Click for material on the Vatican during World War II.
Alvarez, David. "Faded Lustre: Vatican Cryptography, 1815-1920." Cryptologia 20, no. 2 (Apr. 1996): 97-131. And in Selections from Cryptologia: History, People, and Technology, eds. Cipher A. Deavours, David Kahn, Louis Kruh, Greg Mellen, and Brian J. Winkel, 191-225. Boston, MA: Artech House, 1998.
"Between 1815 and 1920 the Vatican lagged behind other states in responding to developments in cryptographic practice."
Alvarez, David.
"A German Agent at the Vatican: The Gerlach Affair." Intelligence
and National Security 11, no. 2 (Apr. 1996): 345-356.
Monsignor Rudolf Gerlach was a Bavarian priest and "private chamberlain and confidant of Pope Benedict XV." He was also "a conduit for covert German subsidies" to anti-interventionist newspapers during the period before Italy entered World War I. It is also likely that he engaged in espionage activities while at the Vatican.
Alvarez, David. "The Papal Cipher Section in the Early Nineteenth Century." Cryptologia 17, no. 2 (Apr. 1993): 219-224. And in Selections from Cryptologia: History, People, and Technology, eds. Cipher A. Deavours, David Kahn, Louis Kruh, Greg Mellen, and Brian J. Winkel, 155-160. Boston, MA: Artech House, 1998.
Alvarez, David. Spies in the Vatican: Espionage and Intrigue from Napoleon to the Holocaust. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2002.
Peake, Studies 47.1 (2003), views this work as "well documented and well told." The author "tells about Vatican involvement in a wide variety of intelligence functions, from espionage and counterintelligence to codebreaking and propaganda." Alvarez believes that the "intelligence capabilities of the Papacy" have been exaggerated, concluding that "the Vatican had 'neither the ability nor the appetite to employ ... espionage and clandestine operations' to the degree imagined by others."
According to Brooks, NIPQ 19.3, the author "spends more time enumerating the various espionage attempts by world powers against the Vatican than [he] spends detailing the very limited capabilities of the Pope's tiny diplomatic service." (emphasis in original)
Hess, JIH 3.2, notes that "with the disappearance of the Papal States [in 1870,] the Pope’s intelligence capabilities largely vanished." From World War I through World War II, "the world and certainly its European and North-American regions underwent an intelligence revolution.... 'This intelligence revolution completely bypassed the Papacy.'" Spies in the Vatican "provides fascinating reading," is written in "elegant and at times witty and always precise language," and "needs to be read together with the extensive notes. They contain many stories and details, which would otherwise evade the reader’s attention."
For Keefe, I&NS 18.3, "[t]his entertaining and thought-provoking study will provide the Papacy's critics and supporters with an unique perspective and some convincing arguments about the place of the Vatican in the world of espionage." Schwab, IJI&C 18.1 (Spring 2005), is somewhat more negative about this work, noting that "the lack of a clearly stated thesis is surprising.... From a stylistic perspective, Spies in the Vatican is an uneven work." Nonetheless, the author "has produced a useful work for students of diplomatic and intelligence history to consult."
Alvarez, David. "Vatican Communications Security, 1914-18." Intelligence and National Security 7, no. 4 (Oct. 1992): 443-453.
During World War I, the Vatican "depended upon the ordinary mails or, where possible, the diplomatic messengers of other states.... [P]apal cryptography during the war ... was a modest effort.... [T]here can be little doubt that throughout the war the Holy See was plagued by poor communications security."
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