Lessons From a Confidential Document – Folha de S. Paulo, November 26, 1972
by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira
Today, for the benefit of readers, I am transcribing a confidential note from the Vatican archives. Upon reading it, you will immediately recognize that the document is a summary of a presentation by Presidential Advisor Henry Kissinger to a Vatican official, such as Cardinal Jean-Marie Villot, Secretary of State of the Holy See.
“With regard to Russia, the representative of the US president stated that his government believes everyone has a duty to work to change Russia’s disposition so it becomes a member of the family of nations rather than remaining isolated. In postwar reconstruction, an isolated Russia is, for the time being, a powerful enemy that threatens the peace we all wish to see endure. There are currently numerous indications, the American diplomat said, that progress is being made in this direction. In Washington, there is growing confidence that Russia will become a useful ally…and that the Russian system’s generally unacceptable features are vanishing. Communism, as such, is ceasing to exist; the principle of private property is being reintroduced, at least in part; although there is currently no freedom of religion, the attitude [of the authorities] toward religion is changing considerably. The diplomat emphasized that the US government is working continuously to bring about a change in Soviet policy towards religion. It is generally accepted in Washington that considerable progress has been made in this regard. He reiterated that the most important aspect of the situation is the need to do everything possible to transform Russia from an isolated enemy into a friend.”
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The reader may ask, “Why publish such a banal summary of concepts and hopes? I haven’t read in the newspapers that Kissinger met with Cardinal Villot or any other Vatican figure. But if he did, he could only have told him what this note contains: all the reasons imaginable to justify the end of the Cold War in the eyes of the Holy See by forming a Washington-Moscow axis. And it sums up the illusions and hopes of those around the world who applaud Nixon’s policy.”
I agree with the reader. I am not aware that Kissinger said everything in this note. However, it is clear that it portrays him in his entirety: a man convinced of all the myths spread by Soviet propaganda, confident in the mitigation of the communist regime, in the restoration, at least partial, of private property and freedom of religion; a man certain that this process can be accelerated through major concessions or compromised by maintaining the isolation in which Russia has been.
It is understandable that the reader might ask me, then, what the point is of reproducing here a document that adds nothing new and ultimately reveals what is already known: the enormous bluff that motivates a catastrophic error by the Yankee government.
However, dear reader, I insist the document is extremely interesting. To prove it, I need only add a few clarifications.
If you review the beginning of the article, you will see that I was careful not to claim that this note is a summary of a conversation between the Presidential Advisor and a Vatican dignitary. I merely said that this would be the impression a reader would have.
In fact, this note is found in the Vatican archives (A.A.S. 6798/42, orig. typed), but it dates precisely from thirty years ago and contains a summary of a presentation by Mr. Myron Taylor, then Roosevelt’s personal representative, to Cardinal G.B. Montini, then substitute for the Vatican Secretariat of State, on “the war and the postwar period in Europe.” It is dated September 22, 1942, and appears in the book Pie XII devant l’Histoire, by Monsignor Georges Roche and Philippe Saint-Germain, published by Ed. Robert Laffont, Paris, p. 495.
I have transcribed only its main parts here and have replaced “Mr. Myron Taylor” with “the representative of the US president” or a similar phrase.
As can be seen from the date, Russia was at that time working with then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt to prepare him for the immense and catastrophic Yalta capitulation.
It would have been impossible for Moscow to achieve its immense post-war conquests if the US Head of State had not led many public figures in the New and Old Worlds to believe that communist ideology was in decline and that the Soviet regime would see socio-economic and religious mitigation.
Once these conquests were achieved, it became clear that all the prospects for internal change in Russia, which Stalin had led Roosevelt to believe in, were nothing more than a massive bluff.
But all these facts have been largely forgotten. Stalin’s successors are now making the same promises and lies to Roosevelt’s successors that they did thirty years earlier.
In turn, Roosevelt’s successors are pursuing the same policy of capitulation that has drawn severe condemnation from history.
The comic opera—or tragedy—keeps repeating. No one has learned from the bitter experience of three decades.
This reflection is particularly useful in our time.
In the pillory of history, Roosevelt stood alone with his small team of collaborators, including the sinister George Marshall, who pushed China toward communism.
Nixon and Kissinger, however, will not be alone. The number of their accomplices is immense! Among others, Willy Brandt, the German micro-Nixon, will stand with them in the pillory. In 1935, fighting in Spain alongside Russian communists, the German chancellor rendered them services incomparably smaller than those of his present “Ostpolitik.”
On the international stage, the most significant event this week was the small but regrettable victory of the governing coalition in the German elections. In Central Europe, Brandt symbolizes the same appeasement that the Nixon-Kissinger duo represents on the world stage. And the day of capitulations, incomparably more tragic than those of Yalta, is approaching.
No argument can dissuade the current “capitulators” from their suicidal policy.
But much can be done to limit their actions by enlightening public opinion about the fundamental insincerity of Soviet promises.
To this end, I believe few documents are as conclusive as the one I have transcribed. In it, we see that thirty years ago, Russia was awakening the same hopes, pursuing the same policy of lies, anesthetizing the other party in the same way, and ultimately doing exactly the opposite of what it had promised.
