CHAPTER III HIMMLER AND THE JESUITS

A FAMILY entirely devoted to the Roman Catholic Church: the father. Head of the Catholic School of Munich and tutor to the Kronprinz Ruprecht ofBavaria; the uncle, Jesuit, former canon of the Bavarian Court; the brother, a Benedictine. — Was not Himmler a mere puppet? — Halke von Ledochowski, General of the Jesuits, and the Central Services of the Gestapo: Catholic priests in the SS uniform. — A strange death. — The political plans of von Ledochowski and Mgr. Pacelli. — A myth: The Catholic Church persecuted by Hitler. Goebbels, pupil of the Jesuits:”There are lies as necessary as bread!”. — Education and training of the future Nazi chiefs modelled after Jesuits methods. Perinde ac cadaver. — Hitler praises his inspirers. The Russicum, organ of espionage and propaganda.”Now has come the time to nail others on the cross, not to climb up there ourselves.”. A call to crusade: Pius XII’s Christmas 1942 message. — Hitler used to say:”I see in Himmler our Ignatius de Loyola”

WHEN considering the extent and almost insane character of the German atrocities, there are several questions which one cannot help asking oneself about their principal organizer.

Who was Kurt Heinrich Himmler, Reichsfuhrer of the SS, of the Gestapo and of the German police forces? And how did this rather dull man of meagre intelligence accede to a State post second in importance only to Hitler’s?

He belonged to a family which was entirely devoted to the Church. His father had been the head of a Catholic school at Munich, before he became private tutor to Prince Ruprecht of Bavaria, in that royal court where his uncle, the Jesuit Father Himmler, had been canon; and his brother, a Benedictine monk, was living in the famous monastery of Maria Laach. In fact, it was this brother who acted as liaison agent between Dom Ildefonso Herwegen, Abbot of the monastery, and their Uncle, the former canon. Knowing this, it is easier to understand that Kurt Heinrich Himmler, an odd person in himself, should have been able to rise to the highest functions. Someone must have been pulling this puppet’s strings. Was it not his uncle, the Jesuit father, who had been promoted high-ranking officer of the SS?

And was not the latter the very eye and arm of Halke von Ledochowski, General of his Order, in the so sadly famous police services: Gestapo (Geheime Staats Polizei—State Secret Police), the Security Service SS, the Central Jewish Emigration Office (execution of the scheme for exterminating the Jews)?

In fact, a certain special organ was taking shape at the heart of the Central Service of the Security Service SS, with Catholic priests occupying almost all the important posts—and these priests were wearing the black uniform of SS officers.

Who, then, was sending so many million deportees to death? Was it Heinrich Himmler or his uncle, the former Bavarian canon? It would really seem that here lies the conducting wire linking Borgo Santo Spirito No. 5, office of the Jesuit Fuhrer, and Leipzigerstrassc No. 86, office of the SS Reichsfuhrer.

After the capitulation of the Third Reich, Heinrich Himmler’s uncle was arrested and transferred to the prison of Nuremberg. But he never appeared before the international tribunal which tried the war criminals. One morning, he was found dead in his cell. One never knew whether this was a case of suicide or of opportune execution. The conspiracy of silence was such that nothing ever transpired of this strange death.

The political schemes of von Ledochowski and Mgr. Pacelli

“On the morrow of the Great War”, writes the Tribune des Nations, “the General of the Jesuits, Ledochowski, conceived a vast plan, still known as the ‘Ledochowski Plan’—it is also called the ‘Habsburg Plan’—for the creation, with or without a Habsburg Emperor, of a federation of the Catholic nations of central and eastern Europe: Austria, Slovakia, Bohemia, Poland, Hungary, Croatia, and also—this is most important—Bavaria. . . . At that time, Mgr. Pacelli, future Pius XII, was Nuncio at Munich, and later at Berlin, and an intimate friend of Cardinal Faulhaber, Ledochowski’s principal collaborator; the Ledochowski Plan was the dream of Plus XII’s youth.”

Upon careful consideration, it will be seen that Hitler was fulfilling this plan by subjecting all the Catholic nations to Germany— countries which, in the Jesuit’s mind, were to constitute a central empire.

This youthful dream of Pius XII seems thus to have haunted him all his life and to have inspired his entire politics, both before and after his elevation to the throne of Saint Peter.

He saw in the obscure agitator of Munich, whom he caused to accede to power and whom he upheld against all principles, the “secular arm”who would make this dream come true.

The testimony of Raymond de Becker, the repentant Rexist who was condemned after the Liberation, has exploded the myth which was spread by Vatican propaganda—i.e., that the Catholic Church was persecuted by the Germans during the years 1933 to 1954. During a journey in the Reich, before the war, he was able to convince himself that this was in no way true:

“The churches were packed with worshippers, and the priests were continuing to receive their pay from the State and were enjoying a liberty to preach which was quite disconcerting.”

And still Raymond de Becker forgets to add that, on important religious occasions, banners bearing the Swastika were seen being carried in great pomp into the Catholic churches, and that they were even blessed by the clergy.

The young Rexist visited several Nazi organizations:

“My visit to the Ordenburg of Sonthoffen left a very deep impression on me. This school for leaders was something both of a monastery and of the Academy of antiquity. . . . More than 500 students were living there at that time, as well as 150 professors. . . . Each in turn was to become a Fuhrer. . . . ‘Here, we build the Reich several centuries ahead’, one of the Ordenburg chiefs told me.”

Goebbels, pupil of the Jesuits

“Still another fact”, writes Frederic Hoffet, “shows that Catholicism is not so foreign to National Socialism as one would wish it to be. Hitler, Goebbels and Himmler, as well as most of the party’s ‘old guard’, were Catholics. . . .

“This relationship between National Socialism and Catholicism is particularly striking if one studies more closely the party’s methods of propaganda and internal organization. Nothing is more instructive in this connexion than the works of Joseph Goebbels. It is known that the latter was brought up in a Jesuit College. . . . Every page, every line of his writings recalls the teaching of his masters. There is the stress placed on obedience, which was to be the principal virtue of National Socialism . . . the disdain of truth. . . . ‘Some lies are as necessary as bread!’ he proclaimed by virtue of a moral relativism, taken from the writings of Ignatius de Loyola. . . .”

Indeed, it was by assiduously applying this Jesuistic principle that the chief of Nazi propaganda was to acquire throughout the world— including Germany—the reputation of one of the greatest liars of all times.

And Frederic Hoffet continues:

“There was, in particular, the National Socialist system of educating and training its leaders, with which Goebbels had endowed the regime. This system applied the methods of the Jesuits almost servilely. The young recruits were grouped in schools situated well out of town, where they had to spend several years, isolated from the rest of the world. There, in an atmosphere of austerity, they were submitted to a training which was in no way less severe than that of the monasteries of the Company of Jesus. After a noviciate, which ended in numerous and difficult tests, the future leaders had to swear obedience: ‘Perinde ac cadaver’.. . .”

Hitler defends his inspirers

Herman Rauschning tells us:

“‘I learnt most of all from the Jesuit Order’, Hitler told me. ‘So far, there has been nothing more imposing on earth than the hierarchical organization of the Catholic Church. A good part of that organization I have transported direct to my own party. . . . The Catholic Church must be held up as an example. … I will tell you a secret. I am founding an Order’.”

After the war this secret imparted by the Fuhrer was enlarged upon by the revelations of Walter Schellenberg who had been Chief of the German counter-espionage and Leader of the National Socialist Government of Danzig:

“The SS had been organized by Himmler according to the principles of the Jesuit Order. The rules of service and spiritual exercises prescribed by Ignatius de Loyola constituted a model which Himmler strove carefully to copy. Absolute obedience was the supreme rule ; every order had to be executed without comment.”

This parallelism between the two”doctrines”was to be further reinforced by the close linkage of Jesuit “evangelization” and the Nazi invasion. This is acknowledged—somewhat discreetly—by Walter Hagen, who saw what happened:

“The General of the Jesuits, Count Halke van Ledochowski, was ready to organize, on a common ground of anti-Communism, a certain degree of collaboration between the German ‘Secret Service’ and the Jesuit Order. . . . Ledochowski considered the forthcoming bellicose settling of accounts between Russia and Germany as inevitable; for this reason, he did all he could to obtain German assurance that the priests of the ‘Collegium Russicum’ would not be impeded in their activity in territories that might be occupied by the Wehrmacht. For years, the ‘Collegium Russicum’ has been preparing priests, with the special object of organizing Catholic missions among the Russian Orthodox population of the Soviet Union.”

This testimony is in fact confirmed in a work which is quite free of suspicion, as it is devoted to the glorification of Plus XII:

“The Vatican signed an agreement with Berlin whereby Catholic missionaries were authorized to visit occupied Russian territories and whereby the Baltic territories were brought within the competence of the Nunciature of Berlin.”

The “Russicum”

But what, exactly, is this”Russicum”, destined to bring back Orthodox Christians to the lap of the Roman Catholic Church? Roger Garaudy will tell us:

“The Jesuits consider the Slav countries as one of their preserves. . . . Even today, the true leaders of Vatican policy in the Slav countries reside at Borgo di Santo Spirito, in Rome, at the very military-looking centre of the Jesuit general headquarters. There reigns the ‘Black Pope’, Father Jansens, General of the Jesuits; his assistant for Slav countries is a Croatian, Father Preschern, who was very closely associated with the Fascist ‘Ustashis’ who assassinated Bar thou. …”

“‘Russicum’ is short for ‘Russian Pontifical College’, which is in Rome, at No. 2 Via Carla Cattaneo. It was founded in 1929. It constituted, in fact, a secret section of the Vatican Secretariat of State. For three years, it has been hiding five Nazi SS officers who were rescued by the Vatican at the Liberation. One of them is the collaborator Hauff, who was in charge of the Gestapo at Modena. These officers keep at the ‘Russicum’ a card-index and records of the Hitlerist organizations left by the Wehrmacht in the Slav countries. . . .

“The second anti-Soviet centre is the Eastern Pontifical Institute, installed at Piazza Santa Maria Maggiore, in Rome. In principle, it specializes in ideological warfare. Father Wetter teaches there as well as at the ‘Russicum’. This institute, which trains 70 priests, mostly Poles and Byelorussians, is run by a German Jesuit: Father Hermann. . . .

“Finally, the Jesuit Noviciate, at the Piazza Gesu in Rome, comprises a group of fifteen novices who go by the strange name of ‘Russipetes’. Indeed, there aim is ‘petere Russiam’, to go to Russia. These ‘black parachutists’ receive a severe training which prepares them for work either on Russian territory or in the peoples’ democracies. . . .”

But here are some choice statements made to an Italian newspaper by a man particularly well qualified in this question. Father Alighiero Tondi, a deserter from the Company of Jesus who resigned his professorship at the Gregorian Pontifical University:

“The activities of the ‘Collegium Russicum’ and of its cognate organizations are manifold. For example, in league with Italian Fascists and the residue of German Nazism, the Jesuits organize and co-ordinate the various anti-Russian groups upon instructions from the Ecclesiastic authority.. . .

“When I was speaking with the Jesuit Andrei Ouroussof, I told him that it was shameful that the Osservatore Romano, the Vatican’s official newspaper, and other ecclesiastical publications should maintain that the spies who had been found out were ‘martyrs of faith’. Ouroussof burst out laughing.

—”‘What would you write, Father?’ he asked me. ‘Would you say they were spies, or even worse? The Vatican’s politics of today is in need of martyrs. But, as they are difficult to come by, they have to be invented.’

—”‘But’, I observed, ‘that is a dishonest game!’

“He shook his head ironically.

—”‘You are simple, Father. In your work, you should know better than anybody that the Church’s leaders have always lived by the same rules.’

—”‘And Jesus Christ?’ I asked.

“He laughed: ‘We must not think of Jesus Christ’, he said. ‘If we did that, we should finish on the cross. Now is the time to put others on the cross—not to climb up there ourselves’.”

This opinion would appear to be shared by the Holy Father, when, in order to help the German offensive in Russia, he launched himself upon one of his favourite calls to arms.

Pius XII’s “Christmas message of 1942”

“This is not the time for lamentation but action. . . . Fired by the enthusiasm of the Crusades, may the worthiest Christians rally . . . to the cry: ‘It is God’s will!’ ready to serve and to sacrifice themselves, like the crusaders of long ago. We exhort and beg you . . . to comprehend in all its fullness the terrible gravity of present circumstances. You who volunteer to join in this modern Holy Crusade, lift up the banner . . . and declare war upon the darkness of a world which has strayed from God.”

This inflamed harangue is the proclamation of a generalissimo capering before his troops—before the”Army of Mary”, which had been recruited by the Baudrillarts, the Mayol-de Luppes, to combat the Russians . . . and, incidentally, their allies. In the regions conquered by these”crusades of modern times”the SS will bring about the reign of the Nazi”Order”, and, mingled in their ranks, other soldiers of Christ, under the guidance of the “Black Pope” Halke von Ledochowski, will sow the good seed. All this holds together, and so the”temporal”and the”spiritual’ will help each other along. Now it is easy to understand what the Fuhrer meant by these last words, which put everything in a nutshell:

“In Himmler I see our Ignatius de Loyola!”

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