Eugenio Pacelli is the Vatican ambassador in Berlin and observes Hitler's political rise. The anti-Semitic ideology of Nazism is unstoppable and within a few years the plight of the Jews in Germany becomes dramatic, for example with the implementation of the racial laws and the Night of the Crystals. Unpublished documents from the Holy See show that the Vatican tried to fight Hitler by trying to encourage the emigration of German Jews, but to where?
In 1938, the Evian Conference brought together the most important western states, but none of them wanted to accept German Jews, because anti-Semitism was not an exclusively German issue. In March 1939, Eugenio Pacelli was elected Pope with the name Pius XII, while the clouds of the Second World War were gathering. What will Pope Pius XII do? Will he openly condemn Nazism, or will he remain silent? And why?
