 Two important and recent studies are worth mentioning here . In The Real Odessa . How Peron Brought the Nazi War Criminals to Argentina ( 2002 ) , the Argentine journalist , <unk> Goñi described how the Argentinean government dealt with war criminals that entered Argentina . However , during his research Goñi accidentally stumbled on documents of the British Foreign Office about the involvement of Vatican personnel in the smuggling of war criminals , the so @-@ called post @-@ war " ratlines " . Goñi found out that the British Envoy D 'Arcy Osborne had intervened with Pope Pius XII to put an end to these illegal activities . Furthermore , he discovered " that the Pope secretly pleaded with Washington and London on behalf of notorious criminals and Nazi collaborators " . Suzanne Brown @-@ Fleming 's The Holocaust and Catholic Conscience . Cardinal Aloisius Muench and the Guilt Question in Germany ( 2006 ) underlines Goñi 's findings . In her remarkable study , Brown @-@ Fleming clearly demonstrated how Pius XII intervened on behalf of rather vicious German war criminals ( e.g. Otto Ohlendorf ) . Brown @-@ Fleming 's main source was the archive of Pope Pius XII 's representative in post @-@ war Germany , Cardinal Aloisius Muench . Then , Phayer 's Pius XII , The Holocaust , and the Cold War ( 2008 ) makes use of many documents that have recently come to light thanks to Bill Clinton 's 1997 executive order declassifying wartime and postwar documents , many of which are currently at the US National Archives and Holocaust Memorial Museum . These documents include diplomatic correspondence , American espionage , and even decryptions of German communications . Relevant documents have also been released by the Argentine government and the British Foreign Office and other information sources have become available , including the diary of Bishop Hurley . These documents reveal new information about Pius XII 's actions regarding the Ustaše regime , the genocides in Poland , the finances of the wartime church , the deportation of the Roman Jews , and the ratlines for Nazis and fascists fleeing Europe . According to Phayer , " the face of Pope Pius that we see in these documents is not the same face we see in the eleven volumes the Vatican published of World War II documents , a collection which , though valuable , is nonetheless critically flawed because of its many omissions " . 
