Bishop Dr. Alois Hudal: A Greeting from Across the Sea
From Rome, the Catholic Bishop Dr. Alois Hudal addresses Argentine Germans
Title: A Greeting from Across the Sea [de: Ein Gruß übers Meer]
Author: Bishop Dr. Alois Hudal [Wiki LINK]
“Der Weg” Issue: Year 03, Issue 02 (February 1949) [ToC LINK]
Page(s): 89-92 [Scan LINK]
Editor’s Note(s):
In the precarious turmoil of the post-war world, few have trodden their path with such unswerving resolve and upright honor. Yet, scarcely another has faced the young emigrants of that era with the nobility of spirit, the resolute authority, and the fearless readiness to aid as has His Excellency, Bishop Dr. Alois Hudal, Rector of the German National Church of Santa Maria dell’Anima in Rome. Thus, it fills us with profound joy that this spiritual guide and valiant, tireless supporter of an entire generation of German and Austrian refugees once more, across the vast ocean, illumines the way and the goal.
The reply will echo as one: Most Reverend Bishop, let this stand—loyalty for loyalty!
Rome, New Year’s Eve 1948.
A Greeting from Across the Sea
by Bishop Dr. Alois Hudal
To my dear compatriots in Argentina!
I gladly heed the call to address you, on the cusp of a new year cradling so many secrets and enigmas within its depths, with a word of solace and spiritual strengthening, borne by my heartfelt prayers and wishes for your whole future. Many of you I know personally. To some—perhaps not a few—I could lend a helping hand in the darkest weeks of their sojourn in Rome.
After untold struggles, trials of patience, disappointments, and deprivations of every kind, numerous German and Austrian citizens have succeeded, through the generous and compassionate welcome of the Argentine government—to which they owe eternal gratitude—in finding work far from their homeland, thereby forging the foundations for a new life and a gradual return to ordinary circumstances.
Yet, the bonds tying you to your old homeland remain unbroken, nor will they ever wholly fray. For "Heimat" is the soul, the rootedness of our entire being. It transcends mere memories of a cherished childhood home or the happy, distant years of youth.
In German parlance, "Heimat" surpasses "home" or "fatherland." Invisible forces chain a person to this sacred ground, wherever life may later lead, never fully letting go. Woe to those who truly have no homeland left.
Thus, I wish to entrust to your hearts three desires, like a greeting and a legacy your homeland bestows upon you for the coming years of your lives.
I.
Love, even from afar, your homeland, your fatherland, and your people—be it Germany or Austria, the soil where your cradle stood. Preserve, or strive to attain, a dispassionate, objective, and tranquil judgment over the past decades of our German history. In these recent years, our people have borne much and grievous injustice, though none would deny the errors, failings, and atrocities wrought by individuals of our nation—never, however, by the people as a whole. Ultimately, it was a struggle for existence itself, a contest of being or not being, which, since the fateful call for "unconditional surrender," had to assume ever harsher, more inhumane forms.
Yet, were our people not deceived beforehand with promises still unkept today, misled by grand phrases of the Four Freedoms—now sought in vain in many lands or long forgotten? If there be any purpose in accusing the past rather than building anew, must we not also indict those who, through the Treaties of Versailles, Saint-Germain, and Trianon, sowed the seeds of this second calamity? Shortsighted, hate-filled statesmen like Wilson and Clemenceau—men scarcely fit for a provincial deputy, let alone capable of resolving Central Europe’s intricate woes—wrought such folly as no Metternich, Talleyrand, or Bismarck would ever have dared.
What a political crime was the mere dismantling of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, that commonwealth which, for all its flaws, weaknesses, and outdated governance, far surpassed all that replaced it in 1918. It needed only a modern reshaping, granting generous national autonomies, to forge in that tension-ridden Danube region a political and economic anchor of the first order—as Bismarck, one of the few truly great and farsighted statesmen of our people in the last century, affirmed time and again in his letters and speeches.
Were the peoples once bound to that empire free today to vote in secret, choosing whether they were happier and more sovereign now or thirty years ago—when an incorruptible Supreme Administrative and Constitutional Court served every citizen—a crushing verdict would swiftly clarify all. Its destruction was the gravest political misdeed of recent decades. What have nations like the Slovenes, Croats, Hungarians, and Slovaks gained instead? Since then, Southern Europe has become a Pandora’s box, a cauldron of unrest, blessing no one truly.
It is the curse of an evil deed, ever spawning woe. No second war would have arisen, nor would any Austrian German idealist have dreamed of the Anschluss or found cause for it, had that empire—recast after the First World War as a Southeastern league akin to Britain’s Dominions—endured, rather than being brutally erased.
Or was it not monstrous political naivety, indeed a crime against Europe’s peace, that in 1945 the German army—history’s most disciplined, its unparalleled feats destined to outlast many a modern statesman’s name—was wholly destroyed? What a bulwark for Europe’s salvation we might have held, while today, despite the Marshall Plan’s brilliance, this continent lies militarily exposed, a pitiful frontier ripe for unresisted overrun. Should not those who committed such outrages, in statecraft and beyond, face an international tribunal?
II.
Proclaim with pride your allegiance to the German people, though it be treated ignobly today—torn within by partisan strife, weighed by Europe’s uncertain political course as it steps into the new year. It stands now as the Jewish people did after their mighty empire’s fall in 586 BCE: betrayal, discord, tribal rivalries, and grave missteps by Jerusalem’s leaders eased the way for enemies—long envious from north and south of David’s dynasty’s rise, thwarting it with ceaseless intrigue—to crush that state, a vital balance between the Eastern powers of Assyria and Egypt. Then, the prophet Jeremiah penned timeless words in his famed lamentations, beholding the tragedy upon his people. Alter them but slightly, and they speak to our times:
"Who will grant my head waters, my eyes a fount of tears, to weep day and night for our people’s slain? In woe, yesterday’s friends are foes. Foreign rule weighs heavy on our land. Valiant sons have fallen, others captive, for the enemy was too strong. Our inheritance has passed to strangers. Yet, above the rubble of yesteryear and through the dark of a pain-laden now, Your image glows, O Lord. You are our solace. Your reign outlasts history. Your grace will turn all anew and reshape our days."
We too, my dear countrymen, shall not despair in this dark night of suffering, but recall the old German adage, true for individuals, states, and nations alike:
"The mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceedingly fine."
Believe not, then, the spirits of hate and vengeance who break judgment over our whole people—those who, in Pharisaic self-righteousness, heap guilt upon us alone, saying:
"Lord, I thank You I am not as the Germans."
Nor trust blindly the records of the Nuremberg Trials, Landsberg, or sundry denazification courts, though they gleam in print for all to see. The final word remains unsaid. None can be both accuser and judge.
In mere years, a grand revision of the last thirty years’ German history will dawn, restoring to our people justice and right—for even a vanquished nation holds a sacred claim to truth and clarity. What we endured was no mere "Nazi catastrophe"—too crude a lens—but a collapse of all European culture, born of countless errors, oversights, and follies by every state and power these past three decades, demanding of all a resounding "Nostra culpa."
True, the Western Allies triumphed on the battlefield with their vast armaments, yet peace they have long since lost. To them too applies the Scripture:
"They were weighed on the scales of justice—of world history—and found wanting."
III.
Profess boldly and fearlessly, everywhere, your Christian worldview. Many of you witnessed firsthand, in Rome and beyond, the Church’s quiet, selfless aid to all refugees and the politically persecuted—heedless of creed or race—and many felt its loving care touch your own lives. What would humanity become should this light of Christian justice, love, and truth flicker out?
Be whole Christians, not merely within the hallowed church, but in every sphere of life: selfless, honorable, noble in thought and deed, fulfilling the Apostle’s call:
"Shine like stars amid a crooked world."
Above all, aid one another in servant-hearted love!
Christianity stands again in fierce battle with nihilism’s ruinous forces, borne to Europe’s heart and far continents by a cunning, unbridled propaganda that reveres nothing sacred or inviolable. Recall your first visit to St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome—perhaps beneath a fair Italian sky. There, sunlight streamed through Michelangelo’s dome, bathing the tomb of that humble Galilean fisherman, Peter, in radiant glory.
You read then, in grand golden mosaic, beneath the dome:
"Portae inferi non praevalebunt—The gates of hell shall not prevail against it."
This is our certainty, our victorious hope. As we believe in Germany’s and the Danube’s rebirth—lest this continent wholly perish—so, even more, we trust in the Church’s and Christianity’s final triumph in Europe. Evil may claim fleeting victories, never enduring ones.
These reflections are my New Year’s wish to you, dear countrymen—Reich Germans and Austrians, known and unknown, all bound in spirit by shared homeland and tongue, even abroad. Think patriotically, Christianly, Germanly; hold fast together—God will govern the rest! Live overseas worthy of the German name and esteem, worthy too of your fatherland!
Not all emigrants grasp that abroad, rightly or not, their lives often judge their people and homeland. Whoever dwells abroad is, in some measure, his nation’s envoy. As doctor, engineer, worker, or merchant—touching lives diplomats seldom reach—he can do more for his fatherland’s honor, dispelling more prejudice, than state-paid officials in foreign posts.
I bless you from afar—your families, your entire future too. God be with you!
