Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- 1 Britain and the Vatican in the last years of Pope Pius XI (1935–39)
- 2 The Conclave of 1939
- 3 The peace plans of Pius XII
- 4 The winter war, 1939–40
- 5 The Italian entry into the war
- 6 First months in the Vatican
- 7 Surveillance I
- 8 Surveillance II: the bag
- 9 The Jews in 1942
- 10 The bombing of Rome
- 11 The Italian Armistice
- 12 The German Occupation
- 13 Aftermath
- Select bibliography
- Index
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- 1 Britain and the Vatican in the last years of Pope Pius XI (1935–39)
- 2 The Conclave of 1939
- 3 The peace plans of Pius XII
- 4 The winter war, 1939–40
- 5 The Italian entry into the war
- 6 First months in the Vatican
- 7 Surveillance I
- 8 Surveillance II: the bag
- 9 The Jews in 1942
- 10 The bombing of Rome
- 11 The Italian Armistice
- 12 The German Occupation
- 13 Aftermath
- Select bibliography
- Index
Summary
The sacredness of Rome
On the day that Italy entered the war Cardinal Maglione asked Osborne to ask the British not to bomb Rome. Italian newspapers picked up an extract from the Daily Telegraph threatening the bombing of Rome and other Italian cities. Maglione showed Osborne the extract from the newspaper. Osborne said that it was written by an imbecile and should be disregarded.
On the night of 13–14 June 1940 Allied aircraft flew over Rome and dropped pamphlets on Vatican City. This at least infringed neutrality. Maglione protested to London. London said that British aircraft had flown nowhere near Rome. But they retorted that if they decided to throw pamphlets at Rome, they could hardly avoid some of those pamphlets drifting down over Vatican City.
This was the start of a very long correspondence which took much space in the archives of both sides and slowly became more anxious and more bitter.
London could see every reason for not bombing the Vatican. It could see no reason at all why it should undertake not to bomb Rome, especially if Italian aircraft bombed London. London said so to Rome, not uncertainly.
This argument went on for months and months. The British in London never came anywhere near understanding the Pope's point of view. They could not see that to the Pope Rome was quite as much his city as it was the capital of Italy; more his city. It was his capital of a thousand years.
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- Britain and the Vatican during the Second World War , pp. 222 - 245Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1987