Abstract

Critics of Pope Pius XII usually fail to account for the dangerous role he took as mediator in a conspiracy against Hitler at the outbreak of World War II in 1939. Peace negotiations between German military rebels and the British government flowed through the Vatican as a secret conduit. First-hand testimonies by German conspirators, and secondary studies by historians of the German Resistance and British-Vatican relations, all give evidence of the Pope’s heroic courage in the face of grave threats to himself and the Catholic Church.