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

from St Monica’s monastery offered them respite and made contact with Anton Call, a carabiniere who was on close terms with Monsignor O’Flaherty and Sir D’Arcy Osborne and had helped to hide Albert Penny, the British seaman who had arrived at the Vatican on a bicycle. Call advised the new arrivals to approach the Vatican in twos and threes. He said once they got inside they should declare they were prisoners of war and ask to be handed over to Osborne’s butler, John May. The next day Call discovered that the servicemen were in a local barracks. The plan had failed. The escapees had managed to fool the Swiss Guards but not the gendarmes, who handed them to the carabinieri in St Peter’s Square. All fourteen men were taken to the Vittorio Emmanuele barracks.

      That night Call visited O’Flaherty. The police officer gave the priest details of the new detainees and O’Flaherty gave him 3,000 lire to buy food for the escapees. Within hours the men were well fed and well dressed. O’Flaherty considered the police barracks a safe place to leave the servicemen as the Germans did not visit the place. But the men’s freedom was short-lived, for in late October the Germans unexpectedly arrived at the barracks. Two of the group managed to escape but the remaining twelve were rounded up. For O’Flaherty the episode was a clear reminder that the escape operation needed more space and resources.

      For Herbert Kappler the discovery of the escapees justified his policy of keeping the Vatican under surveillance and confirmed that he was right to keep a close watch on O’Flaherty. In his developing battle with the monsignor it was an enjoyable early triumph. Even so, for every escapee Kappler’s men caught there were many more who evaded detection.

      O’Flaherty took huge personal risks. On one occasion he met three South African escaped servicemen in Rome and while he was taking them to the apartment he had found for them they were stopped by three SS men. Luckily the Germans were lost and just wanted directions. Another time he escorted two more South Africans from a railway station to their safe house. He visited hospitals where escapees were being treated and regularly secured their release to pro-Allied families in the city.

      It was an open secret that O’Flaherty was the man behind the escape operation. By late October 1943 around 1,000 servicemen had been placed in safety in homes across Rome and in farms and buildings outside the city. Kappler wanted to catch the monsignor red-handed but knew he could only arrest him away from Vatican territory.

      By now the monsignor and his friend and collaborator John May realized that the two of them could not handle the escape operation on their own. ‘Look, Monsignor, this thing is too big for one man, you can’t handle it alone … and it’s hardly begun!’ May said. O’Flaherty agreed that another senior figure was needed to share the workload of recruiting host families, raising money and visiting suitable accommodation for the escapees. Count Sarsfield Salazar of the Swiss legation was approached. Salazar had been interned when Italy declared war but had later been released. He had originally joined the staff of the American embassy and gained experience dealing with prisoners of war when he visited internment camps as an official inspector. And now, as a diplomat for a neutral country, he had the ideal background. Salazar agreed to join May and O’Flaherty.

      The trio’s first priority was to secure more accommodation, so O’Flaherty went house hunting, criss-crossing the city by tram and on foot looking for suitable houses and apartments. After living in Rome for nearly two decades he knew the city intimately and soon found a flat in Via Firenze and another, about a mile away, in Via Chelini.

      But, as well as premises, the Escape Line needed cash to pay for food and clothes for the escapees. The issue of money was discussed at night-time meetings between Osborne, O’Flaherty and May. The British Minister agreed to seek financial assistance from the Foreign Office in London and over the next nine months large sums of money were made available. Eventually Foreign Office officials would secure a loan through the Vatican Bank of three million lire. It was a risky strategy for them because they knew a paper trail leading to Osborne could jeopardize his position in Rome. One senior British civil servant summed up the arguments and concluded that it was best to make funds available: ‘It is worth taking a good many risks, including that of compromising his position in the Vatican, to send money to British prisoners, wherever they may be in Italy.’ Money would also come from other sources, including a Jesuit account and the American government through its chargé d’affaires Harold Tittmann.

      While sitting in his room in the Vatican, O’Flaherty answered the phone and heard the unmistakable voice of Prince Filippo Doria Pamphili. A member of one of Rome’s oldest families, the prince could trace his ancestors back to Admiral Andrea Doria, known as the liberator of Genoa. He was a friend of the monsignor and sympathetic towards his Escape Line. An opponent of Fascism, he had refused to accept Mussolini’s rule. Pamphili had declined to fly the Italian flag from his palace to mark the Fascist leader’s anniversary – a move that had particularly angered Mussolini because the prince’s residence was across the street from where crowds used to gather to hear the leader speak. Pamphili was imprisoned and then banished to southern Italy, but in recent months he had been allowed to return to Rome. He had become friendly with O’Flaherty before the war and the monsignor had often been to parties at his home. Having secretly become involved in anti-fascist groups which helped refugees, the prince was now telephoning O’Flaherty to say he wanted to see him.

      The journey from the Vatican to the Palazzo Doria in Via del Corso didn’t take long. There the two men adjourned to the prince’s impressive picture gallery, where they were surrounded by renaissance and baroque paintings, some of the city’s finest works of art. Ever conscious of watching eyes and listening ears, the prince told O’Flaherty, ‘Even in my own palazzo I am not safe from spies now.’ He then explained that he wanted to help the escape organization, and handed over 150,000 lire, which at the time was equal to some £2,000.

      O’Flaherty was being watched by Kappler’s men, who noted his trip to the prince’s residence.

      As autumn arrived Kappler was adjusting to his new life as the chief of the Gestapo in Rome. Now he had the entire city under his control. One day specific orders came from Berlin. Kappler’s secretary put the call through to her boss, who listened intently. First the caller congratulated him on his promotion and then there were words of praise for his deputy, Erich Priebke, who, like Kappler, had been awarded the Iron Cross for his work in finding Mussolini.

      Kappler had made sure his work tracking down the former dictator had not gone unnoticed by his superiors in Berlin. He had sent one cable reminding them that Mussolini was discovered ‘exclusively from intelligence sources controlled by me’. After the good wishes came the instructions, relayed in stark terms from Heinrich Himmler’s office.

      The deportation of Rome’s Jews was to be Kappler’s first task following his promotion. This command, he was told during the phone call, would be followed by a radio message which would confirm that he was to begin the ‘Final Solution’ in the city. He had been in his new post only a few days but he was already once again at odds with his bosses in Berlin. Just as he had initially opposed the plan to rescue Mussolini, he found this latest plan objectionable. He didn’t agree with the order he had just received. He felt he knew Rome well, certainly better than those sitting behind desks in Germany. He believed any attempt to deport the city’s Jews would do little to engender sympathy among a local population already angered by the German occupation. Then there were the practicalities of a mass round-up. How could widespread deportations be organized? Days earlier Kappler had been instructed in a message from Berlin to secure the routes in and out of the Vatican. He had questioned whether he had the manpower for such measures and replied that ‘instructions to this effect can only be carried out if additional forces are brought up’.

      Kappler was sure he did not have enough SS men and what staff he did have lacked any experience in these matters. It was a bad plan, but he knew he had to do more than simply object to it. If he was to successfully oppose this latest order from Berlin, he needed allies. He travelled the short distance to Frascati to meet Field Marshal Kesselring. He reminded Kesselring how he had dealt with Jews on a previous occasion in Tunisia. Rather than carry out mass deportations, Kesselring had formed the Tunisian Jews into work gangs, and Jewish leaders who had been arrested were released after payment of a fine. When Kappler told him how many men he would need to organize deportations