Behind the Dictators

Behind

the
Dictators

A Factual Analysis of the Relationship of

Nazi-Fascism and Roman Catholicism

by

L. H. LEHMANN

1942

Second, enlarged edition.. April, 1944
Third printing, March, 1945

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER I. Page

Jesuits, Jews AND Freemasons 3

CHAPTER II.

The Jesuits and the Protocols of Zion 10

CHAPTER III.

The Strange Case of Leo Taxil 16

CHAPTER IV.

The Re-Establishment of the Holy Roman Empire 20

CHAPTER V.

Hitler and the Catholic Church 26

CHAPTER VI.

The Catholic Church and the Corporative State 31

CHAPTER VII.

The Greatest Trojan Horse of Them All 36

CHAPTER VIII.

Nazi Socialism and Catholic Restoration 43

CHAPTER IX.

Hitler's Fight Against the Churches 50

CHAPTER X.

National Socialism and Catholic Action 56

CHAPTER XL

Rexism and Catholic Action 60

CHAPTER XII.
Pro-Germanism of Pius XII 65

APPENDIX.

A Vital Condition For Lasting Peace 75

BEHIND THE DICTATORS

CHAPTER I.

JESUITS, JEWS AND FREEMASONS

IT IS IMPOSSIBLE to understand fully what has been taking
place in the world for the past twenty-five years unless we are

able to grasp the underlying significance of what appears on
the surface. It is necessary to penetrate behind the scenes of day-to-
day happenings and examine thoroughly the active forces and
planned objectives which are responsible for all that has come to
pass so quickly in the past few years.

The 19th century left us deplorably weak in true knowledge of
the history of State-Church conflicts. The facts of human develop-
ment since the Reformation have become so inextricably tangled,
that we have ceased to try to unravel them. We content ourselves
in America with a mere superficial knowledge of events, and the
conclusions arrived at, far from helping us to get at the real truth,
only drive us farther away from an understanding of the real
meaning of these events. Too much emphasis has been placed
upon the mere economic aspect of the world-situation. The
ideological and theoretical origins of Nazi-Fascism, as a conse-
quence, have been almost entirely overlooked. Research is necessary
to show where social, political and religious conflicts cross one
another. There is abundance of incontestable proof that the forces
of religion, as represented by the Catholic Church, have succeeded
in dominating the political and social field, and that there exists a
close bond between them and the origins, methods and objectives
of the whole Nazi-Fascist movement in Europe. Furthermore, this
domination has already spread to America. History proves that in
every attempt made during the past half century against the liberal
progress of mankind, the Jesuit Order, as the leader of Catholic
action, has played a decisive role. We can go even so far as to state
that Nazi-Fascism had its origin in the Society of Jesus, and that,
like other movements in the past analogous to Fascism today, it
was planned to serve the traditional aims of the disciples of Igna-
tius Loyola.

4 Behind the Dictators

As long as this reverse side of the conspiracy against democratic
liberahsm goes undetected. Fascism will survive. The defenders of
democratic ideology will not be victorious until they come out
openly against their real enemy — the Knights of the Black Crusade.

The Jesuits were once irrevocably expelled from the nations of
Europe, and from the Catholic Church itself, by Pope Clement XIV
in 1773, and the only refuge they could find during their forty
years of banishment was with the impious Catherine of Russia.
Sworn to obey and defend the pope in all matters, they were hard
put to it (even as Jesuits) to find a way out of the dilemma of
being proteges of a monarch who thumbed her nose at the pope —
in order to protect them from his wrath. Not to be outdone, the
Jesuits politely and diplomatically protested to Catherine for thus
disobeying the pope. And having thereby satisfied the requirements
of their oath, they proceeded with a clear conscience to accept her
hospitality. The truth of the matter is, that the Jesuits are not so
much sworn to protect any individual pope as such, but rather the
institution of the Papacy. By this Jesuitical distinction they hold
themselves free to resist any pope who fails to follow their dic-
tates; nor would they lament if such a pope were "providentially"
speeded on his way to heaven. It is they, in fact, who comprise the
Papacy. Their unalterable aim is to restore the nations of the world
to the control of the Catholic Church.

As recently as 1886, the public press spoke frankly and fearlessly
about the menacing tactics of the Jesuits to secure this world-
control by the Papacy. The New York Tribune, of Sept. 19; of that
year, in a dispatch from Rome reporting the serious illness of Pope
Leo XIII and his subsequent rapid recovery, states that the London
Times referred editorially to the report that Pope Leo's close
approach to death "was due to poison administered by the Jesuits."
It relates that, after his sudden recovery, the pope established a new
policy in the Church towards the Jesuits, "and that this new line
of policy is the price at which he was able to procure the antidote
which they alone could supply." The Tribune report goes on to say:

"Within three days of the recovery from his illness, the pope issued
a Bull re-establishing all the privileges, immunities, exceptions and
indulgences formerly accorded to the 'Society of Jesuits', and declaring
null and void all documents which his predecessors have ever written

Jesuits, Jews and Freemasons 5

against the order. The fact that Leo XIII restored the order to what it
was in the days of its supreme power is more than enough to paralyze
all hopes of a peaceful determination of the conflict between the Vatican
and the Quirinal; for the Jesuits constitute the belligerent element of
Catholicism, and are thoroughly 'intransigent' on the subject of the tem-
poral power of the world escaping from the control of the church . . ."

Far be it from us to doubt the sincerity of the Jesuits and their
followers in believing that the control of the world by the Catholic
Church is the only solution for the ills of mankind. They are wel-
come to their conviction, and are free in the United States to propa-
gate their teaching and carry out their activities towards that end.
The traditional manner in which they carry out their designs, how-
ever, should be disturbing to all who strive to sustain the demo-
cratic ideology and the principles of freedom and tolerance cher-
ished so highly in this country.

In order to obtain their objective, they spend all their energies
(as Nazi-Fascism does) against the two forces they consider in-
imical to their cause — Judaism and Freemasonry. From its first
founding, the Jesuit Order has battled, by every means, against
these two, because they are the chief advocates of tolerance and
freedom for all. By the ruthless elimination of Jews and Free-
masons in so many countries of Europe, Nazi-Fascism has merely
effected what the Jesuits have schemed and worked for during
many centuries.

In France, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Spain, Belgium and
Italy, the Jesuits, for many years before Mussolini and Hitler, led
the fight against the Jews and Freemasons. In each of these coun-
tries it was a Catholic priest (prototypes of Father Coughlin) who
was the spearhead of Fascist attacks on both Judaism and Free-
masonry. In France it was the Jesuit Father Du Lac, with his Ligue
Nationale Anti-semitique de France; in Germany the Jesuit Fathers
Overmanns, Muckermann, Loffler and Pachtler; in Hungary it was
Father Adalbert Bangha, and Father Bresciana in Italy — all of
these worked under the banner of Positive Christianity and Chris-
tian Front to fight Judaism and Freemasonry, in order to get the
millions of unsuspecting non-Catholics to serve their ends. They
all proclaimed a crusade for "The Christian Reformation of States

Behind the Dictators

and of the World." Father Overmanns' states that "the rock of
positive moral Christian law"^ is the best foundation for the crea-
tion of organizations capable of reuniting the members of all
Christian religions.

Father Hugger, S. J., shortly after the establishment of the Ger-
man Republic, wrote (in Stimmen der Zeit, June, 1919, p. 171):

"We are facing a ruinous state of affairs. Once again the work of
restoration will have to be accomplished by youth. Will the Congrega-
tions of Mary not go forth for the third time as the instrument of recon-
struction chosen by Divine Providence?"

Hitler^ also identified his National Socialist Party with "Positive
Christianity." In his Mein Kampf he states that he imbibed his
anti-Semitism and his hatred of Masonry from the Catholic Chris-
tian Social Party of Lueger, then Mayor of Vienna, when he went
there as a young man. "By combatting the Jews," he says, "I am
helping the work of the Lord."

This "Christian Reform of States" — which is also the subject of
the late Pope's famous encyclical Quadragesimo Anno — is nothing
else but the establishment of the Fascist, Corporative State, in
which neither Jews nor Freemasons will have any part. Needless to
say, it is also anti- Protestant.

The Jesuit Fathers Pachder and Muckermann proclaimed the
Fascist doctrines of Nazism before Hitler was heard of. Father
Muckermann wrote prolifically in favor of racial eugenics and
sterilization, and continued to do so even in spite of the condemna-

P. Loffler, S. J., Zur Jubelfeier der Marianischen Kongregationen Frei-
burg, pp. 21, 47: G. M. Pachtler, S. J., Der Stille Krieg gegen Thron und
Altar. (The Silent War against Throne and Altar). 1876; P. Bresciani, S. J.,
The Jew of Verona and The Roman Republic, published in the Jesuit
magazine Civilta Cattolica. Rome.

In Stimmen der Zeit (Jesuit magazine), Feb. 1918, p. I82etseq.

' For the Jesuits, "Christian" is synonymous with "Roman Catholic".

^ Cf. Art. 24 of "The National Socialist Party Program": "Die Partei als
solche tertritt den Standpunkt eines positiven Christentums."

^P. 70, 1931, German ed.
Cf. Muckermann, Hermann, S. J.: Volkstum, Staat nnd Nation — eugen-
isch gesehen ("The People, State and Nation — from the Eugenic view-
point") ; also his Rassenforschung und Volk Zukunft, Berlin, 1932, in which
he expresses the desire that the doctrine of race will penetrate the national
consciousness as a religion (p. 81).

Jesuits, Jews AND Freemasons 7

tion of sterilization in the encyclical Casti Connubii of Pope Pius
XI in 1929.

Jules Michelet, the great French historian, in his Histoire de
France, and the German historian Wilhelm Herzog,^ stress the
fact that those who directed the anti-Semitism at the time of the
Dreyfus Affair depended upon the instructions and, above all,
upon the financial support of the Jesuits. The Croix de Feu and the
Parti Francais in France, and the Catholic Rexist Party in Belgium
also had the support of the Jesuits. The Libre Parole, anti-Semitic
daily newspaper, was founded by Jesuit money and its treasury was
constantly replenished by them. The anti-Semitic leaders of the
Dreyfus Affair, which was a plot against the French Republic, were
products of Jesuit schools or had Jesuit confessors. In France, as
elsewhere, anti-Semitism and anti-Masonic campaigns took the
form of "integrated Nationalism/' They called for expulsion of
Jews and Freemasons, the overthrow of the French Republic, and
the setting up of a "Nationalist State." Henlein's Party in Czecho-
slovakia, likewise, preached the doctrines of Othmar Spann, the
theoretician of the Corporative State and a protege of the Jesuits.
One of the first acts of Father (now Monsignor) Josef Tiso, when
he became Nazi premier of Slovakia, was the destruction of all
Masonic lodges.

In his Mem Kampf Hitler repeats these principles of the Jesuits
against Judaism and Freemasonry like a well-trained parrot. All
that he says against the Jews and the revolution in Germany after
the war, about Zionism, Jewish exploitation of indecency and
obscenity in literature, movies, theater and the press, their part in
the organization of vice, prostitution and white slavery, was bor-
rowed almost word for word from the official writings of the
Jesuits. Everything he says, likewise, against the Freemasons —
their fight for religious tolerance, their efforts to break down racial
and religious barriers, as well as their alleged disloyalty to Ger-
many during the world war — is in agreement with both the teach-
ing of the Jesuits and of the popes in their encyclicals against

Der Kampf einer Republik — die Affare Dreyfus, p. 34, et passim.
Cf. Herzog, opus cit., pp. 27, 52.
Idem, pp. 26, 36.

Behind the Dictators

Masonry. The Jesuit Father Bea, shortly after the revolution in
Germany, wrote:

"The part played by many Jews at the time of the revolution . . . the
Zionist movement ... all this should be a lesson to those who take their
religion and their country seriously to put themselves resolutely on the
defensive. The increase of anti-Semitic literature and anti-Semitic
organizations is evidence that the people are ready for the fight against
Judaism."

As far back as 1911 Father Overmanns, writing in Stimmen aus
Maria Laach, states:

"It is impossible to deny the harmful influence of the Jews "on the
ideal which we desire in our literature. . . . The Jews make use of the
great scope of their influence to spread corrupt and obscene principles
and thus cause immense damage to the spiritual life . . . Everyone can
see that they create many literary works which are inspired by vile and
worldly ideas . . . the hooks of these writers are filled with the base
pleasures of life, a vile sensuality and pure naturalism. The commercial
sense of the Jews is not offended by the worst obscenities, white slavery,
prostitution and immorality of all kinds ..."

The popes before Hitler proclaimed all this in even more brutal
terms. Pope Pius VII, who restored the Jesuits to the Catholic
Church and the nations of Europe after the downfall of Napoleon
in 1814, issued a Bull in 1821 against the Freemasons. He calls
Freemasonry "a cancer and a deadly disease of society." And the
reason he gives is because Masonic Lodges uphold the idea of
religious tolerance: "... they receive into their order all classes
and all nationalities, and favor all kinds of moral codes and all
forms of worship."

The culminating point in the Vatican's fight against Jews and
Freemasons is to be found in the encyclicals of Popes Pius IX-and
Leo XIII. Pius IX styles Masonic Lodges "Synagogues of Satan,"
and accuses them of having fomented wars and revolutions which
put Europe to the fire and the sword. Pope Leo XIII, in his ency-
clical Humanum Genus (1884), calls Freemasonry "a work of the
devil," and "an impure epidemic." He accuses Freemasonry of
aiming to destroy the churches, the state, and the public well-being.

In Stimmen der Zeit, (Jesuit magazine), 1921, p. 172.

Jesuits, Jews and Freemasons

He states that among the chief reasons why Freemasons, and

democracy, must be condemned are the following:

"They teach that all men have the same rights, and are perfectly
equal in condition; that every man is naturally free; that no one has
a right to command others; that it is tyranny to keep men subject to
any other authority than that which emanates from themselves. Hence
they hold that the people are sovereign, that those who rule have no
authority but by the commission and concession of the people, so that
they can be deposed, willing or unwilling, according to the wishes of
the people. Thus the origin of all rights and civil duties is in the
people or in the State, which is ruled according to the new principles
of liberty. They hold that the State must not be united to religion,
that there is no reason why one religion ought to be preferred to an-
other, and that all must be held in the same esteem."

He ends his encyclical by inviting all the Catholic clergy as well
as the whole lay world to exterminate the Freemasons without
mercy.

All this was the plan of Mussolini and Hitler as expressed and
put into practice by Nazi-Fascism. Circumstances have permitted it
to go farther than the popes and to carry its principles by propa-
ganda, invasion and war, into the whole world. In undermining
the position that Jews and Freemasonry acquired since the French
Revolution, it threatens to destroy the entire work of political and
religious freedom initiated by the Protestant Reformation. It thus
serves the aims of the Roman Church and the Society of Jesus,
founded chiefly for the work of Counter-Reformation. For both
Roman Catholicism and Nazi-Fascism regard the ideas that
came out of the Reformation and the French Revolution as the
chief source of the evils of our time — evils which they trace for
their origins to Rousseau, Calvin, Luther, John Huss and Wycliffe
— to Paris, Geneva, Wittenberg, Prague and London.

All of this again is to be found in the "Protocols of the Elders
of Zion." An examination of this matter in the next chapter will
show conclusively that this infamous forgery is the work of none
other than the disciples of Ignatius Loyola.

Father Coughlin's magazine, Social Justice, Oct.-Xov. 1939, reiterated
all this in a series of three articles entitled Freemasonry in the Scheme of
Satan. They repeat the papal assertions that Freemasonry is allied with the
Jews and Communists, and end by calling it, in the words of Pope Pius IX,
"The Synagogue of Satan."

10 Behind the Dictators

CHAPTER II.

THE JESUITS AND THE PROTOCOLS OE ZION

IT IS ADMITTED by all intelligent people that the so-called
"Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion" are criminal forgeries,
and could never have been written either by a group of Jews
or Ereemasons. Yet their authorship remains unknown. The amaz-
ing part of it is that this fantastic fraud has succeeded in its planned
objective — the ousting of all Judaic-Masonic influence in Central
Europe by methods that would bring a blush to the cheek of a
Torquemada.

The contents of these alleged Protocols are well enough known,
and have been broadcast by Nazi-Eascist (and Roman Catholic)
agents in every country as verbatim reports — proces verbaux — of
secret conferences at which certain Jewish leaders drew up plans
for the formation of an invisible world -government. With the help
of Masonic Lodges and the liberal, democratic, socialist and com-
munist parties, these "Elders of Zion" are said to have conspired
for the overthrow of all non-Jewish governments and to destroy
all religions other than Judaism. Every despicable means to weaken
Christian institutions is set forth by the imaginary leaders of this
vast conspiracy.

All this is to be accomplished principally by means of the
Masonic orders throughout the world, as the blind dupes and will-
ing tools of this alleged super- imperial ism of the Jews. Credit is
claimed for the Jews in having instigated practically all revolu-
tionary movements of the past century, assassination of rulers and
heads of states, all the wars, civil, racial and international, and all
the upheavals in and throughout the nations — from the Protestant
Reformation to the economic conditions that resulted in our busi-
ness depression. Behind it all there is pictured the cold calculation,
the unscrupulous cunning and murderous fanaticism of these
"Elders of Zion." Protocol One tells of a vast army of spies and
secret agents, well supplied with funds, who bore from within and
create dissension and revolution in all countries. Support of an-
archist, communist and socialist movements for the destruction of
Christian civilization is outlined in Protocol Three; also the debase-

The Jesuits and the Protocols of Zion 11

ment and ruin of the currency system, leading to a world-wide
economic crisis. Universal war against any nation or group of
nations which fails to respond, is planned in Protocol Seven. Pro-
tocol Ten contains particulars how all morality is to be undermined
and leading statesmen blackmailed, compromised and calumniated
in order to force them to serve the ends of the conspirators.

The secret conclave, at which these monstrous plans were pur-
ported to have been drawn up, is said to have been held under
the auspices of "one of the most influential and most highly initi-
ated leaders of Freemasonry"; they are also said to have been
"signed by representatives of Zion of the Thirty-Third Degree."

No group or organization could ever be as evil and satanic as
these Judaic-Masonic "Elders of Zion" picture themselves to be.
They are the apotheosis of the anti-Christ, and could have been
conjured up only by theological minds imbued with the fearful
expectation of the eventual coming of an anti-Christ.

It must be admitted that there, is a certain similarity between
this revolutionary plan of action and the Bolshevist program that
followed the assassination of the Czar of Russia and the overthrow
of the Kerensky regime. But of the seventeen members of the
Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet government at that
time, only one, Trotsky, was a Jew. Neither have the Masons ever
been the least bit influential in Russia, either under the Czar or
the Soviets. A world-wide economic depression also has since
happened, somewhat similar to that allegedly planned by these
elders of Zion. By no means, however, have the Jews and Masons
ever so completely controlled the world's finances. They suffered
as much as others as a result of the economic debacle in 1929.

The Nazi-Fascists, who have successfully exploited these Pro-
tocols to their great advantage, and who have used these criminal
forgeries to attain their primary objective, might well be accused of
their authorship. But their publication antedated the rise of Fas-
cism by a quarter of a century, when Hitler and Mussolini were
youngsters learning their multiplication tables in school, and
Franco babbling his "Hail Marys" at his mother's knee.

Now, authorship of an anonymous document is best discovered
from the document itself — by the cause it favors and by the enemies

12 Behind the Dictators

it depicts. Tliese will appear even if placed in reverse. A clear
sample of this can be seen from such an analysis of a part of these
Protocols of Zion which I have before me. It is a reprint from The
Catholic Gazette, of February, 1936, a monthly publication of the
Catholic Missionary Society of London, England. Space limits per-
mit the quotation of only parts of this nefarious document.
The Judaic-Masonic conspirators are speaking:

"As long as there remains among the Gentiles any moral conception
of the social order, and until all faith, patriotism, and dignity are up-
rooted, our reign over the world shall not come. . . .

"We have still a long way to go before we can overthrow our main
opponent, the Catholic Church. . . .

"We must always bear in mind that the Catholic Church is the only
institution which has stood, and which will as long as it remains in
existence, stand in our way. The Catholic Church, with her methodical
work and her edifying and moral teachings, will always keep her children
in such a state of mind as to make them too self-respecting to yield to
our domination, and to bow before our future king of Israel. . . .

"That is why we have been striving to discover the best way of
shaking the Catholic Church to her very foundations. . . .

"We have blackened the Catholic Church with the most ignominious
calmunies; we have stained her history and disgraced even her noblest
activities. We have imputed to her the wrongs of her enemies, and have
thus brought these latter to stand more closely by our side. . . . We
have turned her Clergy into objects of hatred and ridicule, we have
subjected them to the contempt of the crowd. . . . We have caused the
practice of the Catholic Religion to be considered out of date and a
mere waste of time. . . .

"One of the many triumphs of our Freemasonry is that those Gentiles
who become members of our Lodges, should never suspect that we are
using them to build their own jails, upon whose terraces we shall erect
the throne of our Universal King of Israel. . . .

"So far, we have considered our strategy in our attacks upon the
. Catholic Church from the outside. . . . Let us now explain how we have
gone further in our work, to hasten the ruin of the Catholic Church . . .
and how we have brought even some of her Clergy to become pioneers
of our cause.

"We have induced some of our children to join the Catholic body, with
the explicit intimation that they should work in a still more efficient
way for the disintegration of the Catholic Church. . . .

"We are the Fathers of all Revolutions — even of those which some-
times happen to turn against us. We are the supreme Masters of Peace
and Wai". We can boast of being the Creators of the REFORMATION!
(sic). Calvin was one of our Children; he was of Jewish descent, and
was entrusted by Jewish authority and encouraged with Jewish finance
to draft his scheme in the Reformation.

The Jesuits and the Protocols of Zion 13

"Martin Luther yielded to the influence of his Jewish friends, and
again, by Jewish authority and with Jewish finance, his plot against
the Catholic Church met with success. . . .

"Thanks to our propaganda, to our theories of LIBERALISM and to
our MISREPRESENTATIONS OF FREEDOM (sic), the minds of many
among the Gentiles were ready to welcome the Reformation. They
separated from the Church to fall into our snare. And thus the Catholic
Church has been sensibly weakened, and her authority over the Kings
of the Gentiles has been reduced almost to naught. . . .

"We are grateful to PROTESTANTS for their loyalty to our wishes —
although most of them are, in the sincerity of their faith, unaware of
their loyalty to us. . . .

"France, with her Masonic government, is under our thumb. Eng-
land, in her dependence upon our finance, is under our heel; and in her
Protestantism is our hope for the destruction of the Catholic Church.
Spain and Mexico are but toys in our hands. And many other countries,
including the U.S.A., have already fallen before our scheming. . . .

"Likewise, as regards our diplomatic plans and the power of our
secret societies, there is no organization to equal us. The Jesuits are
the only ones to compare with us. But we have succeeded in discrediting
them, ... for they are a visible organization, whereas we are safely
hidden under cover of our secret societies.

"But the Catholic Church is still alive. ..."

"We must destroy her without the least delay and without the
slightest mercy. . . . Let us intensify our activities, in poisoning the
morality of the Gentiles. Let us spread the spirit of revolution in the
minds of the people. They must be made to despise Patriotism and the
love of family, to consider their faith as a humbug. . . . Let us make it
impossible for Christians outside the Catholic Church to be reunited to
that Church, otherwise the greatest obstruction to oar domination will
be strengthened and all our work undone. . . .

"Let us remember that as long as there still remain active enemies
of the Catholic Church, we may hope to, become Masters of the World.
. . . And let us remember always that the future Jewish King will never
reign in the world before the Pope in Rome is dethroned. . . .

"When the time comes and the power of the Pope shall at last be
broken, the fingers of an invisible hand will call the attention of the
masses of the people to the court of the Sovereign Pontiff to let them
know that we have completely undermined the power of the Papacy. . .
The King of the Jews will then be the real Pope and the Father of the
Jewish World-Church."

When all this is placed in reverse, the following appears:

The Catholic Church is the only upholder of morality, the social order,
faith, patriotism and dignity. . . .

The Catholic Church is the only institution which has stood, and
which will always stand, in the way of anti-Christ.

14 Behind the Dictators

The Catholic Church is the great examplar of methodical work, edify-
ing and moral teachings; she always keeps her children self-respecting,
and will never bow to satanic allurements.

Only when Catholics become ashamed of professing the precepts of the
Church and obeying its commands, shall we have the spread of revolt
and false liberalism.

The Catholic Church has been blackened by the most ignominious
calumnies, her history has been stained, and her noblest activities dis-
graced. The practices of the Catholic Church are not out of date or a
mere waste of time.

Freemasonry is allied with Satan against the Catholic Church. Not all
priests are to be trusted; liberal Catholic priests only serve the work
of the devil.

The Reformation was the work of evil conspirators, Calvin and Luther
were financed by them to overthrow the Catholic Church.

Freedom and liberty are mere representations of good. Protestants
have unwittingly helped to bring all the evils into our present world.
Protestant England aims to destroy the Catholic Church. All that may
happen in Spain and Mexico is a part of a plot against the Catholic
religion.

The Jesuits are not an underhand organization, but all they do is
open and above board. The Jesuits are the only organization, however,
who can defeat the force of evil in the world.

FINALLY: As long as the Pope remains on his throne in Rome the
world is safe. . . .

This is exactly what is taught in all Catholic schools. Every re-
treat and mission given to priests and lay people begins with St.
Ignatius' picture of "The Two Camps" — the Catholic Church led
by God on one hill, and a combination of Protestants, Jews,
Masons, communists, socialists and atheists on the other led by
Satan.

And all of this is to be found again in Father Coughlin's Social
Justice magazine. In its issue of February 5, 1940, for instance, he
reiterates that the Catholic Church is "the ideal Christian Front"
and proclaims that all those opposed to, or not with, it belong to
anti-Christian groups which will soon "appear incarnated in the
person of Anti-Christ himself." He says that "lay Christian leader-
ship of social matters is to be condemned." In the same issue a
special correspondent of his magazine in Rome writes an article
that the "Only Hope of Christian Europe Lies in Rome," and that
Europe can be saved only by the resoration of the Holy Roman
Empire; that England, "who more than any other country now

The Jesuits and the Protocols of Zion 15

represents the neo-Judaic, anti-Catholic spirit," will be destroyed by
Germany and Italy. In another part of this issue, liberal Catholic
priests, like Msgr. John A. Ryan, are called "Hireling Clergy" paid
by left-wing revolutionary groups. Towards the end is a trick ques-
tionnaire which implies twenty answers aimed to secure a poll
from its readers which will be condemnatory of democracy.

Although first published in Russia in 1903, the Protocols of Zion
had their origin in France and date from the Dreyfus Affair, of
which the Jesuits were the chief instigators. They were planned
also first to take effect in France, by the overthrow of the "Judaic-
Masonic" government of the French Republic. But the discovery of
the gigantic fraud of Leo Taxil, who had been openly supported
by the Jesuits, the concluding of the Franco-Russian alliance, along
with the Vatican's difficulties with the French government at that
time, made it more opportune to have them appear first in Russia.

These Protocols of supposedly Jewish leaders are not the first
documents of their kind fabricated by the Jesuits.

For over a hundred years before these Protocols appeared, the
Jesuits had continued to make use of a similar fraud called The
Secrets of the Elders of Bourg -Fontaine against Jansenism — an
anti-Jesuit French Catholic movement among the secular clergy.
The analogy between the two forgeries is perfect — the secret
assemblage in the forest of Bourg -Fontaine; the plan of the "con-
spirators" to destroy the Papacy and establish religious tolerance
among all nations; the alleged plot against Throne and Altar, and
the setting up of a world-government in opposition to the Catholic
Church. There is the same dramatization of the negative pole of
the historic evolution of the world, in order to bring out, by con-
trast, the positive Christian [Catholic] pole, around which all
conservative forces — the monarchy, the aristocracy, the army, the
clergy — must gather to save the world from Satan's onslaught.

Analyzing, therefore, the ends to be attained by these Protocols
of Zion, the means to be employed, the forces depicted as evil and
those to be considered good, we must reach the conclusion that
only to those whose objectives these forgeries were clearly intended
to serve, can their authorship be attributed.

16 Behind the Dictators

CHAPTER III.

THE STRANGE CASE OE LEO TAXIL

THE PRIME MOTIVATION of Catholic Action is its escato-
logical complex that the Vatican, as God's designated cham-
pion, must do open battle with the forces of Satan before
the world ends. Present world trends have convinced Catholic
leaders that the time for that Armageddon is fast approaching.
In their minds there is not the slightest doubt but that ultimate
and complete victory will be theirs. Neither have they any doubt as
to who comprise these forces of Satan. They now name commun-
ism as the generic term for the objective at which the various forces
aim who are on Satan's side against the Catholic Church. And since
they hold that all who are not 100 per cent with the Catholic
Church are against it, liberals of all kinds are placed under the
banner of communism. Leadership of these combined forces of
evil is accredited to world Jewry and Ereemasonry.

"The Protocols of Zion," preceded by the like forgery of "The
Secrets of the Elders of Bourg Fontaine," have spread this belief
among Catholics everywhere. Obvious forgeries though they are
admitted to be, it is safe to say that nothing contributed more to
the rapid victories of Eascism over the forces of liberty and toler-
ance than these alleged Protocols of the Elders of Zion. As has
been pointed out, they insidiously picture world Jewry and Free-
masonry as conspiring to establish the reign of Satan on earth and,
by contrast, the Catholic Church as the sole bulwark and only cer-
tain triumphant force against it. As employed by Nazi-Fascism in
the past ten years, this fantastic but clever fraud has already suc-
ceeded in discrediting democratic institutions of government, even
in the United States, and in glorifying the authoritarian rule of
force and brutality.

No one can deny the chief role which the Catholic Church has
played in these events and all that has led up to them during the
past half century. Pope Pius IX' calls Freemasonry ". . . the Syna-

Cf. Brief of Nov. 1865. These and other quotations have been published
time and again in Father Coughlin's Social Justice magazine, and in other
printed and mimeographed brochures sent out from his Shrine at Royal
Oak, Mich. One of these is called The Malist — For the Honest and Honor-
able, published at Meriden, Conn.

The Strange Case OF Leo Taxil 17

gogue of Satan ... whose object is to blot out the Church of Christ,
were it possible, from the face of the earth." Pius X says:

"So extreme is the general perversion that there is room to fear that
we are experiencing the foretaste and beginnings of the evils which are
to come at the end of time, and that the Son of Perdition, of whom the
Apostle speaks, has already arrived upon the earth."

As has been shown in a previous chapter, the popes of Rome
condemn Masonry as in alliance with Judaism chiefly because it
teaches tolerance of all religions and works for the establishment
of popular government, secular education and international broth-
erhood. There is nothing too fantastic that the popes and Catholic
authorities have not believed and propagated against Judaic-
Masonic aims and activities. The most astounding and outrageous
were the alleged revelations of the arch-imposter Leo Taxil towards
the end of the last century. So successful was his deception of the
pope himself and the whole Catholic world, that Father Herbert
Thurston, S. J., is forced to deplore the fact that examples of "ex-
cessive credulity have been too lamentably brought home to our
generation by the outrageous impostures of Leo Taxil."

Taxil's real name was Jogand Pages, and he is described by
Father Thurston (loc. cit.) as "the most blasphemous and obscene
of anti-clerical writers in France." He was once jailed for having
published a book entitled Les Amours de Pie IX ("The Love
Affairs of Pope Pius IX"). That was all before his conversion to
the Catholic Church. It was then that he began to make alleged
revelations about the Freemasons, and published a large number
of books about them, each more astounding than the other.

Sensing the Catholic Church's demon complex, Taxil played
this up with consummate art. In his many novels, which were
published by the Catholic press all over the world, Taxil stressed
the cult of Demonism, or what he called Satanisme. He pictured
the Freemasons as practising this worship of the devil, and accused
them of assassinations, sexual orgies and white slavery. He re-
counted that the Freemasons tried to get women into their power

Cf. Supremo Apostolatus, 1903.
^ Cf. Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. VII, pp. 701-703.

18 Behind the Dictators

to the point of forcing tliem to have intercourse with the devil.
As proof that Freemasonry was secretly controlled by the Jews, he
revealed their alleged practices of Jewish rituals.

The Catholic clergy everywhere were especially delighted with
Taxil's sinister novel Palladismus, the story of Diana Vaughan
who, according to him, was the result of the union of her mother
with a devil named Bitron. These fantastic revelations convinced
many that the Catholic hierarchy were in direct contact with this
daughter of the devil through the intermediary of Leo Taxil, now
their protege. Pope Leo XIII received Taxil in private audience,
gave him his blessing, assured him that he had read his books
against the Freemasons with intense interest, and that his writings
were of great benefit to the cause of the Catholic Church. I pass
over the question many will ask as to how an infallible pope could
be so completely deceived by one of the most outrageous imposters
who ever lived. It was one time that the Jesuits too were outdone.

For a long time Leo Taxil enjoyed the easy success he had ob-
tained by playing upon the credulity of the Catholic clergy and
laity. Then came the great denouement — planned and carried out
by himself, as it were, for the fun of it. In order to enjoy his victory
over the Jesuits to the very last, he called a public meeting in Paris
on April 10, 1894, and announced, to the consternation of his
hearers, that all his activities, his books and pamphlets, as well as
the story of Diana Vaughan, the daughter of the devil who had
been converted to the Catholic Church, were nothing but a huge
joke dispassionately concocted and executed by him. He quietly
told them that Diana Vaughan was merely the name of his typist!

The interesting, and serious, point in the whole affair is the fact
that it was the Jesuits who translated Taxil's novels into German.
The Jesuit Father Gruber, whose article on Freemasonry in The
Catholic Encyclopedia is nothing but a rehash of what Taxil says
about it, widely publicized all his books. And they continued to
reassert that what he had written was perfectly in accord with
actual facts, even after they had broken with him because of his
dramatic expose of himself.

Cf. Hoensbroech, Der Jesuitenorden, Vol. 11, page 504.

The Strange Case of Leo Taxil 19

And even to this day, in the United States, the Cathohc Church
continues to pubhsh and broadcast Taxil's frauds about Free-
masonry and its alhance with world Jewry. The New World,
official organ of the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago, in its issue
of March 26, 1910, published an article entitled Freemasonry —
The Open Door To Damnation, as defamatory and fantastic as
anything Leo Taxil ever wrote. It was reproduced, as a sample of
Catholic animus towards Masons and Jews, in the Souvenir
edition

of Life and Action during the Knights-Templar Conclave in Aug-
ust that same year. It states that "Jews are the master spirits of the
Masonic craft," that "Freemasonry was founded and organized by
Jews in the vain hope of destroying Christianity," that they plot
assassinations of prominent men, even in America, and corrupt
the judiciary to set murderers free. Reminiscent of Pope Leo's
condemnation of Freemasonry in his Bull Humanum Genus, is
the following:

"A society that admits to membership Christians, Turks, Jews,
Chinese, and every other species of barbarian, and amalgamates them —
or the majority of them — into an army of infidels and atheists, must be
animated and controlled by the malevolence and malice of the evil spirit.
. . . There is no reason to doubt that a Christ-hating Jew is the head
of the Masonic craft at this time — and at all times."

There is no need here to stress the fact that, when it comes to
attacks on Judaism and Freemasonry, Leo Taxil has nothing on
Father Coughlin. This priest and his powerful supporters among
the Catholic clergy and laity in America are copying the methods
of Hitler and the other dictators who have ruthlessly obliterated
Freemasonry and Judaism from all of Central Europe. In reality
they are not so much imitators of Hitler, Mussolini and Franco as
the successors of the Popes, the Jesuits and the Taxils who
initiated

the campaign half a century before Nazi-Fascism came into being.
Its objective was, and is still, to destroy the effects of the
Reforma-
tion and to re-establish the Holy Roman Empire of the German
Nation.

20 Behind the Dictators

CHAPTER IV.

THE RE-ESTABLISHMENT OF THE HOLY
ROMAN EMPIRE

EUROPE'S TRAGEDY, in Catholic opinion, is due to the
breaking up of its great papal-controlled confederation of
states by the Protestant Reformation. All the efforts of the
Catholic Church since have been directed to the work of counter-
Reformation — to re-establish the political and social order of pre-
Reformation times. That order of states was hierarchical, not dem-
ocratic, and was ruled at the top by the dual sovereignty of Pope
and Emperor, by the union of Church-State authority. The political
and social order that resulted from the Reformation, both in
Europe and America, is regarded by the Catholic Church as pagan
and anti-Christian; they give it the name of "pseudo-democracy."

This is to be found in all official Catholic writings and is the
burden of all papal encyclicals. The Jesuit weekly America,' for
instance, tells us that the evils of our present time are to be ascribed
to this "pseudo-democracy, which is pagan in its remote origins
and leads to an inhuman wage system, an uprooted proletariat and
pauperism." It goes fijrther to say: "Protestant, rationalist, and
now definitely anti-Christian in its inspiration, its logical fruit is
Socialism," and calls for "a return to an integral social order, the
principles of which are still preserved in our languid memory of
the great medieval experiment."

Few realize how intense is the hatred of official Roman Catholic
spokesmen for the American democratic way of life. This same
Jesuit magazine America (which advertises itself as "the most in-
fluential Catholic magazine in the United States") published the
following in its issue of May 17, 1941, six months before Pearl
Harbor:

"How we Catholics have loathed and despised this Lucifer civiliza-
ion, this rationalist creation of those httle men who refuse to bend
the knee or bow the head in submission to higher authority . . .
Today, American Catholics are being asked to shed their blood for
that particular kind of secularist civilization which they have been

' April 13, 1940.

The Re -Establishment of the Holy Roman Empire 21

herocially repudiating for four centuries. This civilization is now
called democracy, and the suggestion is being made that we send the
Yanks to Europe again to defend it. In reality, is it worth defending?
What's the sum and substance of it all? All the Yanks in America
will not save it from disintegration. Unless a miracle occurs, it is
doomed — finally and irrevocably doomed. The New Order in Europe
will be either a Nazi or a British totalitarianism, or a combination
of both . . .

"American democracy is disintegrating, crumbling from within.
Fatigue, disillusionment, disgust, the unbearable tension in society,
the fear of war and the fear of bankruptcy, the absence of security,
the technological revolution which has gone far beyond the instru-
ments of social control, deep-rooted, anarchistic hatred of a social
order, which has too long denied the principle of social justice, the
revolt of the masses and the levelling of all values, the absence of any
common ethical basis — these are but a few of the multiple factors in
the decline which is now upon us . . .

"Leadership in this crisis will not come from the laity. It will not
come from the bottom of the Catholic pyramid. It will come only from
the top, from the Hierarchy. The Christian Revolution will begin
when we decide to cut loose from the existing social order, rather
than be buried with it."

Whatever opinion the Catholic Church may now express about
Hitler and his Nazi-Socialism, it stands 100 per cent with him and
the other fascist dictators in this avowed objective of destroying the
political and social order that came out of the Reformation and
substituting therefor an integral, positive-Christian hierarchical
confederation of states, similar to that which existed before Protes-
tantism disrupted the authoritarian order of things in Central
Europe. Hitler laid it down in article 24 of his National Social
Party Program that "the Party as such starts from the standpoint
of a Positive Christianity." This is specifically a Jesuit principle of
action, with the ultimate objective of inducing all Christian sects
to unite with the Catholic Church for a "Christian reform of states"
— the establishment of an hierarchical grouping of corporative
states entirely devoid of Jewish, Masonic and Protestant influence.
Bishop Hudal and other German prelates have pointed out the
identity of the fundamentals of National Socialism and Catholi-
cism. Father Coughlin and his Jesuit supporters preach the same
in this country. To date. Hitler's blitzkriegs are accomplishing in
fact everything set forth in his ideological concepts for a "new

Die Grundlagen des Nationalsozialismus, p. 18.

22 Behind the Dictators

order" in all of Europe after his ruthless extermination of Judaism
and Masonry.

For centuries Vatican policy has based all its hopes for the
restoration of its dominion over the nations of Europe upon a
strong, militaristic Germany that would cleanse the Continent of
all British Protestant influence from the West, and, above all,
safeguard it from Russo-Slavic invasion from the East. A Greater
Germany, in other words, must be made again the center of a
revived Holy Roman Empire.

It is significant that Pope Leo XIII urged this very plan upon
the late Kaiser Wilhelm II during the latter's last visit to the Vati-

■J

can. The Kaiser, in his Memoirs, vividly describes the colorful and
solemn setting in which the interview took place, and says that he
jotted down what was said for future reference. What interested
him most was Pope Leo's insistence that, by war, if necessary, the
Holy Roman Empire should be restored, and that to this end "Ger-
many must become the Sword of the Catholic Church." Following
are the Kaiser's own words:

"It was of interest to me that the Pope said to me on this occasion
that Germany must become the sword of the Catholic Church. I re-
marked that the old Roman Empire of the German nation no longer
existed, and that conditions had changed. But he stuck to his words."

Hitler succeeded the Kaiser and by Germany's military might
wiped out from all of Europe popular government. Freemasonry,
and all the democratic freedoms against which Pope Leo XIII
and other nineteenth century popes fulminated their condemna-
tions.

Catholic propagandists in the United States, despite expressed
opinions to the contrary, have not been unaware of this identity of
interests between Nazi-Fascism and Catholic aims, and diplomatic-
ally, but definitely, have been striving for their realization. Hitler's
early conquests in Austria and Czechoslovakia were applauded as
"a natural re-adjustment in Europe" by the Catholic Justice Her-
bert O'Brien of New York, in an article featured in the New York
Herald Tribune of March 29, 1938. Needless to say, his opinions

See, The Kaiser's Memoirs, by Wilhem II, translated by Thomas R.
Ybarra, p. 211, Harper & Bros. 1922.

The Re-Establishment of the Holy Roman Empire 23

are not solely his own, but were obviously dictated to him by official
Catholic authority. Taking occasion to warn the United States from
participating in war on the side of England and France, Justice
O'Brien stated that such a war would be unjust since its objective
would be "to oppose certain political adjustments and changes in
Central Europe resulting in economic and nationalistic confedera-
tions which had existed for generations before the great world con-
flict . . . and also to resist that great confederation of small groups
which, up to the breaking out of the great world war. had enjoyed,
under the beneficent sway of the Hapsburgs, commercial prosperity,
independence and peace." He goes on to say:

"The opposition to this adjustment of the German peoples with
some of the groups of the old Austrian Empire . . . comes from Eng-
land and France. These two nations have expressed their bitter resent-
ment over these changes as a disturbance of the 'balance of power'
in Europe, and are fearful that Germany, in union with a re-united
Austria, will place the German peoples in the ascendancy with ample
force to maintain this position, and, by alliance with Italy, terminate
Britain's sole supremacy of the Mediterranean and directly affect its
sole future control of India and Egypt and the African British
colonies."

He wrote that "dismemberment of the Austrian Empire was
the most tragic blunder of the twentieth century. When England
and France chopped up Austria they ruined Europe." He applauded
Hitler's success in destroying Protestant British hegemony in
Central Europe and in securing a return to the political and social
set-up of the corporate union of states in a revived Holy Roman
confederation:

"What America is witnessing is the normal reunion of these several

parts into the original, living structure. It had to come. It could not be

blocked. In justice to the 100 miUion people in Central Europe, why
should anyone try to prevent it?"

He uncovered the whole pretense of official Catholic opposition

even to Hitler's religious and racial persecutions as well as to his

"protectorates" over non-German nations as follows:

"It happened with Hitler. It would have happened without Hitler,
and in spite of Hitler. And with the inclusion of these non-Germanic
groups. Hitler's anti-rehgious and racial persecutions must terminate
and vanish. Hitler will pass away, but the great re-established union,
together with rehgious liberty, will survive."

24 Behind the Dictators

What the Cathohc Church is hoping and working for as a result
of the present death struggle between the fascist and democratic
blocs is the re-establishment in Europe of the "Real State," a rigid
hierarchical system wherein inferiors are subject to superiors. In
this system each individual, like a cell in a body, must humbly sub-
mit to his fate and occupy his "natural place" which is allotted to
him from birth and have no desire to get away from it. This basis
of social structure is not only anti-Jewish, but also anti-Protestant.
It corresponds exactly to the system of the Jesuit Order itself as
founded by Ignatius Loyola, the essential point of which consists
in an hierarchical structure of ideas, and is characteristic of all
Catholic political thought. The hierarchical, as opposed to the
Protestant democratic system, holds that the different races con-
stitute the hierarchical steps in a cosmic system which no one has
the right to change or modify either by individual or collective will.

The Jesuit Father Muckermann, in his many works on race
hygiene, fully explains this ideology which is at the basis of all the
aims and acts of Nazi-Fascism. Mixture of races, he holds, pro-
duces "inharmonious" descendants who have difficulty in allowing
themselves to be absorbed into a national unity. It is well known
that mixture of races brings forth strong individualities; and these
in the Jesuit view, would disrupt the static "harmony" they desire
among peoples and nations, as well as nullify the gregarious in-
stinct which the Jesuits endeavor to foster. In their view "harmony"
is a state where each one places himself humbly and voluntarily in
the organic niche appointed for him by the supreme authority
without any "diabolic inharmonious" desire to leave it. This is the
way the Jesuit Order itself is built up, and this is the ideal Catholic
aim for states and groups of states in the political and social order.
It is the organic, static, hierarchical, integralist, corporative system
of Nazi-Fascist teaching, which is already in effect in many coun-
tries of Europe. It is in direct opposition to the disintegralist,
dynamic, liberal, free, democratic concept of political and social
order.

Cf. Rene Fulop Muller, Macht und Geheimnis der Jesuiten, p. 41; also

his Rassenheirarchie als Kirchliche Lehre, pp. 42, 204.

The Re-Establishment of the Holy Roman Empire 25

The Jesuit Order has its "Aryan paragraph" corresponding ex-
actly to that of Hitlerism. Its Constitutions contain six impediments
against reception into the Order, the first of which is Jewish descent
up to the fourth generation. If Jewish descent is discovered after a
candidate's admission, it prevents his "radiation." This Aryan para-
graph first appeared in the statutes of the Order in 1593, was con-
firmed in 1608 and is to be found in the latest official edition pub-
lished in Florence in 1893. General councils of the order have many
times proclaimed that Jewish descent must be considered as "an
impurity, scandal, dishonor and infamy."^ Suarez, noted Jesuit
theologican, also states that Jewish descent is an impurity of such
indelible character that it is sufficient to prevent admission into the
Order.^

This identity of interests between Nazi-Fascism and Jesuit
Catholicism in the matter of opposition to the mixture of races and
religions is something that cannot be denied. And this ideology is
the prime cause of the war that is devastating the world at the
present time. Hider, the fanatic, has already gone a long way to
bring it to realization. If he succeeds in making it permanent, the
"new order" which he has vowed to bring about in Europe will be
what the Catholic Church has been strenuously working for during
the past four centuries. As a result, Europe will be entirely free
of that "pseudo-democratic liberalism" so hateful to official Cathol-
icism. With or without Hider, as Justice O'Brien says, it had to
come. And its beginnings could only have been accomplished by
the ruthless war now being waged by Nazi-Fascism — a fact which
its Jesuit proponents have fully realized during their centuries of
counter-Reformation activities. But it is only by facing this fact,
and forgetting Roman Catholic propaganda in our daily news-
papers, that we can understand why a victory for an authoritarian
Germany, not its crushing defeat by the democratic Allies, has been
fervently desired by the Vatican.

Institutum 8. J., p. 278, 302; also Jesuit Lexicon, p. 939.
F. Suarez, Tractatus de religione Societatis Jesu, p. 34.

26 Behind the Dictators

CHAPTER V.
HITLER AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

HITLER is a product of the Catholic Church. He has never
renounced the religious doctrines nor condemned the
political aims and aspirations of the Church into which he
was bom and baptized. Just as his father regarded the Catholic
priesthood as the highest state to which anyone could aspire, so to
him as a child the priest appeared as the ideal human being. In his
autobiography Hitler says that he was deeply impressed with the
religious ceremonies of the Catholic Church and was a member of
the choir in his parish church. In his free time he took singing
lessons at the nearby monastery. "This," he says, "supplied me
with the best opportunity to steep myself in the solemn magnifi-
cence of the brilliant feasts of the Church."^

These early emotions never completely disappeared, and he has
always remained conscious of the extremely suggestive value of
ecclesiastical surroundings. Toward the end of his book he de-
scribes "the psychological conditions which tend to create that
artificial and mysterious half-light in Catholic churches — the wax
tapers, the incense ..." In fact, in his Mein Kampf Hitler approves
of everything particularly relating to Jesuit Catholicism as opposed
to Protestantism. He approves of the indisputability of Catholic

1 1

dogmas," of the intolerant attitude of Catholic education, of the
necessity of blind faith, of the personal infallibility of the pope —
imposed upon the Church by the Jesuits in 1870,^ — and of the com-
pulsory celibacy of the Catholic clergy. These are all matters that
make Catholicism radically different from the other churches of
Christendom. In an open and prophetic expression of his admira-
tion for the Catholic Church, he says:

"Thus the Catholic Church is more secure than ever. It can be pre-
dicted that, as passing phenomena vanish away, she will remain as a
beacon light amid these vanishing elements, attracting blind adherents
in ever- increasing numbers."

' Cf. Mein Kampf, p. 4. ' P. 293. ' P. 385. ^ P. 417. ' P. 507. ^ P. 513.
See The Catholic Church in Hitler's 'Mein Kampf; 15c Agora Publishing
Co. It was a priest. Father Staempfle, not Hitler, who really wrote "Mein
Kampf."

Hitler AND THE Catholic Church 27

This enthusiastic declaration of the Fuehrer is not only an ex-
pression of the prophetic sense generally attributed to him, but the
manifestation of a desire firmly rooted in his soul. Like all Catholics
of Central Europe, he was educated to resist Protestantism — the
historical enemy which has always endeavored to detach govern-
ments and peoples from the political and religious influence of
the Church of Rome. Throughout his book he has no word of dis-
approval for the Jesuit campaign against ail forms of Protes-
tantism. It is true, that, in places, he states that both Protestantism
and Catholicism, as religious units, are of equal worth, so far as his
National Socialism is concerned. But an analysis of his particular
statements regarding the two religious systems immediately shows
how closely he is bound to ultramontane Catholicism. In the matter
of racism and anti-Semitism, Hitler clearly indicates his hostility to
Protestantism. He says:

"Protestantism opposes in an extremely vigorous manner every attempt
that is made to rid the nation of its worst enemy; in fact, the position
of Protestantism with regard to Judaism is more or less dogmatically
fixed. But we have now come to a point where this problem will have
to be solved; otherwise all attempts at the renaissance of Germany and
national regeneration will be of no avail."

It is true that Protestantism can never associate itself with Jesuit
racism. The protest to Hitler by the German Confessional Church
in 1936, makes this clear: "Anti-Semitism," it says, "often provokes
excesses that nothing can justify, and which are merely the result
of hatred for the Jewish minority."

The identity of Hitler's ideology with that of traditional Jesuit
Catholicism cannot be denied; nor the fact that by ruthless persecu-
tion and armed might, in collaboration with the other Catholic
dictators, he has forwarded the ultimate objectives of the Catholic
Church. Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and Salazar (the Catholic dic-
tator of Portugal) ousted Jewish, Masonic and Protestant influence
from all of Europe from the Arctic to the Mediterranean. In spite
of this, however, many in America are still skeptical of any pre-
determined connection between Nazi-Fascism and Jesuit Catholi-
cism. They point to the "persecution" of the Catholic Church in

7 p. 123.

8 Cf. Easier National Zeitung, July 20, 1936.

28 Behind the Dictators

Germany, and to professions of faith in democracy by some Catlio-
lic spokesmen in tlie United States.

Tliere is liere a case of obvious contradiction between reality
and appearance. In the first place, Nazi opposition to the Catholic
Church in Germany has been confined to its "liberal" elements,
and Catholic leadership has always opposed these more than any
others. The Jesuit party has long feared the infiltration of Protes-
tant and liberal ideas into the German Catholic mind. During the
post-war years, when Germany was a democratic republic, many
of the ordinary secular clergy and some of the religious orders
became enamored of the liberal, secularizing spirit. They formed
the backbone of the Catholic Centre Party — which was the last
bulwark against Hitler's rise to power. But this last element of
liberalism in Germany was dissolved by order of Pope Pius XI, as
a stipulated condition of the Vatican's concordat with Nazism; its
leader, Klausener, was assassinated in the "blood purge" of June
30, 1934. The last liberal party in Italy also, headed by the exiled
priest Don Sturzo, shared the same fate at the hands of the same
Pope Pius XL It is nothing new in Catholic history that religious
and social reformers from within the Church should be the first to
suffer its enmity. The heretics of history, delivered over to auto-
crat civil power for burning and imprisonment by the Church, are
mute witnesses to this unchanging policy of intransigent Catholi-
cism.

It can easily be seen that the identity of Jesuit political thought
with the objectives of Nazi-Fascism makes it imperative to conceal
it from the American public. Were it otherwise, the Catholic
Church would suffer complete loss of its prestige in the United
States — in the eyes of Catholics and non-Catholics alike. It is not
surprising, therefore, that the following evident contradictions
may be noted with regard to Catholic Church propaganda:

1. Opposing views of Jesuit authors on actual questions con-
cerning politics, economics, and even religious matters;

2. The adoption of national peculiarities in all countries, even
in pagan lands;

Hitler and the Catholic Church 29

3. The combatting of socialism witli one liand and ottering it
friendsliip witli tlie otlier;

4. Tlie favoring of chauvinist and nationalist views as well as
of international pacific tendencies;

5. The making of eloquent declarations in favor of democracy,
and at the same time seizing upon every possible means to
undermine and wreck it;

6. The creation of situations apparently contradictory of one
another.

Apart from this, there is nothing insincere on the part of in-
transigent Catholic leadership. The guiding forces of modem
Catholicism are as sincere in their conviction as their predecessors
of old that nothing good can come out of liberal political and social
regimes. Liberalism in religion is anathema to them and their
greatest enemy. They desire peace, but hold with the Nazi-Fascists
that peace can come only by war, with all its appalling conse-
quences, as a necessary evil. For by victorious war alone, they hold,
can men and nations to be made to submit to the hierarchical idea
of a world-order of states, races and individuals. Their conviction
is that peace can come only from that "harmonious" acquiescence
of men bound to their "natural place" in society and religion.
From its apex, this pyramid of states is to be totally ruled by the
theocratic institution of the Catholic Church, with the Pope of
Rome as the Vicar of Jesus Christ and the sole mouthpiece of
Almighty God.

Alone, and without well-planned direction, Adolf Hitler never
could have accomplished what he did to this end. All the world
is now convinced that he was no idle dreamer, nor just a poor
paper-hanger, when he attempted his Munich Beer-hall putsch. His
visions were realistically sketched out for him by those who directed
him as a youth, and the grandeur of their ideas of a totalitarian
world, symbolized by ritualistic ceremonies in cathedrals and
churches, urged him to action.

When Hitler drew Austria into his hierarchic confederation, his
action was greeted by Heils from Catholic Church prelates. After

30 Behind the Dictators

his bloodless absorption of Czechoslovakia and the land of the
hated Hussites, there was rejoicing again within the Catholic
world. A feeble, easily answered complaint from the Vatican fol-
lowed his blitzkrieg that brought Catholic Poland again into the
orbit of a centrally-controlled Europe. Definite refusal met the
request of President Roosevelt, through his "peace ambassador"
to the Vatican, that Pope Pius XII condemn Hitler's invasion of
Protestant Denmark and Norway.

Only short-sighted, idealistic Americans fail to understand that
Hitler and the intransigent leaders of Roman Catholicism are one
with Mussolini when he declared:

"Capitalism, parliamentarian ism, democracy, socialism, com-
munism, and a certain vacillating Catholicism, with which, sooner
or later, we shall deal in our style, are against us."

All of these, particularly the last, are the forces which the Jesuits
and their counter-Reformation have fought against (and made
use of) since the time of Martin Luther and his associates.

The Catholic Church and the Corporative State 31

CHAPTER VL

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND THE
CORPORATIVE STATE

A FEW YEARS AGO, Americans considered it incredible
that the Catholic Church could be officially in favor of the
Fascist corporative state; much less that it could have been
in any way responsible for the origin and spread of Corporatism.
They refused to believe that the vaunted encyclical Quadragesimo
Anno, of Pope Pius XI, was an endorsement of the Nazi-Fascist
objective to discredit and destroy the structure of the liberal demo-
cratic state, and to set up, in its stead, authoritarian, hierarchical
regimes. Yet, this encyclical embodied the whole aim of the Catho-
lic Church for half a century before the rise of Fascism, namely,
the total reconstruction of the then existing social order on Catho-
lic-Fascist lines. The real title of this encyclical is: "On the Recon-
struction of the Social Order," and its plan is actually the ecclesias-
tical counterpart of the Fascist military onslaught against liberal-
ism and democracy.

Americans heard Father Coughlin preach this for eight years,
but merely shrugged their shoulders and took it for granted that
his rantings were those of a crackpot and had nothing to do with
the true aims and activities of the Catholic Church. It can now be
seen that this plan of the Vatican, though camouflaged in terms
to quiet the fears of Americans, was being carried forward officially
by the Catholic Church in the United States as vigorously as in
European countries.

In our first issue of The Converted Catholic Magazine,' atten-
tion was directed to the plan as published under the auspices of
the National Catholic Welfare Conference, and signed by 131
Catholic prelates and noted laymen. It advocated a change in the
United States' Constitution to permit the enactment of the recom-
mendations of Pope Pius XI into American law. It praised the
NRA, which is now admitted as having been patterned on Fascist

'Jan., 1940. p. 6.

32 Behind the Dictators

Corporative lines,^ and which was aboHshed by unanimous opinion
of the U. S. Supreme Court as destructive of American democracy.
In spite of this, however, this plan of the CathoUc Church says:
"Had the NRA been permitted to continue, it could readily have
developed into the kind of industrial order recommended by the
Holy Father."

So cautiously had this plan been advanced in the United States,
that it was not until the Roman Catholic hierarchy, in 1940, issued
its pronouncement on "The Church and the Social Order"^ that
the press could safely headline the news that "The Catholic Hier-
archy Advocates Corporative System for the U. S." Strange to
say, there was then no public outcry. And even now, when patriotic
Americans are turning the searchlight of suspicion on every sign
of political and economic subversion, the greatest Trojan Horse
of them all continues to tower unmolested in the very shadow of
their searchlights. In newspaper offices, this Trojan Horse of Jesuit
Catholicism is still regarded as the feared and untouchable "sacred
cow."

The misconception that the corporative system is purely an
economic matter, has blinded the American press and public to the
real aim behind Catholicism's advocacy of it. Corporatism is indeed
the economic ingredient of Fascism. But it is also the essential ele-
ment of Fascism, since the corporatives make a parliament or con-
gress unnecessary. For these corporatives are the means through
which the "Leader" exercises his dictatorial will. It was precisely
because the Supreme Court judged that, by the NRA, Congress had
abdicated its powers and was thus paving the way for Fascism,
that it took vigorous action against it. The entire ideology of Fas-
cism and Nazism — in social, economic, educational, religious and
military' matters — is contained in the corporative system. Corpor-
atism is Fascism.

- Cf. John T. Flynn, in the N. Y. World-Telegram, July 12, 1940, where
he states that, by the NRA, President Roosevelt, unwittingly, "attempted
to introduce this feature of Fascism into our country".

^ Feb. 8, 1940. The N.C.W.C. called it "the most important utterance made
by the Catholic hierarchy since the bishops' program of reconstruction
of 1919".

^ Cf. Richmond Times Dispatch, Feb. 9, 1940.

The Catholic Church and the Corporative State 33

The Roman Catholic bishops, though cautiously, have spoken
nonetheless as plainly in favor of Nazi-Fascist ideology as the
Catholic hierarchies of Italy, Spain and Germany. Like Hitler and
Coughlin, they start from a standpoint of "positive Christianity,"
and call for "a comprehensive program for restoring Christ to His
true and proper place in human society," for "a reform of morals
and a profound renewal of the Christian spirit which must precede
the social reconstruction." Implicit in this is the customary anti-
Semitic and Fascist condemnation of the "Masonic-Judaic pluto-
democracies" as resting upon an immoral, un-Christian foundation.

It was in this same way that the Roman Catholic bishops of

Italy, Spain and Germany supported the rise of Fascism and

Nazism in their respective countries. In their pastoral letter from

Fulda on August 30, 1936, the Catholic hierarchy of Germany

solemnly declared to their people:

"There is no need to speak at length of the task which our people
and our country are called upon to undertake. May our Fuehrer, with
the help of God, succeed in this extraordinary difficult work . . . What
we desire is that belief in God, as taught by Christianity, will not be
overcome, but that it be universally recognized that this faith con-
stitutes the only sure foundation upon which can be built the powerful
and victorious bulwark destined to hold back the forces of Bolshe-
vism..."

All doubts as to the whole-hearted support of Hitler's program
from the beginning by the Catholic hierarchy in Germany are
cleared up by a perusal of the discourses and writings of Bishop
Aloysius Hudal, Rector of the Collegio Teutonico in Rome and one
of the closet consultors of the Holy See on German and Austrian
affairs. In his book. The Fundamentals of National Socialism, he
repeats the contents of many of his allocutions to the German
colony in Rome. The following is a sample:

"Let us see, for example, how interesting are some of the objectives
of the National Socialist program: popular unity as opposed to every-
thing that can disrupt; language as the nation's spiritual bond; con-
sciousness of Germany's historical destiny; the sentiment of race
consciousness; the attempt to solve the Jewish question; assurance of
pure German breeding; destruction of parties; culture of the family, and
the ideal of the large family considered as a matter of honor and
national pride; the militarization of the nation . . . ; a new system of
instruction and education; the corporative idea; the aristocratic princi-
ple of government by a Leader. . . . Above all, the German people are

34 Behind the Dictators

indebted to this spiritual movement for the slow destruction of the
idealogy of the Rights of Man, upon which the edifice of Weimar was
founded, as well as for destruction of faith in formal juridical constitu-
tions, of the dialectics of parliamentary procedures . . . and of democ-
racy".

In order to prove the identity of interests between Catholicism
and Nazi Socialism, Bishop Hudal quotes from the Catholic Ger-
man historian, Joseph Lortz of Minister, who, in his work. History
of the Churches,^ shows that Catholicism and Nazi-Socialism agree
on the following points:

"1. Both are mortal enemies of Bolshevism, Liberalism, and Relativ-
ism, that is to say. of the three deadly maladies from which our age
is suffering, and which fiercely attack the work of the Church. The
essential ideas of Nazi Socialism, together with the principle of liberty
bound to authority, correspond exactly to the ideas that Popes Gregory
and Pius IX endeavored to impose upon the 19th century, in face of a
world which called itself progressive, and which received their teachings
with sarcastic smiles. To this is added their common fight against
Freemasonry.

"2. Their common fight against the Godless movement; against
public immorality; against the stupid doctrine of equality, which is
destructive of life; their fight for a rational and fertile structure of
human society as desired by God, and for the corporative structure of
the state as proposed by Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI (Quadragesima
Anno); their common fight against a mode of life that is unnatural and
deprived of all healthy traditions as encountered in great modern cities
and workmen's localities.

"3. By its principle of authority and government by a Leader, a
principle upon which all national life rests. National Socialism com-
bines the German and the Catholic attitude towards human life.

"4. Most important of all: National Socialism is a confession of
faith; opposing, as it does, unbelief and destructive doubt it has con-
vinced all classes of society that the outlook of the believer is not, as
liberalism has taught, an attitude of inferiority, but one that carries
man towards the total accomplishment of his destiny. And although the
Catholic Church should never identify itself with any movement, it can-
not afford to mists the opportunity of gratefully accepting the help of
this powerful ally in the fight which she is carrying on against atheistic
rationalism."

This Catholic historian calls attention to the fact which American
observers have failed to note, that Nazi-Fascism is but the outcome
of events in which the Catholic Church has played a decisive role

5

Op cit p. 236 et seq.
p. 291 et seq.

The Catholic Church and the Corporative State 35

for centuries. He says that National Socialism is the "fulfilment of

destiny," and goes on to say:

"It was born originally out of the most profound tendencies of the
epoch, of which it is the crowning act. Undoubtedly, we now have
the right to speak of an essential transformation, of the birth of a
veritable new era, the accomplishments of which will remain, A new
epoch has opened which will serve religion and the Church, and which
will be extraordinarily well armed to carry on the fight against
atheism."

This, and much more, is quoted by Bishop Hudal to prove the
fundamental identity of the aims and purposes of Catholicism and
Nazi- Socialism. The Catholic bishops in the United States cannot
afford to be as frank in supporting Nazi-Fascist ideology in this
country. They cannot but admit, however, that their fellow-bishops
in Nazi-Fascist countries have been correct in their analysis of the
benefits which this anti-liberal and anti-democratic ideology will
bring to the organization of Roman Catholicism.

Franz von Papen, a papal Knight and Hitler's most successful hench-
man, declared in Der Volkischer Beobachter of January 14, 1934: "The Third
Reich is the first power which not only recognizes, but which puts into
practice the high principles of the Papacy."

36 Behind the Dictators

CHAPTER VII.
THE GREATEST TROJAN HORSE OF THEM ALL

A CLEVER MASQUERADE has always been characteristic
of the pohtical activities of Jesuit CathoUcism. Jesuitry is
a word in all our dictionaries that is defined as synonymous
with subtle duplicity, indirection and disingenuousness. History is
witness to the undeniable fact that the Jesuit Order, founded in
1540 for the express purpose of counter-Reformation, has excelled
in the art of Machiavellian duplicity.' It is an organization founded
on military lines to fight for the political restoration of the Roman
Papacy, and is the only order in the Catholic Church that binds its
members by special oath for this purpose. It uses the deep-seated
religious needs of the human heart in order to carry out a plan
which is patently political and reactionary from the point of view
of social matters.

This is a fact that must be borne in mind today in order to under-
stand what is behind the onslaughts of what is known as Nazi-
Fascism against the liberal constitutions of Protestant democratic
countries. Present-day events appear as a mass of contradictions
and confused paradoxes which, if they are to be fully understood,
require a most acute analysis. In order to uncover the real forces
which are playing for high stakes in the game, it is not sufficient
to examine the mere surface of things as they happen. It is neces-
sary to discover who is pulling the strings from behind the scenes.
Otherwise we reach, not the real culprits, but only the puppets
pushed out in front by their political masters to cover up and bear
the brunt of the initial attack.

All the efforts so far made in America to fight the forces of
Fascism, Nazism and Communism, in order to safeguard the gains
of liberalism and democracy, have been frustrated by the fact that
few have been aware that their chief strength lies in their ideology.
Only now is it being slowly realized that they can never be over-
come by fighting them merely along the lines of economic interests.
But all that comes under the name of Fascism will never be success-

Cf. the well-known Jesuit slogan: "Suaviter in modo, fortiter in re"-
"Be suave in manner, aggressive in act".

The Greatest Trojan Horse of Them All 37

fully met until it is further fully realized that the essential founda-
tion of its ideological factors is rooted in the past. Americans will
never win out against it unless and until they bring to light the
activating forces set in motion, long before Mussolini and Hitler,
for the express purpose of arresting and eventually destroying the
progress that followed upon the Protestant Reformation and the
American and French Revolutions. Nazi-Fascism is not merely
"Kaiserism with bad manners." It is the spearhead of a hidden
force which set out long ago to impose a new ideology upon the
post-Reformation world.

Religion, which has always been used by ambitious oppressors
to serve the ends of their political power, is the mask to conceal
their scheme of action. Although religion is the most sacred of
man's needs, it is the easiest and most effective cloak to hide a
poisoned dagger from an enemy. It has always been used by politi-
cal Catholicism as a Trojan horse with all the appurtenances of
war safely concealed within its flanks. This is especially the case
in liberal democratic countries like the United States, where a
wealthy and powerful organization like the Church of Rome is
safeguarded not only against open attack but even against mild
and just criticism. American tolerance, leaning backwards, has
forced a rigid policy on leading newspaper offices and bureaus of
public information to treat the Church of Rome as a "sacred cow."
Just as the Trojans unsuspectingly accepted the mysterious horse
thrust within their gates by the wily Greeks, so too has America
stood in awe of the "sacred cow" of Catholicism and has never
dared even to question its presence. Americans are justly fearful
of being accused of religious bigotry and intolerance, since they
have long prided themselves as guaranteeing religious liberty and
freedom of expression to all comers. They have been thus without
means to justify an open investigation of an organization suspected
of concealing dynamite that, touched off by other dangerous forces,
may explode in their midst and destroy the very Constitution that
has enabled them to remain secure and prosperous themselves and
tolerant to the Catholic church itself.

Observers in America's ivory towers have been blinded to the
real facts behind the present upheaval that threatens to wipe out

38 Behind the Dictators

every vistage of post-Reformation liberalism from the world. This
is due in great part to that subtle duplicity which has enabled Jesuit
Catholic forces to pave the way for, and cooperate with, Nazi-
Fascism's successful efforts to impose on the world an entirely new
ideology, while at the same time making it appear in Protestant
countries that the Catholic Church is on the side of democracy, is,
in fact, one of the main bulwarks of democracy. Its real aim and
purpose, however, can be known only by an examination of its
activities before and since the rise of Fascism.

The Jesuits take a solemn oath to fight a crusade for "Catholic
restoration," the success of which has always depended first on
the complete destruction of Protestantism and its increasing liber-
alizing effects on political and social life for the past four hundred
years. For it was Protestantism that undermined the political power
of the papacy in the past. It made religion a matter of individual
choice; it liberated the individual from the authoritarianism of
kings and popes; it freed the civil state from ecclesiastical inter-
ference; it caused non-Catholic governments to deny outright the
vital claim of the Church of Rome to be, by divine right, a uni-
versal, independent entity and superior to all other forms of gov-
ernment; it took away from the Church of Rome direct control
over all the institutions that go to make up the life of man — mar-
riage, education, charitable, cultural and recreational activities.
It is now accused by Catholic spokesmen as being the instigator of
communism and atheism and the ally of world Jewry and Free-
masonry.

Space permits only a very brief summary of the counter-Reforma-
tion activities of Jesuit Catholicism which led to the rise and pres-
ent successes of Nazi-Fascism against the liberalizing effects of
the Protestant Reformation. The Thirty Years War, the murderous
reign of the Duke of Alva in the Netherlands, the massacre of St.
Bartholomew and the bloody attempts at Catholic restoration in
England, are visible, and terrifying examples of the anti-Protestant
activities of the Jesuit Order in the past. It was they who instigated
the Dreyfus Affair as a means to overthrow the French Republic
and thus nullify the effects of the French Revolutions of 1789 and
1848. For these, in the Jesuit view, were also the result of the Prot-
estant Reformation.

The Greatest Trojan Horse of Them All 39

"The ^Revolutions of 1789 and 1848." says the Jesuit Father Ham-
merstein," "were the result of the Reformation. And today we are
faced with a choice of an alternative: either to live in a Socialism
during these last years of heresy [Protestantism] or to infect public
life with the principles of Christianism, that is to say 'Catholic prin-
ciples.' Anything else is but half-measure."

Hitler himself admits that he was helped by the methods of the
Jesuit counter- Reformation to carry on his ideological war. His
use of brute force against all opposing convictions and philosophi-
cal opinions is the result of the fact, as he says, that "I made a
rigorous analysis of analogous cases which are to be met with in
history, especially in the domain of religion."

But it was not until after "World War I that the active plan

for Catholic restoration began to take shape. Before the coming

of Pope Pius XI, in 1922, the Catholic church had been forced

into a more or less defensive position towards the liberal spirit of

modern times. But with the election of this admittedly pro-Jesuit

and pro-Fascist pope, Mussolini and Hitler also appeared on the

scene, and in combination with them the Catholic church took the

offensive. The following, from the historical work of Karl Boka,

an ardent supporter of Catholic restoration, is to the point:

"At this decisive moment the Pope seized the reins and took into his
hands the unified control of all fields of endeavor in which his predes-
cessors had distinguished themselves. This was the beginning of Catho-
lic Action of far-reaching importance, of the entrance of the church into
the fight, into the battle for moral and religious renovation, and for the
reform of social institutions. And this intervention had for its end the
destruction of the liberal spirit of the 19th century and the triumph of
the Christian Idea."

Since then we have witnessed Catholicism's open support of every
step taken by Nazi-Fascism to impose authoritarian regimes upon
all peoples: its active cooperation in the systematic oppression
exercised by the Fascist regime in Italy itself; its secret agreement
with Hitler's National Socialism (the Vatican was the first to rec-
ognize Hitler's regime); its support of Mussolini's shameful con-
quest of Ethiopia and even of Japan's invasion of China; its open

In his book. The Church and the State, p. 132. published before the first
world war in England, when he was professor of Canon Law at Button Hall.
' Cf. Mein Kampf, p. 186.

Staat und Parteien. p. 75, Max Niehams Verlag, Zurich and Leipzig.

40 Behind the Dictators

alliance with Franco in his rebellion against the Spanish Republic;
its joy at the annexation of Austria to Nazi Germany and the oblit-
eration of democratic Czechoslovakia; its part in the final triumph
of Leon Degrelle's Rexist Party in Belgium and its fulsome praise
for the French Fascist State which under "good Marshal Petain,"
took the place of the defunct French Republic. After Pearl Harbor
the Vatican accepted General Ken Harada as Ambassador from
Tokyo to the Holy See.

The full account of events in Germany from 1918 till the rise of
Hitler to power has yet to be written. But it cannot be denied that
they were cleverly maneuvered to their outcome by the machina-
tions of Jesuit diplomacy. The owning classes, whose liberalism
was less an expression of ideal convictions than of material inter-
ests, were gripped with the fear of the growth of socialism under
the Weimar Republic. By clever propaganda, Roman Catholic
forces succeeded in convincing them that an hierarchical church
was their best protection against the attacks of the "lower classes."
On the other hand, they used the anti-liberalism of German
socialists to prove to these latter that political Catholicism and
the socialist movement, both opponents of this liberalism, could
form a solid basis for common action in the domain of political
action.

The coalition between the Social-Democrats and the Catholic
Center Party was the result of this maneuver; in reality it was an
unconscious submission of the former to Jesuit Catholicism, which
was thus enabled to use Catholic democratic politicians and the
anti-Jesuits for its own ends. It was so cleverly done that the real
aim of the Jesuits was not realized until Pope Pius XI dissolved
the Catholic Center Party and thus left the way clear for Hitler's
rise to power. In all this. Hitler had the cooperation of Monsignor
Kaas, the real head of the Catholic Center Party. The role played
by former Chancellor Briining, the political leader of the Party, is
as obscure as that of his ill-fated colleague Schuschnigg. The pres-
ent pope, Pius XII, was papal nuncio in Bavaria at that time and
was well known to have been an enemy of the German Republic.
After Hitler came to power he was sent as nuncio to Berlin and
immediately drew up a concordat between Hitler and Pope Pius XL

The Greatest Trojan Horse of Them All

41

Shrewd Franz von Papen, a favorite protege of the Jesuits, also
played an important part in preparing the way for Hitler's final
victory over the Social-Democrats and all other parties in the
Reichstag.

And if we look closely into present happenings in our own
Western Hemisphere we cannot fail to note a cautious, yet aggres-
sive pro-Fascist and anti-liberal trend in all official Catholic utter-

7H;e: tablet. PATt'RL

I

-ft i.con-in Prie^T

:if^R^p^r,

.M;it Rti. Myn T. ■cII"<Ji(1!m

In Pislof a) UrB«i ?m>k

T» Prolnt

GATHOLFC SUPPORT
OF NAZIS INDICATED

SUtwntnl b) Ralcft B^tNspi''

Con'«r»nc» ti Eip«clKj to

Rsvii* Ourch Stind

Catholic Bishojis

'. on Nation;)! I)f fcn-e,

S»YSWEIIUSt"jiV0iOW«' The Bishops ct th- A^^ttative

^ ( Cocnmitti-e of Ihe Nitiorj! C«:l>o.^ V.«l-

Bj^e-Wadi»ofth B<t| it.' f"e ConfrreOce. thrwgh ihr gern^l sec-
ia!«il It U.<T». T. I rrtary, the Ri6hi Rrv. Monsi6»or Miff-*'

^!^ i««« ^ Miliury A*-^ vCjCjOff^^ .^,

DUE EARLY IN SEPTEUaER

I

LtuSnr Synipalhati« ts Hitlar

Activt M ScMion — M«tl

Biihap Im Eticlid

V^l^ ka TM Alv ^f T^H
)4r-.«- cf i>-ri£4B Jtimbop^ m^vmif
Li JPVtdK. vbKk c^h4 '^ ^

ftf, O/fm'

^<_>*^..

»a*^

42 Behind the Dictators

ances. American democracy's greatest danger is Fascist penetration
of the Latin- American Republics, whose way of Hfe has always
been controlled by the Church of Rome. Evidences are plentiful
that this Nazi-Fascist penetration has the support of the Catholic
Church.^ The Catholic press in the United States ridiculed and
openly resented the attempt of the United States to "impose its
will" on the Pan-American Conference held at Havana in 1942 to
countract Nazi-Fascist efforts in South American countries. The
close observer will not fail to note the pronounced anti-Semitic,
anti-Masonic, anti-British and pro-Fascist tone of official Catholic
periodicals and newspapers. They also pooh-poohed any need of
compulsory military training in this country, and instructed the
Catholic people to write to their senators and representatives in
Washington to protest against efforts to pass the Burke- Wads worth
bill. They accuse the Jews and the Masons and liberal organizations
of being the real "fifth columnists" against whom Mr. Hoover and
his FBI should take action. Montreal's Catholic Mayor Houde in
1940 openly defined Canada's law requiring national registration
for home defense, and urged the citizens of Canada's largest city
to disobey the law.

Political ecclesiasticism, which thus makes use of man's need of
religion to serve its thirst for power, forfeits the right to be called
religious.

^ Cf. N. Y. Times' report from Bogota, Colombia, June 3, 1940.

For confirmation of these facts, see issues of the Jesuit magazine
America, N. Y. Catholic News, Brooklyn Catholic Tablet, Social Justice,
etal. for 1940-41.

Nazi Socialism and Catholic Restoration 43

CHAPTER VIII.
NAZI SOCIALISM AND CATHOLIC RESTORATION

CATHOLIC ACTION, instituted by Pope Pius XI, is a generic
term for Catholic reform and reconstruction — the restora-
tion of Catholicism to the position of authority which it
held over the nations before the Reformation. It has a two-fold
object: a purge of liberal elements within the church itself, and
the complete destruction of Protestantism and its liberalizing effects
in those countries which threw off the yoke of the papacy in the
past. Catholic Action was brought into being coincidentally with
the rise of Nazi-Fascism, and was later consolidated by the Lateran
Pact with Mussolini in 1929, and by the concordat with Nazi
Socialism in 1933. It gained its objectives to a large extent in
Europe through the military might and fifth column methods of its
Nazi-Fascist partner.

It can be safely said that Nazi-Fascism and Jesuitism, the two
greatest reactionary forces in the world today, are but two facets
of the same unity — one civil, and the other ecclesiastical. For an
authoritarian civil State cannot function properly without the help
of an authoritarian ecclesiastical system. It is nonetheless true,
though not sufficiently recognized, that a free electoral State is
impossible without the spiritual support and nourishment of a
free church.

Nazi-Fascism's anti-Semitic ideology, its anti-Masonic and anti-
democratic activities, its propaganda methods, the hierarchical
structure of its organization, and even its war program, were copied
from the Jesuit Order. The crusades of the Middle Ages also began
with persecution of the Jews, and were preceded by a purging
within the church itself. Likewise a brutal cleansing within Catholi-
cism preceded the wars of religion instigated by the Jesuits in the
16th and 17th centuries. Its object was to rid Catholicism of the
heretical Protestant influences which had arisen within the church's
organization before and after Martin Luther's time. It is in the
light of these events that Nazi Socialism's fight with all the
churches in Germany must be regarded. On the one hand, it was an
attempted purge of recalcitrant elements within the Catholic

44 Behind the Dictators

Church which had been infected with hberal and Protestant ideas
during the post-war years in Germany under the Weimar Repub-
hc. On the other hand, it was a fight against Protestantism and its
hberal institutions which had been afforded still greater scope for
development after the fall of the monarchy in 1918. The fight was
carried out, in both instances, according to the traditional methods
of Jesuit strategy.

Many Americans, however, do not see it in this light. They
think only of the fact that the Hitler regime in the beginning
interned Catholic priests in concentration camps because they re-
fused to obey his dictates; that heads of religious orders were
brought to trial for smuggling money out of the country; that
some of the members of religious orders were arrested and found
guilty of crimes against morals; that some priests were imprisoned
for allegedly harboring communists; that the Hitlerites turned
against Cardinal Faulhaber, Cardinal Innitzer and the Bishop of
Salzburg; that public school education was taken out of the hands
of the priests in Austria; that the Catholic Center Party was anni-
hilated and its members persecuted; that its leader. Dr. Klausner,
was assassinated on June 30, 1934, in Hitler's "blood purge."
These and other facts are at times cited to show that Nazi Socialism
seems to be actively opposed to the Catholic Church. They are,
however, merely facts whose real significance is hidden beneath
the surface. In reality, they are not indications of a war against the
Catholic Church as a whole, but only against certain groups op-
posed to a corresponding plan of reconstruction and Fascist regi-
mentation instituted at the same time by Pope Pius XI within the
church itself. Hitler, Goebbels, von Papen, and the greatest part
of the highest officials in the Third Reich are Catholics by birth and
education.

The popular confusion about the relations between the Catholic
Church and Nazi Socialism is due to the fact that few people have
any precise knowledge of the inner workings of the Catholic
Church. They have been led to believe that Catholicism is a rigidly
uniform system. The truth of the matter is that it is not the wonder-
ful unity that it is generally supposed to be. Like all natural and
historical phenomena, the Catholic Church is also subject to the
law of polarity and philosophical contradictions. It has always had

Nazi Socialism and Catholic Restoration 45

its conservative, reactionary element pitted against opposing liberal
groups. In order, therefore, to understand fully the status of the
Catholic Church in relation to Nazi Socialism it is necessary to
know the details of these opposing tendencies and forces within
the church's organization. History alone can furnish the key to
the mystery.

An outstanding Catholic historian, Josef Schmidlin, draws a

clear picture of the different factions which existed within the

Catholic Church towards the end of the 19th century, and how

victory for the intransigent Jesuit party led to the rise of Fascism.

The following, from his History of the Popes of Modem Times,'

is to the point:

"The history of the Popes during the 19th century presents a
succession of divergent systems following each other hke a game of
opposites and of warring forces striving for the mastery, with first
one side winning and then another. On one side are the zealots striv-
ing in an intransigent and intolerant manner to preserve fixed tradi-
tions and orthodoxy, and who take a hostile attitude towards the
progress of modern civilization and the liberal victories that fol-
lowed on the great revolutions, which are the unremitting enemies of
the [Catholic] Church, the State and the principle of authority. On
the other side are the liberals who. actuated by a more equitable
political sense, endeavor to break free from the traditional restraints
bound up with the ideas of old, and who try to reconcile themselves
with modem progress in order to live in peace with liberal states and
governments, and to integrate the church, as a spiritual force, in
contemporary civilization.

"From the beginning this war-like game of opposites has been
going on within the Roman Curia, and especially within the College
of Cardinals. It is most evident in the papal conclaves which become
the stage for this play of divergent tendencies, which are afterwards
openly expressed in the attitudes of successive pontiffs. For the popes
support one or the other of these tendencies and personify them by
the conduct of their internal and foreign policies after mounting the
papal throne."

Thus it can be seen that the Catholic Church has been torn be-
tween two main irreconcilable factions, corresponding to the two
opposing ideologies of Fascism and Democracy, which are war-
ring to the death at present all over the world. They are two dis-
tinct parties whose effects are felt in all ecclesiastical groups in
the church. They are particularly active during times of papal

Vol. Ill, p. 1.

46

Behind the Dictators

elections, and at all times go beyond the field of religion and pro-
foundly affect political and social affairs. Their effect can easily be
seen in every phase of social and political life in the United States.'

The fight between these two opposing factions has been in-
creasingly evident since the time of the Encyclopedists. The spirit
of progress had developed so strongly in the 18th century, even
within the Catholic Church, that Pope Clement XIV was able to
succeed, where other popes had failed, in completely suppressing

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the Society of Jesuits which represented, then as now, the intolerant
and intransigent element of Catholicism. In spite of Pope Clement's
irrevocable decree, however, the Jesuits were again restored to
power by Pope Pius VII after the fall of Napoleon in 1814.' But
the liberal Catholic groups, which recognized to a certain extent
the victories won by the French Revolution, managed to exist side
by side with the Jesuit reactionary group which has always regarded
the liberal progress of civilization as something pernicious and
diabolic. The progressive groups did all they could to bring the

Cf. The Catholic Church in Politics, a series of six factual articles by
L. H. Lehmann in The New Republic. Nov. -Dec, 1938.

" The Jesuits lost heavily during their 40 years of banishment. Before
their suppression they controlled practically all educational work in Euro-
pean Catholic countries. In 1749 they had 639 colleges with up to 2,000
students in each; in France alone they had 40,000 students.

Nazi Socialism and Catholic Restoration 47

teachings of the church into hne with modem philosophic doc-
trines, and thereby incurred the increasing enmity of the Jesuit
faction. They showed themselves skeptical of relic and saint wor-
ship and of religious sentimentalities in general. Moreover, they
made no secret of their hostility to the Jesuits. The Benedictine
Order, long ante-dating the Jesuits, greatly angered the latter by
their efforts in promoting what is known as the "Liturgical Move-
ment" — a return to Evangelical Christianity and an attempt to
cleanse Catholic worship of modem innovations and superstitions,
such as wonder-working devotions to the saints. They aimed this
especially at the Jesuits' pet devotion of the "Sacred Heart," which
has since been outdone, however, by more modem fads like the
Little Flower devotion. The Jesuits fought back by their usual
underhand methods of playing on the fears of bishops and secular
priests and even by sending members of their order, disguised as
laymen, to spy on the Benedictines, as was done at the Benedictine
Abbey of Maria Laach near Cologne.

A severe blow to the hopes of liberal Catholic groups was the
Syllabus of Errors decreed by Pope Pius IX at Jesuit insistence.
One of these "errors," in particular, fairly took the ground from
under the feet of those who had striven for a more progressive and
liberal Catholicism. In complete accord with traditional Jesuit in-
transigence. Pope Pius IX solemnly condemned the proposition
that "the Roman Pontiff can and ought to reconcile himself to,
and agree with, liberalism and modem civilization."

The history of the Catholic Church entered a new phase with
the proclamation of the dogma of the personal infallibility of the
pope, which was also railroaded through the Vatican Council
(1870) by the machinations of the Jesuits. This was the severest
blow of all to the liberal elements, and certain groups hostile to
the Jesuits followed Doellinger out of the church and established
themselves as the Catholic Christian Church. But the vast majority
of those who had fought the Jesuits and opposed the dogma of in-
fallibility bowed their heads and submitted with resignation.
Bishop Fitzgerald of Little Rock, Arkansas, held out till the end
and voted against it. Archbishop Kenrick of St. Louis and five other
American bishops left the Council and returned home without
voting.

48 Behind THE Dictators

From that time the forces of reaction fought on, invisible from
the outside, but all the more effectively because they worked by
intrigue and trickery. The popes themselves often aided this under-
hand working — at times they covered up the real intent of the
Jesuits and, at other times, they restrained them lest their excessive
zeal should wreck the Vatican's other political maneuvers. In order
to prevent the news of the increasingly bitter controversies waged
at papal conclaves from reaching the public. Pope Pius XI imposed
an oath of perpetual silence on everyone connected with them in
the future.

All these developments paved the way for the Vatican's ecclesi-
astical support for the coming Fascism. There followed a rapidly
increasing trend in Catholic action in favor of rigorously authori-
tarian, conservative and solely hierarchical policies. Apparent
yielding to contrary policies in democratic countries did not in any
way affect Rome's fixed goal. It merely served to help its attain-
ment, since it was able to employ what are now known as fifth
column methods by using to its own purposes freedom of speech
and religious tolerance in those countries. Once democracy and
freedom of speech have been obliterated by military might, as in
Nazi-Fascist controlled countries in Europe, the real authoritarian
and intolerant nature of Jesuit Catholicism comes to light. It imme-
diately proclaims itself the ecclesiastical counterpart of civil dicta-
torship. What has happened in France since its capitulation to
Hitler and Mussolini is a clear case of this. Likewise in Germany
the Catholic bishops in 1940 decreed a solemn oath of loyalty to
Nazi Socialism,"^ and in Slovakia in the same year the governmental
structure of that country was publicly and officially declared to be
a combination of Nazi Socialism and Roman Catholicism.

Catholic historians do not trouble to deny that the success of
Fascism is to a great extent due to the reactionary policies of the
late Pope Pius XI. Josef Schmidlin,^ already quoted, in spite of his

" A Vatican dispatch to the N. Y. Times of Sept. 17, 1940, stated that the
pope had decided that it was more ependient to defer official pronounce-
ment on this pledge till the end of the war.

' Op. cit., p. 3.

NaziSocialism and Catholic Restoration 49

prudence in the matter, states:

"This conservative heritage appears not only by the fact that the
Pope (Pius XI) alhed the church to the Fascist state, but also by the
fact that he seeks to deprive the clergy and Catholicism of all political
activity and strongly supports Cathohc Action, which is based upon
the principle of an absolute hierarchy."

Schmidlin also points out that hberal CathoHc groups during
the reign of Pius XI placed their last and only hope in the election
of a liberal pope to succeed him. By the selection of the aristocratic,
conservative Cardinal Pacelli as Pius XII, that hope was forever
frustrated.

The Fascist policies of the Vatican can be seen from the follow-
ing four points:

1. In the application of "modern" methods of political action, that
is, fascist methods,

2. In the opposition to the one-time Catholic (popular) political
parties.

3. In the distrust of the lower clergy, because of its too tolerant
attitude toward pre-Fascist ideas of individual rights and liberties.

4. In the creation of a movement of restoration. Catholic Action,
entirely dependent upon Vatican bureaucracy.

Much of the mystery of Vatican relations with Nazi-Fascism
can thus be solved. Persecution of the Catholic Church in Germany
has been directed only against those elements which did not en-
tirely submit to the ever- increasing centralization of authority in
Church and State. To this end the Vatican helped to crush out the
Catholic popular parties both in Italy and Germany and centralized
all political matters in Rome. This insured to the dictators freedom
from popular interference on the part of Catholics; it established
a more complete dictatorial regime within the Catholic Church
itself; it enabled the Vatican to enter into secret concordats with
fascist countries already existing, and with democratic countries,
like Spain, France, Belgium and Portugal, after the destruction of
their democratic governments by revolution and blitzkrieg. Finally
it left the way dear for complete harmony and unity between
Nazi-Fascism and Jesuit Catholicism.

50 Behind the Dictators

CHAPTER IX.
HITLER'S FIGHT AGAINST THE CHURCHES

THE FULL STORY of the rise of Nazi-Fascism has still to be
written. When it appears it will surprise most Americans to
discover the part played in it by the Christian Churches —
Protestant as well as Catholic. For Nazi-Fascism was as much a
product of the Churches as of the State, and a movement towards
religious as well as political and social authoritarianism. European
Catholic historians immediately recognized it as the final act in
the Jesuit plan of counter-Reformation instituted exactly four
hundred years before — in 1940.

Americans will never fully understand the real aims and activi-
ties of the Church of Rome so long as they continue to look at
Catholicism from our American point of view. On this side of
the Atlantic attention has been focussed mainly on attempts of a
few "liberal" Catholic spokesmen to integrate their Church with
the American way of life. These are sincere in thinking that Catho-
lic authoritarianism can be reconciled with the liberal, tolerant
principles of American democracy. But the Church of Rome has
its roots in Europe; there its metaphysic was first established. It is
therefore to its background and activities in Europe we must look
if we want to judge what its real nature is. It is the policy deter-
mined upon "beyond the Alps" in Europe that directs and guides
the Catholic Church even in America. Well-meaning Catholic
spokesmen in the democracies are permitted to voice their liberal
views, but their wishful thinking has never had any effect in really
bringing the Catholic Church into line with our American demo-
cratic way of life.

This issue has been bitterly fought out in Europe between Nazi-
Fascism and the Christian churches. As far as Europe is concerned
the fight is ended — with victory on the side of Nazi-Fascism and
Catholic ultramontanism. In Italy, Spain, Austria, Poland, Portu-
gal, France and Belgium, Catholicism alone was involved. In
Germany, however, both the Protestant and Catholic Churches

Cf. for example, the article of Rev. John F. Cronin, S. S., Rome — Ally
of Democracy! in the magazine Common Sense for October, 1940.

Hitler's Fight Against the Churches 51

have played their respective parts. There the struggles were as bit-
ter, and purges as bloody, within the Churches as within the State.
They were more severe and bloody within Protestantism than
Catholicism; many more liberal Protestant leaders than Catholic
were liquidated or put out of the way in concentration camps. By-
refusing to make any concessions to Nazism, the Evangelical Prot-
estant Churches are said to have actually paved the way for the
success of the "German Christian" movement. These "German
Christians" — Protestant Fascists — professed to consider it neces-
sary to submit to a spiritual leader in order to free Protestantism
of liberalism and rationalism. They thus became one with the
Catholic Fascists who, in keeping with the Catholic Action crusade
of Pope Pius XI, were purging every taint of liberalism and democ-
racy out of the Catholic clergy and were bringing the Catholic
Church in Germany into line with pure Vatican absolutism. Gon-
zague de Reynold, ardent Jesuit Catholic reformer, in his book
L'Europe Tragique,^ states:

"A real fight has been waged within Protestantism. The Evangelical
Protestants refused to make any concessions and established a confes-
sional church in opposition to that set up by the state . . . We are on
the threshold of a religious schism. These are the final repercussions of
the Reformation. We are witnessing a phase of dissolution [of Protes-
tantism]. Many German Protestants believe that to reject a purely
religious authority like the Papacy, would constitute a danger to the
church and to Christianity."

In order to understand what happened to the Catholic Church
in Germany, it is necessary to go back to the time of Pope Leo XIII,
well known for his unrelenting antagonism to the liberal constitu-
tions of states.^ In order to counteract the increasing influence of
19th century liberalism on Catholic countries. Pope Leo XIII urged
on Catholic leaders throughout the world the formation of Catho-
lic political parties. He thought that if such Catholic parties took
an active part in parliamentary politics they would, by securing the
balance of power, succeed in obtaining victory for the Church. He
even hoped that these Catholic political parties would eventually
obtain a large enough majority, by democratic means, to enable

- P. 329.

Cf. Great Encyclical Letters of Leo XIII — also The Converted Catholic
for October, 1940, p. 19.

52 Behind the Dictators

them to seize complete control of governments. What actually
happened, however, was the very opposite. The Catholic parties
gradually came under the influence of their liberal opponents and
copied many of their ideas. Thus in Italy the Catholic party became
the "popular" liberal party headed by the now-exiled priest Don
Sturzo; in Germany it became the liberal "Center" party.

This liberal influence of Catholic parties became so great that
the Holy See began to regard Catholic political trends as a grave
danger which actually threatened the juridical and political unity
of the Church itself. These Catholic parties became infiltrated with
the liberal spirit of the French Revolution of 1789. The ideas of
the rights of man, of religious tolerance, of freedom of conscience,
of speech and press, were adopted by a great number of Catholic
politicians and by many of the lower clergy.

So pronounced had this trend of popular Catholic politics be-
come in the United States, for instance, that when Alfred E. Smith
was nominated for the Presidency in 1928, the Vatican and Catho-
lic bishops in Europe were shocked to hear that Mr. Smith had
been prompted by priests to proclaim these principles to be, not a
mere matter of "favor" (as he first stated) but also a matter of
"innate right. ""^ This was rank heresy, and, after Mr. Smith's defeat
at the polls in 1928, the Vatican rebuked those who had advised
the former Governor of New York to proclaim doctrines so con-
trary to official Catholic teachings.

By the end of the First World War, the Catholic political parties
had begun to lose the importance which they had, in the eyes of the
Vatican when it first brought them into being. They became so
integrated with democratic States, founded as they were on political
compromise, on tolerance and the idea of equality, that it was con-
fusing to note the alliances made by some Catholic parties with
bourgeois groups and by others with socialist groups. It had become
apparent that the control of Catholic politics was being lost by the
Holy See in Rome. Pope Leo XIII's plan had miscarried, and had
proved a boomerang against the real aims of the Church as he had
proclaimed them. Catholic political action had acquired an inde-

Cf. Alfred E. Smith's reply to the Open Letter of the late Charles C.
Marshall in Forum Magazine, March, 1928; also Mr. Marshall's able work
The Roman Catholic Church in the Modern State.

Hitlers Fight Against the Churches 53

pendence that made it a menace to. rather than a docile instru-
ment of, the Vatican. Liberal Catholicism, in fact, which, to all
appearance, had received its death-blow by the decree of papal
infallibility towards the end of the 19th century, had taken on a
new lease of life by means of the very Catholic political parties
which had been established and sustained by Pope Leo XIII to
oppose the hated liberal constitutions of democratic States.

This is how the Vatican saw it after the First World War, and
the conclusions which it drew from its observations in the matter
were the first steps towards the rise of what we now call Fascism.

Many of the non-Jesuit religious orders in Germany, notably
the Franciscans and the Benedictines, started movements which dis-
pleased the Vatican. The "Liturgical Movement" of the Benedic-
tines; their attempt to establish contact with the Oecumenical
Evangelical Movement, and their effort towards a reunion of all
Christian Churches; the attitude of the Patres Unionis ("Fathers of
Unity") who were even prepared to modify the dogmas of papal
infallibility and the Immaculate Conception in order to help their
work of reunion; their open and secret negotiations with groups
in the Anglican Church under the guidance of the late Cardinal
Mercier — all these liberal reform movements were regarded as
tainting the lower clergy and the intelligent laity with the heresy
of liberalism and Protestantism. The Vatican regarded its authority
as gravely menaced by it all, and determined to wage relentless war
against this growing liberalism in political and spiritual matters.

It should not be surprising that Rome became disturbed at the
prospect of a revival of the Lutheran Reformation. It was particu-
larly marked in Germany. Friedrich Heiler has the following to
say on this point:

"These recent tendencies of Catholicism have spread to a great
extent in Germany. German Catholicism is in fact a particular kind of
Catholicism, due to the fact that it has been subject, continually if
not visibly, to the influence of the reformed churches of Christendom,
and has constantly absorbed certain features belonging to Evangeli-
cal Christianity."

But the democratic States were the most powerful in the world

' Professor at th
Kirche, p. 175 et seq.

Professor at the University of Marburg, in his work, Im Ringen um die

54 Behind the Dictators

at that time. The CathoHc poHtical parties had become too strong
to be stopped by mild protests or even by encycHcal letters from
Rome. Repressive action, carried out by the help of authoritarian
secular regimes, was necessary. Thus the two great opposing fac-
tions within the Catholic Church became locked again in a gigantic
struggle: one possessing the Evangelical Catholic idea, deep-seated
as of old in the hearts of true Christian believers; the other, the
coldly imperial, sectarian and intransigent Roman Party, repre-
sented by the Holy See under the domination of the Society of
Jesuits.

It is in the light of these facts that Hitler's "campaign against
the churches" must be viewed. Neither Hitler nor the Jesuits could
forgive priests and bishops in Germany who sided with the cause
of liberalism and democracy during the Weimar Republic. It was
against them that the acts of Catholic repression were directed.
Hitler and Pope Pius XI acted in concert to destroy every vestige
of liberalism in Germany: the one in social and political life, the
other in the sphere of religion. By dissolving the Catholic Center
Party, the Pope removed the last obstacle to Hitler's rise to power,
and also deprived the Catholic people and clergy in Germany of
any say-so in political matters. He had done the same for Mussolini
in Italy by the dissolution of the Partito Popolare and the exiling
of its priest-leader Don Sturzo. By his Catholic Action he concen-
trated all Catholic political power in the Holy See. Thenceforth,
the Vatican was free to make arbitrary concordats with the Fascist
dictatorships.

The lower clergy in Germany did not yield without a struggle.
Many defied both Hitler and the Pope. Some priests were im-
prisoned. Even when the pristine ardor of Cardinal Innitzer for
Hitler and Nazi Socialism showed signs of cooling, hostility was
engineered against him. Catholic schools, mostly under the care
of liberal, non-Jesuit religious orders, were closed; some heads of
these anti-Jesuit religious orders were punished for attempting to
save their funds by smuggling them out of the country. In the
press of America this was called "Hitler's persecution of the Catho-
lic Church," and served to conceal the common purpose of Nazi

Hitler's Fight Against the Churches 55

Socialism and ultramontane Catholicism. There were some mild
protests from Rome but no adverse action. Even the closing of
Catholic schools in Austria went almost unprotested. These were
regarded by the Vatican as but a small loss compared to what was
gained by the elimination of disobedient priests and their liberal
views. The Nazi- Vatican concordat continues to hold and function.

With the extinction of liberal Catholicism and the imprisonment
of liberal Protestant leaders, Vatican absolutism was triumphant.
Of supreme satisfaction to the Jesuit Catholic faction was the
knowledge of the apparent dissolution of Protestantism in Ger-
many, and the fact that the pro-Nazi Protestant "German Chris-
tians" were forced to realize, as Gonzague de Reynolds points out,
that "to reject a purely religious authority like the papacy would
constitute a danger to the Church and Christianity."

56 Behind the Dictators

CHAPTER X.
NATIONAL SOCIALISM AND CATHOLIC ACTION

c

ATHOLIC ACTION— the crusade for Jesuit-Catholic Re-
form — has the following characteristics:

1. Its direction, as laid down in Pope Pius XI's Encyclical Quadra-

gesimo Anno, is explicitly entrusted to the Society of Jesus.

2. Its aims are: the extermination of the hated liberal spirit of the
19th century; the formation of a world crusade against socialism and
communism; the success of the counter-Reformation.

3. The means to obtain these ends are: the annihilation of the old
Catholic political parties, which became impregnated with the "demo-
cratic ideology, and the purging of the secular clergy, the religious
orders and the laity in so far as they persist in holding to non-Jesuit
opinions in matters of ecclesiastical policy.

4. The most suitable political regime to assure the success of this
crusade for Catholic reconstruction is the hierarchical, authoritarian
form of the Fascist state or of Nazi Socialism.

The secular clergy of the Catholic Church in Germany and other
European countries have always secretly fostered a democratic
tradition, and for many years considered it their principal task to
live in peace with Protestantism and the liberal institutions of the
modern world. For this reason they constituted the chief obstacle
in the way of the Catholic Reconstruction Movement initiated by
the late Pope Pius XL They were not friendly to the idea of the
corporate state, to the plan of the new crusade, nor to the Vatican's
aim to set up complete papal absolutism. Unlike the Irish-domi-
nated clergy in America, the Catholic clergy of France and of
Germany and other European countries have never fully identified
the pope himself with the seat of power in Rome. They acquiesced
in taking their religion from Rome but not their politics, nor in
accepting the Vatican's direction of extra- spiritual matters in their
respective countries.

In modern times, the European Catholic clergy veered increas-
ingly to the idea that it was advisable to encourage Christian toler-
ance and friendly relations with all religious sects, even with those
who belonged to no Church. Many were persuaded that the day
would come when all the Christian Churches could be united on a
basis of a universal Evangelical reform within the Catholic-Church.

National Socialism and Cathouc Action 57

This liberal reform would be aimed at the overthrow of the "juris-
dictional" papacy, with its unscriptural, political Roman Curia and
its claims to ecclesiastical absolutism; it would be a reform against
papal imperialism, against Jesuit-fascist discipline and overlord-
ship. It would aim to set up an "Evangelical" Papacy which, freed
of political ambitions, would act as a center of Evangelical unity for
all Churches of Christendom. This would indeed be true Catholic
reform — a second Reformation, the setting up of Evangelical
Catholicism. It would mean the purging of medieval accretions of
doctrine and liturgy and. of course, the complete banishment again
of the Jesuits from the Church and the world, as was accomplished
by Pope Clement XIV in 1773.

All such aims and plans for a liberal. Evangelical reform, how-
ever, fell within the explicit condemnations of religious tolerance
and the liberal, democratic idea by Jesuit-controlled popes during
the past 150 years. The late General of the Jesuits, Wemz, in his
treatise on Canon Law,' says:

"As concerns the relations of the Catholic Church with other re-
ligious associations, there is no doubt that all religious associations
of unbelievers and all the Christian sects are regarded by the Catho-
lic Church as entirely illegitimate and devoid of all right of existence.
These organizations are formally rebels against the Church. As a
consequence, he is in grave error who believes that the different re-
ligious sects, such as, for example, the Anglicans, the Lutherans, the
Orthodox Catholics, constitute legitimate parts of a universal Church
of Christ, and that they are in some way collateral branches of the
Catholic Church, or sister Churches."

Against this hope for true Catholic, reform that would have
brought about a tolerant. Evangelical Catholic Christian Church,
the Jesuits swept the field for an absolutely totalitarian set-up in
Catholicism to go hand-in-hand with the Nazi-Fascist regime in the
secular order. On their side they had Hitler himself who, as far as
condemnation of religious tolerance is concerned, has always
shown himself to be a better Catholic than the ordinary European
priest and many bishops. In Mein Kampf he upholds and approves
of the dogmatic intolerance of the Vatican party in the Catholic
Church; like the Jesuits he regards religious tolerance as an effective
instrument for the establishment and support of the liberal aims

1 Cf. his Jus Decretalium. Vol. 1. p. 13.

58 Behind the Dictators

of the Jews and Freemasons;' his chief cause of complaint against
the clergy of the Center Party in Germany was that they had
allowed themselves to become convinced of the idea of tolerance,
and that they had made alliances with these deadly enemies of
the Christian religion; he holds that his principal task is the com-
batting of this deplorable situation from which religion has suf-
fered so much. He also condemns Protestantism for persisting in
its tolerant attitude towards Judaism; he adds, however, that

"the believing Protestant who belongs to National Socialism could exist
side by side with the fervent Catholic without his religious convictions
being in any way affected thereby".

This yielding of Catholics to the liberal tendencies of religious
tolerance was regarded by the Jesuits as the "Protestantizing" of
Catholicism; to correct this they deemed that drastic, punitive
measures were imperative. The late Jesuit Cardinal Billot expresses
true Jesuit contempt for this yielding of the secular clergy to liber-
alizing tendencies, and also advocates the severity that should be
meted out to them, when he speaks of

"the poor little parish priests who fill the greater part of our religious
magazines and periodicals with their speeches, seeking thereby to create
a new apologetic to take the place of the miracles which the 20th cen-
tury no longer understands. There are but two replies to make to this:
the first is the whip . . ." ^

This is in perfect keeping with Mussolini's symbol of the fasces
or bundle of rods, such as he and his Nazi partner have so ruth-
lessly employed to scourge Europe of every vestige of liberty and
tolerance. Thus, Hitler's program of Catholic "repression" is but
the carrying out of the Jesuit punitive measures, and a part of the
plan for Catholic reform against those members of the Catholic
clergy in all countries who have opposed Jesuit hegemony over
Catholic affairs.^

Catholic Action, like Nazi-Fascism, ostensibly started out as a
crusade against Godless communism which, the Jesuits say, is but

" German edition, p. 345.

I Ib„ p. 294. " lb., p. 632.

Die erste ist die Peitsche . . ." in Hugo Koch's Katholizismus und
Jesuitismus. p. 53.

The German bishops, the Catholic Popular Association and the Center
Party opposed the re-entry of the Jesuits into Germany in 1910. Because of
this the Jesuits regarded the German bishops as "recalcitrants"; cf Hoens-
broech. The Jesuit Order, p. 248.

National Socialism and Catholic Action 59

the radical application of the Protestant principle of the separation
of Church and State. They hold that communism is the extreme of
Protestantism predicted by the Jesuits since their founding by
Ignatius Loyola to fight the Reformation of Martin Luther, and is
the result of the wrong principle that the internal life of the indi-
vidual is the only place where he should be allowed to seek satis-
faction for his religious needs. The Jesuits therefore launched their
new offensive principally against Soviet Russia, the first country
since the Wars of Religion that seriously threatened to undermine
their work of counter-Reformation. They have found it more
menacing to their aims than Protestant England was in the 16th
and 17th centuries. By completely separating the State from the
influence of all forms of religion, the communists have tried to
make religion a purely private matter and by this means to effect
the complete liberation of the individual and the conduct of civil
affairs from all ecclesiastical influences. Because of this, the Jesuits
identify Protestantism and democracy with socialism and commun-
ism and seek to destroy them together with all movements to the
left of Fascism and Nazism.

Catholic Action, similar to Nazi-Fascism, will not be content
with any half-hearted reform in Catholicism. Just as a brutal war
campaign against democratic nations has been deemed necessary
in Nazi-Fascist policy, so a brutal cleansing within the church,
even at the risk of some loss to Catholicism as a whole, is a neces-
sary part of the Jesuit program of Catholic Reconstruction. Gon-
zague de Reynold, one of the most ardent zealots of the movement,
whom we have already quoted in these pages, frankly admits that
the wiping out of these Protestant tendencies (liberalism and
socialism) constitutes the first problem of religion, namely, of
Roman Catholicism, and that the new "Christian regime" which
will come about as a result of this desired Catholic Reconstruction
of the social order, will have to be Fascist, since, as he says, "Fas-
cism has been the only successful attempt to create a new regime."
The Italian socialist, L. Segni, confirms this when he states that

"Fascism is an epiphenomenon in keeping with the evolution of the
Catholic Church as directed by the tactics of the Jesuits."

Cf. L'Europe Tragique, p. 93.

In his book, L'Esprit du Fascisme, p. 15 et seq.

60 Behind the Dictators

CHAPTER XL

REXISM AND CATHOLIC ACTION

NOWHERE has Catholic Action shown itself more in line
with Nazi-Fascism than in Belgium where Leon Degrelle's
Rexist Party in 1940 came into its own. Pope Pius XI gave
the Jesuit slogan Christus Rex — "Christ the King" — to Catholic
Action as the battle-cry for its crusade for Catholic Reconstruction
of the social order. The same cry. Viva Christo Rey, was used by
Franco's Fascists in their war against the legitimate Republican
government of Spain. It was the war cry of the fanatic Mexican
Indians who were spurred on by the Jesuits to commit acts of
sabotage against the Republican government of Mexico. It was
also the cry of the Spanish Rebel officers who, with the help of
their Moorish troops, tortured, violated and slaughtered nearly
15,000 men, women and children at Badajos.

The Rexists in Belgium claimed the honor of being the first
fruits of Catholic Action, the "Christian Fronters" of Belgium.
Their leader, Leon Degrelle — the Belgian peasants nicknamed
him "Adolf Degrelle — was won over to the movement by Mon-
signor Picard, when he was a student at the University of Louvain.
He and all his assistants are products of Jesuit training.' He became
the great "lay apostle" of Catholic Action in the Jesuit drive to
align the Catholic Church with Nazi-Fascist plans for the "new
order" in Europe after the destruction of liberalism and democracy.

As the scope of Degrelle's activities increased, his Christ-the-
King movement was temporarily separated from Catholic Action
in Belgium with the consent of the hierarchy. This maneuver was
designed to give the Rexists greater liberty of action to work out
Nazi-Fascist policies. Thereupon the apparently independent "Rex-
ist Popular Front" was set up, ostensibly to fight "Jewish Com-
munism," much on the same lines as Father Coughlin's "Christian
Front" in America. Degrelle's chief officer was the White Russian

This slogan is from the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola, founder
of the Jesuits.

"Leon Degrelle is a pupil of these gentlemen [the Jesuits]; so also are
all his colleagues." — R. A. Dior, in Le Vatican, Paris, 1937, p. 42.

Rexism AND Catholic Action 61

Denizoff, who was Secretary to the last President of the Council

in the Czarist regime. Today Degrelle is Hitler's right-hand man in

Nazi-occupied Belgium where no signs of disagreement are appar-

ent between the Catholic hierarchy and the Nazi invaders. He has

organized his own storm troopers, formations de combat he calls

them, and is fast bringing Belgium into close collaboration with

Hitler's new order. In a heavily censored dispatch from Liege to

the New York Times on January 6, 1941, Degrelle said:

"We must make our choice now. We have faith in the Fuehrer as the
greatest man of our times. Trust his spirit, his genius, and have faith
in the Europe which he will build up. The youth of all Europe is today
fighting shoulder to shoulder for a new order under German leadership.
German weapons will win because they are defending a just cause
Hitler saved Europe, and Belgium's future could [several words missing]
cooperation with the Reich."

There never was any secret about Degrelle's collaboration with
Hitler. In its issue of May 20, 1936, the Paris newspaper Le Temps
called attention to the close relationship between the Rexist Party
and Hitler's National Socialism, and shortly before the Belgian
elections in May, 1936, Degrelle went to Germany to "study" Nazi
propaganda methods. After the example of the German Fuehrer
(and Father Coughlin) he sought to gather around him all the
discontented elements of the middle class. In imitation of Goeb-
bels, he curried favor with the workers by appearing to side with
strikers. The chief point of comparison, however, between Rexism
and Nazi-Fascism is that both declared war on Catholic liberal
tendencies, among both the clergy and the laity, with the aim of
setting up the Jesuit, authoritarian control of Catholic activities.
This was the real reason why Catholic Action was instituted by
Pope Pius XI.

It is not out of place to repeat the underlying reasons for this
desire to abolish all pre-Hitler Catholic politics throughout Europe
— a thing the Jesuits for many years had ardently longed to see
accomplished. As already pointed out, the old Catholic political

In their joint pastoral letter of October. 1940, the Catholic bishops of
Belgium instructed their people as follows: "It is doubtless necessary to
recognize the occupying power as a de facto power and to obey it within
the limits of international conventions." (Quoted from the Jesuit magazine
America, Feb. 22, 1941.)

62 Behind the Dictators

parties had become intimately bound up with the Hberal constitu-
tions of States, wherein all parties and religions were able to
coexist freely. Furthermore, the ideology of the liberal democratic
State, with its principles of religious and racial tolerance, was
broadening the political and social outlook of these Catholic
parties. The fraternizing of the secular clergy with the laity in
these political parties furthered the spirit of tolerance as opposed
to the traditional intolerance of Catholic dogma.

On the other hand, it must also be remembered that in Ger-
many the two Catholic political parties, the Center Party and the
Bavarian Popular Party, because of their close religious connections
with the Catholic Church, had met with strong opposition from
the Protestant part of the population. As a consequence, the con-
tinued existence of these parties threatened to compromise the aim
of Catholic Action, which was to use Germany as the instrument
to effect its counter-Reformation designs. It was thus necessary for
the new Catholic policy to camouflage itself as a national move-
ment, and make itself appear as the only party representing the
nation as a whole.

It can thus be seen why the abolition of the pre-Hitler Catholic
political parties in Germany had the approval of the movement
for Catholic Reconstruction. Here is what Gonzague de Reynold
has to say on the point:"^

"The Center Party, which Hitler fought with all his might, was
forced to commit suicide. But it was a party which had already shown
signs of deterioration, which had made many mistakes and upon which
the young people were turning their backs . . . The news that soon they
could take part in real Catholic Action, without any addition of party
politics, aroused great enthusiasm."

For the very same reason the Rexist Party in Belgium, direct off-
spring of Catholic Action, likewise declared:

"All Catholic parties are the result of a fixed historical situation,
and have advantages and disadvantages for the Church. "When these
historical situations cease to exist. Catholic parties lose their reason
for existence. This applies equally to the Catholic party in Belgium. Up
till now differing opinions could be had as to their usefulness and their
right to existence. Today, however, they are anarchronisms, as were the
Center Party in Germany and the Popular Party in Italy.

"The Catholic Party did not understand the new 'historic mission';

4

Cf. L'Europe Tragique, p. 333.

Rexism and Catholic Action 63

the confessional movement did not transform itself into a national
movement. Because of these deficiencies it had to disappear hke all
other parties. The Rexist Party will now take up the defense of Catholic
and ecclesiasiteal interests. It does not only intend to defend the Church,
but also to take the whole religious question out of politics. It will effect
this by means of the Constitutional guarantee of the rights of the
Catholic Church and by drawing up a concordat to regulate the relations
between the State and the Church."

Thus, according to this new Cathohc pohcy, there is to be no
apparent separation between CathoUc Action and the Nazi-Fascist
thrust for the estabUshment of its "new order" in Europe. To the
Rexist Party was assigned the task of regulating the relations
between the Catholic Church and the Fascist State in Belgium by
means of a concordat, as was done in Germany through Von Papen
and the present Pope Pius XII, then papal nuncio to Germany..
This "new historic mission" of the Church of Rome, initiated by
the Lateran Pact and Concordat of 1929 between the Vatican and
Fascist Italy, calls for collaboration with the Nazi-Fascist dictators,
unhampered by any questioning or interference from the people
or the lower clergy. Liberal principles and popular freedom have
to be crushed out as completely in the Church as in the State.

"We in America are only now beginning to see clearly how the
noose was formed to strangle all forms of liberalism and democ-
racy in pre-Hitler Europe, in order to make way for the Nazi-
Fascist hierarchical grouping of nations and individuals in a sort
of revived Roman Empire of the German Nation. And the real
motivating force behind it all has been the thrust of the Jesuit
counter-Reformation, ante-dating all the dictators, which aimed
to crush out of existence the hated liberal principles of the Protes-
tant democracies. It has indeed been an ungodly combination that
worked together to accomplish this objective: Catholic Reconstruc-
tion movement of Pius XI; Italian Fascism; Hitler's National
Socialism; French anti-Semitic Leagues; La Roque and the Cagoul-
ards; Belgian Rexism; the Hungarian racist movement of Father
Bangha; white Russian association; Croatian associations — whose
hand appeared in the assassination of King Alexander of Serbia
and French Foreign Minister Barthou; Slovene separatists led by

^ Cf. Vaterland. Lucerne, Aug. 14, 1936.

64 Behind the Dictators

the Jesuit Father Anton Koroshetz, who worked his way to the
Presidency of the senate in Yugoslavia; the CathoHc prelates and
politicians of old Austria — Mgr. Seipel, DoUfuss, Schussnigg, et
al.; the priest-politicians of Slovakia, Carpatho-Ukraine and Bo-
hemia — Fathers Hlinka and Tiso; not forgetting Franco and his
Fascist Generals in Spain and the Laval-Petain cliques in France.

All of these worked closely together and were interlinked with
the Catholic Church in working towards the same end — the
destruction of the post-Reformation structure of Europe and the
world.

But the end is not yet.

Pro-Germanism of Pius XII 65

CHAPTER XII.
PRO-GERMANISM OF POPE PIUS XII*

IT IS NOT generally known that the reasons which led the
Allies to exclude the pope from the Peace Conference after
the First World War were connected with the activities of
Monsignor Eugenic Pacelli, later Pope Pius XII.

HIS TWELVE YEARS IN GERMANY

Monsignor Pacelli's life has been divided between his native
Italy and Germany where he spent twelve crucial years. Nuncio
in Munich in 1917, he has dealt with the Kaiser and with the
Republic, with revolutionary committees and Nazi conspirators.
He was a friend of Friedrich Ebert, first president of the German
Republic, and an intimate of Germany's monumental Hindenburg
under whose presidency he concluded a concordat with Prussia.
He witnessed Hitler's tempestuous beginnings in Munich and
the machinations of his agents in Berlin. Viscount d'Abemon,
Britain's first ambassador to the Weimar Republic, in his Memoirs
calls Pacelli "the best informed man in the Reich."

His mission in Munich in 1917 was not the starting point of his
German career. Even before the first world war, Monsignor Pacelli
had been Papal State Secretary Gasparri's most trusted expert on
German affairs. It was no mere chance that in the very first months
of the war he was stationed in Switzerland where he started with
great devotion, tact and zeal, a truly Christian and humanitarian
movement — the exchange of prisoners of "war. Yet, while there he
had frequent contacts with the Kaiser's propaganda chief, his old
acquaintance Matthias Erzberger, for years a leading member of
the Reichstag's Catholic Center Party. It was with Matthias Erz-
berger in Switzerland that Pacelli engaged in the negotiations
which deeply shocked Italy's liberal Government, and which ac-

* This article was published in The Converted Catholic Magazine for
April 1943. The author, Pierre L'Ourson, was for many years connected
with the League of Nanons in a responsible diplomatic capacity.

66 Behind THE Dictators

counted largely for its opposition to the Vatican's participation in
the peace settlement.

All his life Eugenio Pacelli has taken an active part in one of
the most secret and complex intrigues of our time: the patient
struggle of the papacy to regain and extend its temporal power.
In this struggle, for the last seventy years, whenever a major issue
of international politics was at stake, the Vatican has hitched its
star to the Germanic juggernaut.

HIS TIE-UP WITH EASCISM

The Lateran Treaty in 1929 between the Vatican and Mussolini
restored the sovereignty of the pope and allied the Vatican to the
Italian Fascist Government. It also brought about a world-wide
coordination of authoritarian powers of the corporative and na-
tionalistic type, and the eventual entrance of Italy into the camp
of Nazi Germany. Thus in 1940, after the fall of France and the
proclamation of Marshal Petain's Fascist French State, it looked
as if in the present World War Vatican policy had gained substan-
tial progress where it had failed in the previous one.

At the end of this war, when delegates of all countries will
gather in an international peace conference, the pope, for the first
time in more than a hundred years, will again be represented as a
ruling monarch — ^provided that his miniature State is still intact.
He expects to exercise considerable authority, although as a tem-
poral ruler his influence will be less than that of Pope Pius VII at
the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Today, as Chief of State of Vati-
can City he possesses only a formal, juridical status. But he will
have real power because of his self-assumed status as "Chief of
Christendom," a notion cleverly introduced, for more than ten
years, into public international discussions and, after centuries of
obliteration, re-admitted even in non-Catholic countries. As "Chief
of Christendom," the pope would take rank above all other Chiefs
of State — just as the papal nuncio on the continent of Europe as
well as in Latin America automatically becomes "dean" of the
diplomatic corps.

Pro-Germanism of Pius XII 67

"CHIEF OF CHRISTENDOM"

The idea of a Chief of Christendom, himself also a Chief of
State, presiding over an assembly of Chiefs of State, is a medieval
conception which has no
place in our twentieth-cen- ^
tury democratic world. It
has been revived for politi-
cal reasons, and unless de-
nounced, will prove a dan-
gerous challenge to free-
dom and progress. For just
as the equality of individu-
als, the equality of nations
is a fundamental principle
of democracy.

To recognize one Chief
of State as senior and per-
manent hierarchical chief
of all other States would
be to set up an authoritari-
an world monarchy, even
though the term 'mon-
archy' may not be used.
„ . . . ". . . has always been known for his

Caesar Augustus m ancient g^o^g German leanings," says his official
Rome refused the unpopu- Catholic biographer, Kees van Hoek.

lar title of king and pre-

ferred to be called "Imperator," a dignity which the Roman Re-
public used to bestow temporarily upon a Supreme Commander
appointed in a national emergency. Hitler played the same trick in
Germany. It would have been easy for him to have had himself
crowned Emperor. Instead, he found it more expedient to leave
the Constitution of the Weimar Republic legally in force and to
assume the less conspicuous name of Fuehrer or Leader — the
"Mein Fuehrer" standing for the old-fashioned "Your Majesty"
or "Sire."

Protestant nations, it is to be hoped, will not accept this new
international slogan of a "Chief of Christendom" which the Holy

ft

EUGENIO PACELLI— HOW POPE

PIUS XII

68 Behind the Dictators

See is trying to smuggle into general acceptance. Whatever the
illusions of clerical politicians who believe in the re-establishment
of the supra-national rule of the papacy, their schemes are bound to
work to the advantage of imperialist Germany.

Recent statements by Mr. Elmer Davis as well as Vatican diplo-
matic activity seem to indicate that the Axis Powers are seeking
the mediation of the Holy See. If the Government of the Protestant
Kaiser tried to enlist the support of the Vatican, there is no reason
why Hitler's predominantly Catholic Greater Germany should
refrain from appealing to the pope, now that even the most fanati-
cal Nazis can no longer hope to conclude the war by a crushing
Axis victory. The last time the pope's collaboration in post-war
arrangements was made impossible by Article 15 of the Secret
Treaty of London between Italy and the Allies. This explicit ex-
clusion of the pope from the Peace Conference has ever since
been branded by Catholic politicians as a villainous maneuver of
international Freemasonry. They still point to the absence of a
delegate of the Holy See at Versailles and Neuilly in 1919 as the
deeper cause for the failure of the Peace Treaties and of the
League of Nations.

TREATY OF LONDON

The real history of Article 15 of the Treaty of London and the
reasons for the exclusion of the pope from the Peace Conference
have never been fully understood in this country. The American
public does not know that Italy demanded and that the Allies
agreed upon the exclusion of the pope from the future peace set-
tlement because they had evidence that some of the most prominent
clericals at the Holy See were favoring the Central Powers, and
had for months discussed and planned a secret German proposal
to reconstitute in Rome a Papal State with internationally guar-
anteed access to the sea.

Only in face of the irrefutable fact that, in the midst of a terrible
war, Vatican politicans were abusing the Christian peace apostolate
of the Supreme Pontiff to further their temporal interests and to
extend their power, even at the expense of their native land —
these papal politicians were all Italians — did the Allies agree to

Pro-Germanism of Pius XII 69

Italy's demand. Although from the beginning of the war it was
obvious that the sympathies of the Vatican could not be with
Protestant England, anti-clerical France and Orthodox Russia,
Allied statesmen — some of them devout Catholics — found it hard
to believe that papal diplomacy would place its political interests
before those of millions of French and Belgian Catholics who
had become victims of German aggression.

MATTHIAS ERZBERGER

The story of Germany's collaboration with the Vatican in the
last war has been told, as so often before, by a devout Roman
Catholic who had himself been on the inside of the intrigue and
who, vain by nature and bitter from disappointment, spoke out
when he felt that he had been abandoned by his former associates.
Our witness is none other than Matthias Erzberger, leading mem-
ber of the Catholic Center Party, militant German imperialist in
1914, Germany's foreign propaganda chief until 1917 when he
promoted the Reichstag's famous peace resolution. Imperial
Under-Secretary of State, leader of the German armistice delega-
tion. Minister of Finance and one of the Fathers of the Weimar
Republic. He was assassinated in 1921 by young German nation-
alists, a few months after the publication of his outspoken book.
My Experiences in the World War.

SECRET VATICAN TREATY WITH GERMANY

One of Erzberger's chief objectives was to secure diplomatic
immunity and extra-territorial rights for the Holy See. As early
as October, 1914, a few weeks after his appointment as chief of
foreign propaganda, he suggested the establishment of a small
neutral Papal State in that part of Rome which lies on the left
bank of the Tiber, with a corridor to the sea and a port. His negoti-
ations finally led to a draft treaty "regarding the recognition of the
temporal power of the Pope." This treaty, he says, had the approval
of "competent personalities of the German Foreign Office." The
first version was submitted by Erzberger and his friends in Vatican

Erlebnisse im Weltkrieg, von Reichsfinanzminister A. D. Matthias Erz-
berger, Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart & Berhn, 1920.

70 Behind the Dictators

circles in the beginning of 1915. It was formulated with character-
istic thoroughness.

The following extracts of this secret treaty are from Erzberger's
book (pages 127ff.):

Article I

The temporal power of the Pope is recognized by the High Contracting
Powers as extending over a territory including Vatican Hill and a strip
of land connecting it with the Tiber and with the railroad to Viterbo and
to be designated as Church State . . .

Article II
The church State is permanently independent and neutral. Its independ-
ence and neutrahty are guaranteed by the High Contracting Powers.

Article III

Sovereign of the Church State to the Pope.

During the vacancy of the Apostolic Chair the sovereignty is exercised
by the College of Cardinals.

Article IV
Citizens of the Church State are: Papal legates, nunzios and inter-
nunzios, members of the Papal Court, officials of the administrations and
palaces of the Church State, members of the Palace guards as well as
ecclesiastics permanently residing in the Church State . . .

Article V

The Kingdom of Italy pledges to render the Tiber navigable for ocean-
going ships with draught of five meters, along the border of the Church
State and thence to the sea, within two years from the ratification of the
present treaty.

Papal ships can at all times navigate on the Tiber to and from the sea
without being subject to the authority of the Italian State. Should Italy
be at war or should it, for other reasons, deem necessary to close the Tiber
waterway to general traffic, a channel is to be kept open for Papal ships,
and river pilots are to be placed at their disposal.

Papal ships shall be treated by the High Contracting Powers as extra-
territorial in peace and in war and not subject to interference by a foreign
power . . .
Article VI

The Kingdom of Italy will pay to the Holy See within six months
after the ratification of the present Treaty the sum of 500,000,000 Lire, to
cover the cost of the Papal Court and of the administration of he Church
State.

Article VII

The sovereignty of the Church State includes finances and jurisdiction.

Article VIII

Diplomatic representatives of foreign powers accredited to the Holy See
enjoy within the territory of the Kingdom of Italy the same privileges and

Pro-Germanism OF Pius XII 71

exemptions as diplomatic representatives of the same rank accredited to
the Kingdom of Italy ... In case of a state of war or a break in diplomatic
relations between the Power they represent and the Kingdom of Italy,
they have to take residence in the Church State . . .

Article IX

The High Contracting Powers, after the ratification of the present
Treaty, will invite all those powers which are not signatories of this treaty
to recognize the temporal power of the Pope over the territories desig-
nated in Article I as well as the extra-territorial status af Papal ships
as provided in Article V.
Article X

This Treaty shall be ratified as soon as possible.

Ratification documents will be deposited with the Holy See.

The Treaty enters into force on the day on which ratification docu-
ments have been deposited.

It is not astonishing that the liberal Government of Italy should
have resented this planned infringement of their country's sover-
eignty by Germany and the Vatican. Nor was this all. Germany has
never given without receiving. Only indirectly does Herr Erzberger
inform his readers of the assistance which Germany had received
and was to receive from the Holy See.

INTERNATIONAL CATHOLIC COMMITTEE

After Italy entered the war on the side of the Allies, Erzberger,
as the Kaiser's chief of propaganda, organized in collaboration
with an emissary of the Papal Secretary of State, an International
Catholic Committee in which each country was represented by five
or seven delegates. Its object was to urge upon all belligerents that
the territorial independence and the political freedom of the Holy
See should be guaranteed in the future peace. This International
Catholic Committee and several of its sub-committees met repeat-
edly in Switzerland and Holland. Its chief purpose was to explain
the German viewpoint to the world. Erzberger tells us that the
high official of the Roman Curia with whom he negotiated in
Switzerland was in charge of the exchange of prisoners of war. He
was Monsignor Eugenio Pacelli, the present Pope Pius XII.

PAPAL PEACE OFFENSIVE

Negotiations between Erzberger and Pacelli continued through-
out 1916. In June of that year Erzberger was "asked by the German

72 Behind the Dictators

Secretary of State to inform the Vatican tliat tlie German Govern-
ment was willing to accept the good services of the Pope in the
matter of peace and would appreciate them." He at once consulted
with his "friend, the representative of the Papal Secretary of State
in Switzerland" [Pacelli], who believed that the time had come
for "winning the peace." But after the Vatican peace move had
produced its first results, it was checked by a parallel intervention
of the German Foreign Office through Spain. The results which
Berlin wished to obtain in 1916 were only of a diplomatic and
psychological nature. Germany was in fact merely trying to disin-
tegrate the home front of the Allies and to obtain a clear picture
of the political situation in the Allied camp. The Papal peace
move thus suited the Kaiser's purpose.

In 1917, after Eugenio Pacelli had been appointed nuncio in
Munich, Wilhelm II became more outspoken in his demands.
According to Pope Pius XII's official biography by Kees van Hoek
(published in London in 1939 by Bums, Oates & Washburn, Ltd.,
publishers to the Holy See), the Kaiser told Monsignor Pacelli
"that the Pope should mobilize the Episcopate all over the world in
a moral peace offensive and begin by using his special influence on
Catholic States by promoting [a separate] peace between Italy and
Austria."

JESUIT PROPAGANDA AMONG PROTESTANTS

Erzberger's propaganda mission ended shortly after Pacelli had
taken up residence in Germany. With laudable frankness Erzberger
tells us (page 7) that he had been assisted by "a number of Jesuit
priests who rendered us extremely valuable services in enlightening
foreign countries." Nor were these propaganda activities limited
to Catholic circles. It should be of interest to Protestants in America
to discover that this prominent Roman Catholic politician, working
hand in glove with the highest dignitaries of the pope, also organ-
ized what was known as "Weekly Evangelical Letters." These
letters were edited by Dr. Deissmann, Professor of Protestant
theology at the University of Berlin and were addressed especially
to American Protestants. "Professor Deissmann," says Erzberger,
"was very skillful in drawing up his mailing lists . . . We adapted
the contents of these letters deliberately to American interests . . .

Pro-Germanism of Pius XII 73

Professor Deissmann had reason to be satisfied with the response.
The Secretary General of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ
in America, representing thirty evangelical church organizations
with 125,000 communities, maintained close relations with him."
This gentleman might not have done so, had he known that these
"Weekly Evangelical Letters" were financed and — in the last in-
stance — directed by propaganda chief Erzberger and his Jesuit
assistants.

Erzberger's assassination in 1921 had been planned for some
time. The young fanatics who killed him were only the instruments
of others who wished to eliminate this man who knew too much,
who already had said too much and who had been too closely
connected with events in which the promoters of the present World
War saw Germany's humiliation.

PACELLI'S POST-WAR ACTIVITIES

Monsignor Pacelli's stay in Germany lasted in all more than
twelve years. He was in Munich under the short-lived Bavarian
Soviet Republic which he fought, and at the time of Hitler's first
putsch in 1923. When France occupied the industrial Ruhr Valley
because Germany refused to continue reparations payments, the
Nunzio, though not accredited to Prussia, ostentatiously flew from
the Bavarian capital to Duesseldorf in the Prussian Rhineland, and
induced his friend Achille Ratti, then Pope Pius XI, to publish an
open condemnation of the "Ruhr adventure." In 1925 he obtained
a concordat with Bavaria, a concordat with Prussia in 1929, after
his appointment as nuncio in Berlin, and in 1933 the famous con-
cordat with the whole of Hitler's Germany.

"Cardinal Pacelli," wrote Kees van Hoek, his official Catholic
biographer, in 1939, "has always been known for his strong Ger-
man leanings."

Thus it is that Germans and Italians now have good reasons for
looking forward hopefully to Pius XII's mediation on their behalf.
For his past history shows that, instead of condemning Hitler
whom he knew well during the seven years of his stay in Munich,
he negotiated a concordat with the Nazis just as he tried to nego-
tiate one with the Kaiser's Germany during the last war. He

74 Behind the Dictators

fears German radicals as much as his predecessor feared the bol-
sheviks. Like Pius XI, he is connected with the Fascist bourgeoisie
through his family. His uncle, a famous banker, was the founder
and guiding spirit of the Banco di Roma, one of Italy's greatest
banks and investment houses. His brother, Francesco Pacelli, who
drafted the Lateran Treaty with Fascism, had more than a hundred
secret conferences with Mussolini before the treaty was signed.

The Papacy undoubtedly can and will survive the present Fascist
set-up in Italy, but in the lifetime of Eugenio Pacelli it will continue
to support Italy's vested interests and will continue to remain pro-
German under any kind of a regime, provided it is not anti-
Catholic.

Today, Papal diplomacy is again busy behind the scenes. Judging
by its record in the last war and by the personal leanings of the
present Pope and his Jesuit advisers, the Curia is not the disinter-
ested and elevated tribunal which it is made to appear to Ameri-
cans. The Pope, too, has a political axe to grind.

By propagating the idea that the Pope as "Chief of Christen-
dom" is to be dean and arbiter in the future peace conference,
clerical politicians, however, may render disservice to their cause.
Protestants as well as Orthodox Catholics, who do not believe in
any "Chief of Christendom," might come to learn that the Allies in
London in 1915, after all, were not so ill-advised.

A Vital Condition For Lasting Peace 75

APPENDIX

A Vital Condition For Lasting Peace

By Leopold Mannaberg, Ph.D.

THE AUTHOR of this article, who has worked all his life in
Central Europe as a Civil Engineer and industrial leader, obtained
his degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Heidel-
berg, Germany. His position and personal connections afforded
him an excellent opportunity to follow closely the events of the
past twenty-five years.

This article was cabled to Moscow and reproduced in the newspapers
there on February 8, 1944, to substantiate Soviet Russia's accusation of
the pro-Fascism of the Vatican. It was also published in pamphlet form
under the title: "Vatican Power Pohtics in Europe," and received wide
publicity in the press of the United States and England.

EVEN WHEN VICTORY for the United Nations was still a
long way off, scores of books and sundry publications had
piled up with plans for the post-war economic, political
and moral reconstruction of Europe. This lively discussion of the
problem by Americans is proof of the spreading conviction that
the future of Europe is of no less importance to America than it is
to Europe itself.

From many of the contributions to the subject in question, how-
ever, one is likely to get the impression that continental Europe is
so deeply depraved, that a state of lasting peace cannot be achieved
unless the reconstruction is preceded by a great deal of political
and social demolition. I venture to assert that this picture is much
too dark. I believe that most of Europe is healthy enough to make
its own future. This belief is based partly upon my personal ex-
perience, but principally on the display of resistance to the oppres-

76 Behind the Dictators

sors put up by the ailing body politic after years of horror and
torture. The Civil War in Spain gave us splendid evidence of the
brave and healthy spirit of the Spanish people. From the very
beginning of World War II we have seen everywhere on the
continent of Europe the people's will to resist flaring up in the
very face of death. This is not the reaction of a depraved spirit,
nor of a body succumbing to a fatal disease. Therefore I say that
many of the plans for reconstruction are unnecessarily radical and
some of them even dangerous.

Take for instance the suggestion contained in The Problems of
Lasting Peace by Herbert Hoover and H. Gibson, that in some
cases the problem of mixed border peoples "may have to be solved
by the heroic remedy of transfer of populations." I think this
remedy not at all heroic but on the contrary almost barbarous.
Besides it is useless, because borders with mixed peoples are the
rule and not the exception, as the heroic remedy seems to imply.
The best and most obvious thing to do is to abolish the borders
altogether.

For the reorganization of Europe a firm hand and common
sense are more essential than far-reaching schemes. Let us bear in
mind that the peoples of Europe have borne the brunt of the
attack aimed at the whole world. They stumbled and fell because
the world failed to back them up. They have had their full share
of turmoil and agony; what they need now is rest. They went
through a nightmare of injustice and lawlessness; what they need
now is justice and law. They fell victims to terror and extortion;
provide them with adequate protection from both and the peace
will last.

At the present time more than a dozen European nations are
anxiously waiting for liberation. As they differ, more or less, in
their political organization and social structure, the builders of
lasting peace will see, in each of them, a different facet of the
problem. That is the reason why only general rules for the making
of peace can be traced beforehand. But there is one principle of
general validity: the shortest and quickest way to peace is likely
to be the best one.

A Vital Condition For Lasting Peace 77

POLITICAL PAPACY ENDANGERS PEACE

IT IS NOW GENERALLY agreed that post-war Europe will
have to be protected by some kind of superstate roofing, covering
all countries, as a guarantee of their common pledge for a good
neighbor policy. It should not be a talkative super-parliament such
as the League of Nations which talked its head off before acting,
but a sober and rigid court for the arbitration of international
quarrels — a watchdog of peace, barking at any aggressive shadow
and biting the enemy if need be. It must be the military head-
quarters of Europe's liberty, with an international police force at
its disposal, strong enough to crush any atttempt at aggression
within the disarmed Continent.

The installation of this European fire engine must be accom-
panied or preceded by a thorough house-cleaning, in order to
ensure its effectiveness. Attics must be cleared of all inflammable
materials in order to make fire-fighting measures effective. The
continent of Europe badly needs such a house cleaning, since on the
premises there is a factory of explosives, not recognizable as such,
and therefore all the more dangerous to a peaceful development
of the European commonwealth.

I refer to the Vatican, headquarters of the Papacy.

This disclosure may come as a shock, and no wonder. Ameri-
cans are acquainted with only one face of the pope, his spiritual
authority over an ancient and beautiful church. But we Europeans
have become familiar, by history and experience, with another
aspect of the pope, namely, as the chief of an international politi-
cal organization admittedly anti-democratic and anti-liberal. The
traditional trend of the Vatican's policy was confirmed anew by
the 1943 New Year's message of Pope Pius XII. It contained not
a single word of sympathy for the cause of the United Nations
but, on the other hand, did not refrain from the usual attack on
socialism and communism. This occurred at a moment when our
deadly struggle against the Axis needed the support of all men
of good-will, without any political or religious discrimination.
Aimed at our ally, the Soviet Union, the attack of the pope was
without doubt an unfriendly act to the cause of the United Nations.

78 Behind the Dictators

This unfriendly attitude was made still more clear and definite
by the official announcement of the pope's "strict neutrality" in
the war. Ostentatiously made on the occasion of a Japanese am-
bassador's presentation to the Vatican in the Fall of 1942, it was
intended obviously for the consumption of the American public,
as an excuse for the Vatican's friendly relations with the Japanese
government. Qui s'excuse, s'accuse. This ill-timed display of
friendliness towards Japan amounted to another challenge to the
United Nations. Contrasting the moral standard of the Axis
powers with the moral principles preached by the Catholic Church,
we can say that the pope, in making his declaration of neutrality,
was driven by his political zeal so far as to slap his own religious
face.

There have been many other occasions when the sympathies of
the Vatican with the Axis were plainly revealed. As for instance
its attitude toward the war in Abyssinia and toward the Civil War
in Spain. There was no neutrality of the pope in either of them.
On the contrary, he did his best to back up the aggressors. He
congratulated Mussolini and distributed sacred amulets to the
Italian troops going to Ethiopia. He sent Generalissimo Franco
his blessing in the Spanish Civil War and presented his soldiers
with victory medals.

On October 13, 1935, the late Cardinal Hinsley, Catholic

archbishop of Westminister, the pope's chief agent in England,

made a speech in defense of the friendly attitude assumed by the

Vatican towards Fascism in its war against Abyssinia, and closed

with the following words:

"While I do not in principle approve of Fascism, I do say that if Fas-
cism goes under in Italy, then nothing can save the country from
chaos. With it God's business too will go under."

This speech may appear to many as basphemy; but it is not, for
Cardinal Hinsley was really a very devout man. He merely con-
fused God's business with the pope's business, a confusion quite
natural for a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church.

On August 25, 1936, Cardinal Archbishop Roey of Malines —
the pope's general in Belgium — warned Belgian Catholics against
participating in the International Peace Congress scheduled to

A Vital Condition For Lasting Peace 79

begin in Brussels on September 3, 1936, under the chairmanship
of Mr. Herriot, president of the French Senate. "This does not
mean," he explained, "that Belgian Catholics are not filled with a
real love of peace, but they must protect themselves against the
political ideas of the organizers of the congress."

On September 6, 1936, a statement of the bishop of Berlin,
Count von Preysing, was read from the pulpits of his diocese.
According to this statement the Holy Father had informed the
bishop, "that any and every connection or contact with Leftist
currents is forbidden to Roman Catholics and must be most strenu-
ously fought by the church."

These records taken at random from the rich choice of papal
enunciations in recent years give ample evidence of the Vatican's
sympathies with Nazism and Fascism in the critical period before
the pact of Munich. We are therefore justified in taking the pope's
"strict neutrality" in the second World War not too seriously. It
is nothing but a strategic smoke-screen intended to cover his rela-
tionship with our foes, which he did not even bother to conceal
until the entrance of the United States into the war. It seems
natural now to raise the question how far back that relationship
can be traced. In other words, what part has political papacy
played in the European tragedy these last twenty years?

VATICAN ALIGNMENT WITH FASCISM

A SUPERFICIAL VIEW of Nazism and Fascism shows, aside
from their coincidence, so many features in common, that it is
difficult to believe the resemblance to be merely accidental. The
closer you examine the two movements, the more they are likely
to appear as children of the same spirit. Let us try to get closer
to that spirit by analyzing its development.

Both movements started not as revolutionary eruptions from
below, but as counter-revolutions, aiming explicitly to be the salva-
tion of state, society and religion from the danger of the liberal
wave which flooded the European continent in the years after the
first World War. In accordance with this program the two oppos-
ing camps were clearly outlined: on one side the allied conserva-
tives and reactionaries, and on the other side liberals and socialists.
This anti-democratic character of both Nazism and Fascism, not-

80

Behind THE Dictators

ILDUCE MUSSOLINI

Pope Pius XI styled Mussolini ... "a
gift of Providence, a man free from the
prejudices of the politicians of the
liberal school."

POPE PIUS XI

". . . far more of a Mussolini and an
autocratic dictator than Mussolini him-
self." — "William Teeling, Catholic author.

withstanding their nationalistic camouflage, is proved not only by
the rank and file of their sympathizers on both sides of the Atlantic,
but in a more striking way still by their activity. We know that
the first fury of both movements was turned against the adherents
of democracy and liberalism, organized labor and communists, and
of course against the Jews, the traditional appetizer on a mob's
menu card.

The anti-democratic character of both Fascism and Nazism re-
veals further that their sources could not have been of low origin.
Their inspiration could not have been bom in the slums from
which Hitler and Mussolini came. Besides, since in the first years
after the first World War even the German government, like all

A Vital Condition For Lasting Peace 81

others, was under the influence of liberalism, a sponsorship of
these two movements by the government of any European coun-
try itself was out of the question.

Under these circumstances it would have been impossible for
obscure nobodies, as were Hitler and Mussolini at that time, to
mobilize the masses for a bloody crusade against the masses of the
people and their liberal governments unless they were backed by
some political force of extraordinary qualities — a force reaching
up to the summits of society as well as down to its depths, one ex-
ercising a strong influence in the international arena and keeping
itself cleverly out of sight. There is but one force qualified in this
extraordinary way, namely political Papacy, centered in the
Vatican.

After this excursion of general character, let us now go back
to our evidence. The various facts previously mentioned are sig-
nificant indeed, but they do not constitute sufficient evidence of
the collaboration of the Vatican with the Axis. They confirm only
what every student of history knows, that the Papacy is and always
has been anti-democratic and anti-liberal. But by themselves they
do not prove that the Vatican had a part in the world-wide con-
spiracy, launched by Nazism and Fascism, against democracy and
liberty. A past master of political intrigues, such as the Vatican is,
makes documentary evidence hard to find. We can only hope to
catch an occasional glimpse through the cracks in its political
walls. Bishops in politics, as in chess, move obliquely.

One insight was furnished by The Catholic International, a new
periodical, recently published in New York. It identified itself as
"a magazine of Christian decency for the Christian home and edited
under clerical direction." This magazine contained the following
amazing comment on the fall of France: "The earthly disaster has
been a heavenly blessing. The days of Socialism and Freemasonry
are gone forever in France . . . Isn't it all glorious?" And, turning
to Italy, it continued: "And in Italy too . . . The base little atheist
schoolmasters have been booted out forever and monks and nuns
now again teach the children of the Peninsula."

As all ill-timed remarks do, these words carried the disadvan-

82 Behind the Dictators

tage of indiscretion. They not only offered an official avowal of
intolerance and hatred of public education, but also expressed
exultation at the New Order established by Fascism both in Italy
and France. They also proved that the interests of the Vatican
were on the side of the dictators all during these last twenty years.

Was this community of interests a simple coincidence or was it
founded on a premeditated coalition? The answer to this question
must necessarily be hidden in the roots of World War II. In order
to lay them bare, the principal events of these last twenty-five years
must be reviewed in the light of the role that the Vatican has
played behind the European stage. We must begin with the Rus-
sian Revolution of 1917-18, because it was in relation to this revo-
lution that the contemporary counter-revolution started and devel-
oped. While the first World War is likely to go down in history
as a mere nuisance, it will rank high in the history of mankind for
having fathered the Russian Revolution, a social upheaval of
greater importance and greater consequence than even the French
Revolution of 1789.

The young plant of Russian Liberty was raised under the most
unfavorable conditions, but received so loving a care as to enable
the youngster, only twenty-five years later, to join the United
Nations in their fight against slavery and to do a highly efficient
and successful job. It is no exaggeration to say that the Soviet
Union, bom out of the first World War, became the life-saver of
liberty in World War II.

I like to believe that humanity has a bodyguard analogous to
the emergency squadron of cells in our body, which comes to its
rescue in case of injury or fever. I like to believe that the birth of
the Russian Republic in 1917 was due to providential planning to
have a bodyguard for liberty at hand in 1941. This romantic belief
is strongly supported by the unusual circumstances which paved
the way for the birth of the Soviet Union. For it was the German
High Command in the first World War who in 1917 dispatched
Lenin and his aides from their exile in Switzerland to the Russian
border, in a sealed railway car, in order to start the revolution that
brought about the collapse of Imperial Russia from within.

The social eruption had been simmering in Imperial Russia for

A Vital Condition For Lasting Peace 83

many decades as a consequence of the brutal oppression and ex-
ploitation of the masses by aristocrats, landlords, bureaucrats and
a depraved clergy. As long as the peace lasted it could get no-
where. But in the first World War Russian soldiers set the spark
to the fuse when, after three years of terrible losses and hardships,
they were driven by whips against the German lines without food
and ammunition. It is possible that the revolution might have
started without Lenin and his friends, but it certainly would have
succumbed before long without their intellectual leadership.

After having overthrown the Czar and established a govern-
ment of their own, the Russian people turned to the much harder
task of rebuilding their utterly exhausted country.

There is no one who does not admit that the Russian Revolution
was morally justified, and entitled according to international prin-
ciples to be considered a purely internal affair of Russia alone,
without any interference from without. But in this case of a people
fighting against its unjust oppressors, the conservative chancel-
leries of Europe thought fit to intervene — as they had done in the
French Revolution in 1792. Although fighting among themselves,
it took them no time to agree upon this decision. Bloody foes of
yesterday made common cause to crush the young Soviet Union.
These 'White Guardsmen' invaded Russia from the North and
the South simultaneously, ravaging the country and committing
atrocities against the population. But this time, with liberty at
stake, the Russian soldiers fought like heroes and succeeded after
one year of fierce fighting in beating back the invaders and driving
them out of the country. Then again the Russian people dropped
their arms and took up sickle and hammer to continue their work
of reconstruction.

WORLD-WIDE CONSPIRACY AGAINST
THE SOVIET UNION

THE FIRST ATTACK on the Soviet Union failed partly for the
reason that the foes of the Soviet Union at that time were very
busy with their own affairs at home. Four years of a war of attri-
tion had not only sapped the economic strength of the warring
countries but also stirred the minds of their peoples. As a sort of

84 Behind the Dictators

compensation for the blood he shed and the hardships he endured,
the man in the street now gained poUtical weight over night. The
balance of political power started shifting from the Right to the
Left. Far from opposing this trend, the parties of the Right were
only too glad to take a leave of absence from the public stage.
Although responsible for the outbreak of the war they did not
like the idea of signing the peace. They knew it was a suicidal job
and preferred to have it done by men of the Left. Furthermore, the
post-war economic reconstruction was a hard task, both difficult
and ungrateful. These requirements did not suit the reactionaries.
They, in general, like to take a rich country and run it down; then
they let others have their turn.

According to this policy the reactionaries modestly stood back
and allowed the socialists to come to the front. This was their
formula for the establishment of so-called National Government,
that would embrace men both of Left and Right for cooperation in
the reconstruction. As a rule the chiefs of state were taken from the
Left. As a matter of fact, at that time, the whole continent of
Europe looked like a progressive and peaceful society of nations.
But the political modesty and self-denial of the reactionaries were
nothing but a clever maneuver. By withdrawing from the scene,
they were at the same time preparing for future attack. Having
men of their own party in the government, they had only to watch
for their opportunity to come after their passive resistance had
worn down the wave of liberalism.

They were not a bit afraid of the socialists, though these had
succeeded in rallying under their banner the bulk of the workers
in the big cities and industrial centers. While the socialists and
liberals held the majority in the urban places, the decisive factor
for a majority in parliament were the rural districts, and here the
liberals were impotent against the influence of the traditional
political bosses, the pope and his reactionary parties. As the great-
est private landowner throughout Catholic Europe, the pope exerts
by this very fact, since time immemorial, an economic and political
control over the rural population, in whose minds the tradition of
the feudal system is still stronger than the written law. His news-
papers kept on prescribing to the country people their mental diet,
his priests bossed both schoolmaster and burgomaster, and woe to

A Vital Condition For Lasting Peace 85

the provincial business man or mercliant who dared to subscribe
to one of the liberal newspapers from the capital. Stigmatized as
heretics they lost not only the lucrative patronage of the rich mon-
astery or abbey nearby, but were furthermore ostracized by the
whole community. The peasants were warned to ward off socialism,
as the foe of God and religion which leads inevitably to eternal
damnation.

No ordinary political party could afford to maintain the vast
organization necessary for such a political grip. Only the pope had
it in his church all ready and organized throughout the different
countries, down to the smallest hamlet, like a well-organized and
disciplined army — every priest a soldier trained in blind obedience
to the bishops, the officers of the pope.

It is by these means that the workers and peasants are kept in
opposite political camps: by the coordination of economic and
religious pressure.

This papal policy has been supported by the reactionaries of
Europe, ever since the French Revolution, with lasting success. It
was the government of the young Soviet Union which opposed
that policy for the first time in European history. Although it de-
creed freedom of worship throughout the Union, at the same time
it forbade the clergy to misuse religion for politics or to interfere
with public education, their activities to be limited strictly to their
spiritual services in the church. It made religion a private affair.
This measure was a necessary provision for the mental armament
of the youth of the young republic.

A system of public education had to be provided whereby the
youth would be raised to general appreciation and preservation of
liberty, free from reactionary influence. The leaders of the Soviet
Union realized that liberty is uncertain and very likely to get lost
unless youth is provided with such a mental armor through public
school education.

The reactionaries were pierced to the quick by that decree of
the Russian government. It meant that one hundred and sixty
million people were on the way to real liberty, of body and mind.
There was no saying what dangerous repercussions it might have
on the minds in Eastern and Central Europe, if the dastardly influ-
ence from the East was not stopped at once. It was therefore a mat-

86 Behind the Dictators

ter of life or death for the reactionaries and the Catholic Church
that the Russian revolution be strangled. The whole of Europe was
to be mobilized for a crusade to that end. The first thing to do
was to discontinue their political vacationing and to get the power
at home well in hand again. In the meantime Europe had to be safe-
guarded against mental contamination, and to this end Russia was
to be placed under permanent international quarantine. The
shadow of World War II began to emerge.

In accordance with these decisions the reactionaries started a
campaign of defamation throughout the world against the Soviet
Union and its government unique in its extension and ferocity.
There is no crime or blasphemy of which the men in the Kremlin
were not guilty. They murdered millions of Russians and forced
the people into "godless" communism. It is not necessary for me
to go deeper into the subject of this defamatory campaign. AH of
us have witnessed it and many of us have fallen under its spell. It
took a second World War to lift the ban after twenty years.

The reactionary parties were now again very busy with their
domestic politics. Their stratagem of temporary abstention from
active politics had worked according to plan. The aftermath of the
first World War had made life for the great mass of the people
extremely difficult. Shortage of food and inflation weighed heavily
on their shoulders because the enormous cost of the war had not
been equally distributed. Landlords and industrialists had managed
in time to rid themselves of their war loans, paying off their mort-
gages or enlarging their factories and equipment for a trifle, while
workers and employees fought a hopeless battle against the onrush-
ing tide of inflation. The economic coat of the European nations
was buttoned awry and needed, according to the famous formula
of Prince Bismarck, to be opened up and buttoned anew. The
socialists in the governments were not blind to the danger. They
saw the necessity for strong measures, but all their attempts to do
something about it were now frustrated by the other parties of the
Coalition. Instead of cooperating with the liberals for the benefit
of the nation, these parties. Nationalists and Clericals, now saw
their opportunity at hand to stab the liberals in the back and they
did not hesitate to do so regardless of public interests.

The general attack on Democracy and Liberty was about to
begin.

A Vital Condition For Lasting Peace 87

LIBERTY GOES DOWN IN ITALY

IT STARTED IN ITALY with the Blackshirts of Benito Musso-
lini. Originally an obscure journalist in the socialist camp, he
changed his coat in time, and so quit the socialist party and
devoted his ability to tireless braying for the benefit of radical
Nationalism. Then came his sudden rise, like that of a rocket, to
the chiefdom of a party. Nobody knew who it was that set him
off, but it was undoubtedly a force of high standing. It was gener-
ally known that his personal means did not allow him the pur-
chase of more than half a dozen black shirts for himself and much
less for the equipment and pay of his followers. The general guess
at that time pointed to a rich industrialist as his sponsor. But then
came the famous March on Rome which destroyed this conjecture.
The boss was evidently to be looked for higher up.

The Italian people are fond of theatrical performances, but the
March on Rome was a poor one and they did not like it. Mussolini
did not march at all. He came by train. Nobody was deceived.
Those guns were hired and paid for in cash. The garrison of Rome
could have annihilated this mummery in a short while. But, instead
of having the Blackshirts thrown out of his capital, the king sat
down with Mussolini to a friendly discussion of his kingdom's
affairs and without further ado surrendered the management and
the future of his kingdom to the upstart, reserving for himself only
the title of king. Mussolini became Dictator of Italy over night;
no fairy tale could do it easier. But who was the magician ? Cer-
tainly not the king, who was obviously a secondary actor, one of
the cast in this melodrama, charged moreover with an embarras-
sing and humiliating role. Who was the man in a position to make
the king play that part?

The new ruler of Italy had urgent business on his mind. The
next thing for him to do was to wipe out all traces of liberalism
and democracy in order to consolidate his own regime. Com-
munists, socialists, liberals and intellectuals were the victims of
the purge. Their organizations were dissolved, their leaders exiled
or killed. Years later, it could be said all over the country, "the
base little atheist schoolmasters were booted out and monks and
nuns started again to teach the children of the Peninsula."

88 Behind the Dictators

The Italian people are essentially democratic and liberal-minded.
Therefore it took Mussolini many years to overcome socialism
and liberalism. It was not until then that the stage of this political
comedy was finally set for the appearance of the playwright before
the curtain, when, in 1929, the Lateran Accord between the pope
and the Fascist government was published. For Mussolini it was
the time for the payment of the royalties agreed upon with his
author. Besides receiving from Mussolini 750 million lire in cash
and one billion lire in Fascist government stock, the Vatican got
a tiny but substantial sovereignty, carved out from Italy's heart, a
Treaty and a Concordat, making Catholicism the sole Church
of the kingdom and giving the clergy full control over the people's
education. The union between the Vatican and Fascism was
publicly sealed. The Vatican could now, after many years, enjoy
again the attributes and privileges of diplomatic sovereignty,
which are of inestimable value in the game of international politics
— though meaningless to religion and even incompatible with it.

That remarkable pact of 1929 did not only reveal to the public
the real boss of Fascism; it made it clear that political papacy
was once more on the rampage. Connoisseurs of history predicted
at that time still bigger political events, to come in the near future.
They were right.

DEMOCRACY IN GERMANY GOES THE SAME WAY

TO FIGHT RUSSIA without the help of the German Reich was a
hopeless enterprise. As a matter of fact, Germany was the trump
card, and therefore had to become the center of the crusade against
the infidels in Moscow. Things in Germany looked very propitious.
A political upheaval was precipitated by the ruinous consequences
of Germany's currency inflation. It was especially the middle class
which found itself economically ruined or degraded. As these
people saw themselves cheated out of their property, their tradi-
tional honesty became seriously shaken. Out of this social turmoil
emerged the Radicals from both sides, but it was the National-
Socialist Party which absorbed the greater part of the desperate
middle-class, combining in its very name the attractions of both
Left and Right. This party got the upper hand by lying propaganda

A Vital Condition For Lasting Peace 89

and terroristic activity. With cudgels and revolvers they literally
conquered the streets house by house, and by terror made them-
selves masters of the situation. As a matter of fact it was a new
type of civil war, and the socialists got the worst of it for two
reasons: their organization was out of money, and they lacked
besides the stomach to kill.

On the other hand Hitler and his party got plenty of money to
develop their propaganda and carry on the terroristic campaign on
an evergrowing scale. It came not only from German tories but
from all reactionary camps abroad. They saw in Hitler their cham-
pion as he kept on promising to wipe out both socialists and com-
munists. Bloody terror backed by heaps of money and the unveiled
sympathy of influential political circles proved to be irresistible
in the end. Finally even the police and judges yielded to the pres-
sure and lawlessness began to spread, like mushrooms in a damp
cellar. The honest citizen found himself treated as an outlaw if he
tried to resist.

This sad story has been told many times before. What was not
told or may be forgotten is the story of how Hitler's advent to
supreme power was achieved at the end of January 1933. It is sig-
nificant that ten years of ruthless pursuit of his bloody strategy
had not brought victory to the Nazi party by the way of elections.
I believe we have to give the German people credit for this proof
of their will to resist evil, against heavy odds. The fact is that in
1932 the Nazi tide obviously began to turn. Hitler gradually lost
ground in several elections; his supply of money began to run low.
It became evident that the German people were recovering from
their apathy and fright. Hitler had to realize that his war against
the German people was lost. In this critical moment, when the
chiefs of the Nazi party started to despair of the future, a powerful
hand came to their rescue. Messrs. Hugenberg and Franz von
Papen, two political and social aces, both of them notorious hench-
men of the Vatican, did the job. As the German people could not
be persuaded or forced to accept Hitler as their leader, it had to
be done the other way around, by persuading old Marshal Hinden-
burg to make Hitler his chancellor.

The two men arranged a vicious and concentrated attack on the

FACSIMILE OF INTRODUCTION TO THE OFFICIAL GERMAN TEXT OF THE
CONCORDAT BETWEEN THE HOLY SEE AND HITLER'S REICH— SIGNED ON
JULY 20, 1933, BY EUGENE CARDINAL PACELLI (NOW POPE PIUS XII) AND
FRANZ VON PAPEN.

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The text ends as above: "Signed in duplicate in Vatican City on July 20, 1933.

EUGENIO CARDINAL PACELLI
FRANZ von PAPEN."

Article 16 of the above concordat between Hitler and the Vati-
can gives the wording of the oath that all German bishops are
obliged to take before the Reichstatthalter, as follows:

"I swear before God and upon the Holy Gospels and promise, as
becomes a bishop, to be loyal to the German Reich and the State.
I swear and promise to respect the constitutional Government and
to have it respected by my clergy."

Shortly after the concordat was signed by Cardinal Pacelli and

Catholic Franz von Papen, Cardinal Bertram of Berlin wrote to
Hitler as follows:

"The Episcopate of all the German dioceses, as is shown by its
statements to the public, was glad to express, as soon as it was pos-
sible after the recent change in the political situation through the
declarations of Your Excellency, its sincere readiness to cooperate to
the best of its ability with the new government which has proclaimed
as its goal to promote Christian education, to wage war against God-
lessness and immorality, to strengthen the spirit of sacrifice for the
common good, and to protect the rights of the Church." (From the
Catholic [London] Universe, August 18, 1933.)

Whatever the Catholic church may now think about Hitler and

the whole scheme of the Nazi-Fascist Axis, there is no doubt that

the Vatican was Hitler's ally from the beginning. Fritz Thyssen,

rich Catholic steel magnate who financed Hitler,* testifies to this.

After he went to Switzerland in 1940, Thyssen wrote an article in

the Swiss Arbeiterzeitung entitled: "PIUS XII, AS NUNCIO,

BROUGHT HITLER TO POWER." In this article he states

plainly what the aim of the Hitler-Vatican plan was. He says:

"The idea was to have a sort of Christian Corporate State organized
according to the classes, which would be supported by the Churches
— in the West by the Catholic, and in the East by the Protestant —
and by the Army."

RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION OF THE NAZI AND FASCIST
DICTATORS. THEIR PUPPETS, QUISLINGS, AND
COLLABORATORS

The following facts have been checked with offi-
cial publications and bureaus of information:

Adolf Hitler — Nazi Fuehrer Roman Catholic

Benito Mussolini — Italian Duce Roman Catholic

Francisco Franco — Spanish Caudillo Roman Catholic

Antonio Salazar — Portuguese Dictator Roman Catholic

Henri P. Petain — Vichy Chief of State Roman Catholic

Pierre Laval — Vichy Chief of Government Roman Catholic

Joseph Tiso — Slovakian Chief of State ...Roman Catholic Priest

Vidkun Quisling — Premier of Occupied Norway Protestant

Anton A. Mussert — "Quisling" of Occupied

Holland Protestant

Emil Hacha — Nazi President of Bohemia-
Moravia Roman Catholic

Konrad Henlein — "Quisling" of Sudetenland Roman Catholic

Leon M. Degrelle — Belgian Resist Leader Roman Catholic

Ante Pavelich — Croatian Poglavar (Leader) ...Roman Catholic

* See Thyssen's book, I Paid Hitler, published in this country in 1941.

92 Behind the Dictators

old gentleman's mind. One of the next regional elections, held in
the tiny principality of Lippe-Detmold, gave them the opportunity
to provide the Nazi party with a victory, scoring 40% of the votes
in its favor. Big money and political high-pressure did the trick.
This was only an insignificant local success, but it was sufficient
for the two agents to launch their drive on Hindenburg. They
tried to make the old man believe that it was the people's voice
speaking in that election and calling for the leadership of Hitler.
Their insinuations, warnings and threats were supported by two
most influential political parties: the ultra-clerical Bavarian Peo-
ple's Party and the Catholic Center Party of the big industrialists
in the Rhineland. The conspirators had even succeeded, by dona-
tion of an estate, in winning the cooperation of the Marshal's own
nephew, Colonel von Hindenburg, who enjoyed his uncle's trust.
These forces combined for a joint assault on the old President and
succeeded in conquering his dislike for Hitler, after having ex-
hausted both his body and mind. He dismissed the cabinet of
General Schleicher and named Hitler chancellor.

The German people were overpowered at last. But let us bear
in mind that it never would have happened without the deliberate
support of the Vatican's political organization in Germany.

POLAND AND HUNGARY

BOTH COUNTRIES are predominantly agricultural, of the typi-
cal European kind, with millions of small poor farmers drudging
along with their families, working extremely hard to eke out a
living, their bodies prematurely exhausted and their minds over-
shadowed by mental oppression of centuries. As a whole these
countries are happy-hunting-grounds for reactionaries. Their poor
schools are little help against illiteracy, and those little farmers as
well as the rural workers are living today much as their fore-
fathers lived for centuries, under the strict rule of aristocrats, the
Catholic church, and great landowners. The pope is, of course, in
both countries the greatest private landowner, and therefore enjoys
supreme political power. Democracy, liberty and political inde-
pendence may be written on the parchment of some constitution;
practically they are phantoms, never touching the people of the
rural districts.

A Vital Condition For Lasting Peace 93

Then there are some cities and industrial centers with organized
workers. But their number is of no avail and their voice cannot
reach those working in the fields. For these people of the soil serf-
dom has been replaced by hopeless dependency on the few big land-
holders. Nothing but a fundamental land reform can bring them
the economic independence, which must be the forerunner of
democratic liberty.

These conditions are best illustrated by exact figures from an
official report on the distribution of the land in Hungary at the
end of 1936:

Of a total of 16,162,589 Katastraljoch (1 Joch equal to 1.4
acres) were in possession of

State and Communities Joch 750,000

The pope " 1,100,000

1200 landlords " 3,900,000

The remainder of the land was divided among 1,200,000
peasant farms each with a small area from one half to
one-hundred Joch, while 500,000 landless peasants had
no soil of their own at all.

While these figures, typical of all Catholic countries in Europe,
reflect the economic structure of the countries mentioned, they
also give a clear picture of their political status. The landless
peasants, plus many of the small farmers, are no better off today
than their forefathers had been as serfs a century ago. They have
to wander like nomads over the country to get work and shelter
as sharecroppers on the big estates. The medieval distribution of
land has its inescapable political effects which cannot be over-
come by any paper declaration of democracy. Those people are
absolutely dependent, both in mind and body, on their employers.

Both in Poland and in Hungary, the wave of progressive liberal-
ism sweeping the continent of Europe in the wake of the first
World War tried to remedy the depicted evils, but it was crushed
before long by the deep-rooted political organization and economic
pressure of the reactionary parties.

94 Behind the Dictators

FRANCE

THE UNFORTUNATE FATE OF FRANCE in 1940 was no sur-
prise to anyone familiar with the status of things in that country.
The Third Republic was doomed because it represented not a
united French nation, but a thousand streamlets of political, social,
and religious discriminations, and these streamlets had long before
eroded the roots of the Repubhc and the foundations of the
national structure. In this condition France could not withstand
the shock of German aggression. Now we face the task of ex-
plaining the source of those disruptive streamlets.

The French Revolution in 1789 left France without the indis-
pensable armament for the defense of her newly-won liberty and
democracy. Such an armor can be given a nation only by means of
an efficient public educational system. But this was never accom-
plished, and this failure explains why France never succeeded in
becoming a united nation in both her political and social life.

There were two Houses of Legislature and in both of them the
clerical parties, directed by the Vatican, held a decisive position
between Left and Right, turning the political balance, at their
will, on any important issue. These parties of the Vatican, looking
serenely on the conflict between Left and Right, fanned the flames
and widened the gap between the two political camps in order
to increase the national political turmoil.

One of the questions most important to them was the matter of
public schools. Supported by the parties of the Right, they saw to
it that the public schools were poorly equipped, and that the pay-
ment of the teachers did not rise above the minimum. But, at the
same time, the Vatican kept on entertaining and enlarging a vast
system of private schools affiliated with the convents and other
religious bodies. These private schools of the church were better
equipped than the national public schools, and, in general, more
exclusive socially because of their higher cost of tuition. Their
exclusiveness flattered and kept alive the social vanity of the
French professional classes. As a result, these church schools were
preferred by the middle class, who were very proud to have their
children sitting on the same bench with the youth of the aristocratic
and rich families. It goes without saying that the French aristo-

REVIEWING VICHY TROOPS

This photograph from Vichy shows two Roman Catholic Cardinals with Chief of State
Marshal Petain and Chief of Government Pierre Laval reviewing a parade of Vichy-
French troops.

Left to right: Marshal Petain; Cardinal Suhard. Archbishop of Paris; Cardinal Gerlier,
Archbishop of Lyon {former unoccupied zone), and Pierre Laval.

96 Behind the Dictators

crats, for many good reasons, sent their children to clerical schools
— and so a closed circle was formed.

To these psychological inducements were added the solemn
admonition from the pulpits not to send Christian children to
public schools "where atheist teachers are employed." The spirit
transmitted to the children in the clerical schools was naturally
not in harmony with the Republic's motto: "Liberty, Equality and
Fraternity."

The political harvest of the church by this private educational
system becomes clear, if you bear in mind that the graduates of
those clerical private schools were destined to become the back-
bone of the country's administration. With a diploma from one
of the clerical schools they were sure to be given preference; and
this system, from generation to generation, had succeeded in cov-
ering the whole field of administration by a network of reactionary
administrative officials, to whom the directives, from the nearest
bishopric, meant much more than the principles of the Republic.

Add to this the wide-spread influence of the girls and future
wives and mothers coming out of convent schools and you will
understand how it came about that the more influential part of the
French nation was systematically imbued with a spirit indifferent,
more often hostile, to the principles of the Republic.

In this way the Vatican held a tight grip on the administration
and spirit of France, and will continue to do so, as long as the
education of French youth is not made the exclusive privilege of
the State. This is the main reason why the national unity of the
French nation cannot be achieved. This is the reason why the
French Republic has never been a republic of the people.

It has been said that France was ruled by some two hundred
aristocratic and rich families, but behind these families has always
stood the powerful organization of the Vatican, directing them
according to its political strategy. Those ruling families of France
were only too willing to be guided in that way because they knew
they had a common cause and that their rule over France could
not be challenged effectively by the people as long as they followed
the guidance of the Vatican. Thus the reactionary parties of France
were at the helm of the State, steering the vessel as they chose.

A Vital Condition For Lasting Peace 97

Hitler's New Order found, in tlieir souls, a very sympathetic echo,
and, it is not surprising that the bishops of France enthusiastically
greeted Hitler's New Order and promised the Vichy government
full cooperation. To them the fall of the Third Republic was cer-
tainly a "heavenly blessing."

CZECHOSLOVAKIA

EVER SINCE MAGISTER JAN HUS, the first Czech anti-papist,
was burned in 1415, the relations between the Czech nation and
the pope have been strained, and ever since it has felt the Vatican's
hand weighing heavily upon its shoulders. Every new century
brought about new bloody installments of that lasting spiritual
feud, at the bottom of which lies the indomitable spirit of the
Czechs for independence and liberty, a claim no pope liked to hear,
much less to grant. Therefore we see down through the centuries
the bloody trail of papacy sweep the Czech country over and over
again. Every century brought a new installment of the pope's
anger and the twentieth century was no exception. Its contribution
was by no means the least one. Let us hope it will be the last.

After the first World War the government of the promising
young democracy realized the danger threatening it from the
Vatican and it tried to evade it. But the effort was not sufficiently
bold and courageous. A sort of compromise was made with the
Vatican, in order to attain a modus vivendi. That was the mistake.
The Czech leaders should have known that a modus vivendi with
the Vatican meant death. Well- instructed in Europe's history,
they should have remembered the old French proverb: Qui mange
du pape, en meurt — that is, literally, "He who eats from the pope
dies."

And so it happened in 1938, when Hitler's campaign against
Czechoslovakia approached its climax, that the Czech people were
stabbed in the back by the declaration of an independent state of
Slovakia, in which the Slovak people themselves had no part what-
soever. This foul deed had been prepared by Father Hlinka, leader
of the Vatican party in Slovakia, and executed by his successor in
this leadership, Msgr. Josef Tiso. Armed Hlinka guards flooded
the country, crushing out with Nazi cruelty all attempts at re-

Behind the Dictators

Reichsfuehrer Hitler greets the Rt. Rev. Msgr. Joseph Tiso, Slovakian Chief of
State, Papal Chamberlain and Roman Catholic priest, at Hitler's field
headquarters on the Eastern Front, October, 1041.

sistance, utterly destroying national unity, confusing and demoral-
izing the people at the very moment when German troops on the
Austrian border at Bratislava stood ready for the occupation of
the Slovak capital.

This stabbing was so perfectly timed with the attacks on Czecho-
slovakia from Berlin, that Hitler and Mussolini could not fail to
gratefully remember their partner in the Vatican, when they signed
the pact of Munich.

AUSTRIA

AUSTRIA IS THE ONLY COUNTRY in Central Europe where
the socialists after the first World War succeeded in achieving a
remarkable success. This was due partly to their electoral majority
in Vienna, which comprised nearly one third of Austria's popula-

A Vital Condition For Lasting Peace 99

tion, but was principally due to the energy and integrity of their
leaders. They even managed to approach and attract the peasantry
in the provinces. Supported by liberal intellectuals and scientists
they began to found public libraries in many small communities,
thereby stimulating the appetite for reading and learning, a feast
hitherto unknown to the country folk.

This development of a peaceful progress came to an abrupt
end in February 1934, when the two other parties of the 'National
Government,' the Christian Socialists (the pope's party) and the
German Nationals, together started their bloody coup d'etat which
buried the Republic. This attack was carefully prepared for some
years previous by the Chancellor Msgr. Ignaz Seipel, a Roman
Catholic priest. He broke up the National Government and by
combining the Christian Socialist party with the German Nationals
against the socialists, started Austria on its way to civil war.

The German Nationals had traditionally been foes of the Catho-
lic church. They hated Christianity in general and the Roman
church in particular. For more than 50 years the slogan of their
stormy, but not numerous party had been: 'Los Von Rom,' which
means: 'Away from the Roman Church.' Nevertheless, Msgr.
Seipel constantly rejected the repeated propositions of the socialists
for a lasting understanding as the base for a solid government, the
only security for a peaceful future. Seipel accepted the Ger-
man Nationals as his allies in 1930 and the internal strife was on.

When Msgr. Seipel died, he was succeeded by a man he himself
had picked out — Engelbert DoUfuss, trained and educated by the
Jesuits. It was Doilfuss who in May, 1932, suppressed the Repub-
lican constitution and established an authoritarian government. In
parliament he mustered a majority of one, but did not hesitate to
abolish it altogether when it got deadlocked, which was naturally
bound to happen. Relying on the armed organizations of the Ger-
man Nationals he allowed and even encouraged them to deliber-
ately attack workers and their organizations. The signal for the
massacre was given on February 12, 1934. The workers tried to
resist, but had to give up when the national army bombarded their
homes.

Austria now became an ecclesiastical state with a papal encycli-
cal as constitution and the Archbishop of Vienna, Dr. Innitzer

LITTLE DOLLFUSS, WITH CARDINAL INNITZER ON THE RIGHT, WITNESSING
THE PROCLAMATION OF THE NEW CLERICAL-FASCIST CONSTITUTION IN 1934.

Left to right: DR. SCHUSCHNIGG, PRICE STAREMBERG AND

CARDINAL INNITZER SMILE THEIR APPROVAL OF
DOLLFUSS.

A Vital Condition For Lasting Peace 101

(made a Cardinal after the butchery) as its virtual head. It did
not take the new government long to show its true colors. From
the first moment of victory, dissension split the two government
parties and public administration began to show signs of deteriora-
tion. Corruption and nepotism spread so rapidly that before long
they became the only keys to all higher posts in public service. At
the same time heedless squandering of public funds developed
for the benefit of party leaders on one side and of monasteries and
abbeys on the other. Working hours were lengthened and wages
lowered. The indebtedness of the State and of municipalities went
soaring despite constantly heavier taxation. In short, this adminis-
tration did so well, that it succeeded in less than two years in fos-
tering and concentrating on itself the hatred of the population. I
remember the exclamation of a hotel-keeper in Carinthia province
in the summer of 1936: 'Anything would be better than this clerical
pest!' Not everybody was as outspoken as that, but the sentiment
was a fairly general one. Under such circumstances it seemed only
natural that Nazi propaganda began to make rapid headway in
Austria.

Then came the assassination of Dollfuss. Schuschnigg, another
of Msgr. Seipel's Jesuit-trained pupils, took his place. From the
very beginning he was at the mercy of the German Nationals in
the government. Boasting openly of their relations with Berlin,
they kept extorting more and more concessions from him for the
Nazi party in Austria. In his desperate situation Schuschnigg
turned to Mussolini for help. Mussolini had repeatedly declared
he would fight for the independence of Austria, because he hated
to see German soldiers on the Brenner. But this time it was another
story. Mussolini disclosed to Schuschnigg in July 1937 that Italy
was by now disinterested in Austria's independence. And so the
tragic end came.

On March 13, 1938, Hitler, at the head of a strong force, made
his cautious entry into Austria and Vienna. Heavy bombers roared
day and night over the city. The frightened people dared not
even leave their homes. A major part of the frenzied youth, cheer-
ing Hitler in the streets of Vienna, had preceded the Germans as
"tourists."

102 Behind the Dictators

Five days later came the political denouement, when the Aus-
trians were confronted in the morning with big posters everywhere.
It was an address "To the Catholic people of Austria!" signed
by all archbishops and bishops of the country headed by the name
of Cardinal Innitzer, Archbishop of Vienna. The undersigned
prelates declared therein that they had deeply considered the situ-
ation and had decided that Adolf Hitler had proved to be the
protector of German rights and culture. They expressed their con-
viction that his leadership would guarantee material and moral
happiness to the German people in the future and they therefore
entreated the faithful people to trustfully follow the Fuehrer.

SPAIN

THE CADAVER OF AUSTRIA was the indispensable bridge for
the military coalition between Nazism and Fascism. But this broth-
erhood in arms materialized for the first time on the battlefields of
Spain, when the rebellion of Franco against the legal government
of Spain started in 1936. This was the first joint open move by the
reactionary coalition against democracy and liberty. It was the
first practical test of the coalition and offered to German and Italian
bombardiers the opportunity for practicing on living "Red" tar-
gets. Both tests had satisfactory results. German and Italian bom-
bers did a truly devastating job for Franco, while the big democra-
cies continued, like a well conducted orchestra, to play appease-
ment and non-intervention tunes, not heeding the fact that the war
in Spain was in reality a war against themselves.

The role played by the Vatican in the Spanish Civil War is
generally known; and there is no need, therefore, to explain it in
detail here. It was really the Vatican's war. Aside from the desire
to kill the young Spanish Republic, the Vatican had a real material
grievance against its government.

That democratic government had dared to abolish the tax ex-
emption for the vast domains of the pope, and, as we well know,
the Papacy has always been most sensitive to the matter of money
and revenues. The victorious Franco promptly restored that tax
exemption, brought back the Jesuits, and the Catholic church
again enjoys its full revenues from Spain, while the Spanish
people starve.

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A Vital Condition For Lasting Peace 105

HITLER'S MISTAKE

WITH THE SIGNING OF THE MUNICH PACT and the in-
vasion of Czech territory in March, 1939, the stage for the killing
of the Soviet Union was definitely set. Had Hitler struck at Russia
then, history would probably have written a different story. But
the "sorcerer's apprentice," evidently intoxicated by success, went
crazy with megalomania and bolted. He decided to make Russia
the last bite of the European pie and attacked Poland, whose gov-
ernment was of his own Fascist flesh, and thereby forced France
and England to take up arms against him. World War II started.

REMEDIAL SUGGESTIONS

HERE ENDS our restrospective journey through Europe, and we
can now consider the inferences of our survey. I venture to assert
that the historic events and the undeniable facts pointed out on
our way furnish ample evidence of the Vatican's political activity,
and show, furthermore, to what disaster this activity has led. We
have seen the Vatican, as an outspoken supporter of Fascism, fos-
tering and spreading dissension among Nations, instigating blood-
shed and war, in short, violating by political activity the religious
principles of the Catholic church itself. Now we can evaluate the
real meaning of the friendly relations between the Vatican and
Japan and of the pope's declaration of "strict neutrality" in World
War II for human rights and liberty. Both moves were of a highly
political nature and greatly injurious to the cause of the United
Nations. They cast a shadow of distrust into the souls of millions
of simple minded people as to the righteousness of our cause. But
since that attack came from a political quarter, we are entitled to
strike back. It is even our duty to do so and explain to those people
that political opinion issued by the Vatican, or any high Catholic
prelate, cannot be expected to be necessarily in accordance with
the religious spirit of the church and should, therefore, not be
accepted blindly but scrutinized and weighed carefully by reason
and conscience. The activity of political Papacy is written in blood
on every page of Europe's history.

When the time comes for the United Nations to clear up the
European scene for a lasting peace, their major problem will there-

106 Behind the Dictators

fore be to bar the political activity of the Vatican by appropriate
legal measures. No kind of post-war organization of Europe can
secure a durable peace, as long as the incendiary production of
the Vatican has not been stopped. The problem is to cut the strings
which are pulled by the Vatican for political purposes. To this end
I recommend the following:

1) Absolute separation between State and Church;

2) Absolute separation between School and Church;

3) Every religions community must constitute an autonomous and
independent corporation under the law;

4) Individual governments should take over, within their territory,
all agricultural land, owned or controlled by the Vatican, directly
or through an ecclessiastical body, for the benefit of small peas-
ants and landless farmers.

5) Democratization of the Catholic church by proportionate repre-
sentation of Cardinals from democratic countries, and by giving
the Catholic people a voice in the election of bishops and the
management of church properties.

These propositions are a vital condition for lasting peace in
Europe. They need no commentary. The need for each of them
can be seen directly and interpreted by one or another of the his-
toric events and facts revealed above. Put to work they will go a
long way toward clearing the atmosphere and the ground for a
lasting peace in Europe. Otherwise serious trouble is inevitable
in the future.

Vatican Support of German Militarism 107

VATICAN SUPPORT OF GERMAN
MILITARISM

SIXTY YEARS AGO, "The New York Times" made a prophecy
that "the profound immorality of the temporal policy of the
Church of Rome" would be the cause of wars in the years to come.
As a reminder of this ice sent the following to the "Times" after its
attack on "Izvestia," Russian Covernment newspaper, on Feb. 5,
1944. because of its factual criticism of the pro-Fascist policy of
the Vatican in our time:

February 14, 1944

THE EDITOR,

"THE NEW YORK TIMES,"

Dear Sir:

Your severe editorial of February 5, opposing Isvestia's criticism

of the Vatican, entirely overlooked the known facts in the matter

of the Vatican's consistent support of German militarism for the
past 100 years.

Are you aware that your own New York Times once editorially
castigated the Vatican in much more scathing terms than Izvestia
for the same reason, accurately prophesying that the issue "will be
potent in molding the history of Europe for years to come"! This
editorial in The New York Times called the Vatican's support of
German militarism "the profound immorality of the temporal
policy of the Church of Rome."

The editorial appeared in The New York Times of February 8,
1887. and is as follows:

"All is grist that comes to the mills of Rome. The collision between
the spirit of military absolutism and the spirit of Parliamentary
liberty in Germany, a contest watched with the deepest interest all
over the world, and whose issue will be potent in molding the history
of Europe for years to come, is viewed by the Pope merely as a wel-
come opportunity to improve the condition of the Roman Catholic
Church in Germany.

"The party of the Centre in the Reichstag is the Catholic party.
Dr. Windthorst, who has been its leader throughout the long struggle
against the May laws, is its leader now. He led the successful opposi-
tion to Bismarck's bill increasing the army and providing for its sup-
port for a period of seven years, commonly called the Septennate bill.

108 Behind THE Dictators

When the Reichstag had rejected the bill and Bismarck had dissolved
that body and a new general election had been ordered. Baron Frank-
enstein sent to Koine, through the Papal Nuncio at Munich, an inquiry
as to the views and wishes of the Pope Concerning the conduct of
Catholics in the struggle. The Pope's reply is made in a letter written
by Cardinal Jacobini: 'That the Septennate question embraces re-
ligious and moral considerations which justify him in expressing the
opinion that he may expect from the Centre party's conciliation to-
wards the measure a beneficial effect in the final revision of the
May laws.' The Pope desires, moreover, 'to meet the views of Em-
peror William and Bismarck, and thereby induce the powerful
German Empire to improve the position of the Papacy.' . . .

"One sentence of Dr. Windthorst's address reveals with pitiless
and perhaps unintentional frankness the profound immorality of the
temporal policy of the Church of Rome. "The Pope's advocacy of the
Septennate bill," said Dr. Windthorst, 'was independent of the merits
of the measure, and arose from reasons of expediency and from
political considerations.' It would be difficult to frame a more
accurate analysis of the Papal motives while at the same time indi-
cating a more sweeping denunciation of the Papal policy. Liberal
principles, the right of popular government, the German constitution
and its guarantee of Parliamentary institutions, says the Pope, may
go to the dogs if we can secure some further modification of the laws
which relate to the Church, and so improve the condition of the
Papacy in Germany."

The New York Times' dire prophecy came true, as the First and
Second World Wars sadly testify. Pope Leo's Kill's command to
the Catholic Center party in 1887 to aid militarism in Germany was
a contributing factor to the First World War. Again in 1933, when
the Vatican removed the Catholic Center party as the only remain-
ing obstacle to Hitler's rise to power, the Second World War began.

How true it is that a strong militarist Germany is essential to the
Vatican policy can be seen in the late Kaiser Wilhelm's Memoirs,
where be tells that on his visit to Pope Leo XIII, the latter insisted
that "Germany must become the sword of the Catholic Church."*

(Signed) LEO H. LEHMANN,

Editor THE CONVERTED CATHOLIC MAGAZINE.

Secy. CHRIST'S MISSION.

* The Kaiser's Memoirs, by Wilhelm II, translated by Thomas R. Ybarra,
page 211. Harper & Bros., N. Y.