BREAKING NEWS -- New Evidence on the Catholic Church's Uneasy Relationship with Nazi Germany: The Swastika Blessing

Well, I suppose that depends on what you consider "news" and "breaking," since we're talking about a historical event here.   This article reports on information that was posted just a few hours ago (as of late Friday night, October 7), at http://www.theswastikablessing.com/.  Here's what it's all about:

Several months ago I was privileged to report an amazing discovery made by my Yale roommate, Steve Galebach.  You can find the earlier report here: "Was the the Vatican Soft on Nazism?"   It has lots of background you won't find here, so you may want to check it out.  In short:   In doing some archival research for a client, Steve found this photograph in Der Stürmer, a violently anti-Semitic Nazi newspaper (in fact, not a newspaper -- a wildly polemical propaganda rag) that was widely disseminated and influential in Germany.




Caption:  "An archbishop blesses the Nazi banner."
[Click on photo to enlarge.]

It reportedly shows Archbishop Santiago Luis Copello of Buenos Aires blessing the Nazi flag (not yet the German national flag) at the worldwide Eucharistic Congress held there in 1934.  Hitler became German Chancellor in 1933.

Is this a big deal?  Yes.  How big remains uncertain.

(1)  There are no other reports that anyone has been able to find that any senior Catholic priest ever blessed a swastika flag.  This photograph has never been noticed or reported on in any of the vast scholarship on the relationship between the Nazis and the Roman Catholic Church.   The RCC forbade blessing the Nazi symbol. 

So Steve's discovery is historic.   Future historians of Nazi-Roman Catholic relations will be required to account for it.

(2)  Second, the Vatican's emissary to the Eucharistic Congress, guest of Archbishop Copello, and the senior Catholic official present (not at this ceremony) was one Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, the Vatican Secretary of State.  Cardinal Pacelli became Pope Pius XII in 1939.   There is a lively historiography as to Pacelli's attitude toward Nazi Germany.  While there is considerable evidence of Pacelli's disapproval of Nazism, there is enough uncertainty over what he knew and when he knew about the Holocaust to prompt one author to call him "Hitler's Pope."  (John Cornwell, Hitler's Pope, 1999; and there was also Rolf Hochhuth's play, The Deputy which was also highly critical of Pius XII on this score, later made into a movie called "Amen" by Costa-Gavras.)  Despite the controversy that continues regarding his attitude toward European Jewry, the Vatican is currently proceeding with the steps required to declare Pius XII a saint.

(3)  Copello himself was elevated to Cardinal months later, in 1935.


Archbishop, later Cardinal, Copello

(4)  The world -- including Argentina, and including in particular Catholics in Argentina -- knew quite a lot about Nazism in 1934.  Mein Kampf was widely known, as was the violent antisemitism of the Nazi Party.  The incredibly savage purge of the SA (Sturmabteilung), the Nazis' military arm, in which scores and probably hundreds were murdered (including some extremely prominent Germans outside of the military), received worldwide press and was heavily covered in Argentina.  (This "Night of the Long Knives" is one of the centerpiece events of of a current popular history by Erik Larson, In the Garden of Beasts.)  That slaughter took place in June 1934.  The swastika blessing was in October.  The Nazis' methods and motives were already viewed with alarm -- World War II, after all, was only five years off.   In the months before the blessing, official Catholic publications in Argentina condemned the Nazis for their anti-Catholic actions, among other things.  Could Copello possibly have been merely naive or uninformed?  And if he was not, does his decision to proceed reflect in any way on his superiors from Rome?

When I originally reported on this a year ago, Galebach, a staunch Roman Catholic, wasn't quite sure what to make of all this. 

Neither was I.  My initial concern was that Steve did not have any confirmation that the photograph was authentic.  It appeared nowhere (apparently) besides one of the least credible publications in history.  I had other questions, and still do, but that one was fundamental.

Well, there are two pieces of news hot off the Internet:

First, the authenticity of the photograph is no longer in doubt.  In searching through issues of the Buenos Aires newspaper La Prensa from 1934 earlier this year, Steve's wife Diane Galebach found a report of this ceremony and an explicit mention that among the flags Archbishop Copello blessed was the Nazi party flag.  Present were the German ambassador and a group of Catholic pilgrims from Germany visiting the Eucharistic Congress.  Although  not as dramatic as the photograph, this brief passage is every bit as significant -- more so, in fact, because it was not found in a scurrilous Nazi broadsheet like the photo but in a contemporaneous news account from the Eucharistic Congress itself in a legitimate newspaper.  In fact, the newspaper reported that the ceremony was a "consecration" -- a greater Catholic honor than a "blessing."  Thus, a Catholic archbishop blessed, or consecrated, a swastika on the eve of the visit to the Eucharistic Congress by the future Pius XII.  It happened.

Second, Steve and Diane have begun to publish their findings in an online book called The Swastika Blessing.  (http://www.theswastikablessing.com/)  You may download and read a free introduction that is pretty complete in itself, and for $12 you can download Volume 1, which contains much more detailed information and some fascinating background relating to the relationship between Roman Catholicism and National Socialism.  Three more volumes relating to Vatican policy towards Nazi Germany in 1934 and 1935, and additional "causes and context" research are scheduled for release before the end of the year.  For your $12 now, you get a 111-page PDF in a Power-Point-type format with lots of text and many photographs and documents, complete with translations.  Extremely interesting and clearly presented. 

[NOTE:  I reviewed and provided extensive comments and suggestions on early drafts of Steve's work on this, before Diane became more involved.  Steve's and Diane's project changed considerably in scope and presentation thereafter; I reviewed one early and very different draft of the present format, and the present incarnation not at all.  I am mentioned in their acknowledgements.]

The question before the house is:  Should this photograph -- rather, should the event it portrays -- provoke a re-examination of RCC-Nazi relations in the years leading up to World War II?  And, of more urgent current interest, should it provoke a re-examination of the attitude toward National Socialism of Cardinal Pacelli -- Pope Pius XII -- as the RCC moves ever closer to elevating him to sainthood?




Cardinal Pacelli, later Pope Pius XII

The latter is the question that exercises the Galebachs.  Both are devout Catholics.  They have chosen a somewhat unorthodox method of presenting what they've found, their book taking the form of a presentation of evidence both damaging and exculpatory to the hierarchy of the RCC in alternating sections presented by an "investigator" and "defense counsel."   I did not find this unusual approach distracting, and it has the merit of making room for a great deal of background information.   The free Introduction has quite a bit of information in summary form, it's much more than a tease.  Chapter I is a detailed overview of events at the Eucharistic Congress, including the blessing, the relationship between the major players (Pius XI, Pacelli/Pius XII, and Copello), and what was known about the Nazis' ideology and practices in Argentina in 1934.

Despite their scrupulousness in presenting evidence favorable to Pacelli/Pius XII, the overall impression the Galebachs leave is one of skepticism as to whether Pacelli's robes are entirely clean.  As a result, the reader is left with the further impression that the Galebachs believe that the episode may well be material to the ongoing beatification process for Pius XII -- and, presumably, adverse to the sainthood partisans -- although they are careful not to come right out and say it.  (Although their subheading promises "an "investigation into a photograph that changes history.") 

That's quite an impression to derive from one photograph and a confirmatory newspaper item.  I hope I am not being unfair in attributing it to them.   Is it justified?

It should be noted that no one took special note of this event at the time.  The photo appeared nowhere until it popped up some months later in Der Stürmer, but the contemporary newspaper account explicitly stated that the Archbishop had blessed the swastika flag -- it used the phrase "cruz gamada," which translates as "swastika."   Whatever this might mean to us now, it did not provoke any notice at the time that the Galebachs have been able to find.  (To my knowledge -- no idea what goodies they have in store for us in later installments.)   If, as the Galebachs have shown, the Nazis' virulent anti-Catholicism and violent suppression of religious freedom were known to Catholic officials, why not? 

The Galebachs have found themselves at the center of quite a mystery.

In the absence of direct evidence of either (1) Pacelli's complicity, or (2) Copello's intentions in blessing the Nazi banner, the Galebachs proceed in the only way available to them:  By examining the overall context of Nazi/Vatican relations in the mid-Thirties, in Argentina and Rome.  What they have produced so far, as investigators with a large family to care for and other jobs to do, is nothing short of astounding.   I don't know everything they've come up with or where their own thinking has settled, but I am looking forward to the remaining three installments.

Here's that link again:  http://www.theswastikablessing.com/

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Was the Vatican Soft on Nazism? An Exclusive Report on Some Intriguing New Evidence

It's the dream of every blogger to come up with something resembling a scoop, since we’re usually relegated to commenting on other people's news-gathering. But today, my Cool Hot Centrists, I have for you what amounts to something of a news flash. It will mainly engage persons interested in the history of the Roman Catholic Church in the twentieth century, the relationship of the RCC to the Nazis, the history of the Third Reich – and, of contemporary interest, the current campaign to declare Pope Pius XII a saint. It centers on a fascinating photograph recently discovered by an attorney looking for something else entirely, and his subsequent investigation into what he found.

Let me declare my interest. The attorney is Stephen H. Galebach, lately of Medford, Massachusetts. Steve was my college roommate for three years at Yale and a good friend in all the years since. He contacted me when he discovered this photo and asked me to comment critically on an essay he had written about it. I did so, extensively, and corresponded with Steve on my concerns with his text. I have sent him a few items I found online that relate to his research. His questions – and conclusions -- are entirely his own.

Galebach has discovered a photograph of the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Luis Copello, that purports (I use this cautionary verb for reasons I’ll get to) to show him blessing a Nazi flag during the Eucharistic Congress held in Buenos Aires in 1934.   The photo appeared in a Nazi newspaper in 1935. Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933.  Archbishop Copello was elevated to Cardinal in 1935.  Here is the link to Galebach's preliminary disclosure of this picture and his research into it.  I believe there will be more to come in scholarly publications.

Here is the photo:

Caption:  "An Archbishop Blesses the Swastika Banner"

You can examine a larger version by clicking on the image.

Galebach believes that the photograph may raise important questions about the attitude of one Eugenio Pacelli toward German National Socialism. At the time, Eugenio Pacelli was the Vatican Secretary of State. He was present in Buenos Aires at the Eucharistic Congress, the guest of Archbishop Copello, when this photo was allegedly taken.

That same Eugenio Pacelli became Pope Pius XII. Pius XII's attitude toward the Nazis is the subject of vast and bitter controversy into which I do not propose to delve. More importantly to Galebach’s inquiry, Pius XII is currently going through the Vatican's process to determine whether he should be declared a saint.

Eugenio Pacelli, Pope Pius XII

Now . . . my headline up there is a bit of a tease.  Galebach's initial disclosure on his website is not nearly so sensational, but instead reproduces the photograph and poses ten questions, to which he appends some (but by no means all) of the research he has conducted to date, modestly acknowledging that further research is needed. He saves to last this question: “How, in the final analysis, does this evidence reflect on Eugenio Pacelli [the future Pius XII] and the pope of the time, Pius XI?” To this question he appends no additional information or speculation.

Galebach is not anti-Catholic. Quite the opposite. He is an adult convert to Roman Catholicism who takes his devotion with utter seriousness. He served with prize-winning distinction in the Marine Corps (I personally witnessed Kingman Brewster, Jr., Yale's rather liberal President at the time, wincingly present Steve with something his roommates (Chuck Casper, Alan Ringel, and I) called the Grunt of the Year award for his Officer Candidate School achievements at Quantico). After Yale and the Marines he went to Harvard Law School and was an editor on the Harvard Law Review. He served as a policy advisor in the Reagan White House and Department of Justice and has been in private practice since then. Nor is Galebach a fundamentalist crazy – he discovered the photograph in question in the course of handling World War II restitution claims for American descendants of the Czech "shoe king" Jan Bata who was attacked in the Nazi press as a Jew.  He has written extensively on the abortion issue, and has proposed creative approaches to the prosecution of RCC pedophile priests. And, lest his Roman Catholic bona fides remain in doubt, he and his lovely wife Diane have ten children. QED.



My friend, Steve Galebach

(I am not Catholic and have no interest in whether Pius XII is declared a saint.  I have studied the history of the Third Reich but know almost nothing about the scholarship over whether the Vatican closed its eyes to Nazi atrocities.)

To the best of Galebach's ability to determine, no researcher – nobody at all – has ever noticed the existence of this photograph since its appearance in Germany in 1935. And here I must remark on the first important question raised by this photograph: Is it real? That is, is it a true representation of what it purports to be? Did the act it portrays take place? If so, then it is every bit as important as Galebach expects that it is, and it raises all of the other questions he presents. To his credit, the question of the photo’s authenticity is the first one he tackles.

Galebach found the photograph on page 5 of a microfilm version of a July 1935 issue of Der Stűrmer, the virulently anti-semitic Nazi newspaper published by the notorious Julius Streicher, eventually convicted of crimes against humanity at Nuremburg and hanged in 1946.  (His hanging was botched -- he suffered considerably before he was finally dispatched.)   Any resemblance between Der Stűrmer and a real newspaper is probably limited to its use of newsprint. It contained mainly anti-Jewish propaganda, incredibly lurid, and by no means a reliable source for any kind of information. So the begged question is critical: Did it really publish a photograph accurately portraying a Roman Catholic archbishop blessing a Nazi flag at an international conference in 1934? 

Der Stűrmer; Julius Streicher



Many questions spring to mind;

--   Is that really Archbishop Copello?  (Probably.)
--   Was the image manipulated to create a false image?
--   Why was this 1934 photo not published until 1935 (to anyone's current knowledge)?
--   Why did the Nazis make no other use of this photo (to anyone's current knowledge)?
--   Why didn't the Vatican or any of its German representatives take any notice of the photo or the event it purports to show (to anyone's current knowledge)?
--   Why did it only appear on page 5 of Der Stűrmer?
--   Why have no scholars noticed this photograph or reported on the event it purports to show (to Galebach's current knowledge)?

Galebach is a private citizen. Although trained as a scholar at Yale, he has neither the time nor the resources to travel the world checking original sources or poring through German or Argentine libraries.  (He is fluent in German, but not Spanish; he relies on one of his accomplished sons for the latter.)  He is accordingly required to reason from negative evidence – other than the facial appearance of the photo itself, he is limited to arguing that there is no reason to believe that it is inauthentic. He presents a fair number of arguments against inauthenticity, and some of them are provocative and even persuasive, but in the end it will probably be left to full-time investigators to determine whether this photograph appearing in a notorious Nazi propaganda organ portrays an event that actually took place, and whether the accompanying text in Der Stűrmer (which Galebach details) describes it accurately. I should add that Galebach has not had access to original newsprint copies of Der Stűrmer, so the preliminary question is whether the primary source is accurately reproduced in the microfilm copy Galebach examined. For what it’s worth, I lean about 55% toward authenticity. If I were going to fake a picture like this, I don’t think I would have put a kid at the edge of the frame; that unusual image gives the thing just the slightest whiff of legitimacy.  (That the figure on the far right is a child is clearer on the larger versions of the photo.  On the other hand, the other officials Der Stűrmer reported to be present at the event are not shown.)  It’s the threshold question, and you can bet that when Galebach’s find becomes generally known, lots of historians with a stake in Roman Catholic and Third Reich history -- and Pius XII’s legacy -- will be looking into this topic with considerable verve.

The photo is of interest even if it is fake.  At a minimum, it demonstrates the Nazi Party's interest in demonstrating that its legitimacy, and maybe even its publicly-known goals, were endorsed by the Vatican.

If the consensus is that the photo is the goods, then look out. A ceremony of this significance taking place while Archbishop Copello was hosting the most influential of Vatican officials, Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli, soon to become Pope Pius XII, during a Eucharistic Congress of enormous importance to Roman Catholics worldwide, will focus renewed attention on the question of Pius XII’s attitude toward the Third Reich during his papacy.   (Not to mention that of Pius XI, pope at the time of the photograph.)   And that, in turn, may influence the views of Roman Catholic churchmen on the current question before the house – is Pius XII a saint?

And folks, unless you know Steve Galebach – you read it here first.

Check out his site.  Here it is again.

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