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Hitler had planned to Kidnap Pope Pius XII
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SS General Karl Wolff figures prominently in claimed accounts of the
kidnapping plot. SS General Karl Wolff claimed while testifying at the Nuremberg Trials that he had disobeyed an order from Hitler to kidnap the Pope and instead sneaked into the Vatican to warn the Pontiff. Most other allegations of a plot to kidnap Pius XII are based on a claimed 1972 document written by Wolff that Avvenire d'Italia published in 1991 and on personal interviews with Wolff before his death in 1984. Wolff maintained that Hitler summoned Wolff to his office on September 13, 1943, and that Hitler stated: I have a special mission for you, Wolff. It will be your duty not to discuss it with anyone before I give you permission to do so. Only Reichsfuhrer (Himmler) knows about it. Do you understand? ... I want you and your troops to occupy Vatican City as soon as possible, secure its files and art treasures, and take the Pope and Curia to the north. I do not want him to fall into the hands of the Allies or to be under their political pressure and influence. The Vatican is already a nest of spies and a center of anti-National Socialist propaganda. … Colonel 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. But, von 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. Von Lahousen and Colonel Wessel Freytag von Loringhoven were also present at this meeting. Amè apparently spread the news and the plot was dropped. The Colonels were later part of the July 20 plot to assassinate Hitler, along with Claus Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg. Niki Freytag Loringhoven, the son of von Loringhoven, gave a substantially similar account in Munich in 1972 to von Lahousen's deposition in Nuremberg, according to the Italian Bishops' newspaper Avvenire … Kurzman acknowledges that there are no official German documents that refer to the plot, claiming that Hitler prohibited the plot to be put in writing, and bases his book on personal interviews with Germans and Vatican officials. Kurzman's principal source is Wolff, whom he interviewed only hours after his release from Allied custody; Kurzman acknowledges that Wolff was demonstrably untruthful in many aspects of his testimony, but notes that "other key persons" corroborate Wolff's account. 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. Finally, Kurzman cites a personal interview with Peter Gumpel, the Vatican's advocate for canonization of Pius XII, who claims that unpublished documents support the existence of such a plot. Gumpel has also stated that Pius XII made plans to resign in the event of his kidnapping.”
More Vatican Archives. Vatican Archives at Jewish organization - Pave The Way Foundation The complete collection of over 76,000 pages of documents, newspaper articles, video testimonies, and important articles, relative to the papacy of Pope Pius XII, is on our restricted page, which requires registration at no charge.
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| 11-Video- International News Correspondent and author Dan Kurzman Book Special Mission- The Secret Plot to Kidnap Pope Pius XII | ||||
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