CHAPTER V VATICAN-HITLERIST ACTIVITY IN THE UNITED STATES

A NATION of essentially Protestant origin. The Catholic strength increased by the nineteenth century influx of Italian and Irish immigrants. — A powerful minority: the German-Americans. — Hitlerist and Fascist propaganda under the aegis of the Vatican before the second world war. Importance of the fifth column: military-like leagues and formations. Hitlerist demonstrations in the principal American towns. — The Christian front, and its Director, the Jesuit Father Coughlin, Apostle of the Swastika. His wireless broadcasts reach millions of listeners. — An official document: letter from the Ambassador of the Reich at the Holy See, mentioning the efforts of the International Catholic Truth Society to prevent the United States from entering the war alongside the Allies. — Pearl-Harbour and the leap of Yankee patriotism.—After the war: the Jesuits continue their work of infiltration and of setting up cells in the United States. They spread their influence through their educational establishments. The University of Georgetown, seed-bed of American diplomacy, directed by the Jesuit Father Walsh, the well-known pro-Hitlerist. —Mgr. Spellman, personal friend of Pius XII, and Catholic Action. — Again Father Walsh: he was the keeper of Senator Mccarthy’s conscience. — Abuses of the”witch hunts”. Congress reacts. — Vigilance essential.”The Roman Church knows how to hide even her name”. — A warning: The”democracies seem always to be warming their enemies in their own bosoms.”

THE fact that we propose to demonstrate in this book, that of the perfect agreement between two creeds of domination—Roman Catholicism and Pan-Germanism—would be less than apparent if we were to leave aside a certain extra-European theatre where they also worked together—the United States of America.

At first sight, the great republic of the New World would not appear to offer a very favourable ground for such an undertaking. It is difficult to imagine that Fascism or Hitlerism might hope for success in a country whose traditions are so essentially liberal and that the Vatican should have much influence in a nation of which by far the great majority is Protestant. Today, there are 30 million Catholics there, mostly of Irish or Italian origin, out of a total of 160 million. The German-Americans form a powerful minority whose members often occupy very important positions in business. This makes it easier to understand that Nazi or Vatican propaganda —they are the same thing—should have been able to function openly in the United States before and during the second world war and even to have a great influence on the country’s foreign policy.

We shall see later, moreover, that the defeat of Hitler and his allies has in no way slowed down this propaganda. In fact, one is tempted to add: quite the contrary.

It is a notorious fact that the Germans have always excelled in spying and undermining within the heart of foreign communities. Six years before the war, Pro-Hitler organizations abounded in the United States. We shall list only a few, connected with VaticanFascist groups working for the same end:

Kyffhaeuserbund (German ex-servicemen’s league)
A. V. Jugendschaft (Hitlerist Youth)
Christian Action
Germano-American League
Ordnungsdienst (Shock troops for the maintenance of order)
Stahlhebn (Steel helmets)
Italian Fascist clubs
Blackshirts
Falangists
Deutscher Krieger Bund of North America
Christian Front, etc …

The activity exercised by these subversive groups was such that, even in 1935, the Minister of the Interior, Mr. Harold-L. Ickes, had no hesitation in saying:

“It becomes clearer every day that a criminal movement is plotting, in our country, the substitution of an odious Fascist system for our free American institutions.”

This cry of alarm will be understood when it is realized that the “Kyffhaeuser Bund” and its affiliated movements alone numbered 200,000 members, and that on certain occasions its shock troops, dressed in brown shirts, a Swastika on the arm-band, and roaring: “Heil Hitler!” were goose-stepping by the thousand through American towns.

But more important and more dangerous still was the”Christian Front”, led by the Jesuit Father Coughlin, a well-known proHitlerist. This pious orgamzatioa wanted for nothing, and was receiving from Berlin a copious supply of propaganda carefully adapted by Goebbels’ office.

Through his newspaper Social Justice and his radio broadcasts, the Jesuit Father Coughlin, apostle of the Swastika, reached a vast audience. In addition, he maintained in the principal urban centres, shock cells, which were secret, needless to say, as is only becoming for the sons of Loyola, and were trained by Nazi agents.

The first objective of this clerical fifth column was obviously to create among American Catholics, as their colleagues were trying to do in Europe, a current of sympathy towards the dictators, protdges of Saint Peter, and thereby to prevent the Washington Government from entering the war alongside the Allies.’

The existence of para-military formations in these movements proves that their chiefs were contemplating the possibility of backing up persuasion with force, if need be.

The importance with which the Nazi Government regarded this work of poisoning American public opinion appears from the following document:
“Rome, 26 September 1939
(POL IX 2034)

The Ambassador of the Reich at the Holy See to the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

I have the honour to send you copies of several reports, to which my attention has been drawn by certain religious circles, and which emanate from the National Catholic Welfare Conference; this, as you know, is the accredited news agency for the entire Catholic press of the United States. The report from Brooklyn, dated 8 September deserves special mention; it concerns the mass meetings organized by the International Catholic Truth Society in the biggest towns of the United States, under the slogan: ‘What can you do to keep the United States out of the war?’ Among the motions proposed by the Society, it is worth noting a draft bill that is to be placed before the American Congress stipulating that any declaration of war must first be submitted to a plebiscite. The reports of the National Catholic Welfare Conference show in what large measure the feeling against the war exists among American Catholics and how much this feeling is favoured by the influential personalities belonging to these circles.
(Signed) Von Bergen.

Is it not significant that this document should come from the Ambassador of the Reich to the Holy See? The close agreement between the two powers is once more made apparent by the process of “osmosis” which caused their information services to inter-communicate.

In fact, this pacifist propaganda of the Vaticano-Hitlerists proved most efficacious. Nothing less than the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour was needed to bring it to a stop.

It was less than four months after that attack—i.e., 27 March 1942—that Japan entered into diplomatic relations with the Holy See. Here is what Camille Cianfarra has to say about this:

“The Fascist press had immediately interpreted the event as a diplomatic victory for Japan over the United States. . . . According to La Nazione, of Turin, at the beginning of the negotiations that were to end in the concluding of the Vatican-Japanese agreement, Washington made an energetic protest to the Secretary of State, through its representative, Myron Taylor, and attempted at the same time to influence the Holy See by means of a violent antiJapanese radio propaganda campaign.”

However, the defeat of Hitler and his acolytes was not to put an end to the Vatican’s insidious work in free America. Does it not still have 30 million of the faithful there—Italian and particularly Irish—that is, 30 million who are blindly devoted to the Holy See? It is more than the Jesuits require to develop a large-scale operation, of the kind needed to ensure that occult domination over the State which is the overriding purpose of their society. The University of Georgetown where all the teaching staff is Jesuit is one of their strongholds. It is there that the majority of American diplomats have been, and are being, trained under their care. The great advantage given them by this grip on the diplomatic service is obvious. Moreover, the numerous educational establishments that they have in the country, attended by children of the governing classes, are ceaselessly extending their influence in these circles. Furthermore the good Fathers—as is well known—are past masters in the art of keeping up with their former pupils and in”following”them in life and giving them their support. Needless to say, they expect their pupils to reciprocate. Thus, the illustrious Society is always represented in the principal State posts of command—as is the case in Europe, incidentally—and is able to intervene in a most efficacious and sometimes decisive way.

In its issue of 28 July 1949, Action wrote as follows on the subject:

“It is a fact that the policy of the State Department is under the influence of Cardinal Spellman. At least 50% of State Department personnel represent the point of view taught by the University of Georgetown, the Jesuit diplomatic school. This school is directed by the famous Jesuit Father Walsh, a geopolitician of the school of General Haushoffer, the former Hitlerist theorist. . . . The entire Hearst and Script Howard press today has a Catholic bias. It is surprising that Europe should not have realized that the evolution of American policy reflects the machinations of the Jesuits, who attack everyone who opposes them. …”

Indeed, this was made clear, when the Congress Committee on Un-American Activities—in fact, a branch of Catholic Action— started its inquisitorial check, not only on the behaviour of the citizens but even on their beliefs, at the instigation of the famous Senator McCarthy. McCarthy himself was inspired by the German-American Jesuit Father Walsh, as Jacques Derogy has pointed out:

“It was barely a month”, he says,”since McCarthy had confided his ambitions to that ecclesiastic known in American Catholic circles for his peregrinations (travel on foot) and, in particular, for the missions entrusted to him by the Pope—Dean of the School of Political Science of the University of Georgetown, the nursery of American diplomacy; propagandist for German geopolitics. . . . The Jesuit Father Walsh had become the keeper of this young Catholic senator’s conscience and was to play a big role in his career.”

Finally, after many scandals and many revelations of the poor moral quality of the accusers who gave evidence, the Commission shook oS the yoke of the Jesuits and brought more justice and more restraint into the inquiries, which up to that time had recalled, in their intolerance and disregard for equity, the all too well-known Inquisition.

But it would be unwise to attach too much importance and significance for the future to this slight reaction of Congress against the encroachments of Catholic Action. There would be more point in listening to Frederic Hoffet’s warning:

“Mgr. Spellman, Archbishop of New York, and personal friend of Pius XII, with whom the latter draws up his American policy. . . . Refusing to be embarrassed by her own doctrines, or by those of her adversaries whose help she knows how to compel while concealing her real aims, the Roman Church is today playing the Protestant game . . . and all this very quietly: when she wants to, the Roman Church knows how to appear humble, even to the extent of keeping her name out of things.”

We ourselves have written in an earlier book:

“The Vatican knows human weaknesses very well—it has lived on them for so long! That of homo americanus has not escaped it, you may be sure. Availing itself of its spiritual ascendancy over all Catholic countries, flashing this power like a great mirror in the eyes of anyone to whom it can be of advantage, will it succeed in hypnotizing this American man, as it hypnotized homo germanicus? Will this people, untamed until a short time ago, be the last steed mounted by the Papacy, which has already ridden to death so many frisky chargers in its fantastic ride which has lasted for seventeen centuries?”

Let us hope all the same that the citizens of America will be able to make a timely assessment of the peril that too intimate a ‘flirtation’ with the Vatican would entail for their free institutions.

Let us hope finally that in the United States, as well as in Europe, due weight will be given to this judicious reflection of Ralph Barton Perry’s,6 which is at the same time a warning:

“The democracies seem always to be warming their enemies in their own bosoms and in this way helping on their own destruction.”

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