Saving Italy: The Race to Rescue a Nation's Treasures from the Nazis (5 page)

Late that afternoon, Mussolini arrived at Villa Savoia, the royal residence, for a specially arranged audience with Vittorio Emanuele. After listening to the Duce’s brief report on Italy’s military situation and his meeting with the Grand Council, the king asked for Mussolini’s resignation. He informed him that arrangements had already been made for seventy-two-year-old Marshal Pietro Badoglio to become Italy’s next prime minister. “There was a silence in the room, ‘broken only by a phrase which the King had repeated several times during the course of the conversation: “I am sorry, I am sorry, but the solution could not have been otherwise.”
 
’
 
” The meeting lasted less than thirty minutes.

The leader who had entered the royal residence departed in shocked silence, aware that he had failed his nation. Taking no chances, the king had arranged for fifty
Carabinieri
(military police) officers to hide in the bushes in case a gun battle erupted with Mussolini’s private guards. As Mussolini exited the villa, he was led not to his car, which had been moved, but to an ambulance where an officer of the Carabinieri said, “His Majesty has ordered me to protect your person.” In an instant, the ruler of Italy disappeared.

That evening, a national radio address announced the king’s acceptance of Benito Mussolini’s resignation and Badoglio’s appointment as the new leader of Italy. Within hours, tens of thousands of joyous people gathered in St. Peter’s Square. As celebrations erupted throughout Italy, an observer in Rome wryly noted, “The supply of wine was exhausted.”

But the Duce’s removal from office didn’t alter the reality that Italy remained the principal ally of Nazi Germany. The United States and the United Kingdom had every intention of conquering Sicily and then attacking the Italian mainland. The war in Italy, even without Mussolini, was just beginning.

NEWS OF MUSSOLINI’S
resignation reached Hitler at the
Wolfsschanze,
his Eastern Front headquarters in Rastenburg, Germany, sometime after 9:30 p.m. on Sunday, July 25. Hitler told those gathered: “The Duce has resigned. It is not confirmed yet. Badoglio has taken over the government.” Because of Hitler’s order barring spying on the soil of its trusted ally, the German security services had no idea of the Duce’s location or the circumstances of his disappearance. Certain the Duce’s removal was a prelude to Italy’s switching sides in support of the Allies, Hitler added, “Undoubtedly, in their treachery, they will proclaim that they will remain loyal to us; but that is treachery. Of course they won’t remain loyal.”

The failure of the German offensive at the Battle of Kursk in the Soviet Union in early July put Hitler’s forces on the Eastern Front on the defensive; they would stay that way for the remainder of the war. News worsened with the early morning commencement of the Allied bombing of Hamburg, Germany. Over the next eight days, these air attacks would result in the deaths of more than forty thousand citizens and destruction of the city. Losing Nazi Germany’s most important ally at this low moment would deal a significant blow to the morale of the German people and its fighting forces, especially the sixty thousand
Wehrmacht
(Germany’s armed forces) troops already fighting alongside Italian forces in Sicily.

Morale alone didn’t explain the seriousness of the problem. Hitler needed Fascist Italy’s 2.1 million soldiers. With the exception of two armored divisions stationed in Calabria (in the “toe” of Italy’s “boot”), there was no other major concentration of German forces in Italy to block an Allied invasion of the Italian mainland. Until significant reinforcements arrived, the buffer zone on Germany’s southern border lay exposed. A successful invasion would allow the Allies to use Italian airfields to launch bombing missions that could reach Nazi Germany’s all-important oil supply—the lifeblood of any army—in the Balkans.

The Führer reacted to the news of Mussolini’s resignation by telling Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel, head of Armed Forces High Command (OKW—
Oberkommando der Wehrmacht
), and General Alfred Jodl, OKW Chief of Operations Staff, that he wanted to “give the commander of the 3rd Panzergrenadier Div. the order to drive into Rome with a special group and immediately arrest the entire government, the king, the entire bubble, especially to arrest the crown prince and to get hold of this mob, especially Badoglio and all this rabble. Then you will see that they give up and in 1 to 2 days there will be another upheaval.” However, Generalfeldmarschall Kesselring believed that Italy would continue the fight alongside its German ally, just as Badoglio had promised. Why unsettle things further by rushing troops into Rome? Waiting would provide time to determine the king’s true intent.

Many leaders of the Nazi Party shared Hitler’s hatred of the Vatican and its leader. Hitler had long attacked the Catholic Church for its influence in the internal politics of Germany. Although they’d not met, Hitler knew of Eugenio Pacelli from his service as Papal Nuncio to Germany from 1917 to 1929. Subsequent dealings with Pacelli led to the signing of the
Reichskonkordat
(treaty) between Nazi Germany and the Vatican in 1933.

Convinced that the pope had somehow played a role in Mussolini’s removal, the Führer flashed with anger and impatience: “I am going into the Vatican immediately. Do you think the Vatican bothers me? They will quickly be packed up, especially the entire diplomatic corps. . . . I could care less. . . . We’ll remove every one of these bunch of swines. . . . Then we’ll apologize afterwards. . . . We’ll find plenty of evidence inside [the Vatican] to document their treason!”

Dr. Joseph Goebbels, Reichsminister of Propaganda, who referred to the Italians as “macaroni eaters,” urged restraint. Goebbels knew that even the savviest media campaign couldn’t silence the outcry that would surely follow any action taken against the pope. Most of Hitler’s advisers agreed.

Hitler ultimately decided not to send a special detachment of troops into Rome, but he did issue an order for crack German paratroopers to rescue Mussolini. With the Duce at his side, he calculated, a newly formed Fascist state would be announced, one that Hitler could manage and closely monitor. Reestablishing the appearance of a strong Axis partnership now became an urgent concern. But who would watch over the weakened Duce once the paratroopers rescued him? Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler, feared leader of the Nazi
Schutzstaffel
(SS) and “master of all the concentration camps,” had a man in mind.

“The
Signores
[
sic
] get another reprieve,” Himmler told SS General Karl Wolff during a phone call on July 27, “but postponed is not abandoned.” Wolff was a high-ranking SS member, an
Obergruppenführer
and General of the Waffen-SS, the armed-combat division of the SS. He had joined the Imperial German Army at the age of sixteen, serving on the Western Front during World War I, where he received two Iron Crosses for bravery. Following the war, Wolff trained as a banker in Frankfurt for two years and eventually found employment at Deutsche Bank in Munich from July 1923 until June 1924. After a brief stint in the advertising business, he started his own firm. Those jobs served him well; one honed his political skills, the other his ability to sell himself and his ideas. He was opportunistic but also pragmatic, a survivor.

Although Wolff did not come from an aristocratic family, his humanistic education, which included literature, music and the arts, placed him among the high-society youth of his hometown. Later, during World War I, Wolff’s selection to serve on the protection detail for the Grand Duke of Hesse, alongside other officers from aristocratic families, added to his self-image of nobility. Some of his SS peers sneered at the new, more charming and cultured Wolff. They considered him a “Septemberling,” a derogatory term used to refer to those who hadn’t joined the Nazi Party until after the successful elections in September 1930. Wolff, in fact, waited more than a year after the power shift to become a Nazi Party member, but he joined the SS the next day. His “Aryan” features—six feet tall with blue eyes and blond hair—suited him well for the SS. Motivated by his ambition to be a member of the elite, he embraced Nazism as a calculated choice, in contrast to many of his new colleagues’ passion for extremist Nazi ideals.

Beginning in November 1936, Wolff became Himmler’s Chief of Personal Staff, with responsibility for several departments of the SS, including the
Ahnenerbe
, the Ancestral Heritage Research Unit founded by Himmler to attempt to prove “the connection between the modern German people and the ancient Germanic tribes.”
*
Wolff served as “Himmler’s eyes and ears” at Hitler’s headquarters. In a 1939 letter, the extent of his devotion to the SS and Himmler emerged: “Faith has put me next to a unique man, the Reichsführer-SS, as his closest assistant. . . . Our joined work, which satisfies me profoundly . . . roots in the belief in Race. My entire being and aiming is with the SS and its future goals.” In July 1941, Wolff accompanied Himmler on a visit to an SS command post near the Soviet city of Minsk, where he witnessed one hundred innocent Jews being murdered, eight to ten at a time. The following summer, he interceded to resolve some of the railway bottlenecks resulting from the transport of Jews to the death camps. “I notice with particular pleasure your report that for fourteen days a train has been going daily with members of the chosen people to Treblinka. . . . I’ve made contact with the participating agencies, so that a smooth implementation of the entire action is ensured.”

During their late-July meeting, Wolff listened as Himmler ordered him to Italy to serve as a diplomatic link between Kesselring’s forces in southern Italy and other German Army groups in the north. Wolff had fourteen days to prepare a plan for the “seizure of power of the civilian sector” in Italy and present it to the Führer. Maintaining infrastructure and production facilities in Italy would be essential to a successful occupation.

Wolff was the obvious choice for this assignment. Hitler and Himmler each trusted him, a man they considered a true “specimen of a noble German and ‘knight in shining armor.’
 
” Wolff had also won favor with Mussolini while acting as an honorary escort during his state visit to Munich in 1937 and on numerous subsequent trips to Italy. In his new position, Wolff “was to consider himself the Führer’s governor” in an area extending from Italy’s northern border to the rear of Germany’s troops on the front.

NOT EVERYONE DISCOUNTED
Hitler’s threat to enter the Vatican and seize the pope. Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, chief of the
Abwehr
(German military intelligence); General Erwin von Lahousen, chief of
Abwehr
Section 2 (German sabotage section); and others in his immediate circle shared strong anti-Nazi sentiments and had been intimately involved in various plans to remove Hitler from power. When Canaris’s deputy informed them that he had just received a report “that those fellows intend to liberate Mussolini; to liquidate the Pope and King,” they were stunned. One of his aides became incensed: “Such a dirty trick. We should really tell the Italians about it.” Canaris agreed and instructed Lahousen to set up an emergency meeting with his Italian counterpart, General Cesare Amè.

On July 29, Canaris and Lahousen flew to Venice to meet General Amè at the famed Hotel Danieli. For Amè, exchanging information about the war, including the recent fast-moving changes in the leadership of Italy—and Germany’s reaction to them—was normal business; doing so alongside three of the Reich’s highest-ranking intelligence officials was not. The presence of Amè’s staff initially limited what Canaris could say, but Lahousen, who was sitting next to Amè, clearly heard his boss state: “Be careful and watch out, because something might happen.” After lunch, Canaris and Amè took an excursion to the Lido, where they walked—alone—and continued their conversation.

On August 4, six days after this meeting of intelligence officials in Venice, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Luigi Maglione summoned the cardinals residing in Rome “to review the political situation in Italy and discuss the threat to the Vatican.” During that meeting, Maglione “warned his audience that official Italian circles feared that German troops were moving to seize Rome, invade the Vatican, and carry the Pope to Munich.” In the tense days that followed, key Vatican staff members were instructed to have their suitcases ready, prepared to travel on a moment’s notice. Sensitive documents were hidden, including those of the Holy Father, placed beneath the marble floors of the Papal Palace.

Nineteen days later, Harold Tittmann, special assistant to Myron Taylor, President Roosevelt’s personal representative to the pope, spoke with his colleague, British Minister Francis Osborne. Tittmann had vacated the U.S. Embassy in Rome upon Italy’s declaration of war on the United States and, like other members of the diplomatic corps, moved into the Vatican. Osborne informed Tittmann that, “according to reliable sources, the Germans were most likely to take over Rome and possibly the Vatican City within the next few days. At Osborne’s request, my sons used the fireplace in our living room, the only one available to diplomats in the Vatican, to burn the British Legation’s confidential documents.”

As Lahousen later explained, Hitler did not just intend to kidnap the pope. He “wanted to kill him.”

*
Ordinary Affairs generally referred to internal affairs. Monsignor Domenico Tardini, Deputy Secretary of State for Extraordinary Affairs, handled foreign relations. Both men were deputies to Vatican Secretary of State Luigi Maglione. As Owen Chadwick pointed out (p. 54) in
Britain and the Vatican during the Second World Wa
r, “the distinction had never been clear. Often the Pope simply decided whether he preferred Tardini or Montini to deal with the question.” Montini would become Pope Paul VI in 1963.

*
About $267,400 in 2012.

*
The
Ahnenerbe
(Ancestral Heritage Research Unit) was founded by Himmler in 1935 as “a cultural branch of the SS devoted to archaeological, historical and racial investigations that ‘proved’ the connection between the modern German people and the ancient Germanic tribes.”