International Intrigue - Ramifications
CHAPTER SIXTEEN - Part B
The Foreign Office
London
April 12, 1937
Robert G. Vansittart was not a very evangelistic religious man, nor did he see himself as a very pious man, however, since being brought into Operation Mercury by the Foreign Secretary and the King, he could feel himself recalling the stirrings he felt during the church services he attended as a child at Coventry Cathedral, and taking time from his work day to attend the midday services conducted at St. Paul’s.
Based upon the information that his network of informants in the various embassies around Europe had been providing, as well as the information from the Imperial Intelligence Office, Operation Mercury had not only created a firestorm, but had actually created some positive effects, depending upon your point of view.
Operation Mercury was the code name given to the British Empire’s covert (and in some places overt) assistance to the Roman Catholic Church’s distribution of its anti-Nazi and anti-communism encyclicals (Mit brennender Sorge and Divini redemptoris), and had the Protestant British Empire helping the Roman Catholic Church in ways that would have had the leaders of the Reformation spinning in their graves. Then again, thought Vansittart, seeing whom the Holy See was combating, the Fathers of the Reformation might just be cheering Britain’s assistance. In the here and now, however, Vansittart thought wryly, it only mattered that King George wanted the Holy See assisted, and assistance was what the Church received.
With the harsh language contained within the encyclicals, once they began to be made known within the targeted countries, the threatened governments took steps to prevent the spread of their message.
In Germany, the Nazis confiscated all available copies of the Mit brennender Sorge encyclical, arrested printers who made copies, and seized their presses. Those individuals caught distributing or publicly speaking the message of the encyclical were arrested on trumped-up subversion or morality charges. France and the Soviet Union and to a lesser extent Republican Spain, the subjects of Divini redemptoris, reacted in a similar manner to Nazi Germany upon the announcement of the encyclical. Printers were arrested and their printing presses seized if not destroyed. Arrests were made of anyone caught pronouncing the encyclical’s ideas.
At that point, Operation Mercury picked up where the Roman Catholic church could go no further. Members of British Embassies, Consulates and Delegations, both the overt and covert employees (i.e. the members of the Foreign Office and the members of the Imperial Intelligence Office) went out and clandestinely redistributed copies of the encyclicals. In the Soviet Union, these activities were more difficult with the breaking of diplomatic ties with the Communist nation, so here members of the Empire’s IIO were forced to smuggle in by various ways the encyclicals.
The reaction to the redistribution of the encyclicals by the targeted countries was quick and brutal. In Germany, several priests, and one bishop who was actually forcibly escorted from his cathedral by members of the Gestapo, were actually subjected to trials and found guilty. Their sentencing was forgiven based upon either their removal from the Church or exile from Germany. Against the wishes of all six, the Church brought them out of Germany and had them brought to Rome to work in the Vatican. Despite the furor created and the obvious impact of Mit brennender Sorge upon German Catholics, the overall political scheme of Germany remained unchanged, save for a greater awareness of the Nazi’s dedication to power regardless of international opinion.
The Soviet’s reaction was particularly brutal with many of the individuals caught or even linked to the encyclical were taken by the NKVD and simply disappeared. Vansittart, who had some knowledge of the NKVD’s tactics and abilities shuddered at the thought of those brave individuals who stepped forward to assist in the proliferation. From some of the reports from Prince Henry’s office that he had been allowed to review, the Empire’s operatives had suffered some losses in the NKVD’s but nothing compared to what the natives of the Baltic Republics and the native Russians experienced. Luckily MI-6’s Admiral Sir Hugh Sinclair, “Quex” or simply “Q” within Intelligence circles, had been able to use assets not linked to other operations going on in that part of the world.
In France and Republican Spain, while the reaction by those governments was the same as the Soviet Union, the results were far different.
Republican Spain witnessed a backlash of unforeseen ferocity and impact. While the original announcement of the Divini redemptoris resulted in a lessening of support for Republican forces as the average Spaniard still listened to the Holy Mother Church in Rome and conversely creating an increase of support for Nationalist forces, as Nationalist leaders had from the very beginning of the civil war courted, supported and defended the Catholic Church’s rights and prerogatives, in a word, religiously, the reaction to the redistribution was more ruthless. The severity of Republican attempts to squash the spread of the encyclical, including the imprisonment of priests, and in one unfortunate instance the execution of the Archbishop of Barcelona, fanned the flames created by the encyclical’s message and touched a nerve in the still very religiously minded Spanish citizenry, creating a increase in the number of anti-Republican groups flocking to the banner of the Nationalists. From the latest dispatch from Spain the encyclical and the Republican attempt at its suppression had sounded the death knell for their cause. The forces still loyal to the Republican cause, heavily depleted due to mass desertions, were losing battle after battle to the swelling Nationalist forces and slowly being pushed out of more and more provinces. The Imperial General Staff predicted that barring any outside intervention or an act of God, the fall of the final Republican bastions would occur by the end of the summer.
Communist France followed in the footsteps of Moscow and searched out and arrested any printers found with copies of Divini redemptoris and confiscating their printing presses. As in Spain, with the help of the British Imperial Intelligence Office, specifically the S.O.E. (recently renamed Strategic Operations Executive), the number of copies available were barely affected, and the words of the encyclical continued to be spread. The French authorities then began to arrest those who were caught distributing the tract while beginning to investigate how copies continued to be readily available to the French citizenry. With the impact of Divini redemptoris growing larger with every church service or public meeting, the Communist Government of France authorized the arrest of any and all persons who were caught preaching the encyclical, discussing it or possessing a copy. While these steps worked in the Soviet Union with brutal efficiency, as in Spain, the results in France were much different.
Within a mere span of two weeks, the political right began to gain favor with the average Frenchman, causing a panic amongst the Communist leadership. Clearly identifying the Church as the cause of the troubles, a position the Church proudly shouted from it’s pulpits and bell towers, Paris placed the ordered for all property owned by the Roman Catholic Church to be turned over to the State, all priests, nuns and servants of the Church to turn themselves in to the State for re-education and redeployment to the industries of the State, and the barring of any church services to be held within the borders of France. The outcry from the general public, not to mention the Church and the world wide community was loud and fast in coming. The Vatican immediately called for the French people to protect the servants of the Church and for those threatened by the French Government to flee France. The international community, especially those with a large Catholic population, lodged official diplomatic complaints, warnings and in the case of Poland, several Latin American countries, and the British Empire, the severing diplomatic ties with Paris. Inside France, angry mobs both supporting the Communist Party’s response and condemning their actions took to the streets, often coming into violent contact with each other and the police or military units that were employed in the attempt of controlling the riots.
As Vansittart closed the folder with the most recent reports and prepared to leave his office, it seemed to him, as well as the experts with in the Foreign Office, that if the King was intending for the Empire’s foes and potential foes to be unsettled by the Holy See’s encyclicals, that intention had been well met. A almost rabid anti-Communist feeling was swelling within Spain, Nazi Germany had been exposed to it’s own population as well as the world itself as having no respect for any religion other than the worship of the State, and the Soviet Union was quietly but brutally tearing itself apart looking for anyone and everyone that dared speak a word against Comrade Stalin and the infallible Communist Manifesto. And closer to home, and therefore of much more concern to the Empire, France was finding itself in the midst of a collective reliving of the Revolution of 1789. As a loyal servant of the Crown who happened to also be an avid amateur historian, Vansittart could only wonder in what condition the French would emerge from the current conflagration, and hope that France did not also experience again the outcome of one hundred forty-eight years ago and the ramifications bestowed upon the world.
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