HISTORY II

History II

History II

The good news is that there is no reason to believe the pope was complicit while the bad news is that other Catholics were. The bad news is that the Catholic priests who did help the Nazis, did so in a big way. They turned more than a blind eye to the criminal pasts of those they helped, and it is fair to say that without the assistance of such priests, the Nazis could never have fled Europe in such vast numbers.

The two most vital priestly cogs in the system of machinery that enabled the Nazis to escape through Austria and Italy were the Croatian Mgr Krunoslav Draganovic and the Austrian Bishop Alois Hudal. A keen supporter of Pavelic and his barbaric Ustashi, Draganovic served as a chaplain at Jasenovac concentration camps, where thousands were slaughtered in the most bestial fashion. Draganovic also played a key role in the "Bureau of Colonisation" which forced Serbs to convert to Catholicism, as well as stealing their property and giving it to Croatians. In the words of one US intelligence officer, Draganovic thought that "the ideas espoused by this arch-nationalist organisation - half-logical, half-lunatic - are basically sound concepts".

After the war, Draganovic travelled around internment camps in northern Italy and Austria checking on the fate of the Ustashi members who had been captured. However, Draganovic's "relief work" also involved sheltering his comrades at San Girolamo, the Croatian monastery in Rome, There, on the mezzanine floor, Draganovic founded the Committee of Croatian Refugees in Rome, which was nothing less than a front for his people-smuggling activity.

The Americans and the British managed to infiltrate a spy into the monastery, who discovered that the Ustashi were being ferried around in cars bearing Vatican diplomatic plates. This led the Allies to assume that Draganovic had the backing "at the highest level" of the Holy See, an allegation that was reiterated by a British intelligence officer some years later, who maintained that it would have been impossible for Draganovic to have operated without the consent of Pius XII.

Unfortunately for Pius-bashers, such suspicions hardly constitute proof that the pope was complicit. Besides, the ultimate protectors of Pavelic were not members of the Vatican, but the Allies themselves. In mid-July 1947, an operation mooted by the Americans and the British to arrest Pavelic was suddenly cancelled with the simple order "Hands off", for reasons that are still opaque. It is fashionable to suggest that an arrest would reveal the complicity of the Vatican in assisting Pavelic, but it is just as likely that the Allies did not wish for the former dictator to be arrested because to have done so would have alienated a vast number of Croatians who were being used as informers in the nascent Cold War against the Soviet Union.

Whether Pavelic ended up being of any use to the Allies is doubtful, but we do know that Draganovc was more than helpful. It was Draganovic who ran the "ratline" down which the Gestapo officer-turned-American agent ...