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David Alvarez. Spies in the Vatican: Espionage and Intrigue from Napoleon to the Holocaust. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2002. 341 pp.
ISBN: 0700612149, $34.95

It is common for not only politicians and intelligence professionals but also for historians to speak authoritatively of the "Vatican’s intelligence service". They also assert with boldness and confidence that the Pope commands "the best information service in the world". As a result of his thorough research that included reading and checking numerous Vatican, Italian, French, Spanish, British and American archival sources, David Alvarez challenges this common belief and illuminates not only the inner workings of the Vatican but also the global events with which it was inextricably involved.
David Alvarez is a professor of politics at Saint Mary’s College of California, USA. During his previous studies while writing the books Secret Messages: Codebreaking and American Diplomacy, 1930-1945 and Nothing Sacred: Nazi Espionage Against the Vatican, 1939-1945 his curiosity was aroused about the wider aspects of the little-known world of espionage, counter-intelligence and security in one of the most sacred places on earth, the Holy See. During the course of his collaboration with Robert Graham, S.J., he had access to the latter’s extensive private collection of documents, interview records, and research papers. After the death of Father Graham, this collection was sequestered by the Vatican and is now in the custody of the papal Secretariat of State. While it remains unclear what plans the Vatican may have for the disposition of these papers, the event sheds light on the still secretive attitude of the Vatican towards scholarly research and studies about its history.
The book covers the pontificates of eleven popes and starts with Pius VI who died in 1799 as a prisoner of the French during their revolution. It concludes with Pius XII, who led the Catholic Church through the Second World War and who withstood the ideological claims of Fascism, Nazism and Communism.
The period from the Congress of Vienna in 1814 to the end of the Papal States in 1870 was the high point of papal intelligence "to navigate between the rocks of internal revolution and shoals of foreign intervention and aggression". Finally, with the disappearance of the Papal States the Pope’s intelligence capabilities largely vanished.
Not surprisingly, the new domestic intelligence organization of Monsignore Umberto Benigni around the turn of the century was aimed at the "modernists"; that is, the liberal Catholics and their reform ideas. However, his organization for propaganda and disinformation was short-lived and disappeared with its mastermind. From the beginning of the Great War in 1914 until the end of the Second World War in 1945 marks a period during which the world and certainly its European and North-American regions underwent an intelligence revolution. This revolution would dramatically influence the harsh necessities of modern war, as well as the troublesome uncertainties of modern peace. "This intelligence revolution completely bypassed the Papacy".
The secret mission of Bishop Michael d’Herbigny in 1926 to re-establish a Catholic Church organization in the Soviet Union failed. His covert operation was compromised from its very beginning. Pius XI (1922-1939) aligned himself with the dictators in Italy and Germany and continued secret negotiations with the Soviet Union. In 1929 the Lateran Agreement to settle the "Roman Question" and in 1933 the concordat with Nazi-Germany were signed. In both cases the Vatican hoped to protect its flock by codifying the legal status of the Catholic Church in Italy and Germany in general and of the independent Vatican State in particular. But Mussolini, Hitler, and for that matter Stalin, considered the Catholic Church a serious threat to their ideological claims and their political ambitions. They would therefore never adhere to any legal arrangements, despite having signed a much heralded treaty.
The book also discusses the many successful attempts of the "Men in Black" of the Axis-Powers as well as the haphazard and mostly amateurish intelligence efforts of the Allies against the Vatican. Regrettably, the United States never considered the Papacy an important intelligence target. The result was that " well into the war myth and prejudice rather than information and appraisal guided American policy makers in their dealings with Rome".
The last chapter discusses the burning question that addresses when and with what detail had the Pope been informed about the Holocaust. The author shows very convincingly that not only did the Allied Governments know of the Holocaust earlier than the Vatican did, but also that by 1944 the Vatican had effectively lost contact with the Catholic churches of Eastern Europe. "The
situation was so bad that by 1945 the (Vatican) Secretariat of State did not even know which Polish bishops were still alive and at their posts".
In summary, the Vatican’s access to intelligence usually fell far short of the expectations of outside observers. The author discusses the Vatican’s structural reasons for this shortcoming. The primary reason of course was that as much as the political institution of the Vatican and its legal protections demanded access to accurate information, the Holy See represented foremost and above all the spiritual values of the Catholic Church. Guided by these values, "priests could no more be spies than they could be warriors". "The Vatican had to protect its interests and project its influence in an international environment where (governments) relied on espionage and clandestine operations, but it had neither the ability nor the appetite to employ such practices itself".
The author remains neutral and generally quiet about the assessment of whether the confrontation between ecclesiastical faith and ideological unilateralism demanded more the careful and balanced diplomacy of Pius XI and Pius XII or required the clear and unequivocal voice of the encyclicals "Divini Redemptoris" against the errors of Communism and "Mit brennender Sorge" ("With burning concern") against the errors of Nazism. It remains a fact that the Holy Office never condemned Hitler’s political creed "Mein Kampf" ("My Struggle") as heretical and put it to the Roman index of banned books. Several drafts of a planned syllabus of the mistakes of racism had been discussed during 1934 - 37 but its publication had by decision of Pius XI finally been delayed for an undetermined time ("dilata sine die"). It also remains a fact that Pius XII did not publicly condemn the Holocaust. As Stalin rightfully suspected, the Pope could not command any military divisions, but with the power of his word he could have reinforced the resolve and resistance of millions of faithful people.
David Alvarez’s study is unique. It is the first comprehensive treatment of the subject. The book provides fascinating reading, not only because of the turbulent events of the past two centuries and the Vatican’s involvement in them, but also due to the elegant and at times witty and always precise language. The book needs to be read together with the extensive notes. They contain many stories and details, which would otherwise evade the reader’s attention. The bibliography is thoroughly documented, however the publisher should have provided a better-arranged index. This book is highly recommended not only for advanced students and professionals of intelligence, but also for policy makers, diplomats and religious leaders. Not the least it is recommended for citizens interested in how their religious affiliation could be employed or abused in the pursuit of a global information society.

Sigurd Hess
Rheinbach

David Stafford. Spies Beneath Berlin. London: John Murray, 2002. ix, 205 pp.
ISBN: 1585673617, £16.99

Few books published on intelligence in the Cold War years fail to provide an account of the Berlin tunnel and how it was used to successfully tap into the Soviet and East German telephone system. This is the subject of a new book by the Canadian scholar, David Stafford, now living in Britain. Why, many would ask, do we require another book on this topic. The brief answer would be that new records have become available, such as those through the CIA, the Public Record Office, the National Archives and participants in the affair who have given oral accounts of their experiences.
The plot will be known to many readers: it has its origins in several successful tappings of the Soviet telephone cables in Vienna by SIS from 1948 to 1955 to which the CIA was introduced by the British. Recordings of these transmissions were sent by SIS to its offices in London for translation by Russian speakers. A similar operation was launched in Berlin under CIA leadership named as operation Gold. The SIS named it Stopwatch and so it became known as Stopwatch/Gold Operation. The US paid the capital cost of constructing the associated buildings and tunnel for $6 million and it penetrated 500 metres into the Soviet zone from the West's zone. The British telephone experts fixed the final tap since this required skills only available to technicians operating in a large national telephone system like Britain's. Allen Dulles, chief of the CIA, gave approval for the scheme on 20 January 1954 and it commenced operations in April 1955. The British also supplied the high-impedance and pre-amplification equipment necessary to convert the weak telephone signals into ones that could be tape recorded.
The tunnel remained in operation for twelve months yielding up a huge number of tapes to be transcribed and translated. Most were sent to London, where 300 people worked on them, in the SIS and to Washington where the teletype messages amounting to 1,000 metres per day were translated. A variety of insights were obtained, as can be seen from materials released by the CIA, with most of the information relating to the Soviet forces in East Germany and some KGB and GRU information. The most important information revealed was that the Soviets had no intentions for expansion into the West and that detente would prevail between the two sides. The tunnel was 'discovered' by the Soviets on 22 April 1956 thus ending the operation.
The climax to the whole story was that from its very beginnings, the Soviets knew of the tapping because of information given to it by the SIS agent, George Blake, who worked on the project. All historians writing on this affair have speculated on the authenticity of the information collected, given the Soviet's foreknowledge of the tapping. Stafford argues that the Soviets did little to hamper the flow of information as a measure for reassuring the West that the Soviet's intentions were not bellicose and detente (clearly in their interest) could be made to work. And indeed that is what happened. It has been suggested that the Soviets refrained from closing the tunnel earlier in order to deter an Allied investigation that might possibly expose Blake. But Soviet intelligence was amateurish in protecting its sources and Blake was exposed by a Polish counter-intelligence officer, Colonel Goleniewski, to SIS in 1961. How the KGB allowed such important information to be leaked to the Poles could well be the topic of another book. Meanwhile Stafford's book will stand as the last word on this subject and in this manner it recommends itself to all intelligence historians.

Frank Cain
Canbarra

Giles Scott-Smith, Hans Krabbendam, eds. The Cultural Cold War in Western Europe 1945-1960. London: Frank Cass Publishers, 2003, xii, 335 pp.
ISBN: 0714682713, £49.50

The cold war was in many respects a global competition for the hearts and minds of people everywhere. Through cultural diplomacy and propaganda, both sides attempted to isolate the respective opponent internationally, win the approval of world opinion, and consolidate hegemonic order. Every opportunity from art exhibits to international sports events, and every medium from radio to satellite and computer technology was used to fight the ideational and psychological war between East and West. This collection of essays is a timely and valuable addition to the growing literature on the symbolic dimensions of the East-West confrontation.
Giles Scott-Smith and Hans Krabbendam, of the Middelburg Roosevelt Studies Center, have assembled sixteen impressive contributions to the study of American overt and covert propaganda and cultural relations in Western Europe during the early cold war. The essays are organized according to five central thematic clusters and examine the role of intellectuals, state-private networks, specific target groups and target areas as well as the role of high culture in the cold war.
In the first part, Frances Stonor Saunders and Scott Lucas discuss the question of control and autonomy of European intellectuals in the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF). Although both acknowledge the limits of direct control, Saunders and Lucas clearly emphasize the boundaries of intellectual freedom set by the organization’s dependency on the CIA. In contrast, Hugh Wilford’s analysis of the CIA and the British left suggests that clandestine operations were extensive but did neither limit freedom of thought nor achieve intended results: "... the British response to the US intervention, far from being one of passive subordination, was characterized variously by willing collaboration, creative appropriation and straightforward resistance. It might well have been the case that the CIA tried to call a particular tune; but the piper did not always play it, nor the audience dance to it." (49)
Those interpretative tensions between covert operations as successful Machiavellian tools of ideational control and the multiple complications and ironies in specific national contexts are characteristic of a number of essays. This is also apparent in the second part in which Scott Lucas urges further study of the state-private network in the cold war. He suggests that the close cooperation of government and private agencies provided an ideational force field which limited the free appropriation of ideas outside the boundaries set by American grand strategies. Anthony Carew’s analysis of American initiatives to influence European unions as well as Valerie Aubourg’s study of European initiatives in the creation of a forum for Atlanticism, however, underline the power of the receiving end. They underline internal divisions in Washington’s overall approach to shoring up Western Europe and suggest, as with all transfers, the influence of target groups to hinder, foster, and reinterpret original messages along unintended lines.
Specific target groups are the focus of part three with case studies by Richard Aldrich, Karen Paget, Joel Kotek, and Helen Laville. Women and youth organizations were of particular importance to western governments as they were considered highly susceptible to communist infiltration and propaganda. Three main issues emerge from those cases: the importance of state-private networks, a better understanding of the willingness of private groups to be co-opted into America’s overall ideational and cultural offensive (i.e. Memorial Day Statement), and an increased recognition of the challenges posed by specific organizational cultures and structures (i.e. student movement) to the agenda of clandestine manipulation.
Those challenges are highlighted in the fourth part by a selection of country studies. Marc Lazar demonstrates the often futile attempts by the French and Italian communist parties to propagate the Soviet way of life. Their cultural orientation clearly expressed preference for the American model of modernity. At the same time, as David Ellwood shows, propaganda for the Marshall Plan’s culture of productivity encountered many obstacles in the Italian context and often failed to achieve its short-term goals. Ingeborg Philipsen and Tity de Vries complicate the story of the CCF’s powerful role in shaping the boundaries of freedom in their country studies of Denmark and the Netherlands. In Denmark, the congress "played out of tune, played a different tune, or refused to play at all".(250) The local committee was difficult to control and members often used the organization more to foster their own interests than that of the Congress. In Holland, the CCF was largely absent as the country’s traditions limited the public political role of intellectuals and many held ambivalent views of the United States.
In a final part on high culture (music, art, and drama), three case studies by Jessica Gienow, Cora Goldstein, and David Monod, emphasize the preconditions for and limits of the successful political instrumentalization of high culture in America’s cold war strategy. Pre-existing cultural affinities, as Gienow-Hecht emphasizes, were an important asset, although no guarantee for political compliance. Even if, as David Monod demonstrates in his analysis of the 1952 tour of Porgy and Bess to Berlin and Vienna, cultural export produced enthusiastic reception, the exporters often underestimated the complexities of projection, reception, and long-term impact.
In sum, this volume demonstrates the importance of the symbolic dimension of America’s approach towards Western Europe. The well-crafted essays demonstrate the complexities of the transatlantic relationship, underline the importance of local initiatives as well as limitations to Washington’s overall strategy by local conditions. They offer valuable and nuanced insights into the limits of clandestine operations, the workings of cold war alliances, and the uses of soft power in international affairs. The book will surely stimulate further research and is well-suited for class-room adoption.

Frank Schumacher
Erfurt

Reinhard R. Doerries. Hitler’s Last Chief of Foreign Intelligence: Allied Interrogations of Walter Schellenberg (London/Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 2003),
xvii, 382 pp. ISBN: 0714654000, £35.00

SS-Brigadeführer Walter Schellenberg was an intriguing and complex personality. Born in 1910, he joined the Nazi party in 1933, and the SS and Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the Nazi party’s own intelligence service, around the same time. By August 1939 he had become head of Amt IV E (counter-intelligence) of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA), the Central Office for State Security. He was directly involved in the Venlo incident in November 1939, when two members of the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) were captured by German intelligence; this led to the mopping up of most of the SIS’s agent network in Western Europe, although in retrospect this may not have been as disastrous as it seemed at the time.
Schellenberg moved to Amt VI (foreign intelligence) of the RSHA in 1941 and, after some scheming, was soon appointed as its acting head. He quickly dismissed about 30 per cent of the staff because they were incompetent or guilty of serious financial irregularities, but finding suitable replacements proved to be very difficult. His main ambition was to create a unified intelligence service, even though this brought him into conflict with the Abwehr (the Wehrmacht’s espionage and counter-espionage service), which was a much bigger organisation than RSHA’s Amt VI.
Schellenberg quickly rose to power largely because he was a protégé of Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, and Reinhard Heydrich, the head of the RSHA. Despite suffering from extremely poor physical health, and a nervous breakdown in 1939, he was a driven man who often worked 20 hours a day. He was far from being a typical senior Nazi, in that he had a certain charm and earned the respect of the heads of several foreign intelligence services, such as Colonel Roger Masson in Switzerland. He was also a realist who anticipated German’s defeat quite early on. In July 1942 he planned to put out peace feelers to Sir Samuel Hoare, the British ambassador to Spain. He later had peace discussions with senior Americans, and with Count Folke Bernadotte, from the Swedish Red Cross. Schellenberg even discussed killing Göring and Hitler with various people, which must have been extremely dangerous, especially since his enemies at the top of the RSHA would have been delighted to dispose of him.
In early 1944, Hitler dismissed Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, the head of the Abwehr, and issued a decree for the creation of a unified intelligence service. Abwehr I (espionage) and II (sabotage) became part of a new department, the Militärisches Amt, with Schellenberg as its head. This might have been his opportunity to realise his dream of a unified service, had it not been much too late in the war. In addition, Abwehr I was taken over as a going concern, although it was a completely ineffective organisation which had been thoroughly penetrated by the British, largely due to signals intelligence (Sigint). Schellenberg tried to transform Abwehr I, but he never stood a chance, given the lack of German Sigint on the SIS and MI5, and the Abwehr’s dearth of good agents.
In early 1945, despite the chaos in Germany, Schellenberg, together with Bernadotte, Felix Kersten (Himmler’s gifted masseur), and others, helped to save the lives of thousands of Jews and other prisoners in the concentration camps. Without Schellenberg’s assistance, these efforts would almost certainly have failed.
Schellenberg was convicted at Nürnberg in 1949 because he knew that, after Operation ‘Zeppelin’ for which Amt VI had been responsible, some unfortunate Russian prisoners of war who had carried out sabotage operations for Germany against the USSR had subsequently been murdered in Auschwitz. He was also found guilty of membership of the SD. However, he was sentenced to only six years’ imprisonment, doubtless reflecting the fact that a number of highly placed people, including Bernadotte, had spoken very favourably about his wartime humanitarian efforts. As it was, his health deteriorated so much that he was released on medical parole in 1950. He died in Italy in 1952, aged only 42.
Schellenberg never gave the slightest indication to his interrogators that he was aware of the vital role played by allied Sigint on the German intelligence services, which makes one wonder whether he had fully analysed or understood the intelligence process. Without Sigint from 240,000 ISOS (Intelligence Service Oliver Strachey - Abwehr manual ciphers) and ISK (Intelligence Service [Dillwyn] Knox - Abwehr Enigma) decrypts, the SIS and MI5 could not have accurately evaluated the myriad of contradictory statements by agents and others. Humint and Sigint on the Abwehr dovetailed admirably: ISOS and ISK messages were often scrappy and unintelligible on their own, but agents’ reports clarified them, and completed the picture.
Sigint had also enabled the British to build up an invaluable detailed picture of the Abwehr’s order of battle. During the British post-war interrogations of Schellenberg, their resulting detailed knowledge of German intelligence personnel indirectly confirmed his belief in a super-efficient British SIS (which existed only in his imagination), and convinced him that any attempts at evasion would be useless. His interrogators therefore considered him to be truthful.
The main part of this book (about 275 pages) consists of a transcript of the final Allied interrogation report on Schellenberg. While the report is a fascinating document in itself, it greatly benefits from an admirable introduction by Professor Reinhard R. Doerries based on his wide-ranging research and extensive reading of the secondary literature. Doerries has clearly devoted a great deal of time and care to this book, and has done a fine job as editor. Hitler’s Last Chief of Foreign Intelligence is essential reading for everyone interested in Schellenberg, German intelligence in the Second World War, or the inner workings of the Third Reich.

Ralph Erskine
Belfast