Götterdämmerung?
During the last months of the war, as the Reich crumbled, there spread through Europe a sensational alarm concerning the Nazis' reported intention to exterminate all foreigners under their control. Though the report was taken seriously by the allied governments, it was never confirmed after the war, so it has passed into obscurity largely ignored by historians. But, as the documents show, the Holy See was caught up in this final burst of fear of a climactic Nazi atrocity.
The Vatican learned of the warning through Polish Ambassador Casimir Papee on September 25, 1944. All the inmates of Auschwitz were to be liquidated, he said. Accordingly, on the next day, the nuncio in Berlin was asked to intervene in whatever way he judged most effective. This time the Secretariat did not ask him to first verify the report. The Holy See told him it had been informed that German authorities were preparing a massacre of prisoners in Auschwitz concentration camp. These prisoners, accused of `political crimes,' are said to amount to 45,000, mainly Poles, but also Italians and other nationalities.
Several days later, the Apostolic Delegate in Washington reported that a group of Jewish spokesmen had asked for a papal appeal to the German government and to the German people as the only means to save the existence of the Jews and in particular, the 45,000 Jews and Christians of Polish, French and Czech nationality, interned at Auschwitz and in imminent danger of death. Later, Cicognani amended his telegram, adding the camp of Birchenau-Nauss [sic]. The Red Cross of Geneva had reportedly appealed to the Germans too. In an October 18 telegram from Washington, Cicognani said, situation deportees in Germany already distressing, if events precipitate it might become tragic and end in a bloodbath.
On October 13, Orsenigo reported from Berlin that the reports, according to the Wilhelmstrasse, were Allied propaganda. Orsenigo himself commented in his report: though admitting sincerity of the (of the) Foreign Ministry, it is not excluded that the notorious SS formations have received secret instructions that are very different.
After subsiding somewhat, the alarm revived again in the last months of the war. On January 25, 1945, Tardini warned Orsenigo again, after receiving information from the Polish ambassador. On March 3, 1945, Orsenigo was instructed to take steps to assure the safety of prisoners, deportees, internees and foreign laborers, but at that late date, from his remote base at Eichstatt, there was little that Orsenigo could do. On March 18, the delegate in Washington reported that the Jews in America were terrified at the report that all Jews in German hands, estimated at 600,000, would be liquidated. In his March 28 reply, Tardini recounted the Vatican's efforts to forestall such a tragedy. Responding to rumors that Germans would be sent to labor in Russia, he said such a move would not be the very best way to prevent further massacres of Jews and Poles.