Not wanting the Supreme Pontiff to fall into the hands of the allies during World War II, Adolf Hitler had given one of his generals an order to occupy the Vatican and kidnap Pope Pius XII, according to a report in the
Daily Mail.
Hitler's plan even reached the Vatican, where they then started making preparations of how to hide the Pope until he could be rescued, according to the Daily Mail, citing an unearthed report first published by the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano.
The report says that in the Fall of 1943, Hitler had ordered SS General Karl Wolff to carry out the mission — under the guise of protection, take the Pope to Germany.
"I do not want him to fall into the hands of the allies or to be under their political pressure and influence," Hitler told Wolff, according to the report. 'The Vatican is already a nest of spies and a center of anti-national socialist propaganda."
Pope Pius was often called "Hitler's Pope" because of his reticence to criticize the Nazis' Holocaust of the Jews, the Daily Mail reported.
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