Captured Nazi documents, published today simultaneously by the State Department here and by the British Government in London, quoted a high Hitler representative to the Vatican as saying, in 1941, that Pope Pius XII favored Germany during the early stages of World War II.
The documents, covering German diplomatic activity between June 23, 1941 and December 8, 1941, quote Fritz Maneshausen, counselor to the German Embassy in Rome, as reporting that “one is assured time and again that Pope Pius XII stands on the side of the Axis powers.”
One of the items now published quotes cables from Joachim von Ribbentrop, then German Foreign Minister to the German Embassy in Washington, ordering an attempt to influence American Jewry against favoring war on Germany. In his orders, Ribbentrop had instructed his representatives in Washington to adopt a line of telling American Jews that they must oppose war against Germany, lest the Jews in the United states be blamed for subsequent heavy American casualties.
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