Jewish anger as Pope Benedict moves Pius XII closer to sainthood

[Jan Klimkowski]

Jewish anger as Pope Benedict moves Pius XII closer to sainthood

• Catholic leader signs decree extolling virtues of predecessor
• Wartime pontiff accused of inaction during Holocaust

Riazat Butt, Religious affairs correspondent guardian.co.uk,
Monday 21 December 2009 15.44 GMT


Jewish leaders from around the world expressed their outrage today after the Pope opened the way for his controversial wartime predecessor to be made a saint, with some calling the possible beatification of Pius XII as "inopportune and premature".

Benedict signed a decree last Saturday on the virtues of Pius, who has been criticised for not doing enough to stop the Holocaust. The decree means he can be beatified once a miracle attributed to him has been recognised.

Beatification is the first major step towards sainthood. But Benedict, who has long admired Pius, continues to draw fire for ignoring concerns over the controversial pontiff.

Among those to criticise him was the World Jewish Congress, whose president, Ronald Lauder, said: "As long as the archives about the crucial period 1939 to 1945 remain closed, and until a consensus on his actions ‑ or inaction ‑ concerning the persecution of millions of Jews in the Holocaust is established, a beatification is inopportune and premature.

"While it is entirely a matter for the Catholic church to decide on whom religious honours are bestowed, there are strong concerns about Pius XII's political role during world war two which should not be ignored."

He called on the Vatican to immediately open the files on the controversial figure. "Given the importance of good relations between Catholics and the Jews, and following the difficult events of the past year, it would be appreciated if the Vatican showed more sensitivity on this matter," he added, referring to Benedict's rehabilitation of a Holocaust-denying cleric, Richard Williamson.

The incident sparked worldwide condemnation from prominent Jewish groups and individuals and placed an additional strain on interfaith relations, which were already under pressure after the pope issued an edict permitting a prayer that called for the conversion of Jews.

In France, the country's chief rabbi urged the Vatican to abandon its mission to beatify Pius. Gilles Bernheim said: "Given Pius XII's silence during and after the Shoah [Holocaust], I don't want to believe that Catholics see in Pius XII an example of morality for humankind. I hope that the church will renounce this beatification plan and will thus honour its message and its values."

The renewed source of tension could cast a cloud over Benedict's inaugural visit to Rome's synagogue next month.

Giuseppe Laras, president of the Assembly of Italian Rabbis, told the Italian daily newspaper La Repubblica: "I hope it goes ahead but after this latest move I wouldn't be surprised if it is cancelled. While I respect the autonomy of the church in matters of sainthood, I don't see how the pope could have taken such an untimely decision. Anything can happen now."

The Vatican argues that Pius worked quietly behind the scenes because direct interventions might have worsened the situation for Jews and Catholics in Europe. It is a position many Jews have rejected.

Yesterday Benedict, in a look back at an eventful year, recalled his trip to Jerusalem and described his visit to the Holocaust memorial as "an upsetting encounter".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec...-sainthood

[Jan Klimkowski]

I see that there's no mention of Pope Pius XII's involvement in the Paperclip and other ratlines which spirited primarily German and eastern European Nazi war criminals to South America and elsewhwere.

Nor mention of Pius XII's support for ethnic cleansers such as Ante Pavelić, Cardinal Aloysius Viktor Stepinac and the Croatian Ustaša, with its concentration camps such as Jasenovac for Serbs, Jews, Roma and children.

See here (with photos):

http://www.deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/...php?t=1395

Pius XII a Saint? I don't think so.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Ante Pavelic turned back to face rising sun. Although the spring of 1945 was already some weeks old, the Slovene countryside was still cold and mist hung in the valleys and hollows. Despite the temperature, Pavelic wiped sweat from his brow. The fleeing dictator was now on foot, having abandoned his car on the clogged road and joined the trong of refugees marching wearily towards Austria.

Pavelic reflected on the irony of his situation. A few days before ha had been the Poglavnik of 'independent' Croatia, excercising comparable powers to the Fuhrer in Germany. He had even managed to keep the death machine operating almost until the end, while the Germans were frantically dismantling theirs. Then, without warning the Germans capitulated. The Poglavnik was now just one of hundreds of thousands fleeing towards Austria to surrender to the British...

Pavelic quivered, almost like a startled rabbit; he was sure he could see a motorised partisan unit in the distance. He turned again towards the Austrian frontier and broke into a desperate jog...

Pavelic hoped to be greeted in Austria by both Church and British leaders as a prominent Catholic leader in the struggle against 'atheistic Bolshevism'. After alll, British intelligence had maintained close pre-war relations with his underground terrorist network, even after the 1934 assassination of Yugoslav King Alexander in Marseilles. Pavelic also knew that the Holy See looked on Croatia as 'the frontier of Christianity'; a special relationship between Croatia and the Pope extended back to 700 AD.

Apart from this strong historical connection, Pavelic was also aware that Pius XII and his senior advisers held extremely charitable opinions of his militant Catholicism.

Mark Aarons and John Loftus "Unholy Trinity," St. Martin's Press, Edition 1992, pp 70-71, Chapter 4, titled "A staggering blow to the Holy See"

It is absurd to believe that 300,000 fugitive Nazis escaped to South America on the few U-Boats remaining at the end of the war, or that they all made their own travel arrangements...

The truth is much more ordinary, almost mundane. It is all the more shocking as a result. For whatever success ODESSA achieved, they were mere amateurs at Nazi-smuggling when compared with the Vatican. [Croat priest Krunoslav] Draganovic's Ratline was truly professional, ensuring that many guilty war criminals reached safe havens. Often they did not end up in the remote jungles of South America, but settled instead in Britain, Canada, Australia and the United States.

Most of the mass murderers were in fact not even German. At the end of World War II, there were tens of thousands of Central and East European Nazi collaborators who were just as guilty as their German sponsors... These were the people of most concern to Father Krunoslav Draganovic, Secretary of the Croatian Institute of San Girolamo in Rome. Draganovic was known for his deep sympathy for the Croatian Ustashi, even those who had committed war crimes. Many innocent Croatians had been cynically returned by the British to certain death at the hands of Tito's Communist government in May 1945. But many horrendously guilty war criminals escaped... The Ustashi were the first to be protected by Draganovic... Draganovic was in Rome since August 1943, negotiating for Pavelic... Pavelic's plan for smuggling network were already well advanced.

Draganovic was the key man in setting up this Ratline. He established contacts with [Pope] Pius XII, as well as senior officials of the Vatican Secretariat of State and Italian intelligence... In late 1944 the Vatican requested that he be permitted to visit the camps where his fellow countrymen were housed. Although Draganovic was well known to Western diplomats as a fanatic Ustashi, Allied intelligence gave him carte blance.

Mark Aarons and John Loftus "Unholy Trinity," St. Martin's Press, Edition 1992, pp 88-89, Chapter 5, titled "Ratline"

According to secret reports from the U.S. Army's Counterintelligence Corps (CIC), written just after World War II and since declassified, Draganovic and his collaborators at San Girolamo provided money, food, housing, and forged Red Cross passports for a number of Ustasha war criminals seeking to escape justice. Through an underground railroad of sympathetic priests, known as the "ratline," the Ustashas could move from Trieste, to Rome, to Genoa, and on to neutral countries--primarily Argentina--where they could live out their days unpunished and unnoticed. Along the ratline, virtually the entire Ustasha leadership went free. "All these people were escaping--and this at a time when just getting a meal in Rome was a major accomplishment," recalls William Gowen, a CIC officer in Rome after the war...

Croatian Catholic officials were funneling money to war criminals even after they escaped to Argentina, documents show. According to cable intercepts cited in a 1947 U.S. diplomatic report, Pavelic escaped in November 1947 to Buenos Aires, where he was said to have been met by a retinue of Catholic priests.

Susan Headden, Dana Hawkins, and Jason Vest "A vow of silence - Did gold stolen by Croatian fascists reach the Vatican?" US News and World Report, March 30, 1998

A leading Nazi-hunter yesterday attacked plans by the Pope to make an historic 'apology to the Jews' shortly as a 'cosmetic exercise' which would leave the 'true facts' about help given to Nazi criminals by the Roman Catholic Church hidden in the Vatican archives.

Jewish groups have long maintained that Vatican officials help former Nazi officers to flee to Latin America and that Catholic monasteries and convents gave them refuge...

It has also been claimed that gold taken from Jews by the Fascist wartime regime in Croatia, a Catholic country, was transferred to the Vatican for safe-keeping, although the Vatican has denied this.

'I have personally seen documents in the Buenos Aires archives showing that Ante Pavelic, the Croat Fascist leader, arrived in Argentina dressed as a priest and carrying a certificate of safe conduct from the Vatican,' Mr Samuels said.

Shimon Samuels is the head of international relations at the Simon Wiesenthal Centre -- which has brought numerous former Nazi criminals to book...

He was appalled to learn that the Vatican was considering the beatification of Pius XII. This would be 'a morally inadmissible act.

Richard Owen, "Pope's apology to Jews attacked as empty gesture," The Times (London) Oct 30, 1997

[Jan Klimkowski]

From - 'UNHOLY TRINITY: The Vatican,The Nazis, and Soviet Intelligence By John Loftus and Mark Aarons Pub by St.Martins Press [1991] Available from Barnes & Noble [1-800-242-6657]

ISBN0-312-07111-6 [hardcover] ISBN 0-312-09407-8 [paperback]

page 83-87

A Staggering Blow to the Holy See

....senior American officers certainly passed the 'Hands Off' decision down their chain of command. From all the available evidence, however, it seems probable that the original decision was taken by British intelligence officers, who were the fugitive's real sponsors.

The American motive for quietly going along with London's decision to allow Pavelic's escape was really very simple. Senior US officials were then developing their own network of ex-Nazis, and were beginning to co-ordinate activities with both the Vatican and London.

The 'Hands Off' policy came into effect just eight days after Gowen completed his report on wanted Hungarian war criminal Ferenc Vajta and the Vatican connection. Gowen recommended on 6 July that American intelligence should take over Intermarium, passing his views up to 'higher commands so that its full international importance [can] be evaluated'.55

Gowen had certainly worked out which way the wind was blowing. No one cared about Nazis as long as they were anti Communist. Nearly two months after the 'Hands Off' policy was decided, Gowen and another officer submitted a lengthy report on the Pavelic case. They noted, with a great deal of charity, that though 'fanatically anti-Serb and to a lesser degree anti-Orthodox, Pavelic is a cultured person and a social liberal'. They had to admit, though, that

.... during the early months of the Pavelic regime about 150,000 persons of the Serb Orthodox faith were slaughtered - in many cases, it is a matter of record, they were offered salvation if they renounced their faith and became Catholics. Thus, today, in the eyes of the Vatican, Pavelic is a militant Catholic, a man who erred, but who erred fighting for Catholicism. It is for this reason that [Pavelic] now enjoys Vatican protection . Pavelic is known to be in contact with the Vatican which sees in him the militant Catholic who yesterday fought the Orthodox Church and today is fighting Communist atheism .......

For the reasons given above he is receiving the protection of the Vatican whose view of the entire 'Pavelic Question' is that, since the Croat State does not exist and, since the Tito regime cannot be expected to give anybody a fair trial, [Pavelic] should not be turned over to the present Yugoslav regime with the excuse of bringing him to justice. The extradition of Pavelic would only weaken the forces fighting atheism and aid Communism in its fight against the Church.56

The CIC agents were still a little uncomfortable with the Holy See's approach, so they went to some lengths to explain fully the Vatican's justification for its immoral policy:

84 ....Pavelic's crimes of the past cannot be forgotten, but he can only be tried by Croats representing a Christian and Democratic Government, the Vatican maintains. While Pavelic is allegedly responsible for the deaths of 150,000 persons, Tito is the agent of Stalin, who is responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of persons in the Ukraine, White Russia, Poland, the Baltic and the Balkan States over a period of twenty-five [25] years.57

Gowen and his colleague were also certain that Pavelic 'is today being supported and exploited by some power' other than the Vatican. As Pavelic had been 'protected by the British in British-guarded and requisitioned quarters' when he first arrived in Austria in May 1945, and knowing 'something of the British Intelligence system', the CIC officers were sure that this power was the United Kingdom.

They further pointed out that even Pavelic's arch enemies, the pro-Royalist Serbian Cetniks, believed that 'he ought not to be turned over to Tito at the present time since his trial would be used as a basis for more anti-American and pro-Communist propaganda'. So the CIC officers recommended

...that the Vatican and Chetnik views of Pavelic be appreciated and that no direct police action be taken against him on the part of the American Military Authorities. Such action would force his extradition to Tito and would bolster the present British anti-American campaign be [sic] waged among the political emigres in Western Europe.58

The US intelligence officers were referring here to the long standing British campaign to denigrate America in the eyes of the Nazi emigres. They hoped to exclude the Americans from all aspects of the clandestine intelligence and military operations they had organised over the previous two years.

The CIC officers were aware that the British campaign included the claim that the Americans had returned many innocent anti-Communists to Yugoslavia. They commented that in 'the case of the Croats the British state that while they have only extradited seven [7] Croats from Italy the United States had extradited ninety-eight [98] from Austria'.

It was completely false, but nonetheless a very effective propaganda tool in Britain's anti-American campaign. US intelligence was by then fully aware that SIS were recruiting ex-Nazis for their anti-Communist crusade.59

A 'post facto' rationale was found to justify the 'Hands Off' policy. Neither the British nor the Americans were serious about apprehending Pavelic and sending him back to Tito's 'justice'.

85

The bureaucrats in London and Washington formally favoured this course, while turning a blind eye to the activities of their intelligence services. SIS was then mounting major political, intelligence and military operations against Tito. Using Pavelic's followers, they wanted to overthrow the Communist government in Belgrade. Some sympathetic Americans were already working on these operations without official sanction. They, too, saw the Ustashi as useful weapons in the anti-Communist struggle.

Clearly, if the Americans handed over the head of the movement to the enemy, it would be impossible to expect loyalty from the Ustashi rank and file. The solution was clear: Britain must 'be forced to arrest and extradite him themselves. The ultimate disposal of Pavelic is necessary if the Croat democratic and resistance forces are to ever be recognized by the United States.'60

'Disposal', of course, meant escape, and the Holy See was the perfect 'fall guy' to shoulder the blame for smuggling Pavelic. The Vatican had the most to lose if he was handed over to the Communists. Soon after he helped Vajta to leave Rome, Gowen wrote a final report:

...Pavelic's contacts are so high and his present position is so compromising to the Vatican, that any extradition of [Pavelic] would deal a staggering blow to the Roman Catholic Church.61

Ante Pavelic was once again allowed to disappear into thin air. The names of his high level contacts inside the Holy See's bureaucracy are still highly classified. As seen earlier, at least one US intelligence source believed that it was Monsignor Giovanni Montini, the Pope's Under Secretary of State for Ordinary Affairs, and later Pope Paul VI. This is dismissed by present day senior Vatican bureaucrat, Monsignor Milan Simcic, who was Father Draganovic's close colleague in Rome at that time.

Although Simcic rejected the claim that Montini was involved with the Poglavnik, he was absolutely certain that Pavelic was in close contact with Draganovic. Simcic insisted that Draganovic and Montini were also extremely close, suggesting the strong possibility that Montini, the future Pope, may have known of Pavelic's escape.62

A few months after Gowen's suggestion for the 'ultimate disposal' of Pavelic, the fugitive re-emerged in Argentina, where dictator Juan Peron employed him as a 'security adviser'.

86

There is considerable debate about exactly how the Poglavnik made good his final escape. What is known is that he departed Italy on 13 September 1947, arriving in Buenos Aires on 6 November aboard the Italian ship SS 'Sestriere', travelling under the name of Pablo Aranyos.

In the early 1950s, Avro Manhattan, a bitter critic of the Vatican and Catholicism, claimed that Father Draganovic not only provided the Red Cross passport Pavelic used and arranged the shipping details, but actually accompanied the fugitive war criminal to Buenos Aires and stayed with him for twelve months. Despite Manhattan's religious bigotry, he was very well informed, having worked for British intelligence during the war.63

As late as 1986, this was still the 'semi-official' story peddled by the Yugoslav secret police, UDBA, in a series of articles in the Sarajevo based 'Svijet' magazine.64 However, new evidence has recently emerged which suggests a different version. In early 1990 a secret Communist intelligence file was smuggled out of Eastern Europe to the authors. Although the identity of the Communists' source was not disclosed, whoever it was had intimate contact with the Poglavnik, his family and closest associates, as minute details of events and conversations were provided.65

The document confirms that Pavelic and Draganovic met on numerous occasions, and the priest did in fact procure the Red Cross passport in the name of Pablo Aranyos, supposedly a Hungarian refugee. But according to this source, the two men had some kind of falling out. Draganovic proposed that Pavelic leave Rome by air, and as this was thought too dangerous by the fugitive's closest advisers, the priest was cut out of the final preparations.

There is absolutely no mention in the Communist police file of Draganovic accompanying the Poglavnik to Argentina. According to the source, the man who allegedly made the final arrangements was also a Croatian priest, by the name of Father Jole. His real identity is Father Josip Bujanovic, another wanted war criminal now living peacefully in Australia.

This version of events is basically confirmed by Draganovic's close colleague, Monsignor Simcic. In a taped interview, he freely admitted that Pavelic had asked Draganovic to assist his escape. Simcic insisted that Draganovic was working on smuggling the wanted man out of Italy. He was certain, though, that Pavelic eventually made other arrangements.

87

This would seem to be the case, as the evidence points to Pavelic using his extremely influential contacts in the Italian secret service to make his escape. Whatever method Pavelic used, there is no doubt about Draganovic's role in arranging the Vatican's protection prior to his embarkation, and providing him with the necessary travel documents.66

Further, Draganovic had gone to considerable trouble to arrange to have Pavelic met when he reached Argentina. The ground had been very carefully prepared. According to US intelligence, one Daniel Crljen had been flown to Buenos Aires with Vatican assistance to 'confer with Gen[eral] Peron on the organization of an Ustasha "Elite" movement in the Argentine'.67 Crljen was one of the movement's senior ideologues and propagandists, having played a key role in instigating the slaughter of Serbs during the war.

Crljen's mission had certainly been successful; PAvelic's arrival merely completed the transfer of almost his entire government to Argentina. Those veterans waiting to greet him included nearly every surviving cabinet minister, as well as many municipal officers, military and police commanders. Most were wanted war criminals, yet they too had evaded justice, using the same method as their Poglavnik.

Draganovic's Ratline was a sophisticated and professional operation. It was extremely well organised and could handle hundreds of fugitives at one time. One of Draganovic's key operatives estimates that as many as 30,000 people were funnelled from Austria to Rome, on to Genoa and new homes in North and South America and Australia.68 Most of those running the Ratline had very shady pasts of their own. They were not part of some exotic SS 'brotherhood'. In fact, nearly all the personnel running the smuggling network were Croatian [Roman] Catholic priests.

-end page 87-

BTW- During and after WWII, Roman Catholic William ["Wild Bill"] Donovan headed the OSS [American forerunner of the CIA]. Donovan was decorated in July 1944 by Pope Pius XII with the Grand Cross of the Order of St. Sylvester, "the Vatican's highest award, for a lifetime of public and secret service to the [Roman] Catholic Church".

[from picture caption in 'Wild Bill Donovan- The Last Hero'.

By Anthony Cave Brown. Pub.by Times Books]

Roman Catholic, "Knight of Malta" William Casey, who became head of CIA under Reagan, was one of Donovans OSS subordinates.

Allen Dulles was another Donovan OSS subordinate who later headed the CIA. Mr. Dulles son is now a prominent Jesuit priest.

Roman Catholic Helms and Colby were also Donovan OSS subordinates who later headed the CIA.

http://www.mosquitonet.com/~prewett/ut8387.html

[Jan Klimkowski]

FTR #532 Interview with John Loftus
Posted November 15, 2005 by FTR, in Category: For The Record
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about Unholy Trinity and Intelligence Summit

Recorded November 6, 2005
REALAUDIO

In this interview with the heroic John Loftus, we revisit the subjects of the Vatican Bank and the Vatican’s long involvement with fascism. After discussing a summit that John is helping to arrange between members of the intelligence community and members of the general public to discuss the war on terror, the program focuses on John’s landmark book Unholy Trinity and a lawsuit he helped to file against the Vatican Bank for looting the wealth of Holocaust victims, aiding the escape of Nazi war criminals, and using the stolen money and the fugitives to wage covert operations during the Cold War. In Unholy Trinity, John (and his co-author Mark Aarons) document a long history of collusion between the Vatican and Nazi Germany, going back to the immediate aftermath of World War I. After investing millions of dollars in German (later Nazi) industry, the Vatican collaborated with U.S. corporate interests to safeguard the Nazi treasury, spiriting the wealth out of Europe after the War. This capital was recycled back to Germany in the 1950’s and was used to fund the so-called “German economic miracle”—that country’s economic revival. (Veteran listeners will recognize this concatenation’s position within the constellation of the Bormann flight-capital program.) Much of the program focuses on the Vatican’s “Ratlines”—the escape networks that were set up to help fugitive Nazis escape justice. Many of the most notorious Nazi war criminals escaped with the help of this network, which was operated with the knowledge and blessings of the highest officials of the Church.

Program Highlights Include: The decades-long collaboration between the Vatican and the powerful Wall Street law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell in protecting their mutual investment in Nazi industry; the history of US corporate investments in Nazi Germany; the involvement of Western (including American) intelligence agencies in the operation of the Ratlines; the role of Argentine dictator Juan Peron in the exodus of Nazi capital and fugitive war criminals from Europe; the role of the World Commerce Corporation in the flight of Nazi wealth from Europe after the war; the sheltering of some of the worst Nazi criminals in the Pope’s summer residence at Castelgandolfo; the continuing cover-up by the government of Argentina in that country’s conspiracy to aid fugitive Nazis; the continuing cover-up by Vatican related elements in Italy of the true extent of Church complicity in the escape of fugitive Nazis; the channeling of Vatican money to Hitler in 1919; the role of Popes Pius XII and Paul VI in the Vatican/Nazi conspiracy.

1. The broadcast begins with John’s discussion of a project with which he’s involved called “Intelligence Summit.” This is a meeting scheduled for Presidents’ Day Weekend in 2006 in Washington D.C. Bringing together elements of the intelligence communities of numerous countries, the gathering offers the opportunity for members of the working press and the general public to share information with these intelligence professionals, and vice versa. The only stipulation is that non-intelligence attendees cannot divulge the information that they learn there anywhere else. For more information, see: http://www.intelligencesummit.org.

2. The balance of the program consists of discussion and analysis of John’s book Unholy Trinity: The Vatican, The Nazis and the Swiss Banks (co-authored with Mark Aarons.) Before discussing the book, we noted the reinstatement of a lawsuit for which John was the intelligence adviser. Note that the lawsuit was reinstated by an American appellate court at the same time as Cardinal Ratzinger was appointed Pope. (For more about the Pope’s interesting background, see FTR#508.) “A federal appeals court stepped into the controversy over the Catholic Church’s relations with Nazi regimes during World War II on Monday, reinstating a lawsuit by Holocaust survivors against the Vatican Bank for allegedly profiting from property looted by the Ustasha puppet government in Croatia. . . .”
(“Court Revives Suit Against Vatican Bank” by Bob Egelko; San Francisco Chronicle; 4/19/2005; p. A6.)

3. “ . . . The Ustasha took power in Croatia after the German invasion in 1941 and established death camps in which as many as 700,000 people, mostly Serbs, were killed, according to a U.S. government report cited by the court. A separate State Department report said Ustasha leaders found sanctuary in a papal institution in Rome after the war, with a treasury of over $80 million. The suit claims much of the money had been stolen from Serbs, Jews, Gypsies, Ukrainians and others under Ustasha domination and was kept in the Vatican Bank, where it was used in part to finance the relocation of Nazi fugitives. [Italics are Mr. Emory’s.] The plaintiffs—who seek class-action status on behalf of all those affected—want restitution of their losses and any profits gained by the bank. . . .” (Idem.)

4. After discussing John’s lawsuit, the program highlights Unholy Trinity. Barred from writing about the Vatican/Nazi/intelligence connections because of his high security clearances, John and associates recruited a young man of Croatian heritage, who spoke fluent Serbo-Croatian. Posing as a young Ustashi enthusiast, he was able to interview some of the surviving villains of the Vatican/Croatian/Nazi collaboration. Thinking him to be a kindred soul, they “spilled the beans” into a tape-recorded microphone. With the veil of secrecy having been thus breached, John received clearance to go ahead with the publication of his book.

5. Next, the program turns to discussion of the genesis of the Nazi/Vatican Bank connection, which is at the foundation of Loftus’ lawsuit. The story begins with the Webb/Pomerene act—a loophole in the American anti-trust legislation that legalizes the formation of cartels (international monopolies.) In possession of the tremendous wealth of the U.S. boom that began with World War I and continued through the 1920’s, the “Robber Barons” of the American power elite were free to network with their counterparts abroad (chiefly in Germany and Japan) in order to monopolize international world trade. “ . . . The 1920’s and early 1930’s were a profitable time for American investors in Germany. The break-up of the American cartels at the end of the nineteenth century, followed by Teddy Roosevelt’s ‘trust-busting’ legislation in the 1910’s, induced the early multinational corporations to seek a more friendly clime offshore. Germany not only permitted cartels and vertical monopolies, it encouraged them as a means to rebuild its industrial might after the devastation of World War I and the Versailles reparations.” (Unholy Trinity; p. 291.)

6. “Moreover, from the late 1920’s the German economy, although cash poor, was scientifically advanced. As the Weimar Republic began to disintegrate under the weight of internal chaos and external greed, German scientists, sponsored by German corporations, led the world in research in physics, chemistry, and biology. So esteemed was the German intellectual edge at the end of the 1920’s that American scientists who wished to make their mark would take their advanced degree at a German university.” (Idem.)

7. “Effectively, Germany had a virtual high-tech monopoly on advanced production techniques, rigidly reinforced through a system of worldwide patents that gave it a decided advantage. If the Du Pont Corporation, for example, wanted a license for chemical processes, it had to deal with Berlin.” (Idem.)

8. At the epicenter of the Nazi money/Vatican/Robber Baron connection is Sullivan & Cromwell, the powerful white-shoe law firm, whose best known partners were Allen and John Foster Dulles. (Under President Eisenhower, Allen Dulles became CIA director, while John Foster became Secretary of State.) As discussed in (among other programs) FTR#361, Allen Dulles handled the Bush family’s investments in Nazi Germany. “Sullivan & Cromwell’s American clients, in turn, had something that the Germans wanted badly: gold. Under the Versailles Treaty, Germany had to pay its reparations to the Allies in gold bullion. In 1924, Sullivan & Cromwell stepped into the breach with the ingenious Dawes Plan. In its simplest form, the Dulles brothers’ clients would loan gold to Germany, so that it could repay its reparations to France and Britain, which would then recycle the American gold to repay their war loans to America. It was a crazy merry-go-round, but it worked.” (Ibid.; pp. 291-292.)

9. “The attraction for Sullivan & Cromwell’s clients was that the Germans paid off the original American gold loans with stock in German corporations. Unlike the hyperinflated Deutsch mark, German stocks and bonds were far from worthless, as they were backed by the very patents and trade secrets that American industry so desperately sought. With the crash of 1929, the American economy went into the Great Depression, but simultaneously Sullivan & Cromwell’s clients poured billions into the German economy. For example, John Foster Dulles’s legal records show that he handled the transfer of $10 billion worth of gold in return for German bonds and investments. By some estimates, 70 percent of the money that went to rebuild the German economy after World War I came from Wall Street investors, most of whom sought the legal counsel of Sullivan & Cromwell. . . .” (Idem.)

10. “ . . . The secret strings of German investment were held by American lawyers sitting on the boards of German banks and corporations. Allen Dulles, for example, sat on the board of the Schroder Bank, with offices in London, New York, and Berlin. Ostensibly owned by a prominent German banking family, the real controllers were Sullivan & Cromwell’s clients. . . .” (Ibid.; p. 293.)

11. Next, the program highlights the genesis of the Vatican/Nazi money connection, which was central to the realization of the American/Nazi money-go-round. Archbishop Eugenio Pacelli (later Pope Pius XII) was the Papal Nuncio to Munich Germany. He gave Vatican money to Hitler in 1919 to fight communism in Germany. Following the Lateran Treaty of 1929 between the Vatican and Mussolini’s fascist government in Italy, the large financial windfall the Vatican obtained from Mussolini was invested in German heavy industry. (For more on the Vatican/Nazi money link, see RFA#’s 17-21, available from Spitfire.) “ . . . Sullivan & Cromwell’s clients were not the only foreign investors in Germany, nor were they the only ones to hedge their bets by making small donations to the infant Nazi party. Following the $26 million cash settlement with Mussolini over disputed lands in 1929, the Vatican invested nearly all the proceeds in German industry, but at least one small investment was made in the Nazis as well. The following incident was reported by an eyewitness, Sister Pascalina, a nun who was the personal aide (and devoted admirer) of the Papal Nuncio in Munich and the man who would become Pope Pius XII on the eve of World War II: ‘Hitler came one night to the holy residence of Archbishop Eugenio Pacelli (later Pius XII). All others in the household were asleep by then, except [Sister] Pascalina . . . . Hitler told Pacelli that he was out to check the spread of atheistic communism. . . . It did not come as a surprise to her, therefore, in light of Pacelli’s hatred of the Reds, to see the prelate present Hitler with a large cache of Church money to aid the rising revolutionary and his small struggling band of anti-communists.’ . . . .” (Ibid.; pp. 294-295.)

12. After taking power, Hitler passed laws rendering the Western industrialist/Nazi money links more opaque. This eventuality cemented the partnership between the Nazis, the Vatican and the U.S. money men—a connection that was to prove central to the postwar laundering of Nazi wealth, as well as its recycling back to drive the German “economic miracle” of the 1950’s. “ . . . It is no coincidence that the Swiss passed a law in 1934 making disclosure of Swiss bank accounts a crime. In the same year, Sullivan & Cromwell officially closed its Berlin office. From 1934, Switzerland was the center of the Dulles brothers’ operations. With so much of its own holdings tied up in Nazi Germany, the Vatican had little option but to adopt the same course.” (Ibid.; p. 295.)

13. The realization of the Vatican/Nazi/U.S. financial axis was completed with the implementation of the IOR—the Vatican Bank. “The Holy See devised a special shield to help protect it from the looming international conflict—its own financial institution, the Vatican Bank. This was the one monetary entity in the world that was completely immune from outside audits, protected by Vatican sovereignty, and with the added convenience of diplomatic immunity. During the War, the Dulles brothers and the Vatican were drawn into a symbiotic relationship: Sullivan & Cromwell’s investors needed the Vatican Bank to launder their profits under the watchful eyes of both the Nazis and their own governments, while the Vatican needed the Dulles brothers to protect its own investments in Hitler’s Germany. . . .” (Idem.)

14. The program sets forth the manner in which Allen Dulles, the Vatican and the Third Reich helped recycle the Nazi wealth from Europe to Argentina, and then back to Germany. (For more on how this relationship worked, as well as how this concatenation fits into the context of the Bormann flight capital program and Underground Reich, see FTR#’s 504, 508. Some of the actual documents proving the Dulles and Bush family collaboration with the postwar Nazi/Argentine money axis are available at: http://www.debatecomics.org/BushFamilyFortune/. For more about the Bormann flight capital program see: http://www.spitfirelist.com/f305.html.) “ . . . Few who watch the film Evita would recognize that the Peron family of Argentina worked directly with the Croatian Ustashi to establish a pipeline from the Vatican Bank. As recounted earlier in this book, Ante Pavelic himself, the Croatian Nazi leader, moved to Buenos Aires and became a ‘security adviser’ to the Perons. Laundered through the ‘untraceable’ Vatican Bank, the Nazi treasure moved from Switzerland to South America. There the stolen funds were invested in a number of Argentine businesses whose lawyer was, of course, Allen Dulles.” (Ibid.; p. 300.)

15. Among the vehicles used in the Vatican-assisted Nazi flight capital was the World Commerce Corporation. Featuring former OSS chief William Donovan and former British head of intelligence for North American William Stephenson, this organization epitomized the synthesis of business and espionage. For more about the WCC, see—among other programs—FTR#’s 504, 508. “As the final act of the money laundering, Dulles created the World Commerce Corporation to revive trade between Argentina and West Germany. On its board were such notables as William Donovan of US intelligence, and William Stephenson of British intelligence. During the 1950’s, much of the stolen proceeds were laundered back to Germany for the great economic revival of West Germany.” (Idem.)

16. “In the end, the money went back to the original German companies and their Western investors. It is not Swiss bank accounts that we should be tracing; it is the stock ownership of the Swiss banks. There lies the last and perhaps the ugliest secret of World War II. And therein lies the major culpability of the Vatican in the relations with Hitler’s Germany: without the Vatican’s investments in the Third Reich there could not have been the motive to provide the means to smuggle the Nazis’ plundered loot from Switzerland through the Vatican Bank. . . .” (Idem.)

17. Next, the program turns to the subject of the “Ratlines”—the Vatican Nazi-smuggling effort conducted in conjunction with elements of Western (and U.S.) intelligence. Some of the most important Nazis escaped via the Vatican network, including Adolph Eichmann, the supervisor of the extermination of the Jews. In addition to Pius XII himself, Cardinal Montini (later Pope Paul VI), Bishop Alois Hudal and Father Kunoslav Draganovic oversaw the networks. One of the principal Nazi figures in setting up the Ratlines was Walter Rauff, who devised the mobile gas chambers during the war. Rauff, in turn, worked with SS officer Friedrich Schwendt, who oversaw Operation Bernhard and Operation Wendig (“Window”), the forging of British pound notes in order to destroy the British war economy and finance the Ratlines. (For more about the Ratlines, see RFA#17, available from Spitfire. The Ratlines are also discussed in FTR#’s 504, 508, 529. The roles of Pius XII [Eugenio Pacelli] and Montini [later and better known as Pope Paul VI] are discussed in these For The Record shows as well.) “ . . . Following the collapse of Mussolini’s regime in September 1943, Rauff was dispatched to northern Italy where he served with the SS in the region around Genoa, Turin and Milan. Once again, his assignment was the extermination of the Jewish population. It was during this period that Hudal made contact with this notorious mass murderer. The genesis of Hudal’s and Rauff’s friendship is something of a mystery. Alfred Jarschel, a former Nazi Youth leader, claims that Rauff first met Hudal in the spring of 1943, when Deputy Fuhrer Martin Bormann sent him to Rome for six months without any apparent mission. This was at a time when the Reich desperately needed senior officers of Rauff’s experience and caliber as the war’s outcome still hung in the balance. Jarschel believes ‘that the first contacts with the Vatican were established during those months, which were to lead eventually to the setting up of Hudal’s escape network.’” (Ibid.; pp. 33-34.)

18. “The time was fast approaching when it would be needed. By early 1944 when the Allies landed in Sicily, even Hudal could see that Hitler’s ‘Thousand Year Reich’ was doomed. As long as the Nazi Armies were winning, he had proudly driven around Rome with a ‘Greater Germany’ flag on his car; but when the Allies arrived in the Italian capital in June of 1944, Hudal ‘was the first to change it—suddenly his flag was Austrian.’” (Ibid.; p. 34.)

19. “ . . . There were many dramatic changes in the Vatican as well, one of which may have played a crucial role in the development of Hudal’s escape network. In August 1944, Cardinal Maglione died. Pius XII decided not to appoint a new Secretary of State, reassuming personal responsibility for foreign policy. From that time, Monsignors Tardini and Montini worked directly for the Pope. Ladislas Farago claimed in his controversial book, Aftermath, that this decision ‘was Hudal’s entrée to the highest echelon of the Holy See.’ Farago argues that Hudal had been on the outs with Maglione, relying on infrequent contact with the Pope himself to influence Vatican policy. But now he ‘acquired a friend in the Secretariat of State.’” (Idem.)

20. “Maglione’s death suddenly left Giovanni Montini in charge of Pontifical Assistance to refugees, opening the door for Hudal’s plans. Farago claims that it was Montini who allowed Hudal access to Vatican passports and other identity and travel documents, which he then used to aid his Nazi friends. At the same time Hudal allegedly developed good contacts with another important Vatican bureau under Montini’s control. This was the Pontifical Commission for Assistance, which was concerned with work among refugees. One of its major roles was issuing travel documents to legitimate refugees. Finally, Farago alleged that Montini gave Hudal access to Caritas International, a Catholic charity which paid living and traveling expenses to help genuine refugees. . . .There is some circumstantial evidence in the American diplomatic records to support the claim that Montini was deliberately aiding Hudal’s Nazi-smuggling. . . .” (Ibid.; pp. 34-35.)

21. “ . . . In fact, Dragonovic was widely known among Western intelligence operatives as the ‘Balkan grey eminence.’ This was a standing joke among both American and British officers, in whose circles Draganovic moved freely. This was also confirmed by Simcic, who was certain that Draganovic had direct contact with British, American and Italian intelligence. The former British officer was also emphatic that ‘you can almost talk about interlocking directorships between Western intelligence and the Vatican at this period.’” (Ibid.; p. 114.)

22. “It is no coincidence that Rauff’s ‘Mr. Dulles’ later became Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, or that James Jesus Angleton became head of CIA Counter Intelligence. Throughout Angleton’s career he retained exclusive control over American intelligence liaison with the Vatican. Whatever the American motive, it is incontestable that Rauff was released from custody and returned to his flat in Milan.” (Ibid.; p. 39.)

23. “According to the French publication Cercle Noir, Rauff made contact with Archbishop Siri of Genoa, and immediately went to work for the Vatican in establishing a Nazi-smuggling system. Apart from his high level American and Vatican contacts, Rauff’s main contribution to Hudal’s smuggling system may have been financial. The man who once can the mobile gas truck program now became a money launderer, with the help of Frederico Schwendt, Rauff’s former SS colleague. Schwendt is considered among the greatest counterfeiters in history, having forged millions of banknotes during the war as part of an SS operation codenamed Wendig.” (Idem.)

24. “The original intention was to undermine and possibly destroy the Allied economies, but as the war was drawing to a close, Schwendt laundered the counterfeit money through various banks for the first Nazi escape network. Wiesenthal claims that Schwendt turned the proceeds over to his old comrade, Walter Rauff.” (Idem.)

25. “However Jarschel has a slightly different version. He claims that Hudal contacted Rauff in July 1945, asking him to come to Rome for a secret meeting. This proved impossible, so Hudal suggested that Rauff travel instead to Genoa and contact the newly appointed and strongly anti-Communist Archbishop Siri, another key player in the Nazi-smuggling operation. Rauff went to Genoa and was received by one of Siri’s private secretaries. Jarschel alleges that he was given a sizeable sum of money and a Red Cross passport with a valid visa for Syria. He then returned to Milan and established the escape network.” (Idem.)

26. “Perhaps the truth is somewhere in between: Rauff probably used Siri’s money to augment the proceeds from the counterfeit laundering operation. Jarschel and Cercle Noir both agree that over the next four years some of the most wanted Nazi war criminals passed from Rauff in Milan, to Bishop Hudal at the Anima in Rome and then on to Archbishop Siri in Genoa. Here they boarded ships and left for new lives in South America. . . .” (Ibid.; pp. 39-40.)

27. One of the most heinous Nazis who escaped with the help of the Vatican was Ante Pavelic, head of the brutal Croatian Ustashi government in World War II. Before fleeing to Argentina (where he became an aide to Juan Peron), Pavelic was actually physically sheltered in Castelgandolfo, the Pope’s summer residence. “. . . From a very confidential source, American intelligence had discovered in May 1946 that the Poglavnik was living ‘close to Rome in a building which is under the jurisdiction of the Vatican.’ This was soon after Pavelic had first arrived in Rome from Austria, and it is now known that the Poglavnik, like Ferenc Vajta, actually took refuge at Castelgandolfo, where the Pope’s summer residence is located. It seems that many Nazis gravitated to Castelgandolfo, for Pavelic was housed with a former Minister in the Nazi Romanian government. [Italics are Mr. Emory’s.]” (Ibid.; p. 78.)

28. Next, the program sets forth documentation of the veracity of the plaintiffs’ charges in the aforementioned lawsuit against the Vatican Bank. The Vatican “ratlines”—the Church’s Nazi escape networks—were presided over by Bishop Alois Hudal and Father Draganovic (the “Golden Priest”). Draganovic helped to spirit the Ustashi plunder out of Yugoslavia as well. In the immediate aftermath of the war, the Ustashi loot was used, in part, to finance a guerilla war against the Yugoslavian regime. These reconstructed Ustashis were termed “Krizari”—Crusaders. The Krizari campaign was administered by British intelligence, which assisted the Vatican with the exodus of the Ustashi plunder. Again, the “Pavelic” referred to in the following passage was Ante Pavelic, the Fuhrer of the Ustacha regime, who became a trusted adviser to Argentine dictator Juan Peron after the war. “ . . . With the help of Catholic priests, Pavelic had begun to transfer large quantities of gold and currency to Switzerland in early 1944. Some of the treasure had been taken to Italy by British Lieutenant Colonel Jonson to finance the Krizari forces. Another portion went to Rome with Draganovic and also ended up financing the terrorist network.” (Ibid.; p. 132.)

29. “But over 2,400 kilos of gold and other valuables still remained secreted in Berne. It was supposed to be used to ‘aid refugees of the Catholic religion’, but was really earmarked for the Ustashi’s clandestine operations. Although the Allies had temporarily prevented them from gaining access to these funds, by early 1948 the time had come to use the Church to retrieve the loot.” (Idem.)

30. “In Berne, Rozman’s Ustashi friends were engaged in wholesale fraud, using the black market to convert the gold into dollars, and later, into Austrian schillings. ‘Aid to the refugees is accounted for at the official rate of exchange for dollars,’ the American officers noted, adding that ‘malpractices have been carried on (officially, the dollar is worth 10 schillings; on the black market, 100 to 150). According to reliable information: ‘Rozman is going to Berne to take care of these finances. The money is in a Swiss bank, and he plans to have most of it sent through to Italy and from there to the Ustashis in [the] Argentine.’” (Ibid.; pp. 132-133.)

31. “A short time later Rozman duly arrived in Berne, accompanied by Bishop Ivan Saric, the ‘hangman’ of Sarajevo. By the end of May 1948, Rozman had apparently carried out this money laundering operation for the Ustashi, for the visited the U.S. Consulate in Zurich and was given a ‘non-quota immigration visa as a minister of religion.’ He then traveled to the United States and settled in Cleveland, Ohio. The circle was now almost complete. Pavelic’s stolen ‘treasure’ had been tracked down through close monitoring of the movements and activities of the quisling Bishop of Ljubljana. . . .” (Ibid.; p. 133.)

32. “William Gowen and his CIC colleagues had started to unravel Britain’s role in the Krizari’s operations during their hunt for Ante Pavelic in 1947. As already discussed, they soon discovered that the Vatican was sheltering Pavelic, with the connivance of the British Secret Intelligence Service. In the course of establishing this, Gowen also confirmed sensational claims made by Ferenc Vajta. It will be recalled that the American’s Hungarian Nazi contact had told him that SIS was behind the military and political revival of the Ustashi.” (Ibid.; p. 122.)

33. “Gowen investigated the Krizari’s finances and soon uncovered the unsavory truth: their money came partly from the ‘treasure’ which ‘Pavelic’s henchmen’ had carried out of Croatia. According to Gowen, the Ustashi had fled with a large number of truckloads of this stolen booty. When the British SIS apprehended Pavelic in Austria in may 1945, they also picked up some of his loot. Gowen believed that the following story of what really happened was ‘closest to the truth’: ‘British Lt. Colonel Jonson was placed in charge of two (2) trucks laden with the supposed property of the Catholic Church in the British Zone of Austria. These two (2) trucks, accompanied by a number of priests and the British officer, then entered Italy and went to an unknown destination.’” (Ibid.; p. 123.)

34. “Major Stephen Clissold confirmed that two such Ustashi ‘treasure trucks’ had indeed reached Austria. Not surprisingly, Clissold did not mention the British role in removing them to Italy, claiming instead that they ‘were deposited in the safe-keeping of a monastery,’ but Gowen was certain that the British were now using it to finance ‘the Croat resistance movement in Yugoslavia. The resistance forces . . . go by the name of Krizari (Crusaders) . . . Radio contact is maintained by means of a field radio operated by Vrancic, a former Pavelic minister located in the British Zone of Austria. The Ustashia courier service within the Austrian Zones is believed aided by the Roman Catholic Church in Austria. The Cardinal of Graz is known to be on close terms with . . . Professor Draganovic, Krunoslav, known Pavelic contact in Rome.’” (Idem.)

35. “Yet again, Western intelligence found that Father Draganovic was at the center of the Ustashi’s clandestine activities. Indeed, he was widely known in Western intelligence and émigré circles as ‘the golden priest’ because he controlled a large part of the stolen treasure. Although Colonel Jonson had taken away two truckloads in 1945, this was only a fraction of Pavelic’s loot.” (Idem.)

36. “Four hundred kilos of gold, worth millions of dollars, and a considerable amount of foreign currency had been secreted at Wolfsberg, where it was under the control of former Ustashi Minister, Lovro Susic. Draganovic discovered this from senior Ustashi officials during his visit to Austria in mid-1945. They were apparently determined to maintain some independence from the British, who they feared would seize the gold, so they asked Draganovic to save it. The priest was only too willing to oblige, for he contacted Susic and with his agreement took forty kilos of gold bars to Rome, concealed in two packing cases. There is no doubt about Draganovic’s close connections with the Ustashi hierarchy in this money laundering scheme. . . .” (Ibid.; pp. 123-124.)

37. Another of the Croatian war criminals who benefited from the Ratline was Srecko Rover. In the 1990’s, Rover returned to Croatia to become an adviser to the “new” Croatian government in its atrocities committed against Serbs and Bosnian Muslims. (For more about the Croatian Ustashis and their influence on the “new” Croatian government, see—among other programs, FTR#48.) “It is no coincidence that Pavelic’s lieutenant Srecko Rover—whose roles in the brutal atrocities in and around Sarajevo during World War II and in the British intelligence terrorist networks of the late 1940’s are documented in Chapter Six of this book—has given Tudjman’s government specialist advice on how to conduct a good massacre. Nor is it a coincidence that Rover, and his Ustashi comrades who were smuggled down the Vatican Ratlines to Argentina, America, Canada, Australia, and Britain, trained a new generation of Western-educated Croatian war criminals who left their adopted countries to slaughter Serbs and Muslims in the 1990’s Balkans wars.” (Ibid.; p. xvi.)

38. Next, the program turned to an invitation that John Loftus received to attend an event in Argentina, supposedly to help shed light on Nazi war criminals and their exodus to Argentina. This occurred in the immediate aftermath of Loftus’s role in aiding the discovery and extradition of Nazi war criminal Eric Priebke, the perpetrator of the Adreatine Caves massacre in Rome during World War II. Priebke was among the Nazis who benefitted from the Ratline. (For more about Priebke, see FTR#6.)“ . . . Suddenly, John Loftus, one of the authors of this book, received an invitation from the Menem government to come to Buenos Aires to address an International Seminar on anti-Semitism. It did not take long to discover why: the Argentine government wanted him to talk about Nazis in America., to take the sting away from the Nazis in Argentina. The conference turned out to be a public relations effort to gloss over the dark side of Juan and Evita Peron’s role in providing Argentine visas to the Vatican to smuggle Nazis out of Europe, which we document later in this book. Several speakers minimized the presence of Nazis in Argentina, defended the Perons, and praised President Menem for his courageous decision to open Argentina’s immigration files for inspection.” (Ibid.; p. xiii.)

39. Note that the Menem government continued to mask the truth about the extent of Nazi involvement with Argentina. Note, also, that Priebke continued to be sheltered by powerful elements, who did not want the truth about the Ratlines and the complicity of those who participated to emerge. “ . . . As this book shows, Juan and Evita Peron had welcomed some of the worst Nazi mass murderers of World War II, including Ante Pavelic, the leader of the ‘independent’ state of Croatia. Pavelic and nearly the entire cabinet of his bloody Ustashi government had emigrated via the Vatican to Buenos Aires, where Peron promptly made Pavelic one of his senior ‘security advisers.’ Even the carefully presented facts did move the Menem government. Months passed, and it seemed that Priebke would suffer little more than ‘protective’ custody under the benevolent eye of the Argentinians. Eventually, however, they had to hand Priebke over in the wake of an almost unprecedented international campaign.” (Ibid.; pp. xiii-xiv.)

40. “Several of our intelligence sources warned us that Priebke was still being protected. He knew too much about the Vatican’s Ratlines to Argentina to ever be permitted to stand trial. Amazingly, the Italian military tribunal acquitted Priebke on a technicality. The people of Rome dimmed the lights of the city in protest. The next morning, Priebke was rearrested. The Supreme Court of Italy ruled that he must stand trial in a civil court. But to our dismay, Priebke received only a five-year sentence, roughly equivalent to a week in jail for every person he had murdered in the Adreatine caves.” (Ibid.; p. xiv.)

41. “As we were to discover, Priebke was indeed protected by charitable forces. Priebke knew too much about the Vatican’s Ratlines, and did not even serve his time in a prison, but lived comfortably for many months under ‘house arrest’ in a Catholic monastery. In March 1998, the Italian military tribunal again considered his case, and this time decided to jail him for life. By this time Priebke had been moved to a hospital located, ironically enough, in the Jewish quarter of Rome. As we write in April 1998 it seems unlikely that Priebke will serve more than a few symbolic days of his ‘life sentence’ in a prison.” (Idem.)

42. Next the program reviewed some of the information about the Crusade For Freedom and the complicity of high ranking GOP officials in aiding the relocation of Nazis to the United States. For more about this, see—among other programs—FTR#465.

43. The program also reviewed the CIA’s sponsorship of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Arab Nazi collaborators. The show also reviewed the GOP/Muslim Brotherhood/Bank Al Taqwa connection. For more about this, see—among other programs—FTR#’s 454, 473, 514, 515.

http://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/f...hn-loftus/

[Jan Klimkowski]

The following is a slightly edited excerpt from People of God: The Struggle for World Catholicism [Viking], by Penny Lernoux.

By PENNY LERNOUX-

One of Catholicism's oldest lay orders, the Sovereign Military and Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and Malta, better known as the Knights of Malta, or SMOM, is unique in several ways. Although it has no territory outside its headquarters in a Roman palazzo, it enjoys the status of a sovereign state, maintaining relations with 49 countries and issuing its own passports and stamps. Its 13,000 members include some of the world's most powerful figures, among them heads of state.

While it pledges allegiance to the pope, neither he nor the order's grand master in Rome has real control over SMOM's various national associations, some of whose members have been involved in fascist plots and CIA covert wars. And while dedicated to charitable work, such as funding leprosariums and contributing medical supplies to the Third World, it also serves as an old-boys' club for the European aristocracy and the political right in the United States and Latin America.

SMOM was founded in the 11th century to provide medical aid and military protection for-pilgrims to the holy city of Jerusalem. The order's knights participated in several important crusades, and gifts it received soon gave it control over extensive estates throughout Europe. The wealth of the knights' grand priories greatly increased in the 14th century when they absorbed the estates belonging to the Knights Templar, whom they helped to destroy, and for a time they maintained control of the island of Rhodes.

Forced from Rhodes by Sultan Muhammad II in the 15th century, they eventually settled on the island of Malta, which gave the order its name. The Knights remained a major military presence in the Mediterranean until 1789, when Napoleon occupied Malta. After a brief sojourn in Russia, the order in 1834 established headquarters in Rome under papal protection.

By the end of the century, it had become a charitable organization of the aristocracy devoted to the care of the sick and the wounded. It maintained its exclusivity by refusing to accept members from Europe and Latin America who were not of the nobility or heads of state. In recent years the ruling has been relaxed for Latin America, but even as late as the 1940s the order refused to admit Eva Peron as a dame because of her proletarian background.

An exception was made for the United States because of its rising political, economic and military power, and in 1927 a branch of SMOM was established on the East Coast. Most of the founding members were tycoons of industry and finance who would strongly oppose Roosevelt's New Deal [one, John J. Raskob, the chairman of the board of General Motors, even became involved in a plot to seize the White House].

They were soon joined by such titans as John Farrell, president of U.S. Steel; Joseph P. Grace, of W.R. Grace & Co.; Joseph Kennedy, a Boston entrepreneur and father of a future president of the United States; and George MacDonald of Pennsylvania, who made a fortune in oil and utilities.

MacDonald was typical of those who joined SMOM for the sheer fun of it. In recognition of generous contributions to the church, he was made a papal marquis as well as a grand master of the Knights, of Malta. MacDonald loved to dress up in the splashy Knights costume, with its ostrich-plumed hat, gold spurs and a uniform with gold epaulets, sashes and the medal with the Knights' eight-pointed Maltese cross

Many of the approximately 1,500 Americans who subsequently joined the knighthood also enjoyed the rituals of induction at the local cathedral and the ceremonies in honor of the order's patron, St. John. But for others, SMOM was more than pomp and circumstance-it was a source of money and power.

Among the latter was New York's Cardinal Francis Spellman, at one time the most powerful Catholic churchman in the United States. He became involved with the American branch of SMOM almost from its founding and was the order's official church patron in the United States when he was auxiliary bishop of Boston. After he became archbishop of New York in 1939, he changed his title to "Grand Protector" [apparently to distinguish it from that of King Leopold and Queen Wilhelmina, who were mere "protectors" of the Belgian and Dutch branches of the Knights].

Spellman enjoyed the support of the right wing of the curia, particularly Cardinal Nicola Canali, who dominated Vatican finances, and Canali authorized his monopoly over Knight appointments in the United States. The quid pro quo was that, instead of sending the American Knights' contributions to SMOM headquarters in Rome, Spellman funneled the money into Canali's coffers. When SMOM's grand master demanded an accounting from Spellman, he got no answer. No action was taken against Spellman, however, because at the time the order was fighting for its life against Canali, who wanted to gain control of its wealth.

Spellman's financial contributions to the Vatican, his friendship with Pius XII and his access to U.S. economic and political elites, some of them Knights, gave him immense power, and by World War II he had become the Vatican's go-between with the White House and its proconsul in Latin America.

[Cardinal Spellman did more than any other single person to get the USA to support the Roman Catholic ruling class of Vietnam .... JP]

When Spruille Braden, U.S. ambassador to Colombia during the early 1940s, complained about the anti-American tone of a pastoral letter issued by Colombian Archbishop Ismael Perdomo, Spellman sent a personal emissary to Bogota to lecture Perdomo on the need for cooperation in the war effort. At this meeting, which took place in Braden's presence, the archbishop was instructed to show Braden anything he wrote about the United States before releasing it. Braden was impressed. "It was good theater," he said.

Spellman also played an important role as emissary between the White House and Rome as, for example, in relaying the pope's concern about Allied bombings of Italy. And he encouraged Vatican cooperation with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the wartime forerunner of the CIA that was headed by his old friend General William ("Wild Bill") Donovan.

[ Ronald Reagan's first head of CIA, William Casey, supplier of Cardinal Bravo's 'Contra's,' worked for OSS/Donovan ....... JP ]

Much of the European aristocracy that provided SMOM its membership was allied with the Falangist groups in Spain, the Catholic integralist -Vichy French, the Italian fascists and the German-Austrian supporters of Hitler.

While they objected to Hitler's attempts to create a Nordic system of belief in competition with the teachings of the Catholic church, some agreed with the Nazi's on the "Jewish question."

For example, Franz von Papen, a [Roman] Catholic aristocrat from the Westphalian nobility and Knight Magistral Grand Cross of SMOM, paved the way for Hitler's assumption of power after von Papen became chancellor with the support of the Nazis.

[All or nearly all of the earliest high level Nazis were Roman Catholic, as were the heads of state allied with Hitler-such as Franco and Petain ... JP]

During the war the Vatican's position was ambivalent, not because Pius XII approved of Nazism-on the contrary, he abhorred it-but because he feared communism more than fascism and because he was afraid to risk the loss of the church's power by taking an uncompromising stand against the self-declared masters of Europe. Or as the British Foreign Office put it, the pope, "for worldly rather than spiritual reasons, has allowed himself, like others, to be bullied."

Although the Vatican undertook many private initiatives to help Jewish and other refugees, Pius remained silent through most of the war. He refused to condemn the German invasion of Poland in the belief that the Poles were at fault, and despite repeated pleas from the Polish government in exile, he failed to condemn Nazi genocide.

"We cannot forget that there are 40 million Catholics in the Reich," he said at the time of the invasion of Poland. "What would they be exposed to after such an act by the Holy See?" When he did speak out, as in his 1942 Christmas message about the deaths of "hundreds of thousands of people .......... merely because of their race or their descent," the appeal was lost in the opacity of Vaticanese language.

Similarly, the Vatican said nothing about the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Serbs belonging to the Serbian Orthodox church during the Nazi Catholic puppet dictatorship of Croatia, apparently because its leader, Ante Pavelic, and his Ustashi thugs had the support of the local Catholic clergy. The only important Catholic voice to speak out against the slaughter was that of the French Cardinal Eugene Tisserant, who said that at least 350,000 people had been killed by Pavelic's forces. The Holy See, said Tisserant, has accommodated itself "for its own exclusive advantage-and very little else."

Much the same might have been said of some American members of the Knights of Malta. W.R. Grace & Co. was on the U.S. government's "Watch list" of companies known or suspected to be trading with the enemy during WWII. State Department documents showed that some Grace personnel in Latin America were kept under surveillance because of their ties to Nazi agents, particularly those in the company's shipping lines and in the Panagra airline, which Grace owned jointly with Pan American Airways. (J. Peter Grace, who took over the company at the end of the war and became SMOM's leading American Knight, later employed a Nazi war criminal and chemist, aiding him to enter the United States under the U.S. government recruitment program of Nazi scientists known as "Project Paperclip.") Joseph Kennedy, another prominent American Knight, was forced in 1940 to leave his post as U.S. ambassador to London because of his noninterventionist stance.

After the war, the Vatican, the OSS, the SS (Schutzstaffel, the elite guard of Nazi intelligence) and the various branches of SMOM joined to do battle against the common Soviet enemy-and to help Nazi war criminals escape. In 1945, when the outcome of the war was no longer in doubt, the OSS approached Reinhard Gehlen, who was Hitler's chief of intelligence on the Eastern Front. The aim was to revamp the Gehlen Organization into 'an OSS-controlled operation.' The plan was so successful that "Gehlen Org" was transformed into West Germany's postwar intelligence agency, the BND, with help and money from the OSS' successor, the CIA.

Paralleling the OSS-Gehlen plan was "Project Paperclip," which smuggled more than 900 German scientists into the United States. Gehlen's brother was secretary to one of the chief officials in SMOM's Rome headquarters, and the Knights were active as go-betweens. Baron Luigi Parrilli, an Italian aristocrat who was a Knight of Malta, papal chamberlain and fascist sympathizer, took part in the negotiations between SS leaders and the CIA's future director, Allen Dulles.

[Allen Dulles son is now a well known Jesuit author ...... JP]

Meanwhile, James Jesus Angleton, who would later become the CIA's controversial director of counterintelligence, was dispatched by admiral Ellery Stone, U.S. proconsul in occupied Italy, to rescue Prince Valerio Borghese from possible arrest by the Italian Resistance, which had sentenced him to death for war crimes. Borghese, who survived to be a leader in Italy's postwar fascist politics, was a Bailiff Grand Cross of Honor and Devotion of SMOM, and in gratitude for U.S. services to him and other Knights, SMOM gave Stone, Angleton and Angelton's deputy its Grand Cross award. Other recipients of the coveted award were Reinhard Gehlen and Truman's Vatican envoy, Myron C. Taylor.

[wartime head of OSS "Wild Bill" Donovan, Cardinal Spellman's old friend, was also awarded by the papacy ...... JP ]

SMOM provided more than medals. One of its directors arranged for the printing of 2,000 SMOM passports for political refugees, many of them Nazis. A branch of the Knights in southern Germany ran a large refugee camp, and the leading Bavarian Knight of Malta was reported to have arranged travel "for no small number of ex-Nazis." That the Vatican, OSS and the U.S. Army's Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) were a party to such arrangements is shown by files that Justice Department investigators discovered in the 1980s.

Catholic monasteries and convents were used as safe houses for war criminals on their way to Latin America. Sometimes the CIC supplied false documents, while church organizations provided the means of escape - a famous case being the flight to Bolivia of Klaus Barbie, the "butcher of Lyon."

A key contact in the underground rail way, known as the "Rat Line," was a Croatian priest, Krunoslav Draganovic, who had been an adviser to Ante Pavelic and a member of his Ustashi terrorists and who ran the Croatian Committee for Pontifical Assistance, an aid and resettlement agency of the Holy See. Draganovic passed along upward of 30,000 Croatians, including most of the Pavelic government and Pavelic himself, who escaped Argentina. The priest also helped SS officers escape, according to Barbie, who said that Draganovic described his work as "purely humanitarian."

[see BLOWBACK by Christopher Simpson, pub by Weidendfeld & Nicolson 1988 .... JP ]

CIC reports to Washington gave detailed descriptions of Pavelic's stay in Rome under church protection "disguised as a priest within Vatican City" and predicted his escape to Argentina, then ruled by the dictator Juan Peron, a Bailiff Grand Cross of Honor and Devotion of the Knights of Malta.

They also reported Pavelic's contacts with Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini, the Vatican's undersecretary of state and the future Pope Paul VI.

Montini, a close friend of SMOM and the OSS' principal contact in the Vatican during the war, supervised the Vatican bureau that issued refugee travel documents.

CIC reports and other documentation show that he was privy to the activities of the Croatian Committee for Pontifical Assistance.

He apparently shared Pius XII's conviction that Pavelic and his Ustashi troops might overthrow Marshal Tito's government and reestablish a Catholic state in Yugoslavia.

[creation of a pure "Catholic state in Yugoslavia" was delayed for 45 years- then-with America taking the place of Nazi Germany, the desire of "His Holiness" Pius XII, Ante Pavelic and the USTASHI was fulfilled ..... JP ]

Ivo Omrcanin, a close friend of Draganovic who was working at the Vatican when the priest was smuggling Croatians abroad, said that "the pope would never have considered anybody who was fighting communism a war criminal."

[all Nazis' and Ustashi were deemed anti-communist fighters .... JP ]

The relationship of the Vatican, SMOM and the OSS/CIA was also important in the crucial 1948 Italian elections. Baron Parrilli again served as a go-between, this time with the CIA, in planning Vatican strategy to prevent a Communist victory by backing the Christian Democrats. A key figure in the plan was Luigi Gedda, a Turin doctor, Knight of Malta and Catholic integralist who wanted to restore Europe to an age before Protestantism and the French Revolution.

Gedda was head of Italy's Catholic Action, a militant lay movement of young people who served as papal shock troops-C.L. Sulzberger, of the New York Times, reported from Rome that Catholic Action "is armed, active and tough." Gedda organized a network of 18,000 "civic committees" to get out the vote. James Angleton, then CIA's Vatican connection, strongly recommended CIA funding for Gedda's political machine. The CIA pumped $65 million into Italian centrist and right-wing movements between 1946 and 1972, according to hearings by the House of Representatives.

Other important players were Montini and Spellman, the latter funneling huge amounts of New York money into clandestine church activities in Italy. Spellman encouraged a letter-writing campaign whereby Italian Americans urged their relatives to vote against the Italian Communists, and he joined such famous Americans as Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby and Gary Cooper in a radio blitz of Italy at election time.

Meanwhile, Catholic Action's papal troops prepared for battle with U.S. jeeps, guns and other supplies. The Christian Democrats won the election, and Washington, under pressure from Spellman, agreed to repay the Vatican's election expenditures through Italy's black currency market.

High-ranking Knights of Malta were involved in Italian politics during the following decades, and on two occasions, in 1964 and 1970, they attempted unsuccessful right-wing coups. The second attempt was led by Angleton's Prince Borghese and the prince's neo-Nazi protege, Stefano Delle Chiaie, one of the period's most dangerous terrorists. Borghese and Delle Chiaie were connected to the notorious P-2 Masonic Lodge, an organization with ties to the Mafia and the Vatican that schemed to take over the Italian state and was responsible for a string of terrorist acts.

-END PAGE 10-

Picture caption- Cover of Lernoux's book, People of God.

Picture caption- Monsignor Mario Brini, right, precedes Hungarian-born American biochemist Fra Giancarlo Pallavicini, far left, and his brother Fra Hubert Pallavicini during a procession of officials of the Knights of Malta in Rome in April 1988. Thirty-six officials later cast secret ballots to select a new leader.

Picture caption- Pope Pius XII, left, with Cardinal Spellman in 1958. "Spellman's financial contributions to the Vatican, his friendship with Pius Xll and his access to U.S. political ties, some of them Knights, gave him immense power."

Picture caption- Joseph P. Kennedy Sr.

-END QUOTE-

See ..................................... THE AMERICAN POPE

The Life and Times of Francis Cardinal Spellman

By John Cooney ........................pub by Times BOOKS



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Cardinal Spellman is also prominent in ........... LA POPESSA ......... [biography of Sister Pascalina, who was Pius XII's personal housekeeper for over forty years] .................. Pub by WARNER BOOKS 1983

http://www.mosquitonet.com/~prewett/ncrmay890910.html

[John Bevilaqua]

Wow, great thread Jan. This really belongs somewhere within the JFK Assassination thread as well since I am firmly convinced that the Sovereign Military and Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and Malta, the Shickshinny Knights of Malta (a "mimic" or "copy-cat" order) and their British counterpart the Sovereign Military and Hospitaller Order of St. John of Lazarus whose membership included Senator Jesse Helms, the brothers Hunt, Lord Malcolm Douglas-Hamilton and Robert Gayre from Scotland were the highest controlling and shot-calling level of the entire cabal against JFK.

United States Marine Corps . 2[/FONT]

General Lemuel C. Shepard, USMC, (Retired)[/FONT]

Lt. Gen. Pedro A. del Valle, USMC, (Retired) (Liberty lobby)[/FONT][/FONT]

Department of the Army - 12[/FONT]

Lt. Gen. Clovis E. Byers, USA, (Retired)[/FONT][/FONT]

'Major Gen. Charles A. Willoughby, USA, (Retired) (Liberty lobby)[/FONT]

Major Gen. Allen Delamater,USA (Retired)[/FONT]

Major Gen. Douglas T. Greene, USA (Retired)[/FONT]

Brigadier General H. Terry Morrison, USA (Retired)

*Brigadier General Bonner Fellers, USA (Retired) (Manchurian Candidate)

Brigadier General Edwin Cox, USA (Retired)

Brigadier General j. Harry laBrum, USA (Retired)[/FONT]

Colonel Philip J. Corso, USA (Retired) (Emissary to Giovanni Batista Montini in Italy)[/FONT]

Colonel Catesby Jones, USA (Retired)[/FONT]

Colonel George Stewart, USAF (Retired)[/FONT]

Colonel John M. Johnson, USA (Retired)[/FONT]

European Representatives - 1[/FONT][/FONT]

Lord Malcolm Douglas-Hamilton, OBE, DFC, RAF (British isolationist and racialist)

*Sir Barry Edward Domville, KBE, CB, CMG (British Admiral and Fascist)

Marquis de Amodio, CB, CBE, MC, possibly from Franco's Spain or Portugal[/FONT]

Department of the Navy - 8[/FONT]

Vice Admiral Harold Davies Baker, USN (Retired)

Rear Admiral Arthur A. de la Houssaye, USN (Retired)[/FONT]

Rear Admiral Robert lee Porter, USN (Retired)[/FONT]

Rear Admiral Herbert S. Howard, USN (Retired)[/FONT]

Rear Admiral Richard Blackburn Black, USN (Retired)[/FONT]

Rear Admiral Francis T. Spellman, USN (Retired)

Rear Admiral Francis W. Benson, USN (Retired)

Commodore Howard H. Benson, USN (Retired)[/FONT][/FONT]

[/FONT]

Abbreviations used in the honorary or actual awards:

OBE= Order of the British Empire

KBE= Knight of the British Empire[/FONT]

DFC= Distinguished Flying Cross

RAF = Royal Air Force[/FONT]

[Jan Klimkowski]

John - I suspect you will find much of interest in the Morales thread, which investigates a contemporary incarnation of Gladio false flag terrorism, thwarted - in ruthless but probably justifiable fashion - by the Secret Service of the Bolivian President.

http://www.deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/...php?t=1304

One of the many clues suggesting the Gladio methodology and origins, for those with eyes wide open, is the attempt by "Foreign Minister Andras Karoly Nagy of the Federation of Autonomous Priories of the Sovereign Order of St. John of Jerusalem - Knights of Malta (KMFAP)," to get one of the surviving mercenaries out of jail.

http://www.deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/...tcount=110

Plus here:

Karoly Nagy Andras, Foreign Minister of the Sovereign Order Of Saint John Knights of Malta, Federation of the Autonomous Priores, said that the Order would take the Magyarosi case to the court of human rights.

Attila Nyikos, the Magyarosi family's lawyer, said that he would submit a report to police on Monday regarding the murder of a European Union citizen.

The 28-year-old ethnic Hungarian and his two allies were shot dead for alleged involvement in an plot to kill Bolivian President Evo Morales.

http://www.deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/...tcount=176

Who was Eduardo Rozsa-Flores?

See here for speculative attempts, rooted in evidence, to put the pieces together:

http://www.deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/...tcount=174

http://www.deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/...stcount=63

[Peter Lemkin]

GOD AND THE FASCISTS; The Vatican Alliance with Mussolini, Franco, Hitler and Pavelic

By / Peter Gorenflos October 3rd, 2013

Excerpt from GOD AND THE FASCISTS; The Vatican Alliance with Mussolini, Franco, Hitler, and Pavilec, by Karlheinz Deschner, Prometheus Books, 2014). Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

This is the prologue to the book:

Why, after almost fifty years, should there be a reprint of Karlheinz Deschner's work God and the Fascists ( Mit Gott und den Faschisten )? Because it is very topical. Because it is, fully unfairly, in danger of being forgotten. Because it disrupts a process of suppression, or better, indeed the deliberate policy of disinformation, pursued by the Vatican. It reminds us of the Vatican's collaboration not only with Hitler, the greatest criminal of all time, but also with Mussolini, Franco, and the little-known Pavelic, the Fascist leader in Croatia who, along with Cardinal Stepinac, was responsible for the concentration and death camp of Jasenovac, of whose existence only few people know today.
Because the web of lies spun by the Vatican is exposed. It has been trying to position itself as an anti-Hitler resistance organization for decades, although according to Cardinal Faulhaber, Pius XII was "the best friend, indeed, the only friend of the new Reich at the beginning," especially in the unstable initial phase of National Socialism, when history could have taken a completely different course! Because it is not a fashionable book that caters for a trendy opinion for reasons of accommodation but presents and summarizes historical facts precisely and in great detail and draws conclusions that are comprehensible to everyone. Daniel Jonah Goldhagen clearly considers it unnecessary to quote Deschner at all in his book A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust , despite Deschner being able to provide much more information using much less ink nearly forty years earlier. And because it is also exciting to read, like a novel but where every line is the truth and every reader is considerably more intelligent and enlightened after reading it than he or she was before and may also be shocked to see the extent of the collaboration between the Nazis, all the Fascists, and the Vatican! In short, because it exposes a historical lie. The lie of the Catholic resistance.
Let us not forget that it was the French Revolution that showed the Catholic Church where its boundaries were and thereby put an end to its feudal poweralbeit, unfortunately, only half-heartedly. But still, the Spanish Inquisition did not sentence the last hereticthe schoolteacher Caetano Ripolto death at the gallows, followed by a "symbolic burning," until July 26, 1826, almost half a century after the Bastille was stormed! After the revolution, Napoleon's troops occupied the Papal States at the end of the eighteenth centurywhich had arisen from bloody wars and been legitimized by a forged document, the so called Donation of Constantinearrested Pius VI, and took him to Valence as a prisoner. The Congress of Vienna restored the Vatican rState again in 1815 with a reduced territory, but in 1870, after the occupation by Italian troops, it finally disappeared in the new Italian state. Those responsible were then excommunicated. . . and could not have cared less.
The increasing power of the bourgeoisie, the development of the European national states, the emancipation movement, the natural sciences and progress through technological developments increasingly forced Catholicism onto the back foot in the second half of the nineteenth centuryit tried desperately, and in vain, to take up the fight against "modern rationalism" with the first Vatican Council and restore the beleaguered papal authority by means of the dogma of infallibility. But time was against Catholicism. Under Bismarck, nearly two thousand Catholic clergy were imprisoned or given hefty fines in the Kulturkampf ("battle of the cultures") for interfering in state affairs; the United States broke off diplomatic relations with the Vatican on February 28, 1867 (and did not restore them until 1984 under Ronald Reagan). The "Roman Question" had arisen: How could the Holy See be saved from ultimate, and at that time foreseeable, downfall? How, and with whose aid, could its former power be restored? This problem was exacerbated by the growth of the decidedly anticlerical workers' movement after the debacle of the First World War, which was committed to enlightenment and the principle of equality.
This is the starting point of Karlheinz Deschner's book God and the Fascists . The aim of this new edition, published by Prometheus Books, is to ensure it is not forgotten. With richness of detail, historically founded, and by mining a vast number of sources, it proves that after the First World War, the chance was seized to turn the wheel of history back together with the rising Fascist movements. For fear of a victory of the workers' movement across Europeaccording to the Soviet modelthe Vatican, together with the reactionary property-owning classes and their henchmenthe Fascistsentered an alliance that was intended to secure the existence of both. This unholy Catholic alliance with the supposedly lesserFascistevil led to the greatest catastrophe in human history: the Second World War and the Holocaust.
After the Catholic party "Partito Popolare" was dissolved by Pius XI, the curia paved the way for Benito Mussolini and Italian Fascism. As a reward, they receivedby means of the Lateran Pactsthe Vatican State back, a sovereign, stately construct, albeit reduced in size, and the monstrous sum of one billion lire in state bonds and 750 million lire in cash. These assets formed the basis of the Vatican Bank, which is under strict observation from the American supervisory authorities today because of its machinations, suspicion of money laundering, and proximity to the Mafia.
And the Vatican helped the Nazis to power according to exactly the same pattern and under the same premises. The Catholic Centre Partythe oldest party in Europe led by Prelate Kaas, a close friend of Cardinal Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli, the Pope's second-in-commandconcurring with the Enabling Act of March 24, 1933, and then dissolving itself cleared the way for Hitler. The subsequent dictatorship set the catastrophe in motion. The historical lie that nobody at the time knew who they were dealing with is clearly disproved by Karlheinz Deschner. Because the first concentration camps had been built before the Enabling Actnot for the Jews at this point, but for political oppositionbasic citizens' rights were suspended and the boycott of Jewish businesses, doctors, and lawyers was called for. Hitler's Mein Kampf could not have been unknown to Eugenio Pacelli: the same Eugenio Pacelli who had been the papal nuncio in Berlin until 1929 ("the best-informed diplomat in Germany") and then made a career in the Vatican, first as cardinal secretary of state, then as pope. Pope Pius XII. He, who had the reputation of being an outstanding connoisseur and friend of Germany, harvested the fruits of that collaboration on July 20, 1933, in the form of the concordat with Nazi Germany. This treaty under international law still has constitutional status in the Federal Republic of Germany to this day (Article 123.2 of the German Basic Law). It regulates the friendly relations between the Holy See and the German Reich; state religious education was introduced under it, with a status equal to that of the other subjects taught, the payment of salaries from religious-education teachers to bishops by the state from public tax revenue is guaranteed and church tax collected by the stateto this day, let it be noteda new phenomenon that was to have far-reaching consequences. Workers must publicly declare their religious confession, losing their previously constitutional right to keep this silent, and employers are obliged to take part in the collection of the ecclesiastical obolus. A church state was born! The Hitler concordat meant that the clergy's robes were afforded the same protection as military uniforms, priests were exempted in advance from military servicethey knew what was comingthe dissolution of the Centre Party was retrospectively justified and a great deal more.
Karlheinz Deschner describes how the collaboration of the German episcopate with the Naziswhich could only happen with the approval of the curialasted until the end of the Second World War, how vicars, priests, and bishops prayed for Hitler's Reich every Sunday all across the land, which was also regulated in the concordat (Article 30), and agitated in favor of the war, how churches and cathedrals were decorated with swastikas on Hitler's birthday, and the papal nuncio personally congratulated the Führer, full of pride, on his fiftieth birthday in 1939half a year after the Kristallnacht! In the so-called church struggle, which is supposed to have been the expression of church resistance, the church stood up only for its own interests, never against Hitler, never against the war, and never for the Jewish population. And even after the military defeat of Nazi Germany, the Vatican helped high-ranking Nazi functionaries to flee to South
America with the help of the ratline, with which Mengele, Eichmann, and many other criminals escaped the Allies' justice.
What did Benedict XV, Pius XI, and Pius XII dream of ? They dreamt of a Catholic continental Europe in a united military battle against the godless Soviet Union, as degenerated as it may already have been by Stalin's influence (read Arno Lustigers Stalin and the Jews: The Red Book ). They dreamt of the end of Orthodoxy, the end of communism, and the Catholicization of Russia. And of a neutral, Anglican Great Britain and a neutral United States. Because a military conflict within the western camp made the outcome of the war unpredictable. After the military defeat of France, this dream seemed to be well within reach, and in 1940 the whole world was convinced that Hitler would win the war. The realization of the curia's dream had, with Hitler's help, come within their grasp.
We learn from Karlheinz Deschner how the invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, was openly welcomed, not only by the German episcopate, and how unlimited their enthusiasm for Hitler and agitations against Russia were. And Pius XIIwho allegedly did too little against Hitler and said too littlespoke in a radio address one week later of "rays of light that raise the heart to great, holy expectations: great bravery and courage in defending the foundations of Christian culture and optimistic hope for their triumph," by which he intended to express, according to embassy counselor Menshausen, the hope that the great sacrifices demanded by this war would not be in vain and would, should Providence so wish, lead to victory over Bolshevism. In this "war between worldviews," which had been so longed for by the Catholics and which Hitler also called it, the Holocaust was viewed as a kind of collateral damage.There may even have been a secret feeling of satisfaction in light of the two thousand years of Christian anti-Judaism. Had Hitler not, in April 1933, already coquetted before high Catholic functionariesas Deschner reportsand much to their delight, that his "treatment of the Jewish Question" was merely a continuation of medieval Catholic tradition?! In any case, the pope never condemned the Nazi pogroms against the Jews, not even when the Jews were rounded up before his eyes, so to speak, and taken away. Today's propagated idea of a Judeo-Christian West is based on a syncretism swindle.
The Vatican was even more deeply involved in Fascist crimes in Croatia, where the Franciscans played a leading role in the atrocities perpetrated there, which were so brutal that even the Germans complained. Ante Pavelić, the leader of the Croatian Fascists, called the Ustaša, coined the slogan that a third of the Orthodox population of Yugoslavia should be forcibly converted, a third expelled, and the other third murdered. Seven hundred fifty thousand Serbs fell victim to this regime with clerical help, and often after brutal torture, as did 80 percent of the Jews in Yugoslavia. The Primate of the Croatian Catholics, Archbishop Dr. Stepinac, collaborated with Pavelić from the first minute to the last. After his conviction as a war criminal, the Ustaša leader managed to escape, initially to South America, with the help of the ratline. He was accompanied by the former contact man between the Croatian archbishop Stepinac and the Vatican, the priest Krunoslav Draganović, who was, among other things, responsible for the deportation of Jews and Serbs during the war as a "resettlement officer" and was later one of the key figures in the organization of the ratline. He later fled to Franco's Spain, where he found refuge in a Franciscan monastery in Madrid. This war criminal died on December 26, 1959, and received the blessing of the Holy Father on his deathbed. Stepinac was the only high cleric who was at least partly brought to justice for his deeds. The sentence: sixteen years' imprisonment with forced labor. After six years of imprisonment, he was released early. Today's theologians may claim that this verdict was based on a "misunderstanding." But it is no misunderstanding that Yad Vashem rejected the obscenity of an application to grant him the title and honor of a "Righteous among the Nations" twice, in 1970 and 1994. He was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1998.
In his résumé at the end of the book, Karlheinz Deschner says, in 1965, "If one considers the attitude of Eugenio Pacelli to the politics of Mussolini, Franco, Hitler, and Pavelić, it hardly seems an exaggeration to say: Pius XII is probably more incriminated than any other pope has been for centuries. He is so obviously involved in the most hideous atrocities of the Fascist era, and therefore of history itself, both directly and indirectly, that it would not be surprising, given the tactics of the Roman Church, if he were to be canonized."
And now the beatification is already under way, less than fifty years later! If Hitler had won the war, one may wish to add, then he would presumably have long since attained the same Catholic honors.
And Franco's support from the Vatican in the Spanish Civil Warand beforeis also a theme of this rewarding book, this irreplaceable source of information.
Let us now return to the present, to the constitutional knock-on effects of the church's collaboration with Fascism in Germany. One has to only compare this close interrelationship between church and state, this still-surviving German church statewhich, under the Weimar Constitution and the federal constitution of Germany, should never have been permittedwith the constitutions of France and the United States, in which the separation of church and state is clearly stipulated. It then becomes clear how far Germany is today from being a modern democracy. It is a country in which the churches, on the basis of regional concordats, have places in all radio and television broadcasting councils, in nearly all newspaper editorial offices, in countless other influential institutions, andsome quite openly, others well hiddenat the levers of power. It then becomes clear what massive favors Hitler and Mussolini did the Vatican with this special answer to the Roman Question, with the restoration of its statehood, its assets, and its public influence, which were in a state of dissolution in the second half of the nineteenth century. And at what cost to the rest of the world!
Karlheinz Deschner's book is an important contribution to enlightenment, a jewel for anyone who seeks historical truth; it is an antidote to the historical lie of Catholic resistance to Adolf Hitler and provides a fundamental contribution to the current debate on the rehabilitation of the Pius Brotherhood (fronted by Richard Williamson, who denied the Holocaust), the planned beatification of Pius XII, the scandal surrounding the Vatican Bank, the reintroduction of the Good Friday Intercession, and the role of the Vatican in the world in general.
Anyone who is looking for the historical Ariadne's thread in the labyrinth of church heteronomy will go nowhere without Karlheinz Deschner's book God and the Fascists . I would, at this juncture, recommend to anyone who wishes to find out more, many historical layers deeper, for example, about the historical origins of Christianity, Hyam Maccoby's superb, central work The Mythmaker:
Paul and the Invention of Christianity (1986), in which he proves that Christianity is not founded on the Jewish Jesus but the Greek Paul, who composed a highly virulent mythical mix of gnosis, mystery cults, and the story of Jesus and, therefore, started off two thousand years of Christian anti-Judaism, which culminated in the Holocaust.
The other Ariadne's thread from the religious labyrinththe subjective, "psychological" onecan be found by anyone looking for it in Sigmund Freud (e.g., Totem and Taboo , The Future of an Illusion , Moses and Monotheism ), and more especially in the pioneering study of religion by Fritz Erik Hoevels, ""Bhagwan' Rajneesh and the Dilemma of any Humane Religion" in Mass Neurosis Religion , published by Ahriman International, which is now also to be credited with the republishing of Deschner's masterpiece God and the Fascists . Both authors make it clear how small the eye of the needle is through which human society must pass if the aims of enlightenment, reason, freedom, the principle of equality, and maximum happiness for the maximum number of people are to become reality, how many archaic and yet real power structures must be broken in order to achieve this.
May the interested reader convince himself or herself of the topicality of this book nearly fifty years after God and the Fascists was first published. It is thrillingly written and a literary achievement of the first rank.
Peter Gorenflos

[David Guyatt]

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Nudge, nudge - wink, wink, say no more...