Nothing Sacred: Nazi Espionage against the Vatican, 1939-1945 by David Alvarez and Robert A. Graham, S.J. (review)

142BOOKREVIEVfS Nothing Sacred:Nazi Espionage against the Vatican, 1939-1945. By David Alvarez and Robert A. Graham, SJ. (London: Frank Cass; distributed by ISBS, Portland, Oregon. 1997. Pp. 190. $42.50 clothbound; $19.50 paperback.) "No one knows more about the wartime Vatican," Peter Hebblethwaite wrote in 1993, "than Father Robert Graham." In Nothing Sacred, the late Reverend Robert A. Graham, SJ., and his co-author, DavidJ. Alvarez, lead us on an iUuminating detective investigation through the halls of the Vatican during World War II. This work is the first to critically examine the veil of espionage surrounding the Holy See during one of its most historiographically controversial periods. As our authors take us on their rounds, they introduce us to a wealth of new material concerning the Third Reich's attempts to infiltrate the Roman Curia. German efforts to penetrate the walls of theVatican ranged from savvy and smooth to confusing and comical. At the end of their investigation, Graham and Alvarez conclude that despite some spirited attempts to collect curial intelligence, no secret information was gleaned and no "hard targets" of Vatican diplomacy were ever compromised to the Reich. In short, Nazi attempts to infiltrate the most confidential echelons of the Holy See's diplomatic corps met with umitigated failure. The most compelling portions of the book are devoted to describing "HUMINT" that is to say, the human intelligence gathering techniques directed by the Nazis against the Vatican. Such techniques included the recruitment of Catholic university professors, the targeting of curial clerks, and even the introduction of ersatz German "seminarians" into the German College in Rome. Our authors contend that these efforts were unsuccessful because "with the onset of war, the secrecy which normally characterized the internal affairs of the Papal Secretariat of State became even stricter" (p. 3). Vatican security, it seems, thwarted the best attempts of the Nazi intelligence system. Yet, regardless of their disappointments in Rome, the Germans did make a great deal of headway on the home front. One of the major revelations of the book is its examination of Nazi infiltration of the German Bishops' Conference, the German Catholic Press, and the Catholic university system. What the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA) failed to do internationally,it brilliantly succeeded in doing domestically. Its major coup included the collection of the internal memoranda of the German national episcopal conference. The newest and most important contribution that this book makes to the literature of wartime Vatican diplomacy is its exposition of Vatican cryptology Here, DavidJ. Alvarez masterfully presents the sophisticated themes of GermanVatican wartime codes. And it is here where Nazi efforts were most fruitful. While the Vatican considered its most sophisticated codes invulnerable throughout the war, by May of 1940 the Nazis were reading more than half of the Holy See's signal traffic. More importantly, by 1943 the Reich Security Administration had compromised all of the Vatican codes. The Vatican, for its part, surmised that at least some of its codes had been broken, but trusted that its newest codes were inviolate. The Secretariat was disabused of this notion by book reviews143 late 1944 and came to the realization that "all governments" were able to read their codes "with great facility" (p. 166). Ironically, this new information has serious ramifications for the argument advanced by Father Graham in the first portion of the book. Specifically, it seems reasonable to conclude that the RSHA might deem it unnecessary to devote valuable human intelligence resources against the Holy See if it were already reading its most sensitive diplomatic cables. Moreover, since the Holy See's military and geo-strategic importance is negligible at best, it is precisely the concession of its diplomatic correspondence that might be considered the "golden nugget" of anti-Vatican intelligence. Most historians of Vatican diplomacy during this era agree that the primary intelligence function of foreign missions to the Vatican was that of the "listening post." Given that the Holy See's codes were "hopelessly compromised" early on, Nazi intelligence efforts against the Vatican might be considered a sound success. Barring these observations , the study remains essential reading for any researcher or graduate student interested in Vatican diplomacy, Nazi intelligence techniques, and broader surveys...