From left to right: Chamberlain, Daladier, Hitler, Mussolini and Ciano after signing the Munich Agreement.
1938 was the crucial year for the European crisis. The 11 March saw the invasion of Austria and its annexation to Germany, an event that went down in history under the name of Anschluss. This was the first action of the Second World War.94
With the Anschluss the Austrian State was practically erased from the European map.95 With “an indignant soul and a bleeding heart”, Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira denounced, in a five- column article on the front page, the “dramatic disappearance of Catholic Austria from the map of Europe”.96
Mussolini, reversing his 1934 stand, when, to avoid the annexation of Austria, he had sent Alpine divisions to the Brenner border, this time approved Hitler’s action. In celebration of Italian-German Friendship, the Führer made an official visit to Italy from 3 to 9 May 1938. On that occasion, Pius XI retired to Castelgandolfo, out of season, to avoid taking part. He stated, “on the day of the Holy Cross”, the triumph “of another cross that is not the Cross of Christ.”97
In number 289 of the Legionário of 27 March 1938, the first page showed a picture of the Colosseum with the news that the great monument would be illuminated in honour of Hitler’s visit to Rome. The caption reads:
“The Coliseum’s multi-secular witness to the martyrdom of early Christians and to the insatiable cruelty of paganism, will be illuminated in honour of today’s illustrious persecutor of Christians and the restorer of paganism in Germany. It will be lit up in red!”
On the 12 September 1938, after the annexation of Austria, it was the turn of the Sudetenland. To avoid things coming to a head, the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, went personally to Berchtesgaden, to come to an agreement with the Führer. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira had no illusions: He wrote: “War is a matter of days, or of months, but unfortunately it will explode (…). As long as Hitler is in power, it will be inevitable”.98
To avoid a worsening of the situation, Mussolini proposed, in extremis, a four-party conference, which was held In Munich on the 29 and 30 September 1938.99 The western democracies represented by the English Chamberlain and by the French Daladier, in the vain hope of avoiding war, sought a compromise with Nazi Germany at any cost.100 Famous are the words with which Churchill, the head of the Conservative internal opposition, apostrophized Chamberlain: “You had to choose between shame and war: you chose shame and you will have war.’’
In a brilliant article of the 1970s on détente, Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira thus recalls the event:
“Munich was not just a great episode in the history of this century. It is a symbolic event in the history of all time: at any time and in any place there is a diplomatic confrontation between raving warmongers and raving pacifists, advantage will smile on the former and frustration on the latter. And if there is a lucid person, he will blame the Chamberlains and Daladiers of the future with the words of Churchill: ‘You had to choose between shame and war: you chose shame and you will have war’.”101
Less than six months later, on 15 March 1939, violating the agreements made, Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia and incorporated into the Reich the territories of Bohemia and Moravia for which he established a “protectorate”. Thus the Czechoslovak Republic, one of the creations of the Peace of Versailles, also disappeared from the map of Europe. The previous month, Pius XI, already seriously ill, died. On 2 March 1939, Cardinal Camillo Caccia Dominioni announced from the central loggia of St Peter’s Basilica the election of the new Pope, Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, with the name of Pius XII.102
That year began with a surprising forecast from Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira. It appeared in the first issue of the year of the Legionário:
“In fact, while all the battle fields are being marked out, an increasingly clear process is taking place: that of the doctrinal fusion between Nazism and Communism. In our opinion, the year 1939 will see the achievement of this fusion.”103
Some months later, in August 1939, the announcement of the so-called Ribbentrop-Molotov agreement “had the immediate effect of a real bomb on European public opinion, amazed by this sudden agreement between the two countries that represented the two ideologies that were up to then the most hostile.”104
The non-aggression treaty between Russia and Germany marked the most unexpected “reversal of alliances” of our time. The German historian Andreas Hillgruber wrote:
“Nobody who consciously lived that experience can forget what surprise and bewilderment, what a shock was provoked by a brief announcement of the ‘German Information Office’ in the late evening of 21 August, and confirmed the following day by Tass: ‘The government of the Reich and the Soviet government have agreed to draw up a reciprocal pact of non- aggression. The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Ribbentrop, will arrive in Moscow on Wednesday 23 August to conclude the negotiations.’”105
Notes:
94. Gordon Brook Shepherd, Anschluss. The rape of Austria, London, Macmillan & Co., 1963; Andreas Hillgruber, Die Zerstörung Europas. Beitrage zur Weltkriegsepoche 1914 bis 1945, Berlin, Propyläen Verlag, 1988, It. tr. La distruzione dell’Europa, (Bologna, Il Mulino, 1991), pp. 133-52. Decisive in the Anschluss was the role of the ambassador to Vienna, Franz von Papen (1879-1969) who already in 1933 had opened the way to power for Hitler with his pressure on Hindenburg. Papen, who declared himself a Catholic, was defined by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira as “the greatest traitor of the Church in our days” (P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “7 dias em revista”, O Legionário”, no. 516, 2 August 1942). An historical confirmation from Richard W. Rolfs, The sorcerer’s apprentice: the life of Franz von Papen, London – New York, Lanham, 1996.
95. “Austria, poor Austria eternally mocked — noted Count Friedrich Reck-Mallenczewen on 20 March 1938 in his diary — whose only mistake was undoubtedly that of opposing the dominating spirit of the great Prussia, preserving to the end the memory of the old Roman-German Holy Roman Empire”. Tagesbuch eines Verzweifelten, Stuttgart, Henry Goverts Verlag, 1966, it. tr. Il tempo dell’odio e della vergogna, (Milan, Rusconi, 1970), p. 66.
96. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “A conjuração dos Cesares e do synhedrio”, O Legionário, no. 288, 20 March 1938. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira thus expressed his admiration for Zita of Austria (1892-1989), the wife of the last emperor Karl “She knew what to do in favour of the cause of Monarchy in Europe, to which she was dedicated out of pure idealism and not out of vulgar interest, much more than innumerable sovereigns, ex-sovereigns or heir-apparents throughout the whole world. In this century of gross materialism, she is an energetic and idealistic figure who deserves the greatest respect from every observer” (P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “O destino trágico de duas grandes dynastías”, O Legionário, no. 247, 6 June 1937). On Zita, cf. now G. B. Shepherd, The last Empress, London, Harper Collins Publishers, 1991.
97. M. Maccarrone, Il Nazionalsocialismo e la Santa Sede, pp. 211-12.
98. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “O verdadeiro sentido do vôo de Chamberlain”, O Legionário, no. 314, 18 September 1938.
99. On the conference of Munich and on “appeasement”, cf. Martin Gilbert, The roots of Appeasement, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1966; Charles Loch Mowat, Britain between the wars, 1918-1940, London, Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1976; Telford Taylor, Munich, the price of peace, London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1979; A.C. Parker, Chamberlain and Appeasement, New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1993.
100. “France and England could not have been more They drank the chalice until the last drop. And when they were told that if they drank just a few more drops they would obtain peace, they wept with joy”. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “Os fructos ideológicos da paz”, O Legionário, no. 316, 2 October 1938.
101. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “Churchill, o avestuz e a America do Sul”, Folha de S. Paulo, 31 January 1971.
102. On Pius XII (1876-1958) in relation to the themes we have dealt with, cf. Cardinal Domenico Tardini, Pio XII, Vatican City, Tipografia Poliglotta Vaticana, 1960; Schneider, Pio XII. Pace, opera della giustizia.; A. Rhodes, The Vatican in the Age of Dictators.; J. Chélini, L’Eglise sous Pie XII.; G. Martina, Storia della Chiesa, vol. IV, L’età contemporanea, pp. 219-47; Giorgio Angelozzi Gariboldi, Pio XII, Hitler e Mussolini. Il Vaticano fra le dittature, Milan, Mursia, 1995. Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli had been Nuncio in Germany (1917-29) and then Secretary of State (1930-9) before ascending to the Papal throne.
103. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “Entre o passado e o futuro”, O Legionário, no. 329, 4 January 1939. “Nazism — he had insisted on 8 May 1938 — from an international point of view can almost be compared to communism. And even so this ‘almost’ is a big problem”, ID., “Legitima difesa”, O Legionário, no. 295, 8 May 1938.
104. J. Guiffan, Histoire de l’Europe, p. 195.
105. A. Hillgruber, La distruzione dell’Europa, p. 257. The “non-aggression” agreement was valid for a period of ten years and it committed the two contracting parties to refrain from any ‘mutual attack’. Attached to this was a secret protocol which left Hitler free to attack Poland, leaving the USSR to control the three Baltic countries, Finland, Poland and Bessarabia. Cf. Walther Hofer, Die Entfesselung des Zweiten Weltkrieges, (Frankfurt a. Main, S. Fischer, 1964), pp. 165 sgg.; Gerhard L. Weinberg, Germany and the Soviet Union, 1939-1941, Leiden, Brill, 1972; Arturo Peregalli, Il Patto Hitler-Stalin e la spartizione della Polonia, Rome, Erre Emme Edizioni, 1989; Juan Gonzalo Larrain Campbell, “1939: o Pacto Ribbentrop-Molotov confirmou as denúncias do Legionário”, Catolicismo, no. 532, April 1995, pp. 22-4.