For anyone interested in this topic, this book is a must read:
Cornwell, John. Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII, 1999
Cornwell had access to Pacelli’s records, held in Vatican archives, as the Vatican Secretary of State and later as Pope, decades before the records were made available to the public earlier this year.
Particularly relevant are Chapter 8, Hitler and Pacelli, on Pacelli’s direction of the German Catholic Center Party to vote to give dictatorial power to Hitler in 1933, as well as Chapter 17, The Jews of Rome, on the roundup and deportation to Auschwitz of more than 1000 Jews.
The book also addresses the fiction created in Pius XII’s Vatican newspaper during the war that he made humanitarian efforts “behind the scenes” to mitigate the devastation of the Shoah. This myth has been perpetuated since, and, in the film “Holy Silence,” was repeated by Norbert Hoffman, representing the Vatican Commission on Jewish Relations. Through decades of research there has been no evidence presented to support it.
Sincerely,