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 expected to manage to agree to disagree, taking comfort from the fact that the papacy would have little say in the outcome.41
Cardinal Bertram may have been the first to suggest the appointment of Ratti as ecclesiastical commissioner for the plebiscite to lend the appearance of clerical decorum and integrity to the rowdy contest in Silesia. Ratti did not welcome his nomination to this largely honorific title that combined high visibility with a minimum of true authority. Indeed, the proposal was a bad idea for so many reasons that at first neither Cardinal Gasparri nor the Allied overseers of the vote saw much merit in it, but in the end the Vatican could not resist accepting even so modest an opportunity to escape its galling diplomatic isolation, and so sought and eventually procured the post for its reluctant emissary in March 1920.42
From the start, the Silesian duty caused Ratti nothing but trouble. In the first place, he entered office under the general suspicion that he could not help but be partial to Poland, the country of his nunciature. Warsaw surely hoped so, and lobbied eagerly to see that he got the job, with some clout to go with it. Once he was installed, Poland looked to him as an advocate, while German opinion regarded him as an enemy. Both sides misread their man: in fact, Ratti shared Gasparri’s preference for minimizing German losses in Silesia.43 He observed careful neutrality, and urged evenhanded restraint and civility in his public statements. These policies provoked grumblings of disappointed expectations from the Polish quarter, which he took as a good sign. “When only the Germans were against me, I did not know whether I was on the right track,” he later recalled, “but when also the Poles expressed their feelings against me, I was certain that I was doing the right thing.”44
Nuncio Ratti also found himself caught in the middle of a sharp partisan divide among the Catholic churchmen of the plebiscite region with no power to enforce a disinterested via media. The predominantly Polish lesser clergy of Upper Silesia comprised the most articulate, nationally conscious, and influential segment of the Poles of the province. With more or less open encouragement from Warsaw, many of these priests threw themselves into the political arena on behalf of Polish interests, while other itinerant clergy filtered in from Poland proper to lend support to the cause.45 This agitation annoyed the German archbishop, Cardinal Bertram, on two counts: not only did he oppose the pretensions of Poland to Silesia, as he often reminded Ratti, but he also resented the widespread electioneering of his own Polish priests as well as the unregulated comings and goings of the carpetbaggers in collars as a challenge to his right to maintain ecclesiastical order within his diocese. In the summer and fall of 1920, as German complaints mounted that the Poles were exploiting Silesian pulpits as nationalist soapboxes, Bertram gradually resolved to put a stop to it. Ratti was helpless to ward off the looming collision. Despite his symbolic stature as commissioner, he possessed no mandate to curb the freelance Polish clerics, and even less to override the legitimate pastoral and disciplinary authority of an angered ordinary much his senior. His only option was to apply moral suasion, but this was hampered by his frequent absence from the scene. After all, his residence and primary responsibilities remained in Warsaw, not Silesia, and the considerable distraction of the Polish-Soviet war also preoccupied his time and attention as the pressure mounted in the plebiscite zone.46
Cardinal Bertram dropped the other shoe on November 21, 1920, by issuing a decree pronouncing a ban on various types of politicking by clergy within Upper Silesia. Although it applied equally to both nationalities, Poles and Germans alike instantly grasped that the practical effect of the order, and doubtless its intent, was to damage the Polish chances to prevail in the vote. No ecclesiastics from other jurisdictions would be allowed to enter Upper Silesia for the purpose of influencing the outcome of the plebiscite. As for the mainly Polish priests of the archdiocese, they could comment or take part in political controversies only with permission of their parish pastors, seventy percent of whom happened to be German. To enraged Poles, the Church had cast its ballot for Germany by hamstringing the patriotic Polish clergy, thus arbitrarily nullifying their strongest asset in an uphill struggle to overcome the inherent advantages of the wealthier and better placed Germans in Silesia.
At the time and for years afterward, many wondered whether Ratti and the Vatican knew and approved