Alleged plot to kidnap Pope Pius XII

Wolff maintained that on 13 September 1943, Hitler gave the directive to "occupy Vatican City, secure its files and art treasures, and take the Pope and Curia to the north".

[4] Former Generalmajor Erwin von Lahousen, in his deposition at the Nuremberg Trials on February 1, 1946 (Warnreise Testimony 1330-1430), said that Hitler had ordered the Reichssicherheitshauptamt to devise a plot to punish the Italian people by kidnapping or murdering Pius XII and the King of Italy.

[5] But, Lahousen said, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of the German counterintelligence service, informed his Italian counterpart, General Cesare Amè, during a secret meeting in Venice on July 29–30, 1943.

[10] In Cornwell's view: "all the facts indicate, therefore, that an attempt to invade the Vatican and its properties, or to seize the Pope in response to a papal protest would have seriously hindered the Nazi war effort.

And thus even Hitler came to acknowledge what Pacelli appeared to ignore: that the strongest social and political force in Italy in the autumn of 1943 was the Catholic Church, and that its scope for noncompliance with disruption was immense.

"[12] Dr. Peter Gumpel, S.J., an expert in the wartime period of Pope Pius XII's papacy, published a point-by-point rebuttal, including pointing out that "Before publication of the book ["Hitler's Pope"], an article appeared in the Sunday Times, in which Cornwell (who has no academic degrees in history, law, or theology) said he was the first and only person ever to be granted permission to visit the archive of the Vatican secretariat of state, had worked there for months on end, and discovered an unknown and highly compromising letter written by Pacelli on April 18, 1917, which, according to him, had lain there hidden as a time-bomb.

[17] Kurzman's other interviewees include: Rudolph Rahn, German ambassador to the RSI, Eitel Mollhausen, Rahn's deputy, Albrecht von Kessel, the deputy of Ernst von Weizsäcker, SS Colonel Eugen Dollman, Wolff's liaison to Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, and Peter Gumpel, the Vatican's advocate for canonization of Pius XII.

[19] Osborne himself considered the odds of such a kidnapping incredibly unlikely, as the Pope's presence in the Vatican prevented the British from bombing the key communications center of the German army in Southern Italy, which was adjacent.

[23] Alvarez and Graham go further in indicting the scholarship of those claiming a plot: Historians have yet to uncover a single piece of contemporary evidence indicating that Hitler, Himmler, Bormann, or any other authority had any serious intention, let alone plan, to invade Vatican City and carry out Pope Pius XII.