Pacelli reports to Gasparri about his discussion in Berlin with the new Reich Chancellor, Stresemann, about dangers of Bolshevik revolution in Germany, and the National Socialists on the opposite extreme - Sept. 24, 1923
Source: Timeline
Sept. 24, 1923 Pacelli reports to Gasparri about his discussion in Berlin with the new Reich Chancellor, Stresemann, about dangers of Bolshevik revolution in Germany, and the National Socialists on the opposite extreme.
Italian original at www.Pacelli-Edition.de and English translation
Sept. 24, 1923 Pacelli to Gasparri:
Re: Trip to Berlin – Political Situation – Ruhr Issue
Most Reverend Eminence,
As I did not fail to make known by private letter to Mons. Sostituto [Pizzardo] of the Secretariat of State – after having delivered to Bavarian Education Minister Dr. Matt the Note concerning the Concordat negotiations, a copy of which had already been transmitted by me to Your Most Reverend Eminence, I believed it my duty to go to Berlin, in order to introduce myself to the new Chancellor, Mr. Stresemann. This visit was indeed awaited by him with strong desire. Arriving in Berlin the morning of last Tuesday, the 17th, I was immediately received by him at 11:30am. The Chancellor explained to me the domestic and foreign situation of Germany. As to the first, he said that the rumors circulating in Bavaria that a Bolshevik or purely Socialist government will soon come to power in Berlin (rumors that steadily feed separatist tendencies) are unfounded. The Reich Army is loyal and ready to oppose any form of insurrection, be it from the right or the left. It is also false (he said) that the Socialists have a preponderant influence in his Cabinet, since they leave him freedom of action. If they were to exit the coalition, he would not resign, but would form a Cabinet purely of the bourgeois parties and, if necessary, obtain from the Reich President the dissolution of the Reichstag. It is rather likely that, because of the enormous increases in prices, there will be lootings in the shops and in the countryside, but these can be repressed. The situation is undoubtedly rather tense in Saxony and Thuringia, where the Red parties predominate, and the Reich Government is indeed disposed to act eventually at the opportune moment, but this has not yet arrived, because then he would be obliged to proceed also against the elements of the extreme right (National Socialists) of Bavaria, which, no less than the elements of the extreme left, despise and deprecate the Authorities of the Reich. I had to add, however, that if the Chancellor is expressing himself with so much confidence with regard to Bolshevism in talking to me, who am currently living in Bavaria, evidently for the purpose of calming the rumors circulating there, with other Ambassadors on the contrary, according to what they themselves have told me, he has depicted the Bolshevik peril in Germany, especially in Berlin, as grave and threatening.
Coming then to discuss the foreign policy situation ...
Source: Historical Archive of the Secretariat of State (Holy See), Section for Relations with States, AA.EE.SS., Germania , 1923-1928, pos. 525, fasc. 39, fol. 71r-75v, reprinted in www.Pacelli-Edition.de, Document No. 107.