Religion and the Cold War

Religion and the Cold War Edited by Dianne Kirby

Cold War History Series General Editor: Saki Dockrill, Senior Lecturer in War Studies, King’s College, London The new Cold War History Series aims to make available to scholars and students the results of advanced research on the origins and the development of the Cold War and its impact on nations, alliances and regions at various levels of statecraft, and in areas such as diplomacy, security, economy, military and society. Volumes in the series range from detailed and original specialised studies, proceedings of conferences, to broader and more comprehensive accounts. Each work deals with individual themes and periods of the Cold War and each author or editor approaches the Cold War with a variety of narrative, analysis, explanation, interpretation and reassessments of recent scholarship. These studies are designed to encourage investigation and debate on important themes and events in the Cold War, as seen from both East and West, in an effort to deepen our understanding of this phenomenon and place it in its context in world history. Titles include: Günter Bischof AUSTRIA IN THE FIRST COLD WAR, 1945–55 The Leverage of the Weak Christoph Bluth THE TWO GERMANIES AND MILITARY SECURITY IN EUROPE Dale Carter and Robin Clifton (editors) WAR AND COLD WAR IN AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY, 1942–62 Saki Dockrill BRITAIN’S RETREAT FROM EAST OF SUEZ The Choice between Europe and the World, 1945–1968 Martin H. Folly CHURCHILL, WHITEHALL AND THE SOVIET UNION, 1940–45 Michael F. Hopkins, Michael D. Kandian and Gillian Staerck (editors) COLD WAR BRITAIN, 1945–1964 New Perspectives John Gearson and Kori Schake (editors) THE BERLIN WALL CRISIS Perspectives on Cold War Alliances Ian Jackson THE ECONOMIC COLD WAR America, Britain and East–West Trade, 1948–63 Saul Kelly COLD WAR IN THE DESERT Britain, the United States and the Italian Colonies, 1945–52 Dianne Kirby (editor) RELIGION AND THE COLD WAR

Wilfred Loth OVERCOMING THE COLD WAR A History of Détente, 1950–1991 Erin Mahan KENNEDY, DE GAULLE AND WESTERN EUROPE Steve Marsh ANGLO–AMERICAN RELATIONS AND COLD WAR OIL Crisis in Iran Donette Murray KENNEDY, MACMILLAN AND NUCLEAR WEAPONS Effie Pedaliu BRITAIN, ITALY AND THE ORIGINS OF THE COLD WAR Andrew Roadnight UNITED STATES POLICY TOWARDS INDONESIA IN THE TRUMAN AND EISENHOWER YEARS Kevin Ruane THE RISE AND FALL OF THE EUROPEAN DEFENCE COMMUNITY Anglo-American Relations and the Crisis of European Defence, 1950–55 Helene Sjursen THE UNITED STATES, WESTERN EUROPE AND THE POLISH CRISIS International Relations in the Second Cold War Antonio Varsori and Elena Calandri (editors) THE FAILURE OF PEACE IN EUROPE, 1943–48

Cold War History Series Standing Order ISBN 0–333–79482–6 (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England

Religion and the Cold War Edited by

Dianne Kirby Lecturer School of History and International Affairs University of Ulster

Selection, Editorial Matter, Introduction and Chapter 6 © Dianne Kirby 2003 All other chapters © Palgrave Macmillan Ltd 2003 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2003 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin ’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 0–333–99398–5 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Religion and the Cold War / [edited by] Dianne Kirby. p. cm. – (Cold War history series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–333–99398–5 1. Cold War – Religious aspects. 2. Cold War – Religious aspects – Catholic Church. 3. Church and state – Europe – History – 20th century. 4. Religion and politics. I. Kirby, Dianne, 1953– II. Cold War history series (Palgrave (Firm)) D843 .R416 2002 261.8 ’7 ’09045 —dc21 2002072336 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne

For my parents, Agnes and Ken Kirby, with love.

Contents List of Contributors Foreword Acknowledgements

ix xii xiii

1 Religion and the Cold War – An Introduction Dianne Kirby

1

2 Domestic and Foreign Policy Considerations and the Origins of Post-war Soviet Church–State Relations, 1941–6 Anna Dickinson

23

3 The German Protestant Debate on Politics and Theology after the Second World War Matthew D. Hockenos

37

4 Pope Pius XII and the Cold War: The Post-war Confrontation between Catholicism and Communism Frank J. Coppa

50

5 The Lonely Cold War of Pope Pius XII Peter C. Kent 6 Harry Truman’s Religious Legacy: The Holy Alliance, Containment and the Cold War Dianne Kirby

67

77

7 The Vatican, Italy and the Cold War John Pollard

103

8 The United States and the Vatican in Yugoslavia, 1945–50 Charles R. Gallagher

118

9 Cold War on High and Unity from Below: The French Communist Party and the Catholic Church in the Early Years of the Gaullist Fifth Republic Paul Hainsworth vii

145

viii Contents

10 Between War and Peace: Politics, Religion and Human Rights in Early Cold War Canada, 1945–50 George Egerton

163

11 The Clergy, the Cold War and the Mission of the Local Church; England ca. 1945–60 Ian Jones

188

12 The Rehabilitation of Martin Luther in the GDR; or, Why Thomas Müntzer Failed to Stabilise the Moorings of Socialist Ideology Hartmut Lehmann

200

13 ‘Martyrs, Miracles and Martians’: Religion and Cold War Cinematic Propaganda in the 1950s Tony Shaw

211

Index

232

List of Contributors Frank J. Coppa, Professor of History at St. John’s University, New York, and Director of its doctoral programme in Modern World History, has research interests in Italian and European History. He received his MA and Ph.D. from the Catholic University of America and is the author of a series of biographies that include Giovanni Giolitti, Camillo di Cavour, Pope Pius IX and Cardinal Giacomo Antonelli, among others. More recently he has published the fifth and final volume in the Longman History of the Papacy – The Modern Papacy (1998), and in 1999 served as editor-in-chief and contributor to Encyclopedia of the Vatican and the Papacy and Controversial Concordats: The Vatican’s Relations with Napoleon, Mussolini and Hitler. He has reviewed all the popes and anti-popes for the Encyclopedia Britannica’s on-line references to the papacy and all the popes from Renaissance through Gregory XVI for the new edition of the Catholic Encyclopedia. He is currently editing a volume entitled Notable Popes and writing a volume on The Papacy Confronts the Modern World in the Anvil series. Anna Dickinson studied at the Centre for Russian and East European Studies (CREES) at the University of Birmingham. She completed her Ph.D. on the Russian Orthodox Church in the Second Word War in 1999. Having taught at the Universities of St Andrews and Dundee between 1998 and 2000, she is currently researching the development of assistive technology for older people. Her areas of interest include Soviet history and the role played by religion, and representations of religion, in the development of the Soviet State, and she is preparing her thesis for publication by Palgrave. George Egerton is Associate Professor of History at the University of British Columbia where he has taught since 1972. His research interests include the history of the League of Nations; British, American, and Canadian international relations in the modern era; the genre of Political Memoir; and the history of religion and politics in Canada. Author of Great Britain and the Creation of the League of Nations (1979) and editor of Political Memoir: Essays on the Politics of Memory (1994) and Anglican Essentials (1995), he has recently produced a multimedia website on the History of the League of Nations for the United Nations ix

x List of Contributors

Library (Geneva). He is presently writing a study of human rights, religion and constitutional politics in Canada since 1945. Charles R. Gallagher SJ received his Ph.D. in 1998 from Marquette University. He is currently working on a biography of the papal diplomat Joseph Patrick Hurley. He has published reviews in the The Catholic Historical Review and Film and History. He currently resides in New England and teaches in the History Department of the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. Paul Hainsworth is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Ulster. His doctorate (Bristol) focused on Communist-Catholic relations in France. Amongst his recent edited publications are The Politics of the Extreme Right: From the Margins to the Mainstream (2000), East Timor: The Struggle for Independence from Indonesia (2000) and Divided Society: Ethnic Minorities and Racism in Northern Ireland (1998). Matthew Hockenos is assistant Professor of History at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York. He is completing a manuscript entitled Coming to Terms with the Past: The Protestant Church in Postwar Germany, 1945–50. Funded by the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) and the Leo Baeck Institute, he is currently conducting research in Germany on ‘The Protestant Church and the Jewish Question’ and is a visiting scholar at the Institute for European History in Mainz, Germany. His research interests include German church history, ethics, and justice and reconciliation after the Second World War. Ian Jones is Lloyd Researcher at the Lincoln Theological Institute for the Study of Religion and Society, University of Sheffield. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Birmingham in 2000 and is currently preparing a monograph on ‘The Mainstrean Churches in England, ca. 1945–1998: the Local Church and Generational Change’. Peter C. Kent is Professor of History at the University of New Brunswick. A graduate of the London School of Economics, he is the author of The Pope and the Duce: The International Impact of the Lateran Agreements and co-editor with John Pollard of Papal Diplomacy in the Modern Age. His most recent monograph is The Lonely Cold War of Pope Pius XII. Dianne Kirby is a lecturer of American Studies in the School of History and International Relations at the University of Ulster. From her

List of Contributors xi

doctoral studies onwards, the role of religion in the Cold War has been the main focus of her research and publications. Author of Church, State and Propaganda (1999), she is currently working on a monograph, The Holy Alliance: Harry S. Truman’s Religious International Anti-Communist Front. She has published in a range of scholarly journals including Twentieth Century British History, Journal of Church and State, Journal of Religious History, Electronic Journal of International Relations, Journal of Contemporary History, Journal of Ecumenical Studies, European History Review, Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique and Contemporary British History, among others. Hartmut Lehmann has been since 1993 the Director of the MaxPlanck-Institut für Geschichte in Göttingen and Adjunct Professor at the Universities of Göttingen and Kiel. From 1969 until 1993 he was Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Kiel, and from 1987 to 1993 he was the Director of the German Historical Institute in Washington, DC. His recent publications include Religion und Religiosität in der Neuzeit (1996), Max Webers Protestantische Ethik (1996), Protestantische Weltsichten (1998) and Protestantisches Christentum im Prozeß der Säkularisierung (2001). His research interests cover Religion and nationalism, as well as secularization in Europe since 1789. John Pollard was educated at Cambridge and Reading Universities. He is Professor of Modern European History at Anglia Polytechnic University, Cambridge. He has published extensively on the history of modern Italy and the modern papacy, most notably The Vatican and Italian Fascism, 1929–1932 (1985), Papal Diplomacy in the Modern Age (ed. with Peter Kent, 1994) and The Unknown Pope: Benedict XV and the Pursuit of Peace, 1914–1922 (1999). He is currently writing Money and the Rise of the Modern Papacy: The Finances and Financiers of the Vatican, 1870–1945, to be published in 2003. Tony Shaw is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Hertfordshire. His publications include Eden, Suez and the Mass Media: Propaganda and Persuasion during the Suez Crisis (1996) and British Cinema and the Cold War: The State, Propaganda and Consensus (2001). He is currently working on two projects: a comparative analysis of Soviet and American Cold War cinema, and a history of British government propaganda during the Cold War.

Foreword A largely secular world has today had to understand once more that religion still plays a major part in the shaping of global relationships. Since 11 September 2001 it is upon Islam that the spotlight has been playing, often simplistically and unfairly. Religion, for good or ill, has never been absent from political life and struggle. Fundamentalist religion provided the foundation for apartheid. Justice based religion helped to bring it to an end. General Pinochet stood for one kind of religion. Archbishop Romero, shot at the altar, for another. For too long religion, as a major factor in the dangerous game of the Cold War, was not given the significance it deserved. True, religion helped to give freedom to the Poles. But religion also gave to President Reagan and those around him the apocalyptic language of evil empires which helped to drive the Cold War forward. By producing this book Dr Kirby and the scholars she gathered together for a ground-breaking conference in April 2000 have done us all a service. The curtain has been lifted on the use and misuse of religion during Cold War days. The Vatican, the Orthodox Churches, the Church of England, churches East and West, were all players in that expensive and unnecessary confrontation. The lesson for the future is clear. We in the faith communities are citizens of two kingdoms. To Caesar we render only what strictly belongs to him. Reconciliation and peace-making are duties we cannot delegate. Bruce Kent 17 February 2002

xii

Acknowledgements A project of this nature inevitably incurs numerous debts to institutions and individuals. My initial thanks go to John Saville and David Howell, who have long supported my endeavours to highlight the significance of religion in the Cold War from their humble origins in my doctoral thesis. For encouragement and practical help in launching ‘Religion and the Cold War’ as a collective scholarly enterprise, beginning with a conference and proceeding to this book, I owe thanks to the Institute of Contemporary British History, particularly Michael Kandiah, Gillian Staerck and Peter Catterall. Exceptional aid came from the George Bell Fellowship, notably Andrew Chandler and Giles and Natalie Watson. For providing a most apt venue in the Royal Foundation of St Katharine, my thanks to Ron Swan. For providing the funding to bring Father Georgii Edelstein from Russia to England to address the conference, my thanks to Tania Rose and the Philips Price Memorial Trust. For infusing the proceedings with warmth and humour, I know I speak on behalf of all conferees in thanking the conference’s guest speaker, Bruce Kent. I have the great good fortune to belong to a tremendously friendly and supportive school, History and International Affairs at the University of Ulster, and want to thank all for the sound advice on how to run a conference and how to publish the proceedings. For valuable feedback on content I owe immeasurable thanks to Carmel Roulston, Alan Bairner, William Crawley and Walter Hixson. I am especially appreciative of the generous support provided by my Head of School, Alan Sharp, and Head of History, Keith Jeffery. I owe a particular note of thanks to the long-suffering secretaries, Janet Campbell and Rosemarie Bell. Those familiar with the intricacies and priorities of the RAE will fully understand how great is the debt that I owe to all the contributors, who gave so generously of their time and scholarship, and to Saki Dockrill, who worked so tirelessly on all our behalves. My deepest thanks to everyone who has contributed to the success of the project to date and to those new friends who have joined us along the way, recognising religion not only as a vital ingredient essential for a full understanding of the Cold War, but also as a means of bringing fresh new perspectives into Cold War scholarship. Dianne Kirby University of Ulster xiii

1 Religion and the Cold War – An Introduction Dianne Kirby

The story of the Cold War is likely to become more contentious as it becomes more interesting and complex, and it will continue to defy any single narrative. A key variable, essential for a full and nuanced analysis of the Cold War, that has for too long been seriously neglected, is the role of religion. Neither religion nor the state has withered away, as Enlightenment rationalism and Marxist teleology predicted. The relationship between the two can tell us a great deal about the Cold War that will provide fresh new perspectives and telling insights. Although the unpredicted resurgence of religion in global society has heightened awareness of its potency as a political force and relegitimised it as an object of study, the role of religion in the Cold War remains to be systematically examined. To date, either as an organised entity or at the level of personal faith, religion’s place in Cold War historiography has been systematically neglected.1 Yet for many political commentators and for many who lived through the period, the Cold War was one of history’s great religious wars, a global conflict between the god-fearing and the godless. Cold War policies cannot be understood simply in terms of ‘realism’, power politics and geopolitical considerations. Ideology, based on and informed by religious beliefs and values, was crucial in shaping both perceptions of and responses to the Soviet Union.2 The religious dimension of the Cold War was of particular significance to the United States, a nation whose people and leaders, despite the constitutional separation of church and state, stressed their religiosity and considered their country to be a special moral force in the world.3 The importance of such ideas is enshrined in the pivotal Cold War document NSC 68, which committed the USA in 1950 to a massive 1

2 Religion and the Cold War

arms build-up. NSC 68 began not with a geopolitical evaluation but with the vision of an apocalyptic struggle between American good and Soviet evil. NSC 68 wanted to defeat the ‘fanatic faith’ of Communism by mobilising a superior ‘spiritual counter-force’, awakening ‘the latent spiritual energies of free men everywhere’.4 In 1950, Washington Post editor Herbert Elliston asked Isaiah Berlin to write a ‘credo’ for Cold War liberalism. Berlin replied: I do not think that the answer to communism is a counter-faith, equally fervent, militant, etc.; to begin with, nothing is less likely to create a ‘faith’ than perpetual reiteration of the fact that we are looking for one, must find one, are lost without one.5 This, however, is precisely what the British and the Americans tried to do in the late 1940s as they sought to construct a ‘Western’ doctrine with which to counter the growing appeal of communism.6 In an era in which religious faith still mattered, Marxist atheism was seen as a potential focus for undermining the popular appeal of communist doctrine. This was particularly important in relation to the masses of poor, for whom communism naturally held a significant attraction, as these were equally the people for whom religion was a comfort and a consolation. Marxist atheism provided a window of vulnerability, the Achilles’ heel of communism from the West’s religio-political perspective. It was hardly surprising, therefore, that Christianity was appropriated by Western propagandists and policy-makers for their anti-communist arsenal. The construction of an entirely new doctrine with which to counter the appeal of communism proved unfeasible. However, anticommunist rhetoric emphasised freedom of religion and Christian ideals, which, combined with its emphasis on democracy and freedom, enabled anti-communism to assume a doctrinal status with a claim to moral superiority owing to its spiritual component as opposed to the base materialism of communism. The new historians of the Cold War stress the significance of ideas and beliefs, focusing on the importance of ideology and culture. Interestingly the new scholarship tends to be preoccupied with communist ideology rather than that of the West.7 The trend is discernible in We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History by John Lewis Gaddis, the best-known historian of the Cold War and foremost proponent of a school of interpretation called post-revisionism that stresses the importance of geopolitics and power balances.8 Gaddis’s new work is

An Introduction 3

distinctive due to the extent that it abandons post-revisionism and returns to a more traditional interpretation of the Cold War, blaming the Cold War on Stalin’s personality, on authoritarian government and on Communist ideology.9 American ideas and the actions they inspired tend to be glossed over in the new literature, which tends to present a picture of a passive Washington.10 However, American officials and the American people held powerful beliefs about the superiority of their institutions, culture and way of life. These beliefs, including religious beliefs, prompted actions that figure prominently in the story of the Cold War and the nature it assumed. The US traditionally perceived itself as the manifestation of Truth, Justice and Freedom placed on earth by a God whose purpose was to make of it an instrument for extending His spiritual and material blessings to the rest of humanity. Even Gaddis now notably concludes that the Cold War was ‘a contest between good and evil’.11 The defeat of Nazi tyranny strengthened the view of America as an anointed nation, a society with a unique mission born of its righteousness, endowing these beliefs with a powerful crusading quality.12 A sense of mission became in many ways the most powerful ideological force in post-war American culture. It is essential to understand this in order to appreciate the unfolding of the conflict with the Soviet Union as a particular sort of Christian enterprise, sustained by the conviction that the American cause was morally right and the communists were evil.13 Melvyn Leffler, one of the Cold War’s most respected scholars, acknowledges that the new historians of the Cold War are relating something of importance when they stress the significance of ideas and beliefs, but advises that they need to look more closely at beliefs in Washington as well as Moscow and Beijing. US officials and the American people held powerful beliefs about the superiority of their institutions, culture and race, prominent amongst which was religion. In early Cold War America religion was part of a very important concept, the ‘American Way of Life’, which was believed to be threatened from both within and without.14 Americanism took it for granted that communism was by no means only a political, military or economic challenge, but also a spiritual one that threatened the deepest foundations of human life. The ideal America was unified spiritually: a righteous and God-fearing nation, giving expression to belief in God with one voice. The ideal was symbolized on 28 May 1953 when President Eisenhower signed the bill adding ‘under God’ to the Pledge of Allegiance. In a July 4 editorial the Living Church perceived the addition as ‘one more example of the renewed religious earnestness of our nation’.15

4 Religion and the Cold War

No one in the West seriously challenged America’s moral leadership or its presentation of itself as a God-fearing nation, despite the constitutional separation between Church and State. America’s crusade to defend Western Civilization and Christianity was seen as entirely compatible with its crusade to promote freedom and democracy. In reality, as the rise of fundamentalism in the latter part of the twentieth century has demonstrated all too clearly, religion can be a force for political dysfunction that subverts freedom and democratic values. Those who equate religion with social justice, political democracy and freedom for the individual have avoided this uncomfortable reality. Similarly, many Cold War histories avoided the equally uncomfortable reality that for many third world peoples freedom and democracy became less attainable owing to Western policies supposedly meant to promote freedom and democracy, but which all too often led to their antithesis. A significant indication that the importance of religion in the Cold War is at last being recognised as worthy of consideration can be discerned from the fact that Diplomatic History, the leading journal in the field, published a symposium on the subject in autumn 2000. The feature article on which all the others commented was Andrew J. Rotter’s ‘Christians, Muslims, and Hindus: Religion and US–South Asian Relations, 1947–1954.’ Rotter noted how scholars, even those of a culturalist bent, have usually resisted interpreting US foreign policy as a product of religious thinking.16 He observes that this was an idea that made people uncomfortable. America was supposed to be a country in which religion and politics did not mix, despite the extent to which religion is encoded in political practice, taking the form of what Robert Bellah has called ‘civil religion’, the translation of religious language and symbols into secularisms. It is Rotter’s contention that even in an ostensibly secular state the private religious commitments and concerns of foreign policy-makers can be crucial, even decisive, factors in shaping international relations, especially when the policy-makers share a common religious culture. He points to the surprising number of ‘missionary kids’, reared in a strong Protestant missionary subculture, who for a significant part of the twentieth century dominated the foreign affairs establishment of the United States, at the State Department and in the academy. Rotter examines the association between religion and United States foreign policy and the manner in which America’s ‘sense of mission’ carried on into the Cold War. In particular, he demonstrates how the lingering assumption that America was in some essential way a Christian and more specifically, a Protestant nation perpetuated a missionary

An Introduction 5

mentality.17 The Soviet Union was not just an enemy but the antichrist, the ‘devil we knew’. Rotter records the surprising number of Cold War monographs with ‘crusade’ in their titles, the senator who proclaimed in 1950 that ‘America must move forward with the Atomic bomb in one hand and the cross in the other’, and how accepting the Republican nomination for the president in 1952, Dwight Eisenhower said, ‘you have summoned me … To lead a great crusade …’18 Commenting on Rotter’s article, Patricia Hill acknowledges that religion constitutes a category that ought to be considered in the writing of diplomatic history. However, she perceives a fundamental difficulty in the proposition that religion can function, like gender, as a category of historical analysis. Commenting that it is not, as Susanne Hoeber Rudolph has pointed out, a ‘master variable’ in international relations, but one that acquires or loses salience in particular historical moments, Hill suggests that religion cannot be easily abstracted as a structural component of social order. She doubts, therefore, that it can be deployed as a category of analysis in the same way that scholars have wielded gender, class and race. She adds that, if Rudolph is correct, religion may not always be a variable that matters as it is now assumed race, class and gender must always be understood as constituents of any society or state.19 Another contributor to the debate, Robert Buzzanco, questions the value of cultural interpretations.20 Buzzanco notes that the fact that religion has become the subject of a roundtable in a major diplomatic history journal suggests that it deserves attention. However, while he acknowledges that policy-makers in North America had ideological beliefs, preconceptions and prejudices based on religion, he questions how important these were. This is a question addressed elsewhere by David S. Foglesong. Foglesong points out that many prominent officials shared the assumptions that communism was a spurious pseudo religion and that the West could mobilize religious conviction against the atheistic Soviet regime. Among these was John Foster Dulles who was responsible for the Eisenhower administration’s policy to roll back communism in eastern Europe. Another was Walter Bedell Smith, ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1946 to 1949, who observed that the strong religious faith of the Russian people was something to be utilized against the regime. After returning to the US, Smith served as director of the CIA from 1950 to 1953, the years when the agency began funding propaganda organizations that sought to rouse religious feeling against communist governments.21

6 Religion and the Cold War

Historians of US foreign relations have long recognized the importance of the urge to re-make other societies in the image of the United States. Little attention has been paid to the religious component of that urge, which can equally be seen as an expression of American culture. Foglesong’s exploration of American attitudes toward the liberation of Russia offers an analysis of the assumptions, values and prejudices of key US policy-makers and suggests that religious ideas were a significant influence. He argues that US policies cannot be understood simply in terms of ‘realist’ responses to Soviet threats: US propaganda and political warfare were shaped by ideology. His research suggests that rather than think about the Cold War merely in the geopolitical terms of liberal or conservative anti-communism, the consultants, officials and policymakers who inspired, founded and guided the Cold War propaganda organizations were influenced by their religious beliefs.22 Undeniably, for some US representatives, the appeal to religious sentiment was merely a pragmatic cold war tactic. For others the missionary language and images expressed deeply held convictions. There was a special fervour in the propagation of Christian ideas from the late 1940s to the early 1950s. Foglesong reveals that although some senior diplomats and policy-makers scorned the emphasis on religion, it was not peculiar to idiosyncratic advisers on the margins of US policy-making. NSC 68, mentioned earlier, enshrined many of the ideas inspired by the religious convictions that these key policy-makers espoused. In addition to which, the propaganda organizations supported by the State Department and the CIA embraced the missionary tactics advocated. Edward Barrett, an assistant Secretary of State who headed the US Information Service (USIS) from 1950 to 1952, believed powerful religious forces could become ‘Communism’s greatest foe’. Under his leadership, US information programmes placed increased emphasis on ‘the great appeal of godliness versus godlessness’. Voice of America broadcasts repeatedly attacked Soviet tyranny as hostile to religion, denounced Stalin as a pseudo-God and claimed that the Russian people still crowded into churches despite all the persecution and peril.23 In bringing forward evidence and arguments supporting the contention that religion was from the beginning a significant Cold War component, it is essential to give some consideration to why, if this was the case, it has taken so long to recognise and address it, particularly in America. At the most mundane level, the neglect of the religious dimension can be attributed, in part, to the fact that the historiography of the Cold War was for a long time dominated by

An Introduction 7

American scholars working in North American ‘secular’ universities which adopted rather a frigid attitude toward church history and religious studies. Defended by many as a necessary adjunct to the separation of church and state, the disdain, as John Conway has pointed out, ‘was in fact due to the ideological hostility of the majority of the professoriate towards religion in general and Christianity in particular.’24 Conway argues that the controversial misinterpretation of the alleged conflict between science and religion took its unfortunate toll to the degree that while, for most history departments, it was inconceivable to teach the history of the middle ages without reference to religion, the opposite was true for the more recent centuries. This still holds true today, despite the growth of departments devoted to religion, as the subject is too frequently tossed between Religion and History, with departmental barriers preventing any profitable collaboration. Perhaps even more instrumental in the neglect of religion is the fact that it is too complex and too intertwined with other cultural and social forms to be easily isolated. It also raises difficult enough questions on its own. What does ‘religion’ mean? What is the history of this word? What happens when ‘religion’ and particular religions are reified in legal and political language? Can we talk about religion without privileging Christianity? Historians and political scientists too often refer to religion as if everyone knows what it is. For many it is synonymous with belief. For others it is more nearly synonymous with ‘culture’. Discussion of religion and politics tends to be dominated by a Protestant model of religion as individual, chosen and believed, with little attention given to religion that is communal, given and enacted. Above all, the debate tends toward the hypothetical question whether or not politics ‘contaminates’ religion. It could be argued that religion was always and remains ‘contaminated’ by politics. Religion is as intricately intertwined with the political as it is with the social and the cultural. Where great advances have been made in relation to the significance of religion, is in the study of political and psychological warfare. The importance that propaganda assumed by the 1950s in American Cold War policy resulted in the emergence of the Psychological Strategy Board (PSB) to coordinate psychological operations. The directors’ group of PSB consultants was aware of the importance of ‘the world’s concept of us as a young and vital nation endowed with the spiritual qualities necessary for world leadership.’25 Ronald Reagan’s famous reference in the 1980s to the ‘evil empire’ is a salutary reminder of the persistence and power of Cold War religious

8 Religion and the Cold War

imagery. Western propagandists played the religious card in the early years of the cultural Cold War, an early example being Winston Churchill’s 1946 Fulton Speech in the presence of President Truman.26 It has been said of Truman that he instinctively recognized the influential position of the pulpit.27 Propaganda studies frequently refer to Truman’s ‘Campaign of Truth’, formally launched before the American Society of Newspaper editors in April 1950.28 Truth, of course, is a value-laden term with religious implications. Truman emphasized that the message was for universal consumption and was ‘a necessary part of all we are doing … as important as armed strength or economic aid’. Senate hearings on Truman’s request for funds for his ‘campaign of truth’ revealed the strength of support for what was referred to as a ‘contest for the minds and loyalties of men’ and as ‘a Marshall Plan in the field of ideas’. Twenty-seven senators wrote to Truman urging a ‘psychological and spiritual offensive against the Kremlin.’29 Existing scholarship confirms that religion played some sort of role in American perceptions and conduct of the Cold War, and therefore in the course it assumed. If a study of religion as a tool of analysis is to be undertaken, then it cannot be confined to the United States. And here Hill raises a cogent point, observing that Rotter’s work raises a difficult issue for a culturalist approach to diplomatic history: ‘How can an individual scholar actually produce a persuasive study that addresses religious thinking and its policy impact on the relations among multiple states?’ She sees it as a daunting prospect and feels it may require more than can be expected of the lone scholar: ‘In short, the messy particularity and complexity of religion makes it a category of diplomatic analysis that requires collaboration. We need to imagine creative ways to stimulate and foster such collaboration.’ Hill predicts that if such ways can be found they will open up a host of previously unasked questions, the answers to which will transform the field and produce exciting new perspectives on the history of international relations. Hill argues that, because religion constitutes a very complex category for analysis, to construct a history that includes multiple national sites and takes seriously the transnational character of some religious movements, requires creative, collaborative efforts that embrace both a culturalist approach and an innovative process for implementing that approach. The process has already begun. In April 2000 at the Royal Foundation of St Katharine’s in the East End of London a gathering of scholars from across the disciplines and around the world met to discuss Religion and the Cold War. They have remained in touch with each other’s endeavours, and those of other interested parties who

An Introduction 9

subsequently joined the on-going project, via an electronic mailbase that facilitates group discussion and communication on a daily basis if need be. This book is a direct result of the Religion and the Cold War project, which brought together scholars from different countries and different disciplines who have different approaches to and different perspectives of religion and the Cold War. They address different subjects, in different eras, in different countries and in different ways. The range of subjects varies from Cold War cinema to Marxist scholarship, from popes to parish clergy. None of the chapters takes the simplistic, crudely reductionist view that religion was merely an instrument of propaganda and manipulation used by ‘Cold Warriors’ for purposes that can be adequately defined and understood without reference to religion. Nor do they offer a uniform, single view of what religion amounts to in the Cold War over and above mere propaganda. Rather they provide varied and diverse insights that affirm the rich, multi-faceted, multidimensional role religion assumed during the Cold war era. The collection starts with Anna Dickinson, who explains that the USSR and the Russian Orthodox Church were not enemies by 1945, thereby challenging the tendency to assume that the West had a monopoly on religion. The official atheism of the communist regimes did not prevent religion assuming considerable significance in their Cold War policymaking. In 1940 the Russian Orthodox Church was on the verge of institutional elimination in Russia. Dickinson explains how it was that by 1946 the Russian Orthodox Church had the power to become involved in Soviet foreign policy objectives, whereas in 1940 the most that leaders of the Church could have hoped for was survival. Historians normally focus narrowly on the foreign policy role of the Russian Orthodox Church after 1943. Dickinson suggests that the foreign policy role of the Russian Orthodox Church has tended to cause undue emphasis to be given to foreign policy considerations in motivating religious policy changes. Dickinson uses archival evidence to demonstrate that although the strengthening of Orthodox influence did take place in order to facilitate foreign policy ends, further evidence suggests that these ends were ultimately focused on domestic issues. She contends that the strengthening of the Russian Orthodox Church outside Russia was primarily a means of strengthening the domestic church in order to facilitate its assertion of political control over the liberated territories and the destruction of indigenous nationalist movements, and not primarily as a means of strengthening Soviet influence in the rest of the world. The Russian Orthodox Church also played an important role within Russia.

10 Religion and the Cold War

The Soviet State elected to use the Patriarchal Church and recognized its need to re-establish its power throughout Russia. Dickinson looks at the eradication of the Uniate Church and how the Russian Orthodox Church was allowed to play a missionary role. She uses its complicity in aiding the Soviet government’s destruction of the Uniate Church to explore the post-1943 Church–State relationship, revealing significant areas in which there was a convergence of interest. For example, as members of the underground churches avoided participation in both Soviet society and the patriarchal Orthodox Church, both the Moscow Patriarchate and the Soviet state had an interest in eradicating them. Dickinson portrays a state in fear for its basic survival using a Church that it had previously sought to eliminate to make sure it did survive. In turn, the Church cooperated with the State that had brought it close to institutional extinction through savage persecution for the sake of its own self-preservation. Matthew D. Hockenos’s chapter on the Darmstadt statement highlights that a fundamentally important issue in the West from the viewpoint of social and political theology was the stance to be adopted towards the churches’ response to Nazism. Significant in itself, it is an issue that opens the way to consideration of the extent to which one of the significant dimensions of religion in the Cold War was its place in disputes about who was and was not a fascist or a Nazi. Hockenos’s study is informed by post-war German theological arguments as he explores the relationship between the Protestant church and politics in 1947 when reform-minded pastors and theologians, including Karl Barth, Hermann Diem, Hans Iwand and Martin Niemöller, issued the highly controversial Darmstadt statement. He contends that, although rejected by an overwhelming majority of church leaders, pastors, and theologians, the importance of the Darmstadt statement for understanding the post-war church and Germany generally, should not be minimized. The statement highlighted the irreconcilable political and theological differences between two visions of the church in the postwar era. As one of the first manifestations of Cold War polemics within the church, Darmstadt set the stage for future showdowns between reformers and conservatives over German unification, East–West relations, and rearmament. Hockenos argues that the responses to the Darmstadt statement are highly significant ‘because they provided the political and theological arguments that churchmen would use in staking out their positions in response to the Cold War.’ He further claims that recognizing the mutually supportive nature of the theological and political issues raised

An Introduction 11

by the Darmstadt statement is critical to an examination of the competing interpretations within the Protestant church of the political and theological consequences of the Nazi era. It is equally crucial for understanding the conflicting visions of the church in the early stages of the Cold War. Interestingly, the most contentious religious figure in Cold War history remains Pius XII, and the next two chapters present rather different views of his role. Frank J. Coppa surveys both the religious and political aspects of Pius XII’s anti-communist activities from 1919 to 1958. It is his contention that while American historians have recognized the part played by the United States in provoking the Cold War, the papal role has not been recognized, other than in the religious and ideological sphere. Coppa argues that Pius XII became deeply implicated in the political realm as he mobilized Catholic forces to combat communism in his initiation of a global campaign against Bolsheviks in general, and the Soviet Union in particular. Examining how the Vatican’s ‘alliance’ with the western bloc contributed to the triumph of Christian Democracy in Italy and Germany, Coppa also shows how it compromised papal neutrality. During the war the Vatican resisted denouncing either Nazi or Bolshevik atrocities. While the Holy See had few illusions about National Socialism, it considered Bolshevism the greater evil. Pius XII perceived unconditional surrender as ‘idiotic’ and feared the consequences of a Soviet victory for Poland, the Baltic states, and the whole of eastern Europe, not to mention communist domination over the entire war-torn continent. In the post-war period, Pius XII’s position was that the totalitarian, anti-religious state demanded the silence and acquiescence of the Church. He was not prepared to comply. Coppa highlights the consequences. He argues that Pius XII rallied the support of the faithful for his diplomacy of condemnation and containment of the Soviet Union, a position eventually endorsed by the United States, helped by Russian actions and by the outbreak of the Korean conflict in 1950. However, by the end of Pius XII’s pontificate the Vatican was moving to reach some accommodation with the Soviet system, as it sought to shift from de facto alliance with the West to non-alignment. Coppa shows how the pope who had assumed a leading role in the opening of the Cold War eventually joined forces with those who called for its conclusion. Peter C. Kent agrees with Coppa that the Roman Catholic Church in the twentieth century was among the first ranks of the Cold Warriors, but he challenges assumptions about the Vatican’s initiation of the

12 Religion and the Cold War

Cold War and Pius XII’s central role in determining the course of international events in the 1940s. Kent posits that there are four key issues to be addressed in order to determine the nature and extent of the Vatican’s role: How close a collaboration existed between Rome and Washington after the Second World War? Did the policy of containment as enunciated by Harry Truman in 1947 accord with the goals of the Vatican? Was there a working alliance between the American government and the Holy See to resist the extension of Communism and, if so, how effectively did it operate? Can the triumphal celebration of the Holy Year of 1950 also be read as a celebration of the antiCommunist alliance of the west behind the leadership of the United States with the assistance of the Catholic Church? Seeking to answer these questions Kent arrives at quite different conclusions from Coppa, arguing that while the Roman Catholic Church provided much of the ideological rhetoric of the Cold War, it had little direct influence on the course of events. He also sees little real concordance of policy between Washington and Papal Rome. For Kent, the image of the Church triumphant in the Holy Year of 1950 was false. He contends that Pius XII stood alone in pursuing his conception of the Cold War with scant sympathy or assistance from the government of the United States. My own contribution to the debate surrounding US–Vatican relations presents yet another perspective. With reference to the endeavours of President Truman to forge a religious international anti-communist front, my chapter examines how Truman made religion an integral part of his Cold War campaign to persuade the American people to abandon isolationism, embrace globalism and world leadership and to roll-back communism. The evolution of US–Vatican relations in the post-war period served as an effective yardstick for measuring the scale and degree of changes in American policy from the wartime alliance with the Soviet Union to a more rigid stance in the early part of 1946 to confrontation in 1947. The chapter explores why Truman, fully aware of the serious implications for dialogue and negotiation in the international arena, deliberately advanced relations with Pius XII at crucial points in the congealment of the Cold War. Taken together the chapters provide not only a range of views of the pope, but suggest that more study is required of US–Vatican relations

An Introduction 13

in this period if we are to understand the forces driving the Truman administration’s attitudes and polices. Of equal if not more importance is the provision of a fuller and a more profound understanding of the nature and origins of the Cold War. The status of Catholicism in the story of the European dimension of the Cold War is addressed in three chapters. John Pollard explores the ways in which the Vatican responded to the critical situation it perceived to exist in Italy from the onset of the Cold War and considers the short and longer-term effects of its policy for Italy and beyond. Italy was on the ‘front line’ during the Cold War. Pollard contends that, without the onset of the Cold War, Catholicism would not have achieved such hegemony in post-war Italy. In examining the consequences of the Cold War and the Church’s response to it, Pollard identifies the post-war period of Italian history as an era of Catholic ‘triumphalism’ in which, until the late 1960s at least, the Church appeared to be hegemonic in both Italian political life and civil society. Pollard argues that the polarization of Italian politics in 1947 and 1948 and the atmosphere of cosmic crisis massively increased the value of the Vatican’s intervention in Italian politics, despite the fact that Catholic hegemony in Italian civil society was from the beginning unnatural, artificial and very fragile. He suggests that the Church replaced fascism as the authoritarian system sought by the Italian middle classes. The abolition of the monarchy and the development of the papal cult of the personality reinforced the Church’s influence at this juncture. Pollard introduces evidence to show that the Christian Democratic Party as a political force ‘sponsored’ by the Church lacked real autonomy from the Vatican. He argues that Christian Democratic attempts in the mid-1950s to escape Vatican control began a practice of clientelism and corruption on a massive scale that would eventually lead to the collapse of the Christian Democratic regime itself. It is his contention that the survival of the Christian Democratic regime for almost fifty years was due to the legacy of the Cold War, with communists excluded as far as possible from power. However, with anti-communism as the major issue on the Church’s political agenda, other serious, moral issues, such as the fight against the Mafia in Sicily, went unaddressed, with profound consequences on the home front. Although Pollard regards Vatican policy as more cautious and diplomatic abroad, he contends that it still had profound and far-reaching consequences, not least in eastern Europe. Charles Gallagher, whose focus is on post-war Yugoslavia, agrees.

14 Religion and the Cold War

Gallagher’s chapter opens up debate on the tension often thought to exist between religious liberty as understood in the US Constitution and Roman Catholic social and political theology. Gallagher points to a sensational example of this, Paul Blanshard’s polemic against Catholicism as the real danger. The main focus of Gallagher’s chapter is the furtive diplomatic contact between the US and the Vatican in Cold War Yugoslavia. From 1945 to 1950 the US and the Vatican conducted a clandestine operation of intelligence gathering and transmission in the former Yugoslavia that marked an historic period in their diplomatic cooperation. As a diplomatic force, the Vatican held a great deal of strength in the Balkans during the early Cold War period and was interested in influencing US policy in Yugoslavia for both spiritual and political reasons. In its strategy of ‘looking toward America’ it began by appointing prominent American prelates to key diplomatic posts behind the Iron Curtain. Gallagher examines the Americanization of the Holy See’s diplomatic corps, which represented an historic shift, with a special focus on the appointment of the American bishop Joseph P. Hurley of St. Augustine, Florida, to the Apostolic Nunciature in Belgrade. The first American in the history of papal diplomacy to be raised to the equivalent rank of nuncio, Hurley met secretly with Pope Pius XII in October of 1945 to accept the impending assignment. Hurley had strong political contacts with the US State Department and with many high-ranking members of the Cold War American diplomatic corps. In early 1946, an arrangement was fashioned whereby the Vatican’s official correspondence was sent to Rome via the American diplomatic pouch. The United States was also getting something in return. The Belgrade nunciature secretly supplied the US embassy with detailed reports on Yugoslav Catholic and political activities. The initial breach of the US–Vatican partnership rose out of the United States’ silence concerning the sudden arrest and outcome of the trial of Archbishop Aloysius Stepinac of Zagreb. The United States did not reciprocate the Vatican’s enthusiasm regarding Archbishop Stepinac’s innocence. Then, on 28 June 1948, Stalin publicly expelled Tito’s Yugoslavia from the Cominform. A new set of diplomatic variables was now placed upon the negotiating table. Gallagher suggests the period as a starting point for examining the role that America played in the construction of the Vatican’s Cold War Ostpolitik, or eastern policy, in the Balkans. The possibility of Catholic-communist cooperation is also the subject addressed by Paul Hainsworth, but this time in France. The birth of the Fifth Republic forced both the French Communist Party (PCF) and the

An Introduction 15

Catholic Church to take stock of General De Gaulle’s new regime and to assess what it meant for their respective world-views. Hainsworth examines some of the developments and perspectives operative within and between French Catholicism and the PCF as these powerful forces came to terms with the Fifth Republic and with their own respective evolutions in the context of the Cold War. The PCF had been born in 1920 as a byproduct of the Russian Revolution, and had emerged as the most successful party at the polls in post-war France. The intensification of the Cold War politically isolated the PCF, meaning that it was unable to turn its success into lasting alliances. The Catholic Church had played a conspicuous role throughout French history and society, resulting in France frequently being described as ‘the elder daughter of the Church’. For the PCF, Gaullism was theorized as a manifestation of state monopoly capitalism in which the bourgeoisie relied upon political and ideological ramparts (including religion) to support its economic dominance. The PCF thus perceived Gaullism as a force that recruited religion for class purposes. It is in this context that the Church’s clerical role was to help prop up capitalism and its political arm, Gaullism, signifying the de facto revival of the classic alliance between ‘throne’ and ‘altar’. Although the Constitution’s preamble situated the new regime in the republican fold, the PCF was wary of a collusive Gaullist relationship with the Church. Hainsworth argues that PCF suspicions were not without foundation. He examines the difficulties which the Cold War context imposed upon the policy of the ‘outstretched hand’, the PCF’s mechanism for exploiting the potential for Communist–Catholic contacts. The roots of this approach lay in the 1930s, when PCF leader Maurice Thorez had offered an outstretched hand of solidarity to French Catholics at the time of the Popular Front. Hainsworth contends that the fetters placed on Catholic–Communist contacts by the Catholic hierarchy and the PCF’s hostility towards the Church’s intrusion into the political arena did not prevent the Party from continuing to offer an outstretched hand to French Catholics. He shows how Cold War developments and thaw interacted with domestic efforts to exploit the possibilities for Communist–Catholic cooperation, resulting in a peaceful co-existence that gathered momentum as a more engaging dialogue in the mid-1960s and beyond. George Egerton’s chapter complements the preceding three chapters in extending to Canada the way in which they examine how issues confronted centrally in the Vatican played out in selected countries.

16 Religion and the Cold War

Egerton examines the significance of religion in the Cold War human rights debate both in Canada and in the wider international arena. Noting the contemporary peripheralization of religion in public life, Egerton remarks on how this has helped to create a lacuna in historical understanding of the powerful political functions of religion and the way in which politicians drew upon the religious resources of Western political cultures until the 1960s. He examines the relationship of religion and politics in Canada in the wake of the Second World War and the early years of the Cold War, a period amounting to what was perceived at the time as a religious revival lasting into the mid-1960s. Egerton focuses on the central role that religion played in defining Canada’s ideological response, domestically and internationally, to the dawning ‘Age of Human Rights’. It is his contention that the Communist challenge of these years to Western democratic cultures resulted in an international renewal and reassertion of liberal values that found their most dramatic expression in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in December 1948. The question of human rights provoked deep philosophical, ideological, and religious disagreements. During the Second World War the Canadian churches and government formed a close partnership in a struggle they jointly perceived and presented as the defence of Christian civilization against the pagan forces of Nazism. The political rhetoric that portrayed Canada explicitly as a Christian state continued after the war as the ‘uneasy alliance’ began to crumble and the Soviet Union consolidated its hold over eastern and central Europe and its deeply Christian nations. The genesis of the Cold War and the threat of communism served to reaffirm and strengthen the Canadian church–state partnership. Protestants and Catholics agreed in the post-war period that atheistic communism presented a danger to the central liberal and Christian values of the Canadian state which was every bit as serious as the recently defeated menace of Nazism. Egerton shows how Canadian religion functioned ambiguously in the realm of human rights. The nation’s dominant Protestant and Catholic churches approached the question of human rights protection both supportively and critically, but agreed that human rights required religious grounding and affirmation if they were to achieve political legitimacy. Egerton argues that it was the strength of the Canadian church-state relationship and its eagerness to support government authority in its containment of communism at home and abroad that facilitated the decision against a Canadian Bill of Rights.

An Introduction 17

The remaining chapters make a shift into the realm of social history. Ian Jones emphasizes the need to think broadly, beyond conveniently diplomatic and diplomatic-like history. The Darmstadt statement is akin to diplomatic history in that it deals with elites. In contrast, Jones focuses on the grass-roots level. If religion is a significant Cold War force, its power derives from moving ordinary people. Jones has made a wide study of the life of the local church in post-war Birmingham, from which he offers some reflections on the attitudes of clergy and leading lay members of local Anglican and Free Church congregations toward the Cold War and how and why they raised it with their congregations and parishioners. Many of the clergy’s primary concerns related particularly to the pastoral and missiological implications of the Cold War in Britain. The conflict required that the laity – both churchgoers and nonchurchgoers – play their full part in the campaign. A growing number of local church leaders through the 1940s and 1950s quite simply regarded Christianity and communism as antithetical on theological or ideological grounds. While Jones suggests that the communist threat offered a culturally acceptable scapegoat against which clergy could attempt to re-establish the waning connection between religious duty, social participation and national identity, he warns against underestimating the significance for them of the Cold War as a cosmic struggle between good and evil. For many local clergy important pastoral challenges arose from the whole traumatic experience of living under the shadow of the Cold War. They were convinced that whether communism posed a direct and hostile threat, or spread its influence more subtly through the growth of a materialist outlook on life, the church could not sit idly by without offering a response. Fear about the spread of communism was discernible in the concern expressed by many local church leaders from across the political and theological spectrum about the power of the state in an era of increased government planning. Organized labour could appear as another manifestation of communist activism alarmingly close to home. This did not mean automatic support from religion for the forces of capitalism. Far from seeing material prosperity as a crucial bulwark against communist influence, most clergy regarded a materialistic outlook on life as increasing the nation’s susceptibility to Cold War defeat. Stories of enduring Christian devotion behind the Iron Curtain were regularly featured in church magazines of the time, to show western Christians that the Gospel could not be extinguished, even under an atheistic regime, and to call church members to re-examine

18 Religion and the Cold War

the depth of their own commitment. English clergy appeared sceptical of adopting anti-communism at any price and frequently drew a distinction between the half-hearted Western believer on one hand, and the passionate, committed communist on the other. Hartmut Lehmann’s study brings to the fore the question of how important ideological coherence is for the faithful. With wit and humour, Lehmann examines the complications and complexities to which religion gave rise within the GDR. Presented as a five-act drama, ‘or perhaps even a tragedy’, Lehmann’s chapter addresses a major shift in the official ideology of the GDR by focusing on the way in which Marxist scholarship altered in accord with a changing Cold War climate with regard to two significant historico-religious figures, Thomas Müntzer and Martin Luther. Müntzer was a hero in the early years of the German Democratic Republic. A leading figure of the left, or radical, wing of the Protestant Reformation, a gifted preacher with strong apocalyptic views, he became involved in the 1524 Peasants’ uprising. After the defeat of the peasants of Frankenhausen in 1525, Müntzer was captured, tortured and executed. Friedrich Engels subsequently portrayed him as the leader of the common people in their struggle for social justice, and as a martyr of their cause. Müntzer came to represent the true soul of all German peasants and workers in their struggle against feudalism. In contrast, Engels presented Luther as a servile instrument of feudal lords, and a butcher, or slaughterer, of the peasants. In socialist circles these labels stuck. The martyr Müntzer and the traitor Luther became part of the official ‘German History’ (‘Deutsche Geschichte’), which was being produced by the leading Marxist historians of the GDR. These ideas were reinforced between the mid-1950s and 1967 when a new generation of Marxist historians developed the concept of the Early Bourgeois Revolution (‘Frühbürgerliche Revolution’). With the help of this concept the German communists of the GDR could claim that their forerunners had led the progressive forces of the world in their struggle against feudalism. Lehmann examines the influence of Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik on Marxist scholarship and how between 1975 and 1983 Marxist historians developed a completely new view of the history of the early sixteenth century and especially of the roles played by Luther and Müntzer. Using the records of the committee of the Academy of Sciences in the GDR in charge of preparing a series of theses on Martin Luther in which the German reformer was supposed to appear in a new light, Lehmann explores the major reformulation of one of the most import-

An Introduction 19

ant chapters in the catechism of Historical Materialism. He suggests the most startling change made was in regard to the role of religion. The final chapter is from Tony Shaw and it raises the question of what we find when we shift our gaze from the faithful in the pew, as addressed by Jones and Lehmann, to cinema-goers who may or may not be in any institutional sense religious. Shaw explores how filmmakers on both sides of the Iron Curtain linked religion to domestic and international politics in the 1950s. Trotsky had incorporated film within Marx’s notion of religion as the people’s opiate. According to an article written by Trotsky in 1923, having oppressed the masses for centuries through its theatrical rituals, the church was now to be supplanted by the cinema, a more powerful theatrical medium.30 In the 1950s, when the East–West conflict was at its height, in most countries cinema was enjoying its last period as the dominant mass entertainment form. Shaw’s focus is on how religion (understood as mainly Christianity) was portrayed in British, American and Soviet Cold War films. He looks at filmmakers’ motives, and the images they produced within the context of official Cold War propaganda strategies. His analysis encompasses a wide range of film styles and genres. Particular attention is paid to a small subgenre that fused Western depictions of life behind the Iron Curtain with the contemporary ‘brainwashing’ scare and which focused on the controversial role of the so-called ‘Captive Cardinals’ in eastern Europe. The Bolsheviks’ subordination of the cinema to state needs in Russia after 1917 is well documented. Shaw shows how in the 1920s and 1930s Soviet cinema both indicted religion in some films, while in others suggested that religion could still be used for nationalistic appeals when necessary. The 1950s and early 1960s witnessed a subtle shift in the cinematic treatment of religion. In line with the cultural ‘thaw’ that the Soviet Union experienced after the death of Stalin, films were significantly more ambiguous in terms of their representation of Church malevolence and the threat posed to the state by worship. As Soviet cinema displayed a less dogmatic approach towards religion in the 1950s, one that began to suggest that there was room for competing belief systems in the USSR, British and American films moved in the opposite direction. Shaw notes that without becoming Soviet-style instruments of the state, the film industries of both countries were open to considerable political influence and produced scores of features and documentaries that reflected and projected obsessive fears about the conflict. Religious themes figured prominently in many such films, encouraging audiences to view the Cold War as a conflict in which capitalism, anti-communism and Christianity were synonymous.

20 Religion and the Cold War

Shaw suggests that, despite their often crude nature, these filmic images of religion helped cinemagoers in the East and West to forge important mental and conceptual Cold War linkages: between politics and morality, and economics and spirituality. They help explain why religion was one of the most emotive themes of Cold War popular discourse during this period (particularly in the West), and why the cinema played a significant role in the process whereby the public in both camps came to internalize the Cold War.

Conclusion Mindful of Eric Hobsbawm’s dictum referring to the ‘supremacy of evidence’, perhaps the most important contribution to the Cold War debate provided by this collected scholarship is the evidence that religion mattered, and that it mattered a great deal in a great many different ways. The authors provide critical examples of the variety of ways in which religion came to be a key factor. The accumulation of scholarship and wisdom gathered here reveals the multi-layered and profound Cold War role accorded to religion. It provides answers to the questions raised by Buzzanco, particularly in relation to the nature of the larger context in which religious symbols and beliefs assume more substantial meaning. Buzzanco also queries whether religious ideas were independent factors shaping the attitudes of Cold War policy-makers or rather simply another weapon brought into play to facilitate policy shaped by strictly secular considerations. There is no simple answer to Buzzanco’s suggestion that religion should be assessed as ‘an instrument of foreign policy’.31 These essays, however, provide effective measures from which an answer can be constructed. Of equal importance, they constitute the first major step towards establishing if religion warrants the same sort of consideration given to trade, military aid, intervention, political alliances, cultural relations, the ‘stuff’ of international politics, in a world in which power remains the currency that states use in international affairs. In addition to their contribution to Cold War scholarship, these articles can be seen as a contribution to the cultural internationalism valued by Akira Iriye. Iriye has urged scholars to broaden the study of international relations, devoting to the non-governmental interactions of individuals and private groups as much attention as scholars give to traditional diplomacy. He argues that this widened conceptualisation of the field is important to bring attention to ‘a possible solution to the chaos of the world’. Iriye believes cultural internationalism can link

An Introduction 21

peoples across diverse backgrounds as governments have so singularly failed to do. Iriye calls upon scholars to juxtapose cultural internationalism with a tendency singularly illustrated by theses articles: the tendency of groups of people and of nations to create an ‘other’, that is to construct from fear, resentment, and perceived difference a serviceable enemy or threat.32 The scholarship collected here provides an overlooked access into our Cold War past that can conceivably allow us to make better-informed speculations about our post-Cold War future. Today as perhaps never before, it is of increasing importance that scholars and statesmen turn their attention to understanding the political influence of religion, its role in the international arena and in the hearts and minds of men.

Notes 1 For example, M. Leffler’s Preponderance of Power (Stanford, 1992), a critically acclaimed study of the Cold War, does not address religion, and nor do V. Zubok and C. Pleshakov, whose book, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War (Cambridge, MA, 1996), uses recently released archival material in the Soviet Union. Even the much praised cultural study by W. L. Hixson, Parting the Curtain: Propaganda, Culture and the Cold War (New York, 1997) does not attribute any particular significance to religion. 2 David S. Foglesong, ‘Roots of “Liberation”: American Images of the Future of Russia in the Early Cold War, 1948–1953’, The International History Review, 21(1) (March 1999), pp. 57–79. 3 See e.g. the work of James Burnham, philosophy professor and CIA consultant, The Struggle for the World (New York, 1947), The Coming Defeat of Communism (New York 1950), and Containment or Liberation? (New York, 1953). 4 E. R. May, ed., American Cold War Strategy: Interpreting NSC 68 (Boston, 1993), pp. 25, 36, 75. 5 Michael Ignatieff, Isaiah Berlin: A Life (London, 1998), p. 200. 6 D. Kirby, ‘Divinely Sanctioned: The Anglo-American Cold War Alliance and the Defence of Western Civilisation and Christianity, 1945–48’, Journal of Contemporary History, 35 (July 2000). 7 Leffler, ‘The Cold War: What Do “We Now Know”?’, American Historical Review, 104 (1999), pp. 501–24. 8 J. L. Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (Oxford, 1997). 9 Leffler, ‘The Cold War: What Do “We Now Know”?’, American Historical Review, vol. 104 (1999), pp. 501–24. 10 Ibid. 11 J. L. Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (Oxford, 1997). 12 L. A. Erenberg and S. E. Hirsch, eds., The War in American Culture: Society and Consciousness During World War II (Chicago, 1996), p. 323. 13 See e.g. the work of James Burnham, philosophy professor and CIA consultant, The Struggle for the World (New York, 1947), The Coming Defeat of Communism (New York 1950), and Containment or Liberation? (New York, 1953).

22 Religion and the Cold War 14 Robert S. Ellwood, The Fifties Spiritual Marketplace: American Religion in a Decade of Conflict (Rutgers University Press, NJ, 1997), p. 39. 15 Ibid., p. 117. 16 Andrew J. Rotter, ‘Christians, Muslims, and Hindus: Religion and US–South Asian Relations, 1947–1954; Diplomatic History, 24(4) (Fall, 2000), pp. 593–613. 17 Ibid., p. 606. 18 In a still more recent issue, Diplomatic History published an article examining the way in which religion contributed to the Eisenhower administration’s tragic Vietnam policy. Seth Jacobs, ‘“Our System Demands the Supreme Being”: The US Religious Revival and the “Diem Experiment,” 1954–55’, Diplomatic History, 25(4) (Fall, 2001). 19 Patricia R. Hill, Commentary, ‘Religion as a Category of Diplomatic Analysis’, Diplomatic History, 24(4) (Fall, 2000), pp. 633–40. 20 Commentary, ‘Where’s the Beef? Culture without Power in the Study of US Foreign Relations’, Diplomatic History, 24(4) (Fall, 2000), pp. 623–32. 21 David S. Foglesong, ‘Roots of “Liberation”: American Images of the Future of Russia in the Early Cold War, 1948–1953’, The International History Review, 21(1) (March, 1999), pp. 57–79. 22 Ibid. 23 W. L. Hixson, Parting the Curtain: Propaganda, Culture and the Cold War (New York, 1997), p. 42. 24 John Conway, ‘Editorial’, Association of Contemporary Church Historians’ Newsletter, Sept. 2000, p. 2. 25 Scott Lucas, ‘Campaigns of Truth: The Psychological Strategy Board and American Ideology, 1951–1953’, The International History Review, 18(2) (May 1996), p. 289. 26 D. Kirby, ‘Truman’s Holy Alliance: The President, the Pope and the Origins of the Cold War’, Borderlines: Studies in American Culture, 4(1) (1997). 27 Merlin Gustafson, an expert on the religious policy of the Truman administration, has commented: ‘it should not be surprising to suggest that a popularly elected President in a pluralistic society would instinctively recognise the influential position of the pulpit, and that church and state were not completely separated or working independently of one another.’ ‘Church, State, and the Cold War, 1945–1952’, The Journal of Church and State, p. 51, copy in the Harry Truman Library. 28 Lucas, ‘Campaigns of Truth’, The International History Review, 18(2) (May 1996). 29 Allan A. Needell, ‘“Truth is Our Weapon”: Project TROY, Political Warfare, and Government–Academic Relations in the National Security State, Diplomatic History, 17 (1993), p. 404. 30 Leon Trotsky, ‘Vodka, the Church and the cinema’ (1923), cited in Richard Taylor, ‘Ideology and Popular Culture in Soviet Cinema: The Kiss of Mary Pickford’, in Lawton (ed.), The Red Screen, pp. 54–5. 31 Robert Buzzanco, Commentary, ‘Where’s the Beef? Culture without Power in the Study of US Foreign Relations’, Diplomatic History, 24(4), pp. 623–32. 32 Frank Costigliola Feature Review, ‘A Cultural World Order’, Diplomatic History, 24(2) (Spring, 2000). Akira Iriye’s Cultural Internationalism and World order (Baltimore, 1997), p. 377.

2 Domestic and Foreign Policy Considerations and the Origins of Post-war Soviet Church–State Relations, 1941–6 Anna Dickinson

The foreign policy role that the Russian Orthodox Church played during the Cold War, as an actor in the Soviet Peace Movement and as a member of the World Council of Churches, was made possible by dramatic changes in the Church–state relationship during the Great Patriotic War (1941–5). During the war the antireligious state made important concessions which enabled the Church to preserve itself as an institution, an event that had seemed unlikely before the war. Although the freedoms granted to the Church were very limited, and it remained persecuted and disadvantaged, its position in 1946 was very different from its position in 1940. By 1946 the Russian Orthodox Church had the power to become involved in Soviet foreign policy objectives, whereas in 1940 the most leaders of the Church could have hoped for was survival. In 1940 the Russian Orthodox Church was on the verge of institutional elimination in Russia. Within the 1936 boundaries of Russia there were only 950 churches, from a pre-revolutionary total of 39,530,1 and only 4 hierarchs remained alive and free of the Gulag. There were no educational institutions, so the Church was slowly degenerating, unable to replace the clergy who had left, or had been removed from, their positions. Additionally, the small number of hierarchs made communication with the localities extremely difficult and the Church in Moscow was isolated and powerless; a head out of touch with its own body. After the Patriarch’s death in 1925 the Soviet state had not permitted the election of a new patriarch; although Sergei Stragorodsky eventually emerged as the patriarchal locum tenens the refusal of the Soviet state to permit a sobor to meet robbed him of essential canonical legitimacy. 23

24 Religion and the Cold War

The Russian Orthodox Church had also lost power to rival churches; the schismatic Renovationist Church of the 1920s still existed in the pre-war period and controlled a disproportionately large number of churches. More significantly, the various underground churches, often directly opposed to the conciliatory pro-Soviet policies of the Patriarchal Church, had attracted a significant proportion of orthodox believers;2 and in other areas, where there was no structured underground church or local priest, believers were returning to pre-revolutionary peasant religion, involving practices seen by the central Church as little better than pagan superstitions. Thus, although the 1937 census pointed up the large residual religious belief in Russia,3 the Church was unquestionably in crisis by 1940 and antireligious campaigners could at least claim that official, organised religion was almost entirely eliminated.4 In addition to the increasingly precarious position of the Russian Orthodox Church within Russia and the USSR, the Church had lost any influence it had once had in the rest of Europe and the world. After the 1927 declaration of loyalty the Moscow Patriarchate recognised its dependence on the goodwill of the Soviet leadership and had disassociated itself not only from the anti-Soviet émigré churches, like the Karlovichi synod, but also from those church members who refused to swear loyalty to the Soviet regime, in practice all Russian Orthodox churches outside the boundaries of the Soviet state. Many of these churches were subsequently granted jurisdiction over their own affairs by the ecumenical patriarch, and thus the sphere of influence of the Russian Orthodox Church was considerably narrowed by its obedience to Soviet foreign policy demands.5 By 1940 the Russian Orthodox Church lacked both the resources and the freedom to maintain contact with foreign churches. The Russian Orthodox Church in 1940 could in no way have sustained the foreign policy role that it was to play in the late and post-war period. A reversal of the Soviet state’s strongly antireligious policy was visible from the very beginning of the war; long before Stalin had spoken on Soviet radio, the patriarchal locum tenens, Sergei Stragorodsky, had summoned all faithful believers to the defence of the Motherland.6 Soon afterwards, church collections for the war effort began, clergymen began to reclaim a role in local society7 and, in some areas local authorities permitted the re-opening of churches.8 In the period between 1941 and mid-1943, when no official agreement on the new role of the Russian Orthodox Church had been reached, the NKGB, with overall responsibility for religious affairs, had to react to apparent infringements of the law without a new policy framework to guide them. In September 1943,

Domestic and Foreign Policy Considerations 25

however, this framework was apparently provided when Stalin met the hierarchs of the Church and concessions were agreed. Most significantly, after this meeting responsibility for church affairs passed from the NKGB to the newly established Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church (CAROC),9 the first government body with specific responsibility for religion since the dissolution of the Central Standing Commission on Religious Questions in 1938.10 By 1946 the Church was apparently securely established with a definite role in both foreign and domestic policy. There were 53 hierarchs,11 2,866 churches in Russia (13,215 in the USSR);12 the Church had a healthy intellectual community that had grown up around the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, educational institutions, candle factories, a number of clergymen had publicly been given medals for their contribution to the war effort, and two sobors had been called, the first in October 1943 to elect Sergei Stragorodsky to the patriarchal throne, the second in 1945 to elect Aleksii Simansky patriarch after Sergei’s death. In addition the Church was re-establishing its influence outside Russia; it was in regular contact with the Patriarchs of other Orthodox churches, had developed friendly relations with the Anglican Church, had aided the annulment of the Treaty of Brest and as a result had absorbed a large number of parishes in Ukraine. There had been delegations not only to London, but also to the Middle East; the delegation to the Middle East was flown by a Hero of the Soviet Union, clearly indicating the approval and support of the Soviet state. The increased strength and influence of the Church came with important limitations; there was no fundamental change to the 1929 laws on religion. It remained illegal to involve children in religious activities, the number of churches opened was very small, particularly in some of the Eastern oblasts,13 the Church communicated with foreign churches through the Soviet government, and delegations wrote long reports on meeting foreign clergymen for CAROC’s files.14 In addition, the church hierarchy was obliged to lie to foreign journalists and clergy about the extent of the religious revival in the USSR, and to deny that antireligious persecution had taken place.15 However, more significantly, the concessions granted to the Church had necessitated the absorption of the Church into the apparatus of the Soviet state; this process was not total, but nonetheless the dependence of the Church on government aid obviated any opportunity or possibility for independent action on the part of the Moscow Patriarchate. All translation work, transport arrangements, even the provision of food for the leadership of the Church was carried out by CAROC; the relationship

26 Religion and the Cold War

between the chairman of CAROC, Georgii Karpov, and the Patriarch Aleksii, became amicable, even friendly.16 The curriculum of the new religious institutions was decided with Karpov, as were numerous other details such as the number of students to attend and their living accommodation.17 Religious policy, ostensibly decided at the meeting between the hierarchs and Stalin in September 1943, was, in fact, decided in meetings between Molotov and Karpov, with occasional input from Stalin.18 It would be inaccurate at the very least to argue that before the war the Church had had any great freedom to decide its own policy, but nonetheless it had less freedom by the end of the war: as the role of the Church expanded it was increasingly dependent on the Soviet state. It has never been questioned that Church–state relations were dramatically altered by the war; with access to archival material we can now simply add detail to a picture very accurately described by other historians.19 However, access to archival material also provides detail on the possible motives for religious policy change. The availability of material about propaganda and the foreign policy role of the Russian Orthodox Church has tended to cause undue emphasis to be given to foreign policy considerations in motivating religious policy changes. Archival evidence suggests that the first alteration in religious policy, that of June 1941, took place because of fears about domestic stability in the face of the Nazi invasion, and was not primarily an attempt to appeal to foreign powers. The cessation of anti-religious persecution was intended to aid the cohesion of the Russian people and reduce the danger of believers being seduced by Nazi pro-religious propaganda. The Russian Orthodox Church publications, The Truth about Religion in Russia and The Russian Orthodox Church and the Great Patriotic War, were clearly aimed at a foreign audience, but this does not detract from the domestic focus of the initial decision. On the other hand, the timing of the official agreement in September 1943 suggests that it was made with reference to events anticipated outside unoccupied Russia: the liberation of areas occupied by the Nazis, the westward movement of the Red Army and the continuing necessity for the opening of a second front in Europe. It is possible to argue that by September 1943 Stalin was making policy with an eye to the post-war settlement in Europe. The 1943 agreement explicitly strengthened the institution of the Church, his election as Patriarch returned some form of canonical legitimacy to Sergei as head of the Church, and the new structure of the Church created an effective policy instrument for the Soviet state.

Domestic and Foreign Policy Considerations 27

Historians normally focus narrowly on the foreign policy role of the Russian Orthodox Church after 1943. For example, Shkarovskii writes, ‘The Moscow Patriarchate was regarded by the leadership of the USSR primarily as an instrument of state foreign policy,’20 and Vasil’eva argues that the post-1943 role of the Russian Orthodox Church was designed to fulfil Stalin’s ‘imperialist ambitions’.21 There is considerable evidence to support this analysis, after the meeting with Stalin in 1943, the Russian Orthodox Church was not only permitted, but encouraged, to improve its relations with other churches. In reports addressed to Stalin, Karpov argued for the strengthening of the Russian Orthodox Church abroad to aid not only the diplomatic effort to persuade foreign Orthodox churches to return to the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate, but also the destruction of the Uniate Church. The Russian Orthodox Church particularly targeted the elderly metropolitan Evlogii in France, Exarkh of the ecumenical patriarch for Western Europe. It also aimed to reassert control over (or at least re-establish friendly relations with) the representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church abroad, for example in Italy, Hungary, Greece and Bulgaria. Stalin’s exhortation to the Russian Orthodox Church, that the Moscow Patriarchate should strengthen itself organisationally was responded to with enthusiasm by Church hierarchs. Fletcher dates the beginning of the Church’s ‘diplomatic offensive’ from April 1945 when Stalin received the new patriarch Aleksii in the Kremlin, Fletcher writes, ‘From this time forward the Russian Orthodox Church … would initiate a vastly expanded programme of international activities, conducted in the closest harmony with the foreign policy goals of the Soviet Union.’22 Using archival documents, Shkarovskii has placed the beginning of the Russian Orthodox Church’s involvement as a foreign policy representative much earlier,23 for example, the visit of the Anglican delegation took place in September 1943. Indubitably, however, the spring of 1945 saw an increase in the efforts of the Russian Orthodox hierarchy to influence the rest of the Orthodox world. An archival report written by the chairman of CAROC, Karpov, indicates the state’s underlying motivations. Where churches returned to the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate, Karpov wrote, the parishes should be immediately organised and clergy should be rapidly appointed, ‘The aim of these parishes is to serve Orthodox believers, that is to strengthen Orthodoxy in these countries and gain prestige for the Moscow Patriarchate.’24

28 Religion and the Cold War

The visit of the Orthodox delegation to England was also part of Karpov’s strategy for the strengthening of the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church, he wrote ‘The delegation will make soundings to establish a Russian Orthodox parish in London and to discuss with the archbishop of Canterbury the issue of the participation of the Church of England in the World Council of Christian Churches.’25 The trips to the Middle East were part of the strategy also, Karpov personally selected those who would lead delegations to the Middle Eastern churches and the Soviet state provided money to be offered to impoverished church leaders. The Russian Orthodox Church was used in these ways during and immediately after the Second World War to increase the influence of the Soviet state in ways more acceptable to the allies of the USSR. Additionally, those people influenced by the foreign policy role played by the Russian Orthodox Church were likely to have been hostile to the USSR in the pre-war period. However, although the strengthening of Orthodox influence did take place in order to facilitate foreign policy ends, further evidence suggests that these ends were ultimately focused on domestic issues. Karpov’s reports centred on the assertion of political control in the liberated areas of Western Russia/ Ukraine and the territories around which had come under Soviet influence with the retreat of the Wehrmacht. The strengthening of the Russian Orthodox church outside Russia, in these reports, is presented primarily as a means of strengthening the domestic church in order to facilitate its assertion of political control over these territories and the destruction of indigenous nationalist movements, and not primarily as a means of strengthening Soviet influence in the rest of the world. One of the most significant post-war roles of the Russian Orthodox Church, and one of the most difficult to justify, was the destruction of the Uniate Church in Western Ukraine. The underlying difficulty with the Uniate Church was its loyalty to the Vatican which was seen by the Soviet state as a political threat. Reports on the Vatican and the Uniate Church were sent directly to Stalin, underlining their importance. Karpov sent a report to Stalin on 15 March 1945 in which he wrote, ‘The Orthodox Church limits its activities to religious and moral issues, but the Roman Catholic Church has, throughout its history, struggled to seize both religious and temporal power.’26 The Soviet regime’s anxiety about Catholicism was a concern associated with the West of the USSR, primarily Ukraine and Belorussia. Within Russia the newly opened churches were overwhelmingly Russian Orthodox, but in Belorussia and Ukraine the revival of non-

Domestic and Foreign Policy Considerations 29

Orthodox religions caused concern to the Soviet government; in Belorussia there were 347 Roman Catholic churches,27 and there were 246 in Lvov in December 1945.28 However, the main difficulty in Ukraine was the large number of Greek-Catholic (Uniate) churches in the western oblasts; 529 in Tarnonol’, 567 in Stanislav and 658 in Drogobych.29 The perceived threat that these ‘anti-Soviet’ religions posed was addressed by Karpov who set out a strategy for weakening the control of the Catholic Church in the liberated areas and for weakening the international influence of the Pope; he argued that the Russian Orthodox Church should call a World Council of Christian churches ‘In order to withstand the claims of the Vatican for pre-eminence in the world’30 to which a carefully limited number of church leaders should be invited. The issues suggested for discussion included ‘the total groundlessness of the Catholic dogma that the Roman Pope is God’s representative on Earth’, ‘the Vatican as a patron of Hitler during the war’ and ‘the attempts of the Vatican to interfere with the post-war structure of the world’.31 Karpov wrote ‘The resolutions of the Conference shall be in the form of a grave protest of the whole Christian (non-Catholic) world against the activities and intentions of the Vatican, which would certainly play a positive role in isolating the Vatican and decreasing the prestige of the Pope.’32 An important part of the attack on the Vatican was the destruction of the Uniate Church. In March 1945 Karpov wrote his report ‘On the Question of the Relations between Catholicism and Russian Orthodoxy, the external affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church and its attitude to the Uniate Church.’33 With this report, Odintsov argues, the Uniate Church began to be considered an agent of the Vatican.34 The Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate reinforced the negative attitude in April 1945 with an article by Metropolitan Veniamin on the Roman Catholic Church,35 in which he accused the Roman Catholic Church of being engaged in a perpetual and ‘obstinate struggle against the Soviet Union, against Russia, of trying to undermine confidence in one of the strongest and self-sacrificing members of the union of nations in their struggle against the common enemy.’36 The characterisation of the Roman Catholic Church as a unified, elitist and imperialist power provided the background for an attack on the Uniate Church which the Roman Catholic Church considered, Karpov’s report explained, ‘to be an instrument for the total conversion of the population of West Ukraine to Catholicism and its separation from Russia.’37 The Uniate Church, along with the Roman Catholic Church, was characterised as a

30 Religion and the Cold War

defender of fascism trying to strengthen its influence in the post-war world. The Soviet government, therefore, constructed a plan to oppose the ‘hegemonic’ aspirations of the Uniate church and the eradication of its influence in the USSR which gave important new powers to the Russian Orthodox Church in the liberated territories. Karpov suggested that in order to eradicate the Uniate Church, the Russian Orthodox Church should be allowed to play a missionary role and should be given wide-ranging powers. He wrote that in order to ‘detach the Uniate parishes from the Holy See and to join them to the Russian Orthodox Church’ Russian Orthodox clergy should be allowed to play a missionary role, an Orthodox diocese should be established in Lvov, the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church should publish an address to Uniate clergy and believers and an initiative group should be established within the Uniate Church to call for unification with the Russian Orthodox Church.38 In August 1945 the chairman of CAROC responded to a question about the Uniate Church by saying, ‘the [Uniate] church and its leadership are enemies of Soviet power, they do not want to transfer to the Orthodox Church, they do not want to be re-educated, re-constructed in a political sense to recognise Soviet power, to a loyal attitude to Soviet power – this leadership can in no way be recognised by us.’39 CAROC, which was officially responsible for the Uniate Church instructed its representatives that priests (ksendz) were forbidden to serve Uniate communities, petitions from Orthodox groups asking for Uniate churches would be supported and Uniate priests would not be registered unless they were part of the group pushing for the unification of the Uniate Church with the Russian Orthodox Church.40 These methods were ultimately successful and in March 1946 in a poorly-attended sobor at Lvov, the Uniate Church asked for unification with the Russian Orthodox Church. The role of the Russian Orthodox Church in aiding the Soviet government’s destruction of the Uniate Church reflects two important facets of the post-1943 Church/state relationship; first, the Russian Orthodox hierarchs were doubtless acting in the interests of self-preservation, both personal and institutional, the Russian Orthodox Church only existed because it was useful to the Soviet government; second, the revocation of the Union of Brest of 1596 and the dissolution of the Uniate Church had long been a cherished aim of the Russian Orthodox Church. The Russian Orthodox Church was not only used for foreign policy and the elimination of the Uniate Church in Ukraine, it played an

Domestic and Foreign Policy Considerations 31

important role within Russia. The Soviet state had elected to use the Patriarchal Church and recognised its need to re-establish its power throughout Russia. In order to re-establish the dominance of the Russian Orthodox Church the influence of the Renovationist and underground churches had to be reduced, and, where possible, eliminated. Although the Soviet state had essentially lost its use for the Renovationist Church when the leaders of the Patriarchal Church had renounced their opposition to Soviet power, the Renovationist Church continued to exist throughout the USSR. As late as March 1944 there were 6 Renovationist dioceses.41 With the return to favour of the Patriarchal Church, the Soviet government explicitly withdrew its support from the Renovationist Church; a report submitted by Karpov in October 1943 directed that Renovationist clergy or parishes transferring back to the Patriarchal church should be freely allowed to do so.42 In addition, these clergy were encouraged to return to the Patriarchal Church by prejudicial behaviour towards Renovationists. Renovationist clergy were discharged from their positions or CAROC representatives refused to register them.43 Similarly, Moscow Patriarchate influence over believers had been weakened by the development of underground churches which had emerged either as a result of Metropolitan Sergei’s 1927 declaration of loyalty, which many members of the church refused to accept, or purely as a result of the persecution of priests and the closure of churches, leaving believers no legal means of practising their faith.44 Some members of the underground churches swore ‘to avoid participation in Soviet society and the patriarchal Orthodox Church’,45 and therefore both the Moscow Patriarchate and the Soviet state had an interest in eradicating them. However, the underground churches were not a single coherent group; there were also people who had no access to priests of any kind who carried out religious services for themselves in private homes without holding particular views about the regime or the Patriarchal Church.46 The underground Church and services by unregistered priests were a serious problem for the Soviet regime and the Moscow Patriarchate in the 1940s.47 Most of the local CAROC representatives reported that unregistered priests were carrying out services, and that believers were gathering to pray in private homes. Those who carried out illegal services were listed so that they could be punished.48 For example, in Ul’yanovsk the CAROC representative Kartashev told the inspector Mitin that there were about 50 unregistered priests in the oblast who were carrying out illegal services; he knew who the majority of them

32 Religion and the Cold War

were and he had ‘taken measures to halt these activities’.49 Appended to his report is a list of 41 of these unregistered priests, including their full names and their place of residence.50 In Ul’yanovsk there were only 19 active churches by January 1947; the number of unregistered priests indicates the strong underground church that functioned in parallel to the officially permitted church. The April 1944 report of the Tambov representative, Medvedev recorded a large amount of underground church activity, including services carried out in private houses, but also listing monastics who were clearly members of one of the organised, anti-Soviet churches.51 The Tambov representative cited a group of Josephites in the town of Michurinsk asking believers ‘Why are you going to the Church of the antichrist?’52 The underground church was not confined to the European areas of Russia; in Omsk, Tyumen and Novosibirsk representatives reported, there were organised groups of unregistered priests who gave illegal services to believers.53 The Soviet government was very nervous of groups of citizens meeting secretly to carry out religious rituals, and the Russian Orthodox Church was equally anxious to reassert control over the believers, both for its own institutional influence, and because of the long term implications for the souls of those involved. A letter which Beria sent to Stalin on 7 July 1944 makes it quite clear that the Soviet state would not tolerate the activity of these allegedly ‘anti-Soviet sectarian’ underground church organisations; Beria suggested ‘the resettlement of participants in this organisation, together with members of their families, to the Omsk and Novosibirsk regions and to the Altai and Krasnoyarsk territories under the supervision of the NKVD.’54 1,673 people were deported, 1,448 of whom arrived in Siberia in August 1944 and, since many of them refused to work, the NKVD report records ‘Measures were necessary to draw them into socially useful work, to withdraw the provision of supplies to all the special settlers capable of work who refuse work, to bring them to criminal responsibility for parasitism and to send old people and children to invalid homes.’55

The strengthening of the Russian Orthodox Church made possible the struggle against underground and Renovationist Churches in the dioceses. The Patriarchate used its representatives in the localities, the bishops, to reassert its control over Russian Orthodox believers. After 1943 bishops usually acted as the informants of CAROC representatives in the localities; their offices reported to the representative on what

Domestic and Foreign Policy Considerations 33

they knew of underground church or Renovationist activity, giving names and addresses of priests practising illegally. For example, the representative in Tula, Grishin, wrote in his report in October 1944 of his meeting with the archbishop Vitalii, who was clearly interested in the growth of the influence of the official Patriarchal Church, “at the meetings he was interested in the number of believers’ requests [for church openings] and how many of these had been granted. He personally gave the order to give the representative all the information they had about unregistered priests and confirmed his disapproval of the ‘carrying out of services by unregistered priests …’56 Similarly, in Ul’yanovsk, the representative’s report made it clear that the local bishop, Dimitry, was reporting to the representative on priests and believers giving illegal services, and particularly those dissuading people from attending the Patriarchal Churches. Cooperation between Russian Orthodox bishops and the Soviet organisation responsible for them was made official in the statute promulgated by the 1945 Sobor which stated that the diocesan bishop ‘must co-ordinate his actions with the … local representative of the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church.’57 The close relationship between the diocesan bishops and the representatives of CAROC does not necessarily suggest that the bishops were consciously working for the NKVD; the coincidence of interests between the Moscow Patriarchate and the Council made it likely. In conclusion, the role played by the Russian Orthodox Church that has traditionally received most attention, as a foreign policy instrument of an imperialistic Soviet state was not the only, or even the most important reason for the policy change that permitted the Church’s wartime revival. Although foreign policy was an important part of the revival, it was essentially secondary to the need for the reassertion of Moscow Patriarchate’s control over the liberated areas and the destruction of the Uniate Church. The religious revival was also a process in the longer term development of the Soviet state within Russia; the 1937 census had shown that the outright attack on religion of the 1920s and 30s was not succeeding. When church buildings were closed the believers simply went underground creating secret groups of citizens hostile to the regime, or at least to its religious policy. The response of the state from 1937 to 1940 was the savage persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church which brought it close to institutional extinction. But the anti-Soviet hostility these attacks provoked, especially among underground church members became far more significant in the conditions of war and could no longer be tolerated

34 Religion and the Cold War

by a state in fear for its basic survival; underground churches had to be reabsorbed or eliminated and a loyal Russian Orthodox Church appeared to be the best and least confrontational way to destroy religious opposition. Thus the origins of the Russian Orthodox Church’s involvement in the Cold War are less obvious than later developments might lead us to expect, more complex and more reciprocal; after all, the Patriarchal Church was able to establish itself once more as the most favoured of the religions in Russia, and enjoyed, while Stalin lived, benefits including church openings. It is arguable that as the domestic crises brought about by war and invasion subsided, the Church became more completely a tool for foreign policy influence in the eyes of the Soviet state. Until 1960 the gains made by the Church during the war years were not seriously affected. In essence, the state’s need to reduce anti-Soviet hostility both inside the borders of the USSR and in the wider world meant that war time concessions enabled the long-term survival of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Notes 1 M. I. Odinstov (ed.), Religiozne organizatsii v SSSR nakanune i v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny, 1941–45 (Moscow, 1995), pp. 44–5. 2 There is some controversy over whether most believers supported the Sergeiite Church or the underground churches. Shkarovskii argues that ‘the overwhelming majority of the Orthodox clergy and faithful remained true’ to Sergei (M. V. Shkarovskii, ‘The Russian Orthodox Church versus the State: The Josephite Movement, 1927–1940’, Slavic Review, 54(2) (Summer 1995), p. 374), but pre-archival commentators like Pospielovsky have claimed that the underground churches represented the majority of Orthodox believers. 3 Felix Corley ‘Believers’ Responses to the 1937 and 1939 Soviet Censuses’, Religion, State and Society, 22(4) (1994). 4 See Odintsov, Gosudarstvo i tserkov’ v Rossii v XX vek, (Moscow, 1994), p. 101. 5 W. C. Fletcher, Religion and Soviet Foreign Policy, 1945–1970 (Oxford, 1973). 6 Moscow Patriarchate, Pravda o religii v Rossii (Moscow, 1942), pp. 15–17. 7 See e.g. the NKVD report from Kaluga on hospital visits by local clergy, RTsKhIDNI f.17 op.125 d.188 l.13. 8 For example in 14 raions of Yaroslavl’ oblast’ 51 churches were opened between 1942 and 1943: M.V. Shkarovskii, ‘Russkaya pravoslavnaya tserkov’ v 1943–1957 godakh’, Voprosy istorii, 4/94, p. 36. 9 Although CAROC was headed by an NKVD man, Georgii Karpov, and many of its staff also had connections in the NKVD/NKGB, it was to act in a qualitatively different way: CAROC oversaw with apparent neutrality the revival of the Church and in many issues supported Church interests against those of other Soviet institutions. See e.g. GA RF f.6991 op.1 d.31 ll.23-24, GA RF f.6991 op.2 d.8 l.30.

Domestic and Foreign Policy Considerations 35 10 For a discussion of the Central Standing Commission on Religious Questions see Arto Luukkanen, The Religious Policy of the Stalinist State: A Case Study: The Central Standing Commission on Religious Questions, 1929–1938 (SHS, 1997). 11 GA RF f.6991 op.2 d.6 l.25. 12 Karpov’s report ‘On the Composition of the Russian Orthodox Church’ (Aug. 1946), reproduced in full in Istoricheskii Arkhiv, (1994) 4, p. 102. 13 See e.g. Novosibirsk, Omsk and Tomsk, GA RF f.6991 op.1 d.126, 127, 128. 14 For example, GA RF f.6991 op.1 d.3 ll.1–3. It is worth noting the, fairly obvious, point that the 1943 Anglican delegation were well aware that their conversations were being reported to the Soviet state; although they do not seem to have aware that it was often the clergymen themselves who reported it. This is clear in a report from Kerr, the ambassador in Moscow, to Foreign Secretary Eden, in which he writes ‘an official interpreter was invariably present at all interviews and functions and no doubt rendered a faithful report to the authorities of all that happened’; PRO FO 371 36963 p. 121. 15 PRO FO371 32950; see also GA RF f.6991 op.2 d.10 ll.11-11 ob. 16 See the letters sent to Karpov by Patriarch Aleksii, GA RF f.6991 op.2 d.34 ll.1–10. 17 GA RF f.6991 op.1 d.4 ll.1–3. 18 Istoricheskii arkhiv (1994), 3–4, have selected documents from these communications. Archive sources include: GARF f.6991 op.1 d.81, 29, 3. 19 For example many of the points made by Dimitry Pospielovsky, The Russian Church under the Soviet Regime, 1917–1982 (St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1984) are simply confirmed by archival sources. 20 M. V. Shkarovskii, Russkaya pravoslavnaya tserkov’ i Sovetskoe gosudarstvo v 1943–1964 godakh. Ot “peremira” k novoi voine (St Petersburg, 1995), p. 9; see also W. C. Fletcher, Religion and Soviet Foreign Policy, 1945–1970 (Oxford University Press, 1973). 21 Vasil’eva, ‘Kreml’ protiv Vatikan’ Novoe Vremya (30/7/93), p. 38. 22 W. C. Fletcher, Religion and Soviet Foreign Policy, p. 16. 23 Shkarovskii, “Russkaya Pravoslavnaya Tserkov’ v 1943–1957 godakh”, p. 40. 24 GA RF f.6991 op.1 d.29 l.105. 25 GA RF f.6991 op.1 d.29 l.106. 26 GA RF f.6991 op.1 d.29 ll.102. 27 GA RF f.6991 op.3 d.33 l.121. 28 GA RF f.6991 op.3 d.33 l.109. 29 GA RF f.6991 op.3 d.33 l.109–11. 30 GA RF f.6991 op.1 d.29 l.107. 31 GA RF f.6991 op.1 d.29 l.109. 32 GA RF f.6991 op.1 d.29 l.108. 33 GA RF f.6991 op.1 d.29 ll.101–9. 34 Odintsov, p. 111. 35 Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, 4 (April 1945), pp. 7–10. 36 Metropolitan Veniamin, Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, 4 (April 1945), p. 7. 37 GA RF f.6991 op.1 d.29 ll.102. 38 GA RF f.6991 op.1 d.29 ll.104–5. 39 Cited Odintsov, p. 113.

36 Religion and the Cold War 40 Cited Odintsov, p. 113. 41 Edward Roslof The Renovationist Movement in the Russian Orthodox Church, doctoral dissertation, University of North Carolina, 1994, p. 277. 42 GA RF f.6991 op.1 d.3 l.11. 43 GA RF f.6991 op.2 d.13 l.2. 44 See e.g. The Truth about Religion in Russia, pp. 6–8, which discusses various schismatics, and Johnston, God’s Secret Armies within the Soviet Union (Putnam, 1954), pp. 24–6. 45 W. C. Fletcher, The Russian Orthodox Church Underground 1917–1970 (Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 184. 46 It would appear that people did not always realise that organised worship in private homes was also discouraged by the regime. Certainly some were prepared to volunteer the information that they were involved in this sort of activity; for example in Kirov, according to the representative, Citizen Chikova from Bel’skii raion asked permission to build a prayer house for believers in the cemetery since the church building had an MTS in it and private houses were ‘too small’. (GA RF f.6991 op.2 d.12 l.89.) 47 W. C. Fletcher, A Study in Survival: The Church in Russia 1927–1943 (SPCK, 1965), pp. 93–6. 48 GA RF f.6991 op.2 d.14 l.25, GA RF f.6991 op.2 d.14 l.14. 49 GA RF f.6991 op.2 d.35 l.45. 50 GA RF f.6991 op.2 d.35 ll.56–9. 51 GA RF f.6991 op.2 d.12 l.12ob. 52 GA RF f.6991 op.2 d.12 l.12ob. 53 GA RF f.6991 op.2 d.15 l.13, 18 and 40. 54 Letter from Beria to Stalin 7 July 1944, from Felix Corley, Religion in the Soviet Union, doc. 94, pp. 152–3. 55 Report from Kuznetsov and Chernyshev to Beria, 15 Jan. 1945, Felix Corley, Religion in the Soviet Union, p. 153. 56 GA RF f.6991 op.2 d.14 l.6. 57 Dimitry Pospielovsky, The Russian Church under the Soviet Regime 1917–1982 (St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1984), p. 214.

3 The German Protestant Debate on Politics and Theology after the Second World War Matthew D. Hockenos

’The Confessing Church must have a political policy, we must have a political position as Christians, we need to say today that we are taking a new path.’1 The German Lutheran churchman who made this clarion call in the summer of 1947 was Hans Iwand, a member of the Confessing Church’s Council of Brethren. With the encouragement of Karl Barth, Joachim Beckmann, Hermann Diem, Martin Niemöller and other colleagues at the Council of Brethren’s July 1947 meeting, Iwand wrote the first draft of the Darmstadt statement – officially entitled ‘Statement by the Council of Brethren of the Evangelical Church of Germany on the Political Course of Our People.’2 The final draft, a product of much discussion and debate within the Council of Brethren, was both a confession of guilt for what they saw as the church’s politically conservative past and a redefinition of the church’s social and political mission in light of the church’s accommodation with the Nazi regime. In the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt issued in October 1945 the German Evangelical Church confessed, albeit vaguely and weakly, that it was guilty of complacency during the Third Reich.3 At Darmstadt the Council of Brethren delineated where the church actually went wrong politically and resolved how to make certain that the wrong path would not be followed again. Thus, the long-simmering debate among German Protestants over the relationship between the Protestant church and politics reached a feverish pitch in August 1947 with the issuing of the highly controversial Darmstadt statement. The politically leftist nature of this statement as well as its theological challenge to traditional Lutheranism incurred the wrath of influential conservative churchmen and theologians, such as Hans Asmussen and Walter Künneth. The polar responses within the church to the Darmstadt statement are highly significant because they 37

38 Religion and the Cold War

provided the political and theological arguments that churchmen would use in staking out their positions in response to the Cold War. Authored by the Council of Brethren, the leadership of the reformist wing of the church, the Darmstadt statement brought to a head a tangle of irreconcilable political and theological differences that illuminated two different visions of the church in the post-war era. An early manifestation of Cold War polemics within the church, it set the stage for future showdowns between conservatives and reform-minded churchmen over German unification, East–West relations, and re-armament. The authors of the Darmstadt statement, all influenced by Swiss Reformed theologian Karl Barth, made a complete break with the traditional Lutheran practice of passive obedience to conservative civil authority. They asserted that the 400-year-old Lutheran tendency to back conservative and authoritarian political regimes contributed to the church’s wholly inadequate response to Nazism. The Council of Brethren declared, ‘The alliance of the Church with the old and conventional conservative powers has taken heavy revenge upon us… . We rejected the right of revolution and tolerated and justified the evolution toward absolute dictatorship.’4 Ostensibly, the Darmstadt statement was a political tract. Its official title suggests as much: ‘Statement by the Council of Brethren of the Evangelical Church of Germany on the Political Course of Our People.’5 Although much of its subject matter and rhetoric were political – and intentionally so – conservatives bitterly criticized its underlying Reformed (Calvinist) theology as much as its leftist politics. The roots of this theological discord within the Protestant church can be traced to the centuries-old debates between Lutherans and Calvinists on the nature of salvation and the church’s relation to the public sphere. Recognizing the mutually supportive nature of the theological and political issues raised by the Darmstadt statement is critical to an examination of the competing interpretations within the Protestant church of the political and theological consequences of the Nazi era as well as the conflicting visions of the church in the early stages of the Cold War. The central message of the seven theses of the Darmstadt statement was the need to foster reconciliation between God and man and between men of different nations, classes, and religions. Thesis I acknowledged that in the recent past the German Evangelical Church in its political aims and actions had sinned and thereby separated itself from God. In order to become reconciled with God, the church had to seek absolution in the loving grace of God by confessing concretely its sins. Only after receiving absolution could the church properly hear, receive, preach, and fulfill God’s central message of reconciliation.

The German Protestant Debate 39

Theses II–VI explained how the German people and the church had become separated from God by substituting conservative nationalist ideals for God’s message of forgiveness and reconciliation. Moreover, reconciliation between God and man involved a practical commitment to the reconciliation between men of antagonistic nations and classes. The authors of the Darmstadt statement interpreted God’s message as a call to more activist economic, political, and social programmes, for the benefit of the poor and the needy. In fact, thesis V offered the radical suggestion that if the church had considered rather than spurned Marx’s economic theory its obligations to the social and communal needs of society would have been clear. Moreover, thesis V strongly suggested that the Marxist ideal was very much in accord with the gospel of God’s coming kingdom. The new mission, according to the sixth thesis, was to promote measures that would ease the tension in domestic and international relations brought about by Nazi rule, the Second World War, and the allied occupation and to make whole a new community of Christians with its socio-economic and political needs taken fully into account. Thesis VII, the final thesis, addressed the cynicism and despair prevalent in the post-war period, which might revive a yearning for the authoritarian political schemes of the past. The Council of Brethren urged a sober, responsible reconstruction of state institutions ‘that shall work for justice and for the welfare, peace and reconciliation of the nations.’ The forthright criticisms and choice of wording suggests that the Council of Brethren had no intention of building bridges to the conservative majority in the church. By using the pronoun ‘we’ and the phrase ‘we went astray’ throughout the statement, the Council of Brethren did not shy away from directing their critique squarely at church leaders, including themselves. The implication that dogmatic anti-communism, economic and social elitism, and conservative Lutheranism had restricted the moral leadership of the church before and during the Nazi era and was jeopardizing the process of repentance, reconciliation, and reformation after 1945 incensed the conservative majority. The minutes of the meetings in which Barth, Beckmann, Diem, Iwand and Niemöller drafted and redrafted the Darmstadt statement, along with the dozens of critical responses by conservatives, attest to the highly polarized atmosphere within the Protestant church in 1947.6 Although the reform-minded Protestants who issued the Darmstadt statement represented a minority in the church, they forced the conservative majority to publicly respond to their critique of the

40 Religion and the Cold War

Lutheran doctrine of two kingdoms and their call for a socially conscious and politically engaged church. And by declaring that a truly rejuvenated and revitalized church must start with a forthright admission of the church’s ‘false and evil ways,’ including the church’s traditional prejudice against eastern (Slavic) Europe, the Darmstadt statement re-fuelled the debate begun at the war’s end between conservatives and reformers about the nature of the church’s guilt and how it should be confessed. In the years immediately following the Second World War, Protestant church leaders strove in vain to reunite their politically and theologically divided church. Unity, or at least the perception of it, was essential for the Protestant church to emerge from the twelve years of Nazi rule as a vital spiritual and political force in Germany’s immediate and longterm future. Although churchmen from the former Confessing Church composed the overwhelming majority of the post-war church leadership, they were divided along political as well as confessional lines. As a result, church leaders from Germany’s 28 Lutheran, Reformed, and united (Protestant) regional churches did not agree on the theological and political principles on which the church should be unified in the aftermath of the church struggle.7 To be sure, the vast majority of the post-war church leaders had joined together in 1934 to issue the famous Barmen Theological Declaration of Faith, which provided a theological foundation for the Confessing Church’s opposition to the German Christians and Hitler’s encroachments on the church. Nevertheless, widely divergent interpretations of the Barmen declaration existed and these theological and political differences within the Confessing Church continued to plague the post-war church. The Darmstadt statement staked out one end in the spectrum of church politics and theology by declaring the need for fundamental changes in the church’s theological and political convictions – changes resolutely opposed by the conservative majority. Particularly contentious was the reformers’ intention to redefine the church’s mission by calling for the church to engage actively in Germany’s public sphere as advocates of political and social change. In the context of the Cold War in the late 1940s and early 1950s this would mean taking an emphatically public stance against Chancellor Konrad Adenauer’s plan to re-arm West Germany. The authors of the Darmstadt statement contended that the political agenda they championed was the logical outcome of the theology of the 1934 Barmen theological declaration. They rejected the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Lutheran interpretation of the doctrine of two kingdoms, which maintained that

The German Protestant Debate 41

the Holy Spirit ruled the spiritual kingdom (the church) through the preaching of the Gospel, while the state ruled the earthly kingdom (civil society) through coercion and force.8 According to this understanding, the task of the church was to administer to the spiritual needs of the people. Although politics was not the domain of the church, pastors, theologians and church officials considered it their duty to support the state in its task to maintain law and order.9 For many reformers, this interpretation of the doctrine of two kingdoms was to blame, in part, for the church’s failure to condemn the Third Reich in toto. Building on Barth’s Reformed theology, the Council of Brethren resolved that the church must play an active, independent, and critical role in civil society in the future. Thus, despite the appearance of unity created by the unanimous acceptance of the Barmen declaration in 1934, the establishment of a unified leadership council at the church’s Treysa conference in August 1945, the issuing of the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt in October 1945, and the official post-war founding of the Evangelical Church of Germany in July 1948, divisions wracked the Confessing Church from 1933 to 1945 and intensified during the Cold War. After 1945 reformist and conservative church leaders disagreed in their interpretations of the church’s reaction to the Nazi seizure of power, the persecution of the churches by the state, and the systematic murdering of millions of innocent Jews and other racial and political groups. The tension between the two wings over how to interpret the Nazi era and the church’s post-war mission reached a boiling point with the Darmstadt statement just as the iron curtain was descending on Germany. Conservative Lutherans considered the Darmstadt statement a call by church ‘radicals’ to support left-wing political causes. For the Council of Brethren, political engagement and social activism were a necessary element of the church’s response to its earlier compromises with Nazism. Conservatives, on the other hand, believed that the church had erred during the Hitler era and needed to confess, but they opposed fundamental changes in their political or theological commitments in light of those errors. Immediately after the war, with the issuing of the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt in October 1945, this conservative interpretation of the immediate past acquired official status. In fact, it was the inadequacy of the Stuttgart declaration that prompted the reformers to draft the Darmstadt statement.10 In October 1945, the newly elected Protestant leadership council met in Stuttgart with the leaders of an ecumenical delegation from countries that had suffered as a result of Nazi territorial aggression. At this meeting,

42 Religion and the Cold War

German church leaders issued a statement identifying the Protestant church with the guilt of the German people. From the perspective of many in the Council of Brethren, including Martin Niemöller, Hermann Diem and Hans Iwand, the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt failed to name clearly and concretely exactly what the church was confessing itself guilty of. The Stuttgart declaration stated: ‘we charge ourselves for not having confessed more courageously, prayed more conscientiously, believed more joyously, and loved more ardently.’ In light of these vague admissions, the Stuttgart declaration stated that the mission of the church was to continue proclaiming God’s Word and fostering obedience to God’s Will. For several of the more conservative signatories of the Stuttgart declaration, such as the Lutheran Bishops of Bavaria, Berlin, and Württemberg, Otto Dibelius, Hans Meiser and Theophil Wurm respectively, the purpose of the declaration was to confess a degree of guilt in order to hasten the renewal of ecumenical ties and to avoid a drawnout and debilitating imbroglio over the guilt question. Conservatives worded the confession as vaguely as possible so as to entail few, if any, substantive changes in church doctrine, organization, and policy. It was only after Niemöller insisted that the authors added the highly controversial sentence: ‘With great pain we say: through us untold suffering was inflicted on many peoples and countries.’ Despite its shortcomings, the foreign churches, for the most part, graciously accepted the Stuttgart declaration. In Germany, however, the reaction was very different. Overwhelmingly, ordinary church members and local pastors vehemently repudiated the statement, arguing that the declaration was unduly critical of the church and German people.11 Infuriated by this evasion of responsibility for the church’s role in contributing to an atmosphere in which Nazism flourished, Niemöller took it upon himself to crisscross Germany over the next two years to advocate the need for a far more concrete and forthright confession of guilt. After many months of preaching this message, Niemöller concluded that most Germans did not accept the message of repentance and reconciliation as it was formulated at Stuttgart much less his more accusatory version. By the spring of 1947 it had become increasingly clear to Niemöller and his colleagues that many Protestants preferred the jargon and slogans of Cold War politics to the reformers’ message of repentance, reconciliation, and reformation. By shifting the debate away from guilt and responsibility for Nazi rule to the containment of Soviet communism, conservative Protestant leaders hoped to restore the church to its

The German Protestant Debate 43

old role as the bulwark against communism. Intentionally or not, the increased attention to the brutality of Soviet communism had the effect of obfuscating the severity of Germany’s wartime atrocities in Eastern Europe. Niemöller and Barth warned that Germany under Western occupation powers should not, by choosing the West, become a barrier instead of a bridge between East and West. The Council of Brethren feared that the church was not drawing the right lessons from the Nazi era. In fact, the Council of Brethren believed the church was making the same mistakes it made during the period leading to the Nazi seizure of power. In the context of increasing East–West tensions and the receding concern for the immediate past, Niemöller and his colleagues insisted on a clear statement repudiating the church’s traditional conservatism. Complementing a concrete confession of past errors, they demanded concrete reforms in the church’s mission in the world. The purpose of the Darmstadt statement was threefold: to make the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt more specific, to halt the restoration of a conservative and nationalist church, and, most importantly, to revise the church’s mission to include an active concern for the socio-economic and political needs of the lower classes and the easing of tensions between nations. The role of the church as social activist and reconciler of nations advocated by the Council of Brethren, however, found little favour in conservative Lutheran circles. Hans Asmussen and Walter Künneth, among others, took the reformers to task for both political and theological reasons. It was the reformers’ opposition to the continuation of the alliance of the church with conservative institutions such as the state in a ‘Christian Front’ that led Künneth and Asmussen to defend the traditional alliance of throne and altar. Most significantly, the conservative critique of revolutionary change and Marxist economic programmes had theological origins. Künneth warned his conservative colleagues that the Darmstadt statement represented a ‘theological derailment’ that carried the characteristics of a new German Christian theology but from the opposite political direction.12 For Künneth, the immediate post-war years presented a unique situation for the church: it was the ‘Hour of the Gospel’, which, rather than calling for support for revolutionary change or building bridges to the Soviet Union, called for adherence more stringent than ever to the church’s God-given mission to preach the Gospel.13 While conceding that the church’s alliance with the conservative establishment limited the church in certain ways, Künneth defended the ‘Christian Front’ by citing numerous passages from the Bible allegedly confirming that God had bestowed conservative powers and

44 Religion and the Cold War

institutions on man to tame lawlessness and avoid chaos. Künneth shared Asmussen’s view that biblical authority, the Lutheran confessions, and in particular the Lutheran doctrine of two kingdoms supported the alliance of the church with conservative political institutions. Under no circumstances would he accept the Council of Brethren’s teleological argument that the Third Reich marked the culmination of Germany’s long line of conservative rulers. Conservative rulers like the German Empire’s first chancellor, Otto von Bismarck (1871–90), were to be hailed for their patronage of the Protestant church and defence of Protestant values. Particularly offensive to conservatives was the reformers’ charge in the Darmstadt statement that the church had failed to support checks on right wing extremism during the Weimar era and instead lent support to Hitler’s dictatorship in 1933 and 1934. Darmstadt challenged the conservative interpretation of the Nazi era, which held that the church chose correctly after 1933 to focus on preserving the church’s freedom to preach the Gospel rather than support political opposition to the Nazi regime. Conservatives agreed, of course, that the church was guilty in the sense that all people and institutions in the world are guilty before God, but the church was not guilty in any specific sense of lending support to absolute dictatorship. For Künneth and Asmussen, the church’s role in this world was to preach the Gospel while lending passive support to conservative institutions that insured the church the freedom to proclaim God’s message. Since neither absolute dictatorship nor socialist revolution provided such freedom, both fell outside the scope of church support. Most important, the Gospel denied explicitly the right to revolution, Künneth argued. In fact, by denying the right of revolutionary change in the past and by maintaining an inflexible stand against anti-communism in the postwar period, Künneth believed the church demonstrated correctly its obedience to God.14 Providing their stance with a theological justification, the conservatives charged that the theological error around which the Council of Brethren developed their political agenda was attributable to their Reformed or Calvinist doctrine.15 Asmussen’s critique of the Darmstadt statement drew attention to what he saw as the Council of Brethren’s Reformed understanding of absolution. In thesis I, he pointed out, the Council of Brethren correctly stated that God’s message cannot be properly received, acted on, and preached unless God absolves the church of its sins through confession. But in thesis VI, the Council of Brethren stated that by recognizing and confessing the church’s sins in theses II–V the church

The German Protestant Debate 45

knows itself to be absolved. Asmussen found fault with this latter understanding of absolution. He believed that thesis VI was more in keeping with Reformed doctrine because it suggested that recognizing and confessing the church’s sins and redirecting the church’s mission toward a more socially conscious activist role in society was itself a sign that God absolved the church.16 This type of thinking, Asmussen charged, was neither biblical nor based on the Lutheran confessions. He accused the Council of Brethren of confusing faith and works. For Asmussen, God’s forgiving grace was always present regardless of whether there were signs sent by God. Asmussen wrote, ‘One can go astray as a believer and still be blessed. One cannot, however, be blessed by doing good works without faith.’17 Künneth also expressed alarm at the Barthian or Reformed influences when he asked rhetorically, ‘Has everyone in the Council of Brethren overlooked the fact that the members of the Evangelical Church in Germany are overwhelmingly adherents to the Lutheran catechism?’18 Asmussen and Künneth’s critiques pointedly suggest that the political differences between the authors of the Darmstadt statement and the conservative Lutherans are intelligible only when wedded to their theological counterparts. In short, what stood in the way of a unified Protestant church were not simply different political agendas but different theological orientations. The Council of Brethren, strongly influenced by Barth’s Reformed theology, believed that a genuine confession of guilt must entail making specific changes in the church’s doctrine and mission to ensure that the same errors were not repeated in the future. The authors of the Darmstadt statement attributed the Protestant church’s easy accommodation to Nazism to the church’s adherence to conservative Lutheran theology and organization – in particular, the Lutheran interpretation of the doctrine of two kingdoms. The Darmstadt statement confessed that the church was guilty of a conservative orientation that eventually led not only to lending support to absolute dictatorship but also to ignoring the economic and social needs of the poor. The reformers believed it was their Christian duty to be active in the public sphere in a socially conscious way to insure that such a conservative nationalist orientation would not, once again, draw the church into complacency and silence in the face of inhumane causes. Although an overwhelming majority of church leaders, pastors, and theologians rejected the Council of Brethren’s seven theses, the importance of the Darmstadt statement for our understanding of the postwar church, and Germany generally, should not be minimized. Its significance lies in the fact that in the immediate post-war years a

46 Religion and the Cold War

prominent sector of German society engaged in a public polemic over how to come to terms with the Nazi past and how to direct the church, politically and theologically, in a divided Germany. And even more important, such influential and internationally renowned personalities as Martin Niemöller and Karl Barth demanded that Protestants recognize their complacency during the Third Reich by confessing their guilt and making a commitment to fight conservative-authoritarian convictions in the church in the future.

Appendix: ‘A Statement by the Council of Brethren of the EKD Concerning the Political Course of our People’19 1. We have been given the message of the reconciliation of the world with God in Christ. We must listen to this Word, accept it, act upon it, and fulfil it. We are not listening to this Word, nor accepting it, nor acting upon it, not fulfilling it, unless we are absolved from our common guilt, from our fathers’ guilt as well as our own, and unless we follow the call of Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd, leading us out of all the false and evil ways into which we, as Germans, have strayed in our political aims and actions. 2. We went astray when we began to dream about a special German mission, as if the German character could heal the sickness of the world. In so doing we prepared the way for the unrestricted exercise of political power, and set our own nation on the throne of God. It was disastrous to lay the foundations of our state at home solely on a strong government, and abroad solely on military force. In so doing we have acted contrary to our vocation, which is to cooperate with other nations in our common tasks, and to use the gifts given to us for the benefit of all nations. 3. We went astray when we began to set up a ‘Christian Front’ against certain new developments that had become necessary in social life. The alliance of the Church with the forces which clung to everything old and conventional has revenged itself heavily upon us. We have betrayed the Christian freedom that enables us and commands us to change the forms of life, when such a change is necessary for men to live together. We have denied the right of revolution; but we have condoned and approved the development of absolute dictatorship. 4. We went astray when we thought we ought to create a political front of good against evil, light against darkness, justice against injustice, and to resort to political methods. In so doing we distorted God’s free grace to all by forming a political, social and philosophical front, and left the world to justify itself. 5. We went astray when we failed to see, that the economic materialism of Marxist teaching ought to have reminded the Church of its task and its promise for the life and fellowship of men. We have failed to take up the cause of the poor and unprivileged as a Christian cause, in accordance with the message of God’s Kingdom. 6. In recognizing and confessing this, we know that we are absolved as followers of Christ, and that we are now free to undertake new and better service to

The German Protestant Debate 47 the glory of God and the welfare of mankind. It is not the phrase ‘Christianity and Western Culture’ that the German people, and particularly we Christians, need today. What we need is a return to God and to the service of our neighbour, through the power of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. 7. We have born witness, and today we do so once again: ‘Through Jesus Christ we experience a joyous liberation from the ungodly fetters of this world for free and grateful service to all whom he has created.’ We therefore pray constantly: Do not let yourselves be overcome by despair, for Christ is the Lord. Say good-bye to the indifference of unbelief; do not be led astray by dreams of a better past or by speculations about another war; but in freedom and all soberness realize the responsibility which rests upon us all to rebuild a better form of government in Germany, that shall work for justice and for the welfare, peace and reconciliation of the nations.

Notes 1 A group of Protestant churchmen, led by the Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemöller, founded the Confessing Church in 1934 in order to defend themselves and their churches against German Christian theological heresies and Hitler’s attempts to subordinate the church to National Socialist rule. The German Christians (Deutsche Christen) wanted to integrate the 28 regional churches (Landeskirchen) into a united German Evangelical Reich Church under the leadership of a Reich Bishop subordinate to Hitler. Theologically they advocated the integration of Christian dogma with National Socialist doctrine. This challenge by the German Christians led many of the traditional church leaders in the regional churches to establish the Confessing Church as a way to defend the autonomy of the regional churches and the purity of the Reformation understanding of the Gospel. The Confessing Church’s founding document was the Barmen Theological Declaration of Faith, which asserted the church’s independence from the state and its theological adherence to the message of the Gospel and the Reformation Confessions. Since the mid-1930s the Confessing Church was divided politically and theologically over its relation to the Nazi state. On the one hand, reformists in the Confessing Church believed that their opposition to the Nazi encroachments on the church had political ramifications. On the other hand, conservatives wanted to limit the church’s opposition to the state to the issue of church autonomy alone. See Klaus Scholder, Die Kirche und das Dritte Reich. Bd. 1, Vorgeschichte und Zeit der Illusionen, 1918–1934 (Frankfurt; Berlin; Wien, 1977); Bd. 2, Das Jahr der Ernüchterung. 1934: Barmen und Rom (Berlin, 1985); Kurt Meier, Der evangelische Kirchenkampf. Gesamtdarstellung in drei Bänden. Bd. 1, Der Kampf um die ‘Reichskirche’ (Halle, 1976); Bd. 2, Gescheiterte Neuordnungsversuche im Zeichen staatlicher ‘Rechtshilfe’ (Halle, 1976); Bd. 3, Im Zeichen des zweiten Weltkrieges (Halle, 1984); John Conway, The Nazi Persecution of the Churches (New York, 1968); Ernst Christian Helmreich, The German Churches under Hitler: Background, Struggle, and Epilogue (Detroit, 1979) and Doris Bergen, Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich (Chapel Hill, NC, 1996). The quote is

48 Religion and the Cold War

2

3

4 5 6

7

from: ‘Protokoll über die Sitzung des Bruderrates der EKD in Darmstadt, 6 July 1947’, in Dorthee Buchhaas-Birkholz, ed., ‘Zum politischen Weg unseres Volkes’ Politische Leitbilder und Vorstellungen im deutschen Protestantismus 1945–1952, Eine Dokumentation (Düsseldorf, 1989), p. 92. For a complete translation of the Darmstadt statement, see the chapter appendix. The official title of the Darmstadt statement was ‘Ein Wort des Bruderrates der Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland zum politischen Weg unseres Volkes.’ It first appeared in Flugblätter der Bekennenden Kirche, 8 (Aug. 1947). The Ecumenical Press Service (EPS) printed an English translation, ‘Statement Concerning the Political Course Taken by the German People’, in its 12 Sept. 1947 newsletter. The EPS translation with some minor revisions of my own is provided in the appendix of this chapter. For two contrasting interpretations of the Darmstadt statement see Hartmut Ludwig, ‘Die Entstehung des Darmstädter Wortes’, Junge Kirche supplement to 8/9 (1977), pp. 1–15, and Erwin Wilkens, ‘Zum ‘Darmstädter Wort’ vom 8 August 1947’, in Zukunft aus dem Wort, ed. Günther Metzger (Stuttgart, 1978), pp. 151–253. For further background and interpretation see also Bertold Klappert, Bekennende Kirche in ökumenischer Verantwortung: Die gesellschaftliche und ökumenische Bedeutung des Darmstädter Wortes (Munich, 1988). The Evangelical (Protestant) Church of Germany was a federation of 28 Lutheran, Reformed and united regional churches (Landeskirchen). Divided by confession, administration and ecclesiastical structure, each regional church acted as both an autonomous unit and as a constituent part of the larger umbrella federation, the Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland (EKD). This is from the third thesis of the Darmstadt statement. Italics mine. The minutes of the Council of Brethren’s 5–6 July 1947 meeting at which they discussed the necessity of a public statement on the church’s role in the public sphere are reprinted in Buchhaas-Birkholz, pp. 77–103. Of the several critiques of the Darmstadt statement appearing in 1947 the two most significant are Hans Asmussen’s 28 Aug. 1947 letter to the Council of Brethren reprinted in Buchhaas-Birkholz, ‘Schreiben des Leiters der Kirchenkanzlei der EKD Asmussen an den Bruderrat der EKD’, pp. 106–10, and Walter Künneth, ‘Zum politischen Weg unseres Volkes: Eine theologische Antwort an den Bruderrat der EKD’, Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirchenzeitung, 2/3 (15 Nov. 1947), pp. 13–16. For criticisms of the Darmstadt statement by churchmen living under Soviet occupation see the minutes of the Council of Brethren’s 15–16 Oct. 1947 meeting in Detmold, Zentralarchiv der Evangelischen Kirche in Hessen und Nassau, Bestand 62/1026. The church struggle (Kirchenkampf) refers to three interwoven struggles from 1933 to 1945 involving the reformist, conservative and German Christian factions in the church and the Nazi state. The primary struggle between the German Christians and the Confessing Church emerged immediately after Hitler’s seizure of power. The second dimension of the church struggle was the intense feuding that took place within the Confessing Church between the reformers and conservatives. And finally, the church struggle also involved infrequent and sporadic conflicts between the Confessing Church, especially its reformist wing, and the Nazi state.

The German Protestant Debate 49 8 For Luther’s original distinction between the two kingdoms or regiments see W. D. J. Cargill Thompson, The Political Thought of Martin Luther (Sussex, 1984), pp. 130–6, and Heinrich Bornkamm, Luther’s Doctrine of the To Kingdoms in the Context of his Theology (Philadelphia, 1966). For the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century understanding of the doctrine of two kingdoms see Karl Hertz, ed., Two Kingdoms and One World (Minneapolis, 1976); Hans Tiefel, ‘Use and Misuse of Luther During the German Church Struggle’, Lutheran Quarterly, 25 (1973), pp. 395–411. See also John Conway, ‘The Political Role of German Protestantism, 1870–1990’, Journal of Church and State, 34(4) (Autumn 1992), pp. 819–42, and Helmut Thielicke, Theological Ethics (3 vols; Grand Rapids, MI, 1979), vol. 2, ch. 30. 9 Hertz, pp. 67–89 and 160–84. 10 The Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt is reprinted in Kirchliches Jahrbuch für die Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland 1945–48 (Gütersloh, 1950). For historical background and analysis see Hartmut Ludwig, ‘Karl Barths Dienst der Versöhnung. Zur Geschichte des Stuttgarter Schuldbekenntnisses’, in Arbeiten zur Geschichte des Kirchenkampfes, 26 (Göttingen, 1971), pp. 265–310; Armin Boyens, ‘Das Stuttgarter Schuldbekenntnis vom 19 October 1945. Entstehung und Bedeutung’, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 19 (1971), pp. 374–97; John Conway, ‘How Shall the Nations Repent? The Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt, October 1945’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 38(4) (Oct. 1987), pp. 596–622; Gerhard Besier, ‘Zur Geschichte der Stuttgarter Schulderklärung vom 18./19. Oktober 1945’, in Wie Christen ihre Schuld bekennen: Die Stuttgarter Erklärung, eds. Gerhard Besier and Gerhard Sauter (Göttingen, 1985), pp. 9–61, and Martin Greschat, ed., Die Schuld der Kirche: Dokumente und Reflexionen zur Stuttgart Schulderklärung vom 18./19. Oktober 1945 (Munich, 1982). 11 Many of the letters criticizing the Stuttgart declaration can be found in the Evangelisches Zentralarchiv in Berlin, Bestand 2/34 and 35, and in the Landeskirchliches Archiv Stuttgart, Bestand D1/210 and 211. 12 Künneth, p. 16. The German Christians were a pro-Nazi faction within the church during the Third Reich. The theology of the German Christians was a highly politicised attempt to integrate Nazi doctrine with Lutheran theology. 13 Künneth, p. 13. 14 Künneth, p. 14. 15 Asmussen, p. 111 and Künneth, p. 14. 16 Asmussen, p. 109. The Council of Brethren tried to clarify this statement in its commentary on the Darmstadt statement written a few months later. The commentary on thesis VI read: ‘That the freedom was given to us to recognize and openly to confess [theses II–V] is for us the most hopeful sign that God is allowing us to make a new beginning in his Church.’ For the Council of Brethren’s commentary on the Darmstadt statement see Joachim Beckmann, Hoffnung für die Kirche in dieser Zeit. Beiträge zur kirchlichen Zeitgeschichte 1946–1974 (Göttingen, 1981), pp. 73–90. 17 Asmussen, p. 110. 18 Künneth, p. 14. 19 The following translation is by the World Council of Churches, Ecumenical Press Service, 31 (12 Sept. 1947), p. 215. I have made some minor revisions in the translation.

4 Pope Pius XII and the Cold War: The Post-war Confrontation between Catholicism and Communism Frank J. Coppa

Before the Western Allies recognised the threat of Soviet expansion, before Churchill’s ‘Iron Curtain speech’ (1946), the Truman Doctrine (1947) and NATO (1949), the Roman Catholic Church had struggled against communism, which it perceived as an assault upon its doctrine, institutions and community.1 Following the Bolshevik Revolution, the Holy See feared both the militant atheism of the Soviet state, and its subversion of the social and political orders. Almost immediately the Vatican perceived the ideology and its adherents as a peril to Christian civilisation. These fears were revealed in the apparitions of Fatima, of 1917, where Mary allegedly invoked prayers for the conversion of Russia. They were also catalogued in Pius XI’s 1937 encyclical (Divini Redemptoris), which condemned atheistic communism,2 despite the fact that Stalin focused on ‘socialism in one country’, and sought rapprochement with the West. His successor, Pope Pius XII (1939–58), mobilised Catholic forces to combat communism, initiating a global campaign against Bolshevism in general, and the Soviet Union in particular, thus contributing to the opening of the Cold War. While American historians have finally recognised the part played by the United States in provoking the Cold War,3 the papal role has not always been recognised.4 Even when the Catholic contribution to the anti-communist climate of the 1940s and 1950s was recorded, its focus was limited.5 Pius XII’s religious and ideological opposition to Bolshevism has been explored, but this Pope also understood the political danger represented by the Soviet Union.6 This paper explores both the religious and political aspects of Pius XII’s anti-communist policy. 50

Pius XII and the Cold War 51

Eugenio Pacelli, who became Pius XII in 1939, had nourished a fear of Bolshevism since the Sparticist rising of 1919, and the reign of terror it unleashed in Munich.7 Although the Italian Communist Party originally hailed Pacelli’s election, its enthusiasm soon dissipated.8 In October 1939, Pius issued his first encyclical (Summi Pontificatus),9 condemning the claims of absolute state authority.10 Not surprisingly, its ‘denunciation’ of totalitarianism was applicable to the Soviet Union as well as Nazi Germany, for Pius abhorred the ideologies and political practices of both. Clearly, Papa Pacelli remained pessimistic about Stalin’s regime. Franklin Delano Roosevelt – the first United States President to establish formal relations with the Soviet Union – claimed that the road to peace rested in supporting Great Britain and the Soviet Union against the Nazi menace, urging the Vatican to moderate its anti-communist stance. On the other hand, Bernardo Attolico, Mussolini’s representative to the Holy See, sought to convince the Pope that the war against Russia warranted the Vatican’s moral support. Pius XII rejected both suggestions.11 ‘I see the crusade, but I don’t see the crusaders,’ Tardini responded to the Italian request for Vatican support of the Nazi invasion of Bolshevik Russia. The Pope personally repeated this position to the Italian representative to the Vatican, Attolico. ‘If I should speak of Bolshevism – and I am quite prepared to do so – why should I therefore say nothing about Nazism?’ He concluded by warning, ‘if I “have” to speak one day, I shall do so, but I shall say everything.’12 He did not do so during the course of the war. Although Pius preserved a cautious neutrality, politically his sympathies rested with the Western democracies,13 and he was pleased by Roosevelt’s appointment of Myron Taylor as his personal representative to the Vatican in December 1939. Subsequently, Pius provided indirect assistance to the allied cause by refusing to sanctify the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, but remained troubled by the AngloAmerican alliance with Stalin. An accommodation of sorts was made by the Vatican not condemning American lend-lease aid to Moscow. In fact, Pius remained silent on Soviet as well as Nazi atrocities during the war, but to date John Cornwell has not dubbed him ‘Stalin’s Pope!’ Still, there were limits to what Pius would do to please the western allies, who were tied to the Russian regime, foreseeing and fearing a communist incursion into Europe. On 9 September 1941, Pius received a letter from the American President which indicated that the Soviets were on the brink of introducing some form of religious freedom in their territories, that the Russian dictatorship was less dangerous than the Nazi variant, concluding

52 Religion and the Cold War

that the survival of Russia would prove less dangerous to religious life than the survival of the Nazi dictatorship.14 The Pope disagreed, remaining sceptical of the alleged Soviet conversion. While the Vatican’s relations with Hitler’s Germany proved difficult, they were non-existent with the Soviet regime. Another important difference was that the Nazi persecution, unlike the Bolshevik one, had not completely outlawed religion and suppressed the churches. Furthermore, if Stalin found it prudent to make some concessions to the Russian Orthodox Church to curry favour with his suffering masses, these were not extended to the Catholic Church, which was persecuted, as the Soviets moved to liquidate the Ukrainian Catholic Church (Uniate) and forcefully ‘reunite’ it with the Orthodox Church. Members of the hierarchy who resisted were imprisoned, along with clergy or lay faithful who opposed the Soviet scheme. Few priests remained in Russia so that Father Leopold Braun, chaplain to the American embassy in Moscow, was a rare exception.15 Furthermore, seminaries, schools, publishing houses, and charitable foundations and institutions were confiscated and closed, or turned over to the Russian Orthodox Church.16 For these and other reasons, the Pope and the curia feared the spectre of communism. To add insult to injury, the Soviets tended to depict the Germanophile Pius XII as a crypto-Nazi and Hitler’s Pope. The pontiff deplored the Soviet invasion of Poland, its attack on Finland, its absorption of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, and its designs on eastern Europe. He likewise abhorred Stalin’s continued persecution of the Catholic Church, which saw its property nationalised and its hierarchy shattered by deportations, arrests, and executions. The repression had been thorough, so that by the end of the 1930’s the Catholic Church had been virtually eliminated from the Soviet Union. Conditions were particularly deplorable in the western Ukraine, a hotbed of anti-Soviet agitation, where the Uniate Church was closely linked to National identity. Thus, the Ukrainian Catholic Church of Eastern rite, was the sole Church to be outlawed outright.17 However, once Soviet forces occupied eastern Poland and the Baltic States, the persecution was extended. Catholic schools were likewise shut there, religious instruction in the schools terminated, Church property confiscated, monasteries suppressed, and an aggressive programme introduced to impose atheism. In Catholic Lithuania the Church was likewise brutalised by the Soviet occupation.18 Despite these realities, which contradicted Roosevelt’s optimistic appraisal of communist policies, the Pope sought to accommodate the American collaboration with the Soviet Union. Thus, the hierarchy drew a distinction between

Pius XII and the Cold War 53

communism, which Pius XI had condemned in Divini redemptoris, and the suffering people of the Soviet Union. At the same time, the Vatican resisted denouncing either Nazi or Bolshevik atrocities, hoping they would destroy one another. None the less, Pius dreaded the extension of Stalin’s system. The Vatican’s principal preoccupation remained the Bolshevisation of Europe. This is why Monsignor Tardini concurred with Roosevelt and Churchill plan to help the Russians – but only within limits, hoping that a stalemate between the Nazis and the Soviets would undermine both. Consequently, the Vatican did not obstruct American military aid to the Soviet Union, which was criticised by conservative American Catholics, until Monsignor Tardini explained to their bishops that Pius XI’s 1937 encyclical against communism condemned the ideology but not the Russian people.19 While the Holy See had few illusions about National Socialism, it had absolutely none about Bolshevism, which it continued to consider the greater evil. The course of the Second World War also caused concern at the Vatican, as Pius perceived the ‘unconditional surrender’ policy which Churchill and Roosevelt had sanctioned during the Casablanca Conference (January 1943), as idiotic. Although the American Ambassador Taylor vowed that unconditional surrender did not entail subjugation or destruction,20 the Pope considered this demand neither prudent nor practical, fearing it would preclude the prospect of a negotiated peace, prolong the conflict, and ultimately benefit the Soviet Union. Pius worried not only about the future of Germany and Italy, but feared the consequences of a Soviet victory upon Poland, the Baltic States,21 and the whole of eastern Europe. Finally, he feared the spread of communism over the entire war-torn continent. Furthermore, while the Vatican rigidly adhered to the Polish government in exile, Washington and London were eventually constrained by political and military realities to accept the Soviet-sponsored Polish government, with minimal representation by the London group. To make matters worse for Rome, which championed a restoration of the old Polish boundaries, Washington eventually accepted the Russian expansion of their frontier at the expense of Poland, which was to be compensated with the eastern territory wrenched from Germany. For these and other reasons, the Pope feared the Soviet offensive against the Wehrmacht, and its impact on the post-war reconstruction.22 The Americans justified the prominent role of the Soviet Union in the peace-making process. ‘Russia, when final victory comes for the United Nations, will have earned the right to participate in arrangements for

54 Religion and the Cold War

peace,’ Tittmann advised the Pope. More ominously for the Vatican, he added, ‘At the peace table and in the many adjustments that will inevitably have to be made in international matters after the war, Russia will have an important voice.’23 Dismissing the papal fear of communism, Tittmann concluded that ‘Communism is … an essentially internal problem,’ and deemed it unrealistic for any state to ‘overcome a possible communist menace within its borders by attacking Russia publicly.’24 Indeed, Joseph R. McCarthy later charged that in 1943–4, Adlai Stevenson was dispatched by President Roosevelt to Italy to ‘connive’ to bring the communists into the Italian government.25 Pius was appalled. ‘Communism is materialistic, totalitarian, militarist and anti-religious,’ Tardini wrote on Pius XII’s behalf in 1944, adding, ‘there is no concrete and notable fact to show that Communism has now really changed its theories and its practical way of action.’ For this reason the Holy See adopted ‘an attitude of prudent reserve towards the Soviets and their allies.’26 As the war ended, the Pope brooded about the fate of Europe, alarmed by the expansionism of the Soviet Union and its subversive ideology. The curia shared his concerns. Before his death Cardinal Maglione warned of the grave danger of Russian hegemony in Europe. His apprehension was shared by Monsignor Tardini, who predicted the war would end with a predominant Russian victory in Europe, leading to the spread of communism, to the detriment of European civilisation and Christian culture.27 Even if the allied armies remained in Europe, Tardini continued, foreseeing the onset of the Cold War, the ensuing peace would only rest on mutual fear. In his Christmas message of 1944, the Pope partially abandoned his customary reserve and cautious impartiality to condemn totalitarianism and dictatorship, while favouring democracy.28 Within the next decade, the Vatican contributed both to the campaign against the communism, and the waging of the Cold War. Pius XII and the Vatican were not surprised that the Soviets sought to reap the harvest of the protracted conflict and uneasy peace by imposing their imperium and ideology on eastern Europe. The Pope knew that Marx had denounced religion as the opium of the people, Lenin had preached a crusade against it on the basis of class struggle and dialectical materialism, and during his years in power, Stalin had brutally exploited their goals. Part of the curia trembled at the prospect of a Russian hegemony in Europe, leading to a rapid diffusion of communism throughout the greater part of continental Europe.29 These concerns were not diminished by the Roosevelt supported mission of father Stanislas Orlemanski30 to the Soviet Union in April 1944. Pope

Pius XII and the Cold War 55

and Curia discounted Stalin’s promise to combat religious persecution, as well as Orlemanski’s assertion that Stalin was a friend of the Roman Catholic Church.31 The Vatican acknowledged that during the summer of 1944, Stalin had largely suspended his atheistic propaganda and permitted the clergy and faithful to gather in the few churches remaining open. This, Tardini reported, was due to the political and military exigencies of the war, and the desire to quiet Catholic Poland, which the Soviets were poised to occupy. Under these circumstances, Stalin understandably sought improved relations with the Holy See. None the less, Tardini feared this thaw represented only a temporary expedient, for the communist programme remained profoundly anti-religious.32 There was talk of a rapprochement between Rome and Moscow, but none occurred. Indeed, at the beginning of August, Monsignor Montini responded to the reports circulating in the press, that Russia had offered to open diplomatic relations with the Holy See, which had rejected the offer. Montini denied that such an offer had ever been made.33 Pius clarified the papal position in a radio address of 1 September 1944, insisting that Christians could not admit a social order which opposed the possession of private property.34 Thus, the Pope continued to challenge the American optimism regarding Stalin, questioning the notion of unconditional surrender, and the Yalta agreements as well. His scepticism was well founded, and indirectly acknowledged by the Americans themselves. ‘Regarding the question of obtaining some Soviet assurance on the religious question,’ Taylor wrote the Pope later in September, ‘one reaches the reluctant conclusion that it would be unwise to raise the question openly.’35 Citing Russian sensitivity, Taylor proposed relying on American goodwill and influence rather than seeking a formal commitment from the Soviets. Neither the Pope nor Tardini accepted the allied contention that communism had changed and only the Holy See conducted a campaign against it.36 The United Nations as constituted at San Francisco in June 1945 did not fulfil all of Pius XII’s expectations.37 Although the Vatican did not participate in its formation, it approved of its general aims38 – harbouring reservations about its organisation, and especially the veto exercised by the Soviet Union in the Security Council. The Osservatore Romano complained that it continued the distinction between great and small, victor and vanquished, perpetuating the errors and discriminations of the League of Nations. Finally, the Vatican deplored the central role of the Soviet Union in post-war Europe.39 Stalin discounted papal opposition. ‘The Pope! The Pope! How many divisions has he got?’ the Soviet dictator

56 Religion and the Cold War

repeated at the Yalta Conference of 1945.40 He realised that Pius nourished serious reservations about the proposed post-war settlement, and was among the first to expose the pretense that the Russian occupation was benign. The Pope said as much in his Christmas message of 1946, wherein he lamented the compromises made at war’s end.41 In fact, the Vatican informed the Americans at the end of 1944, and the beginning of 1945, that over 400 priests were deported from the Lublin district into the interior of Russia, a dozen priest-professors of Lublin University were executed, and the Bolsheviks were systematically closing church and parochial schools.42 Early in 1946, a Vatican pronouncement (Orientales Omnes Ecclesias) denounced the forced assimilation of the Catholic Uniate Church into the Russian Orthodox one.43 That same year Josef Beran was appointed Archbishop of Prague.44 Even as Pope and Curia catalogued the perils of the Cold War, they differentiated the danger stemming from the ideology and the state that adopted it. A 1947 editorial in the Vatican journal L’Osservatore Romano reported that in Stalin’s Russia state power prevailed over Marxist convictions, concluding that so long as Stalin did not deem war profitable, he would not wage it.45 Thus, although Rome had reservations about containment, it was deemed preferable to Soviet expansion. Pius warned that unless the West championed and upheld democratic regimes in eastern Europe, the Russians would impose Soviet ones. His prediction proved prophetic, which led the Pope to fret about a Russian penetration of Western Europe. Consequently, he welcomed the 1947 European Recovery Program (Marshall Plan), which George C. Marshall announced at Harvard in June 1947 to reconstruct the faltering European economies. Pius enthusiastically supported the proposal, relieved that the Americans had finally perceived ‘the extreme gravity of the hour’.46 The Pope also approved the initial steps toward European economic integration, as means of blocking Soviet expansion and its unfortunate consequences. In 1949 and 1950, Pius, still seeking to preserve papal neutrality, approved of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, designed to thwart Moscow’s diplomatic coercion and military threats. This papal position enabled Alcide De Gasperi and his Christian Democrats to overcome leftwing opposition and secure Italian ratification of the treaty in April 1949, and also helped the Christian Democrats under Konrad Adenauer to secure West Germany’s adherence in 1955. Throughout most of the thirteen years of his pontificate following the close of the World War (1945–58), Pius generally pursued a conservative, anti-communist course. Some have charged that his entire post-war pontificate remained defensive, desperately attempting to

Pius XII and the Cold War 57

preserve Catholic civilisation in a world shaken by militant Bolshevism.47 Whatever the motivation, Pius did range the moral weight of Catholic preaching against the USSR and its allies, while moving closer to the West. He was especially reassured by the promise of American aid to Italy, and their determination to maintain a military presence in Europe. Indeed, the common interests of the United States and Vatican multiplied following Roosevelt’s death, during the increasingly hostile reaction of the Truman administration towards the Soviet Union.48 Charging that the totalitarian, anti-religious state demanded the silence and acquiescence of the Church, he rejected these conditions.49 ‘What was in the opinion of many a duty of the church, and what they demanded of her in an unseemly [!] way,’ Pius protested, ‘is today … a crime in their eyes and a forbidden interference in domestic affairs of the state: namely resistance against unjust restraint of conscience by totalitarian systems and their condemnation all over the world.’50 Repeatedly setting forth the tenets of the faith contradicted by communist doctrines and policies, he fought Soviet political designs in Europe and abroad.51 During these years, Pius suspended, although he did not abandon, his diplomatic course, as he called for the banishment of atheism and the indestructibility of spiritual values in the struggle against communism and the Soviet Union. ‘Can, may the Pope be silent?’ Pius asked the assembled crowd in St Peter’s Square on 20 February 1949, adding ‘Can you imagine a successor to Peter who would bow to such demands?’ The crowd shouted an unequivocal ‘No!’52 The response pleased the Pope, who utilised the support of the faithful for his diplomacy of condemnation and containment of the Soviet Union. Eventually, his position was endorsed by the United States.53 This policy was accelerated by Russian actions and by the outbreak of the Korean conflict in 1950. Once Stalin dominated eastern Europe, and especially after 1948, when he forged a bloc of compliant satellites from the Baltic to the Black Sea, the dictator’s cronies initiated a brutal repression against the church and clergy of the region. Following the communist putsch in Czechoslovakia, the communists proposed a new constitution and commenced their domination.54 Among other things, they introduced obligatory civil marriage, followed by legislation which extended the prohibition against reading episcopal messages and papal encyclicals from church pulpits. In response, Pius called the Czech bishops to Rome, inspiring them to take a firm stance against their state’s violations of the fundamental rights of the church. Nonetheless, early in 1949 the Vatican and the Czech church sought to negotiate with the

58 Religion and the Cold War

communist controlled government, and talks were opened, but failed. This provoked a swift retaliation by the regime, which under the auspices of the Cominform established a Communist Organisation of Catholic Action, creating a Catholic Church free from papal control. Subsequently, under the prodding of the Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Vishinsky, the government proclaimed a ‘Karlsbad Protocol’ which provided for the eventual liquidation of the traditional Catholic Church in Czechoslovakia. In turn, the Vatican excommunicated the communists and their allies, followed by a prohibition on marriages between Catholics and communists.55 The Vatican’s relations with Tito’s Yugoslavia were not much better. During the war, Archbishop Alois Stepinac, of Zagreb, had been arrested by communist partisans, who regarded him as a symbol of Croat oppression of the Serbs, and though released, he remained persona non grata. For these reasons, Tito requested that he be recalled to Rome, but Pius proved unwilling to do so. As Tito had warned, the Archbishop was put on trial in October 1946, and found guilty of unlawful collaboration with the Ustasha regime, and admitting Orthodox Serbs into the Catholic Church, even though their conversion had been constrained. The Vatican responded with spiritual strictures, excommunicating all who had participated in, or even contributed to, the trial! Tito’s government responded by encouraging the formation of professional organisations of priests, free from episcopal and Vatican control. These organisations were immediately condemned by the Yugoslav bishops, who appealed to Pius XII for support. The Pope upheld their stance, encouraging them to oppose ‘the heavy threat represented by the priests’ organisations.’ His message was accidentally leaked, leading the Tito government to complain early in November 1952 of the Vatican’s ‘unwarrantable interference’ in Yugoslavia’s internal affairs. To make matters worse, Pius honoured Stepinac by naming him a cardinal, and adding insult to injury, did so on 29 November, Yugoslavia’s national holiday. This dual insult prompted Tito’s government to sever diplomatic relations with the Vatican in mid-December 1952.56 Elsewhere in eastern Europe, churches and other ecclesiastical properties were nationalised, schools taken over by the state, religion eliminated from the curriculum, monasteries and seminaries slammed shut, and the Catholic clergy either arrested or deported, including the condemnation of the Primate of Hungary, Cardinal Mindszenty in 1949. In Bulgaria, Bishop Eugen Bossilkov, who refused to join the Orthodox Church or form a national Catholic Church without ties to the Vatican, was executed by a firing squad in 1952.57 Pius protested

Pius XII and the Cold War 59

the persecution of the ‘Church of Silence’ the brutal attempts to eliminate the Uniate Church. In turn, he launched a counter-attack on the unbelievers who sought to subvert the Faith. Surprisingly, the formerly cautious Pontiff who avoided confrontation during the war years, minced no words in his post-war condemnation of communism. Thus, in 1949 the Holy Office published a decree58 which attacked the totalitarianism Stalin had imposed on eastern Europe. At the same time, it prescribed excommunication for those who voted for, joined, collaborated with, or even read the newspapers of the communists and their allies. The year 1950 witnessed the celebration of the Holy Year in Rome, and outbreak of war in Korea. In 1951, the year after the Cold War turned hot in Korea, Pius urged the persecuted Catholics of Czechoslovakia to stand firm in their faith, praising them for their constancy in the face of persecution. Pius also deplored Peking’s disruption of relations between Rome and the Chinese hierarchy, and its heavy-handed attempt to create an alternative to the traditional faith – the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association. In 1952, he rebuked the unjust Chinese attack upon the Church and its hierarchy. His encyclical (Cupimus imprimis) expressed his consolation for, and provided encouragement to, the clergy and people of China, urging Chinese Catholics to continue to suffer for Christ and trust in Him.59 That same year, he also encouraged the Rumanians who were experiencing a similar persecution, assuring them of ultimate victory. The Pope also reached out to the people of Russia, regretting the tribulations they endured, but predicted that the communists could not undo the thousand-year history of the Church in Russia, whom he consecrated to the Immaculate Heart. In an encyclical to the Catholic Churches of the East at the end of 1952, Pius reaffirmed Rome’s desire for unity and deplored the exclusion of God from their lives. In combating persecution in the East, Pius increasingly relied on the states of the West, and particularly their leader, the United States. On 7 January 1953, in his State of the Union Message, President Truman reported that the United States had developed a hydrogen bomb, which proved a double-edged sword for the Vatican. On the one hand this would hopefully restrain the Russians; on the other hand, the potential for global destruction and human annihilation was exponentially increased. Pius worried about the devastating consequences of a third world war, and thus preferred negotiation to confrontation.60 The summer of 1953, on the seventh centenary of the canonisation of Saint Stanislaus, Pacelli focused on the life and martyrdom of this Bishop of Cracow, asking the Poles to remain true and united in resisting dechristianisation and dishonour.

60 Religion and the Cold War

In June 1953, Pius XII dispatched a pastoral letter to the three imprisoned archbishops of eastern Europe: Stepinac of Zagreb, Mindszenty of Budapest, and Beran of Prague, encouraging them and their followers to persevere, predicting they would eventually prevail.61 The following year, Pius vigorously refuted the ‘scurrilous’ charges made against Chinese Catholics. Addressing the clergy and people of China, whose conditions he deplored, the Pope protested the false accusations against the Holy See, the propaganda campaign against the Church, and the arbitrary expulsion of the Nuncio. Once again, he rejected the attempts of the communist regime in China to establish an independent ‘Catholic Church’ separate from the Holy See.62 The rupture with China continues.63 While the Pope supported the efforts of the Europeans and the Americans against the march of communism, he recognised the danger of the Cold War and the ‘coexistence of fear’ which prevailed. The Pope, emphasising the opposition of the Church to wars, except those of a strictly defensive nature, relied on prayer and the intercession of Mary to overcome the difficult dilemma facing the Church in eastern Europe and the Far East.64 Across the Atlantic, Bishop Fulton Sheen branded communism the Antichrist, as many American Catholics pressed Washington to join with Christ and Mary in their war against Satan and his communist allies.65 The Holy See’s anti-communism, which assured moral support for the Western alliance during the course of the Cold War, led the American President in 1950 to propose opening normal diplomatic relations with Rome. The suggestion aroused the latent and widespread anti-Catholic sentiment in the United States, forcing President Truman to withdraw the nomination to ‘the Pope of the Atlantic alliance’. Despite this rebuff, the Pope continued to preach against ‘godless’ communism. In 1956, he denounced the Soviet invasion of Hungary. Two years later, he issued yet another condemnation of Chinese persecution of the Church.66 Although suspicious of partisan politics, Pius relied on the Christian Democratic parties of Belgium, France, the Netherlands and Italy to confront communism. 67 Following the collapse of Italian Fascism, Pius became increasingly preoccupied by the prospect of a communist conquest of Italy.68 As Primate of Italy, the Pope sought to prevent a communist takeover there. To preclude that possibility, the Vatican journal, L’Osservatore Romano, warned the faithful that one could not be a Catholic and communist simultaneously. 69 ‘Communism is a very grave and imminent danger for the Italian people,’ the Pope reported, complaining that it would

Pius XII and the Cold War 61

jeopardise the Holy See ‘if it were surrounded by a restless, agitated and extremist population.’70 Once members of the Italian Communist Party entered the government following the liberation of Rome, Pius became increasingly alarmed.71 The Vatican even expressed concern about who would distribute American aid in the peninsula, calling for committees composed of ‘Catholic’ and ‘honest’ citizens, rather than socialists or communists.72 Seeking allied assistance to spare Italy from the communist menace, Pius was prepared to take further action himself. Subsequently, he embroiled himself in the peninsula’s affairs, by means of Catholic Action groups, under the leadership of Professor Luigi Gedda, supervised by the bishops. In March 1946, in a first salvo, the Pope alerted the Italian clergy that it was their duty to instruct the faithful to combat anti-Christian forces in politics and society. Pius shared the American concern that the communists not triumph in the first parliamentary elections of April 1948. To do so, the Pope encouraged Gedda’s ‘civic committees’ to swing support to conservative parties and policies in Italy, supporting those with a western orientation, while opposing the parties of the Left. Although the Vatican disdained partisan politics, Pius none the less encouraged the Catholic organisations and groups, whose members numbered some 3 million, to support the Christian Democrats, to keep the communists out of power. Indeed, Amleto Cicognani, the Apostolic Delegate to the United States, urged the American bishops to have Italian-Americans write their relatives in the old country, pressing them to reject communist candidates.73 Indeed, there were those in the Vatican who characterised the post-war struggle in Italy and Europe as one between Moscow and Rome. The Church’s involvement in the Italian electoral process in 1948 proved massive and unprecedented.74 It succeeded, and played a major role in assuring the Christian Democrats 48 per cent of the vote, to the 31 per cent garnered by the left-wing Popular Democratic Front.75 The Vatican was prepared to do more. In mid-July 1949 the Holy See made public a decree issued earlier by the Congregation of the Holy Office.76 The questions posed were: (1) was it legitimate to become a member of the Communist Party or to give it support? (2) Was it legitimate for Catholics to publish, disseminate or read periodicals or other literature that upheld the doctrine of communism, or collaborate in their writing or publication? (3) Could the faithful who professed the materialist, anti-Christian doctrine of communism, and especially those who knowingly and willingly engaged in the activities listed above, be admitted to the Sacraments? Finally, (4) whether those faithful who professed

62 Religion and the Cold War

the materialist, anti-Christian doctrine of communism, and especially those who defended it and became its proponents, did not automatically fall under excommunication as apostates of the Catholic Faith? The Holy Office responded no to the first query, indicating it was not permissible for the faithful to join or support the Communist Party, because it was materialistic and anti-Christian while its directors, both in theory and practice, proved hostile to God, religion and the Church of Christ. Secondly, Catholics could not publish, disseminate or even read books, periodicals or other literature that upheld such a doctrine. Thus, those who violated these first two prohibitions should not be admitted to the Sacraments. Finally the decree proclaimed that those who affirmed such doctrines and practices automatically fell under excommunication as apostates of the Catholic faith. On 1 July 1949 the decree was promulgated in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis,77 providing papal support for a condemnation and excommunication which had never been launched against Nazism. The accusations sanctioned by Pius XII against communism were equally applicable to Nazism, which likewise violated the basic teachings of the Faith, but for reasons still debated, from 1939 to 1945, he chose not to unleash such charges against it, or its adherents. However, in the post-war period Pius proved critical of nazism as well as communism, as he moved closer to the Western allies. The Vatican’s ‘alliance’ with the western bloc contributed to the triumph of Christian Democracy in Italy and Germany, as well as the containment of the Soviet Union, but compromised papal neutrality. Pius, who had early on predicted the opening of the Cold War, looked forward to its conclusion following the death of Stalin. To be sure, the dictator’s death in March 1953 did not end the tension, but initiated the movement from the Cold War to the ‘cold peace’. Pius, for his part, contributed to this development by separating the ‘suffering’ Russian people from the ‘odious’ communist system, offering hints that an accord with this regime might be necessary and possible. Indeed, in his Christmas message of December 1954, he called for a ‘coexistence in truth’ to replace the climate of fear.78 During the course of 1955, the year that Konrad Adenauer visited Moscow, Pius – distressed by the proliferation of the nuclear arsenal in a bipolar world – further elaborated his call for co-existence between East and West. ‘The true Christian westerner nourishes thoughts of love and peace toward the peoples of the east, who live within the sphere of influence of a materialistic Weltanschaunng supported by state power,’ the Pope proclaimed. ‘If the question of coexistence continues to move the spirit: faithful westerners

Pius XII and the Cold War 63

pray together with those on the other side of the iron curtain who are still stretching out their hands to God …’79 At the end of 1955, the Pope, who continued to condemn communism as a social system, longed to return to the diplomatic via media he had earlier espoused. He warned the West of the inherent danger of an indiscriminate opposition to any sort of co-existence. Pius thus offered the Soviet regimes of eastern Europe a cease-fire in the Cold War. The signals from the Vatican were received by Moscow, which recognised that despite ideological differences there might be ‘useful’ and perhaps even ‘official’ relations between their Party and the Papacy.80 In December 1956, in his Christmas message, Pius revealed that he still refused to launch a Christian crusade against the Soviet regime.81 At the same time, a new understanding was elaborated between the communist regime in Poland and the Catholic Church. The following year Auxiliary Bishop Josip Lach of Zagreb was allowed to venture to Rome, and facilitated an agreement between the Vatican and Yugoslavia, allowing their bishops to travel to Rome for the obligatory ad limina visits to the Holy See.82 Then, at the beginning of 1958, Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko, acknowledging the deep ideological differences between Moscow and Rome, still believed that agreement was possible with the Vatican on ‘various questions of peace’.83 By 1958 and the end of Pius XII’s Pontificate, the Vatican was moving to reach some accommodation with the Soviet system, as it sought to shift from de facto alliance with the West to non-alignment. Paradoxically, the Pope, who had assumed a leading role in the opening of the Cold War, now joined forces with those who called for its conclusion. This process would reach fruition with his successors, John XXIII’s aggiornamento and Paul VI’s Ostpolitik, with the Cold War finally ending during the pontificate of the Polish Pope, John Paul II.

Notes 1 2

3

4

J. Bryan Hehir, ‘Papal Foreign Policy’, Foreign Policy (Spring, 1990), p. 26. Divini Redemptoris on Atheistic Communism, in Principles for Peace: Selections from Papal Documents from Leo XIII to Pius XII (Washington, DC: National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1943), pp. 510–34. For an analysis of the American role and responsibility look at H. W. Brands, The Devil We Knew: Americans and the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). Herbert Feis in his volume From Trust to Terror: The Onset of the Cold War, 1945–1950 (New York: Norton, 1970), has one scant reference to Pius XII. The more recent From Yalta to Berlin: The Cold War Struggle over Germany by W. R. Smystrer (New York: St. Martin’s, 1999) has none!

64 Religion and the Cold War 5 6

7

8 9 10 11 12

13

14 15 16

17 18 19 20

21

22 23 24 25 26 27 28

Thomas A. Kselman and Steven Avella, ‘Marian Piety and the Cold War in the United States’, The Catholic Historical Review, 72(3) (July 1986), p. 419. This has been persuasively demonstrated by Owen Chadwick in a series of works including his Britain and the Vatican during the Second World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). For the reaction of Pacelli to these events see John Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII (New York: Viking, 1999) and Emma Fattorini, Germania e Santa Sede. Le nunziature di Pacelli tra la Grande guerra e la Repubblica di Weimar (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1992). In this regard se Pier Giorgio Zunino La questione cattolica nella sinistra Italiana (1919–1939) (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1975). ‘On the Limitations of the Authority of the State’. Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 31 (1939), pp. 413–53. Ibid., 37 (1946), p. 154. Italo Garzia, ‘Pope Pius XII, Italy and the Second World War’, in Peter C. Kent and John F. Pollard, (ed.), Papal Diplomacy in the Modern Age, (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 1994), p. 129. This has been persuasively demonstrated by Owen Chadwick in a series of works including his Britain and the Vatican during the Second World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1986), Chadwick, p. 82. Myron C. Taylor, (ed.), Wartime Correspondence between President Roosevelt and Pope Pius XII (New York: Macmillan and Co., 1947), p. 61. Dennis J. Dunn, ‘Stalinism and the Catholic Church during the Era of World War II’, The Catholic Historical Review, LIX.n.3 (October 1973), 406. For a detailed exploration of religious persecution in Soviet controlled areas see Peter J. Barris, Silent Churches: Persecution of Religions in the Soviet-dominated areas (Arlington Heights, Illinois: Research Publications, 1978). Alex Alexiev, ‘The Kremlin and the Vatican’, Orbis (fall 1983), p. 559. Dunn, The Catholic Historical Review, 59(3) (Oct. 1973), pp. 404–7. Hanjakob Stehle, Eastern Politics of the Vatican, trans. Sandra Smith (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1981), p. 211. Myron Taylor to Pope Pius XII, 28 Nov. 1944, in Pierre Blett and Robert A. Graham, Angelo Martini and Burkhard Schneider (eds.), Actes et documents du Saint Seige relatifs a la Second Guerre Mondiale (hereafter referred to as ADSS) (Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1965–81), 11, p. 631. The Papal Secretary of State to the Minister of Great Britain Osborne and the Representative of the United States, 27 July 1944, Actes et documents du Saint Seige relatifs a la Second Guerre Mondiale, ADSS, 11, p. 469. Avro Manhattan, The Vatican in World Politics (New York: Gaer Associates, 1949), p. 218. US Representative to Pius XII, 5 Feb. 1944, ADSS, 11, p. 125. Ibid John Norman, ‘Adlai Stevenson’s Wartime Mission to Italy’ (New York: A Pace University Monograph, n.d.), p. 1. Notes of points drafted by the Secretariat of State for Pope to discuss with Churchill during his visit, 23 Aug. 1944, ADSS, 11, p. 511. Notes of Monsignor Tardini on German peace proposal, 20 Feb. 1945, ADSS, 11, p. 692. Catholic Mind, 43, pp. 66–7.

Pius XII and the Cold War 65 29 Stehle, pp. 238–9. 30 He was Pastor of Our Lady of the Rosary Church, of Springfield, MA. 31 Peter C. Kent, ‘Toward the Reconstitution of Christian Europe: The Aims of the Papacy, 1939–45’, paper presented at the conference, ‘FDR, the Vatican, and the Roman Catholic Church in America, 1933–1945’, at Hyde Park, New York, 8 Oct. 1998, pp. 12–13; Stehle, p. 230. 32 Notes of Monsignor Tardini on the Holy See’s Relations with the Soviet Union, 14 July 1944, ADSS, 11, pp. 462–3. 33 Note of Monsignor Montini, 3 Aug. 1944, ADSS, 11, p. 483. 34 ‘Oggi, al compiersi’, in Carlen (ed.), Papal Pronouncements, 1, p. 121. 35 Myron Taylor to Pius XII, 21 Sept. 1944, ADSS, 11, p. 552. 36 The Holy See and the Allies assess the communist danger differently, 26 Sept. 1944, ADSS, 11, p. 554. 37 In this regard see Edward J. Gratsch, The Holy See and the United Nations, 1945–1995 (New York: Vantage Press, 1997). 38 Monsignor Montini to Myron Taylor, 9 Sept. 1944, ADSS, 11, pp. 534–5. 39 Carlo Falconi, The Popes in the Twentieth Century: From Pius X to John XXIII, trans. Muriel Grindrod (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1967), p. 265. 40 Stehle, p. 225. 41 Catholic Mind, 45, pp. 68–9. 42 Monsignor Tardini’s note to Taylor on the religious situation in Poland, 5 April 1945, ADSS, 11, p. 727. 43 Dunn, The Catholic Historical Review, 59(3) (Oct. 1973), p. 404. 44 Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 38 (1946), p. 400. 45 Giuseppe della Torre, ‘Is War Inevitable?’ L’Osservatore Romano, 14 June 1947. 46 Letter of Pius XII to President Truman, 19 July 1948, in Ennio di Nolfo, Vaticano e Stati Uniti, 1939–1952: Dalle Carte di Myron C. Taylor (Milan: Agneli Editore, 1978), pp. 582–5. 47 This argument has most recently been made in Jonathan Luxmore and Jolanta Babiuch, The Vatican and the Red Flag: The Struggle for the Soul of Eastern Europe (London: Chapman, 1999). 48 John S. Conway, ‘Myron C. Taylor’s Mission to the Vatican. 1940–1950’, Church History (March 1975), p. 98. 49 Hehir, Foreign Policy, p. 28. 50 Stehle, p. 268. 51 Hehir, Foreign Policy, p. 28. 52 Stehle, pp. 270–1. 53 George Kennan, Memoirs, 1925–1950 (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1967), pp. 90–1. 54 In this regard see Ivo Duchacek, ‘The February Coup in Czechoslovakia’, World Politics, 2 (July 1950), pp. 405–20. 55 Ludvik Nemec, ‘Stepan Cardinal Trochta, A Steadfast Defender of the Church in Czechoslovakia’, The Catholic Historical Review, 64(4) (Oct. 1978), pp. 652–4. 56 Stella Alexander, ‘Yugoslavia and the Vatican, 1919–1970’, in Kent and Pollard, pp. 158–61. 57 Cindy Wooden, ‘Bishops Conviction Posthumously Reversed’, The Tablet, 18 Sept. 1999, p. 2. 58 Responsa ad dubia de communismo.

66 Religion and the Cold War 59 Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 44 (1952), pp. 153ff. 60 Monsignor Harry Koenig, ‘The Pope and the Peace in the Twentieth Century’, in Waldemir Gurian and M. A. Fitzsimmons (eds), The Catholic Church in World Affairs (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1954), p. 67. 61 Stella in Kent and Pollard, p. 162. 62 ‘Ad Sinarum gentum’, Acta Apostolicie Sedis, 47 (1955), pp. 5ff. 63 In January 2000, China’s state-controlled ‘Catholic Church’ ordained five new bishops without consulting the Vatican. Chicago Tribune, 7 Jan. 2000; New York Newsday, 4 Jan. 2000. More recently, the Bishop of Shanghai, Cardinal Ignatius Kung, died in exile. 64 Carlen (ed.), Papal Pronouncements, vol. 1, pp. 129–51, 161–3, 177, 201, 203. 65 A. Kselman and Steven Avella, The Catholic Historical Review, 72(3) (July 1986), p. 419. 66 ‘Ad Apostolarum Principis’, June 29, 1958 Acta Apostolicare Sedis, 50 (1958), pp. 601–4. 67 Hehir, Foreign Policy, p. 29. 68 Elisa Carrillo, ‘The Italian Catholic Church and Communism, 1943–1963’, The Catholic Historical Review, 77(4) (Oct. 1991), p. 645. 69 L’Osservatore Romano, 23 July 1944. 70 Notes of points drafted by the Secretariat of State for Pope to discuss with Churchill during his visit, 23 Aug. 1944, ADSS, 11, pp. 505–6. 71 Elisa A. Carrillo, ‘Italy, the Holy See and the United States’, in Kent and Pollard, p. 148. 72 Garzia in Kent and Pollard, pp. 133–4. 73 Gerald B. Fogarty, ‘Vatican–American Relations: Cooperation or Conspiracy’, America, 166(12) (11 April 1992), p. 292. 74 Carrillo, Catholic Historical Review, 77(4) (Oct. 1991), pp. 647–8. 75 Ibid., p. 650. 76 Initially formed as the Sacred Congregation of the Universal Inquisition, it is today known as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. 77 Sandro Magister, La politica vaticana e l’Italia, 1943–1978 (Rome: Reuniti, 1979), pp. 132–3. 78 L’Osservatore Romano, 3 Jan. 1955. 79 Stehle, p. 287. 80 Ibid., p. 299. 81 Emile Poulat, Une Eglise Ebranlée. Changement, conflit et continuité de Pie XII à Jean Paul I (Paris: Casterman, 1980), p. 27. 82 Stella Alexander in Kent and Pollard, p. 162. 83 Stehle, p. 299.

5 The Lonely Cold War of Pope Pius XII Peter C. Kent 1

It was the election of the Archbishop of Cracow, Karol Wojtyla, as Pope John Paul II in 1978 that instigated the public process leading to the end of the Cold War and the break-up of the Soviet Union. Working closely with President Ronald Reagan of the United States, the Holy See exerted sufficient pressure on the communist bloc to force a significant re-evaluation of its continued effectiveness once Mikhail Gorbachev had become Soviet President. The pressure for change gathered its own momentum, fomenting revolutions in many parts of eastern Europe and culminating in the symbolic destruction of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The 1990 reunification of Germany effectively ended the division of Europe which had been the central feature and locus of conflict of the Cold War. As the Holy See was a major player in the events leading to the end of the Cold War, the question must be asked about its role in the initiation of that conflict. Did Pope Pius XII play as central a role in determining the course of international events in the 1940s as his successor John Paul II played in the 1980s? Certainly, any cursory reading of the history of the Roman Catholic Church in the twentieth century would place that institution among the first ranks of the Cold Warriors in its continued opposition to communism and its continued victimisation by the proponents of Marxism-Leninism. If the Roman Catholic Church and Pope Pius XII were so adamantly opposed to communism, how close a collaboration existed between Rome and Washington after the Second World War? Did the policy of containment as enunciated by Harry Truman in 1947 accord with the goals of the Vatican? Was there a working alliance between the American government and the Holy See to resist the extension of communism and, if so, how effectively did it operate? Can the triumphal celebration of the Holy Year of 67

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1950 also be read as a celebration of the anti-communist alliance of the west behind the leadership of the United States with the assistance of the Catholic Church? A close examination of the documentary evidence indicates that most of these questions should be answered in the negative. While the Roman Catholic Church provided much of the ideological rhetoric of the Cold War, it had little direct influence on the course of events. Frequently, the Holy See promoted an agenda which ran counter to the goals of the American government. In fact, the only period between 1945 to 1950 when there was a real concordance of policy between Washington and Papal Rome was the period leading up to the Italian election of April 1948. The Holy See was not in sympathy with the policy of containment which separated Catholic Europeans of the west from Catholic Europeans of the east for 40 years and resulted in extensive persecution of the Church in eastern Europe. In 1948 and 1949, when communist rulers initiated the restriction and persecution of the East European Church, the Holy See found that it received no help and little sympathy from policy-makers in Washington. In fact, Pius XII was induced by 1949 to fight his own religious cold war, using excommunication, one of the few weapons available to him, in a desperate move to shore up the position of the Church in eastern Europe. The image of the Church triumphant in the Holy Year of 1950 belied the fact that, just as Pius XII stood alone at the head of his Church, he also stood alone in pursuing his conception of the Cold War with scant sympathy or assistance from the government of the United States. On the outbreak of war in 1939, the newly-elected Pius XII recognised that Soviet communism posed a major threat to the traditional Catholic civilisation of Europe. Believing that the continued dislocation of European society by war would only work to the advantage of international communism, the Pope’s first objective was to assume a posture of impartiality so that he could be available as a mediator should there be any prospect of compromise peace between the Axis and the Allies. The survival of European culture required compromise and conciliation between the belligerents, and who but the Pope could better preach the blessings of forgiveness? The Casablanca declaration of January 1943, calling for the unconditional surrender of the Axis powers, destroyed all prospects for papal mediation. The war was to be fought to the finish and no compromise would now be possible. Under these circumstances, the Holy See gave up its goal of mediation and instead sought to generate public support to resist the westward expansion of the Soviet Union.2 The Vatican

The Lonely Cold War of Pius XII 69

stood loyally by the Polish government-in-exile in London, even after the great powers, as a result of the Yalta Conference, had accepted the Lublin Committee as the basis for the Polish post-war government. The Holy See also encouraged the American bishops to campaign against the Roosevelt foreign policy and its appeasement of Stalin.3 Having opposed both the doctrine of unconditional surrender and the unity of the Grand Alliance during the war, the Pope turned his attention at war’s end to the plight of the Germans and the Italians. Pius XII recognised that, if the European community were to continue, it was essential to reintegrate the nations of Europe and, thereby, to exclude the influence of the extra-European cultures and values of the Soviet Union and also, by inference, of the United States. This would only be possible if Germany and Italy were to be restored to their place in the European community. In his name-day allocution on St Eugenio’s day, 2 June 1945, Pius XII called on the victors to show compassion to the German people, who had now rid themselves of the criminal government of Hitler. Many Germans, especially Catholics, had resisted Nazism from the beginning but had been powerless to stop it and had suffered accordingly. Now that the Nazis were gone, the government of Germany should be entrusted to those anti-Nazi Germans, many of whom were to be found in the Catholic Church, and should be welcomed back into the community of nations. The victors must be magnanimous and, above all, must never hold the Germans collectively guilty for the crimes of the Nazis. In the same way, the Pope reminded the Allies that the Italians had ejected Mussolini’s Fascists and had joined the war on the Allied side in September 1943. The Italians should not be held responsible for the war any more than the Germans. In the case of Italy, the Pope’s immediate practical concern was to prevent the people from turning to the Italian Communist Party in the event of harsh treatment by the British and American governments. The independence of the Holy See through its temporal incarnation in the Vatican City State depended on the effective continuation of the 1929 Lateran Agreements between Church and Italian State. Such a continuation could not be guaranteed if the communists were to form the government in post-war Italy, which could be the result of withholding of foodstuffs or too harsh a peace treaty.4 In his role as post-war spokesman for the German and Italian peoples, Pius XII not only sought to restore the European cultural community and preserve the temporal power of the Papacy, but he also spoke from his heart and from his personal experience. Pius XII

70 Religion and the Cold War

was an Italian by birth and a German by adoption, having served as nuncio to Bavaria and to Germany during the 1920s and continuing to depend on German advisers and assistants in Rome. He had a warm affection and a sympathetic understanding for both the Italian and the German peoples, now bearing the opprobrium for the atrocities of the recent war. Immediately after the war, the Vatican sought conciliatory peace treaties for both Germany and Italy. There must be no more treaties like the 1919 Treaty of Versailles which had such disastrous consequences for Europe and the world. It soon appeared to the Vatican, however, that the Soviet Union was bent on imposing a punitive peace on both of the defeated Axis powers and intended to use its continuing ties with the Western allies to make this happen. In order to prevent this, the Vatican felt it essential to educate the Americans in the dangers of communism for post-war Europe and to discourage the Americans from continuing their collaboration with the Russians. Working through the American bishops and the American Catholic press, the Vatican mounted a public relations campaign in 1946 to convince the American people and the American government that communists were not to be trusted. Started the month before Winston Churchill delivered his ‘Iron Curtain’ speech at Fulton, Missouri, the Vatican campaign took up the cause of the Croatian Catholic Church, then under attack by Marshal Tito’s communist regime in Yugoslavia.5 The Catholic bishops and clergy of Croatia had, during the war, given support to Ante Pavelic’s brutal and philo-Catholic Ustase regime in Croatia. Aloysius Stepinac, the Archbishop of Zagreb, while protesting some of the worst brutalities of the Ustase, had never broken with that regime and had continued to preside over religious ceremonies attended by Pavelic and his associates.6 Once the communists had secured power in Yugoslavia in 1945, they brought Church leaders to trial, charged with collaboration with the Ustase and complicity in their crimes. Where the wartime position of the Croatian Church had been ambiguous at best, the Vatican mounted a campaign in the American Catholic press which depicted the trial and execution of leading Croatian churchmen as an example of communist persecution of religion. By the time that Archbishop Stepinac himself was tried and convicted in September 1946, the outcry in the United States, Britain, Canada and Latin America was such that the Vatican could be well satisfied with the success of its campaign. Instead of being depicted as a dubious collaborator with the Axis, Stepinac emerged from his trial and the Vatican press campaign heralded as a martyr to communist persecution.7

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The Italian peace treaty of February 1947 was not as generous as the Vatican would have liked, but the strong electoral support for De Gasperi’s Christian Democrats in 1946 was a source of comfort and eventually ensured that the Lateran Agreements would be written into the constitution of the Italian Republic.8 In 1947, the Holy See pinned its hopes on the more difficult German peace treaty, scheduled to be discussed at Moscow in May. However, prior to this meeting, American policy had changed with President Truman’s call for the containment of communism in March 1947. When the Council of Foreign Ministers met in May, the United States was unwilling to proceed with a German peace treaty under Soviet dictate which would have sustained a weak and poor, if reunited, Germany. Instead, the United States introduced the new European Recovery Program, which was announced by Secretary of State Marshall in June, and was designed to integrate western Germany into the economy of western Europe and North America. Instead of restoring Europe, the United States had ensured its division into an American and a Russian bloc for the next 40 years. Once again, the Vatican found itself in opposition to American policy. Both the Pope and the Osservatore Romano, in a series of articles in June 1947, were critical of the American decision, warning that this division of Europe threatened a new war before the last one had been resolved. Fearful lest its own anti-communism had prompted the containment policy, the Vatican sought to clarify its stance by explaining that it was opposed to communism on spiritual and ideological grounds but that it believed that peaceful accommodation with the communist regimes of the Soviet Union and eastern Europe was possible in practical matters.9 The Vatican thereupon sought to establish its neutrality and impartiality between the two blocs and, once again, to assume the stance of the potential mediator. A link between the Washington government and the Holy See had been maintained since 1939 through Episcopalian industrialist Myron C. Taylor as the American President’s Personal Representative to the Pope. While this position had been important to Roosevelt, Truman was considerably less interested in it and had originally planned to terminate Taylor’s appointment along with the position at the end of June 1947. With Vatican objection to the containment policy, however, Truman, who needed Catholic support to get Marshall Plan aid through Congress, changed his mind, continued Taylor in his position, and sent him back to Rome in August 1947 with a personal letter for Pius XII arguing that any genuine peace must be based on Christian ideals and stating that the United States wanted to cooperate with the

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Holy See in building such a peace. Delighted by this attention, the Pope responded warmly to Truman and, in spite of Vatican claims of neutrality, it appeared as if the Vatican had been seconded to the American camp.10 The truth of the matter was that while, in theory, the Vatican could be neutral between the two blocs which were dividing Europe, when it came to the practical issue of preserving its autonomy within Italy, the Vatican could never be neutral, since it could not afford to allow the communists to come to power in that country. With the increased international polarisation following the founding of the Cominform in September 1947 and the communist seizure of power in Czechoslovakia in February 1948, the Vatican set about insuring that there would be no communist victory in the Italian elections of April 1948.11 In this, the Catholic Church was assisted by the American government with special subsidies for the Christian Democrats and threats to terminate Marshall Plan aid if the communists were elected as the government. At this point, the Vatican and the United States appeared to be in close alliance in the Cold War, yet it was a temporary phenomenon. One feature of the developing Cold War was increasing Moscow control over the governments of eastern Europe which, in early 1948, included instructions to the east European governments to limit the independence of the Catholic Church within their borders. The majority of the population belonged to the Catholic Church in the most important of the east European states: Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. The communist parties had had minimal popular support in these countries and had at first sought to enhance the popular toleration of their governance by treating the Church well. Thus, in Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, as well as in Romania and Bulgaria, the Catholic Church had been relatively well treated between 1945 and 1947 and had retained a number of freedoms and privileges. Only in Albania and Yugoslavia, where Church leaders had collaborated with occupation forces during the war, had the Church been deliberately restricted and persecuted. In spite of this situation which favoured the Church in much of eastern Europe and which could have been used to tactical advantage by Church leaders, the Pope believed that the only acceptable posture for the leadership of the Church after the war was one of hostility to the communist regimes. Hence, in Poland, the Holy See refused to recognise the post-war government or to open diplomatic relations with it. The Pope viewed post-war Poland, with its new western frontiers carved out of Germany and its expelled populations of Germans,

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as an impediment to a satisfactory German peace settlement. As a result, the Polish hierarchy frequently found themselves caught between loyalty to their Pope and loyalty to their homeland.12 In Hungary, Pius XII appointed Jozsef Mindszenty as Archbishop of Eztergom and Primate in October 1945. The new Primate’s reputation, according to the British Foreign Office, was ‘that of a very unbending and inhuman, but very zealous, exponent of the antique virtues’.13 Mindszenty was not only opposed to communism and all it represented but he also resented the replacement of the Habsburg monarchy by a democratic republic in 1946. He would agree to nothing proposed or done by the post-war Hungarian government and, in this stance, he was enthusiastically supported by Pius XII.14 Within the east European Church, an undercurrent of opposition developed to this hardline approach of the Vatican. Some bishops, clergy and laity sought opportunities to work with their governments in order to protect the position of the Church and, where possible, to negotiate Church–State agreements which could expand or protect the privileges and freedoms of the Church. These churchmen found that their efforts were constantly criticised by the Vatican. In 1948, Moscow pressed the east European governments to clamp down on the Church. As a result, the Czechoslovak government moved to establish a Czechoslovak National Catholic Church, independent of the Vatican, the Greek Catholics or Uniates of Romania were forced to return to the Romanian Orthodox Church, Catholic bishops and priests were arrested in Bulgaria and, in Hungary, Cardinal Mindszenty was arrested, tried and imprisoned. Tito’s break with Stalin in June 1948 had given urgency to Moscow’s centralisation of power in eastern Europe and, in the long run, neither conciliatory bishops like Josef Beran of Prague nor intransigeant ones, such as Mindszenty of Hungary, were spared. With this new attack on the Churches, the Vatican found itself with few allies and few resources. The United States government showed little interest in the plight of churchmen behind the Iron Curtain, since its policy was containment, not rollback. As Tito defected from the Soviet bloc, the United States lost no time in courting him and, in spite of his continued persecution of the Catholic Church, were prepared to grant him a major loan and welcome him into the anti-Soviet camp.15 Relations between Washington and the Holy See deteriorated as a result of the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 with Vatican insistence on the internationalisation of Jerusalem and the Holy Places.16 Myron Taylor showed less interest in Vatican sensibilities as

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he sought to develop a religious front in the Cold War, trying to link them with the World Council of Churches and the Œcumenical Patriarch. Vatican officials were plainly growing tired of Taylor’s meddling and wished that the United States would appoint a regular ambassador as did other countries.17 The trial and imprisonment of Mindszenty forced the Pope to take action in the only way that was open to him in 1949. By that time, the religious cold war in eastern Europe had become a struggle between communist state authorities and the Vatican for the loyalty of east European Catholics. State officials tried to convince Catholics that their best future lay in supporting a Church which gave its first loyalty to the state and which could, in turn, expect to earn privileges from that state. The Vatican, on the other hand, sought to give Catholics the will to resist these blandishments and, on 1 July 1949, the Holy Office issued a decree threatening with excommunication those Catholics who lent support to communism or the communist cause.18 To protect and preserve the east European Church, the Vatican had used the last weapon in its arsenal. Many east European churchmen were embarrassed by this Holy Office decree and none more so than the new Primate of Poland, Archbishop Stefan Wyczynski, who refused to announce it or to make any public reference to it in Poland. This was because the Polish Primate and the Polish hierarchy were engaged in their own secret negotiations with the Polish State which culminated, in April 1950, in a signed Church–State agreement for Poland. This agreement was not only negotiated in defiance of papal directives, but was presented to the Vatican as a fait accompli.19 In August 1950, the Hungarian hierarchy worked out a similar modus vivendi with the Hungarian government.20 While the 1950 Holy Year appeared as an impressive public display of the Church triumphant, this only put a good face on a difficult situation. Not only was the Church under attack everywhere in eastern Europe, but the Pope had no allies and no support. At the beginning of the Holy Year, Myron Taylor arrived in Rome, at the same time as thousands of American pilgrims, to tell the Pope that he was resigning as Personal Representative to the Pope and was closing the American Office to the Vatican. Similarly, within the Church, the Pope’s directives for dealing with the situation in eastern Europe had been ignored by the Polish and Hungarian hierarchies. Pope Pius XII stood alone internationally and within his Church as he celebrated the Holy Year of 1950.

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Notes 1 This chapter is drawn from Peter C. Kent, The Lonely Cold War of Pope Pius XII: The Roman Catholic Church and the Division of Europe, 1943–1950 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002). 2 Maglione to Cicognani (Washington), 27 Feb. 1944, and Maglione to Godfrey (London), 9 March 1944, Actes et Documents du Saint Siège Relatifs à la Seconde Guerre Mondiale (ADSS), vol. 11, pp. 164–5, 195. 3 Taylor to Pius XII, 18 Oct. 1944, ADSS, vol. 11, no. 395, pp. 577–9; Cicognani (Washington) to Tardini, 6 Dec. 1944, ibid., pp. 640–1; Tardini to Cicognani (Washington), 15 Dec. 1944, ibid., p. 649. 4 Osborne (Holy See) to Eden, 4 June 1945, Papers of the British Foreign Office (FO), ZM3216/38/57; John Conway, Nazi Persecution of the Churches (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1968), p. 326; Carlo Falconi, The Popes of the Twentieth Century (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1967), p. 252. 5 Cicognani to Tanner, 2 March 1946, Cicognani to Carroll, 13, 18, 20 April, 7 June and 14 Aug. 1946, Papers of the National Catholic Welfare Conference (NCWC), Washington, DC, box 9, Communism: Yugoslavia: 1944–46. 6 Michael Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930–1965 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), ch. 3. 7 Papers of the NCWC, box 9, Communism: Jugoslavia: Stepinac: 1946–48. 8 Osborne (Holy See) to Bevin, 21 Feb., 7 March 1947, FO, Z2152 and Z2785/201/57; Maritain (Holy See) to Bidault, 25 Feb. 1947, Papers of the Ministère des Affaires Étrangères, Paris, Z Europe 1944–49, Saint Siège 5. 9 Maritain (Holy See) to Bidault, 5 June 1947, Papers of the Ministère des Affaires Étrangères, Paris, Z Europe 1944–49, Saint Siège 6; Gowen (Holy See) to Marshall, 5 June 1947, Papers of the US State Department, 866A.001/6-547. 10 Parsons (Holy See) to Marshall, 17 Oct. 1947, Papers of the US State Department, 711.66A/10-1747 11 Andrea Riccardi, Il ‘Partito Romano’ nel secondo dopoguerra (1945–1954) (Brescia: Morcelliano, 1983). 12 Telegrams from Cavendish-Bentinck (Warsaw), 30 Aug., 5 Sept., and 15 Sept. 1945, FO, N11759 and N11773/6/55, N12317/23/55. 13 Foreign Office Research Department, Biography of Mindszenty, Nov. 9, 1945, FO, R19879/9778/21 14 Osborne (Holy See) to Foreign Office, 22 Aug. 1946, FO, R12761/436/21; Telegram from Parsons (Holy See), 19 Aug. 1947, Papers of the US State Department, 866A.00/8 – 1947. 15 Charles R. Gallagher, ‘Accommodation and Abandonment: The Vatican, the US Department of State and Tito’s Yugoslavia’, unpublished ms. 16 Gowen (Holy See) to Secretary of State, 13 Aug. 1949, Myron Taylor Papers, 26/322; memo to the Secretary of State, 20 Oct. 1949, Papers of the US State Department, 121.866A/10-2049; statement by United States Bishops, 16–18 Nov. 1949, NCWC, Catholic Action. 17 D’Ormesson (Holy See) to Schuman, 7 July 1949, Papers of the Ministère des Affaires Étrangères, Paris, EU – Europe 1949–55, Saint Siège 4. 18 Telegram from Gowen (Holy See), 15 July 1949, Papers of the US State Department, 800.404/7-1549; D’Ormesson (Holy See) to Schuman, 22 July

76 Religion and the Cold War 1949, Papers of the Ministère des Affaires Étrangères, Paris, EU – Europe 1949–55, Saint Siège 14. 19 D’Ormesson (Holy See) to Schuman, 19, 21 April 1950, Papers of the Ministère des Affaires Étrangères, Paris, EU – Europe 1949–55, Pologne 40; Winch (Warsaw) to Harrison, 21 April 1950, telegram from Perowne (Holy See), 24 April, 1 May 1950, Perowne (Holy See) to Bevin, 14 June 1950, FO, NB1781/14, 15, 19, 30. 20 Hansjakob Stehle, Eastern Politics of the Vatican, 1917–1979 (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1981), pp. 280–2.

6 Harry Truman’s Religious Legacy: The Holy Alliance, Containment and the Cold War Dianne Kirby

President Harry S. Truman made religion an integral part of his Cold War campaign to persuade the American people to abandon isolationism, embrace globalism and world leadership, and roll-back communism.1 Although his presidential addresses were infused with religious imagery, religion has not been given serious consideration in examining Truman’s conduct of the Cold War. Throughout his administration the president sought the formation of an international religious anti-communist front against the Soviet Union under his personal auspices. If for no other reason, it is worthy of examination because Truman believed that the president was the only person who could direct US foreign policy, and throughout his administration he and his secretary of state remained completely responsible for it.2 Truman’s endeavour to persuade the world’s religious leaders to ‘realize that a foe common to them all was trying to destroy them all’ can be seen as part of a universal political tradition of harnessing the power of religion to the policy goals of the state.3 It can also be seen as strongly conditioned by the special religious character of American culture. To move, in G. K. Chesterton’s famous aphorism, the ‘nation with the soul of a church’, the conflict with the Soviet Union had to be unfolded as a particular sort of Christian enterprise. It was presented as part of America’s ‘manifest destiny’ and sustained by the conviction that the American cause was morally right and the communists were evil. The appeal to religious sentiment was much more than a rhetorical device intended to bolster anti-communist propaganda. Religious faith in the ‘free world’ represented a means of inoculating people against the ‘virus’ of communism. Behind the Iron Curtain the faithful constituted indigenous anti-communist elements. Religious beliefs inspire the sacrifice of life and liberty; so Marxist atheism offered a natural 77

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conduit for resistance and dissent, both overt and covert, and for turning against communism the very masses to which it theoretically should most appeal. The Truman administration sought to undermine the Soviet and new communist regimes without recourse to actual war. Liberation was implicit in the policy of containment as formulated during the Truman era. The aim was to avoid direct military conflict through the application of external and internal pressures aimed at promoting instability. Religion became a component part of this process, integral to the larger goal of destroying Soviet power and communism. In the fields of propaganda and psychological warfare, the ‘balance of ideologies’ especially, religion proved of exceptional value. It endowed anti-communism, which in essence had no intrinsic positive values, with religious ideals that allowed it to assume doctrinal status in the popular mind as a legitimate ideological concept. In addition to emphasizing freedom and democracy, anti-communism embraced the defence of western civilization and Christianity. In order to validate the religious component, make it an effective ideological weapon and prevent it appearing simply as a politically expedient device, anticommunism required endorsement from moral and religious leaders. Public endorsement would, of course, help sanction containment in its guise of an anti-communist crusade against evil, the precise aim of Truman’s overtures to the world’s religious leaders. The Second World War had alerted everyone – peasants and politicians alike – to the importance of propaganda in the mass communications age. The war of words was the first significant chapter in the all-important psychological dimension of the Cold War. Making atheism a focus for anti-communist propaganda had additional advantages, at home and abroad. At a time when left-leaning Europeans viewed American capitalism with suspicion, Christianity provided a means of highlighting the common cultural traits and values that united Europe and the US. A universal emphasis in western propaganda generally on defending Christianity and Western Civilisation from the encroaches of godless communism indicates the support Truman received from his west European allies and their churches. With Christianity assigned a political role in the Cold War’s ‘balance of ideologies’, religious leaders and institutions found it difficult to escape the imprint of the East–West altercation.4 The Church traditionally prioritized the belief that it ought not to be ‘identified with any particular political or social system’.5 Democracy, however, had its approbation, with the proviso that to be successful it

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required Christianity. This contributed to the situation whereby Western religious leaders were drawn into the East-West conflict on the side of the West, which was precisely where Truman thought all religious leaders ought to be: One idea that has always seemed to me to be worth trying is to bring about the active cooperation of the leaders and the followers of the great religious faiths of the world. If such a common religious and moral front would be organized, a vital force for the advancement of peace could be harnessed.6 Truman began his quest, very significantly, with the Vatican: I sent Myron G. [sic] Taylor, whom I had previously re-appointed as the President’s personal representative to the Vatican, on a special mission to Pope Pius XII to outline my thoughts on this subject. Under the governance of the fiercely anti-communist Pius XII, the Vatican had already shown itself to be the institutional locus in western Europe of ideological opposition to communism. More important still, it was clear from Soviet mobilization of the Russian Orthodox Church and the destruction of the Uniate Church that the Kremlin feared the power of the Vatican to cause unrest and instability within the USSR.7 Interestingly, while the Truman administration perceived the Vatican as a natural ally, its reactionary associations were initially regarded in political circles in western Europe as detracting from rather than enhancing anti-communism. Oliver Harvey conveyed Foreign Office opinion to the British Minister at the Vatican, D’Arcy Osborne: ‘What we feel is that the Pope’s anti-Communist propaganda would be more convincing if he had a more positive line to show as regards the Nazis and Fascists, their heirs and assigns and all those who collaborated with them.’8 Truman, however, was persuaded that the Vatican would be an extremely valuable ally. After the defeat of the communists in the 1946 Italian election and referendum, which saw the Monarchy deposed and a republican government established under the Christian Democrats, Myron C. Taylor suggested to the president that the defeat of communism, secured with the help of papal influence in Italy, was possible on a wider international basis: The Pope has openly challenged Communism from the beginning. He and the Catholic Church are the great bulwark of democracy in

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continental Europe today. The leadership of the Pope in this field is as important to the Western democracies as to Italy and as to the Catholic Church itself in Europe. The cause of Communism versus Christianity and Democracy transcends minor differences in Christian creeds. It is the Great Issue of the future and thus of today.9 Taylor, a former Chairman and Chief Executive of the US Steel Corporation and a New Deal supporter, had originally been appointed as Roosevelt’s personal representative to the Pope at the beginning of the Second World War. Roosevelt had a number of strategic objectives in linking up with the Vatican. There was, of course, its moral authority and influence: abroad among Catholic nations whose support of the allied war effort would be useful, and at home amongst American Catholics who were opposed to US involvement in the war and against aid to the Soviet Union. There was also the possibility that the Pope might be able to keep Italy out of the war. Papal indictments of Nazi atrocities, and perhaps a good word for Russia, would not come amiss and papal approval for the United Nations ideal could be helpful.10 Taylor had little success in shifting Pius XII from his traditional neutrality. The Pope had more success influencing Taylor, particularly impressing upon him the danger to the world represented by Soviet communism and the need for all religions to unite against it.11 Truman not only proved susceptible to the same conviction, it became his legacy to subsequent administrations. In the autobiographical Mr. Citizen, Truman declared: ‘Minor, and even major, differences in how we choose to worship God strike me as being of relatively little importance in the face of an aggressive foe threatening to destroy all freedom of worship and other individual liberties.’12 Truman was persuaded that what had been effected in Italy could be achieved throughout Europe, and indeed on a global scale. It was a conviction that reflected the sense of mission with which Truman and the nation he led were culturally imbued. Truman instinctively appealed to ‘the deep layer of messianic consciousness in the mind of America’.13 He was inclined toward simplistic interpretations, revealed in his depiction of the Soviet Union as an evil force bent on world conquest and the eradication of religion.14 This worldview, to which Pius XII also adhered, cast the US as an earthly saviour. It was endowed with the added advantage of at once obscuring and justifying US foreign policy. In April 1948, the political standing of the Vatican was significantly enhanced when its influence in the Italian elections was perceived as

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crucial in securing the defeat of the strongest communist party in western Europe. Victory, moreover, went to the Christian Democrats, the party, Taylor emphasized to Truman, of the Church.15 The State Department valued papal support for US policy and had been concerned about the consequences for Italy and the world of a communist victory. It questioned how the Vatican could conduct its affairs satisfactorily if the Holy Father was a prisoner of the communist world and the impact this might have on the faithful everywhere.16 Throughout eastern Europe many distinguished prelates had reached an accommodation with the communist regimes, while significant numbers of clerics appeared to be their willing supporters. The State Department, therefore, had had to contemplate the prospect that this could happen to the pragmatic Vatican for whom the survival of the Catholic faith was paramount. As the State Department appointed ‘intelligence person’ on Taylor’s staff, J. Graham Parsons, subsequently remarked: ‘This was a potentially very serious issue as conceived of at the time.’17 The evolution of US–Vatican relations in the post-war period serves as an effective yardstick for measuring the scale and degree of changes in American policy from the wartime alliance with the Soviet Union to a more rigid stance in the early part of 1946 to confrontation in 1947. Fully aware of the serious implications for dialogue and negotiation in the international arena, at crucial points in the congealment of the Cold War Truman deliberately advanced relations with Pius XII. It would seem that this was because of, rather than despite, the open enmity that existed between Moscow and Rome. Truman inherited from Franklin Roosevelt a policy based on cooperation with the Soviet Union and a public anxious for the peace dividends this promised. Neither Pius XII nor Winston Churchill welcomed or approved of Roosevelt’s policy and both were dismayed that Truman adopted it. Pius XII and Churchill were equally concerned to retain US power in Europe to counter the Soviet Union and to preserve their respective domains. Truman, privately contemptuous of both and unwilling to alienate Stalin, initially dismissed their antiSoviet overtures, despite the fact that privately he shared their reactionary views and during the war had voiced the same hope as the Vatican that Hitler and Stalin might well destroy each other.18 Athan Theoharis argued that Truman’s break with Roosevelt’s policy of ‘quiet flexible diplomacy’ was first revealed in April 1945 when he admonished Soviet foreign minister Molotov about Soviet violation of the Yalta provisions concerning Poland. However, Wilson Miscamble

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has shown that Anthony Eden manipulated the president into a tougher stance than reflected his real position at that time.19 The significance of the incident was that adopting a tough stance proved non-productive, impressing on Truman that this was not an effective means of inducing Soviet cooperation. Therefore, when Truman deliberately abandoned conciliation in the course of 1946, it was not a change of tactics; it was a major policy shift. Against a backcloth of crisis in late 1945 and early 1946 – the failed Foreign Ministers’ Conference of September 1945, Poland, Trieste, the Italian colonies and the Iranian question – Truman was persuaded by the critics of accommodation within his administration that the accords achieved by Byrnes at the Moscow Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in December 1945 were ‘appeasement’. Denouncing Soviet outrages in the Baltic, Germany, Poland and Iran, as well as expressing his conviction that it was the intent of the Soviet Union to invade Turkey and seize the Straits, Truman privately told his Minister of State on 5 January 1946 that the Russians understood only an ‘iron fist’ and ‘division’ and that he was tired of ‘babying’ them. Truman’s shift to a more public policy of firmness toward the Soviet Union during the early months of 1946 was, of course, aided abroad by the ineptness of Soviet behaviour, and at home by the first stirrings of the Great Fear.20 Autumn 1945 witnessed the defection of Louis Budenz, the editor of the Daily Worker, followed by his testimony to the House Un-American Committee in the spring of 1946 that the Communist Party in the United States was a direct arm of the Soviet Foreign Department and that every American communist was a potential spy against the US.21 As American public sympathy for the Soviet Union, assiduously cultivated by Roosevelt during the war, rapidly diminished, American anti-communism resumed its traditional dominance. In particular, Stalin’s election speech of 9 February 1946 aroused extraordinary interest and a great deal of hostility in the US, providing George Kennan, whose views had so far been ignored, the chance to influence Washington.22 Kennan’s Long Telegram of 22 February became a document of seminal importance in the definition of the assumptions of American post-war policy. Kennan asserted that the US was confronted with a world conspiracy whose central purpose was ‘to undermine the general political and strategical potential of major western powers;’ that Soviet leaders were impervious to the logic of reason, but would respond to manifestations of force, and that, fundamentally, Soviet Russia was weak and its rulers would retreat when faced with determination.23 For Truman and his administration the

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apocalyptic rhetoric to which religion especially lends itself provided an effective means of articulating that America possessed the necessary determination. Added to which, the alliance with a religious force that proudly presented itself as the foremost enemy of the Soviet regime, an enemy with substantial numbers of adherents under Soviet domination, served warning that the determination transcended the war of words. Truman’s attitude toward Europe’s two most high-profile anti-communists, Pius XII and Winston Churchill, was transformed by political considerations abroad and at home. Truman and his advisers were worried that the Republican Party might use foreign policy issues for partisan advantage. They were equally worried about prospective changes in the international system that threatened US interests. They thus sought ways to cohere their own thinking, gain the initiative, mould elite opinion, shape public attitudes and garner funds from a recalcitrant Congress.24 The unique positions of Pius XII and Churchill, despite a good deal of anti-Catholic and Anglophobic feeling in the US, provided Truman and his advisers an opportunity to launch the public relations and diplomatic offensive considered a necessary prerequisite to implementing their new policy.25 Fraser J. Harbutt has shown how the transition from accommodation to firmness was a series of acts, which in its formative stages was carefully shaped to appear to the Soviets as an expression of an AngloAmerican joint design – one that seemed to portend that coming together of American power and British world-wide connections, ‘which was believed in Washington to be the particular Soviet nightmare’.26 The symbolic statement of this was the Fulton speech in which Winston Churchill, on 5 March in Truman’s presence, advocated an AngloAmerican ‘fraternal association to resist Soviet expansion’. On the same day, the State Department sent notes to the Kremlin demanding explanations for its behaviour in Manchuria, eastern Europe and Iran.27 The historical record acknowledges Truman’s collusion in the composition of the Fulton Speech. Equally significant, residing at Palm Springs prior to the speech, Churchill was privately informed by Taylor that he was shortly to visit the Pope. Taylor’s visit was important because it followed the elevation by the Pope of four ranking American ecclesiastics to the Cardinalate, a gesture intended to honour the US.28 The official American response had initially been subdued and no distinguished presidential representative attended the ceremonies. The Pope’s strident anti-Sovietism at a time when official US policy still remained cooperation, plus the strength of Protestant feeling against

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American representation at the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church, had led Taylor to caution Byrnes at the beginning of February against sending anyone to Rome at that time.29 Instead he advised that he would himself undertake a trip to Italy within a month to six weeks. As significant as the fact that Churchill was informed of Taylor’s trip was his response to it. Churchill requested Taylor to convey to Pius XII his greetings and best wishes, declaring: ‘I am for the Pope … I join Him in combating Communism … He has been outspoken against it very consistently … I have great admiration for the Pope.’30 Churchill’s words were offered in response to a papal warning, most likely conveyed by Taylor, that if all truly religious people did not stand together, civilization was likely to be destroyed. Churchill further endorsed the Pope’s position, at least in respect to Christianity, in the controversial Fulton speech. He warned: ‘Except in the British Commonwealth and in the United States, where Communism is in its infancy, the Communist parties or fifth columns constitute a growing challenge and peril to Christian civilization.’ The Pope had provided moral sanction for the countering Anglo-American mission Churchill advocated and Churchill now extended to him its embrace.31 Following the furore caused by the Fulton speech, which Truman knew to have heightened Stalin’s suspicion, the president notably instructed Taylor to return to Rome as his own Personal Representative to Pius XII.32 It is in the context of the Fulton Speech, intended by American leaders to be taken by the Soviet Union as an authoritative definition of the new American militancy, and as such it was taken, that Truman’s public announcement that he was sending his own personal representative to Pius XII must be assessed.33 In Soviet eyes, Churchill was the leading European anti-Bolshevik statesman of the post-revolutionary era.34 Pius XII was his ecclesiastical equivalent. Churchill signified a politico-military combination; Pius XII signified a moral and spiritual corollary. Truman deliberately used these two highly significant figures to emphasise to the Soviet Union the profound shift in US policy that Fraser Harbutt has labelled a ‘multidimensional reorientation’.35 On 3 May, Truman issued a press release announcing that the Taylor mission was once more operative, as it had been under Roosevelt, stating that the peace for which the Second World War had been fought had not yet been secured.36 Roosevelt’s wartime appointment of Taylor had outraged American Protestants and assurances had been given to their leaders that it was but an expediency, which would end with the war.37 Truman’s direct appropriation of this unpopular

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diplomatic appointment, despite the extensive domestic repercussions its maintenance had induced, revealed not only the change in his own attitude toward the Soviet regime, but his confidence that a similar change was occurring, or would soon occur, in American public opinion. Despite Truman initially appearing impervious to papal concerns about the Soviet threat, the Americans were far from slow in investing in the Church once they recognised its potential to serve American interests. During the first year of the Truman administration about 40,000 dollars of public money was spent in connection with Taylor’s mission, far exceeding wartime expenditure.38 The 1946 Italian elections were largely responsible. With the strongest communist party in the Western world, Italy’s national election assumed the aspect of an international contest, part of the emerging East–West struggle.39 Although technically forbidden by the Lateran pacts to get involved in Italian politics, the Church under Pius XII ignored this injunction. It was assisted in this course by a US State Department impressed by the post-war resistance of the Church to the spread of communism at every level of Italian life. Taylor favoured disclosing America’s generous financial contributions to the Vatican, convinced that the combination of papal influence and American wealth would prove irresistible in persuading the Italian electorate to reject the left.40 Taylor proved correct, certainly in 1946, and even moreso in the crucial 1948 Italian elections. Anthony Rhodes, stressing how the Vatican has ‘always looked for support from a secular arm’, observed that ‘In Vatican history the post1945 period is notable for the way it has cultivated the United States.’41 It was a strategy in which Pius XII was ably assisted by Taylor, whose dispatches impressed upon Truman that the Italian election and referendum of 2 June 1946, which saw the monarchy deposed and a republican government established under the Christian Democratic Party, with the Communist Party relegated to third place, was a triumph for the power and influence of the Holy See.42 Its political standing was, in fact, so enhanced that the London Observer, remarking on the common assumption that after all its deals with Nazism and Fascism the Vatican’s political role in post-war Europe would be negligible, stated: ‘One result of the recent elections in western Europe is the emergence of a virtual western bloc under Vatican leadership.’43 Noting that Comintern and Vatican were now arrayed against each other in almost every country on the Continent, the Observer contended that in the next 5 to 10 years it would be the Vatican rather than the Comintern that swayed Europe ideologically – precisely Taylor’s view.

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Taylor had been impressed with the potential power of religion to combat the SU since 1936, when Pius XII, then Cardinal Pacelli, had warned him that the greatest threat to the future was the Soviet Union and that a time would come when all the churches would need to combine in order to resist and defeat atheistic communism.44 Although by no means a church-goer, Truman was still a religious man – indications are that in his youth he had contemplated becoming a minister – and this idea held a special appeal for him as the leader of a nation which considered itself a special moral force in the world, with a unique mission, born of its righteousness.45 From the beginning of his presidency, Truman appealed to what Reinhold Niebuhr referred to as the ‘deep layer of Messianic consciousness in the mind of America’. On assuming the presidency in 1945, Truman declared: ‘I believe, I repeat, I believe honestly – that Almighty God intends us to assume the leadership which he intended us to assume in 1920, and which we refused. And I believe if we do that, our problems would almost solve themselves.’46 On a more mundane level, and in keeping with the perceived pragmatism of American political culture, Truman’s interest was secured by Pius XII offering access to information gathered from the Roman Catholic Church’s world-wide intelligence sources.47 The Vatican Secretariat, and indeed Pius XII himself, prepared special reports for Truman conveyed via Taylor, who was himself a direct conduit of information from all sorts of Vatican related sources direct to the President.48 Unsurprisingly, the intelligence focused on the role of communism in the world and issues of conflict between East and West, such as Trieste, in 1946 an area of bitter dispute between Yugoslavia and Italy. Although the utility and worth of Vatican information is questionable, US intelligence was still in its infancy and the Roman Catholic Church was prized for having access to, and influence in, areas regarded as crucial by American policy-makers, particularly eastern Europe and Latin America.49 The State Department even had hopes that the Pope might be able to persuade Franco to relinquish power in Spain to more moderate elements.50 Perhaps even more important, the Vatican confirmed a world-view to which the US had chosen to adhere. To highlight for Truman the advantages to be derived from an alliance with the Vatican, Taylor had the State Department prepare a map of Europe, previously discussed with Pius XII, which detailed the religious make-up of each country’s population. It revealed the Roman Catholic Church to be the largest organised institution opposed to communist domination operating behind the Iron Curtain. As Taylor

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pointed out: ‘The importance of the Church and thus of his Holiness the Pope is therefore worthy of serious consideration.’ Moreover, he advised that what Pius XII had helped achieve in Italy he could help achieve elsewhere. The atheism of Marx provided a potential focus for dissent in the satellite states and allowed Truman to turn containment into an ideological crusade in the West that united the American people and inhibited dissent. An astute politician, aware of the religious dimensions of his office, Truman consciously used religious symbols in his leadership, fully knowing that the dressing of foreign policy in moral terms both obscures and justifies its purpose. Philip Wander points out that: ‘God dampens public debate … While a “crisis” may argue for an end to debate, spiritual imperatives close it down … demand overwhelming support and encourage dependence on the established order.’51 Truman’s Cold War rhetoric was a synthesis of nationalism and spiritualism in which he skilfully used symbols of transcendent values and of the nation’s spiritual heritage. While there is evidence that his administration did attempt to explain to the American people the economic realities influencing their policy choices, confronted with the need to move the nation from its traditional isolationism and abhorrence of involvement with the affairs of other nations, Truman and his advisers could not resist the temptation to simplify Soviet intentions.52 As the Truman administration moved from accommodation to firmness, prominence was given to the ideological and totalitarian character of Soviet foreign policy. Kennan’s assessment in the ‘long’ telegram became the established verity: ‘the notion that the Soviet Union sought world domination became a fundamental postulate of American national security doctrine.’53 The importance attached to ideology was evident in Truman’s 12 March 1947 address to a joint session of Congress in which he expressed the necessity of choosing between alternative ways of life. This was followed by the Truman Doctrine, enunciated on 14 March, calling for 400 million dollars in aid, mostly military, to Greece and Turkey to help ‘free peoples’ resist totalitarianism. Presidential aide Clark Clifford stated that the speech was intended to be the ‘opening gun’ in a campaign to make the American people realise that the war wasn’t over by any means.54 The Marshall Plan followed this, of course, in June 1947, the significance of which, according to the ‘intelligence’ person on Taylor’s staff, J. Graham Parsons, was immediately recognised by the Vatican which, during this period, looked with particular interest and favour on US initiatives. Observing that ‘there was a very real convergence of

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interests in relation to this particular matter’, Parsons noted how the Marshall Plan ‘was greeted with profound relief, satisfaction and hope.’55 Parsons cogently remarked that the prospect of the ‘head of the Church of Rome … sitting on his tiny little island in the centre of the city surrounded by a Red Sea of Communist Italy … sort of boggled the mind.’ Appointed by the State Department immediately following the announcement of the Truman Doctrine, Parsons claimed that the Vatican quickly appreciated its full significance. He added: ‘I don’t think it’s too far to go in saying that most probably all the top people in the Vatican saw the United States as the only possible salvation of the values which they fundamentally stood for.’ He also noted ‘a very real convergence of interests in relation to’ the Marshall Plan which the Vatican ‘greeted with profound relief, satisfaction and hope’ and as ‘directly consonant with its own interests …’56 Pius XII perceived US wealth, power and influence to be the means of stopping, and indeed of reversing, the spread of communism. Parsons reported how Pius XII took care to ensure that the 17 different groups of Congressmen and Senators who visited Rome in this period received an audience. Pius XII made an allocution to all of these groups. Parsons observed: ‘By implication these were strong affirmations of hope and encouragement to the Congressmen to vote in favour of the Marshall Plan.’ He told the State Department that, with great finesse and great subtlety, the Pope was lobbying for the Marshall Plan.57 In August 1947 Truman instructed Taylor to return to Rome on a mission ‘to obtain the energetic cooperation of all men and women of goodwill, whether in religion, in government, or in other activities of life’ to ensure ‘peace under a moral world order’.58 This was followed by a publicised letter exchange between president and Pope in which, although both adhered to the convention of not naming the Soviet Union, each severely indicted it. Each pledged their resources to a lasting peace which both affirmed could only be built on Christian principles. Truman proclaimed the US to be a Christian nation dedicated to the cause of freedom, declaring: ‘To such a consummation we dedicate all our resources, both spiritual and material, remembering always that except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain who build it.’ Calling on all persons, regardless of divergent religious allegiances, to unite to preserve freedom, morality and justice, as they had done in the Second World War, Truman denounced ‘the chains of collectivist organization’, encouraged religious freedom and expressed his belief that the greatest need of the world was a renewal of faith. Truman’s

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references to an evil, disruptive force intent on thwarting the hopes and ideals of mankind was quite clearly the atheist Soviet Union. His assertion that the alliance between the US and the Vatican was based on shared moral and spiritual values acknowledged Pius XII as a central figure in the western alliance.59 In response, Pius XII endorsed US policy, for which he begged God’s assistance, portraying the battle against communism as an extension of the conflict in which the Church had been involved for the past 2,000 years, that against evil. The exchange was a symbolic repudiation of accommodation and negotiation, as was made resoundingly clear by Pius XII stating there could be no compromise with an avowed enemy of God.60 It was also a strategic move, providing moral justification for containment, placing the blame for deteriorating international relations onto the Soviet Union, and, like the Marshall Plan, encouraging dissent within the Soviet sphere. Taylor informed Truman of a conversation on the eve of the letter exchange in which he and the Holy Father had ‘reviewed prospective religious influence and canvassed various plans that have been proposed to you and by you for cooperating in some parallel or common action the power of various religious orders with the objective of conveying to those who are hopeless in many places both within the Russian orbit and outside it such assurances that their misfortunes have not been forgotten.’61 Nor was it a coincidence that the letters were made public while Truman was in Rio de Janeiro attending a conference of Latin American nations, Roman Catholic countries considered crucial for US security and prosperity and on which the State Department believed the Vatican exerted a special influence. The Vatican was equally intent to exploit the alliance. Copies of the letter exchange were printed in brochures in six different languages and circulated by the Vatican Secretariat to all missions accredited to the Holy See. The New York Times saw this ‘unusual action’ as underscoring the importance attributed by the Vatican to the letters, copies of which, it reported, Catholic organisations planned to print in tens of thousands for distribution among the faithful, including in eastern Europe.62 The New York Times had no doubt but that the exchange was part of a joint US–Vatican plan to weaken Soviet influence. It pointed out that the Vatican anticipated considerable results for its anti-communist campaign both in Italy and the rest of Europe now that Catholic clergy could point to the material advantages that would come from the US to a country which opposed communism within its borders and joined the ranks of the democratic nations.63 This was confirmed by Don

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Leone Fumasoni-Biondi, a nephew of Cardinal Fumasoni-Biondi, who told Parsons that the Vatican ‘had been tremendously bucked up’ by the exchange and that aside from the good effect on Church morale generally, ‘bit by bit sermons in parishes all over the world would be able to point out arguments well calculated to persuade the faithful that salvation lay in this world on the side of the Church and the United States and was not on the side of the Communists.’64 The Vatican diplomatic corps were convinced that Taylor’s return to Rome in August had raised the curtain on an effort to mobilise Europe on a spiritual plane comparable to the earlier efforts on the political and economic planes, the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan. Indeed, they regarded the US–Vatican alliance and the temporal power and wealth pledged to work with the Church ‘as an impressive achievement’ for the US. Parsons reported, that ‘members of the Corps have … expressed to me their gratification at the American initiative which is helping to dramatize further the issue of the day.’65 Count Del Balzo, Counsellor with the Italian Embassy to the Holy See, believed the letters had had a direct impact on the communist leader, Togliatti, making him resort to extreme statements, ‘so much so that he really appeared less shrewd and cautious and more extreme and illogical’. For Del Balzo this was a good sign that encouraged optimism about the purely political aspects of the Italian crisis.66 It had been as important to Pius XII as it was to Truman to clarify that the way of compromise was closed. There had been those within the Church, as well as the State Department, who argued for some accommodation with the Soviet Union and against an uncompromising stand. These had pointed out to the Holy See that the Soviet Union had become a ‘great Catholic power’ through domination of the satellite countries in which there were upwards of 50,000,000 Catholics. Members of the clergy, particularly younger groups who anticipated having to live in those countries, saw a basis for agreement. Catholics, anti-communist at heart, could be a potential menace to Soviet security. Communist control could be a menace to the continued exercise of the Catholic religion. Here lay scope for negotiation and compromise. Fumasoni-Biondi told Parsons that in the course of the previous year three political personages, whose identities he did not know, had come to Rome at separate times to argue for a deal: ‘Potential enemies could be neutralised in return for concessions which would permit Catholics to exercise their faith without molestation.’67 Pius XII, however, resisted these overtures and, with his principal advisers, remained resolutely opposed to any form of cooperation. None the

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less, some lingering division of opinion had persisted. The letter exchange unequivocally demonstrated that the resolution of the Holy See continued undiminished. The Truman administration seems not to have anticipated the way in which the Vatican maximized and exploited its new alliance. Taylor confessed surprise to Truman about the amount of publicity the Vatican had generated, while Parsons considered the extent to which the Pope had openly sided with Truman imprudent and likely to expose both the US and the Holy See to the sort of criticism which would increase their vulnerability to Soviet propaganda.68 This proved precisely the case. The communist counterblast in Italy was shrill, followed by attacks from Moscow on the Pope’s descent into the political arena.69 Communists did not underrate the power of religion and they were most certainly ‘discomfited’ by the exchange. Parsons reported their dismay that America ‘with a single exchange of letters won the approbation of the spiritual leader of more than 300,000,000 persons, many of them newly within the frontiers of Soviet power and hence, by religious conviction, hostile at heart to that materialist regime.’70 When the Pope addressed 320,000 people on 7 September in St Peter’s Square, reiterating the same themes advanced in the letters, he provoked leftwing demonstrations for several days afterwards.71 The Pope’s defenders countered that his attitude toward the Soviet Union and communism was not new, throughout the war he had made clear that a consolidated peace required effective means to combat and check communist doctrines. What was new was that this was now integral to the thinking of the president of the United States.72 The letter exchange was widely interpreted to herald an ‘anti-Red crusade’. The New York Times saw it as an American-inspired endeavour to which the Pope had given his full support.73 Its Rome correspondent reported satisfaction in Catholic circles over the official joining of the Catholic Church, the greatest spiritual force, with the US, the strongest lay power. It was welcomed as the logical sequel to the American policy, embodied in the Truman Doctrine, of firmness against Russian imperialism.74 The real importance of the US–Vatican alliance symbolised in the letter exchange was that it confirmed the policy of containment implicit in the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan. The latter, it should be emphasised, had been carefully constructed not to omit all hope of future collaboration with the Soviet Union. Even the notorious Fulton Speech had not entirely shattered the convention previously observed by Western leaders of softening criticism of Soviet conduct

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with cordial references to cooperation and common interests. Churchill had certainly stressed the differences between the two systems, ‘fortifying his case with various anti-Soviet images: the mechanistic expansionism of a totalitarian Communist system also portrayed by Kennan, the primitive and greedy “Bear” of traditional Foreign Office stereotype, and the analogy with Nazi Germany suggesting a renewed threat to Christian civilization.’75 None the less, ‘Churchill made a complimentary reference to Stalin, acknowledged the understandable Soviet desire for security in the west, and called for negotiations and a settlement.’76 In contrast, negative images of the Soviet potential for evil dominated the Truman-Pius XII letter exchange, leaving no doubt that the Anglo-Soviet Cold War of 1945–6 was now a US–Soviet Cold War. Moreover it was a war in which Truman perceived religion as a means by which the US could win. In October 1947 Truman had told his wife Bess: ‘If I can mobilize the people who believe in a moral world against the Bolshevik materialists … we can win this fight.’77 At this stage Truman was happily ignorant of the ancient animosities and doctrinal conflicts which bitterly divided the Christian churches, never mind one religion from another, which were to deter his ambitious scheme. None the less, however impractical, perhaps even ludicrous, Truman’s aspirations might seem to those better acquainted with the intrigues and divisions of Christendom, his vision was given substance by the tangible results achieved in Italy. The resounding defeat of the left in the 1948 Italian elections, perhaps the single most important consequence in Italy of the collaboration between the US and the Vatican, resulted in the domination of Italian politics for almost 40 years by the Christian Democrats. The 1948 Italian elections, in the context of the US–Vatican alliance and Truman’s threat that a communist Italy would not be a recipient of Marshall Aid, demonstrated the extent to which economic aid, without doubt the best means at the disposal of the US to check the Soviet Union, was powerfully complemented by religious influence.78 Satirising the choices confronting the Italian people in the 1948 election, Kingsley Martin, editor of the New Statesman, a journal of the British left, paid homage to the powerful combination of Mammon and God: Invited by Togliatti and Nenni to dispense with material aid from the West and spiritual salvation from the Church – to forgo the good offices of both Mr Hoffman and St Peter – they have firmly

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declined to do without the 700 million dollars proffered under ERP, and have shown an unmistakable reluctance to risk hell-fire by voting for the Popular Front.79 Truman’s 1946 decision to return Myron Taylor as his own personal representative to the Vatican was a diplomatic exercise to demonstrate to the Soviet Union the transition of US policy from accommodation to firmness. In 1947 the symbolic letter exchange signalled a move to confrontation. Truman’s approaches to the Vatican in this period demonstrate that far from seeking to resolve, or at least ameliorate, post-war crises, Truman chose to heighten the conflicts that gave rise to the Cold War. A president with a ‘propensity to exaggerate and oversimplify’, who, ‘aided by his advisors’, recognised the relationship between religion and politics ‘instinctively and intuitively’, Truman chose to present US containment of the Soviet Union in terms of a crusade against the forces of evil.80 Moreover, he used the spiritual authority of the Pope not simply to reinforce and emphasise, but to dramatise and publicise the Cold War as a Manichaean conflict, contributing to the onset and intensification of the Cold War and the shape it assumed, including an inherent commitment to undermine the Soviet Union and roll back communism. Toward the end of the Truman administration and in subsequent years, the US–Vatican alliance appeared to diminish in closeness and importance.81 Religion, however, remained at the heart of the Cold War project, to which the success of Christian Democratic parties throughout western Europe testified. The Pope’s conviction that all religions must stand together against the threat of communism had been translated into a presidential project, while religion was clearly assuming a substantive and diverse role in America’s global Cold War offensive. With the advent of the Korean War, Pius XII, and indeed the world, was left in no doubt that Truman was ready and willing to commit US power and resources to combatting the Soviet Union and communism. Truman’s personal endeavours to bring together the world’s religious leaders are not addressed in any of his biographies or any Cold War studies of his administration, although he does allude to them in the autobiographical Mr. Citizen: I had some private exchange of views with Protestant prelates, among them Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam and Dr. Samuel McCrea Cavert. I spoke with several prominent Jewish leaders, and contact had been made with spiritual authorities in the Moslem world. I

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sought to establish communications with leaders of other faiths, including the Dalai Lama of Tibet.82 Truman inferred that he lacked the time needed to convince these leaders ‘of the desirability of a common religious and moral front’ and claimed not to have pursued it further during the remainder of his term of office. In fact, reports to the president clearly show that throughout his administration he continued to employ Taylor’s services to initiate a move to bring about the closer coordination of religious leaders against what he described as ‘an unparalleled threat to all religion’. The perceived success of the alliance with Pius XII encouraged Truman to seek a similar relationship with the leadership of the World Council of Churches in Formation (henceforth WCC). As well as strengthening and legitimating his vision of a religious anti-communist front, he hoped the inclusion of the WCC would defuse Protestant criticism of Taylor’s Vatican office. However, while Truman minimized the degree of opposition his proposal generated, stating only that there was ‘some hesitation by a few leaders of groups here and abroad’, it generated immense problems for religious leaders, not least in the realm of the proper conduct of church–state relations, as well as exacerbating inter-church tensions created by existing Cold War divisions. Convinced that their mutual antipathy toward communism should be sufficient to unite religious leaders against the Soviet Union and behind the US, and failing to appreciate that their mutual antipathy toward each other often far outweighed that toward communism, Truman had difficulty grasping the extent to which his simple proposal was a contentious and complex challenge for the religious realm. His approach to the WCC graphically illustrated the difficulties. The WCC was the institutional expression of the ecumenical movement whose raison d’être was Christian unity.83 Truman appears only to have become aware of the WCC through American Protestant leaders complaining that his alliance with the Vatican favoured the Roman over the non-Roman churches and contravened the American principle of separation of church and state.84 In response to Truman’s overtures American Protestant leaders assured him that they were ‘deeply impressed both by your spirit and by your approach to the world situation. A leader who seeks to “implement the Sermon on the Mount” should have the full cooperation of the spiritual and moral forces throughout the world.’85 Taking these words more literally than they were intended, Truman despatched Taylor to bring the WCC into the anti-Soviet alliance sought by himself and Pius XII.

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WCC attitudes toward the Soviet Union reflected that of western European statesman generally rather than of Truman and Pius XII: they tended to perceive the Soviet threat less in ideological and more in geopolitical and historical terms, as yet another episode in the ageold balance-of-power struggle. Moreover, the WCC commitment was to the ecumenical ideal, the unity of all Christians regardless of doctrinal divisions or differences, and this, in theory, took no account of state affairs. To be identified with US foreign policy in any way threatened the whole ecumenical enterprise.86 It was not, however, ecumenical principles that defeated Taylor’s endeavours on behalf of Truman, but that other, older cold war, the religious conflict between Catholic and Protestant. Indeed, rather than bringing Christian leaders together, Taylor succeeded only in worsening the already all too often dismal relations between the Roman and nonRoman world. None the less, while Truman’s approach to the WCC might have been clumsy and the outcome not as he intended, it was not entirely misguided. The Second Assembly of the WCC was held at Evanston in August 1954. At the time it was considered significant that it was held in America. It seemed that a major world religious presence was being symbolically brought into alignment with the US, the world’s bulwark against forces of anti-religious, totalitarian evil. The Second Assembly attracted attention allegedly equalled only by that for the Republican Convention of 1952. There are profound implications in the fact that ‘Evanston 54’ drew more reporters than the Democratic convention, the establishment of the United Nations in San Francisco, the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, the funeral of Stalin, the peace conference in Berlin and Geneva, all Roman Catholic events from the Holy Year to various Marian and Eucharistic congresses, the wars in Korea and Indochina, or the atomic tests in Nevada and the Pacific.87 Of even more profound significance was the fact that none other than Truman’s successor in the Oval Office, President Dwight Eisenhower, opened the session, calling faith ‘the mightiest force that man has at his command’.88 In addition to his appearance at Evanston, Eisenhower also spoke at the National Conference on the Spiritual Foundations of Our Democracy, held at the Sheraton-Carlton in Washington in November 1954. The conference was sponsored by the Foundation for Religious Action in the Social and Civil Order, one of whose promoters was Edward L. R. Elson, a former army chaplain and pastor at the National Presbyterian Church, Eisenhower’s church in Washington. Another promoter was Elton Trueblood, who was appointed chief of religious policy of the United States Information Agency in 1954.

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Established in November 1953, the Foundation had two major aims: (1) to stress the importance of religious truth in the preservation and development of genuine democracy; and (2) to unite all believers in God in the struggle between the free world and atheistic Communism, which aims to destroy both religion and liberty.89 Truman did not succeed in bringing together the world’s religious leaders, but he had sown powerful seeds. There were numerous indicators of his legacy during the Eisenhower era. Eisenhower was known not to have joined a church until he entered the White House.90 Yet during the Eisenhower years, in addition to the president’s personal manifestations of religiosity, the rhetoric and symbolism of the period leave no doubt but that religion remained a strategic weapon in the Cold War arena.91 The most well-known symbol was, of course, the addition of the words ‘one nation under God’ to the Pledge of Allegiance on 14 June 1954, Flag Day. The proposal had originated some years previously in Roman Catholic circles.92 Also in 1954, Congress required all US coins and paper currency to bear the slogan ‘In God We Trust’, and two years later that became the official US motto.93 In this same period a ‘Christian amendment’ to the Constitution was easily defeated. In line with Truman’s vision, ‘Adhesional religious symbolism was what Congress wanted, not invidious distinctions among the God-fearing.’94 Recent scholarship by Seth Jacobs has shown how religion contributed to Eisenhower’s tragic Vietnam policy. Jacobs shows how Eisenhower sought to ‘capitalize on the religious issue’ in his formulation of policy toward Vietnam, a Buddhist country with a significant Roman Catholic elite. Vietnam was presented to the public as a conflict of religious and irreligious forces. Religious freedom and the persecution of religion were key propaganda themes. The American public thought Vietnam was a Roman Catholic country.95 For Eisenhower, like Truman before him and Reagan afterwards, and for millions of ordinary Americans, the conflict with international communism was in its quintessence a holy war. Few dissented from the logic of the Cold War, the containment and eradication of evil. By the end of the Eisenhower administration, Reinhold Niebuhr, America’s pre-eminent religious intellectual, conceded that the West had been successfully inoculated against communism ‘by the historical dynamism of the Judaeo-Christian tradition’.96 The most potent testimony, however, to the centrality and strength of religion in the Cold War drama, and to Harry Truman’s vision, came toward the end of the

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Cold War. The alliance between President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II was widely perceived to have precipitated precisely what Truman and Pius XII had hoped to achieve, the collapse of the Soviet regime and the demise of communism.97

Notes 1 D. Kirby, ‘Ronald Reagan, Harry Truman and the Vatican: Promoting Holy War Behind the Iron Curtain’, annual conference of the British Association for American Studies, Glasgow University, 28 April 1999. 2 Harry S. Truman, Truman Speaks (New York, 1960), pp. 6–7. 3 Ibid., p. 119. 4 For a detailed exegesis of the impact of the Cold War on a state church, see Kirby, ‘The Church of England in the Period of the Cold War, 1945–56’, Ph.D. dissertation, Hull University, 1991. 5 Andrew Chandler, ‘The Church of England and the Obliteration Bombing of Germany in the Second World War’, English Historical Review (Oct. 1993), pp. 923–4. 6 Truman, Mr. Citizen (New York, 1953), p. 119. 7 Anna Dickinson deals in detail with Soviet concerns about the Vatican in Chapter 2 of this volume. 8 Oliver Harvey to D’Arcy Osborne, 26 Feb. 1947, FO 371 67917; Public Record Office (henceforward PRO). 9 Taylor to Truman, 21 June 1946; White House Correspondence File (henceforward WHCF) 44, Truman Papers, Harry S. Truman Library (henceforward HST papers). 10 For US–Vatican relations during the war, see G. Q. Flynn, Roosevelt and Romanism: Catholics and American Diplomacy, 1937–45 (New York, 1976); and Owen Chadwick, Britain and the Vatican During the Second World War (New York, 1986). 11 Taylor to Pius XII, 20 June 1951, Myron C. Taylor Papers, Harry S. Truman Library (henceforward Taylor Papers). 12 Truman, Mr. Citizen, p. 119. 13 Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History (New York, 1952), p. 69. 14 Arnold A. Offner, ‘Harry S. Truman as Parochial Nationalist’, in T. G. Paterson and R. J. McMahon (eds), The Origins of the Cold War (Lexington, MA, 1991), pp. 49–59. 15 Taylor to Truman, 11 June 1946; WHCF 45, HST Papers. 16 Manuscript of oral interview conducted by R. D. McKinzie with J. Graham Parsons, p. 46; J. Graham Parsons Papers, Truman Library (henceforward Parsons’ Papers). 17 Ibid. 18 For examples of Truman’s dismissive attitude toward Pius XII and Churchill see R. H. Ferrell, Off the Record: The Private Papers of Harry S. Truman (New York, 1980), pp. 44, 32, 35, 51, 46. For Senator Truman’s wartime attitudes see John Saville, The Politics of Continuity: British Foreign Policy and the Labour Government 1945–46 (London, 1993), p. 42.

98 Religion and the Cold War 19 Athan Theoharis, ‘The Rhetoric of Politics: Foreign Policy, Internal Security, and Domestic Politics in the Truman Era, 1945–50,’ in Politics and Policies of the Truman Administration, ed. Barton J. Bernstein (Chicago, 1972), p. 203. Wilson D. Miscamble, ‘Anthony Eden and the Truman Molotov Conversations, April 1945,’ Diplomatic History, 2 (1978), pp. 167–80. 20 On 14 Oct. 1945 it was noted in the Foreign Office that Russian ‘intransigence’ was greatly helping the British attempts to bring the United States into the ways of British thinking; FO 371/44538/AN 3159, PRO. Joseph E. Davies, a former American Ambassador to Moscow and a sympathetic interpreter of the Soviet Union, wrote in a private letter of 8 Jan. 1946: ‘I know of no institution that needs a high pressure “public relations” organization as much as the USSR. They do not seem to get their case across, even when, as it happens sometimes, they have a good case.’ M. J. Lacey (ed.), The Truman Presidency (Cambridge, 1989), p. 255 n. 68. 21 New York Times, 4 April 1946. Budenz was born into a Catholic family and he rejoined the Catholic Church five days before his public withdrawal from the Daily Worker and the Communist Party. Within 48 hours he had been appointed a professor at the Catholic University of Notre Dame, but soon moved to Fordham, where he taught for 10 years. Budenz, David Caute wrote, was ‘The most successful ex-Communist informer of the postwar period’: The Great Fear: The Anti-Communist Purge under Truman and Eisenhower (New York, 1978), p. 123. 22 Changing public and political attitudes toward the Soviet Union undoubtedly affected judgement of the speech by the media and the State Department. H. Freeman Mathews, Director of the Office for European Affairs, noted: ‘Stalin’s speech of February 9 constitutes the most important and authoritative guide to post-war Soviet policy … It should be given great weight in any plans which may be under consideration for extending credits or other forms of economic assistance to the Soviet Union.’ Foreign Relations of the United States (henceforward FRUS) (1946), vol. 6, p. 695 n. 43. 23 Saville, The Politics of Continuity, pp. 45–9. 24 Melvyn P. Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration and the Cold War (Stanford, 1992), p. 107. 25 Winston Churchill was personally very popular in the US, while it needs to be remembered that the reputation of Pius XII, which since the sixties has been subjected to severe attacks, was at that time akin to the reputation today associated with John XXIII. The scholarly attack on Pius XII began in 1963 with Rolf Hochhuth’s play Der Stellvertreter, about the Pope and the Jewish holocaust. He was subsequently accused of anti-Semitism by G. Sereny, Into that Darkness (London, 1974), pp. 283, 327, and Paul Johnson, Pope John XXIII (London, 1976), pp. 58, 262. See also Malachi Martin (Three Popes and a Cardinal), Saul Friedlander (Pius XII and the Third Reich) and P. Lapide (The Last Three Popes and the Jews). M. O’Carroll addresses criticism of the Pope in Pius XII: Greatness Dishonoured (Dublin, 1980). 26 Fraser J. Harbutt, ‘British Influence: Winston Churchill and the Iron Curtain Speech’, in Paterson and McMahon (eds), The Origins of the Cold War, pp. 156–78. 27 Leffler, Preponderance of Power, p. 110.

Harry Truman’s Religious Legacy 99 28 M. Sheehy, the head of the religious education department at Washington’s Catholic University of America, emphasised the honour accorded the US and suggested a special presidential representative, as other countries with ‘cardinals in the making’ would certainly send distinguished guests to the Vatican ceremonies. Sheehy to Byrnes, 27 Jan. 1946, Italy-Vatican file, HST Papers. 29 Byrnes memorandum for Truman, 4 Feb. 1946; Italy-Vatican file, HST Papers. 30 Taylor, ‘Churchill at Palm Beach, 24 February 1946’, Taylor Papers. 31 The political advantage of an alliance with the Pope was considered by the British Foreign Office’s Russia Committee on 14 May 1946, following the suggestion by Lord Addison to Prime Minister Attlee that the Catholic Church might be made use of in the anti-communist struggle. There were a variety of Foreign Office responses. The opposition included Thomas Brimelow, who thought it ‘a most dangerous suggestion’, and Robin Hankey, who advised: ‘Let’s keep clear of the Vatican. Their ways are not ours, and they are rather in disgrace all over Europe for trimming during the war.’ Despite such views, the Russia Committee’s conclusions reveal that Truman and Taylor were far from alone in recognizing the Vatican as a potentially powerful Cold War ally: The Committee was of the opinion, however, that as the Roman Catholic Church was one of the most powerful anti-Communist influences it might be of advantage, without directly seeking the cooperation of the Vatican, to assist the Church in deploying its influence by facilitating the movements of its emissaries, or by other inconspicuous means. It was recommended that His Majesty’s Minister at the Vatican should be furnished with information regarding Communist activities for use in his contacts with members of the Papal entourage, Catholic bishops visiting Rome, or other influential members of the Catholic hierarchy. It was further recommended that in the circular dispatch to Heads of Missions abroad, their attention should be drawn to the potential importance of organized religion in combating the spread of Communism. (FO 371/56885, PRO) 32 Truman to Taylor, 20 April 1946, Taylor Papers. 33 The British Ambassador to Moscow, Frank Roberts, reported a frank but friendly exchange between Stalin and the new American Ambassador, General Walter Bedell Smith, at the beginning of April 1946 in which Stalin made it very plain that Churchill’s Fulton speech was taken as a very hostile act. Insisting that Truman should never have allowed such a speech to be made in the US, Stalin stated that in his view ‘Churchill was speaking with authority, and also that he regarded a close Anglo-American understanding as already existing.’ FO 371/56832/ N 5502, 9 April 1946, PRO. 34 Harbutt, ‘Winston Churchill’, Origins of the Cold War, pp. 156–78. 35 Ibid. 36 Taylor to Hassett, 21 May 1946, HST Papers. 37 A. Karmakovic, ‘The Myron C. Taylor Appointment: Background, Religious Reaction, Constitutionality’, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1967.

100 Religion and the Cold War 38 ‘The Vatican Embassy Fraud’, Christian Century (April 1946). 39 Stephen Hellman, European Politics in Transition (Lexington, 1992), pp. 329–420. 40 ‘Taylor interview with Cardinal Della Costa in Florence’, 21 May 1946, Taylor Papers. 41 Anthony Rhodes, The Vatican in the Age of the Cold War 1945–1980 (London, 1992), p. 174. 42 Taylor to Truman, 23 May 1946, WHCF files, HST Papers. 43 The Observer, 16 July 1946. 44 ‘Meeting of Protestant Clergymen with Myron C Taylor at Union Club, Park Avenue and 69th Street, New York’, 20 Oct. 1947, pp. 5–6, Taylor Papers. 45 R. D. Eggert, ‘Harry the Baptist: Harry S. Truman and the Baptist Church’, MA thesis (March 1988), copy in Truman Library. See also M. Gustafson, ‘Harry Truman as a Man of Faith’, The Christian Century, 17 Jan. 1973, pp. 75–8. 46 Frank McNaughton and Walter Heymeyer, This Man Truman (New York, 1945), p. 179. 47 Taylor told Truman that he was being aided by His Holiness and his staff, ‘in a most secret and confidential way’, to compile a full report on all the Russian controlled countries of eastern Europe. Taylor to Truman, 25 June 1946, WHCF 44, HST Papers. 48 In the summer of 1946 Taylor received from General Anders, commander of the Polish army in exile, a memorandum and a chart of the disposition of the Russian Army not only in western Russia but also in countries under Russian control. The US Departments of State, War and Navy, all of which confirmed its value, authenticated the information. ‘20 October 1947 Meeting with Protestant Clergymen’, Taylor Papers. The Polish Army in exile began with 180,000 trained soldiers who fled into Russia and were armed and equipped by the Americans to fight the Germans. 49 Owen Chadwick has remarked on the fact that modern scholars, as well as modern propagandists, have sometimes fancied that the Pope, with a priest in so many parishes across Europe, must quickly have known what was happening. But the diplomats in the Vatican kept being surprised by how little the Vatican knew and what poor sources of information it possessed. Chadwick, Britain and the Vatican, p. 201. 50 FRUS, 111 (1947), pp. 1092–7. 51 Philip Wander, ‘The Rhetoric of American Foreign Policy’, The Quarterly Journal of Speech, 70(4) (Nov. 1984), pp. 344–5. 52 Leffler, ‘From the Truman Doctrine to the Carter Doctrine: Lessons and Dilemmas of the Cold War’, Diplomatic History, 6 (Fall, 1983), pp. 247–54. 53 Ibid. 54 Ibid. 55 McKinzie oral interview with Parsons, pp. 53–5. Leffler has shown that the main objectives of the Marshall Plan were to spawn economic recovery in western and southern Europe, undermine the appeal of Communist parties, and thereby subscribe the latent influence and power of the Kremlin; to revive the western zones of Germany and to integrate them into a western economic and political orbit, and to drive a wedge into the emerging bloc

Harry Truman’s Religious Legacy 101

56 57 58 59 60 61 62

63 64 65 66 67 68 69

70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78

79

80

81

82

of Satellite states in eastern Europe. ‘The United States and the Strategic Dimensions of the Marshall Plan’, Diplomatic History, 12 (Summer 1988), pp. 277–85. Ibid., pp. 45, 53, 54–5. Ibid., pp. 45–6, 56–8. Truman to Taylor, 7 Aug. 1947, Taylor Papers. Truman to Pius XII, 6 Aug. 1947, published New York Times, 29 Aug. 1947, pp. 1, 11. Ibid., Pius XII to Truman, 26 Aug. 1947. Taylor to Truman, 27 Aug. 1947, WHCF 44, HST Papers. New York Times, 30 Aug. 1947, p. 6. In October Parsons reported to the State Department that he had little doubt but that the brochures were circulating clandestinely ‘in eastern languages as well’. Parsons’ Diary, 24 Sept. 1947, Parsons’ Papers. Parsons’ Diary, 24 Sept. 1947, Parsons’ Papers. Ibid. Ibid., 17 Oct. 1947. Parsons to State Department, 25 Sept. 1947, Taylor-State file, HST Papers. Parsons’ Diary, 17 Oct. 1947. Taylor to Truman, 28 Sept. 1947, WHCF 44, HST Papers; Parsons’ Diary, Sept.–Oct. 1947. Parsons to Byrnes, 17 Oct. 1947, Taylor-State file, HST Papers. The official newspaper of the Italian Communist Party, Unita, began to refer to ‘Truman’s new order’ as a caustic reminder of Hitler’s ‘new order’ and the Pope’s failure to condemn it. New York Times, 30 Aug. 1947, p. 6. Parsons to Byrnes, 17 Oct. 1947, Taylor-State file, HST Papers. Taylor to Truman, 25 Sept. 1947, WHCF 44, HST Papers. New York Times, 30 Aug. 1947, p. 6. Ibid., 28 Aug. 1947. Ibid., 30 Aug. 1947, p. 6. Harbutt, ‘Winston Churchill’, in Paterson and McMahon (eds), Origins of the Cold War, p. 171. Ibid. Ferrell (ed.), Dear Bess, p. 551. On the eve of the 1948 Italian election, the Pope, confident of the outcome, conveyed his gratitude to Truman for indicating that help for Italy under the Marshall Plan might be suspended in the event of a communist victory. Taylor to Truman, 6 April 1948, WHCF 50, Truman Papers. New Statesman and Nation, 24 April 1948, p. 1. Hoffman was the administrator of the Marshall Plan. See also Paul Blanshard, Communism, Democracy and Catholic Power (New York, 1952), p. 272. Offner, ‘The Truman Myth’, in Paterson and McMahon (eds), Origins of the Cold War, p. 49; Gustafson, ‘Religion of a President’, Journal of Church and State, copy in Truman Library, pp. 380–7. This had a great deal to do with US domestic considerations, while the Vatican increasingly found it wiser not to be seen to be too openly implicated with super-power politics. See Kirby, The Holy Alliance: Harry Truman’s International Anti-Communist Religious Front (Pluto Press, forthcoming). Truman, Mr. Citizen, p. 119.

102 Religion and the Cold War 83 V. ’t Hooft, The Ten Formative Years: The First Assembly of the World Council of Churches (New York, 1949); Darril Hudson, The World Council of Churches in International Affairs (New York, 1977) and The Ecumenical Movement in World Affairs (London, 1969). 84 ‘Meeting of Protestant clergymen with Myron C Taylor’, 20 Oct. 1947, Taylor Papers. 85 Ibid. 86 Kirby, ‘Harry S. Truman’s International Religious Anti-Communist Front, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the 1948 Inaugural Assembly of the World Council of Churches’, Contemporary British History, 15(4) (Winter 2001), pp. 35–70. 87 ‘Assembly in America’, Christian Century, 1 Sept. 1954, p. 1031. 88 Robert S. Ellwood, The Fifties Spiritual Marketplace: American Religion in a Decade of Conflict (New Jersey, 1997), p. 131. 89 Will Herberg, ‘Communism, Democracy and the Churches: Problems of “Mobilizing the Religious Front”’, Commentary, 19 (1955), p. 388. 90 D. W. Brogan, ‘God and the Juke Box’, The Manchester Guardian Weekly, 14 Oct. 1954, p. 12. 91 See J. D. Fairbanks, ‘Religious Dimensions of Presidential Leadership: The Case of Dwight Eisenhower’, Presidential Studies Quarterly, 12 (Spring, 1982), pp. 260–7. 92 M. Silk, Spiritual Politics: Religion and America Since World War II (New York, 1988), pp. 96–7. 93 Ibid., p. 99. 94 Ibid., p. 100. 95 Seth Jacobs, ‘“Our System Demands the Supreme Being”: The US Religious Revival and the “Diem Experiment,” 1954–55’, Diplomatic History, 25(4) (Fall, 2001). 96 Silk, Spiritual Politics, p. 107. 97 Kirby, ‘Holy War Behind the Iron Curtain’, British Association of American Studies, 1999.

7 The Vatican, Italy and the Cold War John Pollard

Introduction Italy was on the ‘front line’ in two senses during the Cold War. On the one hand, the southern end of Churchill’s ‘iron curtain’, Trieste, was on Italy’s redrawn frontier with Yugoslavia. It was still in Italian hands, but only just, and it continued to be disputed with Tito’s new communist regime until 1954. Even more significantly, it could be said that the ‘front line’ in the Cold War actually passed through Italy itself and that the war was ‘fought’ on Italian territory because Italy possessed the second largest Communist Party in the West. Allied in a ‘popular front’ with the still strongly marxian Italian Socialist Party, it presented a formidable challenge in the crucial 1948 general elections. Pope Pius XII and the Italian church hierarchy viewed this situation in apocalyptic terms, especially in 1948. Their response was, as the sociologist Gianfranco Poggi has described it, ‘one of maximum involvement and maximum commitment’ of the Church’s resources.1 The Catholic Action movement, with its massive presence in most areas of Italian civil society, was summoned to battle, a huge propaganda effort was launched in 1948, and in the longer term, popular devotions and the papal cult of the personality were employed against the ‘enemy’, along with the unleashing by the Holy Office in 1949 of the Church’s ultimate weapon – excommunication of all those involved in any way with the left. This chapter will explore the ways in which the Vatican responded to the critical situation it perceived to exist in Italy from the onset of the Cold War, essentially between 1948 and 1958, and consider what the short and longer-term effects of its policy were to be for Italy. Given limitations of space, it will be largely restricted to events in the political field, with only passing mention of those in the realm of trade 103

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union affairs. The term ‘the Vatican’ is obviously used here as shorthand for the ‘Holy See’ or the ‘Papacy’, in all of their institutional manifestations in a broader sense. Though the Vatican and the Italian Church are not always necessarily the same thing, the term ‘the Vatican’ will also often be used to refer to the institutional Church in Italy as well, since the two were effectively one during the Cold War period. The modern Papacy reached the apogee of its power in the reign of Pius, indeed Alberto Spinosa has described Pius XII as ‘l’ultimo papa’, the last real pope.2 Certainly, given the particular dominance which Pius XII exercised over the universal Church, and the absence of an Italian Bishops’ Conference until 1956, the Italian episcopal hierarchy lacked an independent voice for most of the period under discussion.

The threat of communism in Italy At the end of the Second World War, Italy, in common with other European countries, faced serious economic, social and political problems. Chief among them was the need to restore the country’s diplomatic standing, indeed to obtain rehabilitation within the international community after the catastrophe of Fascism: this was not to come about until the signing of the peace treaty with the Allies in 1947, or perhaps until Italy’s entry into NATO two years later. The domestic priorities were economic reconstruction and the establishment of an enduring political settlement following the final collapse of Fascism at the end of April 1945, and the abolition of the Monarchy by popular referendum in June 1946.3 The achievement of a political settlement was complicated by the Resistance experience, that is, the fact that between September 1943 and April 1945 hundreds of thousands of partisans had fought the German occupying army and the forces of the Fascist Republic in the hills and mountains of northern and central Italy.4 The dominant political influence in the Resistance had been the Italian Communist Party, the PCI, which benefited from the experience of its clandestine anti-fascist struggle in the 1930s, its involvement in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War, and the prestige accruing from association with the Soviet Union’s military successes after Stalingrad. It was further reinforced by a ‘unity of action’ pact with the Socialist Party. The Resistance was at one and the same time a war of national liberation, a civil war and a class war. Many Communist and Socialist partisans seriously believed that the Resistance movement could and would have a revolutionary outcome, that they would be able to sweep away not only the residues of Fascism but also the capitalist bourgeois state, an expecta-

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tion encouraged by the success of Tito in Yugoslavia and the continuing Communist struggle in the Greek civil war. When the Communist leader, Palmiro Togliatti, returned to Italy in 1944, he sought to dispel this illusion by explaining to his comrades Stalin’s decision that since Italy fell into the Western sphere of influence according to the terms of the Yalta agreement, there could be no revolution there.5 From this point onwards, Togliatti pursued an essentially parliamentary road to socialism, committed to working with other ‘popular’, ‘progressive’ forces – the Socialists and the Christian Democrats – in a government of Resistance Unity. Some Communists, however, never abandoned their revolutionary dreams, any more than they handed over all their arms to the Allied forces in May 1945: many simply buried them in their backyards. Given the undercurrent of industrial unrest, agrarian agitation and political violence in 1946 and 1947,6 many Italians feared a Communist insurrection; and some Catholic Action leaders, especially those with partisan experience, created their own armed units just in case.7 In the elections to the Constituent Assembly, which accompanied the referendum on the monarchy in 1946, the Socialists and the Communists won 20 per cent and 19 per cent of the votes respectively. If the suffrage had not been conceded to women at this time, it is possible that they could have won an absolute majority. In fact, female suffrage helped swell support for the Christian Democratic party, which won 35 per cent of the vote, whereas its precursor in the 1920s, the Partito Popolare, never garnered more than 20 per cent.8 The Communist Party quickly consolidated its presence in Italian civil society in the post-war years, transforming itself from a small, elite party into a mass movement which, thanks to Togliatti’s Gramscian strategy of tactical alliances with other class groups like shopkeepers, peasant farmers and even small businessmen, extended beyond the boundaries of the industrial working class.9 In coalition with the Socialists, the Communist Party was able to win control not only of some big cities in the north but also of provincial and municipal administrations in a swathe of rural areas in central Italy, the so-called ‘Red Belt’. These areas had been among the pre-Fascist strongholds of the Socialist left. After the war, Emilia-Romagna in particular became a major battleground between the left and their political opponents, chiefly the Christian Democrats. Bologna City council was a notable centre of this struggle and David Kertzer’s book Comrades and Christians provides an excellent analysis of this experience.10 The struggles were also carried on in microcosm in the country areas, Giovanni Guareschi’s Don Camillo being a not entirely unfaithful fictional representation of them.11

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The Vatican’s strategy It was against this background, and of course in the context of an Italy slowly and painfully recovering from the devastation of war, that the Vatican developed its response to the threat from the left. In fact, the Vatican hierarchy had been preparing for the dopo-fascismo (the postFascist era) for a long time. Anyone familiar with the thrust of Vatican diplomacy in the 1920s and 1930s will know that Pius XI and his subordinates, including Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, who was Secretary of State from 1930 until his election as pope in March 1939, were preoccupied with the Italian political situation. The Vatican’s acceptance of Fascism after the March on Rome in October 1922, its continuing tacit support for Mussolini during the Matteotti Crisis of 1924, which nearly brought about Fascism’s overthrow, and its worries about the capacity of Fascism to survive the Great Depression and the Italo-Ethiopian War of 1935–6 were all motivated by the belief that there was no democratic alternative to Fascism, and that should it fall then Italy would once more face the danger of communist revolution as she had in the years immediately following the First World War.12 As the regime started to look shaky in 1942, after a succession of military defeats, Pius XII expressed his anxiety to the Americans about the opportunities for the rise of Communism which a political vacuum might create.13 His ‘special relationship’ with Roosevelt, largely mediated by Archbishop Francis Spellman of New York, continued to be of use to Italy in the post-war period. Certainly, papal diplomacy was able to assist the government of Christian Democratic prime minister Alcide De Gasperi to gain credibility and sympathy in Washington, and the Vatican also used its influence in an attempt to mitigate the terms of the 1947 Peace Treaty.14 But the emergence of De Gasperi as prime minister and the triumph of his party at the polls in 1948, due in large part to the support of the Church, should not lead us to believe that support for the Christian Democrats was in fact the Vatican’s preferred option from the beginning. The Vatican was no monolith; on the contrary there were several competing centres of influence there, especially after the death of the Secretary of State, Cardinal Maglione, in 1944 and the failure of Pius XII to replace him. Fr Messineo of the influential Jesuit journal La Civilta Cattolica and Mgr Ottaviani, the half-blind and wholly reactionary Secretary of the powerful Holy Office, preferred an ‘Iberian’ future for Italian politics, in other words an authoritarian, semi-dictatorial regime with solid Catholic support, on the model of Franco’s Spain.15 Cardinal Siri of Genoa, who later became the first president of the Italian

The Vatican, Italy and the Cold War 107

Bishops’ Conference, also preferred this solution.16 Pius XII had his own favourite vision of Italy’s political future – an essentially right of centre parliamentary-based administration led by a pre-fascist liberalconservative politician like Vittorio Emmanuele Orlando, loyally supported by a Catholic party or parties.17 This was a classically Clerico-moderate solution to Italy’s problems, but it had not worked under Benedict XV in the early 1920s, and it was even less likely to work after 1945 when the Italian liberal-conservative party had now been reduced to a shadow of its former self.18 For Mgr Giambattista Montini (later Pope Paul VI), the Vatican’s Under Secretary for Ordinary Affairs, the obvious and right solution was for the Christian Democrats, who were after all the largest political party, to rule Italy.19 And this is what effectively happened whether others in the Vatican liked it or not. De Gasperi’s appointment as prime minister in December 1945, the Christian Democrats’ victory in the 1946 elections, De Gasperi’s success in persuading a two-thirds majority of the Constituent Assembly, including Togliatti and the Communists, to give democratic endorsement and thus effectively constitutional status to the Lateran Pacts negotiated with Fascism in 1929, by approving article 7 of the new constitution, and his expulsion of both the Socialists and Communists from the government in 1947, all proved his extraordinary ability as a politician and his absolute indispensability if power was not to pass to the left. Yet Papa Pacelli gave only grudging endorsement of the Christian Democrats, and as we shall see, he was unwilling to grant them autonomy in their decision-making

Staring into the abyss April 1948 was the high point of the Cold War in Italy. The general elections of that month, the first under the republican constitution, were held in the shadow of the Prague coup when the Communists seized control of Czechoslovakia. It would have been sufficient for the Christian Democrats to have won a parliamentary majority in electoral alliance with the parties of the centre – the Social Democrats who had split from the PSI in 1947, the tiny Republican Party and the PLI, the remnant of a once-glorious Italian liberal-conservative tradition. In the event, the Christian Democrats actually won 48 per cent of the votes and, by a quirk of the Italian system of proportional representation, over 50 per cent of the seats. This was achieved by a quite remarkable mobilisation of the Catholic electorate. The basis for this victory had

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been laid by Pius XI back in the 1930s. When he abandoned the Christian Democrats’ precursor, the Partito Popolare, to its fate under Fascism in 1925–6, he had also returned to the traditional policy of Leo XIII and Pius X of using the Italian Catholic movement as a massa di manovra, a lever in the Church’s relations with the Italian state. The re-organised and re-invigorated Catholic Action movement was used by Pius XI in pursuit of his long-term goal, ‘the Christian restoration of Italian society in a Catholic sense’. It acted, or tried to act, as a pressure group on the Fascist regime on such issues as ‘public morality’, censorship and the activities of non-Catholic religious groups. It was also seen by the pope, and by some of its leaders, as the basis for a possible alternative should Fascism fall.20 When the regime did collapse, Catholic Action was a massive and impressive organisation, with a total of two and a half million members divided between male and female, adult and youth, university student, graduate and labour organisations.21 Hence Luigi Gedda, the national president, could with confidence offer to put the organisation at the service of Marshal Badoglio’s post-Fascist government in August 1943.22 Given the fact that all the political parties and trade unions and other affiliated associations like the press had been destroyed by Fascism, the Italian working class movement had virtually to rebuild itself from scratch after 1945. Not so the Catholic movement, which had survived at least partially intact thanks to the Concordat of 1929. But article 43 of the same Concordat explicitly forbade the direct involvement of the clergy and Catholic Action in Italian politics.23 In order to circumvent this, Gedda created a network of ‘Civic Committees’ based in Italy’s 24,000 Catholic parishes, in order to get out the vote in 1948.24 The pulpit was also used as a major instrument of anti-communist propaganda in the weeks leading up to the poll. It was at this time that the hierarchy coined the slogan ‘the political unity of Catholics’ in order to give support to the Christian Democrats, which was used, unsuccessfully, for the last time in 1994. Catholic propaganda was apocalyptic in tone, treating the election as nothing less than a battle between ‘God or Satan, Christ or Antichrist, civilisation or barbarism, liberty or slavery’.25 All of Togliatti’s attempts to avoid a confrontation with the Church, of which his agreement to support article 7 of the Constitution is but one example, were to no avail. When he instructed the Communist representatives in the Constituent Assembly to vote for article 7, he is alleged to have exclaimed, ‘The Republic is worth a mass’, meaning that satisfying the Church on this essential issue was the only way to prevent a repetition

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of the damaging church–state conflict which had occurred at the birth of the Italian state in 1861.26 Like Gramsci he had learnt the lesson of Fascism, that open hostility towards the Church was suicidal. But there was nothing he could do about the relentless pace of the ‘Godless offensive’ in the countries of eastern Europe. The trial and execution of Mgr Tiso in Slovakia in 1945, and the trials and imprisonment of Cardinal Stepinac in Zagreb 1946 and Cardinal Mindszenty in Budapest in 1949 were part and parcel of a systematic persecution of the Church that followed in the wake of liberation by the Red Army. That was what mattered in the Vatican, and they offered perfect ammunition in the anti-communist propaganda war. The Vatican’s special relationship with the USA was also decisive. The USA, alarmed by the geopolitical implications of a PCI-PSI electoral victory in Italy, had its own weapons ready in the battle against communism, most notably the threat to cut off Marshall Aid on which Italian economic reconstruction was absolutely dependent. The influx of funds from the USA and other countries like Ireland was also essential to finance the Christian Democratic electoral campaign; Montini actually ran a campaign ‘slush fund’ based on the sale of US army surplus, through the Vatican Bank.27 Another key factor in the 1948 elections was a sort of ‘Giolitti– Gentilone Pact’ in reverse. Whereas in 1913, following the granting of almost Universal Adult Male Suffrage, Count Gentilone the president of the Catholic Electoral Union, had mobilised the Catholic vote, especially in rural areas, in order to prevent prime minister Giolitti’s liberalconservative parliamentary majority being swept away by an avalanche of votes for the Socialists, in 1948 the traditional middle-class supporters of the liberal conservatives voted Christian Democrat in droves in order to keep out the united left which only managed to win 31 per cent of the vote.28 This phenomenon was especially important in the south, whose political culture was less modern, and thus more based on personal relations, clientelism and even organised crime, than on ideology and party programmes.29 It can therefore be argued that it was the Cold War, and in particular the 1948 general elections, which made it possible for the Christian Democrats to break out of their geographical ‘ghetto’ of the Catholic heartlands in northern and eastern Italy, and become a truly national political party. When the time for general elections came round again in 1953, the middle classes, especially in the south, where Christian Democratic land reform was bitterly resented, had largely abandoned the party. Anticipating defeat, De Gasperi resorted to the so-called

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‘swindle law’ (so-called because of its unfortunate resemblance to Mussolini’s electoral law of 1923), which awarded two-thirds of the seats to the party or coalition of parties which obtained more than 50 per cent of the votes.30 The coalition failed to qualify for the twothirds majority of seats by only a handful of votes, but the Christian Democrats lost ground to the extreme right, especially in the south. De Gasperi resigned as prime minister and died a year later.

The continuing Catholic struggle against communism The struggle was not over in April 1948, nor even in 1953. Communism continued to be fought at every level for decades thereafter and a number of different weapons were used to sustain Catholic support, particularly in the early period. If communism in this period adopted many of the forms of a secular religion, then Italian Catholicism seemed to assume more and more the characteristics of a mass, political movement with a charismatic leader – the pope. Oliver Logan has shown how the papal ‘cult of the personality’ reached its peak in the reign of Pius XII.31 He argues that this cult was built around the myth of the ‘victim pope’ initiated by Pope Pius IX, who saw himself as the victim of Italian aggression against the Papal States and consequently described himself as the ‘prisoner of the Vatican’.32 It was developed by his successors Leo XIII and Pius X. Even the authoritarian Pius XI exploited the myth of the ‘victim pope’ when he was in conflict with Mussolini, claiming that Fascist attacks on members of Catholic Action ‘wounded his paternal heart’.33 The same sort of rhetoric was employed by the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano when Pius XII was attacked in the left-wing press.34 Pius XII was dubbed ‘Pastor Angelicus’, and a film of that name, shot in the Vatican during War, was shown in the 4,000 parochial cinemas in the late forties giving further substance to the papal personality cult.35 He was also, fortuitously, a Roman, the first Roman pope for over 200 years. This had made it possible for him to appropriate Mussolini’s much-vaunted ideology of ‘Romanita’, the idea that Rome was the centre of the civilised world, and that by utilising the Roman virtues of order and discipline, Fascism would create a second Roman Empire. Pius XII exploited the idea in a different way, putting the emphasis on the Christian significance of Rome during his attempts to persuade the Allies not to bomb the City. And by visiting the Roman populace when the Allies had gone ahead and bombed the capital in July 1943, he had effectively eclipsed the charisma of the Duce even before the latter was overthrown later that month.

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Rome became a leitmotif of much Catholic rhetoric during the Cold War, which was fitting because the city was a major battleground in the struggle in Italy: ‘Rome or Moscow’ was a typical battle cry. Declared ‘sacred’ by the terms of the Lateran Pacts, Rome could not be allowed to fall into the hands of the ‘barbarians’. That Pius XII seriously feared such an eventuality and the consequent danger of ending up as a defendant in a ‘peoples’ court’, can be adduced from a remark he made to the Irish ambassador. Speaking of the ‘show trial’ of Mgr Stepinac in Yugoslavia, he said: ‘My place is in Rome and if it be the will of the Divine Master I am ready to be martyred for him in Rome’.36 Rome, and more specifically St Peter’s Square and the monumental Via Della Conciliazione, constructed to commemorate the Lateran Pacts, were also the location of massive, carefully choreographed meetings of Catholics with the Pope which were a key feature of the campaign against communism. In Pius Xl’s reign, the gatherings in St Peter’s Square had already begun to compete with Mussolini’s own, ‘oceanic’, meetings of the Fascist faithful in Piazza Venezia. It can thus be argued that the Church and in particular Catholic Action ‘borrowed’ from the Fascist propaganda repertoire in their efforts to contain the communist menace, including the use of loudspeakers outside churches to summon the faithful to political meetings. But Italian Catholicism hardly needed Fascist models in its operations at a local, popular level. It was, for example, able to utilise traditional popular devotions, especially to the Sacred Heart and Our Lady. Pilgrimages to Marian shrines, and not only national ones like the Holy House at Loreto, but also regional shrines like Monte Berico near Vicenza and the Santuario D’Oropa in northern Piedmont, became important manifestations of Italian Catholic identity and loyalty during the Cold War period.37 In addition, there was the phenomenon of ‘Madonna Pellegrina’, that is, a means of whipping up popular fervour by taking the statue of the Madonna in procession around the streets of towns and villages, and on occasion allowing it to ‘stay’ with a family for a night or two. The Marian cult reached its height during the Holy Year of 1950 which in itself was utilised to generate Catholic enthusiasm on a massive scale. It was in that year that Papa Pacelli, in the first exercise of infallibility since its definition in 1870, proclaimed that the bodily Assumption of Our Lady into Heaven was now part of Catholic dogma. And for those unable to participate in the great events in the Eternal City, there was a group of itinerant preachers, in the medieval tradition, ready to bring the Christian, anti-communist message to the remotest areas. The most famous of them was Jesuit Fr Lombardi, or

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‘God’s Microphone’ as he became known.38 Lombardi’s exceptional oratorical skills took him to Italy’s major cities and guaranteed him large audiences. Eventually, he became a radio personality as well. Lombardi and his fellows preached unabashed anti-communist politics, their main themes being the intrinsic materialism of communist ideology; its conflict with Catholic social teaching as well as theology; the need for a third, Christian, way, between capitalism and communism, and the importance of the Christian family as against the alleged amorality of Godless atheism.39

The consequences of the Cold War in Italy What consequences did the Cold War, and the Church’s response to it, have for Italy? The post-war period of Italian history was an era of Catholic ‘triumphalism’, and Richard Webster has described Italy in this period as ‘the Papal State of the Twentieth Century’.40 These characterisations are not short of the mark. Certainly, until as late as 1960, and maybe even later, the Church, and in broader terms the Catholic subculture, appeared to be hegemonic in both Italian political life and civil society. In 1959 Jemolo described the consequences of Catholic triumphalism: In Italy, a strong climate of disapproval and discrimination has been created against those who do not visibly form part of the community of believers, that is those who have only a civil marriage ceremony, who do not accept the last sacraments at the moment of death and who insist on a non-religious funeral.41 The Protestant religious groups in particular suffered discrimination and obstruction from the civil authorities.42 And raccomandazioni (recommendations) from parochial clergy or even bishops were frequently essential for anyone seeking a job. This was obviously a key weapon in the hands of both management and the members of the Catholic trade union confederation CISL in the battle against the Communist trade union confederation CGIL on the factory floor. Paul Ginsborg quotes a Communist trade union organiser from Naples in his History of Contemporary Italy: After 1950 … at the Allocca and Bell companies you had to pass through the Cardinal, the Captain of the Carabinieri etc. We faced up to the blow by not accusing comrades who had tried to ship in among the friends of the Cardinal.43

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It should be stressed that the intensity of this sort of climate varied from place to place. It was worst in the ‘white’ provinces of northern and eastern Italy, the heartland of the Catholic subculture, but much less pronounced elsewhere. It could be argued that this was a natural unfolding of events since the fall of Fascism. With Fascism gone, as the writer Elio Vittorini put it in an article in the review Il Politechnico, ‘the middle classes went to Church seeking Fascism’, the reassurance in other words of another authoritarian system after the loss of the first.44 The abolition of the monarchy and the development of the papal cult of the personality reinforced the Church’s influence at this juncture. Federico Chabod compared the role of the Papacy in Italy at the end of the Second World War with that which it played following the fall of the Roman Empire at the beginning of the fifth century.45 The fact that article 7 of the new constitution gave the Lateran Pacts effectively the same status as the constitution itself meant that the Church was now free to enjoy the fruits of its ‘marriage of convenience’ with Fascism. The enormous losses of property and privilege which it had suffered during the Risorgimento were now partially reversed. Pius XI’s strategy of preparing for a ‘Christian restoration of society’ in Italy had worked. But without the onset of the Cold War, Catholicism would not have achieved such hegemony in post-war Italy. The polarisation of Italian politics in 1947 and 1948 and the atmosphere of cosmic crisis massively increased the value of the Vatican’s intervention in Italian politics and made it acceptable even to those elements of the middle classes who were instinctively secular, and often downright anti-clerical in their attitudes. On the other hand, Catholic hegemony in Italian civil society was from the beginning unnatural, artificial and very fragile, and the radical changes wrought upon Italian society by the impact of the Anglo-Saxon cultural ‘invasion’ after the Second World War and the effects of the economic ‘miracle’ of the late 1950s and early 1960s also proved it to be transient.46 The Cold War and the Vatican’s response to it had longer-lasting consequences than a brief period of Catholic ‘triumphalism’. The Christian Democratic Party as a political force ‘sponsored’ by the Church took a long time to develop its organisational strength, since most of its electioneering was carried out by the ‘Civic Committees’ and the parochial clergy on its behalf. As such, it lacked real autonomy from the Vatican. This is precisely why, despite winning an absolute majority in the 1948 elections, De Gasperi insisted on continuing his governmental coalition with the minor centre parties. These steadfastly ‘secular’ parties gave him a margin of protection against the clerical and confessional pretensions of the Vatican and episcopal hierarchy.

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But in 1952, in a particularly tense electoral contest for control of Rome City Council, the limits of Christian Democratic autonomy were fully revealed. Pius XII insisted that the party enter into an electoral alliance with the monarchists and neo-Fascists, in order to avoid, as the Pope rather dramatically put it, ‘the Cossacks watering their horses in the fountains of St. Peter’s Square’. De Gasperi only managed to evade what would have been a disastrous political blunder by pleading a legal technicality, but he was not forgiven by Pius, who never received him in audience again.47 On the other hand, Vatican intervention in Italian politics sometimes worked to De Gasperi’s advantage, an example being the pressure exerted by the Vatican on the neutralist and pacifist wings of the Christian Democratic party in favour of Italy entering NATO in 1949. What is especially interesting about this situation is that Pius XII initially had serious doubts about the wisdom of an Italian policy of alignment with the West due to his fears for the neutrality of the Holy See and independence of the State of the Vatican City.48 Full decision-making autonomy for the Italian laity in the political and trade union fields was not to be effectively granted until after the death of Pius XII in 1958. His successor, John XXIII, conceded the right of Christian Democratic politicians to make their own decision about entering a centre-left coalition government with the Socialists in 1963. Even then, conservative elements in the Vatican tried to obstruct the pope’s new policy.49 Perversely, the attempts of Amintore Fanfani, De Gasperi’s would-be heir, in the mid-1950s to escape Vatican control (and financial dependence on big business) by creating a Christian Democratic party machine independent of Catholic Action led to the colonising by the Christian Democrats, and later other governmental parties, of the Italian state industrial and banking sectors which offered enormous potential for electoral patronage. Thus began a practice of clientelism and corruption on a massive scale that would eventually lead to the ‘bribesville’ scandals of the early 1990s and the resulting collapse of the Christian Democratic regime itself. In a broader sense, the survival of that regime for almost exactly 50 years was due in no small measure to the legacy of the Cold War. Communists were excluded as far as possible from power, even if that was clearly not completely possible in regions like Emilia-Romagna; though in order to diminish their influence, the establishment of regional autonomy, as laid down in the Constitution, was delayed indefinitely. The left also had the stigma of excommunication laid upon it, though there is evidence that even in such a key battleground as Bologna, Cardinal Archbishop Nassalli Rocca was inclined to

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flexibility in his use of this weapon.50 Anti-communism often seemed to have been the only major issue on the Church’s political agenda, to the exclusion of other serious, moral issues. For example, the fight against the mafia in Sicily was not taken seriously by Cardinal Ruffini, Archbishop of Palermo, who was far more concerned with what he perceived to be the imminent threat of communism in the island.51 And until 1992 anti-Communism remained the winning electoral card for the Christian democrats and their allies. As a result, the Christian Democrats became the ‘natural party of government’ and the Communists were relegated to the role of permanent opposition. The Christian Democrats stayed in government for almost exactly 50 years and the Communists remained in opposition after 1947, from which they did not escape until 1996. As Aldo Moro, the Christian Democratic leader who was murdered by the Red Brigades, once said of the Christian Democrats, they were ‘condemned to govern’.52

Conclusion It is interesting to compare the Vatican’s response to the Cold War on the ‘home front’ in Italy, with that abroad. The presence of the Italian Communist Party, allied with the Socialists, seems to have generated an atmosphere of apprehension, almost panic, in the Vatican and in the Italian ecclesiastical hierarchy generally, which led to drastic measures being taken, including the Holy Office’s decree on excommunication of 1949. Abroad, the Vatican’s policy was, in general terms, more cautious and diplomatic and, as Hebblethwaite has argued, it was anxious that Pius XII should not be seen as the ‘chaplain to NATO’.53 But whatever distinctions Vatican diplomacy made between communism and communist governments, the Italian situation, and the Church’s response to it, was bound to affect events in eastern Europe. In particular, it can be argued that the Holy Office decree, which was essentially intended for ‘home consumption’, had disastrous consequences on the Catholic Church’s capacity to survive the advent of communist regimes. Indeed, it was interpreted as a declaration of war on the Vatican’s part, to which communist governments replied with fire in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Yugoslavia especially.

Notes 1 G. Poggi, ‘The Church in Italian Politics, 1945–1950’, in S. W. Woolf, ed., The Rebirth of Italy, 1943–1950 (London, 1972), p. 147.

116 Religion and the Cold War 2 A. Spinosa, Pio XII, l’Ultimo Papa (Milan, 1992). 3 See P. Ginsborg, A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics, 1943–1988 (London, 1990), chs. 2 and 3. 4 Ibid., ch. 3. 5 Ibid., pp. 42–5. 6 It has been claimed that 52 priests alone were killed in Emilia-Romagna’s triangolo della morte, ‘triangle of death’: O. Chadwick, The Christian Church in the Cold War (London, 1992), p. 15. 7 Poggi, ‘The Church in Italian Politics’, p. 147. 8 J. F. Pollard, ‘Italy’, in T. Buchanan and M. Conway, eds, Political Catholicism in Italy, 1918–1965 (Oxford, 1996), p. 89. 9 Ginsborg, A History of Contemporary Italy, pp. 45–6. 10 D. Kertzer, Comrades and Christians: Religion and Political struggle in Communist Italy (Cambridge, 1980), ch. 5. 11 G. Guareschi, The Little World of Don Camillo (London, 1969). 12 See J. F. Pollard, The Vatican and Italian Fascism, 1929–1932: A Study in Conflict (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 187–8. 13 J. F. Pollard, ‘Il Vaticano e la politica estera italiana’, in R. J. B. Bosworth and S. Romano, eds, La politica estera italiana, 1860–1985 (Bologna, 1990), pp. 225–6. 14 Ibid., p. 227. 15 P. Hebblethwaite, ‘Pope Pius XII: Chaplain of the Atlantic Alliance?’, in C. Duggan and C. Wagstaff, eds, Italy in the Cold War: Politics, Culture and Society (Oxford, 1995), p. 75. 16 Ibid. 17 A. Riccardi, ‘The Vatican of Pius XII and the Roman Party’, Concilium, 197 (1987), p. 40. 18 J. F. Pollard, The Unknown Pope: Benedict XV(1914–1922) and the Pursuit of Peace (London, 1999), pp. 176, 184. 19 Hebblethwaite, ‘Pope Pius XII’, p. 74. 20 Pollard, The Vatican and Italian Fascism, pp. 106–11, 185. 21 P. Scoppola, La Proposta politica di de Gasperi (Il Mulino, 1977), p. 46. 22 Ibid. 23 For the text of the Concordat, see Pollard, The Vatican and Italian Fascism, pp. 204–14. 24 Poggi, ‘The Church in Italian Politics’, p. 147. 25 Ibid. 26 J. F. Pollard, ‘Post-War Italy: “The Papal State of the Twentieth Century?”’, in A. E. Millar, ed., The Legacy of Fascism (Glasgow, 1989), p. 57. 27 D. Keogh, ‘Ireland, the Vatican and the Cold War: the Case of Italy’, Historical Journal, 34(4) (1991), pp. 931–52. 28 Pollard, ‘Italy’, p. 87. 29 Ibid. 30 N. Kogan, A Political History of Italy: The Post-War Period (New York, 1983), p. 64. 31 Logan, ‘Pius XII: Romanita, Prophesy and Charisma’, Modern Italy, 3(2) (Nov. 1998), pp. 237–49. 32 Ibid, p. 238. 33 Ibid.

The Vatican, Italy and the Cold War 117 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53

Ibid. Ibid. As quoted in, Keogh, ‘The Vatican and the Cold War’, Historical Journal, p. 943. Logan, ‘Pius XII’, pp. 242, 244. The fullest account of his role is to be found in G. Zizola, Il microfono di Dio, Pio XII, Padre Lombardi e i cattolici italiani (Milan, 1990). Ibid., pp. 57–9. R. A. Webster, The Cross and the Fasces: Christian Democracy and Fascism in Italy (Stanford, 1960), p. 216. C. A. Jemolo, Societa Civile e Societa Religiosa (Turin, 1959), p. 73. See V. Bucci, ‘Chiesa e Stato: “Church and State Relations in Italy within the Constitutional Framework”’, The Hague, 169, esp. p. 65; and D. Settembrini, La Chiesa nella politica italiana, 1944–1963 (Milan, 1973), pp. 322–30, 489–93. As quoted in Ginsborg, A History of Contemporary Italy, p. 181. As quoted in Poggi, ‘The Church and Italian Politics’, pp. 143–4. F. Chabod, L’Italia Contemporanea, 1918–944 (Turin, 1961), p. 125. Pollard, ‘Italy’, pp. 92–3. Zizola, Microfono di Dio, p. 56. Kogan, A Political History of Italy, pp. 119–20. Hebblethwaite, John XIII: The Pope of the Council (London, 1983), pp. 357–9. G. Battelli, ‘Vescovo, diocesi e citta a Bologna dal 1939 al 1958’, in A. Riccardi, ed., Le Chiese di Pio XII (Rome and Bari, 1986), p. 259. A. Bull, ‘Italy and the Legacy of the Cold War’, inaugural professorial lecture given at the University of Bath, 1997, p. 15. Pollard, ‘Italy’, p. 92. Hebblethwaite, ‘Pope Pius XII’, p. 75.

8 The United States and the Vatican in Yugoslavia, 1945–50 Charles R. Gallagher

In the discussion of Cold War diplomatic events, very little mention is made of the Catholic Church and its role in foreign affairs. Some historians have argued that as the Second World War era closed, the sovereign state of the Holy See, or the Vatican, closed in on itself when Pope Pius XII was rebuffed from affecting the post-war peace negotiations sponsored by the ‘big three’. During the Cold War, Pope Pius XII, still sceptical of United States’ intentions in a bipolar world, attended to ecclesiastical restructuring and the reorganisation of his own diplomatic corps. On the whole, the Vatican and the Western powers worked cordially through the Cold War period, but in an understated and usually non-public way. While there was a common philosophical aversion to the rise of world communism, there were no treaties signed, no mutual statements made, or any agreements concluded that marked an explicit East–West ‘Holy Alliance’ between the Western powers and the Vatican.1 Behind the scenes, however, a number of low-level contacts between the United States and the Vatican began to burgeon under the weight of Cold War exigencies and political dynamics. Nowhere was this flowering of furtive diplomatic contact more prevalent than in Cold War Yugoslavia. Between 1945 and 1950, the Vatican played a crucial role in affecting US policy in Yugoslavia. Diverging from normal diplomatic practice, new initiatives included the sharing of Vatican reports on intelligence gathering, economic policy, and human rights questions.

I From 1945 to 1950 the United States and the Vatican conducted a clandestine operation of intelligence gathering and transmission in the 118

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former Yugoslavia that marked an historic period of US–Vatican diplomatic cooperation. With the close of the Second World War, the United States and the Vatican found themselves harmoniously united against the common foe of international communism. While the Vatican and Pope Pius XII opposed communism due to its godless ‘irreligion’, the United States saw in it a threat to democracy and capitalism. By late 1945, these disparate philosophies – one sacred, the other profane – met in collective opposition to a common foe. In its Balkan crucible, a new diplomatic relationship emerged between the United States and the Vatican. This relationship entailed the transmission of highly sensitive information from the Vatican’s nunciature in Belgrade to the US embassy and eventually to the Department of State in Washington. The Vatican was interested in influencing the United States’ policy in Yugoslavia for both spiritual and political reasons. Religiously, the Vatican was hopeful that a cosy relationship with the USA would stave off Marshall Josip Broz Tito from inflicting a fatal blow to the institutional framework of the Catholic Church in Yugoslavia. Politically, the Holy See was hoping to store up capital with the US so that the principle of religious liberty might be argued more forcefully as an integral component of American foreign policy toward Tito’s new government. When Marshall Tito established his Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia in May of 1945, he initiated a brutal repression of the Catholic Church. Specifically, Tito was unswerving in his ambition to assimilate the Roman Catholic Church into his newly formed state. Through the use of arrest, fear, and repression, the Yugoslav regime hoped to break the Catholic Church from its ties to Rome and create an independent state-sponsored national church.2 Coinciding with Tito’s cold-blooded strangling of the churches was a vehement anti-American political campaign. In early 1947 the American consul at Zagreb could report on ‘frequent smear actions directed against US diplomatic and consular representatives … and of other powers outside the Soviet sphere.’3 Anti-western sentiment hit an all-time high in June of 1947 when Yugoslav anti-aircraft batteries shot down two US cargo planes killing five US airmen. This incident created one of the first major diplomatic crises of the early Cold War period.4 Through a shared siege experience, by 1947 US political anti-communism and Vatican religious anti-communism were melding on the surface to create the appearance of a mutual anti-Yugoslav front. This unwritten diplomatic alliance of convenience behind the iron curtain had its genesis within the vaulted halls of the Vatican as much

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as it did in Washington. In the incipient stages of the Cold War, the Vatican itself adopted a strategy of ‘looking toward America’ for support in its quest in vanquishing the communist Red Horde after the Second World War.5 In fact, as early as January of 1945 the Holy See’s Apostolic Delegate to the United States, Archbishop Amleto Cicognani, made it clear to US Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius that the United States might ‘safeguard Christian civilization and also the liberty of the Catholic church’ in Yugoslavia. In an astonishing departure from the Christian ‘swords-into-plowshares’ philosophy, Cicognani opined to Stettinius that the sad situation of the Catholic Church ‘could be remedied only by the presence of Anglo-American military units in those territories.’6 While Cicognani’s martial enthusiasm became more tempered over time, he continued to believe that the USA remained the principal bulwark against the encroachment of world communism. ‘In fact,’ a State Department official later remarked of a conversation with Archbishop Cicognani, ‘he all but stated that we [the United States] were the Church’s greatest ally and greatest hope against communism.’7 In accordance with this new turn toward America, the Holy See began to appoint prominent American prelates to key diplomatic posts behind the Iron Curtain. This Americanisation of the Holy See’s diplomatic corps represented an historic shift. Up to this time entrance into the Vatican’s diplomatic training school, the prestigious Academy of Noble Ecclesiastics, was reserved to Europeans exclusively. Now, with the United States holding the balance in the Cold War, certain American prelates were skyrocketed into positions of great importance, usually with little or no diplomatic training at all. To Bucharest, Romania, was sent Bishop Gerald P. O’Hara of the Diocese of Savannah, Georgia. No man of international affairs, O’Hara had been an auxiliary bishop of Philadelphia before taking the reigns in Georgia. While a man of great ability, the notable credential for his new job assignment behind the Iron Curtain was that he was the protected son of Philadelphia’s powerful and publicly anti-communist Dennis Cardinal Dougherty. 8 Another American bishop to assume the diplomatic stage was the formerly unremarkable Aloisius J. Muench of Fargo, North Dakota. The son of German immigrants from Milwaukee, Muench not only cut a low profile but earned the sympathy of Pope Pius XII by issuing the pastoral letter ‘One World in Charity,’ which asserted that charity, and not revenge, must be the guiding force for nation-building after the Second World War.9

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To some interested observers, it looked as if Pope Pius XII was moving American bishops around the world in a whirlwind game of geopolitical chess. One prominent commentator suspected that the Pope’s tapping of US bishops for diplomatic posts bespoke a more sinister motive. ‘PAUL TILLICH ATTACKS “VATICAN–WHITE HOUSE AXIS”’ was the banner of a confidential report prepared by the Foreign Nationalities Branch of the US Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Tillich, the world-famous systematic theologian at New York’s Union Theological Seminary, was under surveillance by the US spy service throughout the Second World War. In February of 1945, he suggested that the ‘United States had become a “leading Catholic power.”’ Further, Tillich charged that the White House and the Vatican had entered into a new political alliance not only against the Soviet Union, but also Protestant Britain!10 Notwithstanding Tillich’s critique, there did seem to be a move by the Truman administration to warm to Vatican policy. Truman, for example, ‘stressed the common religious bonds that linked the USA and Europe … argued that global responsibilities were a God-given duty, and justified containment by demonizing the “godless” Soviet Union.’11 In Truman’s mind, the situation was no different concerning Tito’s ‘godless’ Yugoslavia. When Samuel Cardinal Stritch of Chicago met with President Truman at the White House in April of 1946, the prelate ‘told the president of the tragic conditions which prevailed among those Christian people.’12 Truman ‘expressed his opposition with the Tito Government,’ Stritch recorded for his files, ‘and seemed fully to realize that it was Communist and controlled by Russia.’13 Moreover, the president indicated to Stritch that he recently rebuffed an overture by Tito for a visit to America and ‘delayed receiving him until certain demands of our Government were met by him.’14 Presumably, those ‘certain demands’ included human and religious liberties. With a sympathetic Truman now standing firm against Marshall Tito, the Vatican’s appointment of the US bishop Joseph P. Hurley of St Augustine, Florida, to the Apostolic Nunciature in Belgrade was met with deep approval at the White House. Bishop Hurley met secretly with Pope Pius XII in October of 1945 to accept the impending Belgrade assignment. This appointment was not only agreeable to President Truman, but Truman’s own representative in Rome helped to facilitate Hurley’s entry into Yugoslavia.15 On the Vatican’s part, Hurley’s appointment was a shrewd political move. Pope Pius XII, a consummate diplomat, officially appointed him Regent ad interim of the Apostolic Nunciature. This ‘regent’ status was a

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scarcely used designation in Vatican statecraft but proffered extraordinary power. The regent is appointed exclusively by the pope in his role as sovereign of the Vatican City State and is supplied with plenipotentiary powers. Essentially, the regent assumes plenary power to act in the place of the pope as a state sovereign.16 In addition, Marshall Tito greeted this stratagem with approval. Since the Holy See’s representative was not raised to the official rank of nuncio, he would not be recognised as the dean of the diplomatic corps, thus alleviating a delicate situation for Tito’s fledgling atheistic state. Arguably, Bishop Hurley was the strongest link in the Vatican’s Iron Curtain triumvirate of new US papal diplomats. In the first place, he was the only one of the three American bishops to have any diplomatic experience. In 1934, Hurley became the first American to be appointed to the foreign affairs section of the Vatican’s Secretariat of State. Now, with his appointment as regent, he became the first US cleric in the history of papal diplomacy to be raised to the equivalent rank of nuncio. Moreover, if Pope Pius XII had it in mind to create a nexus with the United States behind the Iron Curtain, he could not have chosen a more appropriate prelate. Hurley maintained strong political contacts with the US Department of State and counted Myron C. Taylor, Truman’s personal representative to Pope Pius XII, as a special friend. In July of 1941, Hurley gave a wildly controversial radio address over the CBS Radio Network in support of President Roosevelt’s wartime foreign policy.17 The speech earned glowing reviews from State Department officials and marked Hurley as a leading Catholic interventionist. Regardless of his political leanings, it was also advantageous that Hurley came from a family of new and powerfully connected US diplomats.18 On top of all this, Bishop Hurley previously worked in various capacities with many high-ranking members of the US Department of State.19 Consequently, when Hurley’s appointment to Belgrade was made public on 22 October 1945, several departments of the US government began to express an ‘official interest’ in his new assignment.20 Within the month, the US War Department invited Hurley to a set of meetings to ‘bring him up to date on the political, social, and economic conditions of Yugoslavia.’21 Shortly after, Major Daniel J. Ryan of the US Army Intelligence Corps and Brigadier General Louis Fortier, the former military attaché in Belgrade, took it upon themselves to give further briefings to Hurley before he left for Yugoslavia.22 Never before had the United States government been so interested in the career path of an unknown Roman Catholic bishop.

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In December of 1945, Bishop Hurley flew from Florida to Rome, where he was briefed by Giuseppe B. Montini, Pope Pius XII’s assistant Secretary of State and the future Pope Paul VI. Ever so discreetly, and certainly acting on the suggestion of Pope Pius XII, Montini asked Hurley to ‘cooperate to the utmost of his ability with the Allied diplomatic representatives at Belgrade’.23 Franklin C. Gowen, the State Department representative in Rome reported confidentially that while Hurley was in Yugoslavia ‘ostensibly only [for] religious matters,’ he could be counted on to ‘carefully observe Tito-Stalin political relations.’24 Hurley arrived in Belgrade on 20 January 1946 and immediately initiated an intimate relationship with the Americans. For their part, the US embassy staff sized-up Hurley favorably: He is believed to have a high standing among high churchmen in the Vatican, to be a personal friend of Cardinal Spellman of New York, and is a close personal advisor of His Holiness, the Pope. He is a very friendly man, easy to get along with, speaks fluent French and Italian, as well as some German, and has a quick Irish temper.25 The high opinion of ability and character would be put to the test virtually as soon as the Florida bishop settled into the nunciature. Within a month of his presentation of credentials to Marshall Tito, the Vatican was forced to deal with its first crisis. On 13 February 1946, Bishop Hurley’s office received word that four nuns, members of the Sisters of Charity, had been condemned to death by a state tribunal in Gospic, Croatia. The accusations were grave and foreboding. The sisters were charged with complicity in the murder of wounded Partisan soldiers who were being cared for at their hospital in Otacac in September of 1942. According to reports, a raiding party of Nazi-backed Ustacha soldiers broke into the hospital at night and killed about 20 Partisans who were under treatment. At their trial, one of the Partisan soldiers offered to testify that the sisters had nothing to do with the raid, but later recanted under pressure. In the end, the tribunal ordered the death sentences to be carried out in 10 days’ time. Immediately, Bishop Hurley made ‘personal representations’ to the Yugoslav Foreign Office, but was rebuffed and delayed.26 In the front of his mind, Hurley believed that only the mighty arm of the United States could save the sisters from imminent death. ‘Because of the universal reputation in which the Sisters, and especially hospital Sisters are held,’ Hurley frantically and hyperbolically wrote to US Ambassador

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Richard C. Patterson, ‘this case will have the widest repercussions throughout the civilized world if the sentence is carried out.’27 It is clear that Vatican diplomacy was racing to come to terms with Tito’s new form of persecution. ‘Every instinct of religion, humanity, and chivalry cries out against the act contemplated,’ Hurley wrote in an exquisite melding of theological and international principles.28 Forcing the US to face Yugoslav church–state relations head-on, he warned that the crisis ‘may well constitute a test case to whether the Yugoslav government is determined to exterminate the Catholic religion in this country.’29 For its part, the US Embassy put the case on its high priority list. Ambassador Patterson requested ‘instructions as to further steps’ from Secretary of State James F. Byrnes within hours of receiving Hurley’s report. In the meantime, the lawyers handling the case for the sisters filed an appeal of the death sentence to the Superior Court in Zagreb. In early April the Zagreb court commuted the sentences of three of the sisters to 20 years’ imprisonment. The fourth Sister of Charity, Sister Zarka Ivasic, was upheld on a sentence of death and shot by firing squad on April 7. For publicity reasons, the Yugoslavs kept the sentences secret for over a month. On 21 May, the nunciature asked Ambassador Patterson to intercede in the case, saying that the Vatican would ‘welcome representations for clemency and commutation of the sentences of the other three.’ Ambassador Patterson, shocked at the outcome of the trial, noted to Washington that ‘it would be well to make them’.30 In an unparalleled show of support for the Vatican, Secretary Byrnes’ response was quick and decisive. ‘On humanitarian grounds,’ he wrote within hours of receiving Patterson’s report, ‘the Department is disposed to authorize you to approach Yugoslav government with a view to obtaining clemency for the Sisters.’31 ‘You may, when a suitable opportunity arises,’ he followed-up, ‘express the interest of the US Government in the case and state that the exercise of executive clemency should not fail to be well regarded in the US.’32 The Vatican could not have wished for more. On 6 September, Ambassador Patterson personally made the Vatican’s pitch for executive clemency. In an aide mémoire, Patterson specifically laid out to Tito that any further action against the sisters would meet with severe disapproval by the United States. In an extraordinary turn of events, Tito offered a compromise to the three sisters who were originally scheduled to spend the next 20 years of their lives in a Yugoslav labor camp. Clearly acting under pressure from the US, the Tito regime assured the sisters that their sentences would be absolved if they refused to wear their habit, became laicised, and worked only as nurses in state hospitals.33 Specifically, Tito

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offered the sisters a choice between the renunciation of their religious lives or the destruction of their temporal ones. Yet in diplomatic terms, this proposal ranked as a watershed event in the history of US–Vatican relations. At no time since the establishment of US representation at the Vatican in 1940 had the United States used its good offices to effectuate a concrete negotiated outcome on behalf of the Holy See.34 ‘Humanitarian grounds’ notwithstanding, this was surely a major diplomatic win for the Vatican. Together, the United States and the Vatican were beginning to twist Tito’s arm in the mounting tussle between church and state. Inasmuch as the Vatican was benefiting handsomely from its new snug relationship with the American superpower, the United States also was getting something in return. As a courtesy to the Americans, the Belgrade nunciature secretly began to supply the US embassy with detailed reports on Yugoslav Catholic and political activities. The reports, sometimes twenty pages long, were culled from Bishop Hurley’s visits with priests and bishops around the country. While primarily containing data on religious matters, they also offered a good deal of information concerning government policy and public attitudes.35 In addition, the summaries contained maps and biographies of high-ranking clergymen. These reports were so impressive that exact copies were sent to the OSS outpost in Trieste, Italy. Colonel William P. Maddox, the former Princeton University professor and one of the founding members of the OSS, found the reports ‘extremely interesting’.36 Moreover, since the American diplomats found movement in Yugoslavia to be exceedingly restrictive, the nunciature’s combined reports proved to be an unlikely, yet valuable source of intelligence. The United States certainly did not wish to do anything to compromise this new source of information. ‘The fact that we have come into possession of these documents,’ the embassy reiterated to the State Department upon transmittal, ‘should be kept secret.’37 Even the most basic political information was difficult to come by after Tito took power. As historian Anne Lane has pointed out, in the early years of the Cold War, ‘information gathering was severely restricted because open discussion with individuals opposed to the existing regime was hazardous at best.’38 Moreover, given the fact that Tito brazenly jailed two American embassy staff workers on spy charges in early 1946, the ‘cassock and dagger’ ventures of the nunciature seem brave indeed.39 On the surface, the American members of Bishop Hurley’s nunciature staff engaged in a chimera of neutrality, spurning even social contacts with US diplomats. One high-ranking member of the nunciature staff

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believed that even friendly contacts with US embassy personnel might advertise him as ‘working for the Americans.’40 Such a defensive posture was absolutely necessary. In fact, even Bishop Hurley suspected that two Yugoslav nationals employed on the nunciature staff were Yugoslav secret police (OZNA) spies.41 But Hurley’s courageous efforts for the Americans were based on more than simple Christian charity. While Hurley was supplying Washington with genuine intelligence, the nunciature was exacting a quid pro quo from the United States. In early 1946, an arrangement was fashioned whereby the Vatican’s official correspondence was sent to Rome via the American diplomatic pouch.42 The agreement was particularly beneficial to nunciature since it was understood that Yugoslav authorities would violate the sanctity of the Vatican’s pouch at the slightest provocation. In addition, the Holy See’s ciphers and encryption codes could scarcely be utilised since it was well known at the Vatican that most, if not all, of their principal codes had been compromised by 1945.43 Once again, the Vatican looked to America to vouchsafe its security while under attack in the Balkans. The agreement was put into high gear in 1947, when Tito began to threaten a cut-off in diplomatic relations with the Holy See. ‘Yesterday by courier we received 16 large, bulging, envelopes of uniform size addressed to the Holy See by Bishop Hurley in Belgrade,’ J. Graham Parsons of the American embassy in Rome wrote to Walter Dowling at the State Department.44 ‘I could only think that these envelopes contained Hurley’s most secret archives, sent in anticipation of a raid on his office … ,’ Parsons confided.45 Even Parsons understood that the shipment was a ‘heavy, literally, use of our courier,’ yet he accepted the shipment as routine mail nevertheless.46 Clearly, the employment of this mail scheme exhibited more than just a customary diplomatic relationship. In fact, it is extraordinary to think that any government would bestow the safety and full sanctity of its mail privilege to a country with which it had no formal or official diplomatic relationship.47 But if the mail scheme was symbolic of the tight cooperation that existed between the US and the Vatican, it did little to heal the fissure that arose out of the first public church–state crisis of the early Cold War period.

II The initial breach of the US–Vatican partnership rose out of the United States’ silence concerning the sudden arrest and outcome of the trial of Archbishop Aloysius Stepinac of Zagreb.48 On 11 October 1946,

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Archbishop Stepinac, the foremost Catholic bishop in Croatia, was found guilty of collaborating with the wartime occupation Ustashi regime. From 1941 to 1945, the Fascist Ustashi leader Anton Pavelic presided over the Independent State of Croatia and carried out a grisly ‘purification’ of non-Croat elements within the state.49 During wartime, the Ustashi expelled, slaughtered and forcibly converted large numbers of Serbian Orthodox Croatians. Even though he energetically and resoundingly protested Ustashi atrocities during the war, Archbishop Stepinac, a strong Croatian nationalist, was identified by Marshall Tito’s new communist regime as an Ustashi collaborator. In a show trial that dispensed with all the requirements of legal due process, the Archbishop was sentenced to 16 years of hard labour and placed in Zagreb’s infamous Lepoglava prison.50 According to the Vatican, the Stepinac trial marked the ‘first phase’ in a systematic reign of terror to be meted out against the Catholic church in Yugoslavia.51 Consequently, international Catholic reaction to the sentence was wide and swift. Church sources were quick to condemn the verdict through public media outlets such as Le Figaro, Le Monde and The New York Times.52 The Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano even likened Stepinac to the crucified Christ.53 In Belgrade, Bishop Hurley was hardening his own perception of the Archbishop’s innocence. In a conversation with US Counsellor of Embassy Harold Shantz, Hurley indicated that he ‘stoutly defended the actions of Stepinac during the war and believed him innocent of any real collaboration charges.’54 Somewhat surprisingly, the United States did not reciprocate the Vatican’s enthusiasm regarding Archbishop Stepinac’s innocence. In the wake of the Nuremberg trials, the United States began to take a more cautious tack concerning potential wartime collaborators. This caution intensified when Bishop Hurley, presumably one of Stepinac’s foremost ecclesiastical cheerleaders, failed to distinguish between collaboration and real collaboration during his conversation with Harold Shantz. Moreover, greater distinctions began to be drawn as Bishop Hurley allowed himself to become co-opted to the Croatian nationalist line. After his international career was over, Hurley elaborated on the diplomatic philosophy that guided his years in Belgrade to a fellow American bishop. ‘It is of no avail to say that they [the Croatian people] sided with Nazi Germany,’ he wrote of the war, ‘they were turning against an oppressive government.’ ‘And they knew then,’ he added with a Cold War twist, ‘as we know now, that they were defending their country, their existence, and their freedom in the face of the assault of the Red Beasts, the Barbarians of the twentieth century.’55 It

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is clear that the strange political fortunes of the Balkans ultimately changed Hurley, formerly a staunch anti-Nazi, into a philosophical apologist for the Ustashi regime. More importantly, this simplistic embrace of anti-communism to the exclusion of wartime Nazism would influence the tenor of all of the diplomatic reports emanating from the Belgrade nunciature. These same reports, consequently, would affect the Vatican position on Archbishop Stepinac. While Catholic support for the embattled Stepinac snowballed from protest to protest, a governmental response from Washington was difficult to extract. Two days after the Stepinac trial, the Catholic hierarchy in America turned up the heat when Samuel Cardinal Stritch, speaking as the chairman of the administrative board of the National Catholic Welfare Conference (NCWC), released a statement expressing ‘the hope that the United States would protest on behalf of Archbishop Aloysius Stepinac.’56 Even with this prompting, an official response from the State Department regarding the Stepinac trial came an embarrassing nine days after the verdict was announced. In what must have been a blow to the Vatican, the only gesture on the part of Washington was the issuance of a brief statement that couched the Stepinac trial within the context of religious freedom and civil rights in Yugoslavia. In its press release entitled ‘US Interest in Civil Liberties in Yugoslavia’, the department condemned Yugoslavia’s lack of legal due process and discussed the social problems surrounding the infringement of civil liberties. Remarkably, no mention was made of Stepinac’s guilt or innocence. The innocuous ‘civil liberties’ statement by Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson was the first and only official utterance from the State Department concerning the Stepinac issue. Over the following 40 years, as the case became a perennial flash-point in US–Yugoslav relations, all US officials were directed back to Acheson’s nebulous civil liberties statement of 1946.57 Almost a month after the trial, a hounded undersecretary Acheson unofficially reported to the New York Times that, ‘while fairness in the Stepinac trial left a great deal to be desired,’ the US would make no official protest.58 From the outset, it was clear to the Vatican that State Department officials were reluctant to characterise the guilt or innocence of the Zagreb archbishop. Even Hurley’s friend, the sympathetic Ambassador Patterson, only would state publicly that ‘everything possible was being done’ in the case of Archbishop Stepinac.59 Patterson’s virtual silence on Stepinac may have been due to his reception of information from other sources that seemed to contradict the public absolution that the Holy See had granted to Stepinac.

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The first official sources of information which cast doubt on the Archbishop’s innocence during The Second World War were the reports of the American Vice Consul in Zagreb, Peter Constan. Assigned by the US embassy in Belgrade to observe the trial, Constan indicated to the embassy that, at best, he was sceptical of Stepinac’s claims. This was a particularly uncommon observation since Constan himself was well known as a hardened anti-communist.60 During the closing of the trial, Archbishop Stepinac was granted 30 minutes to give his ‘last word’ to the state. Since Archbishop Stepinac chose to stay mute throughout the trial, it was reasonable to presume that this ‘final say’ would be a forceful echoing of his innocence. ‘His speech was not directly a defense speech,’ Constan noted with an air of puzzlement, ‘he offered no proof that he had not committed the acts of which he is accused, no explanations or excuses.’61 Constan seemed baffled by Stepinac’s lack of rejoinder. He noticed, for example, that instead of defending himself, Stepinac ‘broke into a stinging counterindictment against the regime.’62 While it did not address the merits of the case, Constan believed that Stepinac’s diatribe against the Tito regime certainly ‘should establish that Archbishop Stepinac is an ardent Croat patriot fighting for freedom and he is not a traitor to his people,’ – a conclusion that was never in doubt. Yet as far as the Americans were concerned, neither Stepinac’s patriotism nor the internal judicial system of Yugoslavia was on trial. On the whole, Constan ‘came away with the definite impression that Archbishop Stepinac had in certain ways erred,’ that he had ‘shown too much tolerance, perhaps sympathy, toward the Independent State of Croatia, and in that way may have given a certain amount of comfort to the enemy.’63 Giving comfort to the enemy during wartime was a serious offence, and at the time of the Stepinac trial it was an even more explosive issue. Ironically, while Archbishop Stepinac was on trial in Zagreb, the United States was in the process of liberalising its standards on exactly what constituted ‘comfort to the enemy’. From 1943 until 1947, the US Supreme Court was arguing the very issue as to whether an intellectual commitment to the goals of an enemy country rose to the level of an ‘aid and comfort’ situation. In the celebrated Haupt case of 1947, Justice Robert H. Jackson made clear that while a subject ‘may intellectually or emotionally favor the enemy and harbor sympathies or convictions disloyal to this country’s policy or interest,’ treason could only be assigned in cases of overt action.64 Yet given the fact that such sublime distinctions were being argued only steps away from the

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Department of State, it is no wonder that Constan’s simple reference to even a ‘certain amount of comfort’ to the enemy would raise red flags in Washington. Moreover, in another bit of news that could not have endeared the Vatican to US Policy makers, the OSS was sending intelligence reports to the State Department implicating the Vatican in aiding the escape of Croatian war criminals, including Anton Pavelic.65 On top of this, and more important still, the Americans were in possession of a source from Stepinac’s own hand that raised some doubt as to the Archbishop’s courtroom utterances. On 9 September 1946, Stepinac composed a seven-page secret memorandum and transmitted it to the American Consul at Zagreb, Theodore H. Hohenthal. The fact that he chose to hand the memorandum to Hohenthal and not the papal regent Hurley was sheer coincidence. As it happened, Hurley customarily chose September for his month’s vacation. Even though it was clear that Tito was bearing down on Stepinac, Hurley had it mind that the Yugoslavs would not dare arrest the Zagreb archbishop. He therefore continued with his plans for a recuperative visit to his favourite vacation villa at Lake Lugano, Switzerland.66 In the end, Hurley’s holiday plans may have helped to precipitate one of the most public church–state confrontations in modern papal diplomacy. If Tito previously hesitated to arrest Archbishop Stepinac, now with the Pope’s representative out of country, he was given a green light. On 26 September, Hohenthal wrote to the State Department that he had received a ‘secret memorandum prepared by Archbishop Stepinac and sent to me on 9 September.’ He transmitted the memo as enclosure number two of his consular report and labelled it plainly, ‘Archbishop’s Memorandum.’67 The 9 September date is significant, for on that date one of the first widely publicised show trials opened in Zagreb. It was the trial that would lead the OZNA directly to the steps of Archbishop Stepinac’s palace. Eighteen men stood accused of ‘crimes against the state’, one of whom was Stepinac’s private secretary, Father Ivan Salic. On 18 September, Salic implicated Archbishop Stepinac as an ‘enemy of the people’.68 The trial was interrupted so that the Secret Police could find and arrest Stepinac. Presumably, since all the press outlets were covering the trial, Stepinac knew the testimony and charges that would be levelled against him when he wrote his final memorandum for Consul Hohenthal. On account of his refusing to speak at his trial, the memorandum would become Archbishop Stepinac’s last-ditch effort to present his case and to save him from any future harm. Further, in light of the

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kangaroo proceedings and subsequent execution of the Chetnik leader Draza Mihailovic four months earlier, he surely would have considered this last message a matter of life and death. In fact, toward the end of Stepinac’s own trial, British ambassador Charles Peake visited with Marshall Tito and impressed upon him that the West would certainly register its indignation were Stepinac to receive the same destiny as the ill-fated Mihailovic. Reportedly, Tito responded to Peake that the Yugoslavs ‘would not be such fools as to kill an Archbishop.’69 But the Vatican was of the opinion that Marshall Tito was entertaining other ideas. ‘Shoot the Archbishop,’ was the advice of Foreign Minister Vladimir Velebit shortly after Stepinac’s arrest, and before his trial.70 Hurley’s nunciature was informed that while Velebit had it in mind to execute the Croatian Stepinac as a counter-measure to the execution of the Serb Mihailovic, he ‘could not shoot him because of world public opinion.’71 The memorandum that Stepinac handed to Hohenthal was, then, a desperate cry for help in the absence of Vatican power. The first section of the ‘Archbishop’s memorandum’, labelled ‘observations’, was an ideological exposition in which Stepinac identified himself as a martyr to communism. According to Archbishop Stepinac, his impending trial represented more than a personal saga – it was ‘a clash between Catholicism and Communism, which are today two of the most opposed concepts of life in the world.’72 With a nod to Croatian nationalism, he argued that his removal as Archbishop of Zagreb ‘would pierce the heart of the Croatian soul.’73 A trial conviction ‘would leave clear the road which leads to the inner organization of the Church,’ he argued to the Americans, ‘in order to subdue the Church to the will of the regime, which today is internationally known as the most faithful disciple of the Soviet regime.’74 ‘The regime does not like to lead an open fight,’ Stepinac offered in an ironic observation about a regime that was to take one of its most public moves against the Catholic church, ‘because of world opinion it is afraid to do so.’75 But if Tito was not leading an open fight against Stepinac and the Church he represented, neither was Archbishop Stepinac prepared to lead an ‘open fight’ on the witness stand. Yet, more frustrating for the Americans who were analysing the Archbishop’s statement was the fact that even within the secrecy of his memorandum, Stepinac was unwilling to offer any new evidence of his innocence. His defence on this occasion was to refer the reader to his own diocesan newspaper’s announcements of 1945 and 1946 dealing with his attitudes on the entire situation. ‘By these documents clear proof is given that Archbishop Stepinac did not closely cooperate with the Ustashi and Pavelic.’76

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Secondly, while Archbishop Stepinac declared that he had ‘always enjoined his clergymen to refrain from political activity,’ his most serious call against his clergy mixing in politics came in November of 1945. Coincidentally, it was this 1945 allocution that Stepinac chose to quote to Hohenthal as proof of his Ustashi resistance. ‘I warn you that in the pulpit and in the confessional, please avoid every word that could be interpreted as having a purely political character,’ he admonished his priests.77 Unfortunately, this dire warning came six months after VE Day and seven months after Tito had established the National Federative Republic of Yugoslavia (NFRY).78 Consequently, a glance at the timeline indicated that Archbishop Stepinac was not sounding a clarion call for his clergy to spurn the Ustashi regime, but to cut off their dealings with Tito’s new government. The Archbishop’s memorandum brings up other points, later raised at the trial, which were either dismissed out of hand or simply left unexplained. At his trial, the prosecution argued that the archbishop had given his approval to the name of the anti-Tito guerrilla movement known as the ‘Krizari’, or crusaders. ‘There is no written document originating from Archbishop Stepinac establishing that he approved such a name,’ the Archbishop wrote, failing to offer a remark on the accusation. Later in his trial, a major accusation arose implicating the archbishop in consecrating the flag of the Krizari movement. ‘Nobody can ever prove that the flag was consecrated with the knowledge and consent of the Archbishop,’ the memorandum stated, offering no new argumentation, evidence or verification. A less symbolic allegation in the trial dealt with the Ustashi archives that Stepinac was holding in the basement of his episcopal palace. Shortly before the fall of the Independent State of Croatia, several trunks of archival material were entrusted to Stepinac by the Ustashi foreign minister Alabegovic. It has always been a mystery how and why these materials ended up in the Archbishop’s possession. It was alleged at his trial that the Ustashi archives were placed with the Archbishop in anticipation that the fleeing Ustashi would one day regroup and return to establish an anti-communist state after the war was over. Since a plan did exist for an Ustashi return (known as Operation Krizari) the safety of the Ustashi archives was pivotal to the success of that movement.79 In the Archbishop’s memorandum, Stepinac stated forthrightly that he placed the archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the cellar of his palace, ‘in order to save them from aerial bombardment.’ Archbishop Stepinac clearly did know the political implications of such a move. Certainly, he was acting out of sympathy and intense

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national feeling. Regardless of political naiveté, it was clear to the State Department officials reading the ‘Archbishop’s Memorandum’ that Stepinac’s discussion of events seemed to reconfirm Peter Constan’s observations from his mock trial that Stepinac did indeed give ‘a certain amount of comfort to the enemy’ during wartime.80 Since the State Department was not in the business of making saints, it kept its judgements secret and moved on to decipher the next major foreign policy shift in Yugoslavia, a shift that would have major ramifications for church–state relations.

III On 28 June 1948, Stalin publicly expelled Tito’s Yugoslavia from the Cominform. A new set of diplomatic variables was now placed upon the negotiating table. Tito was claiming to be independent of the Soviet Union, and looking to Western countries for greater bargaining power and financial aid. If the Stepinac case caused a fissure in US–Vatican relations in the Balkans, Tito’s expulsion from the Soviet Bloc was the abrupt blow that forced a complete fracture of US–Vatican interests. Robert Borden Reams, the chargé d’affaires of the US Embassy in Belgrade, called it ‘the most significant event since US recognition’ and saw in it an opportunity for the US to ‘penetrate and disunite the Soviet bloc.’81 Reams indicated to the State Department that the United States should also be prepared to offer economic aid to Tito. W. Averell Harriman, Truman’s special representative in Europe, wrote enthusiastically within days of the split that the US ‘should discuss at the appropriate time the possibility of improvement in our trade and economic relations.’82 The Vatican feared that such a move would give a direct lifeline to Tito’s communist state. Members of the Vatican’s Secretariat of State chafed at the split. For the Roman Catholic Church, the split was inconsequential in terms of policy. According to the Vatican, the Yugoslavs merely entered the second phase of their campaign to liquidate the Catholic Church in Yugoslavia. After the Tito–Stalin split, the religious and political reports that came out of the Belgrade nunciature aimed at impressing upon the Americans that the religious programme meted out against Catholics was a full-scale religious persecution and a gross violation of human rights. The Americans, of course, decided to travel handin-hand with Tito down his separate road, ultimately adopting Reams’ original design of using Yugoslavia as a wedge in the Soviet bloc. Consequently, the US embassy in Belgrade drastically downgraded the

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Vatican secret reports that had been sent to them since 1946. While the nunciature kept the reports flowing, they were unaware that their reports had been devalued to nothing more than mere propaganda.83 By late July of 1948, it became clear that the Tito–Stalin split was causing, as historian John R. Lampe has put it, ‘a diametric reversal in diplomatic relations between Yugoslavia and the United States.’84 From now on, as the new State Department policy statement put it, ‘if Yugoslavia is not to be subservient to an outside power, then its internal regime is basically its own business.’85 Moreover the ‘character of the regime,’ even if it were repressive toward Catholics, ‘would not stand in the way of a normal development of economic relations between Yugoslavia and the United States.’ On the policy level, the Catholic voice was being drowned out by Tito’s cry for American cash. In addition, the Tito–Stalin split prompted a new team of US diplomats to be put in place in Belgrade. Ambassador Patterson, so long friendly to Catholic interests, was replaced by Ambassador Cavendish Welles Cannon. Robert Borden Reams, formerly the chargé d’affaires, was promoted to Counsellor of Embassy and was universally acknowledged as formulating the new strategy in Belgrade.86 Reams and Cannon aggressively argued to the State Department to fund Tito’s new realignment. Cognisant of this political transubstantiation and of their own marginalisation, Bishop Hurley and the Vatican moved on two separate fronts to stem the potential flow of economic aid to communist Yugoslavia. Their first tactical move was to exploit the ‘Stepinac card’ as a means of projecting Catholic power. Within a week of the split, the nunciature made it known to the US embassy that a scorching publicity campaign concerning the fate of the imprisoned Archbishop Stepinac would be waged in America if the US opened its coffers to communist Yugoslavia. In order to head off the American bishops, Ambassador Cannon personally called on Tito and requested the release of Archbishop Stepinac. ‘Tito was blunt’, Bishop Hurley secretly wrote to the NCWC: And said such a move was impossible because of the effect this would have in the American press – in other words, that it would indicate weakness on the part of Tito – with consequent unfavorable repercussions in Yugoslavia, particularly among Serbs and Montenegrans. Tito criticized the Archbishop bitterly as one who might have stopped the Ustachi ‘bestiality’ [Hurley’s quotes], but failed to do so.87 When Cannon reminded Tito about his prior public statements on human rights, and that the release of Archbishop Stepinac would go a

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long way toward ‘removing the doubts of a large segment of the US population,’ Tito became nearly apoplectic.88 At length, Cannon forced Tito’s hand by implying the linkage of a Stepinac release to a potential US loan. Deeply embittered by this revelation, Tito began to drive an even harder bargain. Hurley related that Tito ended up: Finally implying that if a US loan were granted within three months, he would release the Archbishop from jail to go to a monastery. But if the loan has as a condition the release of the Archbishop, Tito doesn’t want it.89 It was abundantly clear to Cannon that Tito was willing to sacrifice millions of dollars, if not all of his political gains from the split, to see that Archbishop Stepinac not be released scot-free. No one in America could guess how personal and neuralgic the Stepinac issue was to Marshal Tito. The situation was heightened when members of Congress began to respond to pressure from American Catholic bishops to link the Stepinac case with US economic assistance. When the powerful House Majority Leader and devout Catholic John W. McCormack sought Ambassador Cannon’s response concerning possible linkage between economic aid and the release of Archbishop Stepinac, Cannon responded that both the ‘cause of religious freedom’ and the ‘widening of the Tito–Stalin break’ demanded a minimising of the Stepinac issue.90 Without a doubt, Cannon was in a deep bind. If he indicated that Tito would rather forsake his entire economic programme than release Stepinac, he risked imperilling the fate of the State Department’s newly formed Yugoslav policy.91 As a result, he landed on a plan to persuade the US Congress that if Tito released Stepinac, his own position would weaken and, somewhat speciously, that Catholic persecution would only increase.92 In the eyes of the Vatican, all of this was nonsense. For Bishop Hurley it was as if his country, unabashedly anti-communist and a bastion of religious freedom, was abandoning him. The Americans were leaving him to twist in the wind, and he did not know why. But the Vatican refused to give up the battle. After this latest setback, Bishop Hurley began to move on a second front. In a last-ditch effort to persuade America not to be duped by Tito’s sentimental schism, Hurley circumvented both the US Embassy and the Department of State by petitioning his long-time friend Myron C. Taylor to intercede on his behalf. Taylor, who held the lengthy title ‘Personal Representative of the President to His Holiness Pope Pius XII,’ could grant the one thing that

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neither the US Embassy nor the State Department could offer – direct presidential access.93 The State Department, which resented Taylor’s special status for some time, was infuriated by this new tactic.94 Working quickly, within three weeks of the split the nunciature prepared a 16-page position paper entitled ‘The Controversy Between the Cominform and the Communist Party of Yugoslavia.’ As gesture of good faith, Taylor submitted the nunciature’s report to President Truman on 25 July 1948.95 From the Vatican’s perspective, the controversy was merely ‘a family quarrel among avowed Communists.’96 The Holy See believed that there was ‘no serious “doctrinal” divergence in the attitude and actions of the Yugoslavs.’ The question of ‘doctrine’ was ‘so much dust in the eyes.’97 The question was one of discipline and not doctrine. Bishop Hurley was afraid that Soviet expulsion might ‘throw Yugoslavia into the arms of the Western powers, who could easily supply her wants.’98 With a sense of fear and reality, Hurley also indicated that the split would ‘also greatly increase the magnetism of the Marshall Plan, which has already exerted considerable influence on Yugoslav economists.’99 In May of 1949, the Yugoslavs tested the new American policy and asked for a prize package of economic aid. In a bold move, the Tito regime requested 25 million dollars from the US Import–Export Bank. Immediately, the nunciature issued a second memorandum for Myron Taylor to hand to President Truman.100 According to the Vatican, Tito was galloping down Wall Street on a Trojan horse while America wilfully disregarded all principles of religious liberty, not to mention the canons of the Atlantic and United Nations charters. ‘If the US once again sells persecuted Christians down the river – to curry favor with a Communist government,’ Bishop Hurley privately wrote as the United States mulled over Tito’s aid proposal, ‘Catholic Croats and Slovenes will lose heart and abandon resistance.’ ‘What are we trying to buy?’ the nuncio asked as if in shock, ‘For what are we once again sacrificing our moral principles?’101 On 17 June 1949, President Truman responded to Myron Taylor’s memos. His response was circuitous and confusing. On the one hand, while he thought that the reports were ‘authoritative and extremely valuable’, on the other he offered no remedy, solution or other words to alleviate the Catholic Church’s grim situation. In reality, Truman offered no response at all. The bulk of his letter dealt with personal pleasantries, family remembrances and sentimental chatter. In fact, he closed to Taylor with nary a word about foreign policy, religious liberty or the Yugoslav human rights record. In September of 1949, the US granted Yugoslavia the coveted 25 million Export–Import Bank credit and it became clear that Vatican intervention had proved dismally ineffective.

The US and the Vatican in Yugoslavia 137

Conclusion As a diplomatic force, the Vatican held a great deal of strength in the Balkans during the early Cold War period. Artfully crafting a sub rosa nexus between the American embassy in Belgrade and Vatican’s nunciature, this Iron Curtain church–state relationship bore instantaneous dividends for both sides. The representations of an American ambassador on behalf of Vatican interests marked a new turn in US–Vatican diplomacy. Caught in a diplomatic siege behind the Iron Curtain, both states warmed to each other’s policies and desires. This embrace was obstructed by the complexities of the Archbishop Stepinac case and its attendant political fallout. The US–Vatican special relationship was derailed for good upon Tito’s voluntary expulsion from the Soviet sphere and his success in acquiring US economic aid. Yet, up until the US aid package was finalised, the Vatican continued to play its hand with the American strategists. In other words, the US–Vatican Cold War relationship remained viable right to the very end. To be sure, within the context of Cold War Yugoslavian politics, the relationship needed to remain within the realm of secret diplomacy. Yet perhaps it was even more important for US policy-makers to play their angel’s game under the table. By 1949, the United States would undergo a brief revival of anti-Catholicism spearheaded by the sociologist of religion, Paul Blanshard. In Blanshard’s widely popular book American Freedom and Catholic Power, he argued that the newly found prominence of American Catholics offered a dangerous threat to the essentials of freedom in the United States.102 Arguing for a fierce separation between church and state, Blanshard’s animadversions were overtly anti-papal and anti-Vatican in their thrust. In keeping their activities with Vatican diplomats concealed, the US State Department avoided a potentially explosive domestic situation.

Notes 1 While John Cornwell’s biography of Pope Pius, Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII (New York: Viking-Penguin, 1999), argues that Pius wielded extraordinary power in the realm of international affairs, historian Michael Phayer has chronicled accurately that by 1943, Pope Pius was ‘sitting on the diplomatic sidelines.’ See: Michael Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930–1965 (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1999), p. 60. 2 Stella Alexander, Church and State in Yugoslavia Since 1945 (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1987), ch. 4; Pedro Ramet [Sabrina Petra Ramet], ‘The Catholic Church in Yugoslavia, 1945–1989,’ in Pedro Ramet,

138 Religion and the Cold War

3

4 5

6

7

8 9

10

11

12

13 14 15 16

ed., Catholicism and Politics in Communist Societies (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1990), p. 182. Theodore J. Hohenthal to Secretary of State, US Department of State, consular dispatch number 23, 30 Jan. 1947, released by the Department of State as addendum to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation subject file of Bishop Joseph Patrick Hurley. Released through USFOIA. ‘Protest Against Yugoslav Attack on American Plane and Detention of American Personnel’, Department of State Bulletin 15 (1946), p. 415. Gerald P. Fogarty, The Vatican and the American Hierarchy From 1870 to 1965 (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1985), p. 313; Johnathan Luxmoore and Jolanta Babiuch, The Vatican and the Red Flag: The Struggle for the Soul of Eastern Europe (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 2000), pp. 37–49. Archbishop Amleto Cicognani to Stettinius, 31 Jan. 1945, records of the Department of State, RG 59. File 860h.404/I-3145, US National Archives, Archives II, College Park, Maryland (hereafter National Archives). Memorandum of a Conversation (Confidential) Regarding United States Relations with the Vatican, 3 April 1947, box 1, folder 8, J. Graham Parsons Papers, Special Collections Division, Georgetown University Library, Washington, DC. ‘Bishop O’Hara Elevated to Rank of Archbishop’, St Anthony’s Catholic News, Aug. 1950. The Encyclopedia of American Catholic History, eds Michael Glazier and Thomas J. Shelley, s.v. ‘Muench, Aloisius Joseph’; Colman J. Barry, American Nuncio: Cardinal Aloisius Muench (Collegeville, MN: St. John’s University Press, 1969); Richard D. Wiggers, ‘In the Service of Rome: An Expanded Role for American Catholics After 1945’ (paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Catholic Historical Association, Chicago, Illinois, 7 Jan. 2000). US Office of Strategic Services Foreign Nationalities Branch Files, confidential report number N-204, 16 Feb. 1945, microfiche copy no. INT 33 GE-79 (Bethesda, MD: University Publications of America, 1988). Dianne Kirby, ‘Divinely Sanctioned: The Anglo-American Cold War Alliance and the Defense of Western Civilization and Christianity, 1945–1948’, Journal of Contemporary History 35 (2000), p. 389; idem, ‘Truman’s Holy Alliance: The President , the Pope and the Origins of the Cold War’, Borderlines: Studies in American Culture 4 (1997); George J. Gill, ‘The Truman Administration and Vatican Relations’, Catholic Historical Review 73 (1987), pp. 408–23. Samuel Cardinal Stritch, memorandum, ‘Conversation with President Truman – White House – Washington, DC, 3 April 1946’, [8], File: International Affairs–Italy, National Catholic Welfare Conference Papers, Series 10, Office of the General Secretary, Department of Archives, Manuscripts, and Museum Collections, the Catholic University of America, Washington, DC (hereafter ACUA). Ibid. Ibid. Kirby, ‘Divinely Sanctioned’, p. 394. The diplomatic position of Regent is seldom used in Vatican diplomacy because the appointment is made only by the pope as sovereign of his

The US and the Vatican in Yugoslavia 139

17

18

19

20 21 22 23

24 25 26

27

28 29

country. As Regent, the diplomatic agent is accredited full powers to act in the name of the sovereign. The Regent may give instructions, negotiate and ratify treaties, sign Letters Under Seal, and create councils of state. A Regent is afforded the full virtue of normal diplomatic credentials. See: Ernest Satow, A Guide to Diplomatic Practice (London: Longmans, 1957), p. 117; Gordon Ireland, ‘The State of the City of the Vatican’, American Journal of International Law 27 (1933), pp. 285–7. Joseph P. Hurley, ‘Papal Pronouncements and American Foreign Policy’ (speech delivered over the Columbia Broadcasting System Network at Washington, DC on 6 July 1941), box 31, Archives of the Diocese of St Augustine, Jacksonville, Florida (hereafter ADSA); the speech was published under the same title and extensively distributed by the American interventionist group Fight For Freedom, Inc., in 1941. An astonishing number of Hurley relatives assumed important posts in the US Department of State. In 1934, President Roosevelt named Hurley’s uncle, Francis P. Corrigan, US Ambassador to El Salvador and later to Panama and Venezuela. In 1945, Bishop Hurley’s first cousin, Robert Foster Corrigan, was named US Vice Consul in Berlin. The bishop’s own brother, James Hurley, was highly regarded as a staff member to US Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius. Taken as a whole these appointments illustrate remarkable talent, ambition and upward social trajectory, especially given the family’s disadvantaged immigrant experience. By the time of his appointment to Belgrade, Hurley had already worked extensively during his prior diplomatic postings in India, Japan and the Vatican with Assistant to the Secretary of State William Phillips, Assistant Secretary of State Joseph Grew, and the US chargé d’affaires to the Vatican, Harold Tittman. L’Osservatore Romano, 22 Oct. 1945. Colonel John E. Duffy to Hurley, 5 Nov. 1945, box 147, file D3, ADSA. Monsignor Howard Carroll of the National Catholic Welfare Conference, Washington, DC to Hurley, 31 Oct. 1945, Box 99, ADSA. Franklin C. Gowen to Secretary of State, 8 Jan. 1946, Record Group 59, Myron Taylor papers, box 28, Confidential Correspondence File (hereafter CCF), National Archives. Franklin C. Gowen to Secretary of State, 15 Jan. 1946 [telegram], RG 59, Taylor papers, box 28, CCF, National Archives. Harold Shantz [Belgrade] to Secretary of State, 13 April 1946, Records of the Department of State, RG 59, 860h.404/4-346, National Archives. Telegram, Patterson (Belgrade) to American Representative at Vatican City, 14 Feb. 1946, Records of the US Department of State, RG 84, Belgrade Legation and Embassy Secret File: Catholic Church, file no. 840.4, box 71, National Archives. Report, ‘For the Attention of the American Ambassador’, [undated], Records of the US Department of State, RG 84, Belgrade Legation and Embassy Secret File: Catholic Church, file no. 840.4, box 71, National Archives. This report presumably was written at the Vatican nunciature in Belgrade. Ibid. Ibid.

140 Religion and the Cold War 30 Telegram, Harold Shantz (Rome) to Washington, 5 June 1946, Records of the US Department of State, RG 84, Belgrade Legation and Embassy Secret File: Catholic Church, file no. 840.4, box 71, National Archives. 31 Telegram Received, 21 May 1946, Records of the US Department of State, RG 84, Belgrade Legation and Embassy Secret File: Catholic Church, file no. 840.04, box 71, National Archives. 32 Secretary of State to American Embassy, Belgrade, Telegrams Received, 12 June 1946, Records of the US Department of State, RG 84, Belgrade Legation and Embassy Secret File: Catholic Church, file no. 840.4, box 71, National Archives. 33 Telegram Received, Acheson to Patterson, 16 May 1946 (see Patterson’s notations in pencil), Records of the US Department of State, RG 84, Belgrade Legation and Embassy Secret File: Catholic Church, file no. 840.4-5, box 71, National Archives. 34 In May of 1943, Pope Pius XII wrote a personal letter to President Roosevelt beseeching him to desist from an Allied aerial bombardment of Rome. This manoeuvre, which met with unmitigated failure, was a public one and quickly drew a great deal of press reporting. See: Pierre Blet, SJ, Pius XII and the Second World War: According to the Archives of the Vatican, trans. Lawrence J. Johnson (New York: Paulist Press, 1999), pp. 203–9; it is difficult to gauge if the United States entertained the interests of the Holy See on other occasions since the published six-volume Vatican collection on the Second World War, Actes et Documents du Saint-Siège relatifs à la Seconde Guerre mondiale, eds Pierre Blet, Angelo Martini, Robert Graham and Burkhart Schneider (Vatican City: Liberia Editrice Vaticana, 1965–8), fails to contain non-Vatican ambassadorial correspondence. 35 Reports filed, General Records of the Department of State, RG 59, file 860.h 400, 1945–50; other reports may be found in General Records of the Department of State, RG 84, Belgrade Legation and Embassy files, Secret File, 840.4, Catholic church files, 1945–50, National Archives. 36 Lt. Col. William P. Maddox [Trieste] to Richard C. Patterson [Belgrade], 7 May 1945, Records of the US Department of State, RG 84, Belgrade Legation and Embassy, post files, box 54, file 840.4, National Archives. On Maddox see: Julius Mader, Who’s Who in CIA (Berlin: Julius Mader, 1968), p. 114. 37 Harold Shantz [Belgrade] to Secretary of State, 24 May 1946, Records of the US Department of State, RG 84, Belgrade Legation and Embassy files, Catholic Church file, 1946, box 71, National Archives. 38 Anne Lane, Britain, the Cold War, and Yugoslav Unity, 1941–1949 (Sussex: Academic Press, 1996), p. 64. 39 David L. Larson, United States Foreign Policy Toward Yugoslavia, 1943–1963 (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1979), p. 106. 40 Personal interview, Vatican diplomatic source contemporary with events, 18 April 1995. 41 Ibid. Hurley also believed that many of the Yugoslav contractors who visited the nunciature were OZNA (‘Odsek-odeljenje za?tite naroda’) agents. There was a running joke among the Americans at the nunciature that every broken light bulb was receiving the special attention of the Yugoslav Foreign Office.

The US and the Vatican in Yugoslavia 141 42 Air Bulletin (Secret), Secretary of State to Franklin C. Gowen [Vatican City], 7 March 1946, Records of the US Department of State, RG 59, Myron Taylor Papers, box 28, CCF, 1944–7, National Archives. 43 David Alvarez and Robert A. Graham, Nothing Sacred: Nazi Espionage Against the Vatican, 1939–1945 (London: Frank Cass, 1997), pp. 140–73. 44 J. Graham Parsons [Rome] to Walter C. Dowling, 17 July 1947, box 1, folder 2, J. Graham Parsons Papers, Special Collections Division, Georgetown University Library, Washington, DC. 45 Ibid. 46 Ibid. 47 Myron C. Taylor, the US representative at the Vatican, carried the cumbersome title of ‘The President’s Personal Representative to His Holiness Pope Pius XII’. Taylor’s appointment carried no Congressional approval and his position was intended only to serve as a conduit of information between the two heads of state. See: George Q. Flynn, ‘Franklin Roosevelt and the Vatican: The Myron Taylor Appointment’, Catholic Historical Review 58 (1972). 48 For extended treatments of the Stepinac case see: Stella Alexander, The Triple Myth: A Life of Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987); Alexander, ‘Yugoslavia and the Vatican, 1919–1970’, in Papal Diplomacy in the Modern Age (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994); Carlo Falconi, The Silence of Pope Pius XII (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1970); Richard Pattee, The Case of Cardinal Aloysius Stepinac (Milwaukee, WI: Bruce Publishing, 1953); Menachem Shelah, ‘The Catholic Church in Croatia: The Vatican and the Murder of the Croatian Jews’, Holocaust and Genocide Studies 4 (1989), pp. 323–7. 49 Stella Alexander, ‘Croatia: The Catholic Church and Clergy, 1919–1945’, in Catholics, the State, and the European Radical Right, 1919–1945, eds Richard J. Wolff and Jorg K. Hoensch (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), p. 52. 50 Concerning the rank injustice of the trial proceedings see: Sabrina Petra Ramet, Balkan Babel: The Disintegration of Yugoslavia from the Death of Tito to Ethnic War (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2nd ed., 1996), pp. 140–3; Stella Alexander, ‘Archbishop Stepinac Reconsidered’, Religion in Communist Lands 6 (1978), pp. 77–9. 51 Harold Shantz [Belgrade] to Secretary of State, 21 Sept. 1946, General Records of the Department of State, RG 59, Myron Taylor papers, box 34, file: ‘Stepinac Case – 1946’, National Archives. 52 Alexander, Triple Myth, pp. 178–9. 53 L’Osservatore Romano, 20 Sept. 1946. 54 Harold Shantz, [Belgrade] to Secretary of State, 13 April 1946, General Records of the Department of State, RG 59, Records Relating to Yugoslavia, file no. 860h.404/4-36, National Archives. 55 Hurley to Howard J. Carroll, National Catholic Welfare Conference papers, series 10, box 26, file 20, ACUA; see also an unsigned typewritten speech delivered to the United American Croatians of New York, May, 1955, Archbishop Joseph P. Hurley papers, Series II, ADSA. 56 New York Times, 29 Sept. 1946. 57 In December of 1951, the Chicago Daily News reporter Ernie Hill filed a report from Belgrade generally indicating that Stepinac had collaborated

142 Religion and the Cold War

58 59 60

61

62 63 64 65

66

67

68 69

70

71

with the Ustashi during the war. The US Ambassador to Yugoslavia at the time, George V. Allen, was quoted in the article as saying that ‘the Yugoslavs had adequate reason for trying and condemning Archbishop Stepinac’, setting off a storm of controversy. While Allen indicated in a Top Secret telegram to the State Department that he generally agreed with Hill’s report, he publicly denied the quote at every turn and constantly referred the press back to Acheson’s statement of 1946. See: ‘Conversation with Ambassador Allen Re Chicago Daily News Despatch From Belgrade’, 10 Dec. 1951, Records of the Department of State, RG 59, Records Relating to Yugoslavia, file 660 (Stepinac), National Archives. Document released through USFOIA. New York Times, 24 Oct. 1946. Ibid.; Robert St John, The Silent People Speak (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1948), p. 166. Memorandum, Constan to Patterson, ‘Observations of the 1945 Election’, Peter Constan Papers, box 1, file: ‘Election in Yugoslavia’, Manuscript Division, United States Library of Congress, Washington, DC; see also Constan’s memoranda on the Mihailovic trial in the same collection. Peter Constan, ‘The Zagreb Trials: Trial of the Archbishop of Zagreb, Dr. Aloysius Stepinac’, General Records of the Department of State, RG 59, Myron Taylor Papers, box 34, miscellaneous subject files: ‘Stepinac Case, 1946.’ Ibid. Ibid. David P. Currie, ‘The Constitution in the Supreme Court: The Second World War, 1941–46’, The Catholic University Law Review 37 (1987), p. 23. General Records of the Department of State, RG 59, Records Relating to Yugoslavia, box 34, file marked ‘Political-General’, National Archives. The author is grateful to Professor Michael Phayer for sharing this research. ‘Joe’ [Hurley] to ‘Eminentissimi Doc’ [Edward Cardinal Mooney], 17 Sept. 1946, Edward Mooney Papers, Series II, Archives of the Archdiocese of Detroit. Even though the trial of Stepinac’s ecclesiastical associates had been taking place in Zagreb for the previous three weeks, Hurley opened his letter to Mooney by stating ‘I’m returning to Belgrade tomorrow after a month in Switzerland and a few days in Rome.’ Presumably, Hurley believed that Stepinac’s archiepiscopal status would keep him immune from arrest. Hohenthal [Zagreb] to Secretary of State, General Records of the Department of State, RG 59, Myron Taylor Papers, box 34, File: ‘Stepinac Case, 1946’, National Archives. The ‘Archbishop’s Memorandum’ is enclosure no. 2 of dispatch no. 1 dated 26 Sept. 1946. Alexander, The Triple Myth, pp. 138–41. Dianne Kirby, Church, State and Propaganda: The Archbishop of York and International Relations, A Political Study of Cyril Forster Garbett (Hull, UK: The University of Hull Press, 1999), p. 163. Informal notes, National Catholic Welfare Conference Papers, Office of the General Secretary, series 10, box 26, file 20, ‘Communism: Yugoslavia’, ACUA. The notes are written in Bishop Hurley’s script. Ibid.

The US and the Vatican in Yugoslavia 143 72 73 74 75 76 77 78

79 80

81 82

83

84

85 86 87 88

89

90 91 92 93

Ibid., Hohenthal to Secretary of State, 26 Sept. 1946. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid, [3]. Nazi Germany surrendered to Tito’s Partisans on 7 May 1945. Tito’s Federative Republic of Yugoslavia was established in Belgrade on 8 May 1945. Phayer, Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930–65, p. 170. Position paper, Walworth Barbour, ‘Trial of Archbishop Stepinac’, 1 Nov. 1946. Records of the Department of State: RG 59, Records Relating to Yugoslavia, box 1, file 660, National Archives. Released through USFOIA. Foreign Relations of the United States (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1969), IV [1948], p. 1073. Telegram (secret), Harriman to Marshall, 7 July 1948, W. Averell Harriman Papers, box 271, file: Marshall Plan, Country File: Yugoslavia, Manuscript Division, US Library of Congress, Washington, DC. Transmittal letter, Robert Borden Reams [Belgrade] to J. Graham Parsons [Rome]. Quoted in Parsons to Secretary of State, 14 Feb. 1948, Records of the Department of State, RG 59, 860h.404/2-1448, National Archives. For a similar assessment of the value of Vatican intelligence see Trevor Barnes, ‘The Secret Cold War: The CIA and American Foreign Policy in Europe, 1946–56’, The Historical Journal 24 (1981), pp. 401–2. John R. Lampe, Russell O. Prickett and Ljubisa S. Adamovic, eds, Yugoslav–American Economic Relations Since World War II (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990), p. 13. Lorraine M. Lees, ‘American Decision to Assist Tito’, Diplomatic History 2 (1978), p. 410. Ibid. Charles G. Stefan, ‘The Emergence of the Soviet–Yugoslav Break: A Personal View From the Belgrade Embassy’, Diplomatic History 6 (1982), p. 388. Informal notes written in Bishop Hurley’s script, National Catholic Welfare Conference Papers, Office of the General Secretary, series 10, box 26, file 20 ‘Communism: Yugoslavia’, ACUA. Ibid.; This was not the last time that Marshall Tito became visibly irate over the Stepinac issue. In a 1955 discussion with Secretary of State Allen Dulles regarding Stepinac, Dulles noted ‘in connection with this matter, Tito showed the first sign of emotionalism that he had during the entire visit. He spoke with considerable heat.’ Memorandum of a Conversation, US Department of State, 6 Nov. 1955, accessed from Internet on 30 Oct. 2000 from Primary Source Media, World Governments Document Archive/Declassified Documents Reference System website at http:// www.ddrs.psmedia.com/tplweb…g+ddrs_img+51695+++(stepinac):text. Ibid. Lorraine M. Lees, Keeping Tito Afloat: The United States, Yugoslavia, and the Cold War (State College, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press), p. 66. Lees, ‘Decision to Assist Tito’, p. 414. Lees, Keeping Tito Afloat, p. 66.

144 Religion and the Cold War 94 The Taylor arrangement is discussed in Taylor to Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius, 22 Dec. 1944, Stettinius Papers, Special Collections Department, Alderman Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia. 95 Secret memorandum, J. Graham Parsons to Secretary of State, 4 March 1948, J. Graham Parsons Papers, box 1, folder 15, Special Collections Division, Georgetown University Library, Washington, DC. In this memo, Parsons indicates that Taylor’s constant communiqués ‘bother the President’. 96 Myron C. Taylor to Harry S. Truman, 25 July 1948, White House Central Files: Confidential File, State Department: Taylor Papers, box 1, file: ‘Reports, 1948’, Harry S. Truman Presidential Library, Independence, Missouri. 97 Ibid. 98 Ibid. 99 Ibid. 100 Ibid. 101 ‘Memorandum on the Religious Situation in Yugoslavia Since January, 1947’, June 1949, WHCF:CF; State Department: Taylor Papers, box 2, ‘Reports, 1949’, Truman Library. 102 Unsigned notes, National Catholic Welfare Conference Papers, Office of the General Secretary, series 10, box 26, file 20, ‘Communism: Yugoslavia’, Department of Archives, Manuscripts, and Museum Collections, The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC. 103 Paul Blanshard, American Freedom and Catholic Power (Boston: Beacon Press, 1949). The book’s anti-Catholic tinge was so popular that it underwent a revision as John F. Kennedy announced his intention to run for the presidency in 1958. Blanshard’s 1951 book, Communism, Democracy, and Catholic Power argued that Catholicism – and specifically the Vatican – presented the foremost threat to democracy in the United States.

9 Cold War on High and Unity from Below: The French Communist Party and the Catholic Church in the Early Years of the Gaullist Fifth Republic Paul Hainsworth

Introduction: the Gaullist republic In 1958, the French political regime changed dramatically. After 12 years of recurrent crisis and amid a bloody war of decolonisation in French Algeria, the Fourth Republic collapsed, was voted out and replaced by a new Fifth Republic, ushered in by General Charles de Gaulle and his supporters. De Gaulle went on to preside over and dominate French politics for the next decade, thus prompting leading commentators to refer to ‘the Gaullist Republic’ or ‘state’. The ascendancy and consolidation of Gaullism in France took place between the years 1958 and 1962, and the onset of the new republic was bound to have consequences for other ‘actors’. This chapter focuses upon two of these: the French Communist Party (PCF) and the Catholic Church. The former had been born in 1920 as a byproduct of the Russian Revolution, and had emerged more recently as France’s most successful party at the polls in post-war France. However, given the party’s political isolation and the intensification of the Cold War, the PCF found it difficult to form political alliances to complement and consummate its electoral showing. The latter entity, the Catholic Church, had played a conspicuous role throughout French history and society, resulting in France being described often as ‘the elder daughter of the Church’. The birth of the Fifth Republic forced both the PCF and the Catholic Church to take stock of the new regime and to assess what it meant for their respective world-views. The purpose of this chapter is to examine some of the developments and perspectives operative 145

146 Religion and the Cold War

within and between French Catholicism and Communism, as these powerful forces came to terms with the Fifth Republic and with their own respective evolutions. The PCF interpreted Gaullism as a manifestation of state monopoly capitalism, wherein the bourgeoisie relied upon political and ideological ramparts (including religion) to help underwrite its economic dominance. Gaullism was thus seen, by the PCF, as a force that recruited religion for class purposes. The Church’s clerical role, in turn, was to help prop up capitalism and its political arm, Gaullism. For the PCF, Gaullism also signified the revival of the classic alliance between ‘throne’ and ‘altar’. At the same time, the return of the General was seen to represent a familiar strand in French political history: the personalised, authoritarian tradition.

A secular republic? Whilst there were elements of the Fifth Republic’s 1958 Constitution that offended the PCF, on paper – at least – the party could agree with Article 2: ‘France is an indivisible, secular, democratic, and social Republic. It ensures the equality before the law of all citizens without distinction based on origin, race or religion. It respects all beliefs.’1 In addition to this welcome (to the PCF) reference to secularity and the absence of any reference to God, the Constitution’s preamble also situated the new regime in the republican fold, with respect for the Rights of Man written in. Nevertheless, despite this proviso, the PCF remained suspicious and vigilant of what it perceived to be a collusive Gaullist relationship with the Church. This perception was not without foundation. Even prior to becoming President of France in 1958, de Gaulle (as premier) had sought Pope Pius XII’s blessing for his ‘mission’ of leading France at a grave period in its history: ‘In all piety I call for [the Pope’s] spiritual support over my action and ask him to bless France.’2 Pius XII willingly responded to this request and, writing in the PCF daily newspaper, L’Humanité, André Wurmser saw this exchange as indicative of de Gaulle’s political intentions.3 The soliciting of papal support was seen, from the outset, as confusing the secularity of the state and the relationship between Church and state. The PCF’s suspicions that the Church would be a significant beneficiary of Gaullism were aroused by the declarations of the French Catholic hierarchy just prior to the proposed referendum on the new constitution for the Fifth Republic. The designation of the Fifth

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Republic as secular was a potential source of confusion for French Catholics, but the declarations of the French cardinals and bishops served to clarify things for their faithful. Only a week before the actual vote on the Constitution, in September 1958, five French cardinals – Mgrs Gerlier, Feltin, Liénart, Roques and Grente – spoke out against ‘the inopportune propaganda that incites Catholics to abstain or reject the constitutional draft’.4 Neither the absence of reference to God nor the inclusion of the word laïque (secular) were to prevent Catholics ‘from freely expressing their opinion on the proposed text’.5 This same advice had been offered by Catholic bishops throughout France, at times coupled with attacks on the Communists. For instance, Mgr Chappoulie (Bishop of Angers) warned against ‘the Communist threat’,6 whilst Mgr Rastouil (Bishop of Limoges) openly declared: ‘In conscience … Catholics may vote “yes” and it is even permissible for them to think that they ought to vote “yes”.’7 Another bishop, Mgr Brault (Bishop of St Dié), said that it was more important for God to be present in the people’s hearts rather than in the texts.8 In short, all could agree with Mgr Guerry (Bishop of Cambrai) that a ‘yes’ vote was possible ‘despite the obvious imperfections of the text’.9 Episcopal advice was sympathetically echoed by the French Catholic press and journalists: R. P. Wenger – editor of the Catholic daily, La Croix – shared his superiors’ view that there was no a priori reason for rejecting the Constitution;10 Fr Richard – in L’Homme Nouveau – simply advised Catholics to vote ‘yes’,11 whilst Jean de Fabrègues – in La France Catholique – rejected the idea of voting the same way as the Communists.12 Again, Wladimir d’Ormesson, writing in Le Figaro, saw no cause for alarm in Clause 2, since it was not written in the Constitution, but in 12 centuries of French history that France is the elder daughter of the Church.13 As explained, the PCF found the episcopacy to be too obliging in helping to deliver the Catholic vote to de Gaulle. For instance, the PCF religious specialist and philosopher, Roger Garaudy, accused the Catholic hierarchy of a ‘flagrant interference in politics’,14 whilst another party spokesperson, Marcel Servin, attacked the same body for endeavouring to put ‘the faith of the faithful at the service of a political operation: that of de Gaulle’.15 Moreover, Servin pointed to ‘an inadmissible intrusion into French political life’, suggesting pointedly that it was not the first time that the Church had sided with the enemies of liberty and the Republic.16 PCF suspicions had been aroused first by de Gaulle’s invitation to Mgr Feltin to be received personally at the Matignon (the premier’s official residence) and also by Minister of

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State Pierre Pflimlin’s cordial dining of Cardinal Tisserant (the Pope’s representative) at Lourdes: ‘One can understand the tranquility of the cardinals and bishops faced with the Gaullist conception of the secular Republic. These receptions give a foretaste of it.’17 The PCF hoped to attract as many Catholics as possible to the antiGaullist camp and to a ‘no’ vote against the 1958 Constitution. This aspiration was based on the undeniable diversity of French Catholicism, and L’Humanité gave considerable coverage to the increasing number of anxieties from Christian (CFTC) trade unions over the Gaullist Constitution. But France as whole – 80 per cent on an 85 per cent turnout – voted overwhelmingly for the Fifth Republic. The PCF was reduced to the token claim that ‘the advanced forces of the nation’ had voted ‘no’: ‘In certain instances, other republicans – socialists, radicals, Catholics – have joined their votes to those of Communist voters.’18 Relations between Gaullism and the high Church were cemented, in June 1959, by de Gaulle’s cordial visit to the Vatican. The exchanges between de Gaulle and the Pope John XXIII were warm and reverential, and the PCF objected to the French President meeting the Pope ‘in the name of France’, and referring to ‘the glory of our Catholic Church’.19 De Gaulle was perceived to be a ‘knight of Christ’, clearly identifying France with the Catholic Church.20 This process was furthered the following December when de Gaulle, standing in for Pope John XXIII, presented the papal nuncio in France, Cardinal Marella, with his Cardinal’s beret. Marella, in turn, pointed to the Vatican’s ‘moral support’ for the ‘civil authorities’, even describing de Gaulle as the incarnation of France.21 The PCF had interpreted de Gaulle’s visit to Rome as evidence of the French President’s Cold War design to construct a ‘little Europe’ of clerical and reactionary governments, ‘under the shield of the Vatican and the sign of anti-Communism’.22 The Catholic alliance of Adenauer (West Germany), Franco (Spain), de Gaulle, Salazar (Portugal) and Christian-Democrat, Vaticanised Italy was seen as a new ‘holy alliance’ crusade against communism.23 The PCF, moreover, both feared and opposed German ‘revanchism’ and suspected Pope John XXIII’s sympathy for Adenauer’s Germany as a model state. The Gaullist–Adenauer friendship, condoned by the Vatican, was viewed by the PCF as detrimental to French interests. Unsurprisingly, the PCF empathised more with communist East Germany than its Western counterpart. West Germany was viewed as the Trojan Horse of American imperialism and state monopoly capitalism. The common denominator of Euro-

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American capitalism and Vatican ideological discourse was, of course, anti-communism. The PCF saw the Vatican as working against France’s interests and the cause of world peace, noting the high Church’s hostility to the doctrine of peaceful coexistence. The mouthpiece of the Catholic Church in France, La Documentation Catholique, published the discourse of the American Cardinal, Spellman, levelled against peaceful coexistence at the time of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s visit to the United States.24 The Soviet leader’s visit to France, in 1960, was an even more tangible occasion to rehearse anti-communist sentiment and, thus, Cardinal Feltin urged all priests to abstain from participating in any celebratory activities: ‘The position of the Church is clear. For several years, she has formally condemned atheistic communism and asked people to pray for the Church of silence.’25 This directive was supplemented by a contribution from the Vatican’s Cardinal Ottaviani, who attacked peaceful coexistence and ‘the passive attitude of the West’ to the persecution of Catholics in eastern Europe.26 In France, too, Mgr Theas (Bishop of Tarbes and Lourdes) asked for prayers for ‘the victims of atheistic Communism’ and ‘the nation that was Holy Russia’.27 René Andrieu, in L’Humanité, took up the gauntlet against ‘the violent anti-communist and anti-Soviet discourse’ against peaceful coexistence.28 Moreover, Andrieu was conscious of the other factors behind Vatican anxiety: the prospect of ‘an opening to the left’ in Italian politics, the consolidation of the Italian Communist Party and the Italian President’s imminent trip to Moscow. Significantly, too, the Church was seen to be out of step with French public opinion, which overwhelmingly saw the de Gaulle–Khruschchev meeting as contributing to peace and friendship between the French and Soviet Union peoples.29 The rumpus surrounding Khrushchev’s visit was climaxed by the ‘Kir incident’. Canon Kir, a former Catholic centrist (Mouvement Républicain Populaire, MRP) parliamentarian and the Mayor of Dijon, was forbidden by his religious hierarchy to greet the Soviet leader. Kir’s response was that: ‘The episcopacy had wanted to pull the iron curtain between Khrushchev and me, between the world of non-believers and the Christian world.’30 Unsurprisingly, the PCF gave a great deal of press coverage to the Kir incident since it spotlighted the hierarchy of the Church unfavourably and out of touch with French opinion. Both Kir and Khrushchev expressed solidarity against the Cold War, and the former even had praise for the wartime role of the Red Army. Various

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PCF journalists pointed to the success of Khruschchev’s visit, despite the restrictions of the Catholic hierarchy. For instance, Wurmser – in an obvious play of words – alluded to ‘L’Eglise qui impose la silence’.31 One interesting response to the Kir incident was that of Maurice Duverger, the distinguished political scientist and commentator. Writing in Le Monde, Duverger objected to a ‘foreign power’s’ intervention – ‘a direct and spectacular intervention in international diplomacy’. According to Duverger: ‘A part of the Church tries to impede the actual evolution of international relations: it distrusts peaceful coexistence, it preserves a nostalgia for the Cold War.’32 This interpretation was in keeping with the PCF’s critical line about interference by a ‘foreign power’. The fact that the argument came now from a wellknown critic of the PCF enhanced the impact of the criticism and Duverger’s contribution was sympathetically and extensively reported in L’Humanité. Summing up the visit, the veteran PCF politician Jacques Duclos concluded that ‘the princes of the Church have been unable to prevent many Catholics participating in the welcome extended to Khruschchev’.33 L’Humanité published a letter, allegedly from a Catholic, who wrote that, like many Catholics, he had ignored the ban on greeting the Soviet leader and had written in protest to Cardinal Gerlier.34 The attitude of the Church ‘establishment’ furnished the PCF with a useful platform to employ their strategy of showing up divisions between the Catholic hierarchy and the faithful. At the same time, the PCF could criticise the Church’s attitude to peace: ‘The Church’s thinking on peaceful coexistence’, argued one PCF author, is full of ambiguity; it urges no coexistence in ‘illusion’, ‘fear’ or ‘error’, but only in ‘truth’ – but the only truth is that of the Catholic Church.35 This kind of Cold War exchange, then, characterised communist–Catholic relations in the early years of the Gaullist Republic. At the same time, PCF–Catholic Church relations were soured by the dispute over Catholic education – le problème scolaire – that is, whether the state should make a financial contribution to the maintenance of Catholic schools. The next two sections examine this specific issue.

The schools problem In 1958, the PCF campaigned strongly against the idea that the secular state should financially support Catholic schools: ‘For the State, religion must remain a private affair. The teacher in his school

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and the priest in his church. No State subsidies to confessional schools.’36 Prospective Gaullist hand-outs for ‘free teaching’ (see below) were seen as a repayment for episcopal support at the time of the 1958 referendum and legislative elections. The episcopacy, in turn, used the issue of aid to Catholic schools as a point of principle and a voting guideline – a further source of irritant to the PCF. Thus, at election times, the Church hierarchy and Catholic parent and teacher organisations urged the faithful to vote only for those parties and politicians pledging support for Catholic education. L’Humanité was critical, for instance, of Mgr Theas’s declaration to his faithful: ‘It is a duty of conscience to refuse one’s vote to candidates professing a doctrine condemned by the Church, to the Communists, for example, who do not accept the essential liberties of Christians, especially in school matters.’37 This heavy-handed intrusion into the realm of party politics particularly upset the PCF and L’Humanité’s editor, René Andrieu, protested that ‘the princes of the Church are on the side of the princes who govern us’, as they were at the time of the 1958 referendum and legislative elections.38 Indeed, Mgr Llosa (Bishop of Ajaccio) had welcomed de Gaulle as ‘a man of providence’, who fully appreciated the religious schools’problem.39 The 1959 municipal elections witnessed a similar pattern, notably with Mgr Morilleau (Bishop of La Rochelle) stating that: ‘We recall that Catholics are unable to bring neither their votes nor their support to Communism, Marxism, materialism, laïcisme, which would deny the liberty of the Church, the stability of the family, the practical rights of parents to entrust their children to the Christian school.’40 Cardinal Richaud followed suit in urging a preference for candidates who were favourable to a ‘fair and peaceful solution to the schools problem’,41 whilst Cardinal Roques’s definition of a ‘good candidate’ was one who had ‘a well-established Christian direction’, inspired by the social doctrine of the Church.42 Few, if any, PCF candidates could match up to these criteria. Moreover, the above guidelines and directives received confirmation at the highest level when, after the April 1959 municipal elections in France, the Vatican Holy Office resurrected the 1949 ban on Catholics voting for Communists, or even for their allies. Further Catholic hierarchy advice to voters duly followed. For instance, at the time of the 1962 (November) legislative elections, the PCF again complained about Church–state collusion. Among the latest guidelines for (Catholic) voters were: ‘the moral worth of the candidate’ and personal attitude to ‘liberty of teaching’ (that is, support for Catholic schools).43 Catholic education remained a key issue for the

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Church. Pius XII had explained the Church’s position here as follows: ‘The Catholic Church only sees its educational ideal realised in the Catholic school.’44 On another occasion, the same pontiff had suggested that the criterion of judgement for the Catholic school was its success in ‘moulding strong Christians’, though – at the same time – he regretted that the institution did not always receive the support it deserved from the ‘public powers’.45 The PCF suspected that, with de Gaulle in office, the ‘public powers’ would be only too obliging in this respect. The episcopacy’s nonplussed attitude to the secular status of the Gaullist Republic led the PCF to believe that Clause 2 of the Constitution would turn out to be a paper tiger. In essence, the PCF questioned theVatican’s notion of ‘free teaching’, as used to depict Catholic education. For the PCF, ‘free’ teaching was not unlike the concepts of ‘free’ enterprise or plurality of trade unions: all were seen as basically reactionary. Free teaching meant the clericalisation of children; free enterprise signified class domination of economic life; and free trade unions resulted in a divided working class. Such ‘freedoms’ could only benefit the Catholic hierarchy and its allies and were, therefore, pseudo-liberties. The PCF–Catholic Church controversy about state aid tended to revolve around the respective ideas of freedom as cherished by both sides. Mgr Cazaux (Bishop of Luçon), for instance, insisted that public funds were essential to make parental choice a reality.46 The PCF, on the other hand, saw potential funds to Catholic schools as taking away much-needed resources from the public sector and deflating the concept of a secular republic. The debate over these matters had come to a head with the passage of the 1959 loi Debré. The loi Debré The PCF’s fears that Catholic education would benefit from Gaullism were confirmed by the 1959 Debré Law, drafted by the designer of the Gaullist Constitution. The loi Debré sought to go one better than its predecessor (the 1951 loi Barrangé, which had granted a subsidy to Catholic schools), by making arrangements for a permanent contractual relationship between the state and Catholic schools. A stormy debate did not prevent the passage of the law, on 31 December 1959, and on the same day, the Vatican’s mouthpiece, L’Osservatore Romano, pointedly carried a piece by Pope Jean XXIII celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of Divini Illius Magistri, the charter of Christian education.47 For the PCF, religious specialist, Georges Cogniot immediately took up the gauntlet, declaring that: ‘Your law is a law of fear and

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hatred’, that contradicts Article 2 of the Constitution and the 1905 separation of Church and state.48 The passing of the loi Debré did not end the religious/schools cold war between the PCF and the Church. The conflict now revolved around the implementation of the law. For one thing the Association pour l’enseignement libre (APEL) found the legislation to be too timid and incomplete whilst the rival Comité National d’Action Laïque (CNAL), backed by the PCF, promised to continue the struggle. The episcopacy was disturbed by the latter course of action and the PCF’s declared intention to prove that a secular majority existed in France. Mgr Guerry spoke of ‘a campaign of exceptional violence’ against free teaching and denied that the Church was a partisan of la guerre scolaire, with the public school as the target.49 La Croix called the campaign against the legislation ‘an odious manoeuvre’, whilst Cardinal Feltin said that it had no ‘raison d’être’ – ‘the law is the law’.50 The Pope himself intervened with a letter to Cardinal Feltin, expressing hope that the Catholic cause would obtain justice and receive substantial aid, so that the student – ‘magnificent hope of the Church and the country’ – would not be deprived of religious instruction.51 The PCF complained about the episcopal ban on Catholics signing the CNAL petition against the implementation of the loi Debré. Noting episcopal unrest, L’Humanité surmised that the ban would not deter many Catholics from signing it.52 The PCF also objected to the undue influence of a ‘foreign power’ (the Vatican), contrary to France’s interests. The PCF stressed that the CNAL campaign should be devoted to changing a situation in which ‘the State finances the teachings of the Church and the Church controls the teaching of the State’.53 Catholic schools were seen as privileged, favoured, elitist and anachronistic institutions. In 1960, PCF journalist Pierre Durand examined Brittany at the time of the annual return to school (la rentrée), pointing to a regiment of priests and religious teachers on their way to school, with the Church coffers full and public schools deficient in 18 communes.54 L’Humanité complained that cutbacks on public expenditure and teachers would only be accentuated by the multiplicity of priests in teaching.55 Similarly, at the time of la rentrée in 1961 and 1962, the PCF contrasted the fortunes of public and private schools, accusing the Gaullists of deliberately causing the ‘catastrophic’ state of the public school and engineering the encroaching influence of big business over educational policies.56 The PCF fears of big business’s influence served as a useful reminder that le problème scolaire and religion were superstructural problems –

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albeit prominent and weighty ones – and the basic problem was defined as state monopoly capitalism. The Church and Gaullism, we recall, were seen as ideological supports for the dominant class. The PCF’s evaluation of the Church as a basically feudalistic institution did not prevent the latter from enjoying a mutually beneficial relationship with the bourgeoisie and its political arm, Gaullism. Pope John XXIII, in his encyclicals, was accused of using the language and discourse of neo-capitalism, or trying to expound a reformed ‘popular’ capitalism. At the same time, the Church’s periodic criticisms of capitalist ‘evils’ or ‘abuses’ left the basic principles of capitalism intact. The perceived clerical revival in France disturbed the PCF because the former was considered to be part of the larger revival of reactionary forces and the concurrent attempts to strengthen capitalism itself. The ‘confessional’ school – albeit construed by the PCF as ‘the school of the Middle Ages’ – was seen as complementary to capitalist interests. Confessional teaching had important socio-political consequences in that the PCF reckoned that it produced a more passive citizen. The ideal pupil here was allegedly insufficiently equipped to take part in ‘the struggle’. Besides, confessional teaching emphasised ‘authority’ and respect for (capitalist) property: it inculcated the norms of acceptance, class harmony, the status quo and children were indoctrinated to accept situations as God-given.

An outstretched hand The PCF’s criticism of Church–state relationships and educational policy in the early years of the Gaullist republic did not mean that the PCF was against appealing to French Catholics on other levels. Indeed, appeals to Catholic workers were an integral part of the party’s key quest to build a broad republican front to advance common causes. This strategy enjoyed increasing currency within the PCF, as it realised that alliance making was an essential route towards breaking out of a political ghetto. The PCF’s strategy was summed up in 1962 by party dauphin Waldeck Rochet: We want to stress that our defence of the secular school does not in any way contradict our politics of the outstretched hand to Catholic workers, but on the contrary. In fact, when we defend the secular school it is not, at any time, a question of affecting the Christian worker in his beliefs. We Communists want, on the contrary, each person to be able to profess the cult or philosophy of his choice in

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all freedom and it is for this that we make our own the old slogan of the Republicans: ‘The priest in his church and the teacher in the school’.57 Waldeck Rochet insisted that the secular public school tolerated all opinions and beliefs and that is why children of Catholic, Protestant and free-thinking parents all attended it, whilst he concluded that ‘the defence of the secular school, as we see it, is not in any way contradictory to the efforts we must continue in order to win Christian workers to common action for social purposes progress, liberties and for peace’.58 Given the PCF’s aim of building a broader republican front, the schools problem was not to be an obstacle to unity and the PCF would not insist that specific issues of disagreement were obstacles to dialogue between Catholic and communist. Moreover, the process of destalinisation, the PCF’s belated espousal of it and the drift from Cold War politics were important preliminaries to a situation, in France, which opened up possibilities of a limited thaw and dialogue between Catholics and Communists. In fact, the fetters placed on Catholic–communist contacts by the Catholic hierarchy and the PCF’s hostility towards the Church’s intrusion into the political arena did not prevent the Party from continuing to offer an outstretched hand to French Catholics and to exploit the possibilities for Communist–catholic cooperation. The roots of this approach lay in the 1930s, when PCF leader Maurice Thorez had offered an outstretched hand to French Catholics at the time of the Popular Front. An important influence on communist–Catholic rapprochement was the international climate. The waning of Cold War intensity, the impact of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union’s Twentieth Congress (and critique of Stalinism), the development of peaceful coexistence and the polycentric leanings in parts of the communist world all contributed to a better climate for communist–Catholic contacts. Also, just as the Soviet Union and its allies sought to promote a more acceptable face of communism, many Catholics – disillusioned with their hierarchy – and perturbed by the dechristianised status of the urban working classes and other social layers, were keen to present a more attractive face of Catholicism. Hence, it was likely that as the PCF sought to escape from its political ghetto, and as the Church approached the urban working class districts as missionary areas, that French Catholicism and Communism would meet.

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The worker priests One interesting area of contact, conflict and thaw between the Church and the PCF was the worker-priest movement. The PCF’s approach to this development was ambivalent. On the one hand, the Party was gratified that contacts, and even recruits, were made amongst the worker priests. On the other hand, the penetration of militant and messianic Catholicism into working-class areas unsettled the PCF. Young priests had gone into the factories at least since 1939, when Archbishop Suhard (Paris) had suggested that the Church should ‘go to the masses’, and he created the Mission de France (1941) and the Mission de Paris (1943) for this purpose. After the Second World War, many priests joined the PCF-dominated Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT) trades union, regarding it to be missionary territory. Unionisation was seen as an essential part of ‘becoming a worker’ and understanding the working class. In 1954, with the Cold War well underway, the French bishops urged priests to ‘know’ the working class and warn it against communist propaganda, and even warmed to the idea of unionisation of priests. However, the Vatican hardly expected priests to become activists in unions that promoted Marxist-Leninism and class struggle. Noticeably, the less militant and Catholic-leaning Confédération des Travailleurs Chrétiens (CFTC) was bypassed by the worker priests. Catholic opponents of the worker-priest movement (such as the Vatican’s Curie) argued that temporal and apostolic duties were being confused. Instead of serving all men and women, some priests were seen to have identified with a particular class. Indeed, the priests made no attempt to deny their espousal of the workers’ cause and even questioned the validity of their superiors’ judgement and opinions from the ‘outside’. The worker priests came to consider class struggle as a moral duty and found the social doctrine of the Church to be deficient.59 Consequently, it was not too surprising when the Vatican tried to contain the movement, on the grounds that devotional duties of the priesthood were being neglected. Thus, in 1953, the Vatican directed that priests had to be ‘specially selected’ by their bishops and ‘properly trained’ for the work, which the French episcopacy now limited to three hours daily. Dissident worker priests ignored this restriction. One PCF convert from these quarters estimated that over half of the worker priests rejected Pius XII’s ruling.60 In 1959, a letter from Cardinal Pizzardo, secretary of the Holy Office, announced the termination of the worker-priest ‘experiment’ and, again, the protection of the priest-

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hood was given as the rationale behind this decision. However, Pizzardo did not omit reference to another important concern of the Church establishment – the gradual submission of the priest to the influence of the milieu: ‘The worker-priest finds himself not only plunged into a materialist atmosphere, that is evil for his spiritual life and often dangerous for his chastity, he is induced … to think like his work-mates in the social and trade union domain and to take part in their claims … which leads him to participate in the class struggle. Now, that is inadmissible for a priest.’61 PCF religious and philosophical specialist Roger Garaudy interpreted the Holy Office decision as a good insight into papal thinking. The Church had hoped that the worker-priests might draw the working class away from communism and atheism but, in the ‘spiritual’ confrontation, the working class had converted the priests.62 Garaudy saw the Holy Office ban as a recognition of this reality. Cardinal Feltin explained that the problems of the dechristianised workers’ world would be pursued,63 whilst Mgr Pirolley (Bishop of Nancy) insisted that, far from abandoning the working class, the Church would simply look for ‘more appropriate means’ of ensuring a Christian presence in the workplace, at the same time maintaining a more complete priesthood.64 Catholic journalists echoed the fears and reservations of their hierarchy. For example, R. P. Wenger, in La Croix, wrote that factory work for priests posed ‘the serious problem of relations with Communism’ and ‘Marxist contamination’.65 Again, the Jesuit R. P. Ricquet, in Le Figaro, added that ‘the priest must never be the man of a clan, a class, a party, but a mediator, the man of reconciliation.’66 The PCF, and indeed many of the worker-priests, drew from the Vatican ruling that priests should be ‘bourgeois’ or else lose their priesthood. A priest could be a journalist, a teacher or practise other professions, but could not become a manual worker. The PCF used the worker-priest episode to spotlight divisions within the Church and to argue that it was not ‘the Church of the poor’. Without doubt, there were divisions on the worker-priests and, in France, Cardinals Lienart and Feltin were amongst those considered to be more favourable to the experiment. The PCF tended to see the movement as basically reactionary since the intention to rechristianise the working class involved dividing it on religious grounds. PCF religious specialist, Gilbert Mury, in a collective on Christians in La Nouvelle Critique (a PCF theoretical review), contended that atheism was a natural characteristic of the working class and this explained why the worker-priests were unable to convert,

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but were instead themselves converted, and earned Vatican disapproval.67 Jean-Marie Marzio, a former worker-priest, claimed that the Vatican’s attitude illustrated its total ignorance of the working class.68 Also, the social doctrine of the Church came under great attack from the PCF and the worker priests. Michael Verret, writing in the PCF weekly, France Nouvelle, remarked that Pope John XIII’s decision had surprised liberal Catholics, who were counting on the new Pope for a liberal interpretation of social doctrine.69 The PCF, by depicting the Church as a reactionary, divisive force, hoped to recruit working-class Catholics and even priests to the Party or, at least, to a left-wing alliance. Some priests, such as Henri Desroches and Jean-Claude Poulain, did indeed become either converts or fellow-travellers. PCF criticisms of the Church also extended to the trade union field, where the post-war episcopal sympathy for Christian unions was taken as another attempt to divide the working class. CGT Secretary-General Benoît Frachon, in 1960, attacked the rival CFTC for its anti-communism and accused Eugene Descamps (his CFTC counterpart) of being the Catholic hierarchy’s ‘yes man’.70 Inter-trade-union rivalry led to the PCF trying to persuade Catholic workers that they had more to gain from joining the CGT and/or allying with their communist comrades in common struggles. For the PCF, though, it was important not to condemn the beliefs of Catholic rank-and-file workers, when criticising the stances of the high Church. The Party’s policy is explained well by Garaudy: ‘Without offending the worker in his/her beliefs and struggle, to bring him/her to participate, always in a more active and aware manner, in the actions and in the struggle of the working class … for peace, national independence and the defence of democratic liberties, for socialism.’71 Thus, not only is there a professed respect for beliefs and convictions but also there is a role to play in constructing socialism. Moreover, like Thorez in the 1930s, Garaudy insists that the policy is ‘not a manoeuvre nor a momentary tactic, but a question of principle’.72 Garaudy also put the ‘appeal to below’ to Catholic workers in the perspective of the broader struggle: ‘After the problem of unity with socialist workers which remains the basic condition of French working class unity and, consequently, the rallying of all national forces, a just policy towards Catholic workers constitutes one of the effective conditions for the reconquest and renewal of French democracy.’73 Essentially, this meant struggling against Gaullism. In 1958, prior to that year’s legislative elections, PCF leader Thorez reiterated party policy: ‘The tactic of the unique front in the next period … must be

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orientated towards the base … It is necessary to make an effort alongside Catholic workers … It is necessary to preserve all contacts that have been established … At the same time, the effort with Catholic workers must be accompanied by a more serious struggle than that which we have taken of late against the Church hierarchy’.74 In short, the PCF pursued a policy of criticising the Church hierarchy whilst trying not to offend Catholics in general. The death of Pope Pius XII and succession of John XIII, in fact, provided the PCF with an occasion to implement the above strategy. Pius XII’s illness was sympathetically reported in L’Humanité, and after his death the procedures for electing a new pope were covered from a neutral, matter-of-fact angle initially. However, the neutral pitch gave way to criticisms of Pius XII’s politics and of Vatican scandal and wealth.75 News, photographs and health bulletins on the dying pope were followed by a critical examination of Pius XII’s ‘temporal’ record, his interference in French secular matters, his opposition to liberalism and modernisation and the development of a dogmatic hostility to Marxist atheism, manifested in anti-Soviet and Cold War politics.76 In addition, Pius XII was accused of steering the Vatican towards American interests and Adenauer’s Germany, whilst the Church was portrayed as amassing a ‘colossal fortune’ and international capital interests.77 Clearly, using the party’s propaganda tool (L’Humanité), the PCF was again endeavouring to show that the Church was not that of the poor and had different interests from Catholic workers and the ordinary faithful. The choice of a new pope, then, is not only a spiritual, but also a political act since the outcome was destined to have ‘an influence on the fraternal relations between Catholic and non-Catholic workers’. The papal succession is used here, by the PCF, to promote the theme of working-class unity. PCF coverage of Vatican scandal and wealth accumulation were intended to undermine the moral authority of the Church’s leadership and expose the gap between the Catholic establishment and the rank-and-file. The PCF rejected any notion that the Church was on the side of the people. Instead, the party strategy was to stress the commonality between its own supporters and working-class Catholics. As Garaudy again suggested, the goal was to help the Christian worker unite with his Communist brother for ends that are common to ‘those who believe in heaven and those who do not, as during the Resistance’.78 The appeal to the wartime Resistance spirit was a popular clarion call of the PCF, since it served to play up communist–Catholic struggle against fascism and occupation, whilst illustrating that the French episcopacy was on the side of the collaborationist and authoritarian Marshall Pétain.

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Conclusion In summary, despite the restrictions placed on communist–Catholic contacts by the Church’s hierarchy, the PCF pursued an outstretched hand policy, and within the context of the pursuit of greater left-wing unity and de-ghettoisation, this strategy acquired a new importance and sense of urgency. The preoccupation of the Church and the PCF with seeking to win over the working classes to their respective sides inevitably ranged the two institutions against one another. Nevertheless, reciprocal antagonisms at the summit did not serve to eliminate all possibilities and prospects of communist–Catholic rapprochement – in the factories, the trade unions, and the common struggles. The picture here was summed up by the editor of the Catholic-inspired theoretical review, Esprit: ‘This kind of field cooperation began in the Resistance, and with a few lapses it has gone on ever since, especially since the deaths of Stalin and Pius XII … Whenever at grassroots level you find disinterested individuals actually doing voluntary social work in France, they are nearly always Catholics or Marxists.’79 The policy of the outstretched hand was the PCF’s mechanism for exploiting the potential for communist–Catholic contacts. It was also the necessary prerequisite for a more engaging dialogue between communism and Catholicism, that gathered momentum in the mid-1960s and beyond. This development is beyond the scope of the present essay. Suffice to say that the year 1962 was something of a watershed one for the PCF. The 1958–62 parliament coincided with the high point of the schools problem and, whereas henceforth this problem was by no means laid to rest, much of the heat was taken out of it, with the passage of time and circumstances. The retreat of the Cold War, greater unity and accommodation across the French left, the concomitant release of the PCF from its political isolation, aggiornamento and renewal in the Catholic Church and an emergent dialogue between Catholics and Communists were all features of the next period of thaw.

Notes 1 Text of the French Constitution in V. Wright, The Government and Politics of France (London, 1978). 2 La Documentation Catholique (DC), no. 1281, 6 July 1958, p. 840. 3 L’Humanité, 22 June 1958. 4 DC, no. 1287, 28 Sept. 1958, pp. 1267–8.

Cold War on High and Unity from Below 161 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39

40 41 42 43 44 45

Ibid. DC, no. 1286, 14 Sept. 1958, p. 1202. Quoted in L’Humanité, 23 Sept. 1958. Ibid. Ibid. La Croix, 5 Sept. 1958. L’Homme Nouveau, 14 Sept. 1958. La France Catholique, 5 Sept. 1958. Le Figaro, 8 Sept. 1958. R. Garaudy, ‘L’Eglise Catholique, la démocratie et la classe ouvrière’, Cahiers du Communisme, Nov. 1958, pp. 1564–82. L’Humanité, 23 Sept. 1958. Ibid. L’Humanité, 15 Sept. 1958. L’Humanité, 29 Sept. 1958. L’Humanité, 30 June 1958. Ibid. La Croix, 17–18 Dec. 1959. L’Humanité, 30 June 1959. Ibid. DC, no. 1316, 15 Nov., pp. 1459–64. DC, no. 1320, 17 Jan. 1960, p. 154. DC, no. 1321, 7 Feb. 1960, pp. 147–52. Quoted in L’Humanité, 5 March 1960. L’Humanité, 9 Jan. 1960. For further details of public opinion attitudes to Khruschchev’s visit see P. Hainsworth, ‘The Policy of the Communist Party (PCF) towards Catholics in France, 1958–67’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Bristol, 1975), p. 67. L’Humanité, 29 March 1960. L’Humanité, 30 March 1960. Le Monde, 29 March 1960. L’Humanité, 4 April 1960. L’Humanité, 9 April 1960. G. Masurel, ‘L’Eglise et la coexistence’, La Nouvelle Critique, 116 (May 1960), pp. 54–9 (see p. 59). L’Humanité, 15 Nov. 1960. Quoted in L’Humanité, 15 Nov. 1958. L’Humanité, 14 Feb. 1959. G. Cogniot, ‘Pour l’union dans la bataille laïque’, Pamphlet of the proceedings of a conference at La Roche-sur-Yon, 3 June 1959 (Maurice Thorez Institute: Paris). L’Humanité, 5 March 1959. DC, no. 1299, 15 March 1958, pp. 357–8. Cardinal Roques, ‘La semaine religieuse du diocèse de Rennes’, Statement, 28 Feb. 1958. Hainsworth, ‘The Policy of the Communist Party (PCF) … ’. DC, no. 1280, 22 June 1958, pp. 769–71. DC, no. 1288, 12 October 1958, pp. 1285–90.

162 Religion and the Cold War 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59

60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79

DC, no. 1303, 10 May 1959, pp. 617–20. L’Osservatore Romano, 31 Dec. 1959. L’Humanité, 30 Dec. 1959. DC, no. 1324, 20 March 1960, pp. 367–74 La Croix, 14–15 Feb. 1960. DC, no. 1324, 20 March 1960, p. 327. See, for instance, L’Humanité, 11 Feb. 1960. L’Humanité, 30 July 1960. L’Humanité, 6 Sept. 1960. L’Humanité, 7 Sept. 1960. See, for instance, L’Humanité, 5, 12 and 13 Sept. 1961; and 6, 11 and 12 Sept. 1962. L’Humanité, 7 Nov. 1962. Ibid. For more on the worker-priest movement, see A. Dansette, Destin du Catholicisme français, 1926–1956 (Paris, 1957) and J. Petrie, The WorkerPriests: A Collective Documentation (London, 1956), trans. from the French, Les Prêtres ouvriers (Paris, 1954). See Hainsworth, ‘The Policy of the Communist Party (PCF) … ’, p. 79. See Le Monde, 15 Sept. 1959. L’Humanité, 22 Sept. 1959. La Croix, 19 Sept. 1959. DC, no. 1313, 4 Oct. 1959, p. 1229. La Croix, 19 Sept. 1959. Le Figaro, 21 Sept. 1959. G. Mury, ‘Solicitude et salut personnel’, La Nouvelle Critique, 117 (June–July 1960), pp. 41–3. J.-M. Marzo, ‘Itinéraire d’un prêtre’, in ibid., pp. 54–60. M. Verret, ‘Domenach entre le Saint-Office et la classe ouvrière’, France Nouvelle, 21 Jan. 1960. L’Humanité, 5 Oct. 1960. Garaudy, p. 1591. Ibid. Ibid. L’Humanité, 10 Oct. 1958. See L’Humanité, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 29 Oct. 1958. L’Humanité, 10 Oct. 1958. L’Humanité, 29 Oct. 1958. L’Humanité, 11 June 1959. Quoted in J. Ardagh, The New France (London, 1968), p. 557.

10 Between War and Peace: Politics, Religion and Human Rights in Early Cold War Canada, 1945–50 George Egerton

The forces of evil have been loosed in the world in a struggle between the pagan conception of a social order which ignores the individual and is based upon the doctrine of might, and a civilization based upon the Christian conception of the brotherhood of man with its regard for the sanctity of contractual relations [and] the sacredness of human personality. (Mackenzie King, Canadian Parliament, 8 Sept. 1939) We in the Western world have adopted the conception of good and evil from the Hebrew and Greek civilizations. This concept has been transformed and transmitted to us through our Christian traditions. It comprises a belief in the intrinsic value of every individual human being and a sense of obligation to our neighbour. Its very essence is freedom. (Louis St Laurent, Convocation, University of Toronto, 27 Oct. 1950) These words, uttered by two Liberal Prime Ministers, the first leading Canada into the Second World War, the second facing an escalating Cold War and fighting in Korea, sought to define and affirm the fundamental elements of Canadian national identity in time of crisis: Canada was a liberal democracy and a member of Western Christian civilisation. The two elements were integrated, as liberalism’s ‘belief in the intrinsic value of every individual human being’ was based upon Christianity’s regard for the ‘sacredness of human personality’. A half century later, such expressions of the close, mutually supportive relationship of religion and politics, of Church and State, would be eschewed by both religious and political leaders in face of the transformations of Canadian 163

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political culture which brought a jurisprudence of pluralism, the deChristianisation of the state, and the privatisation of religion – a principal legacy of the late Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau as constitutional architect of a modernised Canadian polity.1 The contemporary peripheralisation of religion in the public domain of most modernised political cultures of the West has abetted a lacuna in historical understanding of the powerful political functions of religion and the eagerness of politicians to draw upon religious resources that operated in most Western states until the 1960s. It is the intention of this study to examine the relationship of religion and politics in Canada in the wake of the Second World War and in the early years of the Cold War. This period would witness major statistical growth and institutional expansion for Christian churches across Canada, amounting to what was perceived at the time as a religious revival, and which lasted into the early 1960s.2 The immediate post-war years would also see the attempt by Western democratic cultures to reassert fundamental liberal values, in light of the wartime legacy of Nazi atrocities, and then the challenge of Communism – most dramatically in the form of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in December 1948. This study will focus on the central role that religion played in defining Canada’s ideological response, domestically and internationally, to the dawning ‘Age of Human Rights’. As will be shown, Canadian religion functioned ambiguously, with the nation’s dominant Protestant and Catholic churches approaching the question of human rights protection both supportively and critically, but agreeing that human rights required religious grounding and affirmation if they were to achieve rightful political legitimacy. Faced with the alternatives of giving priority to religious or human rights themes in articulating Canadian national identity in the alarms of the Cold War, the Liberal Government of Louis St Laurent would choose God and NATO over the ‘human rights revolution’ – a path confirmed resolutely with the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950. *** The Canadian experience of the Second World War both reflected and expressed the long religious history of the peoples who had come together in the Confederation of 1867 and who had developed diverse forms of the Christian faith in the new land. If the depression and ‘dirty thirties’ instigated prophetic, social gospel criticism by Canadian religious elites of the injustice and inadequacies of the prevailing

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liberal-capitalist economic system, the outbreak of a second world war two short decades after the carnage of the Great War once again drew churches and state together, as religion would be mobilised in its traditional priestly role to legitimate governmental authority and war aims in a struggle against the Axis Powers. The national churches, Catholic and Protestant, added their support to the authority and war effort of the government. Chastened, however, by their memories of the previous war experience, the churches showed little of the crusading zeal of former times; it was largely a matter of defeating an obviously evil enemy, and of ministering to troops and those at home experiencing danger, personal anguish and tragedy. The war effort, nevertheless, drew the churches and government into a closer partnership, in that both perceived and portrayed the war as a struggle to defend Christian civilisation against the pagan forces of Nazism. Here government leaders took the initiative in invoking special days and weeks of national prayer for victory and peace. Government spokesmen from the Prime Minister on down, with very few exceptions, buttressed their war effort speeches with appeals to divine sanction. For Mackenzie King, should the ‘Nazi doctrine of Force’ prevail, there would be ‘an end to our Christian civilization’. The war was therefore ‘a crusade’, where those enlisting for military service were ‘first and foremost defenders of the Faith’.3 The historian of the churches’ role in Canada’s war effort portrays the leading denominations’ perception of their mission as ‘freely-independent partners of the state in this task’.4 When the war ended, government and church leaders joined with the public in religious services of thanksgiving which hailed the victory as providentially ordained.5 The political rhetoric that portrayed Canada explicitly as a Christian state continued after the war as the problematic nature of the victory in Europe became apparent, and as erstwhile Christian states of eastern and central Europe fell under communist control. The genesis of the Cold War saw the Canadian church-state partnership reaffirmed and strengthened. If the war left major divisions between English and French-speaking Canadians deriving from the conscription crises, Protestants and Catholics agreed in the post-war period that atheistic communism presented a danger to the central liberal and Christian values of the Canadian state which was every bit as serious as the recently-defeated menace of Nazism, especially after the revelations concerning the extent of Soviet espionage and communist activity in Canada based mainly upon the information supplied by Igor Gouzenko, a cipher clerk who defected from the Soviet embassy in September 1945.6

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The experience of the past war, and now the emerging Cold War, would both inspire and test the development of human rights jurisprudence in Canada. Knowledge of Nazi wartime atrocities and genocide generated wide-ranging Canadian support for the human rights ideals of the Atlantic Charter, American President Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms, and the human rights themes enshrined in the United Nations Declaration of January 1942. As the war progressed and as the Grand Alliance fought its way to victory, the theme of human rights increasingly drew the attention and support of church leaders and organisations. Roman Catholic leaders reaffirmed classic doctrine on the divine origin of state authority and the necessary right to religious freedoms, while denouncing the idolatry of totalitarian regimes.7 In 1942 the renowned Catholic scholar, Jacques Maritain, published Les Droits de L’Homme et la Loi Naturelle, undergirding an appeal for protection of human rights with an extensive neo-Thomist foundation in natural law.8 It was the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America who gave ecumenical Protestant leadership from an early point in the war to the cause of human rights as a leading war aim for the democracies, and who, with other NGOs, also lobbied successfully for amendments to the Dumbarton Oaks draft of the United Nations Charter to include reaffirmation of fundamental human rights.9 Representatives of Canada’s leading Protestant denominations, cooperating after 1944 in the Canadian Council of Churches, supported the efforts of their American colleagues in furthering the international cause of human rights. Human rights and civil liberties received their most extensive theological articulation in wartime Canada when, after two years of cross-country consultations, the United Church published a report on ‘Church, Nation and World Order’.10 In this detailed and encompassing Charter of ‘basic principles of a truly Christian civilization,’ church leaders attempted to present a political, economic and social agenda for post-war Canadian domestic and foreign policies, confident in offering ‘guidance to the nation and to the world’. The recommendations followed many of the tenets of the 1930s social gospellers, calling for greater government roles in planning and provision of welfare, and counselled a liberal internationalist foreign policy, committing Canada to participation in international institutions to maintain peace with justice and provide ‘collective security’. The Report also endorsed the maintenance of ‘traditional civil liberties’ in an improved parliamentary system. Its extensive section on ‘The Duties and Rights of Man’ specified rights to an abundant life, to justice, to personal freedom, to solidarity and community, to productive and

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gainful work, to a voice in government, to worship, to knowledge, recreation and leisure. Such rights, however, were ‘not absolute,’ and found meaning only in the context of reciprocal duties and responsibilities – as taught in the Christian maxim to treat others as one would want to be treated oneself. The report was explicit in its political theology: ‘The enduring foundation of social order is the moral law of God, to whom men and nations must give account, and whose will is that all His children should live as brothers. The personal dignity of man is derived from his worth in God’s sight, and the social order must recognise this dignity.’11 By the end of the war, many church leaders shared the concern of Canadian civil libertarians at the war’s legacy of domestic injustices: the authoritarian powers exercised by the Canadian Cabinet under the War Measures Act, which enabled such government actions as the wartime expulsion of some 20,000 Japanese Canadians from the Pacific coast; the racial discrimination against aboriginals, Jews, and people of colour; harassment of Jehovah’s Witnesses and suspected communists by governmental authorities in the Province of Quebec; and then the incarceration and interrogation without right to habeas corpus or legal counsel, by executive order-in-council, of suspected pro-communist spies identified by Igor Gouzenko. The post-war government plans to deport thousands of Japanese Canadians, the operations through 1946 of the government-appointed Royal Commission on Espionage, and the subsequent spy trials, all served as a catalyst to Canadian civil libertarians, who not only protested but proceeded to develop effective organisations in defence of human rights, reviving or establishing civil liberties associations in major cities and lobbying the government in Ottawa.12 Canadian civil libertarians also added their support at this time to planning within the United Nations for what would become the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Canadian Director of the UN Secretariat’s Human Rights Division, John Humphrey, would play a central role in this undertaking as Secretary to the UN Human Rights Commission, which was charged in 1946 with drafting an international bill of rights.13 Canadian civil libertarian leaders and groups mobilised both to support this venture and also to press the federal government to give domestic protection to human rights by means of a Canadian bill of rights. The Liberal governments of Mackenzie King and (after November 1948) Louis St Laurent would respond reservedly to the human rights question. Unwilling to concede that they had needlessly violated civil

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liberties in wartime, mindful of the determined constitutional jurisdiction over ‘property and civil rights’ wielded by Canadian provincial governments, especially the government of Quebec under Premier Maurice Duplessis, and equally attentive to the views of Quebec Liberal MPs (mainly Catholic) who constituted a mainstay of the Liberal Party, the federal government appointed a Special Joint Committee of the Senate and the House of Commons on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. The Committee, intended in part to constrain civil libertarian pressures, was directed ‘to consider the question of human rights and fundamental freedoms, and the manner in which those obligations accepted by all members of the United Nations may best be implemented’ and, in light of the work of the UN Human Rights Commission, ‘what is the legal and constitutional situation in Canada with respect to such rights’ and what steps, ‘if any’, should be taken to preserve ‘respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms.’14 The debate in the Commons on establishing the Committee gave advanced indication of government attitudes and the themes to be argued by advocates and opponents of a Canadian bill of rights.15 Ian Mackenzie, Minister of Veterans’ Affairs, introduced debate for the Government, giving a lengthy and enthused commendation of the British political and judicial tradition, from Magna Carta to the Statute of Westminster, where the defence of freedom and rights relied primarily on the protections of the common law and the supremacy of Parliament rather than on constitutionally encoded rights.16 While Canada might affirm the usefulness of an international declaration of human rights, ‘as a guide and direction post for the freedom-loving peoples of the world,’ Mackenzie thought it ‘less evident’ that the Canadian heritage of freedom and the common law should be tampered with by an attempt to inscribed it in statutes or codes. Advocates of a Canadian bill of rights, John Diefenbaker for the Conservatives, and Alistair Stewart and Stanley Knowles for the socialdemocratic Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), berated the Government’s abuse of civil liberties during the war, the violations of fundamental legal rights which had marred the espionage investigations and trials, and the racial discriminations that were operative in Canadian laws. Diefenbaker read his own suggested bill of rights into the record, while the CCF leaders were anxious to see rights extended to include social and economic entitlements. Knowles also pointed to the spontaneous growth of civil liberties associations across the country, and put on record the proposals submitted by the Civil

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Liberties Association of Manitoba. Gladys Strum aligned the CCF with the cause of equal political, social and economic rights for women. The most direct opposition to the idea of a bill of rights, domestic or international, came from Social Credit members, representing the prairie voice of Alberta populism and Protestant fundamentalism: J. H. Blackmore expressed resistance to any surrender of Canadian national sovereignty to an intrusive international body; Norman Jaques saw no need for human rights guarantees, which would only allow the communists and Jehovah’s Witnesses freer reign. Jaques congratulated the government on its prosecution of the communists exposed by Gouzenko. Members from rural Quebec ridings also voiced misgivings about granting licence to enemies of the state and of the Catholic faith. For Eugene Marquis, Liberal MP for Kamouraska and a Quebec Crown Prosecutor, misconstrued claims for ‘freedom to do anything they pleased’ marked the programme of ‘so-called master minds’ and served to cover ‘all sorts of errors and abuses’. There were good reasons for prosecuting Jehovah’s Witnesses, who in the name of freedom, by libels and falsehoods had spread discord and hatred. As well, the government was to be congratulated ‘for having taken energetic measures to fight communism.’ The Independent MP for Chicoutimi, Paul Edmond Gagnon, doubted that liberty could thrive ‘upon empty talk and legal documents’. Canada must set an example by respecting and recognising provincial rights; the government of Quebec would never let ‘Jehovah’s Witnesses, communists and others of the same ilk … take advantage of the freedom we extend to sabotage our institutions and contaminate the sound element of our population …’ Indeed, because it cherished freedom, the province of Quebec did ‘not want to be fouled by trouble-makers, anarchists or advocates of revolution’, nor to ‘become a ghetto for the communist-minded Jews from the lowest strata in European countries.’ Not all French Canadian members were so negative on the human rights programme; but those who spoke in the debate all approached the subject from the perspective of manifest Catholicism. Roch Pinard, Liberal MP from Chambly-Rouville, while opposed to any attempt to legislate a Canadian bill of rights before Canada had patriated her own constitution, supported the current efforts to draft an international declaration. However, Pinard insisted passionately on the need to acknowledge ‘that all rights whatever are not conferred by man but must originate and derive from God’. He went on to assert that no international human rights declaration ‘should be approved by the United Nations and by Canada in particular, unless faith in God and

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also belief in religion are firmly and clearly expressed therein.’ Rejecting all theories calling for the separation of church and state in national or international life as having led to ‘disastrous results’ in the past, Pinard claimed that the leading historical declarations of rights and constitutional protections had all contained a divine referent in their preambles. Even Robespierre had insisted that the French National Assembly, in adopting the ‘déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen’ of 1789, include in its preamble a civil religion reference to the ‘Supreme Being’. The notable modern exception was the constitution of communist Russia. The adoption now of any human rights declaration without a divine referent would be, for Pinard, ‘a sad mistake and miserable blunder’. The Parliamentary Committee began its work in June with a review of the draft articles of the Human Rights Commission with R. G. Riddell, head of the Department of External Affairs UN Division, received several written submissions, and heard expert testimony from John Humphrey, who explained the UN drafting process.17 F. P. Varcoe, Deputy Minister of Justice, briefed the Committee on the constitutional difficulties human rights legislation entailed for Canada. Affirming the traditional jurisprudence of the Justice Department, Varcoe counseled that Canada could best fulfil the UN obligations to further human rights by continuing her existing parliamentary form of government and upholding the rule of law, rather than attempting constitutional innovation through special protection of human rights which, to bind future legislators, would require the retrogressive procedure of petitioning the British Parliament to pass a constitutional amendment to the British North America Act. It quickly became apparent that the Committee’s co-chair, Justice Minister James Ilsley, while content to have Canada accede to an international declaration of human rights, which would have moral, but not legal, effect for UN members, had no desire to provoke a fight with the provinces over the issue of ‘civil rights’ which the British North America Act placed under provincial jurisdiction. Liberal members on the Committee therefore emphasised the virtues of the British system of parliamentary supremacy under the law, where human rights and liberties were best protected, as Senator Arthur Roebuck put it, ‘by the whole body of common law’. Roebuck nevertheless suggested the possibility of expressing ‘in some dramatic way, what we believe to be fundamental and elementary in the matter of human rights.’ Roebuck, who served as a counsel for the defence in the espionage trials which followed the Gouzenko revelations, had established close links with

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the leading Canadian civil liberties groups, who now looked to him as the most sympathetic voice within the Liberal caucus. It was the Conservative, John Diefenbaker, however, who again showed most enthusiasm for testing the possibility of a statutory Canadian bill of rights – a cause he would now champion as his own. Confronting a wall of official resistance to this project, Diefenbaker would charge the government with ‘procrastinating’, ‘postponing’ and ‘shadow boxing’. The Committee completed its initial deliberations in July, recommending only that a similar committee be appointed for the next parliamentary session to continue examination of the question of human rights. The Canadian government was not represented on the UN Human Rights Commission or its drafting group which, meeting through the spring and summer of 1947 prepared the early drafts of an international bill of rights, although John Humphrey provided a friendly source at the heart of the drafting process. From an early point in this process, the discourse amongst the leading drafters indicated dramatically that the question of human rights engaged deep philosophical, ideological, and religious disagreements. The first meetings of the Commission on Human Rights in January 1947 gave an initial rehearsal of the contending approaches to the nature, scope and foundations of human rights.18 Similarly, the initial efforts of Charles Malik, Lebanese Rapporteur for the Human Rights Commission and a devout Greek Orthodox Christian, to give human rights a religious foundation in Thomist natural law theory were rebuffed by other members of the drafting committee. This and subsequent unsuccessful efforts to include a religious referent in the draft Declaration evoked criticism from international and Quebec Catholic commentators.19 The UN Secretary General, in circulating the Geneva drafts of the UN Human Rights Commission, had asked for responses from governments by April 1948. The King government was not ready to respond and hoped the UN decision on the Declaration could be postponed until the 1949 General Assembly.20 But, with some prodding by Diefenbaker, King announced the reconstitution of the Special Joint Committee on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms in the spring of 1948. Debate in the House of Commons on the motion to re-establish the committee, however, revealed that the domestic and international politics of the Cold War would complicate policy formation on the UN draft declaration on human rights. The Royal Commission on espionage and subsequent spy trials had given Canadians insight into the government’s operations against those caught in the web of communist espionage revealed by Gouzenko. If civil libertarians had been

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outraged by the devious methods used to exact information from suspects and gain convictions, the government knew they enjoyed powerful political support as a wave of anti-communism surged through public opinion. Internationally, the communist take-over of Czechoslovakia and blockade of Berlin sparked a crisis mentality and deep fears of a new war, as planning for Canadian participation in an Atlantic alliance was accelerated, while domestic pressures mounted to outlaw communist organisations.21 Parliamentary debate reflected this climate of anxiety. Several members opposed any extension of civil liberties or endorsement of UN human rights, as this would merely provide a smoke screen to allow the treason and subversion of communists and fellow travellers to continue. Those who were petitioning the government for a bill of rights were therefore either ‘dupes’ or ‘traitors’ according to the Social Credit Albertan, Rev. Ernest Hansell, who complimented the government on its recent suppression of the ‘spy ring’.22 The Quebec Liberal, J. F. Pouliot, read into the record the names of those suspect individuals who had signed the petition of the Toronto-based Committee for a Bill of Rights and went on to support Quebec’s anti-communist Padlock Law and the measures taken against Jehovah’s Witnesses.23 Pouliot and others accusing civil libertarians with serving the interests of communism knew they were touching a sensitive point; liberal and social-democratic members were having difficulties in preventing communists and their supporters from dominating the civil libertarian movement and from taking over several of the leading groups.24 David Croll, Toronto Liberal and a leader of the Jewish community, nevertheless defended vigorously the loyalty of the petitioners and advocated renewing the defence of the Canadian political ‘middle,’ in face of the prevailing apprehensions. The extremists of the Right had led the world into the recent war and now the extremists of the Left threatened to spark another world conflict. Croll argued that the politics of the Canadian Centre needed a ‘formal instrument of freedom’ to remedy its deficiencies and re-assert the ‘fundamental principles of individual freedom’. He urged the government to surmount the technical impediments in putting a ‘charter of liberties’ before the Canadian people; without such a charter, ‘supported by all the ethical and social sanctions our society as a whole can command,’ Canadian would enter ill-armed into ‘the great ideological conflict that is only beginning to make itself felt at the present time.’25 When the Special Joint Committee on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms began its meetings in April, the concern to give

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human rights a religious foundation again constituted a principal motif.26 The Quebec Catholic Liberal, Eugène Marquis, returning to the arguments he had used in the previous year’s debates, proposed an amendment to the UN draft Declaration which would add a reference to the name of God in the first article, making clear that for a country like Canada which believed in God, ‘we derive our rights from God, and not from ourselves’. Senator L. M. Gouin, Liberal co-chair of the committee and a devout Catholic Thomist, strongly supported this addition, stating that he considered it ‘the most fundamental question which will come before this committee’. Other members of the committee, notably Benoît Michaud (Liberal), James Turgeon (Liberal), T. A. Crerar (Liberal), H. W. Herridge (CCF), and Ernest Hansell (Social Credit), supported Marquis’s call for a religious referent which would have changed the first article of the draft Declaration to read: ‘All men are born free and equal in dignity being vested by the Creator with inalienable rights.’ Justice Minister Ilsley, co-chair of the committee again, cautioned that none of the UN drafts or documents on human rights implied a positive religious belief on the part of those who would be asked to subscribe, perhaps because it was a human right not only to worship as one saw fit, but also not to worship at all if one so chose. Ilsley, following the procedures agreed to previously by the steering committee, advised that the amendments moved by Mr. Marquis not be voted upon formally, but rather discussed as suggestions which could be forwarded to Parliament and the UN as representing the individual views of members. This was the path followed in the Final Report of the committee which was placed before the Senate and Commons on 25 June 1948.27 The Report of the Special Joint Committee reflected the extreme caution of the Mackenzie King government and Justice Minister Ilsley, together with most members of the Committee, on the matter of human rights legislation. While the Committee was willing to recommend a more concise version of the draft Declaration on human rights, which would involve purely a moral commitment, and which would not intrude into the controversial domain of economic and social rights, it gave no support or consideration to the second UN draft, the Covenant of Human Rights, which would have entailed domestic legal commitment in its implementation on the part of subscribers. The Report also recommended against Mr. Diefenbaker’s proposed legislation of a bill of rights by federal statute, as this could encroach on provincial jurisdictions, and could not, in any event, bind future

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parliaments. Neither would the Committee recommend, ‘without a great deal of further study’, enactment of a human rights code by means of a constitutional amendment to the British North America Act, as called for in written submissions to the committee, notably by the Toronto-based Committee for a Bill of Rights. The draft Declaration had also by now generated major international religious interest and support. During the early drafting sessions of the UN Human Rights Commission, it had been principally Malik and Catholics who had pressed the case for a divine referent in the Declaration. In Canada, the question of human rights received detailed attention in the influential Jesuit journal, Relations, while the Canadian Episcopate joined with American Bishops in affirming Catholic teaching on human rights.28 Always, human rights were presented as part of a political and moral order which found their origins and authority in God. Jacques Maritain continued to articulate Catholic scholarship on human rights, while also playing a prominent role in a 1947–8 UNESCO symposium which engaged leading political theorists from member countries on the nature and foundations of human rights.29 In the summer of 1948 Anglican Bishops from around the world met in London for the first post-war Lambeth Conference. Here, in denouncing the cruelties and false doctrines of the recently-defeated totalitarian states and the new menace of Marxian Communism, the Bishops put forward as their first subject ‘The Christian Doctrine of Man’ which alone could serve as the foundation for human rights.30 The Lambeth Resolutions then endorsed the efforts of the United Nations to protect human rights, most especially the right to freedom of religious belief, practice, and education. Later in the summer, the inaugural meeting of the World Council of Churches at Amsterdam put its support firmly behind the international protection of human rights, not only by means of the draft UN Declaration, which set forth a common standard, but also through an enforceable International Bill of Human Rights, which would guarantee ‘all the essential freedoms of man, whether personal, political or social.’ As with the Lambeth Bishops, the World Council of Churches placed its support for human rights in a manifest theological grounding: ‘The Church has always demanded freedom to obey God rather than man. We affirm that all men are equal in the sight of God and that the rights of men derive directly from their status as the children of God.’31 Explicit theological approaches to human rights would inform the positions of several of the delegates who came to Paris in the fall of 1948 for the meetings of the UN General Assembly and its Third

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Committee, which was charged with reviewing the draft Declaration as received from the Human Rights Commission and the Economic and Social Council before the General Assembly itself would hold a final discussion and vote. When the Third Committee began its discussion of the first draft article, the Brazilian delegate moved an amendment which would have added a description of man as ‘Created in the image and likeness of God,’ thereby giving a transcendent referent to precede and justify the human rights which followed.32 This quickly proved to be unacceptable. While some support was voiced by delegates from countries with Catholic populations (Bolivia and Columbia), critics portrayed such a religious reference as controversial, and inappropriate in a universal juridical text addressing peoples of all faiths, and none.33 The Soviet bloc resisted any reversion to the dark ages of theology and metaphysics, claiming human rights were generated and necessitated by social and economic conditions, and threatening to vote against the whole Declaration if a religious referent were included.34 A later amendment by the delegate from the Netherlands, which would have affirmed that the rights of the Declaration were founded on Divine origin and the eternal destiny of man, fared no better; the Belgian and Dutch amendments were discretely withdrawn.35 The statement by the French delegate, René Cassin, that ‘law could have no other source than the will of the people,’ perhaps best captured the prevailing liberal ethos of the Third Committee, as it met in the Palais de Chaillot, where Des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen had been drafted in 1789.36 Canadians delegates faced an unenviable role in the work of the Third Committee; they had been advised to support the inclusion of a divine reference in the draft Declaration, and were prepared the give support to the Brazilian amendment.37 But there was no support for this from major allies, notably Britain and the United States, who were both anxious to avoid revisiting awkward questions of philosophy or religion and have the draft passed quickly so that it could be used in the ideological struggle with Soviet communism.38 Meanwhile, it was apparent that powerful domestic factors were complicating Canadian policy formation on human rights. With provincial elections in Quebec and Ontario, the retirement of Mackenzie King, and an upcoming federal election under the new Liberal leader, Louis St Laurent, the Liberal party had no desire to antagonise its powerful Quebec base. Moreover, the Canadian Bar Association at its annual meeting held in Montreal, 31 August to 3 September, had voiced serious reservations on the lack of legal precision in the language of the draft Declaration,

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its insensitivity to provincial rights in Canadian constitutional law and, in tandem with colleagues from the American Bar Association, recommended its referral for revision by legal experts.39 John Hackett, President of the CBA, Conservative MP from Stanstead, Quebec, and a devout Catholic, had served on the 1947 and 1948 Special Joint Committees, where he had argued that while an international declaratory statement of human rights might yield some general benefits, equally it would interfere with Provincial jurisdictions, and would have constrained the Federal government regarding such matters as the wartime displacement of Japanese Canadians and the conduct of the recent spy trials. He also had criticised the draft social and economic rights as statements of ‘political economy, not human rights’.40 In his Presidential address to the CBA, Hackett left the legal criticisms of the draft Declaration to the Report of the CBA’s Committee on Legal Problems on International Organisation for the Maintenance of Peace and instead focused on the religious dimension of the current struggle for human rights: such rights, as the authors of the American Declaration of Independence asserted, were an endowment of the Creator. According to Hackett, human rights and fundamental freedom were ‘distinctive of Christian civilization’ and had ‘never existed elsewhere’. And, in the present battles for the human soul against the menace of communism, the ‘great institutions of the Christian Tradition, the church, the university, the law and the Christian family, – institutions which do not exist outside of Christianity and which are the bulwarks of human rights and fundamental freedoms, – must all defend Christian Civilization.’41 The views of Hackett and the CBA had major influence with St Laurent and his Cabinet colleagues. Hackett was a friend since childhood and enjoyed direct access to St Laurent, and also to Lester Pearson, who would succeed St Laurent as External Affairs Secretary when the latter became prime Minister in November 1948. St Laurent and Pearson let Hackett know they shared many of the CBA’s criticisms of the draft Declaration, and kept him confidentially informed on the development of Canadian policy.42 The records of policy formation show that leading Canadian officials and members of the Cabinet viewed the draft Declaration in increasingly negative terms. Based on advice from the Department of External Affairs, the Cabinet on 21 September agreed to a policy which instructed its delegation in Paris to give general support to the draft Declaration, but to press for delay and referral to international legal experts.43 Soon, however, concerns regarding the sensitive issue of provincial jurisdiction, compounded by

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the alarms raised by Hackett and his CBA colleagues, led Pearson and St Laurent to send on much more cautionary advice: the Canadian delegation should distance itself from any support for the Declaration in its present form, and abstain when it came to final UN voting on the Declaration’s adoption.44 This policy was affirmed by St Laurent’s new Cabinet in its meeting of 17 November, when Pearson made it clear from Paris that there was little hope for referral of the draft Declaration or delay of the UN voting.45 After it became certain that adoption of the Declaration without substantial revision was inevitable and would be supported overwhelmingly by UN members, including Canada’s closest allies, the Cabinet held a lengthy Cabinet session on 24 November, which reviewed the continuing misgivings of St Laurent and his colleagues: the draft Declaration involved encroachments on the jealously-guarded jurisdiction of the provinces; its language remained imprecise and many articles could never be implemented; it would confer the right to public employment on Canadian communists and permit the unrestricted activities of sects like the Jehovah’s Witnesses; it invited hypocrisy on the part of many UN members who had no intention of compliance. Many Cabinet members, sensitive to the traditions of British jurisprudence, thought that the approach of the draft Declaration was ‘contrary to the whole spirit of British institutions’.46 Given these manifest reservations, Canadian delegates in the Third Committee continued to play a negligible role, merely recording the government’s concerns and reservations on specific articles of draft Declaration, and then abstaining in the Committee’s final vote on the amended draft. When the draft Declaration went to the General Assembly in December, the government’s attitudes remained negative, with the favoured policy being to abstain again on the final vote. However, after Pearson warned from Paris that such an abstention would be politically embarrassing, the Cabinet agreed reluctantly to a positive Canadian vote when the Declaration was passed on 10 December, thereby avoiding being grouped with a small, select band of abstainers – the communist bloc, Saudi Arabia and South Africa.47 Civil libertarians were shocked and disappointed with the performance of Pearson in Paris, which seemed to typify the government’s negative attitudes on the human rights programme since the Parliamentary Committees of 1947 and 1948.48 But the Government’s very guarded support for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights did not impede an electoral triumph in June 1949 which brought the Liberals back to power with a large majority under Louis St Laurent.

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The Liberals’ anti-communism, now given added fuel by the arrest and trial by the Hungarian Communists of Catholic Cardinal Mindszenty, clearly held more popular appeal than human rights, with the crusade for an Atlantic Alliance holding centre-place in the Liberal Party Platform whereas the theme of human rights went unmentioned. In March 1950, the St Laurent government responded to the mounting, if controversial, Canadian interest in human rights by appointing another parliamentary committee, this time a Senate Special Committee on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, composed exclusively of Liberals. With its new mandate overwhelmingly secure, the Liberals gave Senator Roebuck the latitude to test the possibilities of innovation in human rights. As the Senate committee began its public hearings in April, Roebuck arranged that the first two witnesses were leading Canadian advocates of civil liberties and human rights – J. King Gordon and F. R. (Frank) Scott.49 Both Gordon and Scott were sons of prominent churchmen – Gordon’s father was Charles Gordon (famous as a novelist under the pen-name Ralph Connor), former Moderator of the Presbyterian Church and an architect in 1925 of the union of Presbyterians and Methodists in the United Church; Scott was the son of Canon Frederick George Scott, famed padre to Canadian overseas forces in the Great War and Anglican Archdeacon in Quebec City.50 Gordon and Scott’s religious and political development had taken similar paths in the 1920s and crises of the 1930s – through the ‘social gospel’ and the socialist League For Social Reconstruction, to leadership in guiding Canada’s first federal social-democratic party, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, founded in 1932. Gordon, whose socialism and laudatory return after visiting the USSR had contributed in 1933 to loss of his academic position at United Theological College in Montreal, had joined the United Nations Division of Human Rights 1947, working under John Humphrey. He presented a powerful and eloquent brief for the historic import of the Universal Declaration which, along with the UN Charter, represented ‘the will of peoples’ of the world.51 Frank Scott, Professor of Law at McGill University, came before the committee as Canada’s foremost legal authority in constitutional and human rights law, and now very much a public figure, having taken on the Duplessis government in the Padlock and Roncarelli cases before the Supreme Court, Canada’s highest court.52 The author of several influential studies calling for protection of Canadians from the violations of their rights and liberties which had occurred increasingly in the crises of the depression, the war, and now the anti-communist

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pressures of the Cold War, Scott had recently published an article in the Canadian Bar Review which advocated a major new effort to extend human rights and freedoms in Canada.53 Scott reviewed his arguments before the committee, while also repeating the case for his favoured course: a constitutionally entrenched bill of rights, either by means of British-legislated amendment to the British North America Act or, much more preferably, a Canadian addition to a patriated constitution. The briefs of Gordon and Scott were received respectfully by most members of the committee, even if several Senators expressed reservations over the nature and scale of the changes being advocated. Indeed, both Gordon and Scott were propounding a new, secular liberal jurisprudence centred on human rights protection by governments and courts. As Scott put it, no subject was more worthy of legislative attention in democracies: ‘for it is by enlarging human rights and fundamental freedoms that we strengthen the moral basis of our social order, and give to all our people a stake in democracy which is the surest defence against anti-democratic creeds.’54 Later he would argue that a new activist philosophy of law was emerging: ‘We think of law now in terms of social engineering’, where law was ‘a force itself’, a ‘constructive and creative influence in society …’55 Neither Scott nor Gordon, despite their Christian patrimony, had intimated any need for a religious referent to ground or legitimate human rights. However, the debates attending passage of the Universal Declaration had, by now, generated extensive politico-theological reflection on the part of both church leaders and politicians concerning the nature and foundation of human rights and the proper role of governments in relation to such rights. The Canadian churches, along with other churches represented at the first meeting of the World Council of Churches in Amsterdam in the summer of 1948, had strongly supported the draft United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. The Canadian Council of Churches submitted a brief to the Senate Committee which expressed the attitudes and teachings of its members on the question of human rights. The Council’s brief, like briefs submitted individually by the United and Anglican Churches, while supporting the provisions of the Universal Declaration, and favouring constitutional entrenchment of a Canadian bill of rights, was anxious to place such support within a doctrinal framework: ‘We believe that all men are God’s creatures, and, as such, they are of infinite worth in His sight. They have God-given rights which society must respect and for whose realization it must make provision … Every violation of these rights and freedoms is a denial of basic Christian principles.’56

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The Senate Committee’s Report, then, charted a careful compromise, endorsing the ultimate project of an entrenched bill of rights in a patriated Canadian constitution as favoured by Scott and the leading civil libertarians, while simultaneously affirming the Christian doctrines on the origins and nature of human rights which had been articulated by religious leaders and which held such deep appeal for the Quebec members of the Committee.57 Until constitutional patriation and an amending formula could be negotiated with the provinces, the Report advised that Parliament adopt, as an interim measure, a Declaration of Human Rights – to be ‘strictly limited to its own legislative jurisdiction’. The Senate Report made reference to Canada’s evolution into nationhood, as the remaining vestiges of British colonial status were being dissolved: Canada now had full control of her foreign policy; appeals to the Judicial Committee of the British Privy Council had been ended in 1949; and the federal government had authority to amend the British North America Act in areas under its constitutional jurisdiction. The Roebuck Report, in one of its more visionary passages, called on Canadian legislators to inaugurate a new era in national self-definition: ‘This is then the very time for Canada to decide the basis upon which this new Nation is founded … this is the time to nail the emblems of law, liberty and human rights to our masthead. This is the very moment in which to decide our nationhood, to guarantee human rights and fundamental freedoms to all our citizens, and to proclaim our principles to the world.’ As Senator Roebuck well knew, while this vision appealed deeply to the Canadian social-democratic and liberal Left, and to the social conscience of mainline Protestantism, it held much less attraction for conservative Protestants and Catholics, especially in Quebec. It is notable that the Senate Committee received no brief from the Catholic hierarchy, and Senator Roebuck feared up until the last minute that Quebec Catholic members might sabotage the Committee’s Report.58 The ‘human rights revolution’ hailed by such civil libertarian leaders as Frank Scott, John Humphrey, King Gordon, and Arthur Roebuck, directly challenged both Anglo-Canadian national identity grounded in British jurisprudence, common law, and the supremacy of Parliament, and French Canadian political culture, protected by Quebec Catholicism. Early in the Committee’s deliberations, Roebuck had recorded members’ agreement with the suggestion that any preamble to a Canadian bill of rights should make explicit recognition of God as the giver of rights.59 Senators resoundingly endorsed the views of the churchmen in presenting a transcendent status for human

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rights: ‘Such rights are not created by men, be they ever so numerous, for the benefit of other men, nor are they the gift of governments. They are above the power of men to create …’60 The Report concluded by portraying Canada as ‘a Christian country’ and recommending ‘that all men give thought to the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man,’ so as to further the rule of law and the rights of individuals. *** The deliberations and Report of the Roebuck Committee, then, illustrated clearly the continued integration of Canadian Christianity and liberalism, each reinforcing core values of the other. However, despite the enthusiasm for human rights evoked by the committee from influential circles of Canadian Protestantism, civil libertarian associations, liberal and social-democratic intellectuals, and labour organisations, the timing of the Senators’ Report was inopportune. Within a few days of the conclusion of the committee’s work, on 25 June 1950, the Korean War broke out – a war which would see Canadian forces once again in combat, now under the banner of United Nations collective security. These events would help generate extreme forms of anticommunism in the United States, with civil liberties often being trampled in the investigations to discover treason, disloyalty and ‘un-American’ activities mounted by Senator Joseph McCarthy and the political right. While forms of ‘McCarthyism’ spilled over into Canada where the fear of communism also ran deep, there would be much less zeal in Canada for mobilising public institutions against alleged subversives.61 Nevertheless, whatever attractions the cause of human rights held within the Liberal government quickly abated, and the Roebuck Committee’s Report was ignored and buried. Moreover, with federal–provincial relations subject to the vigilant eye of Quebec Premier Duplessis, the St Laurent government had no desire to provoke provincial opposition by initiatives for either an entrenched or statutory bill of rights. When civil libertarian groups organised a large delegation in May 1951 to press on Louis St Laurent the urgency of proceeding with the recommendations of Senator Roebuck’s Committee, they found the Prime Minister polite but ‘very formal and non-committal’; while the Cabinet would consider their petitions, St Laurent advised that the provinces would first have to be convinced that constitutional innovation was necessary – a course which held no foreseeable chance of success.62 It was not just the alarms of the Cold War, however, which impeded Canada’s entry into the age of human rights. As this study has shown,

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Canada’s political and legal elites shared a deep and enduring commitment to the traditions of British jurisprudence, the supremacy of Parliament, and the operation of the common law in defence of liberties. Neither the Prime Minister, his Cabinet, nor officials from the Justice Department or External Affairs, favoured a bill of rights to be enforced by the courts. Equally, Quebec’s political and religious elites resisted intrusions into provincial jurisdictions and Catholic identity under a programme to protect human rights. Moreover, if the national Canadian churches had aligned themselves with their international leadership in the World Council of Churches, Lambeth, and the Vatican in expressing support for the cause of human rights, conservative Canadian Christians harboured misgivings that the ‘human rights revolution’ presented a challenge not only to the existing religious foundations of Canadian political culture and jurisprudence, but also the longer-term privileging of Canadian religious values, practices, and institutions. Civil libertarians like Scott, Gordon and Humphrey were viewed from this perspective as prophets of a secular, pluralist Canada.63 For conservative Protestants and Catholics alike, a secular pluralism was as disconcerting as communism. The Social Credit MP, Rev. Ernest Hansell, had perhaps voiced these misgivings most clearly when, in the proceedings of the 1948 Joint Parliamentary Committee, he had reiterated fears expressed previously by Catholic conservatives that the Universal Declaration, in offering equal rights to atheists, was going beyond freedom to license. It was his intuition, he cautioned, ‘that contrary forces to our way of life and civilization’ were behind the draft Declaration, even if the proof to his premonitions might only ‘come a hundred or two hundred years from now’. Hansell’s Catholic colleague on the committee, John Hackett, attentive to these views, noted that Canada’s ‘Christian democratic civilization’ would find itself being confronted with the contradictory elements of many civilisations.64 Such troubling prospects of pluralism were not evident to Louis St Laurent, who had recently expressed gratitude ‘that the relations between Church and State are so helpful in our country’, while hoping that ‘future generations should maintain them’.65 The new decade of the 1950s would see Canadian Liberal leaders continue to speak of Canada as a Christian country, a responsible and pro-active middle power defending Western civilisation against the ideological and military menace of communism. St Laurent remained happy to sustain the government’s practice of legitimating government authority and building support for policy with explicitly religious rhetoric which fused liberal and Christian themes. Speaking to the Convocation of the

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University of Toronto in the Fall of 1950, the Prime Minister reminded his audience of the spiritual values that served as the ‘fount’ of liberal societies: ‘We in the Western world have adopted the conception of good and evil from the Hebrew and Greek civilizations. This concept has been transformed and transmitted to us through our Christian traditions. It comprises a belief in the intrinsic value of every individual human being and a sense of obligation to our neighbour. Its very essence is freedom.’66 With Canada’s flourishing churches, Protestant and Catholic, eager to support governmental authority in its containment of communism, domestically and internationally,67 St Laurent would conclude that Canadian civil liberties were sufficiently protected and that neither the government nor its citizens had need for a Canadian Bill of Rights.68

Notes 1 See my ‘Trudeau, God, and the Canadian Constitution: Religion, Human Rights, and Government Authority in the Making of the 1982 Constitution’, in David Lyon and Marguerite Van Die, eds, Rethinking Church, State and Modernity: Canada Between Europe and America (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), pp. 90–112. 2 The picture presented by Canadian church statistics and the new behavioural and attitudinal surveys, is one of pervasive religiosity, with expanding suburban populations building and supporting a new generation of religious institutions and programmes. See John Webster Grant, The Church in the Canadian Era (Burlington, Ont.: Welch Publishing Company, 1988), ch. 8; and Terrence Murphy and Roberto Perin, A Concise History of Christianity in Canada (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 234–56 and 354–7. 3 Broadcast, 27 Oct. 1939. Cited in Louise and Hajo Holborn, eds, War and Peace Aims of the United Nations (Boston: World Peace Foundation, 1943), p. 303. 4 Charles Thomas Sinclair Faulkner, ‘For a Christian Civilization: The Churches and Canada’s War Effort’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1975). 5 On 8 May 1945 the end of the European war was celebrated with services of thanksgiving in cities, villages, and communities across the country, usually with religious service first at city halls and, in the evening, in churches. United Church Observer, 7(7) (June 1, 1945), pp. 1, 12; Globe and Mail, 8 May 1945, pp. 1, 4. 6 See Reg Whitaker and Gary Marcuse, Cold War Canada: The Making of a National Insecurity State, 1945–1957 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994). 7 Catholic statesmen could draw on a corpus of traditional natural law doctrine and Papal statements and Encyclicals – notably Mit Brennender Sorge (14 March 1937), Divini Redemptoris (19 March 1937), and Summi

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8

9 10

11

12

13

14 15 16

17

18

19

Pontificatus (28 Oct. 1939). Encyclicals are reprinted in Claudia Carlen, ed., The Papal Encyclicals (Raleigh: McGrath, 1981). New York: Éditions de la Maison Française, 1942. Doris C. Anson, trans., The Rights of Man and Natural Law (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1943). Maritain’s book would be widely disseminated and translated, serving as the most influential Catholic statement on human rights. Maritain, a leading French philosopher, lectured and offered courses regularly after 1933 at the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, Toronto. For the role of the churches, see O. Frederick Nolde, Free and Equal: Human Rights in Ecumenical Perspective (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1968). A Report of the Commission on Church, Nation and World Order, Presented to the Eleventh General Council, The United Church of Canada, London, Ontario, 1944 (Toronto: Board of Evangelism and Social Service, 1944). Two of the United Church leaders involved in producing the 1944 Report, Gordon Sisco and James Mutchmor, served on the Commission on a Just and Durable Peace appointed by the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America. Canadian civil libertarian activities are analysed in Ross Lambertson, ‘Activists in the Age of Rights: The Struggle for Human Rights in Canada, 1945–1960’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Victoria, 1998). John Humphrey, a young Canadian recruit from the law faculty of McGill University to serve as Director of the Human Rights Division of the UN Secretariat and also as Secretary of the Human Rights Commission charged with drafting the Universal Declaration, would devote a long career to the cause of the ‘human rights revolution’. See A. J. Hobbins, ‘Eleanor Roosevelt, John Humphrey and Canadian Opposition to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Looking Back on the 50th Anniversary of UNDHR’, International Journal, 53 (Spring 1998), and John Humphrey, Human Rights and the United Nations: A Grand Adventure (Dobbs Ferry: Transnational Publishers, 1984). Canada, Parliament, House of Commons, Official Report of Debates, IV, 1947 (Ottawa: King’s Printer, 1948), 16 May, pp. 3139–40. Ibid., 16–19 May, pp. 3139–3236. Mackenzie, a Liberal member from British Columbia, was an outspoken defender of the wartime decision to relocate Japanese Canadians inland; in early planning for the Parliamentary Committee Mackenzie had written to Prime Minister King proposing ‘a delaying tactics committee.’ Mackenzie to King, 18 Nov. 1946, King Papers, National Archives of Canada (hereafter NAC), vol. 401, reel 9173, document 368906. Canada, Parliament, Special Joint Committee of the Senate and the House of Commons on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, Minutes of Proceedings and Evidence (Ottawa: King’s Printer, 1947). United Nations, Economic and Social Council, Summary Records of Commission on Human Rights. United Nations Documents E/HR/1-31; E/CN.4/1 and E/CN.4/SR.1-22. See also Paul Gordon Lauren, The Evolution of International Human Rights: Visions Seen (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), ch. 7. The attempts, especially by Malik, to present religiously-grounded amendments, are described in the Canadian Jesuit journal, Relations, 9(99) (March

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20 21

22 23 24 25 26

27 28

29

30 31 32

33 34 35 36

37

1949), p. 63, and 9(100) (April 1949), pp. 96–9. See also Malik’s introduction to O. Frederick Nolde, Free and Equal: Human Rights in Ecumenical Perspective (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1968), and Habib C. Malik, ed., The Challenge of Human Rights: Charles Malik and the Universal Declaration (London: Centre for Lebanese Studies, 2000). Canada, Parliament, House of Commons, Official Report of Debates (Ottawa: King’s Printer, 1948), p. 2843. Mackenzie King, addressing the Advisory Council of the National Liberal Federation of Canada on 20 Jan. 1948, warned that communism was no less a tyranny than Nazism and described the world as ‘in an appallingly dangerous condition today.’ St Laurent Papers, vol. 32, File ‘Communism in Canada – 1947–48’. The Liberal MP, Wilfrid LaCroix, introduced a private member’s bill to outlaw the Labor-Progressive Party and other communist organizations. For anti-communist perceptions and mobilization, see Whitaker and Marcuse, Cold War Canada. Official Report of Debates, pp. 2874–5. Debates, pp. 2876–9. Lambertson, chs 3, 5. Debates, pp. 2881–3. Canada, Parliament, Special Joint Committee of the Senate and the House of Commons on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, Minutes of Proceedings and Evidence (Ottawa: King’s Printer, 1948). Ibid., pp. 205–12. Catholic teaching and roles can be followed in articles by Richard Arès, SJ, ‘Les Droits de l’Homme Devant Les Nations Unies’, Relations, 8(96) (Dec. 1948); ‘La Déclaration Universelle Des Droits De L’Homme’, Relations, 9(97) (Jan. 1949); and ‘Quand Les Nations Unies S’Occupent De Dieu’, Relations, 9(99) (March 1949); and ‘D’Où Viennent Les Droits De L’Homme?’, Relations, 9(100) (April 1949). Jacques Maritain, ‘On the Philosophy of Human Rights’, in Human Rights: Comments and Interpretations (A Symposium edited by UNESCO, with an Introduction by Jacques Maritain) (New York: Columbia University Press, 1949). pp. 9–16. The Lambeth Conference, 1948 (London: SPCK, 1948), pp. 30–1. The First Assembly of the World Council of Churches (London: SCM Press, 1949), pp. 93–9. United Nations, Official Records of the Third Session of the General Assembly, Part 1, Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Questions, Third Committee, Summary Records of Meetings (Lake Success, New York, 1948), pp. 55, 91. See also, Relations, 9(99) (March 1949); 9(100) (April 1949). Summary Records, pp. 96–101, 116–17. Ibid., pp. 110–11. Ibid., pp. 117, 755–6, 767–77. Ibid., p. 62. See also René Cassin, ‘La Declaration Universelle et la Mise en Oeuvre des Droits de l’Homme’, Academie de Droit International, Recueil des Cours, 79 (1951), p. 284. H. H. Carter, ‘Report on Draft Declaration of Human Rights up to the 23rd November – Articles 1 to 22, inclusive’, 23 Nov. 1948. NAC, RG 25, vol. 3699, file 5475-DM-1-40. The key records of Canada’s policy and role in

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38

39

40

41 42

43 44

45 46

47 48

49

50 51 52

the Third Committee are reproduced in Canada, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Documents on Canadian External Relations, vol. 14, 1948, ed. H. Mackenzie (Ottawa: Minister of Supply and Services, 1994), pp. 350–66. For detailed treatment of Canadian policymaking see William A. Schabas, ‘Canada and the Adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights’, McGill Law Journal, 43 (1998), pp. 403–41. Summary Records, pp. 40–1, 500, 777, 880. The failure of the Canadian delegates to press for a religious referent would be censured by the editors of Relations, 9(102) (June 1949), pp. 145–6. ‘Report of the Committee on Legal Problems on International Organization for the Maintenance of Peace’, Canadian Bar Association, The 1948 Year Book of the Canadian Bar Association and the Minutes of Proceedings of the Thirteenth Annual Meeting (Ottawa: National Printers Limited, 1949), pp. 141–2. Minutes of Proceedings and Evidence (1948), pp. 13, 118–19, 142–3, 150, 155. See also Schabas, p. 439, and Hobbins, ‘Eleanor Roosevelt, John Humphrey and Canadian Opposition to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights’. CBA, Minutes of Proceedings, pp. 94–103. Hackett to St Laurent 25 and 27 Oct. 1948; St Laurent to Hackett, 27 Oct. 1948, St Laurent Papers, vol. 43, File ‘Department of External Affairs – General – Mr. St Laurent’s Signature’; Pearson to Hackett, 28 Oct. 1948, in Documents on Canadian External Relations, vol. 14, pp. 354–5. ‘Memorandum to Cabinet’, 7 Sept. 1948, NAC RG 25, vol. 3699, File 5475DG-2-40; ‘Cabinet Conclusions’, 21 Sept. 1948, NAC, RG 2, A5a, vol. 2642. Pearson to Canadian Delegation, Paris, 7 Oct. 1948; St Laurent to Lionel Chevrier, 8 Oct. 1948, NAC, RG 25, vol. 3701, File 5475-DP-40. See also Schabas, pp. 424–8. Cabinet Conclusions, 17 Nov. 1948, NAC, RG 2, A5a, vol. 2642 (microfilm reel T-2366). Cabinet Conclusion 24 Nov. 1948, NAC, RG 2, A5a, vol. 2642 (microfilm reel T-2366); Acting Secretary of State [Brooke Claxton] to Pearson, 25 Nov. 1948, NAC, RG 25, vol. 3701, File 5475-DP-40. Cabinet Conclusion 8 Dec. 1948, NAC, RG 2, A5a, vol. 2642 (microfilm reel T-2366). See also Schabas, pp. 432–8. John Humphrey in his diaries denounced Pearson’s performance – in abstaining in the Third Committee and then the explanations given in the positive vote in the General Assembly – as ‘niggardly.’ A. J. Hobbins, ed., On the Edge of Greatness, The Diaries of John Humphrey, First Director of the United Nations Division of Human Rights, vol. I (1948–9) (Montreal: McGill University Libraries), pp. 90–1. Canada, Parliament, Senate, Proceedings of the Special Committee on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (Ottawa: King’s Printer, 1950). John Humphrey had delegated King Gordon as he was unable to appear again himself. For Scott see Sandra Djwa, The Politics of the Imagination: A Life of F. R. Scott (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1987). Proceedings of the Special Committee, p. 3. The Padlock case addressed infringement of the civil liberties of Quebec Communists, whereas the Roncarelli case derived from Premier Duplessis’s

Between War and Peace 187

53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61

62

63

64 65 66 67

68

peremptory removal of the liquor license of Roncarelli’s restaurant because, as a Jehovah’s Witness, he had been financing bail for arrested co-religionists. Eventually, Scott would be successful in both cases. ‘Dominion Jurisdiction Over Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms’, Canadian Bar Review, 27 (1949), pp. 497–536. Proceedings of the Special Committee, p. 15. Ibid., p. 25. Ibid., pp. 337–41. The Report, 21 June 1950, is printed in Ibid., pp. 299–307. Roebuck to Irving Himel, 28 June 1950. Arthur Roebuck Papers, NAC, MG 32, C68, vol. 3/11. Ibid., p. 184. Ibid., pp. 302–3. The campaign by Liberal MP Wilfrid LaCroix to have the Labor-Progressive Party and communist organizations outlawed proved unsuccessful. See Cold War Canada, chs 8, 13. Globe and Mail, 9 May 1951; Arthur Roebuck to John Humphrey, 23 May 1951. Roebuck Papers, 3/11. The Dominion-Provincial conference of Jan. 1950 had quickly affirmed that Premier Duplessis’s defence of Provincial rights would prevent any constitutional innovation. Scott’s and Gordon’s socialism supplanted their former Anglican and United Church heritage, while Humphrey, an anti-clerical rationalist, thought that socialism needed ‘something like the Christian morality without the tommyrot.’ Humphrey Diaries, Sept. 8, 1948, cited in A. J. Hobbins, ‘Human Rights inside the United Nations: The Humphrey Diaries, 1948–1959’, Fontanus, 4 (1991), pp. 143–73. Minutes of Proceedings and Evidence (1948), pp. 160–1. St Laurent to T. L. Church, 14 March 1949. St Laurent Papers, vol. 70, File, ‘Religion – General – 1948–49.’ ‘The Preservation of Civilization’, 27 Oct. 1950. Canada, Department of External Affairs, Statements and Speeches (Ottawa, 1950), 50/43. For insight on anti-communism of United Church leaders see Mutchmor: The Memoirs of James Ralph Mutchmor (Toronto: The Ryerson press, 1965), ch. 15. St Laurent made this view clear in a radio broadcast in March 1952, and in the fall was advised by leading members of his staff and Justice Minister Stuart Garson that declining political support for a bill of rights made any action unnecessary and unwise. St Laurent Papers, vol. 86, File, ‘Civil Defence – Bill of Rights, 1952.’

11 The Clergy, the Cold War and the Mission of the Local Church; England ca. 1945–60 Ian Jones1

In 1949, with the Berlin airlift already six months old and communist Chinese forces now occupying Beijing, college lecturer and Congregationalist elder W. H. Leighton offered his thoughts on the worsening international situation to the monthly magazine of his church, the Carrs Lane Church in Birmingham: ‘The so-called “Cold War” between East and West,’ he wrote, ‘is the most terrifying fact of our tragic world … Both Christianity and Communism were absolutes, and one or other will go down. It will not be Christianity.’ All the same, he continued, ‘We are face to face with the greatest challenge ever known since the fall of Rome.’2 Given that just four years earlier, Britain had emerged from a six-year-long world war, language of this kind from a moderate and highly educated man such as Leighton spoke volumes for the wider climate of apprehension within the churches over the worsening international situation. In seeing the Cold War as a potentially decisive struggle between two fundamentally opposed absolutes, Leighton – a liberal – shared an interpretation of the global situation with many more across the West, figures as different as Pope Pius XII3 and Billy Graham,4 with whom he otherwise had little in common. Leighton’s views also seem to have reflected the broad consensus amongst religious leaders in Britain: Dianne Kirby’s study of the close links between Archbishop of York, Cyril Garbett, and the Foreign Office in the 1940s and 1950s has suggested that ‘religion was a crucial propaganda tool, advocating the defence of western civilisation and Christianity against first the paganism of Nazi Germany and then against the atheism of Soviet Russia.’5 The idea of communism as a rival faith to Christianity had been gaining currency for some decades,6 and six years of struggle against Nazism further served to nourish an almost Manichean view of a world 188

The Clergy, the Cold War and the Local Church 189

divided between good and evil, with the very fate of Christian civilisation apparently at stake should the Allies lose.7 Of course, as with wider public and media opinion at the time, church leaders did not immediately substitute a Soviet foe for a Nazi foe in 1945.8 Nor were their responses to communism in any way uniform: in the Church of England, Hewlett Johnson, the so-called ‘Red Dean’ of Canterbury, rubbed shoulders with Geoffrey Fisher, a distinctly non-red Archbishop of Canterbury. Even so, from the 1930s to the 1950s, a progressive hardening of clergy attitudes against the Soviet threat had taken place.9 However, although recent research has revealed much more about the responses to communism amongst the leaders of the English churches, it is still much less clear what kind of message about the Cold War was being preached Sunday by Sunday in the local church. How did local clergy view the Cold War, and for what reasons did they raise it with their congregations and parishioners? This article, which derives from a much wider study of the life of the local church in post-war Birmingham, seeks to offer some reflections. The primary focus is the attitudes of clergy and leading lay members of Anglican and Free Church congregations, and is inevitably influenced by the local focus of the research. Nevertheless, most of those considered here had little love for communism, and this should not be regarded as particularly untypical of clergy of the time. However, whilst their responses reflected more widely-held attitudes and assumptions, many of the clergy’s primary concerns particularly related to the pastoral and missiological implications of the Cold War at home. The battle was to be won and lost within church and community (as much as on the world stage) and required that the laity, both churchgoers and non-churchgoers, played their full part in the campaign. Whilst the picture is inevitably more complex than this short chapter can convey, it is nevertheless possible to identify several different facets to local clergy responses to the Cold War situation. Each of these is considered in turn. Firstly, as already suggested, a growing number of local church leaders through the 1940s and 1950s quite simply regarded Christianity and communism as antithetical on theological or ideological grounds. This is reflected in many local church publications of the time; for example, church magazines and newsletters. One particular worry was the threat to individual freedom in a totalitarian state. As a Carrs Lane Church Journal report of the congregation’s recent Conference on Christian Youth concluded in 1953, Communism was seen as one of the forces endangering freedom today, because in it, society becomes the only thing of importance,

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while for the individual, no room is left to realise a Christian relation with God.10 The religious freedom of the individual became increasingly prized in the 1930s and 1940s, partly due to the rise of the Nazi threat,11 but also because of an important shift in popular theological orthodoxy. Where previously Christian writers had focused on the social role of religion as a crucial factor in the formation of ‘good character’, greater emphasis was now placed on true Christianity as the full development of individual personality.12 Personal spiritual renewal was therefore considered doubly important, as the only means by which a godless enemy could be overcome.13 Indeed, if personal freedom was held to be fundamental to Christian civilisation, such freedom appeared under particular threat in the late 1940’s, as the motives of Soviet Russia came to be viewed with increasing suspicion by the general public. This apparently direct threat began to make the Cold War seem a serious pastoral issue: many local church leaders from across the political and theological spectrum were quick to identify those things which might allow tendrils of communism to reach into the heart of their own community and nation. Particular concern was expressed about the power of the state in an era of increased government planning.14 Whilst most local clergy followed the late Archbishop William Temple in welcoming state help for post-war reconstruction,15 many felt, by the 1950s, that this had gone too far. In 1955, for example, the liberal Bishop of Birmingham, Leonard Wilson, wrote to his diocese that whilst ‘collective experiments have brought great benefits to humanity … collectivism can go mad, and when it does, it destroys the noblest thing in human life – individual personality.’16 As early as 1948, Revd Thomas Tunstall, vicar of St Agnes’, Cotteridge, had warned his parishioners that, ‘after the Second World War, a widespread belief grew up that the State was be the Saviour of man. The State must control everything and everybody, even men’s moral and religious beliefs.’17 However this, Tunstall continued, assumed self-sufficiency, and endangered dependence on God. For more conservative clergy – particularly those ministering to industrial communities – organized labour could appear as another manifestation of communist activism alarmingly close to home. Although communism was not a significantly greater political force in Birmingham than in any other large city,18 communists did dominate the Birmingham Trades Councils throughout most of the 1940s and 1950s. Strikes were not uncommon. At the height of a three-month

The Clergy, the Cold War and the Local Church 191

dispute by workers at the Austin car factory in 1951 (the longest thus far in the history of the motor industry19), the vicar of Kings Norton, whose parish was home to many of the workers, was taken to task in the pages of his parish magazine by Frank Ludford, a local Trade Unionist, for having used the pulpit to preach against industrial unrest. What was the church doing, asked Ludford, to alleviate the world’s insecurities, of which the current industrial dispute was only a symptom? The vicar, Revd Edward Ashford, replied: ‘I would remind those who ask “what is the church doing?”, that they are part of the Church, and that if they were doing their duty to God and the church, we should be able to cope with present evils. Let them come back to the House of God, where they know perfectly well they belong, and the church would be able to cope.’ In contrast, he continued, ‘the spirit of the “closed shop” … is a direct negation of the Spirit of Christ.’20 Nevertheless, this should neither be taken to indicate that such hostility was universal amongst local clergy, nor as implying an easy relationship between religion and the forces of capitalism, as was frequently the case in Cold War America.21 As Dianne Kirby has noted, Anglo-American government propagandists in part played the ‘Christianity’ card in anti-communist rhetoric because the British public were unlikely to regard capitalism as an attractive basis for common cause against Soviet Russia.22 This was reflected in the attitudes of local clergy: as Revd Arthur Burrell, vicar of St George’s in the wealthy Edgbaston suburb of Birmingham – and certainly no leftwinger – warned his parishioners in 1955, I do not believe that the threat in the near future is so much from a gigantic explosion as from the gradual extinction of the spirit of man through the stifling and anaesthetic materialist forces of our modern age.23 ‘Nor,’ he continued, ‘need we smugly think that Communism is the main source of danger. That kind of ideology I believe to be the sworn enemy of that way of life which we know as Christians in our hearts to be right. But the main indictment of our age and society … is that the non-Communist world believes it can fight Communism only by violent fits of anti-Communism.’24 Indeed, most English clergy appeared sceptical of adopting anticommunism at any price. The more theologically conservative, for example, were unwilling to compromise on doctrine merely to present a united front against Soviet Russia.25 Likewise, far from seeing material

192 Religion and the Cold War

prosperity as a crucial bulwark against communist influence, most clergy regarded a materialistic outlook on life as increasing the nation’s susceptibility to Cold War defeat.26 The vicar of St George’s wrote to his congregation in 1954 that in the era of the modern hydrogen bomb, Birmingham could be blown up in a few seconds … What can we do? Give up and live for the day? (dogs, pools, races, etc.). Surely a country that has resisted the invader will not succumb to spiritual wickedness in high places like that!27 For many local clergy, then, important pastoral challenges arose as much from the whole traumatic experience of living under the shadow of the Cold War28 as from any direct threat by expansionist communism. As Revd Arthur Burrell’s reference to ‘a country that has resisted the invader’ suggests, clergy commonly held that the threat of Cold War should have brought the nation back to a recognition of its duty, just as a similar threat had seemed to do in the Second World War. For many local church leaders, however, quite the reverse appeared to be happening, particularly during the increasingly prosperous years of the 1950s. As Revd Edward Ashford of Kings Norton wrote to his parishioners in 1950: As the world is today with the dark clouds of man’s sins, yours and mine too, lowering on the horizon and threatening a dreadful doom for humanity, only the completely careless, the brainless and immoral and perverted can enjoy unbroken happiness. For most of us we have to fight and pray for the sunshine that lightens the dark path of life in this tumultuous, troubled world … Maybe we can do little about these godless spirits in the Kremlin at this hour, but one can work and pray and try to save their most powerful allies … 29 As these words suggest, many clergy were convinced that whether communism posed a direct and hostile threat, or spread its influence more subtly through the growth of a materialist outlook on life, the church could not sit idly by. But what kind of response would it offer? Firstly to consider what local church leaders may have sought from their more committed laity. In part, this response was to have an international dimension. As the Cold War spread beyond Europe and into the Third World, the communist threat to the world church came increasingly into focus. In 1950, R. K. Canning, a Churchwarden

The Clergy, the Cold War and the Local Church 193

at St Nicolas’, Kings Norton, wrote in the church magazine urging parishioners to support forthcoming missionary events, that by our gifts and prayers, and perhaps our correspondence, we may more effectively support the work of those who are sacrificing so much on the front line – a front line the other side of which atheistic communism has a large army and powerful weapons of propaganda.30 To some extent this paralleled the policies of successive governments in regarding overseas interests as a bulwark against communism,31 although most local church leaders appeared far more interested in the need to show solidarity with the church across the world, and respond with like commitment to the Gospel. Stories of enduring Christian devotion behind the Iron Curtain were regularly featured in church magazines of the time. One related in the Grenfell Baptist Church Newsletter of April 1958 highlighted an audience of Russians listening to a communist speaker expound eloquently on the obsolescence of religious faith. His arguments appeared to be winning the day when a priest stood up and simply said ‘Brothers and Sisters, Christ is Risen!’ to which every last one of the audience instinctively rose and responded ‘Verily, he is risen!’32 The story stood as an encouragement to western Christians that the Gospel could not even be extinguished under a hostile and atheistic regime, and called church members to re-examine the depth of their own commitment, in the light of the resilience of their Christian brothers and sisters in the East. To underline this point, clergy letters also frequently drew parallels between the half-hearted Western believer on one hand, and the passionate, committed communist on the other. All Christians must be campaigners, the Revd Thomas Tunstall, vicar of St Agnes’, Cotteridge, stated in 1951. God should be allowed to work through the faithful to save others from ‘the forces of atheism’. We know, he continued, that the final triumph will be God’s, but we must see that no such serious setback is due to our carelessness or neglect. The average Communist knows where he stands and does not mind saying so. But what about the average Christian?33 Indeed, if the committed Christian was to show more diligence in prayer and service, this also meant becoming better-equipped to put

194 Religion and the Cold War

forward the Christian point of view at all times. Reviewing The Case for Communism (a book by Communist MP William Gallacher) for the Carrs Lane Journal in 1949, church elder Tom Rumsby wrote, The case against Communism is in large degree the case for Christianity and we do less than justice to our Christian loyalty if we cannot hold our own in argument and dispute with our Communist opponents.34 Understanding and countering the methods of communism was almost a minor industry for some Christian writers and speakers of the time.35 Indeed, the issue became the subject of a study day for the Carrs Lane Church young adults’ club in 1954. Club members were advised to know their own faith; to study the communist manifesto in order to pre-empt lines of attack; to train themselves to speak just as the communist would; to become involved in questions of social improvement; and to carry a Christian conscience into every possible sphere of life.36 Therefore if the threat of communism provided useful exempla by which local church leaders could seek to galvanize their congregations into action, this was nevertheless underpinned by a genuine worry that a lack of commitment from both church members and the wider public was proving dangerous to both church and society in the unstable Cold War climate. Of course, the idea that neglect from within might prove more serious than external aggression had a longer pedigree. Keith Robbins notes, for example, that widespread talk of defending ‘Christian civilisation’ in the Second World War prompted some observers (particularly within the churches) to ask whether the country was so Christian after all. Indeed, some asked whether the real challenge might come not so much from totalitarianism but from a decaying connection between the British population and their Christian heritage?37 The Cold War witnessed a renewal of this concern, albeit in a society that many clergy increasingly regarded as functioning without a common point of reference in God.38 Cold War rhetoric was fundamentally bound up with clergy efforts to rebuild the unity and purpose of their congregations after the war – especially since that feeling of togetherness which had characterized many people’s recollections of wartime was now beginning to seem a distant memory.39 Furthermore, the importance of unity against division not surprisingly took on new significance in the face of heightening Cold War tension; particularly after 1955, when the Warsaw Pact appeared to seal the

The Clergy, the Cold War and the Local Church 195

cleavage of the world into two camps. As Revd Arthur Burrell of St George’s wrote to his parishioners in that year, ‘we must never lose sight of the Church’s task and function, namely, to being the answer of unity and inspiration into a divided and distracted world’.40 What did this mean in practice? At heart, the recognition of religious duty, not just by committed churchgoers, but amongst the population as a whole.41 At the height of the Korean War, Revd Edward Ashford of Kings Norton even went so far as to warn his parishioners that ‘They who ignore God, who never enter His House, who rarely pray, they are God’s most deadly adversaries, they are the most useful allies of those dark spirits in the Kremlin’.42 In this way, the communist threat could offer a useful (and widely acceptable) scapegoat against which clergy could attempt to re-forge the waning connection between religious duty, social participation and national identity.43 Even so, this should not be regarded as the whole story. Viewing clergy responses solely in terms of a quest for temporal power and influence would be to underestimate the significance for them of the Cold War as a cosmic struggle between Good and Evil. For many vicars and ministers, pulling together in more regular church-going was not ‘just’ churchgoing. As Revd Ashford of Kings Norton again wrote to parish magazine-readers in August 1950, A great swelling-forth of pity and charity and religion in the hearts of non-communists would be the surest answer to the black threat of communist tyranny which threatens the world today. That is why it is so serious that men and women should be content to fritter away God’s holy day, and live year in year out with little thought for God. If the churches of England were filled each Sunday with God-fearing men and women, that would be enough to turn the tide of human history away from the dreadful threat hanging over us.44 This was not to suggest that clergy regarded the simple act of going to church as having talismanic properties; simply that it was only in church, and in regular prayer and service, that personal spiritual development, and the spiritual renewal of the world, was going to be effected. For most clergy of the time, spiritual transformation was the essential pre-requisite for a solution to the material and political problems of the day. In the end, such a ‘swelling-forth of pity and charity and religion’ was not needed in order to neutralize the threat that many local clergy

196 Religion and the Cold War

believed was posed by communism. By the late 1950s, a partial détente between the superpowers left the Cold War seeming, for the moment at least, less of an immediate danger. Even before the end of the decade, however, the Cold War had ceased to be a major topic of concern in most clergy letters. New and pressing issues – particularly declining Sunday School attendance and changing patterns of family and community life – had come to dominate the agenda. Furthermore, as Eric Hopkins suggests, the appeal of communism was also already on the wane; partly smothered by increasing prosperity amongst the working classes it was intended for.45 Ironically, a more materialist outlook on life – which many clergy feared could open the floodgates to communism – was perhaps the very thing which ultimately killed it off. Nevertheless, during the late 1940s and 1950s at least, the Cold War threat had remained an important source of concern for local clergy in Birmingham and beyond. In the face of a divided world, local church leaders encouraged a re-commitment to church, in both spiritual and practical terms; in part to counter the global threat of communism, but more specifically to address the manifestations of Cold War tension to be found locally, in the church, in the city and in community life.

Notes 1 I would like to thank the following for their helpful comments on this paper: Dianne Kirby, Nicholas Hope, Walter Hixson, Hugh McLeod and participants in the International Conference on Religion and the Cold War, Royal Foundation of St. Katharine, April 2000, and at the Ecclesiastical History Society’s Postgraduate Conference on the History of Christianity (Birmingham, April 2000) for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this chapter. 2 Carrs Lane Journal, 47 (March 1949). 3 As Anthony Rhodes writes, Pius XII made fighting communism ‘the principle pre-occupation of the Holy See after the Second World War’, having believed that ‘what was at stake was the very principle, even the end of Christianity itself’ (A. Rhodes, The Vatican in the Age of the Cold War, 1945–1980 (Norwich: Michael Russell Publishing, 1992), p. 231. 4 For Billy Graham’s views of the communist threat, see S. J. Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1991), pp. 77–100 (‘Praying: God Bless America’). 5 D. Kirby, ‘The Archbishop of York and Anglo-American Relations During the Second World War and Early Cold War, 1942–1955’, Journal of Religious History, 23(3) (Oct. 1999), pp. 327–45 (p. 327). For the attitudes of English Roman Catholic elites, see: J. Keating, ‘Faith and Community Threatened? Roman Catholic Responses to the Welfare State, Materialism and Social Welfare, 1945–62’, Twentieth Century British History, 9(1) (1998), pp. 86–108.

The Clergy, the Cold War and the Local Church 197 6 See, for example, E. Barker, ‘Rival Faiths?’ and W. R. Inge, ‘The Christian Tradition’, in the popular collection edited by H. Wilson Harris (of The Spectator): Christianity and Communism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1937). 7 K. Robbins, ‘Britain, 1940 and “Christian Civilisation”’, in History, Religion and Identity in Modern Britain (London: Hambledon Press, 1993), pp. 195–213 (pp. 195–6) and A. Hastings, A History of English Christianity, 1920–1990 (London: SCM Press, 1991 ed.), pp. 382–427. The prevalence of a ‘Manichean’ view of world conflict during the Cold War is further explored within the US context in R. S. Ellwood, The Fifties Spiritual Marketplace: American Religion in a Decade of Conflict (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997), pp. 38–43 and D. S. Foglesong, ‘Roots of “Liberation”: American Images of the Future of Russia in the Early Cold War, 1948–53’, International History Review, 21(1) (March 1999), pp. 57–79 (p. 67). 8 For public opinion, see the results of numerous surveys in G. H. Gallup, ed., The Gallup International Public Opinion Polls; Great Britain, 1937–1975, 2 vols. (New York: Random House, 1976). For press reactions to the early Cold War, see A. Foster, ‘The British Press and the Coming of the Cold War’, in A. Deighton, ed., Britain and the First Cold War (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990), pp. 11–32, and T. Shaw, ‘The British Popular Press and the Early Cold War’, History, 83(269) (Jan. 1998), pp. 66–85. 9 Hastings, A History of English Christianity, pp. 320, 424. This is contrary to the impression given by Anthony Rhodes, in whose The Vatican in the Age of the Cold War the only English non-Catholic clergy to appear are sympathetic to the communist cause (pp. 50ff). 10 Carrs Lane Journal, 51(4) (April 1953). 11 Robbins, ‘Britain, 1940 and “Christian Civilisation” … ’, pp. 204–5. 12 A trend probably best illustrated in the writings of American Protestant divine Harry Emerson Fosdick. See H. A. Warren, ‘The Shift from Character to Personality in Mainline Protestant Thought, 1935–1945’, Church History, 67(3) (Sept. 1998), pp. 537–55. Although Warren’s article deals solely with the USA, this shift was equally important in the United Kingdom, as exemplified by preachers such as Leslie Weatherhead or, indeed, Carrs Lane’s own minister Leslie Tizard, a leading voice in Congregationalism at the time. 13 Even Churchill, not usually known for his piety and devotion, was heard to remark that ‘All hopes will come to nought unless the structure of the New Europe is built firmly upon moral and spiritual foundations.’ This was quoted with approval by the Revd Robert Aitken of Grenfell Baptist Church in East Birmingham, in a church newsletter designed to encourage greater devotion amongst his congregation. Grenfell Baptist Church Newsletter (July 1952). 14 For the Attlee government’s commitment to government planning in postwar reconstruction, see P. Hennessy, Never Again; Britain 1945–51 (London: Vintage, 1993 ed.), esp. chs 3, 4 and 5, and S. Fielding, P. Thompson and N. Tiratsoo, ‘England Arise!’ The Labour Party and Popular Politics in 1940’s Britain (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1995), esp. pp. 102ff. 15 See, for example, W. Temple, Christianity and Social Order (London: Penguin, 1942 ed.)

198 Religion and the Cold War 16 Birmingham Diocesan Leaflet (Oct. 1955). As Dianne Kirby notes (‘The Archbishop of York and Anglo-American Relations … ’, p. 340), a similar emphasis on the distinctiveness and desirability of western freedom is to be found in the writings and speeches of Archbishop Cyril Garbett of York. See, for example, chapter 4 of his Watchman, What of the Night? Eight Addresses on the Problems of the Day (London: Religious Book Club, 1949 ed.), which deals with ‘Freedom and the Modern State’. 17 St Agnes, Cotteridge, Parish Magazine, 24(323) (Sept.–Oct. 1948). 18 F. W. S. Craig (comp. & ed.), British Parliamentary Election Results, vol. 1: 1918–1949 and vol. 2: 1950–1970 (Chichester: Political Reference Publications, 1969, 1971). The high-point of communist success in Birmingham Council elections appears to have come in 1956, when a communist candidate in working-class Sparkbrook ward beat the Liberal into fourth place (Birmingham Post, 11 May 1956, in a scrapbook of Birmingham Local Council Election Results). 19 A. Sutcliffe and R. Smith, History of Birmingham, Vol. III – Birmingham 1939–1970 (London: Oxford University Press, 1974), p. 173. 20 Kings Norton Parish Magazine (May 1951). Whilst Ashford did not explicitly refer to communism here, he would surely have been aware of the strength of the communist vote in local union matters. Furthermore, as his other letters suggest, he regarded anything corrosive of Christian duty and freedom as an ally of communism. 21 Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War, p. 81. 22 Kirby, ‘The Archbishop of York and Anglo-American Relations … ’, p. 335. 23 St George’s Parish Magazine (Sept. 1955). 24 St George’s Parish Magazine (Sept. 1955). 25 As the Revd. Robert Aitken of Grenfell Baptist Church in east Birmingham wrote in 1961, ‘Is this not rather like attempting to destroy one evil by allowing one far worse to occur?’ Grenfell Baptist Church Newsletter (March 1961). This accusation was particularly levelled against Frank Buchman’s Moral Rearmament organisation, which claimed that its ‘Four Absolutes’ allowed Christians of all denominations to unite on a common agenda against communism. 26 The frequently-made connection between materialism and communism is also noted in Joan Keating’s study of the responses of leading Roman Catholic laity to the post-war climate (Keating, ‘Faith and Community Threatened? … ’, pp. 86–108). 27 St George’s Parish Magazine (March 1954). 28 Subsequently, similar points have been made – albeit from different standpoints – in J. Nuttall, Bomb Culture (London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1968), esp. pp. 20–6, and R. Hewison, In Anger; Culture in the Cold War, 1945–60 (London: Weidenfield and Nicolson, 1981). For critiques of Nuttall’s view in particular, see J. Ryder and H. Silver, Modern English Society (London: Methuen, 1970), pp. 212ff, and A. Marwick, The Sixties; Cultural Revolution in Britain, France, Italy and the United States, c. 1958–c. 1974 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 490–1. 29 Kings Norton Parish Magazine (June 1950). 30 Kings Norton Parish Magazine (July 1950).

The Clergy, the Cold War and the Local Church 199 31 Whether or not a genuine threat to these existed. See Deighton, ‘Introduction’, in Britain and the First Cold War, p. 7, and A. Lane, ‘Third World Neutralism and British Cold War Strategies, 1960–62’ (unpublished paper, University of Birmingham 20th Century History Seminar, 1 March 2000).) 32 Grenfell Baptist Church Newsletter (April 1958). 33 St Agnes, Cotteridge, Parish Magazine, 37(342) (Nov.–Dec. 1951). 34 Carrs Lane Journal, 47 (May 1949). 35 See for example J. M. Graham, Christianity, Democracy and Communism (Edinburgh: The Saint Andrew Press, 1958), esp. ch. 8, ‘The Communist Party in Britain’ (pp. 63–71). 36 Carrs Lane Journal, 52 (Jan. 1954). 37 Robbins, ‘Britain, 1940 and “Christian Civilisation” … ’, p. 201. 38 The exceptional event here was the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953, which for many clergy – and not a few other observers – appeared to signal that the relationship between church and society was secure. Whilst the mid-1950s saw a resurgence of confidence in the religious life of the nation, this was nevertheless generally conceptualized in terms of a ‘movement, however imperceptible, towards God’, in the words of Revd. Ashford of Kings Norton (italics mine), rather than evidence of a steady state of religious commitment (Kings Norton Parish Magazine, July 1953). See also Hastings, A History of English Christianity, pp. 443–4, G. Davie, Religion in Britain since 1945 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), p. 31 and G. Parsons, ‘Contrasts and Continuities: The Traditional Christian Churches in Britain since 1945’ in The Growth of Religious Diversity; Britain from 1945, vol. I: Traditions (London: Open University/Routledge, 1993), pp. 46–9. 39 Although some recent historians have suggested that the war may not have contributed so much to social solidarity as has traditionally been believed. See Fielding, Thompson and Tiratsoo, ‘England Arise!’, esp. pp. 3–38. 40 St George’s Parish Magazine (Aug. 1955). 41 Anglican clergy appeared particularly critical of non-churchgoers failing to recognize their religious duty, perhaps in part because as ministers of the established church, they understood themselves to have a particular call on the loyalty of the population as a whole. 42 Kings Norton Parish Magazine (Aug. 1950). 43 H. McLeod, ‘Protestantism and British National Identity, 1815–1945’, in P. van der Veer and H. Lehmann, eds, Nation and Religion; Perspectives on Europe and Asia (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), pp. 44–65 (p. 64). 44 Kings Norton Parish Magazine (Aug. 1950). 45 E. Hopkins, The Rise and Decline of the English Working Classes, 1918–1990: A Social History (London: Weidenfield and Nicolson, 1991), e.g. ch. 8.

12 The Rehabilitation of Martin Luther in the GDR; or, Why Thomas Müntzer Failed to Stabilise the Moorings of Socialist Ideology Hartmut Lehmann

In my chapter I will address a major shift in the official ideology of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) with regard to identification with a historical and at the same time religious figure. What I want to say can be conceived as a drama, or perhaps even as a tragedy, in five acts.

Act I: the stage and the actors In the early years of the GDR the stage was set and the roles of the actors were clearly defined. There were heroes and there were villains, and there were those who were praising the heroes and those who were condemning the villains. The hero, of course, was Thomas Müntzer, a leading figure of the left, or radical, wing of the Protestant Reformation, a gifted preacher with strong apocalyptical views, a man who got engaged in the Peasants’ uprising in the summer of 1524. After the defeat of the peasants of Frankenhausen in May of 1525, Müntzer was captured, tortured, executed. In his famous work on the German Peasants’ War, first published in 1850, Friedrich Engels had portrayed Thomas Müntzer as the leader of the common people in their struggle for social justice, and as a martyr of their cause.1 Within the socialist movement, Engels’ work on the German Peasants’ War always played a key role. It was considered as the one major study by one of the founding-fathers of communism in which the principles of Historical Materialism had been explained not in theory, but on the basis of a real historical example. In this sense 200

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August Bebel,2 Franz Mehring,3 Karl Kautsky,4 and even Ernst Bloch,5 kept alive the memory of Thomas Müntzer. After the Second World War, as early as 1946, the Soviet occupation forces arranged for the republication of Engels’ book in their zone.6 In order to build firm ideological foundations for the new socialist society on German soil which the Soviets hoped to create, no work seemed better suited than the tract Engels had written in the wake of the revolution of 1848. By the early 1950s, Müntzer’s fame was hailed in the GDR in several newly published works. In 1947, M. M. Smirin, a Russian historian, had produced a study on Thomas Müntzer and the German People’s Reformation in which he had closely followed the account given a century earlier by Friedrich Engels. In 1952, Smirin’s book appeared in a German translation.7 In the same year, Alfred Meusel, a German sociologist and historian who had spent the Nazi years in exile in Great Britain and who had returned to East Germany after the war, published a popular biography of Thomas Müntzer,8 and so did another historian, Karl Kleinschmidt, whose book on Müntzer was also issued in 1952.9 For Smirin, Meusel and Kleinschmidt their hero Müntzer represented the true soul of all German peasants and workers in their just struggle against the powers of feudalism. The villain, of course, was Martin Luther. Friedrich Engels had called him a ‘Fürstenknecht’, that is, a servile instrument of feudal lords, and a ‘Bauernschlächter’, that is, a butcher, or slaughterer, of the peasants.10 In socialist circles these labels stuck. After the Second World War, a leading spokesman of the communist party in East Germany, Alexander Abusch, characterised Luther as a forerunner of Hitler.11 With this, he repeated one of the most effective slogans of Allied antiHitler propaganda.12 At the same time, Abusch’s work made it possible to condemn all positive accounts on Martin Luther which were being published in West Germany after the war, as fascist, or proto-fascist. During the 1950s, in the newly founded GDR, Alexander Abusch became Minister of Culture and a member of the central committee of the ruling Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (SED; ‘Socialist Unity Party of Germany’, in English).13

Act II: the creation of a grand narrative Between the mid-1950s and 1967 a new generation of Marxist historians, led by Max Steinmetz from the university of Leipzig, developed

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the concept of the so-called ‘Frühbürgerliche Revolution’, the Early Bourgeois Revolution.14 This concept possessed several fascinating features. What had been a picture simply in black and white was being transformed into a dramatic historical process, with several actors and several stages. According to Steinmetz, this process began with the first signs of an uprising of the lower classes in Germany in 1476. The process continued with Luther’s protest against Rome in 1517 and with Luther’s trial at Worms in 1521. The struggle finally culminated in 1524/5 in the Great German Peasants’ War. But while Müntzer led the peasants into battle, and even sacrificed his life, Luther had become a traitor. He not only sided with the reactionary feudal powers, in the terminology of Steinmetz and his friends, but Luther even issued pamphlets in which he denounced the peasants and their leaders. According to Steinmetz, the Early Bourgeois Revolution ended in 1534/5 with the defeat of the anabaptists in the city of Münster. This grand narrative was first spelled out in detail at a conference of the historians of the GDR at Wernigerode in 1960.15 It was then explained in a series of publications and at many meetings; for example, also on occasions like the International Historical Congress in Vienna in 196516 or in Moscow in 1970. Most importantly, however, this compelling story with the martyr Müntzer and the traitor Luther became part of official ‘German History’ (‘Deutsche Geschichte’), which was being produced by the leading Marxist historians of the GDR. Within the Soviet empire, and within the family of communist regimes which formed the Warsaw Pact, the concept of ‘Frühbürgerliche Revolution’ served yet another purpose: While the Russian communists could claim that they had led the progressive forces of the world in the glorious November revolution of 1917, and while the French comrades could boast that their people had successfully defeated feudalism in 1789, thus achieving the decisive victory for the bourgeoisie and preparing the way for socialism, with the help of the concept of Early Bourgeois Revolution the German communists of the GDR could proudly proclaim that at a decisive turning-point of world history their forerunners had led the progressive forces of the world in their struggle against feudalism. Unfortunately, as conditions had not been ‘ripe’, this early modern revolution had failed. But according to the concept of Max Steinmetz the laurels of the one true hero in this premature fight against feudalism belonged to Thomas Müntzer, and his legacy to the Germans, not to Johan Hus, and thus to the Czech people, and certainly not to Wat Tyler and the British.

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Through all of this, the apotheosis of this contemporary of Luther who had died a martyr’s death in 1525, reached a new level. During the 1950s and 1960s, streets in many towns of the GDR were named, or renamed, ‘Thomas-Müntzer-Strasse’, at Mühlhausen a special museum devoted to Müntzer was established, and quite a few of the newly created collective farms also adopted the name of Thomas Müntzer. What had been conceived as a new grand narrative on the level of Marxist historical scholarship, with the help of such actions obtained some kind of a popular appeal and popular acceptance.

Act III: the crisis With regard to the concept of Early Bourgeois Revolution, between 1967 and 1983 several important anniversaries had to be observed. 1967 was the 450th year since the beginning of Luther’s revolt, 1975 was the 450th year since the Peasants’ War, and 1983 Luther’s 500th birthday. Rather than confirming the grand narrative of the heroic struggle of Müntzer and his followers against feudalism, for many Marxist historians these anniversaries proved to be events of a most difficult nature, and this for several reasons. Already during the Luther anniversary of 1967 controversies between Marxist historians and non-Marxist views could not be suppressed. While Marxist historians duly noted that young man Luther in his fight against Rome seemed on the right track, Lutheran church circles in the GDR celebrated Luther’s deeds as an act of conscience and as a confirmation of their Lutheran faith. Through this, they demonstrated that the communist regime in East Germany had failed in the attempt to demolish the sphere of influence of the Lutheran congregations. True, by the late 1960s Lutheran churches in the GDR had lost much ground; one could say that they were marginalised. But it is also true to say that those who remained faithful and active members of the Lutheran churches, had become very conscious of their faith. The erection of the Berlin wall in 1961 had created a completely new situation. Everyone living in the GDR now knew, that they had to make the best of the existing situation as going West, that is to West Germany, what millions of East Germans had done in the years before 1961, had ceased to be an option. Certainly, quite a few Lutherans submitted to the new situation without resistance. Others, however, began to organise resistance, and it was from some of the Lutheran pastors that these circles received support.

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If one looks at this situation, praising Luther’s act of resistance in 1517 acquired a new meaning: While the 95 Theses of 1517 could be explained in accordance with the Marxist view of history, they could also be seen as an act of non-conformity and dissent. For non-Marxists, Luther’s courage could serve as a role model. From this perspective, in a strange yet quite obvious manner, the communist regime in the GDR seemed to resemble the autocratic, despotic church of Rome against which Luther had protested in 1517. In short: those who disliked the communist regime could identify themselves with the Wittenberg monk who had drafted the 95 Theses. But this was just the beginning of difficulties. Within the concept of Early Bourgeois Revolution, the Peasants’ War of 1524/5 had always been considered as the tragic climax of events. Accordingly, an enormous effort was made by the Marxist historians in the GDR in 1974/5 to celebrate the memory of the Peasants’ War and the heritage of Müntzer in a whole series of conferences and other events. In order to demonstrate the new stability of the regime and the new role of the GDR in international politics and on the international scene, historians and church historians from the West were also allowed to participate. This decision proved to be very risky. Non-Marxist church historians used the conferences of 1974/5 as an occasion to examine Müntzer’s theology. Following the impressive account of Müntzer’s theology given by Walter Elliger,17 they argued that Müntzer should not be characterised as a revolutionary leader, but rather as a committed theologian with strong eschatological views. What counted for Müntzer, they explained, was not inner-worldly progress, but the approaching apocalypse. In short: it was wrong to claim him as a forerunner of socialism and of Marxism. Some of the arguments offered by non-Marxist historians from the West doing social history proved to be even more disturbing. The richer among German peasants had led the revolt in 1524/5, these historians explained, and they had done so in an attempt not to overthrow the feudal system, but to win more influence within a society composed of estates. What they asked for was political participation within feudalism, not a bourgeois, or capitalist society, and even less social equality or some kind of socialism. These views were a severe blow to the Marxist doctrine of Historical Materialism. According to the concept of Early Bourgeois Revolution, during the Peasants’ War the attempt was made to overthrow feudalism and to inaugurate the next stage of development in the Marxist ladder of socio-political formations, that is, the rule of the bourgeoisie

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which in due course would be overthrown by victorious socialism. But how was it possible to identify these conservative, if not reactionary, German peasants of 1525 with the rise of a progressive bourgeoisie? The Marxist argument, that the courageous peasants were fighting in place of the timid bourgeoisie, thus claiming a very special role within world history, could not convince anyone. The outcome of the celebrations of 1974/5 must have been sobering for Marxist historians and the ruling SED.18 Rather than having been blessed with a confirmation of their views, they were confronted with troubling questions: First, with the argument that an Early Bourgeois Revolution led by reactionary peasants and without the substantial involvement of the bourgeoisie, was sheer nonsense; and second with the argument that a theologian who believed in salvation-history and in the apocalypse, such as Müntzer, could hardly have been the leading figure in this struggle. In view of Marxist historians, at least some local studies on Müntzer had proven valid. But even these studies had a negative effect. While they highlighted some of the local episodes in which Müntzer had been involved, they made it very clear that in contrast to Luther their hero Müntzer had always been, and remained, a figure of local importance only, and that he certainly had not possessed the personal qualities necessary for a leading role in that process of world significance called the Early Bourgeois Revolution.

Act IV: consequences of the crisis, or major revisions Between 1975 and 1983, i.e. within less than a decade, Marxist historians developed a completely new view of the history of the early sixteenth century and especially of the roles played by Luther and Müntzer. Pressure obviously was strong because of the unsatisfactory results of the celebrations of 1974/5. But there was also much pressure because of Luther’s upcoming 500th birthday in 1983. I have examined the records of the committee in charge of drafting a new view of Luther’s role – the papers of the committee of the Academy of Sciences in the GDR in charge of preparing a series of theses on Martin Luther in which the German reformer was supposed to appear in a new light. These records19 are fascinating. Obviously there was involvement by party officials of the highest level; also, there were many informal contacts within intellectual circles in Berlin and Leipzig. Therefore, it is hard to tell why the revision undertaken was so radical and far-reaching. But this is exactly what was the case.20

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In my view, several factors played a role in this major reformulation of one of the most important chapters in the catechism of Historical Materialism. First, one should not underestimate the role of scholarship in this process. As part of the concept of Early Bourgeois Revolution, the history of the Reformation had always been one of the areas where research efforts in the GDR had been concentrated. Some of the best talent within the guild of Marxist historians worked in this field, scholars such as Gerhard Brendler, Adolf Laube and Günter Vogler,21 and so did some of the very best church historians in the GDR, scholars like Siegfried Bräuer and Helmar Junghans.22 Both of these groups eagerly followed what leading Reformation scholars in the West produced, historians such as Peter Blickle, Thomas Nipperdey, Rainer Wohlfeil and Eike Wolgast, and church historians like Martin Brecht, Bernd Moeller, Heiko Oberman, and Gottfried Seebass. Ever since the conferences of 1975, the two sides had respected each other. Both sides were eager to advance scholarship. This meant, among other things, that they started to take the arguments seriously which were being offered in favour of Luther. Furthermore, as a result of Willy Brandt’s ‘Ostpolitik’, people in the GDR were no longer completely isolated, and the same is true for scholarly life. Slowly, very slowly, confrontation was being replaced by dialogue. Not that the wall dividing the East and the West had suddenly disappeared. But just as politicians from the East and the West met and talked, historians from both camps began to meet and talk. As compared to the 1950s and 1960s, this was a remarkable change. Certainly, just as the wall continued to exist, Marxist historians did not altogether give up the concept of Early Bourgeois Revolution dear to their hearts. But they developed a new kind of flexibility with regard to their interpretation of Marxist doctrine, as they seem to have been eager to be accepted by their colleagues from the West as equal partners in dialogue. Perhaps the most startling change was made with regard to the role of religion. In particular, in the works of Gerhard Brendler and Günter Vogler published in the 1980s, religion was no longer seen as a factor which depended on the dialectical development of the materialistic economic basis. Rather, religion was now being acknowledged, at least in part, as an autonomous factor in historical life. There were other pressures which worked in favour of Luther. Within educated circles in the Western world, also in the second half of the twentieth century, Martin Luther was considered as a historical figure of highest importance. If the regime in the GDR wished to

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improve international relations, and to become an accepted and equal player in the international scene, then it seemed unwise to continue to denounce Luther as the slaughterer of peasants and as the servile instrument of feudal lords. Equally, some circles in the West were eagerly interested in visiting the places where Luther had lived: Eisenach, Wartburg Castle, Eisleben, Wittenberg. In order to attract tourists from the West, the houses and places in these locations which had a connection to Luther were being restored. Earning an international reputation, and at the same time earning dollars or pounds from Luther tourists, seemed like a brilliant idea. Finally, one should also take into consideration that in the year 1978 the SED regime had entered into a dialogue with the leaders of the Lutheran church in the GDR. While the communist side recognised that the Lutheran churches continued to exist as vital organisations and had not simply faded away, the Lutheran churches recognised that socialism was a fact of life and would not soon disappear. The outcome of the talks was a compromise. On the one hand at least some of the Lutheran leaders started thinking and talking about ‘Kirche im Sozialismus’, church within socialism, that is church-life under the conditions of a communist society. On the other hand, at least some of the members of the Central Committee of the SED were ready to accept a partial autonomy of the Lutheran church. It may have been an implicit part of this agreement, or an implicitly accepted consequence, that Luther should no longer be denounced as a traitor. In 1981 the Central Committee of the ruling SED officially published 15 theses on Martin Luther. These theses23 proposed and spelled out in detail a major revision of the official Marxist view of Martin Luther. No longer was Luther called a traitor or slaughterer of peasants or the servile instrument of feudal lords. Rather, he was now portrayed as a leading reformer, as the most potent force of progress within the Early Bourgeois Revolution. While Luther’s contribution to the progress of humankind was underlined, an attempt was made even to understand his unfortunate role during the Peasants’ War.24 All in all, according to the 15 theses, Luther appeared as a major historical figure whose legacy the GDR was proud to protect and whose mission the first socialist state on German soil, as the GDR called itself, was eager to advance.25 In keeping with the message of the 15 theses, Luther’s 500th birthday was celebrated in the GDR in an impressive manner. There were exhibitions and conferences; Luther tourism flourished. Many scholars from the West visited the GDR, and the ruling SED seemed pleased.

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Act V: epilogue, or what to do with Thomas Müntzer In the 15 theses on Martin Luther, Thomas Müntzer’s role had not been explicitly discussed and redefined. Implicitly, however, it was clear to observers from East and West, and to scholars within and outside the GDR interested in Reformation history, that the theses on Luther would affect the standing of Thomas Müntzer in a most severe way. No one believed that the two reformers could coexist as heroes of progress. The more Luther was praised, the more Müntzer’s role was relativised. As Luther’s monument shone, Müntzer’s fell into darkness. If one argued for the importance of Luther’s role during the Peasants’ war, Müntzer’s struggle seemed ill-placed, and his martyrdom discredited. These tensions implied urgent questions which demanded almost immediate answers, as the 500th anniversary of Müntzer’s birth was just a few years away and the Müntzer birthday commemoration committee, to be formed under the auspices of the Central Committee of the SED, awaited orders as to how to deal with Müntzer’s legacy. In this situation it was a blessing that the exact date of birth of Thomas Müntzer is not known. In historical works on Müntzer, three dates are mentioned: 1486, 1487 and 1489. This meant that Müntzer’s 500th birthday could be celebrated either in 1986, 1987 or 1989. After discussions which have yet to be explored, Marxist historians, in agreement with the Communist Party, decided to celebrate Müntzer in 1989. This decision seemed to have several advantages: the later the date gave them a better the chance to digest the 15 theses on Martin Luther and to prepare a series of theses on Thomas Müntzer which fitted into the new picture. By gaining time they hoped to solve the dilemma which existed because of the discrepancy between Müntzer’s traditional fame in the GDR and Luther’s newly acquired greatness. More importantly, it seems, was the fact that 1989 was an ideal date to celebrate Müntzer because in that year two other major events had to be commemorated: 200 years of French Revolution, and 50 years of the GDR. In other words: in 1989 Müntzer’s difficult jubilee could thus be hidden behind other, more spectacular, events.26 What the clever planners had not foreseen were of course the dramatic political developments in the GDR in the autumn of 1989. When the official Müntzer conference of the GDR was opened on 29 August 1989, political unrest was spreading and no one was interested in Müntzer’s legacy. Shortly afterwards the Wall came down. A year later, the GDR had ceased to exist. In retrospect we could say that

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Müntzer’s monument probably was demolished before the Wall. One would, however, overestimate the role of historical symbols if one argued that had Müntzer’s historical role not been challenged, the GDR would have been saved. The rise and fall of Müntzer in the GDR may appear a tragedy only to the most loyal Marxist believers.

Notes 1 Friedrich Engels, ‘Der deutsche Bauernkrieg’, in Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels, Gesamtausgabe (MEGA), 1st division, vol. 10 (Berlin: Dietz, 1977), pp. 367–43. 2 August Bebel, Der deutsche Bauernkrieg: Mit Berücksichtigung der hauptsächlichen sozialen Bewegungen des Mittelalters (Braunschweig: W. Bracke, 1876), pp. 85–115, 184–93, 224–30. 3 Franz Mehring, Deutsche Geschichte vom Ausgange des Mittelalters: Ein Leitfaden für Lehrende und Lernende (Berlin: Vorwärts, 1910), S. 37–46. 4 Karl Kautsky, Vorläufer des neueren Sozialismus, vol. 2: Der Kommunismus in der deutschen Reformation (Berlin: Dietz, 1923, 7th ed.), pp. 106–9. 5 Ernst Bloch, Thomas Münzer als Theologe der Revolution (München: Kurt Wolff, 1921). 6 Friedrich Engels, Der deutsche Bauernkrieg (Berlin: Verlag Neuer Weg, 1946). 2nd ed. repr. 1875. 7 M. M. Smirin, Die Volksreformation des Thomas Müntzer und der große Bauernkrieg (Berlin: Dietz, 1952; 2nd ed. 1956). 8 Alfred Meusel, Thomas Müntzer und seine Zeit. Mit einer Auswahl der Dokumente des großen deutschen Bauernkrieges, ed. Heinz Kamnitzer (Berlin: Aufbau, 1952). 9 Karl Kleinschmidt, Thomas Müntzer: Die Seele des deutschen Bauernkrieges von 1525 (Berlin: Kongress, Verlag der Nationalen Front des Demokratischen Deutschland, 1952). 10 See n. 1, MEGA, vol. 10, pp. 385–6. 11 Alexander Abusch, Der Irrweg einer Nation. Ein Beitrag zum Verständnis deutscher Geschichte (Berlin: Aufbau, 1946), pp. 20–9, 244–51, 264–71. 12 Cf. Hartmut Lehmann, Martin Luther in the American Imagination (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1988), pp. 293–6, where I discuss Peter F. Wiener’s Martin Luther: Hitler’s Spiritual Ancestor (London, 1941), and William McGovern, From Luther to Hitler: The History of Fascist–Nazi Political Philosophy (Boston, 1941). 13 Abusch (1902–82) was one of the leading communist journalists in Weimar Germany. After 1933 he worked underground in the Saar, but then fled to France. He spent the war years in exile in Mexico. After returning to Germany in 1946, he became a leading member of the newly founded SED. He lost his post in connection with the charges against Paul Merker, but was rehabilitated in 1952. In 1957 he became a member of the Central Committee of the SED and served as minister of Culture from 1958 to 1961. From 1961 until 1971 he was deputy chair of the council of ministers for culture and education.

210 Religion and the Cold War 14 The term ‘Frühbürgerliche Revolution’ was coined by Alfred Meusel. See Meusel, Thomas Müntzer, p. 41: ‘In den Jahren 1517 bis 1525 erlebte das deutsche Volk seine frühbürgerliche Revolution.’ 15 Max Steinmetz, ‘Die frühbürgerliche Revolution in Deutschland (1476–1535): Thesen zur Vorbereitung der wissenschaftlichen Konferenz in Wernigerode vom 20. bis 24. January 1960’, Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, vol. 1 (Berlin: Rütten & Loening, 1960), pp. 113–24. 16 Max Steinmetz, ‘Reformation und Bauernkrieg in Deutschland als frühbürgerliche Revolution’, in Evolution und Revolution in der Weltgeschichte. Sonderheft der Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft zum XII. Internationalen Historikerkongress 1965 in Wien (Berlin: Verlag der Wissenschaften, 1965), pp. 35–50. 17 Walter Elliger, Thomas Müntzer: Leben und Werk (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1975; 3rd ed. 1976). 18 See, for example, Günter Vogler, Die Gewalt soll gegeben werden dem gemeinen Volk. Der deutsche Bauernkrieg 1525 (Berlin: Dietz, 1975);Gerhard Brendler and Adolf Laube, eds, Der deutsche Bauernkrieg 1524/25: Geschichte, Traditionen, Lehren (Berlin: Akademie, 1977). 19 Archiv der Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Berlin, Bestand (Signature) ZIG vol. 709, 1–4. See also Hartmut Lehmann, ‘Zur Entstehung der 15 Thesen über Martin Luther für die Luther-Ehrung der DDR 1983’, in Protestantisches Christentum im Prozeß der Säkularisierung (in press). 20 Cf. Siegfried Bräuer, Martin Luther in marxistischer Sicht von 1945 bis zum Beginn der achtziger Jahre (Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1983). 21 Gerhard Brendler, Martin Luther: Theologie und Revoluton. Eine marxistische Darstellung (Köln: Pahl-Rugenstein, 1983); Martin Luther: Leben, Werk, Wirkung, eds Günter Vogler, Siegfried Hoyer and Adolf Laube (Berlin: Akademie, 1983; 2nd ed. 1986). 22 Helmar Junghans, Martin Luther (Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1983); Junghans, ed., Leben und Werk Martin Luthers von 1526–1546, 2 vols (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1983); Junghans, Das Jahrhundert der Reformation in Sachsen (Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1989). 23 Die Einheit (official party organ of the SED), 36 (1981), pp. 890–903. 24 Cf. ‘Thesen über Martin Luther’ (n. 19), thesis no. VII, which speaks of ‘Tragik Luthers’, that is, of Luther’s tragic position in 1525. 25 Cf. Hartmut Lehmann, ‘Die 15 Thesen der SED über Martin Luther’, Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, vol. 34 (Stuttgart: Ernst Klett, 1983), pp. 722–38. 26 Thesen über Thomas Müntzer. Zum 500. Geburtstag (Berlin: Dietz, 1988); Gerhard Brendler, Thomas Müntzer: Geist und Faust (Berlin: Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, 1989); Thomas Müntzer Ehrung der DDR 1989: Zweite Tagung des Thomas Müntzer-Komitees der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik am 19. January 1989 (Berlin: Dietz, 1989); Siegfried Bräuer, Der Theologe Thomas Müntzer: Untersuchungen zu seiner Entwicklung und Lehre (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1989); Bernhard Lohse, Thomas Müntzer in neuer Sicht: Müntzer im Licht der neueren Forschung und die Frage nach dem Ansatz seiner Theologie (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1981).

13 ‘Martyrs, Miracles and Martians’: Religion and Cold War Cinematic Propaganda in the 1950s Tony Shaw

Introduction Time, the near future: Chris, a Californian scientist (played by Peter Graves), has established radio contact with Mars, thanks to the invention of a former Nazi scientist, Calder (Herbert Berghof), now serving Lucifer with Russian money in the Andes. Consequently, the United States learns that Mars is in a high state of ‘civilisation’, has developed atomic power and dispensed with coal and oil. The news causes pandemonium on earth, stock markets crash, depression reigns, and Moscow gloats over the threatened collapse of Western society. On the brink of chaos, the world learns that Mars is also a Christian society, ruled by a ‘Supreme Authority’ whose teachings parallel those of the Sermon on the Mount. This prompts a religious revival on earth, and a revolution in Russia, where a group of pious peasants inspired by Voice of America broadcasts throw out the communists and crown an elderly patriarch as their new ruler. The story ends on a bittersweet note: Chris, his wife and Calder are killed in a laboratory explosion, leaving the American President (Willis Bouchey) to announce that the faith of the world has been saved and that peace now reigns. Described by one critic at the time of its opening in 1952 as ‘a grotesque, almost insane fantasy, told in deadly earnest’,1 few films capture the personal and political paranoia so often associated with ‘McCarthyite’ Hollywood better than Harry Horner’s Red Planet Mars. Fewer films still threw all their Cold War eggs – anti-communism, an ambivalence towards science, terrestrial and extra-terrestrial ‘alienation’, and the power of religion – so crudely into the one heroically preposterous basket. Yet, as this article will show, Red Planet Mars is only one example of the many ways in which film-makers on both 211

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sides of the Iron Curtain linked religion with domestic and international politics in the 1950s. In September 1955, critic Catherine de la Roche drew attention in the British journal Films and Filming to the frequently recurring and interacting themes of religion, war and anticommunism in British and American films of the period. ‘This can hardly be coincidental,’ she argued: Many people, including some in Hollywood, believe that the Cold War is fundamentally a conflict between Christianity and atheism and that religion is therefore a strong weapon against Communism. Whether the pictures dealing with these three subjects are deliberate propaganda or not, they belong to the same, easily recognisable, pattern of ideas … The best propaganda, of course, is indirect, hardly noticeable. How many of us, I wonder, have not been taken in by any of it?2 Taking de la Roche’s speculations as its cue, this article examines the prominence of religious (namely Christian) themes in British, American and, to some extent, Soviet films that related to the Cold War in the 1950s, that is when the conflict was at its height and when cinema was enjoying its last period as the dominant visual mass entertainment form in the East and the West.3 Its focus primarily on British and American movies reflects the intention not to simply rehearse familiar narratives about Hollywood Cold War propaganda in the 1950s, but to compare those narratives to the much less familiar British films of the same period. The article has three aims in particular: first, to explore the links between film-makers, government Cold War propagandists, and the cinematic images of religion produced in this period; second, to examine the religious messages that films conveyed in relation to the Cold War; and, finally, to offer some thoughts on how these messages were received by audiences.

Religion and Cold War propaganda Unlike many other weapons deployed during the Cold War, it will probably never be known how much money was spent on propaganda. This is due primarily to two inter-related problems: the greater difficulty in defining propaganda compared, say, with military hardware, and the identification of authorship or patronage. In determining Soviet spending on propaganda, for instance, should one include the millions of roubles invested by the State in sport, an activity not

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normally associated with propaganda but one that was without doubt a key element in communist cultural diplomacy?4 In the United States’ case, thanks to the endeavours of Frances Stonor Saunders and other scholars, we now have a clearer picture of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)’s sponsorship of Abstract Expressionism in the 1950s as part of its campaign for ‘cultural freedom’,5 but, leaving aside the question of whether such ‘elitist’ art should be classed as propaganda given that word’s usual association with the persuasion of mass opinion, where does this leave other related activities? For example, should one also take into account the bottles of Coca-Cola sold to visitors to the art galleries that displayed the works by Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and others, bottles which, despite not having been paid for by the US government, were surely – together with McDonalds hamburgers and Levi jeans – far more effective than paintings in projecting American values and perspectives world-wide during the Cold War? As an illustration of the ‘state–private’ network that characterised so much of the United States’ propaganda efforts during the Cold War, one historian estimates that in the late 1940s and 1950s the US Advertising Council contributed between $9 million and $17 million of free advertising to the National Committee for a Free Europe (NCFE), the ostensibly private organisation established by the CIA in 1949 to mobilise dissent within the Soviet satellites.6 According to other estimates, by 1960 Moscow was spending the equivalent of $2 billion on communist propaganda world-wide, much of which, like Russian language studies and the overseas performances by the Bolshoy Ballet, seemed wholly apolitical.7 Whether or not they are entirely accurate, such figures are a testament to the importance attached to the struggle for hearts and minds domestically and externally by the Cold War’s chief protagonists. It is difficult to evaluate precisely the role of religion in this propaganda war par excellence. It seems safe to conclude that most people viewed the Cold War in material, political and economic terms, but religion was not an insignificant determinant, especially for those who were tempted to see the battle between communism and capitalism as a latter-day morality play. One of the main planks of Bolshevik propaganda after October 1917 was its campaign against the Russian Orthodox Church, in line with Vladimir Lenin’s belief that religion was a product of social oppression and economic exploitation. ‘Scientific-educational’ propaganda was disseminated – including vicious anti-clerical literature, posters and films – in order to, as the Communist Party put it, ‘liberate the toiling masses from religious prejudices’, and rid the state of one of the chief rivals to its all-embracing

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ideology. During Josef Stalin’s reign these attacks gathered pace, especially during the great purges of 1936–39, buttressed by the rituals and ceremonials of a ‘Cult of Leadership’ which were designed to appeal at least partially to the spiritual traditions of many Russian people.8 Official and unofficial propagandists in the West were also quick to play the religious card in the early years of the cultural Cold War. In the immediate aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution sections of the British press denounced communists as murderous blasphemers, while theatrical productions such as R. Grahame’s The Bolshevik Peril, staged in London in 1919, warned of the spiritual and sexual depravation concomitant with communist rule.9 After 1945, the persecution of religion under ‘godless Communism’ became one of the most emotive of the major themes of Cold War discourse in western Europe and the United States, complementing those of communist subversion, ‘Red Fascism’, and the threat of a nuclear Armageddon. Encouraged by the ‘missionary mentality’ of many of their political chiefs, particularly in Washington, the CIA and other bodies like the British Foreign Office’s anti-communist propaganda unit, the Information Research Department (IRD), took every opportunity to contrast the West and its ‘gospel’ of religious tolerance, with the ‘fanatic faith’ of those in the East led by their ‘pseudo-Gods’ in the Kremlin. The BBC’s European services and Radio Free Europe, funded and briefed by the British Foreign Office and CIA respectively, consistently sought to ‘mobilise the great spiritual and moral resources’ that were still thought to exist behind the Iron Curtain despite Moscow’s clampdown on the churches in eastern and central Europe.10 Such rhetoric reaffirmed a Manichean perspective on the Cold War for many Christian activists in the West, who believed that the fight to protect theological freedom in the East would in turn help to revitalise democracy’s own moral and spiritual values. It also tied in with the spectacular revival of organised religion in the United States in the early 1950s, a phenomenon which resulted in an enhanced political role for Christian pressure groups who defined Americanism in religious terms.11 Amidst these fears and hopes, religion became discursively associated in Western popular culture with ‘liberty’, ‘democracy’ and ‘Western civilisation’, and held in sharp contradistinction to the amalgam of ‘atheism, barbarism and totalitarianism’ that was communism.

Religion, propaganda and Cold War cinema The Bolsheviks’ subordination of the cinema to state needs in Russia after 1917 is well documented, as is the prescient and impressively

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clear appreciation Soviet leaders had of the possibilities inherent in film.12 In one notable article published in 1923, Leon Trotsky incorporated film within Karl Marx’s notion of religion as the people’s opiate: having oppressed the masses for centuries through its theatrical rituals, the Church was, according to Trotsky, now to be supplanted by the cinema, a democratic, far more powerful theatrical medium whose spectacular images could grip the audience like no others and open the eyes of the people to their previous exploitation.13 Soviet cinema attacked religion implicitly and explicitly in the 1920s and 1930s, with classic films like Sergei Eisenstein’s October (1927) showing the Orthodox Church and its followers to be corrupt, dishonest, primitive and reactionary.14 Somewhat paradoxically, at the same time productions such as Three Songs of Lenin (Dziga Vertov, 1934) presented Soviet heroes as contemporary icons, while Eisenstein’s anti-German epic set in the thirteenth century, Alexander Nevsky (1938), decorated with images of the Orthodox Church indicating that the Russians are on the side of justice pitted against the invading satanic Teutonic Knights, proved that, Socialist Realism notwithstanding, religious symbols could still be used for nationalistic appeals in the Soviet Union when necessary.15 The 1950s and early 1960s witnessed a subtle yet decisive shift in Soviet cinema’s treatment of religion, in line with the ‘cultural thaw’ that the Soviet Union and its satellites experienced after the death in 1953 of Stalin (who since the late 1930s had personally seen and approved every film released). The dominant ideology as it was shaped after the Revolution continued to influence film-makers during the ‘thaw’ years (1954–67), as it would until the demise of the USSR. But, with the leading elite beginning to divide into various factions, each differing in their views of social problems and espousing different versions of socialist ideology, cinematographers – like writers, theatre directors and journalists – felt less culturally and politically constrained, and freer to probe areas hitherto deemed off-limits.16 In the late 1950s Nikita Khrushchev launched his own anti-religious campaign, closing some 15,000 churches in the Soviet Union. In the early 1960s Communist Party militancy intensified to combat religious sects and the yearning, apparent even among Russian non-believers, for answers to moral and ethical questions that politics and ideology could not adequately address.17 Yet during this period a small number of films appeared which, while far from opposing the Party’s religious clamp-down, were significantly more ambiguous in terms of their representation of Church malevolence or the threat posed to the State

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by worship. The Miracle Worker (Vladimir Skuibin, 1960), for instance, which told the story of a Young Pioneer designated a saint after finding a ‘miracle-working’ icon, managed both to condemn religious superstition and affirm the vitality of religion in Russia. Clouds over Borsk (Vasilii Ordyskii, 1960), a tale about religious sects which believed in speaking in tongues, was at one stage officially classed as ‘overly sympathetic’ and therefore shelved as ‘politically harmful’, only for its ban to be lifted later on the orders of the Committee of State Security (KGB). The portrayal of a priest in Everything Remains for People (Georgii Natanson, 1964), a film that centred on rivalries within the scientific community and their impact on an elderly academician, ranks as something of a minor revelation. While the priest stereotypically appears backward in underestimating the potential of human beings and asserting people’s need for faith in an afterlife, he is, as historian Josephine Woll puts it, shown to be a thoughtful intellectual ‘motivated entirely by compassion [and] untainted by the slightest shadow of contempt for others or self-aggrandizement’.18 Such relatively sympathetic portrayals of clerics were a far cry from those seen on Soviet cinema screens in the 1920s and 1930s when priests were characterised as criminal deviants, or in the late 1940s and early 1950s when their role as agents of Western influence was accentuated. As Soviet cinema displayed a less dogmatic approach towards religion in the 1950s, one which began to suggest that there was room for competing belief systems in the USSR, British and American films moved in the opposite direction. This decade represents the high watermark of Hollywood’s and the British film industry’s contribution to the cultural Cold War. Without being Soviet-style instruments of the state, both film industries were open to considerable political influence and produced scores of features, documentaries and newsreels that reflected and projected the fears and obsessions of the conflict. Studios on both sides of the Atlantic, acting independently on most occasions, and prompted by politicians or government officials on others, issued explicit warnings about the threat of communist domestic subversion (for example, I Was A Communist for the FBI [Gordon Douglas, 1951] and High Treason [Roy Boulting, 1951]); demonised Soviet monolithism (The Red Danube [George Sidney, 1950] and The Man Between [Carol Reed, 1953]); created radioactive monsters threatening mankind (Them! [Gordon Douglas, 1954] and Behemoth the Sea Monster [Douglas Hickox/Eugène Lourié, 1958]); and offered critiques of the paranoid nature of Western Cold War society (Storm Center [Daniel Taradash, 1956] and The Young Lovers [Anthony Asquith, 1954]).19

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Religious themes and scenes figured prominently in many films of this type, a factor that helps to explain the ‘religious revival’ that took place on British and American cinema screens more generally during the 1950s. The majority of such themes and scenes encouraged those watching to view the Cold War as a conflict in which capitalism, anticommunism and Christianity were synonymous, and in which neutral bystanders could be construed as opponents of the West’s divinely ordained mission. Variations on this message appeared in different styles across different film genres throughout the 1950s. The most spectacular and costly were the Hollywood biblical epics, epitomised by Mervyn Le Roy’s Quo Vadis (1951) and Cecil B. De Mille’s The Ten Commandments (1956), in which Roman or Egyptian despots were deployed as a thinly veiled metaphor for Soviet tyranny. De Mille stands out as perhaps Hollywood’s most overtly anti-communist mogul during this period. He was in 1944 a co-founder of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals and, after attributing criticism of his Samson and Delilah (1949) to communist sources, campaigned in 1950 for a loyalty oath for fellow members of the Screen Directors Guild. In 1953, De Mille added to his membership of the board of the NCFE by becoming the chief film consultant of the United States Information Agency (USIA). This was a position wholly suited to a man whose movies always elicited, as film historian David Thomson puts it, ‘a primitive confidence in American righteousness’.20 Never one to leave audiences guessing about the meanings of his films, De Mille actually steps before a gold curtain in the prologue to The Ten Commandments to explain that ‘the theme of this picture is whether men are to be ruled by God’s law or whether they are to be ruled by the whims of a dictator … Are men the property of the state? Or are they free souls under God? This same battle continues in the world today.’ When The Ten Commandments was released in 1956, the same year in which Congress unanimously made ‘In God We Trust’ the national motto, it was a smash-hit at box offices world-wide and until the mid-1960s was one of the three most financially successful films ever made.21 Another supporter of the Screen Directors Guild loyalty oath was Leo McCarey, who in 1952 produced and directed My Son John at Paramount Studios. Features like William Wellman’s The Next Voice You Hear (1950), in which God appears on the radio appealing to suburban America to count its mundane, middle-class blessings, consistently linked Christianity, consumerism and the family in the 1950s. My Son John epitomised those productions – usually melodramas –

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which took this linkage a step further by stressing communism’s utter incompatibility with Christian family virtues. Exhibiting all the telltale signs of a Cold War ‘deviant’ in the McCarthyite witch hunt era – intellectualism, contempt for his elders, latent homosexuality – ‘John’ Jefferson (Robert Walker) is a communist agent in small-town America guilty of betraying the Holy Trinity: his country, his brother ‘fighting on God’s side’ in Korea, and his Catholic upbringing. The film is littered with crude religious symbolism. In one scene John’s father shows the fighting faith of Christianity when he hits him over the head with the family Bible, hurling his son to his knees; in another, when John violently forces open his mother’s hand in search of the evidence that will prove his guilt, instead of a key he finds a rosary. John eventually ‘sees the light’, whereupon he is slain by his cowardly Party comrades on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The movie ends with the playing of a tape-recording of John’s remorseful speech: ‘I am a living lie,’ he confesses, ‘And may God have mercy on my soul’.22 There seems to be no evidence of any direct involvement by the US government in the making of My Son John. That said, top US military, intelligence and National Security officials counted Paramount’s President, Barney Balaban, as one of their ‘friends’ in the film industry who would be prepared ‘to insert in their scripts and in their action the right ideas with the right subtlety’. Furthermore, the studio’s Head of Foreign and Domestic Censorship, Luigi G. Luraschi, was a CIA agent, and, moreover, an example of those militant Catholics who understood communism as Christian heresy.23 Leo McCarey, whose original story for My Son John was nominated for an Oscar, went on to make The Devil Never Sleeps in Britain in 1962, a tale of missionary heroism set during the Chinese civil war, starring William Holden as an unlikely Catholic priest.24 Holy men, be it priests or monks, popped up in a variety of cinematic settings in the 1950s, affirming the Church’s protective role either in the Cold War specifically or more generally in Western society. In The Red Menace (R. G. Springsteen, 1949), a melodrama about a discontented US war veteran who is preyed upon by communists, significantly it is the understanding Father Leary who takes the place of ‘Mom’ when the lead protagonist Mollie, who has broken her mother’s heart by rejecting the Church in favour of the communists, seeks redemption following a friend’s Party-induced suicide.25 In Elia Kazan’s 1954 multi-award winning location thriller On the Waterfront, the moral support given to the trade-union informant Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) by Karl Malden’s quintessential liberal Catholic priest

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Father Barry has the effect, as Stephen Whitfield puts it, of converting a Judas figure into a Christ symbol. This film was widely seen as Kazan’s retort to those who had condemned him for naming names before the House Committee on Un-American Activities two years earlier, in 1952.26 Irving Pichel’s dramatic biopic Martin Luther (1953), which was financed jointly by the Lutheran churches of Germany and the United States, switched the focus from the Catholics’ to the Protestants’ role as the guardians of Western civilisation (past and present).27 Louis de Rochement, co-founder of the ground-breaking March of Time documentary series in 1934, produced both this film and the animated version of George Orwell’s Animal Farm (Halas and Batchelor, 1954). Secret funding for the latter came partly from the CIA, which perhaps helps to account for the elision in the film of Orwell’s references to organised religion being the servile upholder of the status quo (Moses’s talk of Sugarcandy Mountain).28 Despite the erosion of their power in the 1950s, the well established authority in Hollywood of such groups such as the Catholic Legion of Decency meant that it was difficult to make films that challenged traditional Christian values during the decade.29 A similar state of affairs also existed in Britain, due to a combination of the conservativeminded British Board of Film Censors and the power of impresarios like J. Arthur Rank, the so-called ‘Methodist magnate’ who balked at financing movies which he found to be in any way ‘morally dubious’.30 Few of the plethora of Rank films with religious themes or scenes that were released between 1953 and 1960 – including Miracle in Soho (Julian Amyes, 1957), Hell Drivers (C. Raker Enfield, 1957) and The Singer Not the Song (Roy Baker, 1960) – were explicitly connected to the Cold War. The latter, for instance, which bizarrely miscast Dirk Bogarde as a ruthless, black-clad Mexican bandit confronted by John Mill’s Irish priest, had more to say about clerical celibacy than politics. What this mini-cycle seems to have reflected was a need to evangelise at a time when religious faith was under threat and church going in countries like Britain, in contrast with the United States, was diminishing. Even those films that criticised religious excess – The Kidnappers (Philip Leacock, 1953), for example – still asserted the continued presence of religion.31 The same thing could be said about many of the movies that juxtaposed religion and science during the 1950s. Atomic developments went hand in hand with Christian evangelism in this period, particularly in the United States, as fears of thermonuclear destruction fuelled apocalyptic predictions from popular preachers like Billy

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Graham who called on their congregations to make their peace with God before it was too late.32 Films played a significant part in mediating these emotions, combining science-fiction images that depicted The End of the World is Nigh with others which provided glimpses of The Meaning of Life and Life After Death. In some films, religion might yield to science: like in The Conquest of Space (Byron Haskin, 1955) when the soldier hero deteriorates into a religious fanatic who believes that God would have given Man rockets if he were intended to fly. On other occasions, religion could be used to chastise science: like in The Fly (Kurt Neumann, 1958) when the Faustian mad scientist is warned not to mess with God’s work, or in The Quatermass Experiment (Val Guest, 1955) when the astronaut, turned plant-like creature Victor (Richard Wordsworth), seeks refuge from the Prometheus-like Professor Quatermass in Westminster Abbey.33 By portraying scientists as troublesome idealists or villainous obstructionists of the State, rather than the progressive saviours of Mankind, the majority of images helped act as a counter to those who argued that Science had rendered Christianity superfluous.

Cardinals in captivity One set of films that presented the East–West conflict as something approaching a modern holy war most directly and powerfully during this period was that which fused religion and political dissidence in Eastern Europe. Such movies ‘opened a window’ on the grim conditions behind the Iron Curtain, and in so doing helped to characterise the Cold War as a bipolar phenomenon fought between sides whose mores, values and governmental systems represented mutually exclusive ways of life.34 The most graphic example of this sub-genre was Peter Glenville’s The Prisoner, a feature made in Britain with American financial backing in 1955. This film stands out for three reasons: due to the ‘factual’ nature of its propaganda, its unusual stylistic hybridity (part conventional courtroom drama, part brainwashing horror), and, because of the mixed reception it aroused among religious groups in Western Europe and the United States. Due to this, and because The Prisoner and other films like it have been overlooked by historians, the film is worthy of detailed analysis. Adapted by Irish-born, British-based scriptwriter Bridget Boland from her own 1954 West End play, The Prisoner was a thinly veiled dramatisation of the show trial and detention of Cardinal Jószef Mindszenty, the post-war Catholic Primate of Hungary. Mindszenty had been

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arrested in December 1948 as part of the Rakosi government’s policy of subjugating the Church to the State. Charged with treason and currency offences, at his spectacular trial in February 1949 Mindszenty ‘confessed’ all and was sentenced to life imprisonment. Media coverage of the trial, actively promoted by the IRD in Britain and overseas, provided many in the West with clear and compelling images of communist injustice and Catholic suffering.35 Throughout the 1950s, dozens of pamphlets, hagiographic biographies, and radio and television dramas played on Western anxieties about communist sedition, and promoted the image of Mindszenty in the United States, western Europe and Asia as a ‘martyr’ who, together with Poland’s Cardinal Wyszinski and Croatia’s Cardinal Stepanic (also incarcerated under communism), was single-handedly holding back the flood of communism.36 Mindszenty’s story had already appeared in two movies prior to The Prisoner: obliquely in the Soviet-made Conspiracy of the Doomed (Mikhail Kalatozov, 1950), which centred on an American-inspired plot to engineer a crop failure in order to force an unspecified Balkan nation into the Marshall Plan; and explicitly in Guilty of Treason (Felix Feist, 1950), a Hollywood B-movie about the torturing to death of a Hungarian music teacher who refuses to let her class sign petitions for Mindszenty’s arrest and which attributes the cardinal’s trial confession to hypnosis.37 Like Guilty of Treason, the extent to which The Prisoner was officially or politically inspired is unclear. Columbia, the film’s distributors, had impeccable anti-communist credentials, having produced a raft of red-baiting movies in the late 1940s and early 1950s.38 C. D. Jackson, Dwight Eisenhower’s unofficial minister for propaganda, also counted Columbia’s president Harry Cohn as one of the governments key ‘friends’ in Hollywood.39 Boland, who had already shed light on East–West tensions in her 1945–6 play The Lost People (released as a film in 1949), was an actively practising Catholic. So was Glenville, better known for his eclectic directorial work in the theatre, including the stage version of The Prisoner. When the popular and critically acclaimed actor Alec Guinness, who played the unnamed cardinal both on stage and screen, converted to Catholicism shortly after the film’s release, Glenville acted as his sponsor. All three were close friends and it is their personal and artistic relationship that seems to have influenced the film’s development most.40 The Prisoner’s stylised narrative of clerical persecution at the hands of ‘totalitarianism’ establishes the clear binary difference between the enforced atheism of the communist East and the religious and political

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freedoms of the democratic West. The film is woven around the relationship between its two central characters, the ‘Cardinal’ and his ‘Interrogator’ (Jack Hawkins), and the latter’s systematic attempts to extract a false confession from the ‘national monument’ for crimes against the state. Neither the Cardinal nor the country in which the events unfolds is named but there seems little doubt that audiences and critics understood the film to be the Mindszenty story. What little real ‘action’ there is takes place almost entirely within the confines of a jail, although there are fleeting scenes of public unrest outside, including the shooting dead of a boy found chalking words of resistance on a wall and the arrest of journalists. Rather than torturing the Cardinal physically, the Interrogator relies on modern psychological methods. ‘It is the mind that is important to us … regard me as your doctor,’ he intones, implying that in Marxist eyes the Cardinal’s Catholicism is a dangerous but curable illness. The tricks employed by the Interrogator as the months pass – solitary confinement, glaring lights, doctored evidence and skilfully worded questions – resembled those typically used by Gestapo officers in many of the American and British Second World War-based feature films of the period,41 and helped to confirm the Western perception of communism as an insidious form of mind control inducing ‘robotlike enslavement’. Western Europe and the United States experienced what some have described as a full-scale ‘brainwashing’ scare in the 1950s, linked partly to the highly publicised East European show trials in which senior communists admitted ludicrous crimes and the ‘change’ various Western POWs underwent after their treatment by their communist captors during the Korean War. Other films which played on the communist/Korean War brainwashing theme during this period include Columbia’s The Bamboo Curtain (Lewis Seiler, 1954), which also incorporated an American communist disguised as a POW camp’s padre (and hence was banned in several US states), and The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer, 1962).42 The first big-screen version of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, the book which more than any other popularised the notion of brainwashing – if not the word – when it was published in 1949, was financed by the USIA, directed in Britain by Michael Anderson and released in 1956.43 When the Interrogator’s techniques fail to ‘turn’ his victim – because the Cardinal remains true to his beliefs – he resorts to archetypal inhuman communist tactics. The dramatic climax comes in a scene meant to demonstrate the indecency characteristic of all totalitarian systems – a coffin is brought to the Cardinal and opened to reveal his

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elderly mother, anaesthetised so as to appear dead. In this moment of shock the Interrogator is able to draw out the single weakness in the Cardinal’s armoury: he is the illegitimate child of a prostitute and, ashamed of this, has never been able to love his mother. Destroyed by this confession, and seeking restitution, the Cardinal stands before the ‘people’s court’ and admits to ever-greater sins: of having no love for man or God, of having betrayed his resistance comrades to the Nazis, and of having conducted sabotage for the West. The Interrogator’s victory is a shallow one, however. For the Cardinal’s acceptance of the execution sentence handed down by the kangaroo court – later commuted to ‘open’ imprisonment – allows him to begin to make peace with himself and God, and serves as proof of his moral stature. By contrast, the Interrogator is revolted by his actions and his own semibeliefs are shattered. Aware that sooner or later he is bound to become a victim of the system for which he works, he resigns, telling his military superiors that ‘I am too fastidious to be trusted. I cannot half serve a cause.’ It is a measure of the hold Mindszenty’s story still had on the British public’s imagination in 1955, and perhaps also the press’s role as eager Cold War propagandist, that, despite The Prisoner’s slow pace and relatively intellectual content, the majority of Fleet Street’s critics recommended the film highly to their readers. Fact and fiction were blurred as critic after critic implied that the film was nothing short of a documentary about Mindszenty’s case; Guinness’s protagonist was ‘a living reproach to the Reds’, according to the Sunday Graphic, for example.44 Not everyone interpreted the film in this fashion, however, especially Catholics. On the one hand, Britain’s Cardinal Griffin lent The Prisoner his utmost support, declaring that it was ‘a film which every devout Catholic should see’. The film then won the Grand Prix Award of the Offico Catholique International du Cinéma for illustrating ‘the final victory of the soul – strengthened by the grace of God – upon a destructive ideology’. On the other hand, both the Italian Film Board and the Irish Censorship Board banned the film on the grounds that it was, respectively, ‘anti-Catholic’ and ‘subtly pro-Communist and tending to the subversion of public morals’. Despite, or perhaps because of, this controversy The Prisoner was acclaimed in the United States, taking over £100,000 in 10 weeks at New York’s Plaza Theater and being awarded the ‘Best Foreign Film Award’ by the US National Board of Review.45 In late 1956 The Prisoner’s box-office was then boosted further when the real Mindszenty was dramatically liberated from prison during the abortive Hungarian uprising and broadcast his

224 Religion and the Cold War

support for the rebels on the eve of the Soviets’ fatal intervention in early November. Mindszenty himself seems to have seen the movie shortly after this episode, courtesy of his enforced refuge in the American embassy in Budapest (where he stayed until 1971). He was little pleased with what he saw, however, mainly because, ironically perhaps, in his opinion the film was not dramatic enough. As Mindszenty wrote in his memoirs, by sanitising the ghastly conditions in which he had been held captive, The Prisoner downplayed both his gaolers’ brutality and his own bravery. In short, the film failed ‘to give any picture of reality’.46

Conclusions The use of religious propaganda in wartime predates the Cold War by at least 2,500 years.47 The Catholic Church had signalled its own awareness of the arts of public persuasion in the seventeenth century, Pope Gregory V having established the Sacred Congregation de Propaganda Fide in 1622.48 Deploying religion as a theme in wartime cinematic propaganda has not been confined to the struggle between communism and capitalism either. During the Second World War American and British films constantly linked God with democracy in the fight against Fascism (thereby preparing the ground for the West’s post-war struggle against communism, or ‘Communazism’ as some preferred to call it).49 And, over the past two decades Hollywood has profited considerably from its portrayals of the perceived threat posed to the United States, or the West in general, by ‘Islamic fundamentalism’.50 This article has shown how integral a component of Cold War cinematic discourse religion was in the 1950s, both in the East and West. American and British film-makers, in particular, proved themselves remarkably versatile propagandists in fusing religion and Cold War political issues, especially at the beginning of the decade when tensions between East and West were most acute. It would be fallacious to attribute this simply to official influence of one sort or another, unlike in the Soviet Union where the State maintained overall control of film output. In contributing to films that pointed out to audiences the dangers communism posed to religious freedom (as the majority of British and American films did), studio executives, directors, producers were motivated by a variety of factors. While a minority – like Columbia’s Harry Cohn and Paramount’s Luigi Luraschi – classed themselves as assistants to government, the majority merely sought to cash in on topical, controversial concerns. Film-making being a

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complex, multi-layered process, these motivating factors were rarely clear-cut. So, while Cecil De Mille used the biblical epic as an opportunity to inject action movies with the new religiosity of the period, he also sought to make more money for himself by appealing to the public’s craving for sexuality on screen and by capitalising on the fact that in the United States titillating scenes ironically had always been more permissible in biblical pageants. It is of course difficult to judge the impact of the films analysed above on their audiences. Separating the influence of one medium (film) from another (newspapers, say) on public opinion is challenging enough, let alone disentangling the influence of religious elements from secular ones in movies. What can be said is that many of the above films bore the hallmarks of shabby B-pictures – blaring music, arbitrary passages of violence, bad continuity, and dismal acting. Because they were so sloppily made, and because often their messages were so clumsily explicit, such films might inadvertently have provided a forum for some people to laugh at or even ridicule popular Cold War hysteria, instead of encouraging them to think seriously about religion and politics. By implying that extra-terrestrials might share the same God as human beings, for instance, it might be argued that Red Planet Mars stood as much a chance of bringing Christian piety into disrepute as persuading cinema-goers of the contemporary resonance of the Gospel. One notable commentator who said as much at the time was Karel Reisz, destined to become one of the leading lights of the ‘New Wave’ film movement in Britain in the early 1960s. Writing in the British journal Sight and Sound in 1953, Reisz identified films like Red Planet Mars and Guilty of Treason as ‘lunatic excesses’ more likely to have damaged rather than bolstered the West’s moral and spiritual crusade. According to Reisz, such movies numbered among the many American and British productions that in the early 1950s had given democracy a bad name by depicting the threat posed by communism so crudely.51 And yet to dismiss this type of Cold War film as generally having had a counter-productive effect on their audiences, as most historians tend to,52 seems to me to be too simplistic. Many of the movies mentioned in this article were open to a variety of possibly conflicting interpretations, as The Prisoner’s confused reception among Catholics illustrates clearly. Similarly, many religious conservatives watching films like The Next Voice You Hear and The Ten Commandments might have been troubled by the juxtaposing of images of Christianity and consumerism, and Christianity and sexuality, respectively. And there is

226 Religion and the Cold War

also every chance that audiences simply failed to see certain movies through a Cold War lens. Nora Sayre, for one, admits in her account of Hollywood Cold War films that as ‘an apolitical English major’ in the mid-1950s so gripped was she by Marlon Brando’s performance in On the Waterfront the film’s socio-political metaphor passed her by.53 All this said, it could still be argued that for all their aesthetic shortcomings, many of the B-pictures analysed here amounted to solid, effective propaganda by offering simple, easily digestible, emotive messages in highly charged, usually action-driven formats. Cheap sciencefiction shockers like The Conquest of Space, red-baiting melodramas like The Red Menace, and Goldwynesque family sagas like My Son John might, each in their own way, have helped to endow the Cold War with the black-and-white moral clarity most people and official propagandists yearned for. The more cerebral docu-dramas like The Prisoner perhaps left a similar impression on a different sort of audience. Together, these Western filmic representations of religion might have helped at least some cinema-goers to forge key mental and conceptual Cold War linkages – for instance between communism and Nazism (conflated as ‘totalitarianism’), or between Christianity and democratic capitalism (in which the latter took on the appearance of a new ‘civil religion’). Thus, for all its complaints in the 1950s about the constant peddling of sexual and material vices in films, the signs are that the Catholic Church in the West had good reason to thank the cinema during this period. Those cinema-goers in Russia who still followed the Russian Orthodox Church also had reason to be grateful, as Soviet films in the late 1950 and early 1960s exhibited signs of a less hostile approach towards their faith. The difference in the Soviet case is that such movies tended to run counter to official propaganda and were therefore apt to confuse popular notions of ideology versus spirituality rather than affirm them.

Notes A version of this chapter appeared in the Journal of Cold War Studies (Summer 2002). I am grateful to the journal’s editor, Mark Kramer, for permission to reproduce it here. 1 Monthly Film Bulletin, Oct. 1952, pp. 140–1. 2 Films and Filming, 1(2) (Sept. 1955), p. 13. 3 For cinema attendance figures in the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union in the 1950s, before television superseded it as the principal medium of communication and attitude formation in the 1960s, see Douglas

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4 5

6 7

8 9

10

11

Gomery, ‘Transformation of the Hollywood System’, in Geoffrey NowellSmith, ed., The Oxford History of World Cinema (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 443–51; Stuart Laing, Representations of Working Class Life, 1957–1964 (London: Macmillan, 1986), pp. 109–11; John Spraos, The Decline of the Cinema: An Economist’s Report (London: Allen and Unwin, 1962), p. 14; Josephine Woll, Real Images: Soviet Cinema and the Thaw (London: I. B. Tauris, 2000), p. xii. These three national film industries have been chosen for analysis due also to their predominant influence in international markets during this period of the Cold War: Hollywood and the British film industry in western Europe and the developing world, and the Soviet film industry in eastern Europe. Baruch Hazan, Soviet Impregnational Propaganda (Ann Arbor, MI: Ardis, 1982), pp. 39–52. Frances Stonor Saunders, Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War (London: Granta, 1999), pp. 252–78; Serge Guilbaut, How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art: Abstract Expressionism, Freedom and the Cold War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993). Scott Lucas, Freedom’s War: The US Crusade Against the Soviet Union, 1945–56 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), p. 108. P. M. Taylor, Munitions of the Mind: A History of Propaganda from the Ancient World to the Present Day (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), p. 256. Geoffrey Hosking, A History of the Soviet Union: 1917–1991 (London: Fontana Press, 1992), pp. 227–41. Phillip Knightley, The First Casualty: From the Crimea to the Falklands: The War Correspondent as Hero, Propagandist and Myth Maker (London: Pan, 1989), p. 149; Steve Nicholson, British Theatre and the Red Peril: The Portrayal of Communism, 1917–1945 (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1999), pp. 31–3. Public Record Office, Kew, London [hereafter PRO], FO 953/145/P3135 Minute by C. F. A. Warner, 1 March 1948; Andrew J. Rotter, ‘Christians, Muslims, and Hindus: Religion and U.S.–South Asian Relations, 1947–1954’, Diplomatic History, 24(4) (Fall 2000), pp. 593–613; David S. Foglesong, ‘Roots of “Liberation”: American Images of the Future of Russia in the Early Cold War, 1948–1953’, The International History Review, 21(1) (March 1999), pp. 57–79; Paul Lashmar and James Oliver, Britain’s Secret Propaganda War 1948–1977 (Stroud: Sutton, 1998), p. 33; Walter L. Hixson, Parting the Curtain: Propaganda, Culture, and the Cold War, 1945–1961 (London: Macmillan, 1997), pp. 42, 64, 83, 93–4, 122; Michael Nelson, War of the Black Heavens: The Battles of Western Broadcasting in the Cold War (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997). Robert S. Ellwood, The Fifties Spiritual Marketplace: American Religion in a Decade of Conflict (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1997); Robert Wuthnow, The Restructuring of American Religion: Society and Faith since World War II (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988); Paul Boyer, When Time Shall be no More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992); Donald F. Crosby, God, Church and the Flag: Senator Joseph R. McCarthy and the Catholic Church 1950–1957 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1978).

228 Religion and the Cold War 12 The literature on early Soviet cinema is wide-ranging. For recent analyses in English see Richard Taylor and Ian Christie, eds, The Film Factory: Russian and Soviet Cinema Documents, 1896–1939 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988); Richard Taylor and Ian Christie, eds, Inside the Film Factory: New Approaches to Russian and Soviet Cinema (London: Routledge, 1991); Anna Lawton, ed., The Red Screen: Politics, Society and Art in Soviet Cinema (London, Routledge, 1992); Peter Kenez, Cinema and Soviet Society, 1917–1953 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Dmitry Shlapentokh and Vladimir Shlapentokh, Soviet Cinematography, 1918–1991: Ideological Conflict and Social Reality (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1993); Richard Taylor, Film Propaganda: Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany (London: I. B. Tauris, 1998); Richard Taylor and Derek Spring, eds, Stalinism and Soviet Cinema (London: Routledge, 1993). 13 Leon Trotsky, ‘Vodka, the Church and the Cinema’ (1923), cited in Richard Taylor, ‘Ideology and Popular Culture in Soviet Cinema: The Kiss of Mary Pickford’, in Lawton, ed., The Red Screen, pp. 54–5. 14 Taylor, Film Propaganda, pp. 69–70. 15 Annette Michelson, ‘The Kinetic Icon and the Work of Mourning: Prolegomena to the Analysis of a Textual System’, in Lawton, ed., The Red Screen, pp. 113–31; Taylor, Film Propaganda, pp. 85–98. 16 Woll, Real Images; Shlapentokh and Shlapentokh, Soviet Cinematography, 1918–1991, pp. 129–45. 17 Owen Chadwick, The Penguin History of the Church, vol. 7: The Christian Church in the Cold War (London: Penguin, 1993), p. 95; Woll, Real Images, p. 117. 18 Woll, Real Images, 157–8, 118. 19 The first film in each pair of brackets is American, the second British. On American cinema and the Cold War in the 1950s see Peter Biskind, Seeing is Believing: How Hollywood Taught Us to Stop Worrying and to Love the Fifties (London: Pluto, 1984); Nora Sayre, Running Time: Films of the Cold War (New York: Dial Press, 1982); Larry Ceplair and Steven Englund, The Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community, 1930–1960 (London: University of California Press, 1979); Patrick McGilligan and Paul Buhle, Tender Comrades: A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1997); Victor S. Navasky, Naming Names (New York: John Calder, 1980). On British cinema and the Cold War see Tony Shaw, British Cinema and the Cold War: The State, Propaganda and Consensus (London: I. B. Tauris, 2001). 20 The USIA was created in 1953 and, among other things, sponsored hardhitting anti-communist films calculated to expose communist lies. See USIA report on film propaganda, 19 Jan. 1954, United States Declassified Document Reference System, Washington, DC, 1976– , fiche issued 1986, doc. no. 893; Lucas, Freedom’s War, pp. 67, 126; Stephen J. Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War (London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), pp. 127, 136; David Thomson, A Biographical Dictionary of the Cinema (London: Secker and Warburg, 1975), pp. 130–1. 21 Alan Nadel, Containment Culture: American Narratives, Postmodernism, and the Atomic Age (London: Duke University Press, 1995), p. 92. Nadel (p. 306) calculates that The Ten Commandments exceeded by at least 20 per cent the

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22 23

24 25 26 27

28

29

30

31 32

33

34

35

rental income of every American film made until 1964, other than Gone with the Wind (Victor Fleming/George Cukor/Sam Wood, 1939). The latter was the most successful American movie of all time until The Sound of Music (Robert Wise, 1965), aided by 26 years of inflation, narrowly surpassed it. Monthly Film Bulletin, May 1953, pp. 69–70; Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War, pp. 136–9. Stonor Saunders, Who Paid the Piper?, pp. 289–91; David N. Eldridge, ‘“Dear Owen”: The CIA, Luigi Luraschi and Hollywood, 1953’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 20(2) (2000), pp. 149–96. Monthly Film Bulletin, April 1962, p. 51. Karel Reisz, ‘Hollywood’s Anti-red Boomerang’, Sight and Sound, 22(3) (Jan.–March 1953), p. 136. Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War, pp. 107–13; Sayre, Running Time, pp. 151–72. Films and Filming, 1(2) (Sept. 1955), p. 13. Martin Luther was a critical and financial success worldwide. Author’s correspondence with Borden Mace, President of RD-DR Corporation (owned by Louis de Rochement, the producer of Martin Luther) in the 1950s, 28 March 1998. For the other changes which Orwell’s Animal Farm underwent in the process of being adapted for the cinema see Shaw, British Cinema and the Cold War, pp. 91–104. Frank Walsh, Sin and Censorship: The Catholic Church and the Motion Picture Industry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), esp. pp. 175, 194–5, 251–4, 269–71. James C. Robertson, The Hidden Cinema: British Film Censorship in Action, 1913–1972 (London: Routledge, 1989); Geoffrey Macnab, J. Arthur Rank and the British Film Industry (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 4, 34, 116. Raymond Durgnat, ‘Vote for Britain!’, Films and Filming, 10(7) (April 1964), p. 11. On US evangelism and Billy Graham see Donald W. Dayton and Robert K. Johnston, eds, The Varieties of American Evangelism (Knoxville, 1991); George Marsden, Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids, 1991); Charles H. Lippy, Twentieth-Century Shapers of American Popular Religion (Westport, 1989). Bill Warren, Keep Watching the Skies! American Science Fiction Movies of the Fifties (2 vols, London: McFarland, Jefferson, 1982 and 1986); I. Q. Hunter, ed., British Science-Fiction Cinema (London: Routledge, 1999); Spencer R. Weart, Nuclear Fear: A History of Images (London: Harvard University Press, 1988); Biskind, Seeing is Believing, p. 116. Hollywood movies of the 1940s and 1950s which depicted life in eastern Europe include Sofia (John Reinhardt, 1948), The Red Danube (George Sidney, 1949), The Steel Fist (Wesley Barry, 1951), Man on a Tightrope (Elia Kazan, 1953) and Night People (Nunnally Johnson, 1954). The British equivalents include State Secret (Sydney Gilliat, 1950), Flight from Vienna (Denis Kavanagh, 1955) and Beyond the Curtain (Compton Bennett, 1960). Ferenc A. Vali, Rift and Revolt in Hungary (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961), pp. 65–6; PRO FO1110/167–8 files; Chadwick, The Christian Church in the Cold War, p. 70.

230 Religion and the Cold War 36 Daniel L. Watson, ‘“A Europe worthy of Mindszenty”: Catholic “Martyrs and Heroes” in American and West European Cold War Culture’, paper submitted as part of the ‘Cold War Culture: Film, Fact and Fiction’ Conference, Indiana University, 18–21 Feb. 1999, pp. 3–4; Patrick Allitt, Catholic Intellectuals and Conservative Politics in America, 1950–1985 (London: Cornell University Press, 1993), p. 63. On US television’s emphasis on religion as a Cold War theme in the 1950s, including ‘Cardinal Mindszenty’, a Studio One production of 3 May 1954, see Fred J. MacDonald, ‘The Cold War as Entertainment in ‘Fifties Television’, Journal of Popular Film and Television, 7(1) (1988), pp. 3–31. 37 Maya Turovskaya, ‘Soviet Films of the Cold War’, in Taylor and Spring, eds, Stalinism and Soviet Cinema, pp. 131, 133, 140–1; Reisz, ‘Hollywood’s Antired Boomerang’, p. 132; Monthly Film Bulletin, Dec. 1950, pp. 185–6. The British title of Guilty of Treason was Treason. 38 These included Walk a Crooked Mile (Gordon Douglas, 1948), Invasion USA (Alfred E. Green, 1952) and the FBI-backed Walk East on Beacon (Alfred Werker, 1952). 39 Stonor Saunders, Who Paid the Piper?, pp. 289–90. On Cohn and Columbia’s On the Waterfront (1953) see Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War, pp. 109–10; Sayre, Running Time, pp. 152–4. 40 David Quinlan, British Sound Films: The Studio Years, 1928–1959 (London: Batsford, 1984), pp. 225–6; Kenneth Von Gunden, Alec Guinness: The Films (London: McFarland and Co., 1987), pp. 80–5; Alec Guinness, Blessings in Disguise (London: Fontana, 1985), pp. 38–49; obituary of Glenville, Daily Telegraph, 10 June 1996, p. 21. 41 See, for instance, Roger Manvell, Films and the Second World War (London: J. M. Dent, 1974); Nicholas Pronay, ‘The British Post-Bellum cinema: A Survey of the Films Relating to World War Two Made in Britain between 1945 and 1960’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 8(1) (1988), pp. 39–54; John Ramsden, ‘Refocusing the “People’s War”: British War films of the 1950s’, Journal of Contemporary History, 33(1) (Jan. 1998), pp. 35–64. 42 Susan L. Carruthers, ‘“Not Just Washed but Dry-Cleaned”: Korea and the “Brainwashing” Scare of the 1950s’, in Gary Rawnsley, ed., Cold-War Propaganda in the 1950s (Macmillan, London, 1999), pp. 47–66; Susan L. Carruthers, ‘Redeeming the Captives: Hollywood and the Brainwashing of America’s Prisoners of War in Korea’, Film History, 10(3) (1998), p. 283; Susan L. Carruthers, ‘The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and the Cold War Brainwashing Scare’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 18(1) (1998), pp. 75–94. 43 Shaw, British Cinema and the Cold War, pp. 105–13. 44 Sunday Graphic, 24 April 1955; Daily Mirror, 22 April 1955; Daily Express, 22 April 1955; Daily Worker, 23 April 1955; Kinematograph Weekly, 14 April 1955. 45 Daily Telegraph, 12 Dec. 1955; Von Gunden, Alec Guinness, p. 80; Columbia marketing material, The Prisoner micro-jacket, British Film Institute Library, London. 46 Vali, Rift and Revolt in Hungary, pp. 316, 335–7; J. Cardinal Mindszenty, Memoirs (New York: Macmillan, 1974), p. xxviii. Mindszenty died in Vienna in 1975.

‘Martyrs, Miracles and Martians’ 231 47 For the role religious symbols and beliefs played in ancient Greek warfare see Taylor, Munitions of the Mind, pp. 27–34. 48 Robert Jackall, ed., Propaganda (London: Macmillan, 1995), p. 1. Propaganda, as the congregation was called colloquially, became one of the most powerful institutional arms of the Church, whose ‘mission’ was ‘to reconquer by spiritual arms, by prayers, by prayers and good works, by preaching and catechising, the countries … lost to the Church in the debacle of the sixteenth century and to organise into an efficient corps the numerous missionary enterprises for the diffusion of the gospel in pagan lands.’ ‘Propaganda, Sacred Congregation of’, in The Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911), vol. XII, pp. 456–61, cited in Jackall, ed., Propaganda, p. 1. 49 On the religious dimension of American and British cinematic propaganda during the Second World War see Clayton R. Koppes and Gregory D. Black, Hollywood Goes to War: How Politics, Profits and Propaganda Shaped World War II Movies (New York: The Free Press, 1987) and James Chapman, The British at War: Cinema, State and Propaganda, 1939–1945 (London: I. B. Tauris, 1998). On the discourse of ‘Communazism’ during the early years of the Cold War see Les K. Adler and Thomas G. Paterson, ‘Red Fascism: The Merger of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia in the American Image of Totalitarianism, 1930s–1950s’, American Historical Review, 75(4) (April 1970), pp. 1046–64; Lashmar and Oliver, Britain’s Secret Propaganda War, p. 33. 50 See, for instance, True Lies (James Cameron, 1994), Executive Decision (Stuart Baird, 1996), The Siege (Edward Zwick, 1998), and Rules of Engagement (William Friedkin, 2000) 51 Reisz, ‘Hollywood’s Anti-red Boomerang’, pp. 132–7. 52 See, for instance, Daniel J. Leab, ‘The Iron Curtain (1948): Hollywood’s First Cold War Movie’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 8(2) (1988), p. 177; Daniel J. Leab, ‘How Red was My Valley: Hollywood, the Cold War Film, and I Married A Communist’, Journal of Contemporary History, 19 (1984), p. 82; Biskind, Seeing is Believing, pp. 3, 162. 53 Sayre, Running Time, p. 161.

Index Abstract Impressionism, 213 Abusch, Alexander, 201 Academy of Noble Ecclesiastics, 120 Acheson, Dean, 128 Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 62 Addison, Lord, 99n Adenauer, Konrad, 40, 56, 62, 148 aggiornamento, 63, 160 Aitken, Rev. Robert, 197n, 198n Albania, 72 Alexander Nevsky (film), 215 Allen, George V., 142n American Bar Association, 176 American Society of Newspaper Editors, 8 Anders, General Wladyslaw, 100n Anderson, Michael, 222 Andrieu, René, 149, 151 Anglican church: Lambeth Conference (1948), 174, 182 local church attitudes, 188–99 relations with Russian Orthodox Church, 25, 27, 35n Animal Farm (film), 219 anti-Catholicism: in communist eastern Europe, 57–9 of Soviet Union, 28–30, 52, 56, 213–14 in United States, 60, 83–4, 94, 137 anti-communism: British propaganda, 214 in Canada, 165, 167, 169, 171–2, 177, 178, 181 cinema as propaganda, 211–12, 216–26 concern for post-war Italy, 14, 60–1, 69–70, 72, 80–1, 85, 103–17 in Fifth Republic France, 149, 151–2 of German Protestantism, 42–3 of Pius XII, 11, 50–66, 67, 68–9, 72–3, 79–80 of Truman administration, 77–102, 181

Ashford, Rev. Edward, 191, 192, 195 Asmussen, Hans, 37, 43, 44–5 Association pour l’enseignement libre (APEL), 153 atheism: Canadian defence against, 16, 165 and Catholic anti-communism, 50–66 local churches’ battle against, 17–18, 188–9, 194–5 religion as weapon against, 2, 6–7, 77–8, 84–5, 86–7, 92, 188–9, 212 of working classes, 157–8 Atlantic Charter, 166 Attlee, Clement, 99n Attolico, Bernardo, 51 authoritarianism: Catholicism in Italy, 13, 106–7, 113 in Gaullist France, 146 of Soviet Union, 3 Badoglio, General Pietro, 108 Baker, Roy, 219 Balaban, Barney, 218 ‘balance of ideologies’, 78, 95 balance of power, 2–3 Baltic States, 52, 53, 57, 82 Bamboo Curtain, The (film), 222 Barmen Theological Declaration of Faith (1934), 40, 41, 47n Barrett, Edward, 6 Barth, Karl, 10, 37, 38, 39, 43, 46 Reformed theology, 41, 44–5 BBC European Service, 214 Bebel, August, 201 Beckmann, Joachim, 37, 39 Behemoth the Sea Monster (film), 216 Bellah, Robert, 4 Belorussia, 28–9 Benedict XV, pope, 107 Beran, Josef, Archbishop of Prague, 56, 60, 73

232

Index 233 Beria, L. P., 32 Berlin, Isaiah, 2 Berrangé law, 152 Biblical epic films, 217, 225 Bill of Rights debate in Canada, 16, 168–81, 182, 183 Birmingham: local churches in, 17–18, 188–99 trade union movement, 190–1 Bismarck, Otto von, 44 Blackmore, J. H., 169 Blanshard, Paul, 14, 137 Blickle, Peter, 206 Bloch, Ernst, 201 Boland, Bridget, 220, 221 Bologna, 105, 114–15 Bolshevik Peril, The (play), 214 Bolshevism: Pius XII’s campaign against, 11, 50, 53 religion and propaganda, 213–16 see also communism; Soviet Union Bossilkov, Eugen, 58–9 ‘brainwashing’ propaganda, 19, 222 Brando, Marlon, 226 Brandt, Willy, 18, 206 Bräuer, Siefried, 206 Brault, Monsignor, 147 Braun, Father Leopold, 52 Brecht, Martin, 206 Brendler, Gerhard, 206 Brimelow, Thomas, 99n Britain: cinema and propaganda, 19–20, 212, 214, 216–17, 219, 220–4, 225 Foreign Office, 99n, 214 local churches in, 17–18, 188–99 relations with Vatican, 79, 99n religious state of nation, 193–4, 195–6 wartime alliance with Soviet Union, 53 British Board of Film Censors, 219 British North America Act, 170, 174, 179, 180 Buchman, Frank, 198n Budenz, Louis, 82 Bulgaria, 58–9, 72, 73

Burrell, Rev. Arthur, 191, 192, 195 Buzzanco, Robert, 5, 20 Byrnes, James F., 82, 84, 124 Calvinism, 38 Canada: anti-communism, 165, 167, 169, 171–2, 177, 178, 181 Bill of Rights debate, 16, 168–81, 182, 183 civil liberties associations, 167, 168–9, 170–1, 171–2, 177, 178 civil liberties violations, 167–8, 171–2, 176 human rights and religion, 15–16, 163–87 as liberal democracy, 163–4 provincial implications of human right declaration, 175–7 and Second World War, 164–7 Senate Special Committee on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, 178–80 Special Joint Committee on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, 168, 171, 172–3, 176 spy trials, 167, 168, 170, 171–2, 176 and Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 164, 166, 167–83 Canadian Bar Association, 175–7, 179 Canadian Council of Churches, 179, 182 Canning, R. K., 192–3 Cannon, Cavendish Welles, 134–5 ‘Captive Cardinals’, 19, 60 see also Beran; Mindszenty; Stepinac CAROC see Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church Carrs Lane Church, Birmingham, 188, 189–90, 194 Casablanca Conference (1943), 53, 68 Cassin, René, 175 Catholic Action movement, 61, 103, 105, 108, 110, 111, 114 Catholic Legion of Decency, 219 ‘Catholic triumphalism’, 13, 112–13 Catholicism see Roman Catholicism

234 Index Cazaux, Monsignor, 152 CFTC trade unions in France, 148, 158 Chabod, Federico, 113 Chadwick, Owen, 100n Chappoulie, Monsignor, 147 Chesterton, G. K., 77 China: Catholic persecution, 59, 60 Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, 59 Christian Democracy in post-war Europe, 93 dominance in Germany, 56, 62 in Italy, 13, 56, 60–1, 62, 71, 81, 85, 92, 105, 106–12, 113–15 Pius XII promotes, 11, 13, 56, 60, 62, 85 ‘Christian Front’ in Germany, 43–4, 46 Christian trade unions in France, 148, 156, 158 Christianity, 2 Christian unity ideal of WCC, 94–5 see also Protestantism; Roman Catholicism; Russian Orthodox Church Church–State relations: British local clergy view, 189–90 Canada, 16, 163–87 in communist eastern Europe, 73–4, 81, 124, 133–6, 137 in French fifth republic, 145–62 in GDR, 207 Lutheran doctrine of two kingdoms, 40–1, 44 in post-war Italy, 106–15 Soviet Union, 10, 23–36 Churchill, Winston, 53, 197n anti-communist stance, 81, 83, 84 Fulton Speech, 8, 83–4, 91–2 CIA propaganda: ‘cultural freedom’, 213 religion as weapon, 5, 6, 214, 218, 219 Cicognani, Archbishop Amleto, 61, 120 cinema: religion and propaganda in, 19–20, 211–31 ‘Civic Committees’, 108, 113

civil liberties in Canada, 167, 167–9, 170–1, 171–2, 177, 178 ‘civil religion’, 4 clergy: cinematic representations, 218–19 itinerant preachers in Italy, 111–12 local churches in Britain, 17–18, 188–99 worker priests in France, 155, 156–9 Clifford, Clark, 87 Clouds over Borsk (film), 216 Cogniot, Georges, 152–3 Cohn, Harry, 221, 224 Columbia (film company), 221, 224 Cominform, 58, 72, 85, 133 Comité National d’Action Laïque (CNAL), 153 communism: British local clergy response to, 17–18, 188–96 excommunication under Pius XII, 58, 61–2, 68, 74, 103, 114–15 in France see French Communist Party historical revisionism in GDR, 200–10 ideology of, 2–3 in Italy see Italian Communist Party religion as weapon against, 1–2, 6–7, 84–5, 92, 212 viewed as a religion, 5 see also anti-communism; atheism; Marxism; Soviet Union Communist Organisation of Catholic Action, 58 Communist Party (US), 82 Confédération des Travailleurs Chrétiens, 156 Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT), 156, 158 Confessing Church, Germany, 37, 38–9, 40, 41–2, 43, 44–5, 46–7 see also Evangelical Church ‘confessional’ school in France, 154 Conquest of Space, The (film), 220, 226 conservatism in German Protestantism, 38, 39–40, 41, 42, 43–4, 45 Conspiracy of the Doomed (film), 221

Index 235 Constan, Peter, 129–30 containment policy: hardening of approach, 81–4, 90–1, 93 nuclear deterrent, 59, 62 papal doubts on, 71 papal support for, 11, 12, 56, 59, 62–3, 67 and persecution of Catholics, 68, 73 religious rhetoric, 87, 92, 93 Conway, John, 7 Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), 168–9, 178 Cornwell, John, 51, 137n Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church (CAROC), 25–6, 31–2, 32–3 Council of Foreign Ministers, 71, 82 Crerar, T. A., 173 Croatia: collaboration allegations, 127–8, 129–30, 132 Ustase regime, 70, 123–4, 127–8 Croatian Catholic Church, 58, 70 persecution of nuns, 123–5 see also Stepinac Croix, La, 147, 153, 157 Croll, David, 172 ‘crusade’ imagery, 5, 165 ‘cultural freedom’ propaganda, 213 cultural internationalism, 20–1 cultural interpretations, 5, 6, 7, 8 Czechoslovak National Catholic Church, 73 Czechoslovakia, 57–8, 59, 72, 73, 107, 115 Dalai Lama, 94 Darmstadt statement, 10–11, 17–18, 37–49 genesis, 41–4 message of, 38–9, 45 responses to, 37–8, 39–40, 41, 44–5 theology of, 40–1, 44–5 theses text, 46–7 Davies, Joseph E., 98n De Gasperi, Alcide, 56, 71, 106, 107, 109–10, 113–14 De Gaulle see Gaulle, Charles De

de la Roche, Catherine, 212 De Mille, Cecil B., 217, 225 Debré law (1959), 152–4 Del Balzo, Count, 90 Descamps, Eugene, 158 Desroches, Henri, 158 ‘Deutsche Geschichte’, 202 Devil Never Sleeps, The (film), 218 Dibelius, Otto, Bishop of Bavaria, 42 Diefenbaker, John, 168, 171, 173–4 Diem, Hermann, 10, 37, 39, 42 Diplomatic History, 4–5 divine referent see religious referent Divini Illius Magistri, 152 Documentation Catholique, La, 149 Dougherty, Cardinal Dennis, 120 Dowling, Walter, 126 Duclos, Jacques, 150 Dulles, Allen, 143n Dulles, John Foster, 5 Duplessis, Maurice, 168, 178, 181 Durand, Pierre, 153 Duverger, Maurice, 150 ‘Early Bourgeois Revolution’, 18, 202, 203–5, 206, 207 East Germany see German Democratic Republic eastern Europe: Church–State relations, 73–4, 81 persecution of Catholics, 57–8, 59, 68, 70, 72, 109, 115, 123–5, 127–8 Prisoner film, 220–4, 225, 226 Soviet expansion, 52, 53, 57–8, 59, 60, 72 stories of Christian devotion, 193 Vatican relations, 71, 72–4, 115 see also individual countries economic aid: US aid to Yugoslavia, 134, 135, 136, 137 see also Marshall Plan Eden, Anthony, 82 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 3, 95, 221 religious rhetoric, 5, 96 Eisenstein, Sergei, 215 Elizabeth II, queen of Great Britain, 199

236 Index Elliger, Walter, 204 Elliston, Herbert, 2 Elson, Edward L. R., 95 Emilia-Romagna, 105, 114 Engels, Friedrich, 18, 200–1 espionage: Canadian spy trials, 167, 168, 170, 171–2, 176 see also intelligence services Esprit, 160 European Recovery Program see Marshall Plan Evangelical Church, Germany, 37, 38–9, 41, 45 see also Confessing Church Evangelical Reich Church, Germany, 47n Everything Remains for People (film), 216 Evlogii, 27 excommunication see under Pius XII Fabrègues, Jean de, 147 Fanfani, Amintore, 114 Fascism: Catholic rhetoric and, 110, 111 Catholicism replaces in Italy, 13, 106–7, 113 Hollywood representations, 224 post-war reconstruction in Italy, 104–5, 108 Ustase regime in Yugoslavia, 70, 123–4, 127–8 Vatican pre-war accommodation, 106, 113 see also Nazism Fatima apparitions, 50 Federal Council for the Churches of Christ in America, 166 Feltin, Cardinal, 147–8, 149, 153, 157 Fifth Republic France, 14–15, 145–62 Constitution, 146–7, 152 Kir incident, 149–50 loi Debré (1959), 152–4 schools problem, 150–4, 160 worker-priest movement, 155, 156–9 Figaro, Le, 127, 147, 157 Films and Filming, 212 Fisher, Geoffrey, Archbishop of Canterbury, 189

Fletcher, W. C., 27 Fly, The (film), 220 Foglesong, David S., 5, 6 foreign policy: religion as instrument of, 20 and religion in US, 4–5, 6, 77–102 role of Russian Orthodox Church, 9–10, 23–8, 33–4 Fortier, General Louis, 122 Fosdick, Harry Emerson, 197n Foundation for Religious Action in the Social and Civil Order, 95–6 Frachon, Benoit, 158 France see Fifth Republic France Franco, Francisco, 86, 106, 148 Free Church in England, 189 ‘free teaching’ in France, 152, 153 French Communist Party (PCF), 14–15, 145–62 and death of Pius XII, 159 ‘outstretched hand’ policy, 15, 154–5, 158–9, 160 and schools problem, 150–6, 160 and secular wording of Constitution, 146, 147–8, 152 French Resistance, 159, 160 ‘Frühbürgerliche Revolution’, 18, 202, 203–5, 206, 207 Fulton Speech (1946), 8, 83–4, 91–2 Fumasoni-Biondi, Don Leone, 89–90 fundamentalism, 4, 224 Gaddis, John Lewis, 2–3 Gagnon, Paul Edmond, 169 Gallacher, William, 194 Garaudy, Roger, 147, 157, 158, 159 Garbett, Cyril, 188 Gaulle, Charles De/Gaullism, 14–15, 145–62 GDR see German Democratic Republic Gedda, Luigi, 61, 108 Gentilone, Count, 109 geopolitics, 2–3, 95 Gerlier, Cardinal, 147, 150 German Christian theology, 43, 47n German Democratic Republic (GDR): religion and Marxist history, 18–19, 200–10 reunification, 67, 208–9

Index 237 ‘German History’, 18, 202 German Peasants’ War (1524), 18, 200, 202, 203, 204–5, 207 Germany: Christian Democratic dominance, 56, 62 Darmstadt statement, 10–11, 17–18, 37–49 East Germany see German Democratic Republic and Fifth Republic France, 148–9 1947 peace treaty, 71 Pius XII’s compassion for, 69–70, 72–3 post-war re-armament policy, 40 post-war restoration, 69–70 Protestant divisions, 40 reunification, 67, 208–9 Ginsborg, Paul, 112 Giolitti, Giovanni, 109 Glenville, Peter, 220, 221 ‘God’s Microphone’ (Fr Lombardi), 111–12 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 67 Gordon, Charles, 178 Gordon, J. King, 178, 180, 182 Gouin, L., 173 Gouzenko, Igor, 165, 167, 169, 170, 171–2 Gowen, Franklin C., 123 Graham, Billy, 188, 219–20 Grahame, R., 214 Gramsci, Antonio, 109 Great Patriotic War (1941–5), 23 Greece: Soviet threat, 87 Greek Civil War, 105 Greek-Catholic church see Uniate Church Gregory V, pope, 224 Grenfell Baptist Church Newsletter, 193, 197n, 198n Grente, Monsignor, 147 Griffin, Cardinal, 223 Gromyko, A. A., 63 Guareschi, Giovanni, 105 Guerry, Monsignor, 147, 153 Guilty of Treason (film), 221, 225 Guinness, Alec, 221 Gustafson, Merlin, 22n

Hackett, John, 176–7, 182 Hankey, Robin, 99n Hansell, Rev. Ernest, 172, 173, 182 Harbutt, Fraser J., 83, 84 Harriman, W. Averell, 133 Harvey, Oliver, 79 Haupt case (1947), 129 Hebblethwaite, P., 115 Hell Drivers (film), 219 Herridge, H. W., 173 High Treason (film), 216 Hill, Ernie, 141–2n Hill, Patricia, 5, 8 historical materialism in GDR, 18–19, 200–10 Hitler, Adolf, 44, 201 see also Nazism Hobsawm, Eric, 20 Hochhuth, Rolf, 98n Hohenthal, Theodore H., 130, 131, 132 Hollywood: propaganda in films, 211–12, 216–26 Holy Year (1950), 12, 59, 67–8, 74, 111 Hopkins, Eric, 196 Horner, Harry, 211–12 House Committee on Un-American Activities, 82, 219 human rights and religion in Canada, 15–16, 163–87 Humanité, L’, 146, 148, 149, 150, 151, 153, 159 Humphrey, John, 167, 170, 171, 178, 180, 182 Hungary: Catholicism in, 58, 72, 73, 74, 115, 178, 220–4 pope denounces Soviet invasion, 60 Hurley, Bishop Joseph P., 14 intelligence role of nunciature, 122–3, 125–6 nuns crisis, 123–5 ‘regent’ status, 121–2 support for Stepinac, 127–8, 130, 134–6 and US realignment, 134, 135–6 Hus, Johan, 202 hydrogen bomb, 59

238 Index I Was a Communist for the FBI (film), 216 ideology: ‘balance of ideologies’, 78, 95 role in Cold War, 1, 2–3 Ilsley, James, 170, 173 intelligence services: US–Vatican alliance in Yugoslavia, 14, 119–23, 125–6, 133–4 see also espionage International Bill of Human Rights, 174 International Historical Congress, 202 Iran, 82 Irish Censorship Board, 223 Iriye, Akira, 20–1 Islamic fundamentalism, 224 Israel: foundation of state, 73 Italian Communist Party (PCI), 54, 61, 69, 90, 103–17 1946 elections, 85, 105 1948 elections, 81, 92–3, 103, 107–10 concession to Church, 108–9 discrimination against communists, 112–13 and election of Pius XII, 51 Resistance movement, 104–5 Italian Film Board, 223 Italian Socialist Party, 103, 104–5 Italy, 103–17 1946 elections, 79, 85, 105 1948 elections, 61, 68, 72, 80–1, 92–3, 103, 107–10 1953 elections, 109–10 ‘bribesville’ scandals, 114 ‘Catholic triumphalism’, 13, 112–13 papal concern for future of, 13, 54, 60–1, 69–70, 72, 80–1, 106–12 peace treaty (1947), 71, 104, 106 Protestant discrimination, 112–13 Resistance movement, 104–5 ‘swindle law’, 109–10 trade unions, 112 Trieste dispute, 86, 103 itinerant preachers in Italy, 111–12 Ivasic, Sister Zarka, 124 Iwand, Hans, 10, 37, 39, 42

Jackson, C. D., 221 Jackson, Robert H., 129 Jacobs, Seth, 96 Japanese Canadians, 167, 176 Jaques, Norman, 169 Jehovah’s Witnesses, 167, 169, 172, 177 Jemolo, C. A., 112 Jerusalem, 73 John XXIII, pope, 63, 114, 148, 152, 154, 158 John Paul II, pope, 63, 67, 97 Johnson, Hewlett, Dean of Canterbury, 189 Johnson, Paul, 98n Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, 29 Junghans, Helmar, 206 Karlovichi synod, 24 Karpov, Georgii, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 34n Kautsky, Karl, 201 Kazan, Elia, 218–19 Kennan, George, 82, 87, 92 Kennedy, John F., 144n Kertzer, David, 105 KGB, 216 Khrushchev, Nikita, 149–50, 215–16 Kidnappers, The (film), 219 King, Mackenzie, 163, 165, 167–8, 171–2, 173, 175 Kir, Canon, 149–50 Kirkby, Diane, 188, 191 Kleinschmidt, Karl, 201 Knowles, Stanley, 168–9 Korean war, 57, 59, 93, 164, 181, 195 ‘brainwashing scare’, 222 Krizari movement, 132 Künneth, Walter, 37, 43–4, 45 Lach, Archbishop Josip, 63 Lambeth Conference (1948), 174, 182 Lampe, John R., 134 Lane, Anne, 125 Lateran Agreements, 69, 71, 85, 107, 111, 113 Latin America, 86, 89 Laube, Adolf, 206 Le Roy, Mervyn, 217

Index 239 Leffler, Melvyn, 3, 100–1n Leighton, W. H., 188 Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich, 213 Leo XIII, pope, 110 Liénart, Cardinal, 147, 157 Lithuania, 52 Living Church, 3 Llosa, Monsignor, 151 local church in Britain, 17–18, 188–99 Logan, Oliver, 110 Lombardi, Fr, 111–12 Long Telegram (Kennan), 82, 87 Lost People, The (film and play), 221 Ludford, Frank, 191 Luraschi, Luigi G., 218, 224 Luther, Martin, 18, 201, 202, 206–7, 208 anniversaries in GDR, 203, 205, 207 Lutheranism: in GDR, 203–4, 207 Martin Luther film, 219 two kingdoms doctrine, 40–1, 44, 45 see also Darmstadt statement McCarey, Leo, 217–18 McCarthy, Joseph R., 54, 181 see also House Committee on UnAmerican Activities McCormack, John W., 135 Mackenzie, Ian, 168 Maddox, Colonel William P., 125 ‘Madonna Pellegrina’, 111 Maglione, Cardinal, 54, 106 Malik, Charles, 171, 174 Man Between, The (film), 216 Manchurian Candidate, The (film), 222 March of Time (documentary series), 219 Marella, Cardinal, 148 Marian cult, 111 Maritain, Jacques, 166, 174 Marquis, Eugène, 169, 173 Marshall, George C., 56 Marshall Plan (1947), 71, 136 papal support for, 56, 88 as political tool, 72, 87–8, 89, 90, 91, 92–3, 109 Martin, Kingsley, 92–3

Martin Luther (film), 219 Marxism: accordance with religious gospel, 39, 46 Marxist historiography in GDR, 18–19, 200–10 see also atheism; communism Mary, Virgin mother, 50, 111 Marzio, Jean-Marie, 158 Mathews, H. Freeman, 98n Matteotti Crisis (1924), 106 Mehring, Franz, 201 Meiser, Hans, Bishop of Berlin, 42 Messineo, Fr, 106 Meusel, Alfred, 201 Michaud, Benoît, 173 Mihailovic, Draza, 131 Mindszenty, Cardinal József, Primate of Hungary, 58, 60, 73, 74, 109, 178, 223–4 Prisoner film, 220–4, 225, 226 Miracle in Soho (film), 219 Miracle Worker, The (film), 216 Miscamble, Wilson, 81–2 Mission de France, 156 Mission de Paris, 156 missionary work: British missionaries fight communism, 193 influence on US foreign policy, 4–5, 6, 214 Russian Orthodox Church, 10, 30 Moeller, Bernd, 206 Molotov, V. M., 26, 81 Monde, Le, 127, 150 Montini, Monsignor Giambattista, 55, 63, 107, 109, 123 Mooney, Cardinal Edward, 142n Moral Rearmament organization, 198n Morilleau, Monsignor, 151 Moro, Aldo, 115 Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, 217 Muench, Bishop Aloisius J., 120 Müntzer, Thomas, 18, 200–1, 202–3, 204, 208–9 Mury, Gilbert, 157–8

240 Index Mussolini, Benito, 51, 69, 106, 110, 111 Mutchmor, James, 184n My Son John (film), 217–18, 226

Osservatore Romano, l’, 55, 56, 60–1, 71, 110, 127, 152 Ostpolitik, 18, 63, 206 Ottaviani, Cardinal, 106, 149

National Catholic Welfare Conference (NCWC), 128, 134 National Committee for a Free Europe (NCFE), 213, 217 National Conference on the Spiritual Foundations of Our Democracy, 95–6 Nazism, 10, 16, 188–9, 226 Croatian collaboration accusations, 127–8, 129–30, 132 German declaration of guilt see Darmstadt statement and Pius XII, 11, 51–2, 62, 79, 98n and Soviet policy on religion, 26 New Statesman, 92–3 New York Times, 89, 127, 128 Next Voice You Hear, The (film), 217, 225 Niebuhr, Reinhold, 86, 96 Niemöller, Martin, 10, 37, 39, 42, 43, 46 Nineteen Eighty-Four (film), 222 Nipperdey, Thomas, 206 NKGB/NKVD, 24–5, 32, 33, 34n North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), 56, 104, 114, 115 Nouvelle Critique, La, 157–8 NSC 68, 1–2, 6

Pacelli, Eugenio see Pius XII Paramount Studios, 217, 218, 224 Parsons, J. Graham, 81, 87–8, 89–90, 126 Partito Popolare, 105, 108 Pastor Angelicus (film), 110 Patterson, Richard C., 124, 128, 134 Paul VI, pope, 63 see also Montini Pavelic, Anton, 70, 127, 130, 131 PCF see French Communist Party Peake, Charles, 131 Pearson, Lester, 176–7 peasant religion, 24 Peasants’ uprising (1524), 18, 200, 202, 203, 204–5, 207 Pétain, Marshal, 159 Pflimlin, Pierre, 149 Phayer, Michael, 137n Pichel, Irving, 219 Pinard, Roch, 169–70 Pirolley, Monsignor, 157 Pius IX, pope, 110 Pius X, pope, 110 Pius XI, pope, 50, 106, 108, 110, 111, 113 Pius XII, pope (Eugenio Pacelli), 11–12 and Americans in Vatican, 120–1 anti-communist stance, 11, 50–66, 67, 68–9, 72–3, 79–80, 83–4, 90–1, 188 campaign to convince US, 70–1 on Catholic schools, 152 Christmas messages, 54, 56, 62, 63 compassion for post-war Germany, 69–70, 72–3 concern for post-war Italy, 14, 60–1, 69–70, 80–1, 85, 106–15 cult of the personality, 13, 110, 113 death and reaction of French communists, 159 excommunication of communists, 58, 61–2, 68, 74, 103, 114–15 and Gaullist France, 146

Oberman, Heiko, 206 Observer, 85 October (film), 215 Odinstov, M. I., 29 Offico Catholique International du Cinéma, 223 O’Hara, Bishop Gerald, 120 On the Waterfront (film), 218–19, 226 Orlando, Vittorio Emmanuele, 107 Orlemanski, Stanislas, 54–5 Ormesson, Wladimir d’, 147 Orthodox Church see Russian Orthodox Church Orwell, George, 219, 222 Osborne, D’Arcy, 79

Index 241 Hurley’s appointment, 121–2 letter exchange with Truman, 88–91, 92, 93 and Nazism, 11, 51–2, 62, 69, 79, 98n neutrality in WW2, 51, 52–3, 68 opposes worker-priest movement, 156–7, 158 post-war non-alignment position, 63, 71 as Roman pope, 110, 111 scholarly attacks on, 98n support for Marshall Plan, 56, 88 l’ultimo papa, 104 and Western allies, 11, 12, 51–2, 62, 68–9 see also US–Vatican alliance Pizzardo, Cardinal, 156–7 Poggi, Gianfranco, 103 Poland: Catholicism in, 55, 59, 63, 72–3, 74, 115 Polish army in exile, 100n Soviet expansion into, 52, 53, 69, 81, 82 politics and religion, 7 see also Church–State relations Pollock, Jackson, 213 Pospielovsky, Dimitry, 34n post-revisionism, 2–3 Poulain, Jean-Claude, 158 Pouliot, J. F., 172 power balances, 2–3 Prisoner, The (film), 220–4, 225, 226 propaganda: Catholic propaganda in Italy, 108–9, 111–12 in cinema of 1950s, 19, 211–31 religion in, 5, 6, 7–8, 78, 188–9, 212–26 Protestant Reformation, 18, 200, 206 Protestantism: anti-Catholicism in US, 83–4, 94 and Darmstadt statement, 10–11, 37–49 discrimination against in Italy, 112 and human rights in Canada, 16, 166–7, 169, 180, 181 missionary subculture influence in US, 4–5, 6, 214

Psychological Strategy Board (PSB), 7 psychological warfare, 7, 78, 222 see also propaganda Qatermass Experiment, The (film), 220 Québec and human rights, 168, 169, 172, 180, 182 Quo Vadis (film), 217 racial discrimination in Canada, 167, 168 Radio Free Europe, 214 Rank, J. Arthur, 219 Rastouil, Monsignor, 147 Reagan, Ronald, 7, 67, 96, 97 Reams, Robert Borden, 133, 134 Red Danube, The (film), 216 Red Menace, The (film), 218, 226 Red Planet Mars (film), 211–12, 225 Reformation see Protestant Reformation Reformed theology, 41, 44–5 ‘regent status’, 121–2 Reisz, Karel, 225 religion: as instrument of foreign policy, 20, 77–102 meaning of, 7 in political rhetoric, 5, 7–8, 77, 87, 92, 93, 96, 121 and politics, 7 in scholarship, 5, 6–7, 8 Religion and the Cold War project, 8–9 religious fundamentalism, 4, 224 religious referent in human rights declaration, 170, 171, 173, 174–5, 176, 179, 180–1 Renovationist Church, 24, 31, 32–3 Resistance movement: in France, 159, 160 in Italy, 104–5 reunification of Germany, 67, 208–9 Rhodes, Anthony, 85, 196n Richard, Fr., 147 Richaud, Cardinal, 151 Ricquet, R. P., 157 Riddell, R. G., 170

242 Index Robbins, Keith, 194 Roberts, Frank, 99n Robespierre, Maximilien, 170 Rocca, Cardinal Nassalli, 114–15 Rochement, Louis de, 219 Rochet, Waldeck, 154–5 Roebuck, Arthur, 170–1, 178, 180–1 Roman Catholicism: alliance with US see US–Vatican alliance Americanization of diplomatic corps, 120–1 anti-communist stance, 11–15, 50–66, 67, 68–9, 72–3, 79–80 as authoritarian system in Italy, 13, 106–7, 113 Church–State relations in Fifth Republic France, 145–62 cooperation with communism in Fifth Republic France, 14–15, 154–9, 160 Croatian collaboration role, 130 dominant power in communist Europe, 87–8 excommunication of communists, 58, 61–2, 68, 74, 103, 114–15 and human rights issues in Canada, 15–16, 163–87 intelligence services, 86–90, 100n, 126 and Italy’s political future, 13, 60–1, 69–70, 80–1, 85, 106–15 political divisions, 106–7 response to Prisoner film, 223, 225 response to Stepinac trial, 127–8, 134–5 schools problem in France, 150–4, 160 and Soviet elimination of Uniate Church, 28–30, 52, 59, 73, 79 worker priests in France, 155, 156–9 see also anti-Catholicism; Pius XII Romania, 59, 72, 73 Romanian Orthodox Church, 73 ‘Romanita’ ideology, 110 Rome: in Catholic rhetoric, 110–11 1952 city elections, 114

Roosevelt, Franklin D., 57, 122, 139n Four Freedoms, 166 and post-war Italy, 106 relations with Vatican, 51, 52, 53–4, 71, 80, 81, 84 ‘unconditional surrender’ policy, 53, 55, 69 Roques, Monsignor, 147, 151 Rothko, Mark, 213 Rotter, Andrew J., 4–5, 8 Rudolph, Susanne Hoeber, 5 Ruffini, Cardinal, 115 Rumania see Romania Rumsby, Tom, 194 Russian Orthodox Church: Church–State relations, 9–10, 23–36, 52, 79 cinematic representations, 215, 216, 226 and elimination of Uniate Church, 28–30, 52, 79 international activities, 27–8, 33 missionary role, 10, 30 pre-war persecution, 23–4, 33, 213–14, 215 and underground churches, 31–3, 34 Russian people: distinct from Soviet state, 53, 59, 62 religious faith, 5, 6, 59, 193 Ryan, Major Daniel J., 122 Sacred Congregation, 224 St Laurent, Louis, 163, 164, 167–8, 175, 176–7, 181, 182–3 Salazar, António de Oliveira, 148 Salic, Father Ivan, 130 Samson and Delilah (film), 217 Saunders, Frances Stonor, 213 Sayre, Nora, 226 science-fiction films, 211–12, 219–20, 225 ‘scientific-educational’ propaganda, 213 Scott, F. R. (Frank), 178–80, 182 Scott, Canon Frederick George, 178 Screen Directors Guild: loyalty oath, 217 Seebass, Gottfried, 206

Index 243 Serbian Orthodox Croatians, 127 Sereny, Gita, 98n Servin, Marcel, 147 Shantz, Harold, 127 Sheehy, M., 99n Sheen, Bishop Fulton, 60 Shkarovskii, M. V., 27 Sight and Sound, 225 Simansky, Aleksii, Patriarch of Moscow, 25, 26, 27 Singer Not the Song, The (film), 219 Siri, Cardinal, 106–7 Sisco, Gordon, 184n Sisters of Charity, Croatia, 123–5 Smirin, M. M., 201 Smith, Walter Bedell, 5, 99n Soviet Peace Movement, 23 Soviet Union, 2–3 anti-Catholicism, 28–30, 52, 56, 79, 213–14 Church–State relations, 9–10, 23–36 cinema and propaganda, 19, 212–13, 214–16, 224, 226 decline and end of Cold War, 67, 215 eradication of Uniate Church, 10, 27, 28–30, 52, 59, 73, 79 Pius XII’s anti-communism, 50–66, 67, 68–9, 72–3, 79–80 religions in, 24, 28–9 split with Yugoslavia, 73, 133–6 underground churches, 10, 24, 31–3, 33–4 Vatican relations with, 71 see also communism; Russian Orthodox Church; Russian people; Stalin Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (SED), 201, 205, 207, 208 Spain, 86, 106 Spellman, Francis, Archbishop of New York, 106, 123, 149 Spinosa, Alberto, 104 Stalin, Josef, 14, 69, 81, 92, 215 disdain for Vatican, 55–6 on Fulton speech, 99n influence of personality, 3, 214 on Italy, 105

religious policy, 24–5, 26, 27, 32, 52, 54–5, 56, 57, 73, 214 split with Tito’s Yugoslavia, 73, 133–6 see also Soviet Union state and church see Church–State relations State of Israel, 73 Steinmetz, Max, 201–2 Stepinac, Aloysius, Archbishop of Zagreb, 14, 58, 60, 70, 109, 221 and breach in US–Vatican relationship, 126–33, 134–5, 137 secret memorandum, 130–3 Stettinius, Edward R., 120 Stevenson, Adlai, 54 Stewart, Alistair, 168 Storm Center (film), 216 Stragorodsky, Sergei, Patriarch of Moscow, 23, 24, 25, 26, 31 Stritch, Cardinal Samuel, 121, 128 Strum, Gladys, 169 Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt, 37, 41–2, 43 Suhard, Archbishop, 156 Tardini, Monsignor, 51, 53, 54, 55 Taylor, Myron, 51, 53, 55, 71–2, 73–4 friendship with Bishop Hurley, 122, 135–6 role in US–Vatican alliance, 79–80, 83–7, 88, 89, 90, 93 WCC mission, 94–5 Temple, William, Archbishop of Canterbury, 190 Ten Commandments, The (film), 217, 225 Theas, Monsignor, 149, 151 Them! (film), 216 Theoharis, Athan, 81 theological divisions in Germany, 40–1 Thomson, David, 217 Thorez, Maurice, 15, 155, 158–9 see also French Communist Party Three Songs of Lenin (film), 215 Tillich, Paul, 121 Tiso, Monsignor, 109 Tisserant, Cardinal, 149

244 Index Tito, Marshal (Josip Broz), 105 relations with US, 124–5, 133–6 relations with Vatican, 58, 121, 122, 123–4, 126 split with Stalin, 73, 133–6 Stepinac imprisonment, 127, 131, 134–5 see also Yugoslavia Tittmann, 53–4 Tizard, Rev. Leslie, 197n Togliatti, Palmiro, 90, 105, 108–9 see also Italian Communist Party totalitarianism: cinematic representations, 221–2, 226 local clergy response to, 189–90 papal opposition to, 11, 51, 54, 57, 59, 166 US supports resistance to, 87 see also Fascism; Nazism; Soviet Union trade unions: in Birmingham, 190–1 in France, 148, 156, 158 in Italy, 112 Treaty of Versailles (1919), 70 Trieste, 82, 86, 103, 125 Trotsky, Leon, 19, 215 Trudeau, Pierre, 164 Trueblood, Elton, 95 Truman, Harry S.: Campaign of Truth, 8 conciliatory approach, 81–2 hardening of policy towards Soviet Union, 81–4, 90–1, 93 letter exchange with Pius XII, 88–91, 92, 93 Mr. Citizen, 80, 93–4 relations with Vatican, 12–13, 60, 71–2, 77–102 relations with Vatican over Yugoslavia, 121–2, 136 religion as weapon in foreign policy, 84–5, 86–7, 92 religious rhetoric, 77, 87, 93, 121 WCC proposal, 94–6 see also containment policy Truman Doctrine, 87, 88, 90, 91 Tunstall, Rev. Thomas, 190, 193

Turgeon, James, 173 Turkey: Soviet threat, 82, 87 two kingdoms doctrine, 40–1, 44, 45 Tyler, Wat, 202 Ukraine: elimination of Uniate Church, 27, 28–30, 52, 79 Ukrainian Catholic Church of Eastern rite, 52 ‘unconditional surrender’ policy, 53, 55, 69 underground churches in Russia, 10, 24, 31–3, 33–4 UNESCO, 174 Uniate Church: assimilation in Romania, 73 elimination in Ukraine, 10, 27, 28–30, 52, 59, 79 United Church, Canada, 166–7 United Nations (UN): Pius XII’s view of, 55 see also Universal Declaration of Human Rights United States: alliance with Vatican see US–Vatican alliance anti-Catholicism, 60, 83–4, 94, 137 anti-communism, 77–102, 181, 216–20 Catholic careerists in Vatican, 120 Catholic pressure in, 60, 70–1, 135 cinema and propaganda, 19–20, 211–12, 216–26 European recovery program see Marshall Plan foreign policy and religion, 4–5, 6, 77–102 House Committee on Un-American Activities, 82, 219 ideology of, 3–4, 6, 87 ‘In God We Trust’ motto, 96, 217 intelligence alliance with Vatican, 86–90, 119–23, 125–6, 133–4 and Italian post-war elections, 72, 85, 92–3, 109 NSC 68, 1–2, 6 optimistic approach to Soviet Union, 52–5 Pledge of Allegiance, 96

Index 245 post-war policy shift towards Soviet Union, 81–4, 90–1, 93 rebuilding post-war Europe, 56–7 religious divisions, 92, 94 significance of religion in, 1, 3–8, 77, 87, 92, 93–4, 214 see also containment policy; Roosevelt; Truman; US… Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 16, 164, 166, 167–83 Canada’s misgivings, 171–81, 182 drafting by Human Rights Commission, 167–8, 169–70, 171–2, 174–6, 177 inclusion of religious referent, 170, 171, 173, 174–5, 176, 179, 180–1 legal precision questioned, 175–7 unregistered priests in Russia, 31–2, 33 US Advertising Council, 213 US Information Service (USIS), 6, 217, 222 US Office of Strategic Studies, 121, 125, 130 US State Department: lack of comment on Stepinac verdict, 127–30, 133 realignment with Yugoslavia, 134, 135, 136 religion and propaganda, 6, 122 US–Vatican alliance, 12–13, 67–8, 77–102 contentious issues, 68, 73–4, 126–33 divergence of allegiances, 133–5 intelligence services, 14, 86–90, 119–23, 125–6, 133–4 Italian elections, 92–3, 109 post-war cooperation, 71–2 and Yugoslavia, 14, 118–44 Ustase regime in Yugoslavia, 70, 123–4 archives, 132 and Stepinac, 127–8, 131, 132 Varcoe, F.P., 170 Vasil’eva, 27 Vatican see Pius XII; Roman Catholicism; US–Vatican alliance Velebit, Vladimir, 131 Veniamin, Metropolitan, 29 Verret, Michael, 158

‘victim pope’ myth, 110 Vietnam war, 96 Vishinsky, Andrei, 58 Vitalii, Archbishop, 33 Vittorini, Elio, 113 Vogler, Günter, 206 Voice of America, 6 Wander, Philip, 87 War Measures Act (Canada), 167 Warsaw Pact (1955), 194–5 Washington Post, 2 WCC see World Council of Churches Weatherhead, Rev. Leslie, 197n Webster, Richard, 112 Wellman, William, 217 Wenger, R. P., 147, 157 Whitfield, Stephen, 219 Wilson, Leonard, Bishop of Birmingham, 190 Wohlfeil, Rainer, 206 Wolgast, Eike, 206 Woll, Josephine, 216 worker priests in France, 155, 156–9 Vatican opposition to, 156–7 World Council of Churches, 23, 28, 29, 74, 94–5 Evanston Assembly, 95 human rights endorsement, 174, 179, 182 Wurm, Theophil, Bishop of Württemberg, 42 Wurmser, André, 146, 150 Wyszynski, Stefan, Primate of Poland, 74, 221 Yalta agreements, 55, 56, 69, 81, 105 Young Lovers, The (film), 216 Yugoslavia, 105 anti-Americanism, 119 Catholic persecution, 70, 72, 115, 119, 121, 123–5, 127–8 realignment of US policy towards, 133–6, 137 relations with Vatican, 58, 63, 115, 123–4, 126 split with Soviet Union, 73, 133–6 Trieste dispute, 86, 103 US–Vatican alliance in, 14, 118–44