Nuncio Pacelli’s report to Cardinal Gasparri about machinegun fire upon the Nunciature and invasion of the Nunciature by anti-Communist forces - May 5, 1919
Source: Timeline
May 5, 1919 Pacelli reports an attack on his Munich Nunciature by anti-Communist paramilitary forces.
Italian original at www.Pacelli-Edition.de and English translation
May 5, 1919 Nuncio Pacelli’s report to Cardinal Gasparri about machinegun fire upon the Nunciature and invasion of the Nunciature by anti-Communist forces:
Most Reverend Eminence,
After the aggressions by the Red Army that I reported to Your Most Reverend Eminence in my respectful report No. 12602, there was an attack here by Government troops against the palace of the Nunciature on the evening of May 3rd. I was at Prof. Jochner’s Clinic in Munich, where I also spent the night. Monsignor Schioppa had also slept away from the house the night before, at the place of a friend of his from the Austrian Legation, and that same evening I strongly recommended that he do the same. Having returned to the Nunciature at 7 p.m. for dinner, however, he did not believe he could go out again without danger, and thus deemed it safer to remain there. Unfortunately, however, toward 10 o’clock, after a loud shout was heard in the street where the Nunciature palace is situated, apparently a military order, a violent fusillade of rifle and machinegun fire struck against the palace itself, and precisely against the eastern side with the room occupied by Monsignor Auditor. He was in the bedroom and had just then turned on the electric light. With the tremendous shots that were discharged against the room, he thought perhaps the light could have provoked this devilry, though there was no order against it. He wanted to turn it off immediately but found that was impossible to do without grave danger, since the light switch was right in front of the window where bullets were coming in. Finally, crawling on all fours across the floor, he succeeded in turning off the light and taking refuge in another room. After a few more minutes, the fusillade ceased. At the same time, three officers and about twenty soldiers came to the door, Government troops (Prussian), armed with rifles, hand grenades and revolvers, and said that there had been repeated shots from the windows of the Nunciature directed at the troops, killing at least four soldiers, and therefore they wanted to make a thorough search of the house. Monsignor Schioppa, after expressing appropriate misgivings in consideration of the diplomatic immunity to which the house was entitled, accompanied the officers and soldiers into all the rooms and even onto the roof, to convince them that there were no Spartacists in the building and that there was necessarily no possibility that troops had been fired upon from there. It was not easy to convince these gentlemen, who asserted that at least two sentries had reported the fact of firing from the windows of the palace. By God’s will, half an hour after midnight, the soldiers left the house, with two sentries remaining there on watch to see if anyone might shoot from dwellings overlooking the garden of the Nunciature. In fact the Spartacists, after losing the major battle, began to fight as guerrillas from the roofs, as their worthy comrades had done in Berlin.
The morning after, it was possible to confirm the severity of the attack that had been suffered. On the exterior walls of the house on the aforementioned side, there are at least fifty or sixty holes made by machinegun bullets. Several window panes are shattered. Two bullets penetrated the interior wall against which Msgr. Auditor’s bed is set. Four shots struck the interior of his bathroom, which is severely damaged, and it was a miracle that one of the bullets did not strike the gas line, which could have caused an immense calamity.
On the same day, I did not fail to call these deplorable events to the attention of the Prussian Legation in Munich, which promised to take an interest so that such events do not recur. Meanwhile, last night another attack was renewed against a house near the Nunciature, and it was a real marvel if it was spared new damage.
In reporting the above to Your Reverend Eminence ...
Source: www.Pacelli-Edition.de, Document No. 259.