CHAPTER II FROM MUNICH TO MGR. TISO’S SLOVAKIA

“ONCE the road to Vienna is free, the road to Prague will not be barred for long”. — IXth Congress of the Nazi Party at Nuremberg. The emblems of the Germanic Holy Roman Empire. — The Czech Democrats and SIovak vassals oppose the Vatican. —The Roman CathoHe Church upholds the Slovak will to”independence”, that is to say submission to Germany. — The Slovak political chiefs are nearly all ecclesiastics. — The priest Hlinka and his guard modelled after the SA. Mgr. Tiso, Privy Chamberlain of the Pope and pro-Hitlerist prelate. — The Vatican does not want a concordat with the Czechoslovak Republic: she will wait for Hitler to dismember it. — Munich and the annexation of the Sudetes by the Reich. — German threats to the rest of the country. — Pius XI refuses to intervene in favour of peace:”It would be useless, superfluous and inopportune”. — Tension grows. Mgr. Tiso in Berlin at Hitler’s request. — 14 March 1939: proclamation of the puppet Republic of a Slovakia enfeoffed to Germany with Mgr. Tiso at its head. The Vatican’s silence. — Cardinal Pacelli, former Nuncio at Berlin, succeeds Pius XI on 12 March under the name of Pius XII. — Mgr. Tiso wants to”set up Slovakia according to a Christian plan”.”Catholicism and Nazism”, he says,”have much in common and they work hand in hand to reform the world.”Consequently, he persecutes the Protestants and deports the Jews. This Catholic prelate, hanged at the Liberation, was the first supplier to Auschwitz.

THE era of conquests had now begun for the Reich.

The rape of Austria was to be followed, a year later, by that of Czechoslovakia. Indeed, as Mr. Ernest Pezet then wrote: “Once the road to Vienna is free, the road to Prague will not be barred for long”.

Franz von Papen, the Pope’s Privy Chamberlain, deals in his Memoires1 with the preparation of these two outrages:

“Nine years later, at the Nuremberg trials, we were to learn of the existence of the famous Hossbach Protocol, a report on the secret conference held, on 5 November 1937, by Hitler, Neurath and the chiefs of the three armed services. It is in this cynical and revealing document that, for the first time, war was presented as an inevitable necessity, and that the approximate dates of the military interventions in Austria and Czechoslovakia were fixed.”

One cannot help admiring the reproachful tone adopted by the good apostle. According to him—who had been the great architect of the Anschluss—he knew nothing, at the time, of these warlike plans. Yet, it cannot be said that there was much mystery about them.

Emblems of the Germanic Holy Roman Empire

“The Party’s IXth Congress opened at Nuremberg, in September 1938, in an atmosphere charged with electricity. Hitler had had brought from the Hofburg the emblems of the Germanic Holy Roman Empire—the crown, the sceptre, the sword, the orb. This was symbolic. . . .”

“The Czechoslovak Republic”, writes Mr. E. Wiskeman,” was the thing that Hitler liked least of all: she was opposed to any form of dictatorship and governed a country where everyone could vote, write or speak as he wished.”

La Croix, on the other hand, had stressed the quite opposite character of the Slovak population:

“Everyone knows that Slovakia is a country which has remained deeply religious, a sort of Slav Bavaria or Vendee. The severe sentence on Johaimes Huss at the Council of Constance will be recalled. His death at the stake in the century when Joan of Arc was to meet with the same end, has made him, in many people’s eyes a kind of ‘martyr’ of the Czech nation. … For many Czechs the name of Huss is linked with a magnificent protest of the Slav soul against oppression. This is a point which lies at the heart of the country’s Catholic tradition and gives religious Bohemia her tragic originality. . . .

“The day after the Allied victory over the twin monarchy, the religious drama of Bohemia was about to enter a new phase. All traces of Austrian domination were to be swept away. . . . The name of Rome is associated with that of Vienna in order to wipe out both from the national religious life. . . . Hundreds of thousands of souls were escaping from Catholic unity. Disaster is in the air…

These last few lines explain admirably the decisive role that the Roman Catholic Church was again to play in entrusting a neighbouring country to the”guardianship”of the German Reich. This is how Walter Hagen expresses it:

“The Slovak will to independence was supported by the Catholic Church. Since, apart from the Church, any genuine Slovak intelligentsia was to all intents and purposes non-existent, the people’s party (that of the priest Hlinka Andrej) could be run only by the clergy. In addition to Hlinka, the other political chiefs of any stature, such as, for example, the future head of the State, Mgr. Tiso, were in the main ecclesiastics.

Year by year Francois Charles-Roux observed this papal policy in favour of Slovak”independence”, a pleasant euphemism to describe this country’s entry into Germany’s orbit:

“On 16 September 1936, the day after the German troops had invaded the Rhineland, Pius XI mentioned to me the Sudetenland and in a general way Czechoslovakia as being one of the directions in which Germany wanted to expand. . . . Czechoslovakia meant less than Austria to the Vatican.

“Their relationship had started by being stormy, then for quite a long time remained shaky. . . .

. . . The settling of ecclesiastical questions that had been pending since the creation of Czechoslovakia . . . could only help the consolidation and internal cohesion of the young republic. Reciprocally, the Catholic Church’s advantage lay in the enjoyment in Czechoslovakia of a definite status, which would be established by common agreement and would put an end to the provisional and the precarious. To this end, it was in its interest to take advantage of the conciliatory character of such statesmen as Masaryk and Benes. .. .” But these conciliatory characters, according to Henriette Feuillet, did not soften the ill will of the Holy See.

“Ever since the creation of the first Czechoslovak republic, the Vatican has obstinately refused to conclude a concordat, whereas the papal Curia was in a great hurry to conclude one with Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy . . . immediately after the establishment of dictatorship in these countries. . . .”

It was also with a dictator that the Holy See was relying on signing a concordat in Slovakia, and so much the better this time since the dictator was to be an ecclesiastic. Hence the Roman Curia appeared quite unhurried. It was awaiting the arrival of Mgr. Tiso.

Here is further evidence of the Vatican’s attitude towards the Nazis’ new and very next victim:

“From the middle of August 1936″, writes Francois CharlesRoux,” I had undertaken to get the Pope to speak in favour of peace—a just peace, naturally. Cardinal Pacelli transmitted the request to him. At first, I was unsuccessful. But as from the beginning of September 1938, that is to say, when the international crisis reached its culminating point, I began to receive soothing impressions at the Vatican which contrasted strangely with the rapid aggravation of the situation. . . . To a new appeal by Cardinal Pacelli, transmitting my requests and those of fellow diplomats, that he should make some pronouncement, he had replied:

‘It would be useless, superfluous and inopportune.’

“I just could not understand his obstinate silence. . . .’

Frangois Charles-Roux did not have to wait long for an explanation of this stubborn silence. Subsequent events were soon to enlighten him, as Ernest Pezet points out:

“”…. First peripheral effects of the Austrian drama: the whole of central Europe is shaken by the annexation, as if by an earthquake. The Third Reich will now settle the account of Czechoslovakia.

“There is further agitation in German Sudetenland. . . .

“Without further delay, the agrarian Sudetes rally to the flag of the Hitlerist Henlein. … A more serious and, to my mind, decisive fact is that the Social Christians are in turn deserting the camps of Benes and Hodza. One of their leaders, the prelate Hilgenreiner, has declared: ‘We do not have to be more Catholic than Cardinal Innitzer, who knew how to be realistic. . . .’

“The ‘surrender’ without a fight of Cardinal Innitzer with all his theological weapons and canonical paraphernalia having thrown the Social Christians of German Bohemia into a panic, the leaders of the Social Christian Party unanimously decided to join Henlein’s opposition.”

While the Duce was keeping the company amused with his tomfoolery, the crucial date was drawing near. Indeed, Walter Hagen? writes:

“On 9 March 1939 Mgr. Tiso retired to his parish of Banovce. . . . In the night of 12 to 13 March, two representatives of the German Secret Service came to ask him to get in touch with the other Slovak leaders at Presburg in order to form, under his presidence, a new Slovak government which would at last proclaim the sovereignty of Slovakia under German protection. Mgr. Tiso acceded to this suggestion.

“. . . On the morning of 13 March, Mgr. Tiso was informed that Hitler wished to see him: He immediately flew to Berlin in a special plane with Durcansky. … A German adviser in the person of :Sturmbaumfuhrer’ SS Nageler was assigned to the Hlinka guard.. .’

It should be noted that this Hlinka guard was the Slovak counterpart of Hitler’s SA.

“On 14 March 1939, Hitler created the so-called Republic of Slovakia. Mgr. Tiso, whose dream it was to combine Catholicism with Nazism, was placed at its head.”

“Alas”, remarks Camille Cianfarra,””the tiara gf the triple crown was barely settled on Pius XII’s head when Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia. . . . The end of Czechoslovakia came as the death knell of the policy of appeasement pursued by Chamberlain. The Vatican remained silent. . . . The sudden disappearance of Czechoslovakia from the map of Europe was a complete surprise. In the eyes of the Fascist Government, the latest German ‘coup de force’ weakened France’s position still further and diminished her prestige both in the Balkans and in eastern Europe. …”

Thus, once more—and it was not to be the last time—the Holy See had co-operated with all its strength in a “coup de force” of the Reich. . . . What was even better, it had for this purpose put one of its prelates at Hitler’s disposal. . . .”Catholicism and Nazism”. declared Mgr. Tiso,”have much in common, and they work hand in hand to reform the world”.

Under such authority the new state was in turn to become acquainted with certain”Christian”institutions that were flourishing in the mighty protecting power.

“The period of the Tiso regime, in Slovakia, was particularly distressing for the country’s Protestant Church, which comprises only one-fifth of the population. Mgr. Tiso was seeking to reduce the Protestant influence to a minimum and even to eliminate it . . . influential members of the Protestant Church were sent to concentration camps.”

The prelate-dictator attacked not only Protestants. He earned another glorious title: that of being the first to deport the Jews.

On this matter Henriette Feuillet asks the following question:

“How did the Vatican react? What did it do to prevent the mass assassinations of Jews in the concentration camps where they were being sent by Mgr. Tiso, who ”justified’ this cruelty by asserting that ‘all that we do against the Jews, we do for love of our nation. Loving one’s neighbour and loving the nation have developed into a fruitful battle against the enemies of Nazism’.”

And here is the reply:

“The ‘impartial’ Vatican behaved towards Mgr. Tiso in a manner which corresponds to its political tendencies. In June 1940, Radio Vatican announced: ‘The declaration of Mgr. Tiso, Chief of the Slovak State, asserting his intention to set. up Slovakia according to a Christian plan, is greatly appreciated by the Holy See’.”

On the other hand, at the Liberation, this good work met with less success amongst the Allies. Delivered by the Americans to Czechoslovakia, the worthy ecclesiastic, expert in setting up states “according to a Christian plan”, was condemned to death by the Prague Tribunal in 1946 and hanged there and then.

It was doubtless the first time m history that a dignitary of the Roman Church was to be seen swinging at the end of a rope as punishment for his crimes.

But what should be said of the Holy See’s “appreciation”? Was Pius XII, who”knew nothing”—so he said—of the German atrocities, also unaware of those of his prelate? Moreover, this is not the complete list of the horrors that were perpetrated under the approving eye of the Holy Father’s representatives, if not under their instructions. In this respect, it will later be seen that Mgr. Stepinac’s Croatia was in no way inferior to Mgr. Tiso’s Slovakia. In both these two unhappy countries, the Roman Church was incontestably all-powerful. … It was Tiso, the chief provided by the Roman Church, who gave the signal for deportations of Jews to the death camps. Lord Russell of Liverpool,!5 who was a legal adviser in the cases of the war criminals, tells in the following terms what happened to these Jews:

“In 1941, at Auschwitz, the first contingent of Jews arrived from Slovakia and High Silesia and those who were not capable of working were immediately sent to the gas chamber in one of the rooms of the building which housed the crematorial ovens.”

Thus, with all due deference to the Holy Father’s apologists, the fact is well established for the edification of historians: the first supplier to Auschwitz was a Catholic prelate.

This is significant.

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