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Ireland, The Vatican and the Cold War: The Case of Italy, 1948*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Dermot Keogh
Dermot Keogh
Affiliation:
University College Cork
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Extract

Eamon de Valera and Fianna Fáil lost power in 1948 after sixteen years in office and the five remaining parties in the legislature formed a coalition government. Fine Gael was back in power. The last time the party had held office was in 1932. But they were now only the larger party in an inter-party government which included the Labour party, a splinter group called National Labour (which reunited with the parent party in 1950), Clann na Talmhan, and Clann na Poblachta. This was one of the most ideologically divided governments in the history of the state. It very soon became faction-ridden. Only one thing united this variegated political grouping – the unanimous wish to keep Eamon de Valera and his party in opposition.

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Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 34 , Issue 4 , December 1991 , pp. 931 - 952
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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References

1 Whyte, John, Church and state in modern Ireland: 1923–1979 (Dubin, 1984 edn), pp. 156–8Google Scholar; Fanning, Ronan, Independent Ireland (Dublin, 1983), pp. 164–5Google Scholar; Murphy, John A., Ireland in the twentieth century (Dublin, 1975), pp. 120–3Google Scholar; Lyons, F. S. L., Ireland since the famine (London, 1973), pp. 559–61Google Scholar; Barrington, Ruth, Health, medicine and politics in Ireland, 1900–1970 (Dublin, 1987), pp. 195–221Google Scholar; and Browne, Noel, Against the tide (Dublin, 1986)Google Scholar.

2 There were thirteen ministers and five parties. James Dillon, the minister for agriculture, was an Independent. He had once been a member of Fine Gael. Fine Gael had six ministries: Richard Mulcahy, education; Patrick McGilligan, finance; Seán MacEoin, justice; T. F. O'Higgins, defence; Daniel Morrissey, industry and commerce; John A. Costello was the Taoiseach (prime minister). William Norton, Leader of the Labour party, was the Tánaiste (deputy prime minister) and minister for social welfare; a party colleague, T. J. Murphy, had the ministry of local government (Michael Keyes took over when the incumbent died in May 1949). Seán MacBride, leader of Clann na Poblachta, was given the portfolio of external affairs, and his party colleague, Noel Browne, given health. Joseph Blowick of Clann na Talmhan took the department of lands while James Everett of National Labour was given posts and telegraphs. See Whyte, , Church and state, p. 156Google Scholar.

3 Vinton Chapin to secretary of state, 16 Feb. 1948, Dublin, Security segregated records, Box 16, 800-General Election, Ireland, 1948, RG 84, NARA. [Chapin had been in Dublin since March 1947.]

4 Comment by Alfred O'Rahilly recorded by D.A.L., 30 Jan. 1948, Dublin, Security segregated records, 800-Irish Politics, RG 84, NARA.

5 Observer, 18 Jan. 1948.

6 Times, 18 Jan. 1988.

7 Browne, , Against the tide, pp. 95–6Google Scholar.

8 That point is demonstrated very well by Cronin, Seán in his recent book, Washington's Irish policy, 1916–1986 (Dublin, 1987), pp. 196–7, 256–8Google Scholar. Cronin argues (p. 196) that ‘MacBride's conspiratorial upbringing made him suspicious of the close links between the Irish bureaucracy and the British, particularly in the Department of Finance’.

9 Told to the late Professor T. Desmond Williams by Frederick Boland, personal interview. The number of diplomats of all ranks working at Iveagh House at the time was not more than fifteen.

10 MacBride to J. E. Carrigan, 9 Mar. 1949, Chief ECA, Special mission to Ireland, Box 1 of 2, Folder ECA/General, 1948–9, RG 496, NARA.

11 Vinton Chapin to Washington, 22 Mar. 1948, Dublin, confidential files, 841D.00/3–2248, RG 59, NARA.

12 Garrett to secretary of state, 9 Sept. 1948, Dublin, Security segregated records, Box 16, 800-Ireland, 1948 (Ireland Act), RG 84, NARA; Garrett became minister to Dublin on 10 April 1947. He was given the rank of ambassador in 1950.

13 Intelligence Memorandum, no. 111, Office of intelligence research, Department of State, 3 Aug. 1948, Dublin, Security segregated records, Box 18, 350-Ireland, foreign relations, RG 84, NARA.

14 Garrett to secretary of state, 18 Mar. 1949, Dublin, Security segregated records, Box 19, NATO folder, 32011, RG 84, NARA.

15 Quoted in Whyte, , Church and state, p. 184Google Scholar.

16 J. Graham Parsons to Washington, 1 Apr. 1948, Myron Taylor Collection, Box 19, RG 59, NARA.

17 Interview with Maurice Moynihan. A distinguished civil servant and active member of the Legion of Mary (an Irish variant of Catholic Action), Moynihan had served in the department of the Taoiseach under de Valera. He was a career officer. Moynihan was secretary of the department and he was also de Valera's private secretary and secretary to the cabinet, which meant that he took the minutes at government meetings. The meeting at which the above statement was passed for release was one of the two attended by Moynihan in his capacity as secretary in the lifetime of that government. The job was given to somebody else at MacBride's insistence. Since writing this, I have read with great interest Lynch, Patrick, ‘Pages from a memoir’, in Lynch, Patrick and Meenan, James (eds.), Essays in honour of Alexis Fitzgerald (Dublin, 1987), pp. 35–62Google Scholar.

18 The literature on Italy and the cold war in 1948 is considerable. See Miller, James E., The United States and Italy 1940–1950 (Chapel Hill and London, 1986), chs. 6–9Google Scholar. By the same author, ‘Taking off the gloves: the United States and the Italian elections of 1948’, Diplomatic History, VII (1983), 35–55Google Scholar; Varsori, Antonio, ‘La Gran Bretagna e le elezioni politiche italiane del 18 aprile 1948’, Storea Contemporanea, XIII (1982), 5–70Google Scholar; Platt, Alan and Leonardi, Robert, ‘American foreign policy and the postwar Italian left’, Political Science Quarterly, XCIII, 2 (1979), 197–215Google Scholar; Divine, Robert, ‘The Cold War and the election of 1948’, Journal of American History, LIX, 1 (1972), 90–110CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the history of the postwar Vatican, see Nolfo, Ennio Di, Vaticano e Stati Uniti 1939–1952 [dalle carte di Myron C. Taylor] (Milan, 1978), pp. 516–641Google Scholar; Fini, Roberto Faenza e Marco, Gli Americani in Italia (Milan, 1976), pp. 158–304Google Scholar; Fogarty, Gerald P., The Vatican and the American hierarchy from 1870 to 1965 (Stuttgart, 1982), pp. 332–8Google Scholar. For one of the best insights into the papal style of Pius XII, see Chadwick, Owen, Britain and the Vatican during the Second World War (Cambridge 1986)Google Scholar.

19 This and all quotations in the following two pages are from, Joseph Walshe to Boland, 21 Feb. 1948, department of foreign affairs (D/FA), P140, secretary's files, Iveagh House, Dublin.

20 Conversations and correspondence with J. Graham Parsons, March and April, 1988. See also J. Graham Parsons oral history interview with Richard D. McKinzie, 1 July 1974, 1978, The Harry, S. Truman Library, Independence, Missouri, pp. 31Google Scholar ff. Ambassador Graham Parsons has also let me read sections of his memoirs relevant to his time in Italy. For the background to the US mission to the Vatican, see: Diplomatic Relations between the United States and the Papal States (also known as the Pontifical States, States of the Church Holy See, and Rome) – Foreign Policy Study Branch, Department of State, Research Project No. 22, 711.66A/5–747, RG 59, NARA; Conway, J. S., ‘Myron C. Taylor's mission to the Vatican, 1940–1950’, Church History, XLIV, 1 (1975), 85–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fogarty, The Vatican and the American hierarchy.

21 It is not immediately clear what SS stands for, but it could be a reference to the Irish secret service.

22 Walshe was quite wrong in his assessment of ambassador Dunn's influence in Washington. As Dr Miller has pointed out, the contours of the US policy of intervention in Italy had been developed in the latter half of 1947. By the date that Walshe was filing this report, 21 Feb. 1948, the United States had long since taken a very active direct interest in the Italian election. See Miller, , ‘Taking off the gloves’, pp. 46–7Google Scholar; and Miller, , The United States and Italy, pp. 245–9Google Scholar. It is believed that the US spent three million dollars in ‘covert’ aid prior to the 1948 election.

23 Secret report on civic committees, 17 May 1948, Rome, confidential files, 800-Italy, comitati civici, RG 84, NARA.

24 Poggi, Gianfranco, Catholic Action in Italy – the sociology of a sponsored organisation (Stanford, 1967), pp. 191Google Scholar ff. See also articles on Gedda, Luigi and comitati civici in Il Giornale, 26 02 1988, p. 4Google Scholar; Avvenire, 17 Apr. 1988, p. 6; Il Tempo, 15 Apr. 1988, special supplement; and Stampa sera, 11 Apr. 1988, pp. 1–2.

25 Walshe to Boland, 21 Feb. 1948, D/FA P140, secretary's files, Iveagh House, Dublin; the ambassador has produced no evidence for this statement which had very serious implications for an interpretation of the Vatican's role in Italian public life.

26 Walshe to Boland, 21 Feb. 1948, D/FA P140, secretary's files, Iveagh House, Dublin. Pius XII had told the Catholic Vanguard Movement in his speech that ‘you may use all legal means that right puts in your hands’. J. Graham Parsons had asked Walshe about the nature of the organization. He reported on 14 Jan. 1948 that he had stated in a conversation to Walshe that, since the Vanguard Movement had been suppressed during the fascist period, it suggested to the US envoy that it had ‘a militant, possibly even military significance’. Walshe replied that it was a sub-division of Catholic Action and had been set up a year-and-a-half before. Membership was limited to young men of between eighteen and thirty who had to be in excellent physical condition. Its purpose was ‘active defence of the church’. J. Graham Parsons, memorandum of conversation, 14 Jan. 1948 (No. 6), copy of document (no reference number cited) supplied to author on 20 Nov. 1980 by Edward J. Becker, Washington, DC.

27 This leads me to believe that the initiative for the sending of the message came first from Walshe and was endorsed by MacBride. No file on the drafting process has been located by the writer.

28 Walshe to Boland, 25 Feb. 1948 (secret and confidential), D/FA P140, secretary's files, Iveagh House, Dublin. Walshe had sent a coded telegram on 24 Feb. to Dublin outlining the reaction of the pope to the message.

29 Walshe to Boland, 25 Feb. 1948, D/FA P140, secretary's files, Iveagh House, Dublin. The ambassador had the unusual habit of capitalizing every reference to the pope out of respect for his position. (Following the audience, Walshe and MacDonald sought to place the message in die news columns of Italian papers. It appeared in Osservatore Romano, Quotidiano (which was the paper of Catholic Action), and Messegero, a conservative publication.)

30 In the early weeks of 1948, there had been some speculation about the pope having to move from Rome if ‘the Left’ took over. The Portuguese ambassador to the Holy See, Count Pedro Tovar de Lemos, raised that possibility in a conversation with Graha m Parsons.

31 Earlier in the audience, Walshe had complained to the pope that the situation in Italy had been made ‘incomparably worse by the lack of realization of the danger on the part of Christians generally, and particularly, perhaps, of some important Italian Catholic groups’.

32 Many with whom Walshe associated feared violence and civil disorder, including Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty, who had run the wartime escape line out of the Vatican.

33 Joseph McGrath was a wealthy Irish businessman with Fine Gael connexions.

34 Walshe to Boland, 5 Mar. 1948, p. 256, P12/2a; Walshe was at pains to point out that Dublin should take note ‘of the particular honour of the autographed letter’.

35 Garrett to secretary of state, 5 Mar. 1948, Rome, confidential files, 865.00/3–548, RG 59, NARA. Michael MacWhite, the Irish envoy to the Quirinal, was no less alarmist than Walshe in his reporting on the Italian situation. ‘Fears are growing’, he told Boland on 28 Feb. ‘that Italy will be next on the list of bloodless conquests’, P140, secretary's files, D/FA, Iveagh House, Dublin.

36 Graham Parsons to secretary of state, 6 Mar. 1948, Rome, confidential files, 867.00/3–648, RG 59, NARA.

37 Walshe confided in Graham Parsons that when he had seen the pope ten days previously, Pius XII was ‘more deeply worried than he (Walshe) had ever seen him’. Parsons gathered from what Walshe had told him that the pope was as ‘pessimistic’ as when another US diplomat Bonner had seen him on 28 Jan..

38 While MacBride had already taken the initiative to see Garrett in Dublin, I have not located any reference to the Irish minister in Washington having been given instructions to make direct representations to the state department on the Italian crisis.

39 Marshall to George Kennan, 9 Mar. 1948, Rome, confidential files, 865.00/3–948, RG 59, NARA.

40 J. Graham Parsons, 10 Mar. 1948, Myron Taylor papers, Box 19, RG 59, NARA. In this memorandum, there is reference to a ‘secret letter of today's date’ to William C. Dowling, head of the Italian desk at the state department. If this can be located it will cast greater light on the events of those days. It is unlikely that Graham Parsons had met Gedda before that evening. In his oral history interview, Graham Parsons states that it was Walshe who had brought him into contact with Gedda (p. 49), Truman Library.

41 Miller, , Italy and the United States, pp. 243–9Google Scholar; and see also Miller, James E., ‘Taking off the gloves’, pp. 45–53Google Scholar. See also Edelman, Eric S., ‘Incremental involvement – Italy and United States foreign policy, 1943–1948’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, Yale University, 1981)Google Scholar. (I am grateful to Professor Walter LaFeber, department of history, Cornell University, for making me aware of this reference.)

42 Walshe to Boland, 23 Apr. 1948, P140, secretary's files, D/FA, Iveagh House, Dublin.

43 Walshe first used the timer in the context of telling ‘our own Heads’ – a reference to the heads of the Irish religious houses in Rome – that ‘the Doctor would remain whatever happened, and that, in my opinion, that decision left us no option but to follow the same course’.

44 Walshe was at pains to point out that the poster campaign was based exclusively on the assumption that the ‘war is being waged against the enemies of Christian civilization’.

45 Walshe to Boland, 24 Mar. 1948, D/FA, P140, secretary's files, Iveagh House, Dublin. Walshe also added the words – ‘the Mercier Society’ – at the end of the letter. That was a reference to a group, set up in Dublin during the war, to promote discussion on matters of Christian concern.

46 Leo T. McCauley minute, 23 Mar. 1948, D/FA, P140, secretary's files, Iveagh House, Dublin. (The reference was to Walshe's telegrams nos. 21, 22, 23 which contained the text of Gedda's telegram to the United States.)

47 There is no evidence that the government took a decision on this question. MacBride, acting on the advice of Boland, may have discussed the matter with Costello alone.

48 For text, see telegram 21, Walshe to Dublin, received Dublin 22 Mar. 1948, D/FA, P140, secretary's files, Iveagh House, Dublin. (Walshe had seen Gedda and his chief assistant at the embassy on 23 Mar.)

49 The late Professor T. Desmond Williams told me that it was on this occasion that Boland was most unfavourably impressed with MacBride who spoke with great deference to the archbishop on the phone and once he had put the receiver down was dismissive of the prelate to the point of being contemptuous.

50 It was somewhat indelicate of the minister for external affairs to sanction the snding of the Gedda text to the English hierarchy through the Irish high commissioner in London.

51 MacBride sent his letters out on 25 Mar. 1948. Walshe cabled the minister (it arrived on 29 Mar.) to tell him that the original Gedda message had been given to the Mew York Times but that the publicity had been unsatisfactory. A new version had been cabled, possibly on the 17th, to heads of the hierarchy in America, Ireland, England, Scotland ‘with request of widest publicity’. D/FA, P140, secretary's files, Iveagh House, Dublin.

52 McQuaid to MacBride, 26 Mar. 1948, D/FA, P140, secretary's files, Iveagh House, Dublin.

53 Dublin to Walshe, 27 Mar. 1948 (No 39), D/FA, P140, secretary's files, Iveagh House, Dublin.

54 D'Alton to MacBride, 17 Mar. 1948, D/FA, P140, secretary's files, Iveagh House, Dublin. The cardinal added his Easter blessings and wrote: ‘I expect you must be very busy since you have taken up your new office. The work will be strange to you for some time.’ The archbishop of Tuam, replied on 26 Mar. He said that he did not like to take any public action but he felt that the archbishop of Armagh should take the initiative and he undertook to write to him. There was to be a meeting of the standing committee of the bishops on 6 Apr. But he realized that the time was short.

55 Extracts of the speech were sent by telegram to Walshe in Rome on 12 Apr. 1948.

56 Garrett to secretary of state, 12 Apr. 1948 (received 19 April), Rome, confidential files, 865.00/4–1248, RG 59, NARA.

57 McQuaid national broadcast, 11 Apr. 1948, D/FA, P140, secretary's files, Iveagh House, Dublin.

58 McQuaid to MacBride, 5 Apr. 1948, D/A, P140, secretary's files, Iveagh House, Dublin.

59 Walshe had sent a telegram to MacBride stating that the appeal from Gedda had been sent to all the Irish bishops with the exception of Dublin and Armagh. (Both D'Alton and McQuaid had already received individual letters from Gedda.)

60 D'Alton to MacBride, 2 Apr. 1948, D/FA, P140, secretary's files, Iveagh House, Dublin.

61 Dublin to Walshe, 3 Apr. 1948 (No 42), D/FA, P140, secretary's files, Iveagh House, Dublin.

62 D/FA, P140, Iveagh House, Dublin.

63 Walshe to Boland, 23 Apr. 1948, D/FA, P140, secretary's files, Iveagh House, Dublin. The ambassador said that Gedda had acknowledged immediately any cheque which he had received from the department. However, in the case of the bulk of the cash coming through the Vatican bank there had been ‘endless confusion and hesitations’ over the exact amount which had gone through the bank from the Dublin nunciature for Gedda.

64 This information is contained in the balance sheet on file, D/FA, P140, secretary's files, Iveagh House, Dublin.

65 Minute by Brian O'Gallchobhair, 9 May 1948, D/FA, P140, secretary's files, Iveagh House, Dublin. In a note on the file, dated 15 Apr. (initials indecipherable), there is the following: ‘Mr. Lynch Foreign Exchange Section D/Finance phoned to-day to say that they had approved a transfer of 26,000 pounds for the Nuncio, in connection with the Italian Election campaign.’

66 Memorandum, 17 May 1948, Rome, confidential files, 800-Italy, comitati civici, RG 84, NARA.

67 Walshe to Dublin, 7 Apr. 1948 (No 29), D/FA, P140, Iveagh House, Dublin.

68 Walshe to Boland, 23 Apr. 1948, D/FA, P140, Iveagh House, Dublin.

69 Dublin to Walshe, 7 Apr. 1948 (No 44), D/FA, P140, secretary's files, Iveagh House, Dublin.

70 Walshe to Dublin, 14 Apr. 1948 (No 31), D/FA, P140, secretary's files, Iveagh House, Dublin.

71 Walshe to Dublin, 14 Apr. 1948 (No 31), D/FA, P140, secretary's files, Iveagh House, Dublin.

72 Walshe to Dublin, 23 Apr. 1948, D/FA, P140, secretary's files, Iveagh House, Dublin.

73 Shinn, Rinn S. (ed.), Area handbook series Italy: a country study (Washington, 1985), pp. 70–1Google Scholar.

74 Walshe to Boland, 23 Apr. 1948, D/FA, P140, secretary's files, Iveagh House, Dublin.

75 Osservatore Romano, 20 May 1948.

76 Walshe to Boland, 26 May 1948 (letter), D/FA, P140, secretary's files, Iveagh House, Dublin.

77 D/FA, P140, secretary's files, Iveagh House, Dublin.

78 Montini to McGilligan, 14 Dec. 1948, D/FA, P140, secretary's files, Iveagh House, Dublin.

79 The transportation of the statue was paid for by many Italians resident in Ireland.