Hide and Seek: The Irish Priest in the Vatican who Defied the Nazi Command. The dramatic true story of rivalry and survival during WWII.

The seminarian was also a fervent advocate of the Irish language. He maintained that it should be spoken as much as possible and argued that his fellow students should spend a few weeks of their holidays in an Irish-speaking district. The priests who taught them worked hard to promote the use of Ireland’s native tongue. One teacher wrote in the college journal that the boys should study Irish ‘to render you immune against the worst forms of Anglicization’.

Hugh and his classmates were also encouraged to discuss current affairs and O’Flaherty enjoyed the college’s debates. On one occasion, in the packed sports hall in front of teachers and students, Hugh’s team was assigned to speak for a motion which called for the prohibition of alcohol. O’Flaherty’s arguments helped to win the debate.

The trainee priest had some knowledge of abstinence. He was a teetotaller, having made a pledge to refrain from drinking or smoking when his brother Jim had fallen seriously ill with pneumonia. Should his brother regain his health, he vowed, he would never drink or smoke. Jim recovered and Hugh kept his promise.

O’Flaherty’s rhetorical skills were not confined to the discussion of social issues. In another debate he argued against the motion ‘The USA stands for the world’s peace’. The seminarian declared, ‘The American government is run by Freemasons and wealthy speculators and it is to their interest to have the European countries at war.’ It was an interesting argument for a man who, some twenty-five years later during the war, would find himself saving the lives of American servicemen.

Away from studying and debating, Mungret set great store by sport. The boys were encouraged to play cricket, rugby and soccer, but emphasis was placed on Gaelic sports too. However, it was golf that became O’Flaherty’s passion, and he would enjoy it for the rest of his life.

Since the college’s central purpose was to prepare young men for a life working overseas as priests, O’Flaherty and his friends spent much time wondering where in the world they would be sent. The much-admired map in the college’s study room was heavily smudged with the fingerprints of students speculating about their future. But matters closer to home were also occupying the thoughts of many in the dormitories of Mungret. Ireland was in turmoil as Britain’s rule was being challenged in a guerrilla war waged by the Irish Republican Army. As violence raged across the country it was impossible for the college authorities to shield their charges from the events of the outside world.

One morning in December 1920, with the Christmas holidays about to begin, the dining hall was filled with an air of happiness. However, within minutes all that would change. On cue, as he did every day, a college prefect who was circling the tables began to hand out the morning post. He passed O’Flaherty and gave him a letter. The mature student paused, opened the envelope, read the note inside, and then shared the dreadful news. ‘Chris Lucy has been shot,’ he told his friends. Lucy, a former Mungret boy, had joined the 1st Battalion of the IRA in County Cork and had been killed some weeks earlier. The boys listened in silence. Then their shock turned to anger.

This was the fourth time in recent months that they had heard how one of their friends had been killed by British forces. Raised teenage voices now echoed across the refectory. ‘One day we will sink the whole British Navy,’ one voice yelled defiantly. It was Hugh O’Flaherty who made this vow, for his political views were by now well formed.

Not long before he left Mungret, the young O’Flaherty’s dislike of Ireland’s rulers was reinforced by an encounter with them at first hand. In Limerick in March 1921 British soldiers shot dead the city’s mayor and former mayor. O’Flaherty and two classmates, Martin and Leo, decided to visit the men’s grieving families to pay their condolences. The three of them left the college grounds and walked into Limerick, unaware that every visit to the homes of the dead men was being monitored by British troops. To the watching eyes the three young seminarians were seen as IRA sympathizers. After they had met the families, O’Flaherty and his two friends set off for Mungret. As they passed the police barracks in William Street they were rapidly surrounded by members of the ‘Black and Tans’, a British unit of temporary police constables, so called because of the colours of their fatigues. Constantly on the lookout for IRA units, they had a fearsome reputation and had been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of civilians. ‘We will take a look at you in the Barracks,’ one of the constables told the students, who were then arrested and ordered inside the building.

The three young men insisted that they were students and explained that their visits had been simply pastoral. Convinced they were being misled, the ‘Tans’ continued their questioning. But luck was on the side of the students, because as they were being taken into the barracks a passer-by had spotted that they were from Mungret. The dean of the college was alerted, he contacted the police station to substantiate his students’ story, and they were released. For the young O’Flaherty the episode was another reminder of why he opposed British rule in Ireland. In the college journal he wrote of the affair in the understated manner which would become his trademark during his days in Rome. He recorded that some boys had ‘gone off to Limerick for the day’ and added coyly that ‘some had exciting experiences, arrests, escapes, etc’. As 1921 drew to a close and Ireland faced an uncertain future, Hugh O’Flaherty’s life became a little clearer. The young student heard that he was to be sent to Rome to continue his theological studies.

Chapter Three ROME IS HOME (#ulink_ed3eb8ff-6505-5dfd-b3ed-4ae5f19d618f)

‘I don’t think there is anything to choose

between Britain and Germany’

Hugh O’Flaherty

On a fairway at Rome Golf Club, the Japanese Ambassador could only watch with amazement and a little envy as his opponent’s ball arced high and long and then landed close to the green. The tee-off was textbook. It was perfect, a wonderful drive that set up the second shot beautifully. It was 1928 and this was the diplomat’s farewell game, a last chance to enjoy eighteen holes in the company of friends before returning to Tokyo. And it was not going according to plan. He was playing a man who had a lifetime of practice that had begun on the greens of Killarney. It was a rather one-sided contest. The monsignor was in fine form and clearly relishing the day a little more than his playing partner.

At the picturesque club, sited on grassland outside Rome, Hugh O’Flaherty’s golfing skills were often the topic of conversation. To some the gifted player seemed unconventional. He didn’t dress like a golfer, sometimes wearing grey trousers and a favourite orange jumper, and his unusual grip was frequently the butt of jokes. ‘Why don’t you hold the club like any other human being?’ one player teased him, remarking that the monsignor seemed to grip the golf club rather like the stick used in hurling, a sport favoured by O’Flaherty’s countrymen.

The priest was very capable of taking the banter and shot back a detailed reply. ‘For the correct grip in hurling, the left hand is held below the right. I am holding my golf club just the opposite, my right hand is below the left,’ he explained with a smile on his face to all those present.

The technicalities were probably lost on his opponents but his ability to play and win the game wasn’t. His continued success on the greens meant that he had to concede a couple of shots to less able players. The par for the course was seventy-one and O’Flaherty regularly came close to that.

His fellow players also wondered how a busy priest weighed down with church duties had time to play golf. For O’Flaherty it was an opportunity to relax and forget the cares and worries of the job. He told a friend that there was ‘nothing like golf for knocking all the troubles of this poor world out of your mind’.

Even though he loved the game, there were times when the distance he had to travel and the price of playing seemed too high. In a letter home he wrote, ‘The links are far from the city and, besides, to be a member one must know how to rob a bank and keep what is robbed.’ Despite his reservations about spending hours driving, chipping and putting, there were other benefits to his favourite pastime. The club had a very influential membership and O’Flaherty began meeting many leading members of Roman society – including royalty, aristocrats, diplomats and politicians – who would prove useful to his escape network.

Those who regularly played the course included Count Galeazzo Ciano, who was married to Mussolini’s daughter Edda. Ciano was the Italian Foreign Minister and O’Flaherty is credited with teaching him the finer points of the game. Another regular player at the club was the former King of Spain, Alfonso.

It was on the golf course that the monsignor was introduced to Sir D’Arcy Osborne. Like O’Flaherty, the British diplomat loved nothing more than taking the Italian air with his clubs on his back. The game was part of Osborne’s life; so much so that he often used golfing references in his correspondence. Exasperated by the intransigence of a position taken by the powerful of the Vatican, he once wrote that trying to get them to change their mind was like ‘trying to sink a long putt using a live eel as a putter’.

With a direct line to the Papacy, Osborne was one of the most influential people in Rome. He was the image of the English gentleman: well-mannered, charming and courteous. A bachelor, he was tall and slim and always immaculately dressed. As a career diplomat he was highly regarded in London and as a cousin of the Duke of Leeds he was well connected and counted the Duke and Duchess of York as friends.

Osborne had a deep affection for Italy, a country he had first visited at the turn of the century, when he had been won over by the people and the scenery. He joined the diplomatic service and after postings in Washington, Lisbon and The Hague he became Britain’s Minister to the Holy See in 1936. He spoke Italian and French and loved art, expensive shoes and fine wine. Like all those who occupied the position of ambassador to the Vatican, he was a Protestant, in case there was a conflict of loyalties. Given O’Flaherty’s Irish nationalist background and Osborne’s British establishment credentials, the pair were an unlikely match. Yet over time they became good friends and would meet both in the club house and at the Vatican.

In the early weeks of the Second World War Osborne’s knowledge and diplomatic skills were much in demand. There was a fevered debate about when Italy would enter the conflict and much concern in Vatican circles over how this would affect its protected status. As Britain’s representative to the Vatican, Osborne’s views were sought by the leaders of the Catholic Church and he was used to test ideas and opinions.

In the spring of 1939 a new resident was holding court in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace. On 2 March Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli had become Pope on his sixty-third birthday. In one of the shortest conclaves in the Church’s history he was elected by sixty-two cardinals. The first Roman-born Pope in over 200 years, Pacelli took the name of Pius XII, in honour of his predecessor Pius XI.

The new Pontiff had had little time to settle into office when, on 15 March, the Germans entered Prague. Over the next few months papal envoys would become involved in shuttle diplomacy with Mussolini, Hitler and the Polish and French governments in a bid to avert war. The discussions did not succeed. On 1 September 1939 Hitler invaded Poland, and two days later Britain and France declared war on Germany.

In his office in Rome Kappler had begun to gather information from all over the city on both anti-fascists and under-cover agents he could employ. He was watching the new regime of Pius XII with particular interest as he wanted to recruit informers within the Vatican. But, before he could make much progress, he was instructed to return to Germany.

Two incidents had occurred, just hours apart, which would focus attention on Hitler’s leadership; events which required the skills of Herbert Kappler. These two investigations would not only enhance the police attaché’s reputation but bring him into direct contact with the Führer. When Kappler arrived in Berlin there was only one story occupying the minds of the Nazi leadership. Days earlier, in a Munich beer hall, Hitler had acknowledged the adoring crowds as he stood in front of a swastika-draped stage. Hundreds of supporters had come to hear the Führer speak at an annual get-together for the Nazi Party’s old guard. At 9.07 p.m. he finished his speech, earlier than planned, and left the building. Hitler had planned to fly back to Berlin, but poor weather made this impossible and he was taken to the railway station instead.

The decision to change his travel plans saved Hitler’s life. At 9.20 p.m. a bomb, hidden in a pillar close to where he had been speaking, exploded. The ceiling and balcony collapsed, killing eight people and injuring many others.

As Hitler made his way back to Berlin, German police held in custody a 36-year-old carpenter from Württemberg who had been arrested as he tried to leave the country and enter Switzerland. Georg Elser had travelled by train from Munich and had been spotted trying to cross over at the border town of Konstanz. A trade unionist and an opponent of Nazism, he had first gone to Munich a year earlier to observe the Führer deliver his annual speech at the Burgerbräukeller. Over the next twelve months the carpenter planned his attack for the following year’s event at the beer hall. He became a regular diner there and over time he built a bomb which he would eventually place in a pillar close to the hall’s podium. As anticipated, on 8 November Hitler was to deliver a speech in the Burgerbräukeller in the evening and Elser had timed the device to go off at around 9.20 p.m.

Shocked at how close someone had come to killing the Führer, the Nazi high command handed the investigation over to the Gestapo. When Kappler arrived in Berlin he was assigned to be part of the team interrogating Elser, who initially had refused to say anything. The police attaché had been in this position many times before: in Austria he had interrogated anti-Nazi dissidents and in Rome he had begun the same work. Now, as he sat opposite Elser, his main job was to break the man’s silence.

Elser was bombarded with questions. How did he prepare the bomb? When did he go to Munich? But perhaps most interesting for Kappler and his Gestapo colleagues was the question of who had helped the carpenter. They began to track down anyone who knew Elser and had been in contact with him in recent months. Investigators caught up with Else Stephan, Elser’s girlfriend, who was questioned personally by Himmler and then taken to Hitler. Of the latter encounter she later said, ‘Behind a table sat a man in a field-grey uniform. He didn’t look up when one of the SS men reported: “My Führer! This is the woman!” Good Lord, it really was Hitler. Hitler put down a folder he had been reading and looked at me. He didn’t say anything. I felt most embarrassed. I wanted to salute but I just couldn’t raise my arm.’

Hitler looked at his visitor for a while before speaking. Then he said, ‘So you are Elser’s woman. Well, tell me about it.’ Else Stephan told Hitler her story just as she had done with Himmler, who was in charge of the investigation. Eventually, after Elser was beaten, investigators secured a confession. Postcards from the Burgerbräukeller had been found in his coat and one of the waitresses recognized him as a regular customer.

Elser was then tortured by the Gestapo, who initially found it difficult to accept that the carpenter had acted alone. Hitler himself was convinced that he had been helped by British Secret Service agents. Under questioning Elser insisted that he had carried out the operation without any help. Himmler personally took part in a number of the interrogations and on one occasion told the suspect, ‘I’ll have you burnt alive, you swine. Limb by limb quite slowly … do you understand?’

Kappler would maintain in an interview some years later that he treated Elser properly during the interrogations. ‘I always spoke to Elser very calmly. He opened up to me without reservation. And I also had the impression that he was telling us the truth on all points – and this was corroborated when his statements were checked.’

Elser made a confession that ran to hundreds of pages. He would be imprisoned at Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps, remaining at the second until the final weeks of the war, when he was taken from his cell and killed. The American forces were nearby but with the war about to end the German high command clearly had some old scores to settle.

Back in 1939, hours after Elser’s arrest, Kappler would find himself examining another ‘plot’ to topple Hitler. This one, bizarre and complicated, did involve Britain’s Secret Service at the highest level.

It began one winter’s morning and involved two British intelligence agents and one Dutch. Before dawn, Sigismund Payne Best was awake. A man in his fifties, he headed Britain’s highly secretive Section Z in the Netherlands. He got up and as he shaved he thought of what lay ahead over the next few hours, and he was nervous. He had reservations but knew he had little choice. He kissed his wife goodbye, told her he might be late, then hurried to his office. There he glanced at the morning paper. A stop-press item about the attempt on Hitler’s life in a beer hall caught his eye. It reported how the Führer had escaped but others had been killed. Best then headed to meet some colleagues, all the time wondering if the incident in Munich he had just read about had anything to do with a group of German officers he had recently become acquainted with.

Payne Best called at a house to pick up two colleagues. Richard Stevens, a less experienced British intelligence officer likewise based in The Hague, was an agent with whom he had recently begun working. The other man was Dirk Klop, who had been seconded from the Dutch intelligence service. The three men chatted about the day ahead and Stevens produced loaded Browning automatic pistols which they each pocketed. Then, as storm clouds gathered, they made their way to the border with Germany.

In the cold November air they arrived at Café Backus, an eating house near the Dutch town of Venlo, close to the border with Germany. The men were familiar with the building, which was of red brick with a veranda and at the back had a large garden with children’s swings.

The venue for the meeting had been carefully chosen. It was in the Netherlands, but stood in a stretch of land between the German and Dutch customs posts. Best, Stevens and Klop had come to the border to continue discussions with high-ranking Nazi officers who wanted to overthrow Hitler. In previous meetings the trio had been told that there was support for Hitler’s removal and the restoration of democracy, which would lead to an Anglo-German front against the Soviet Union. In London senior military officials and politicians including the Prime Minister were kept informed about the discussions. The story had one problem. It was not true. The British and Dutch intelligence officers had been duped as part of a ‘sting’ organized by the German intelligence service.

Best and Stevens had been dealing with an officer named Major Schämmel, who claimed to be a member of an anti-Hitler plot. Schämmel was in fact Walter Schellenberg, a rising star in the world of German military intelligence who would later become the head of the SS’s foreign-intelligence section.

When the three agents arrived at the café the scene was peaceful. A little girl was playing ball with a dog in the middle of the road and nearby a German customs officer was standing watching for traffic. However, this time something seemed different. When they had been to the café before, the barrier to the German side had been closed, but they now noticed that it had been raised. Best sensed danger. As they drove into the car park their contact Schämmel spotted them and waved at them from the veranda. At that moment a large car came from the German side of the border and drew up behind the visitors. Within seconds shots were fired in the air and the two Britons, Dirk Klop and their driver were surrounded by German soldiers and ordered to surrender.

Stevens turned to his colleague and said simply, ‘Our number is up, Best.’ They would be the last words the pair would exchange for five years.

Within hours they were in Berlin and Herbert Kappler had more interviews to conduct. The so-called Venlo incident was a coup for German military intelligence and a source of embarrassment for the British government. The Germans had captured senior British intelligence figures and their removal from clandestine activities was also a crucial blow to British espionage efforts across Europe. Kappler remained in Berlin to help in the interrogation of Best and Stevens. The pair were questioned at length and were later imprisoned at Sachsenhausen and Dachau, where Best reportedly came into contact with Hitler’s would-be assassin Georg Elser.

The Elser affair kept the issue of Hitler’s leadership in the headlines and stories about plots and coups against the Nazi leader continued to surface. When Kappler returned to Rome to resume his duties as police attaché there, Hitler’s future was a subject that was dominating the chatter among the city’s diplomatic circles.

In January 1940 Sir D’Arcy Osborne was called to meet Pope Pius for a private audience. The pair discussed the war and considered a series of scenarios. The Pope claimed he knew the names of German generals who said that Hitler was planning an offensive through the Netherlands in the weeks ahead. He said this need not happen if the generals could be guaranteed a peace deal by the Allies that would see Hitler deposed, and in return Poland and Czechoslovakia would be free of German rule. The Pope was nervous and asked Osborne to keep the contents of the discussion secret, telling him, ‘If anything should become known, the lives of the unnamed German generals would be forfeit.’

Osborne refused the Holy Father’s request and reported the contents of the encounter to officials in London. In his official report the Minister to the Holy See wrote that he thought the discussions had been vague and reminded him of the Venlo incident. His words carried extra weight because the arrest of the three British intelligence officers was still an embarrassment to many in London.

The following month Osborne again met the Pope, who told him that, according to information he had been given by prominent German generals, Hitler was planning to invade Belgium. As he had done before, the Pope talked about a potential uprising against the Führer in Germany. He suggested that there could be a civil war and a new anti-Hitler government might have to start as a military dictatorship. Again the Pope wanted to know what, if the Führer was overthrown and a new regime was put in place, would be the basis of negotiations with the Allies.