their appetite for territory, particularly in the west, before they got themselves, and Europe, in trouble; Poland could not afford to make enemies of both Russia and Germany, and should not burn its bridges to Berlin by pressing excessive claims against its German neighbor in the vicinity of Danzig and Silesia. Sooner or later, he warned, Warsaw would “pay dearly” for its land greed, and might even bring on its own ruin by provoking a disastrous German-Soviet alliance.32
Before the year was out, crises erupted on each of Poland’s contested flanks that brought these tensions into the open and led first to the triumph, then rapidly to the inglorious end of the nunciature of Achille Ratti. In the east, where Polish and Soviet military forces had been jockeying for position in the no-man’s-land of the kresy, Piłsudski threw the hostilities into higher gear in spring 1920 by launching an offensive intended to fulfill his goal of securing the borderlands and tilting the regional balance of power decisively toward Poland. The initial success of the drive brought Kiev into Polish hands by May and sparked an outburst of national euphoria. The Polish Church joined in the enthusiasm by celebrating masses to honor these feats of arms, although some prelates could not bear the fact that the accomplishment had made Piłsudski the hero of the hour. When the conquering general received a thunderous welcome in the parliament upon returning to Warsaw, his sworn enemy Archbishop Teodorowicz stood in the hall speechless and visibly agitated, his patriotic pride wrestling with his hatred of Piłsudski.33 For its part, the Vatican also found itself torn, but for different reasons, pleased by every inch gained by the Poles at Russian expense, but convinced that the Polish advance was a rash venture that was bound to end badly.34
As if to confirm Cardinal Gasparri’s fears of Polish overreach, the tide of battle shifted quickly in the summer, and a Red Army counteroffensive threatened to engulf Poland and, perhaps, to spill out into war-weary central Europe as well. The swift reversal of Polish fortunes that now jeopardized the existence of the state spurred the local Church into action. Rightist clerical foes of Piłsudski who had bitten their tongues while he was winning now turned their fury on him as the instigator of disaster: at one tempestuous meeting, Father Adamski publicly and loudly branded him a traitor to his face.35 On a more dignified level, as the emergency grew more grave, the Catholic leadership of Poland concentrated on rallying the religious sentiments of their people in defense of nation and faith. In July the episcopate called on Poles to maintain unity and brace themselves to resist the invaders, and simultaneously appealed for the prayers and assistance of believers throughout the world to help them shield Europe against the Bolsheviks, “the living negation of Christianity.” At the end of the month the bishops symbolically underscored their petition by asking the pope to canonize Andrzej Bobola, a seventeenth-century Polish Jesuit missionary who had suffered martyrdom by Cossacks while evangelizing the kresy.36
While the Catholic friends of Poland abroad had little aid of their own to give, they freely abetted the cause by invoking the greater powers of the Almighty and lending words of encouragement sometimes chilled with the cold comfort of reproachful advice. Churches throughout Europe raised prayers for the Poles. In Rome, the Jesuit chieftain Ledóchowski ordered hundreds of masses said for his endangered countrymen, and in early August Benedict XV urged moral and material help for Poland, once again the rampart of Christianity.37 Even so, on August 14, as the Reds bore down on Warsaw to deal a possibly mortal blow, the Vatican chided the Poles for having brought misfortune upon themselves in a remarkable commentary in L’Osservatore romano. The article had the fingerprints of Cardinal Gasparri all over it. After making the obligatory tributes to the “noble, devoutly Catholic, chivalrous and brave Polish nation,” it went on to say, in effect, we told you so. Declaring the Russian war a “risky adventure,” it took pains to point out that “the Holy See . . . has never ceased to exhort [Poland] to moderation in seeking or even accepting territories inhabited by majorities of other nationalities. These warnings were repeated several times.” The tone of the piece was grim and valedictory, and readers might well have taken it as an editorial bestowal of last rites upon the Second Republic as a favored but errant son of the Church.
On the front line in Warsaw, Nuncio Ratti also suspected that his host government was doomed, but refused to evacuate his post even as other diplomats fled westward in anticipation of a climactic battle at the gates of the city. In part, he remained out of a sense of pastoral duty, just as Archbishop Kakowski ordered the priests of his diocese not to abandon their flocks, and Rome may too have wanted him on the spot to begin the distasteful but necessary job of making contact with the Bolsheviks in the event of their victory. As the moment of truth neared, the Vatican changed its mind and recommended that Ratti depart, and the Polish foreign ministry made last-minute contingency plans to whisk him to safety, but he chose to stay. On the night of August 14, the eve of the clash, the last train carrying foreign officials pulled out of Warsaw, leaving behind only Ratti and a handful of ministers from other legations. According to his own later account, during these tense hours he conferred with General Maxime Weygand, the French military adviser, and the two conversed about the importance of the coming day for the future of civilization.38
When the battle joined, the Poles unexpectedly prevailed as Piłsudski stopped the Red Army in its tracks and sent it reeling in retreat. The war ended some months later with Poland not only intact, but even having got the better of the fighting. The good news from the east struck a chord throughout the Catholic world, and enhanced the venerable Polish reputation as the shield of Christendom against the barbarian. The episcopates of western Europe raised hosannas of thanksgiving for the delivery of Poland, and the pope spoke for many by congratulating the country for having saved not only itself, but perhaps the whole continent.39 Instantly hailed as an epochal historic event, the decisive clash at Warsaw became known as the “Miracle on the Vistula,” and reports circulated of divine or Marian intervention on behalf of the God-fearing winners. Within Poland these claims took on a partisan edge. Detractors of Piłsudski fostered the accounts of supernatural assistance as a means of denying credit for the triumph to their political foe, much to the displeasure of his admirers.40 Among other things, although at the time no one could foretell its full import, the showdown with Communism before the Polish capital made the reputation of Achille Ratti. His decision to stand by Poland in its desperate hour, recalling the defiance of Pope Leo I in the face of Attila, became the signature of his nunciature and, in retrospect, his crucial stepping-stone toward the throne of Peter. For the moment, at least, it also won him the gratitude of Poles and allayed their nagging suspicions that the papacy could not be trusted to uphold the interests of their nation.
Ratti did not have long to bask in Polish affections, however, for within months he landed square in the middle of another frontier dispute to the west that turned him virtually overnight from a friend in the eyes of Warsaw into persona non grata. The peace conference had determined that the disposition of the coveted mining and industrial district of Upper Silesia, formerly part of Germany but plausibly demanded on ethnic and historical grounds by Poland as well, would be settled by plebiscite, which, in the event, did not take place until March 1921. The run-up to the vote was fractious and occasionally violent, with both sides contending for advantage and seeking ways to create a favorable environment for the balloting. Good reason existed to believe that Roman and local Church authorities inclined to the German position in the controversy. In the first place, Silesia was just the sort of nationally ambiguous claim that Cardinal Gasparri had urged Poland to avoid. Furthermore, many took it as axiomatic that the arithmetic of religious realpolitik gave the Vatican a powerful incentive to wish that the heavily Catholic region should remain German: a few Catholics more or fewer in Poland would make no difference, but the same numbers on the other side of the frontier could tilt the confessional balance in the Weimar Republic by cutting into the Protestant majority and bolstering the strength of the Center Party. The Curia also may well have calculated that with Poland menaced by Soviet Russia, Silesian Catholics might be safer in Germany. The Vatican regularly heard, and heeded, such arguments from the German ordinary of Silesia, Adolf Cardinal Bertram, the patriotic archbishop of Breslau, who spared little effort to prevent the loss of this vital slice of his diocese to Poland. As preparation for the plebiscite began in earnest, Poland harbored no illusions concerning the preferences of the Holy See on the matter, but
