Joseph Lichten wrote : " Pacelli had obviously established his position clearly , for the Fascist governments of both Italy and Germany spoke out vigorously against the possibility of his election to succeed Pius XI in March 1939 , though the cardinal secretary of state had served as papal nuncio in Germany from 1917 to 1929 . " The day after Pacelli 's election , the Berlin Morgenpost said : ' The election of cardinal Pacelli is not accepted with favor in Germany because he was always opposed to Nazism and practically determined the policies of the Vatican under his predecessor . ' Der Angriff , the Nazi party organ , warned that Pius ' policies would lead to a " crusade against the totalitarian states " . According to Karol Jozef Gajewski , Heinrich Himmler 's Das Schwarze Korps ( ' The Black Corps ' ) , house newspaper of the SS , had formerly labelled Pacelli a " co-conspirator with Jews and Communists against Nazism " and decried his election as " the " Chief Rabbi of the Christians , boss of the firm of Judah-Rome . " Pius selected Cardinal Luigi Maglione as his Secretary of State , and retained Domenico Tardini and Giovanni Montini ( future Pope Paul VI ) as Under-Secretaries of State . According to Hebblethwaite , Maglione was pro-democracy and anti-dictatorship , " detested Hitler and thought Mussolini a clown " , but the career-diplomat Pope largely reserved diplomatic matters for himself . The new Pope hoped to stop Hitler 's war , and inaugurated his reign with a message of peace to Germany , and the day after Hitler and Stalin signed their secret pact , sealing the fate of Poland , Pius delivered a 24 August appeal for peace : Some historians have argued that Pacelli , as Cardinal Secretary of State , dissuaded Pope Pius XI — who was nearing death at the time — from condemning '' Kristallnacht '' in November 1938 , when he was informed of it by the papal nuncio in Berlin . Likewise the draft for the preposed encyclical '' Humani generis unitas '' '' ( " On the Unity of Human Society " ) '' , which was ready in September 1938 , was , according to the two publishers of the draft text and other sources , not forwarded to the Vatican by the Jesuit General Wlodimir Ledochowski . On January 28 , 1939 , eleven days before the death of Pope Pius XI , a disappointed Gundlach informed author LaFarge , . " It can not continue like this . The text has not been forwarded to the Vatican . " He had talked to the American assistant to Father General , who promised to look into the matter in December 1938 , but did not report back . It contained an open and clear condemnation of colonialism , racism and antisemitism . Some historians have argued that Pacelli learned about its existence only after the death of Pius XI and did not promulgate it as Pope . He did however use parts of it in his inaugural encyclical Summi Pontificatus , which he titled " On the Unity of Human Society . " Pope Pius XII lobbied world leaders to prevent the outbreak of World War II , up to the very last day of peace . On 24 August 1939 , he made a public broadcast appealing for peace , and on 31 August , the last day before the war , the Pope wrote to the German , Polish , Italian , British and French governments saying that he was unwilling to abandon hope that pending negotiations might lead to " a just pacific solution " and beseeching the Germans and Polish " in the name of God " to avoid " any incident " and for the British , French and Italians to support his appeal . The " pending negotiations " turned out to be a mere Nazi propaganda trick . The following day , Hitler invaded Poland
Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht
Catholic Church and Nazi Germany