Alois Hudal
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
for a short time during the 1930s, a revered
and honoured Nazi Party member.
Title page of the book The Foundations of National Socialism.
The Most Reverend Alois Hudal (also known as Luigi Hudal; born 31 May 1885 in Graz; died 13 May 1963 in Rome) was a Rome-based pro-Nazi bishop of Austrian descent. After the end of World War II, he established a "ratline" which allowed prominent Nazi war criminals to escape trial.
Contents |
[edit] Biography
Bishop Alois (or Luigi) Hudal was born on 31 May 1885 in the Austrian city of Graz, where he studied and received his doctorate. He was ordained to the priesthood in July 1908. He ministered as a parish chaplain in Kindsberg, before leaving to study in Rome. Though the professorate promised to him at Vienna's university was never given, Hudal became a noted specialist on the liturgy, doctrine and spirituality of the Slavic-speaking Eastern Orthodox Churches. After completing his studies in Rome (1911-1913), he began residency in the faculty for Old Testament Studies at the University of Graz in 1914. In 1923 he became rector of the Pontificio Istituto Teutonico Santa Maria dell’Anima (Germanicum) in Rome, a theological seminary for German and Austrian priests where he had begun his career as a chaplain in 1911. He was also Father Confessor for the German-speaking community in the city. In 1930 he took on the role of a consultor for the Holy Office, and in 1933 was consecrated Titular Bishop of Aela by Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli.[citation needed] He was a protégé of Theodor Cardinal Innitzer, ten years his elder and Archbishop of Vienna from 1932 to 1955.
Hudal was a committed anti-Communist.
He also held a Golden Nazi Party membership badge, and in 1936 he published a book entitled The Foundations of National Socialism, with imprimatur from Archbishop Innitzer; despite being an enthusiastic endorsement of Hitler, in the end the book was banned by the Nazis due to their general dislike of Roman Catholicism and of Vatican functionaries in particular. In the book Hudal proposed a compromise between Nazism and Christianity, leaving the education of the youth to the Churches, while the latter would leave politics entirely to National Socialism.
Despite the banning of his book, and despite many harsh National Socialist restrictions against German monasteries and parishes, and effective attempts by the Nazi government to forbid Catholic education at schools (going as far as banning the crucifix in schools and other public areas, see the Oldenburger Kreuzkampf), even despite the destruction of Austrian convents and the official banning of Catholic newspapers and associations in annexed Austria ("Ostmark"), Bishop Hudal remained close to the Nazi regime's officials. Hudal was somewhat close to Franz von Papen, though the former Centre politician Papen was considered dangerous by the Nazi government and disliked for his Catholicism. During the war, Hudal had contacts with Walter Rauff in Rome (see below).
After the war, Hudal became involved with processing Displaced Persons. This allowed him to organise the escape of war criminals such as Franz Stangl, commanding officer of Treblinka, Gustav Wagner, commanding officer of Sobibor, Alois Brunner, organizer of deportations from France and Slovakia to German concentration camps, and, perhaps, Adolf Eichmann. Hudal's activities caused a press scandal in 1947, and he resigned in 1951, residing in Rome until his death in 1963.
[edit] Closeness to the Vatican
Hudal's promotion to Bishop has been cited as evidence that he had close ties to members of the Vatican, particularly Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli, the future Pius XII who had previously been Papal Nuncio in Germany. Given his openly pro-Nazi views from 1934 to 1945, it is also surprising that Hudal was given work with Displaced Persons after the war, and that he was chosen to minister to German internees in Italy. The Vatican arranged for him to have an Allied travel pass for this purpose. Hudal's Ratline was financed in part by Rauff, with some funds allegedly coming from Giuseppe Cardinal Siri[citation needed], the Archbishop of Genoa.
The Vatican was involved in a great deal of post-war humanitarian work concerning Displaced Persons, and some historians take the view that Hudal was only a small player whose Ratline activities did not reflect any official policy. In particular, Catholic historians like Robert A. Graham (1913-1997) - an American jesuit and a longtime Vatican operative who was co-editor of the 11-volume Acts and Documents of the Holy See relative to the Second World War (Vatican City, 1965-1981) - estimated Hudal as "small fish" and as someone who was acting on his own behalf. A French Jesuit historian, Fr. Pierre Blet, another co-editor of the above-cited Acts and Documents, only mentioned Hudal to signal his role as a go-between, at the request of the pope himself, for the contacts of the Vatican with the in October 1943, in order to end the razzias and spare the life of thousands of Jews sheltered in the convents of Rome, after the city was occupied by the Germans in September. These contacts, which had been preceded by direct pressures at diplomatic level in Rome and Berlin, were apparently successful and many Jewish lives were saved by this Vatican diplomacy, according to Blet.
However, according to other sources,[citation needed] bishop Hudal may have been a Vatican-based informer of German intelligence under the Nazi regime. Several authors mention his contacts in Rome with SS intelligence chief Walter Rauff, the developer of mobile extermination with gas vans, who was sent to Rome in the spring of 1943 for a period of six months without any specific assignment. Hudal is said to have met Rauff then and to have begun cooperation with him in the setting up of an escape network for Nazis. After the war Hudal was in fact one of the main Catholic organizers of the Ratline nets, along with Croatian priest Krunoslav Draganovic, who was also involved in pro-Fascist espionage and would become involved into pro-NATO espionage during the Cold War. A smuggler of fascist (ustasha) war criminals, Draganovic was recycled by the U.S. during the Cold War - his name appears in the Pentagon payrolls in the late 1950s and early 1960s - and was eventually granted immunity in Tito's Yugoslavia, where he died in 1983 at 79.
Furthermore, since the works of Graham and Blet were published, historian Michael Phayer, a Catholic professor at Marquette University, has alleged the close collaboration between the Vatican (Pope Pius XII and Giovanni Battista Montini, then "Substitute" of the Secretariat of State, and later Paul VI), on the one side and Draganovic and Hudal on the other, and has sustained that Pius XII himself was directly engaged in ratline activity. These allegations are however not solidly proven at all, given the fact of opposing testimonies and the firm denial by Vatican and secular officials of any involvement of Pius XII himself. No official documents of the Allies proving this direct involvement exist.
In his posthumously published memoirs (see below his main works), Hudal instead recalls with bitterness the lack of support he found the Holy See to give to Nazi Germany's battle against "godless Bolshevism" at the Eastern Front. Hudal several times in this work claims to have received criticism of the Nazi system rather than support for it from the Vatican diplomats under Pius XII. Hudal until his death was convinced he had done the right thing, and said, that he considered saving German officers and politicians from the hands of Allied prosecution, a "just thing". He said that the justice of the Allies had resulted in show trials and lynchings.
[edit] Important works
- Die deutsche Kulturarbeit in Italien (Münster, 1934) - The German Cultural Activity in Italy.
- Rom, Christentum und deutsches Volk (1935) - Rome, Christendom and the German People.
- Deutsches Volk und christliches Abendland (1935) - German People and the Christian Occident.
- Die Grundlagen des Nationalsozialismus (Leipzig and Vienna, 1936) - The Foundations of National Socialism.
- Römische Tagebücher. Lebensbeichte eines alten Bischofs (Graz, 1976) - Diaries of Rome. The Confession of life of an Old Bishop.
[edit] Bibliography
- Mark Aarons and John Loftus Ratlines: How the Vatican's Nazi Networks Betrayed Western Intelligence to the Soviets, William Heinemann, 1991 (republished in the U.S. as Unholy Trinity).
- Robert Graham and David Alvarez, Nothing Sacred: Nazi Espionage against the Vatican, 1939-1945, London: Frank Cass, 1998.
- Michael Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930-1965, Indiana University Press, 2000.
- Pierre Blet, Pius XII and the Second World War: According to the Archives of the Vatican, New York: Paulist Press, 1997.
- "Krunoslav Draganovic", in The Pavelic Papers at http://www.pavelicpapers.com/documents/draganovic/ Warning: this independent site about "The Butcher of the Balkans" and the Ustasha movement has been closed for unknown reasons since July 2006.
- Greg Whitlock, "Alois Hudal: Clero-Fascist Nietzsche critic", Nietzsche-Studien, volume 32, 2003.
- Erika Weinzierl, "Kirche und Nationalsozialismus" at http://www.doew.at/service/ausstellung/1938/22/22.html, with photos of Hudal, Archbishop Innitzer and fac-simile of several documents concerning the Anschluss and its welcome by Innitzer.
- Luigi Hudal, bishop of Aela Alois Hudal's position in the Catholic hierarchy
