nickname of ‘Keine Milde Kardinal’ (Merciless Cardinal). It was the Right’s first blow to the Social Democrats, the first public declaration of the Fascist organization of the Heimwehr.. . .

“Seipel had industriously laid his underground mines. Up to 1929, he manoeuvred to exclude the Socialists from the government and to form a right-wing cartel, with the help of the ‘Christian Socialists’ and of the pan-Germanists, who later became the Nazi Party.

“Mgr. Seipel’s was a militant soul. This great statesman was a visionary and a believer. All he lacked was a heart. . . .

“15 July 1927 may be considered as the first of the four dates which marked the successive stages of the fall of Austrian independence; the three others being the suppression of Parliament by Dollfuss in March 1933, and the two ‘Twelfths of February’, that of the counter-revolution of 1934 and that of the interview at Berchtesgaden in 1938. . . .

“Seipel has always struck me as a being from a spaceless and timeless world . . . every one of his features seemed to belong to one or other cardinal or minister of the days of absolute monarchy. . . . Looking back, it is obvious that in 1938 Austria paid the price of the clerical brand which Seipel left upon her, and which Dollfuss and Schuschnigg made indelible. . . .”

Joseph Rovan, a Catholic writer, wrote as follows about the situation in Austria a few years before the Anschluss:

“The government of Mgr. Seipel, which was still a parliamentary government, had left some resentment behind it; corporate dictatorship and hatred. Popular resistance had been destroyed. . . .”

The author defines the ‘corporate state’ thus:

“. . . The Austrian corporate State governed by Catholics who, inspired by Franz von Papen, had thought that they could respect both the spirit of the times and the foundation of the Catholic concept of society by doing away with the institutions and ideas of liberal parliamentary democracy. … In the field of aDti-Semitism, the Austrian Christian Socialists did not consider they needed any lessons from their former compatriot (Hitler). The guns directed against the workmen’s quarters in 1934 had revealed, among those responsible for a system built upon anti-modernist resentment, a desire to annihilate popular liberties which was no less implacable than that of the Nazi chiefs. . . .”

Chancellor Dollfuss had come into power in 1932. On 5 June 1933 he was signing a Concordat with the Vatican.

On 25 July 1934 Chancellor Dollfus was assassinated by an Austrian Nazi. Hitler, believed to be the instigator of the crime, praised the murderer.

Kurt von Schuschnigg succeeded Dollfus.

In 1936, Hitler appointed Franz von Papen Ambassador at Vienna.

The Pope’s chamberlain

Mr. Gedye tells us that:

“From the beginning of May (1936), van Papen entered into secret negotiations, attacking Dr. Schuschnigg at his weak spot: he pointed out to him the advantages, from the point of view of the Vatican’s interests, of a reconciliation with Hitler. The argument may sound odd, but Schuschnigg was devout, and von Papen was the Pope’s chamberlain.

“In Rome, at the end of April, Schuschnigg could see that he was no more than a pawn in a game where something quite different from Austrian independence was at stake.”

This game was the supreme assault that the dictators whom the Pope had made were preparing against the democratic nations.

“In April 1937”, writes Franz von Papen, “Goering paid an official visit to the Duce in Rome. . . . The official reason for this was the situation created by the Spanish war, but, in fact, his conversations with Mussolini soon turned in the direction of Germano-Italian relations. Goering remarked that the Anschluss should not provoke any conflict between Berlin and Rome. . . .”

The pious fox adds, a little further on, with an air of injured innocence:”At the Nuremberg trials, I was to be reproached with having enticed Schuschnigg into a trap, so that Hitler should be able to make abusive demands, demands I was supposed to know about long before the interview.”

Mr. Gedye has described what happened, and it is easy to recognize in the manoeuvre he relates the “way of working of the master knave:

“Van Papen went to the young Minister of Foreign Affairs of Austria, Guide Schmidt, in order to be sure of his help in drawing Chancellor Schuschnigg into the Berchtesgaden trap. . . . Guido Schmidt therefore took van Papen to Schuschnigg, explaining that he had a friendly and very important proposition to make to him on behalf of the Fuhrer. . . .

“Schuschnigg knew, better than anyone, von Papen’s reputation of intriguer and cheat. … By himself, he could not have deceived Schuschnigg, but the latter’s fully justified suspicions fell under the insistence of his good friend Guido Schmidt. … On Saturday, 12 February 1938, Kurt von Schuschnigg, Chancellor-Dictator of Austria, crossed the Rubicon, which on the map bears the name of Salzach. . . . How many times must the unsuccessful Austrian painter (Hitler)—that out-of-work starveling of the Viennese dosshouses—have dreamed of the day when he would impose his will on the country that had rejected him. . . .”

Walter Goriitz and Herbert A. Quint have related this historic interview and the sequel that was—with what rapidity!—to follow:

The designs of Providence

“On 12 February 1938, Schuschnigg paid his first secret visit to the Berghof. . . . Hitler spoke to him in the most brutal fashion. Providence, he declared, had entrusted him, Hitler, with a mission. . . . The Berchtesgaden agreement (between Hitler and Schuschnigg) came into force on 15 February 1938. The introduction of SeyssInquart (as Minister of Security) in the Schuschnigg government paralysed the entire regime. The pan-Germanist politicians, clerical and conservative, with van Papen himself, were making ready for Hitler’s arrival in Vienna. . . .

“On 11 March 1938, Schuschnigg resigned. . . . Seyss-Inquart’s government was formed, with Ernst Kaltenbrunner, chief of the Austrian SS, as Minister of the State Security Force, and Hueber, Goering’s brother-in-law, as Minister of Justice. . . . German troops entered Austria on 12 March. . . . The Seyss-Inquart government proclaimed the reunion of Austria and Germany. . . . Hitler addressed the crowds from the balcony of the Rathaus fVienna), and spoke of the plans of Providence. . . . Prince Philip of Hesse telephoned from Rome during the evening. Mussolini had accepted Hitler’s message, and recognized the reunion of Austria with the Reich. . . .

“On 10 April, a plebiscite took place: 4,200,000 Austrians approved the union, only 10,000 declaring themselves against it. …

“From 3 to 9 May 1938, Hitler was the guest of King Victor Emmanuel III, and he met Mussolini. The reception was triumphal.”

An enigma . . .

“It has been said”, Jacques Bardoux, Member of the Institute, tells us,”that, although Mussolini might have encouraged Hitler to bring about the Anschluss, he had not foreseen such a complete and rapid annexation. . . . The Italian objective had not varied since the peace had been signed: it was to prevent Austria from finding, either by the restoration of the Habsburgs or by the formation of a customs union, strength enough to enable her to exert on the Brenner a pressure that might be dangerous to Italian supremacy in the Adriatic as well as to the weak salient formed by the Dalmatian frontier.

“On 20 May 1925, Mussolini declared to the Senate: ‘It is not sufficient to guarantee the Rhine frontier: the Brenner frontier must also be guaranteed. . . . Italy would never tolerate that obvious violation of treaties, which the annexation of Austria to Germany would imply. That annexation would annihilate the effects of the Italian victory. It would increase demographic and territorial primacy of Germany. . . .’

“This policy—the essential condition of Italian expansion in the Balkans—was dictated by history and by the map, by past experience and by ambitions for the future. And now, here, on the Brenner frontier, in contact with Tyrolean irredenticism and within flying distance of Venice, was to be put the weight of a rigid, totalitarian, over-industrialized and over-armed mass of 70 million Austro-Germans, whose war potential was growing from month to month.

. . . Italy’s position was more perilous than in August 1914. How is it that this forced renunciation of a secular objective, which aroused great anxiety among the Italian population, should have made no impression on official circles? . . . How can one explain this enigma?. . .”

The reply has been clearly given by Francois Charies-Roux,” then Ambassador of France to the Vatican. He also notes the opposition of German and Italian interests in this affair, but at the same time he expresses the fear that on this capital question Mussolini will give way to the pressure of his powerful colleague.

. . . and its explanation

“It seemed to me possible”, writes the Ambassador,”that Mussolini might drop Austria, and abandon her to Germany, recognizing the Anschluss in exchange for some advantage or concession granted by Berlin. . . .

“We were, alas, to see the achievement of this metamorphosis. I believe that Pius XI and Cardinal Pacelli thought it possible, as I did myself. . . . Perhaps it was the fact that eight million Austrian Catholics, incorporated in the Catholic group in the Reich, would make up a single German Catholic body which would be the better able to make its weight felt. . ..

“Mussolini warned Schuschnigg that he should no longer count upon Italy to make Germany respect Austrian independence. “On 12 March 1938, the blow fell: German troops marched into Austria:

“On 15 March, the German press published the following announcement from Cardinal Innitzer: ‘The priests and their flock must give their unreserved support to the great German State and to the Fuhrer, whose struggle for the power, the honour and the prosperity of Germany, corresponds with the will of Providence.’

“A facsimile of this declaration was reproduced in the newspapers, so that there should be no doubt as to its authenticity. The facsimile was posted on the walls of Vienna and of other Austrian towns. Above his signature Cardinal Innitzer had written in his own hand: ‘Und heil Hitler!’

“Three days later, there appeared a pastoral letter, addressed by the entire Austrian Episcopate to the members of the dioceses ; the Italian newspapers published the text on 28 March: it was a contemptible acceptance of the Nazi regime and a hymn to its glory.”

Cardinal Innitzer’s pastoral letter

According to Mr. Ernest Pezet, Cardinal Innitzer said in his pastoral letter:”The Fuhrer received me. Here are my instructions to the Catholic priests: The priests and their faithful shall unreservedly follow the Great German State and its Fuhrer, for their struggle to give power and honour to the Reich and unity to the German people has clearly been blessed by Providence. I invite the chiefs of the youth organizations to take steps towards a union with the organizations of the German Reich. . . .”

Racism

“If we are to believe Cardinal Innitzer, Goebbels and Rosenberg”, writes Pezet, a little further on,”was it not God Himself who entrusted the Fuhrer with the mission of bringing about the reign of Germanic peace and the preservation of honour—if necessary at the point of the sword?”

And this same Cardinal Innitzer dares to speak of Rosenberg— the champion of the racist doctrine, as:

“That unexpected agent of Providence!”

The Mercure de France drew the logical conclusion:

“We are much moved—not to say scandalized — by the attitude oj the Austrian Episcopate towards the Fuhrer. . . . But it was not the bishops who took a decision that involves the entire Church: it is the Holy See that has laid down a line of conduct and they merely followed it”

Indeed, it cannot be overemphasized that the Catholic hierarchy is subject to the absolute will of the Sovereign Pontiff, the last surviving autocrat of the civilized world. No ecclesiastic, for example, can seek a public office or stand for parliament without the Holy See’s formal authorization, and this is what must be remembered with regard to the Catholic party chiefs whose vote was decisive in enthroning the dictators: don Sturzo in Italy and Mgr. Kaas in Germany. If one adds to these the prelates who became chiefs of government, as did Mgr. Seipel in Austria and Mgr. Tiso in Slovakia, or who enjoyed a profound influence over the State, such as Mgr. Stepinac in Croatia, it is possible to assess the true value of the oft-repeated assertion:”The Roman Church is not concerned with politics”.

It would be truer to say that its policy is a one-way policy, whatever the country involved: “It then becomes easier to understand the English author F. A. Ridley, who complains that Pius XI’s policy was everywhere too much in favour of Fascist movements. By collaborating, said Cardinal Suhard, Archbishop of Paris, he was only following in the footsteps of Pius XI, ‘it was a question of ensuring the freedom of the Church’s beneficent mission’.””This”, observes J. Tchernoff, “is how the Austrian bishops argued.”

The Roman Church carried out this”beneficent mission”for months and years to come, by helping in every ‘coup de force‘ and by having a hand in every crime.

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