What if in 1939, the Papal Conclave elects a proactive, anti-Nazi Pope in Pius XII's place? I was thinking maybe this guy, Maurillo Fossati, the Archbishop/Cardinal of Turin?
According to his Wikipedia article
According to his Wikipedia article
So, what if he had become Pope, and uses his Papal authority to speak out against Nazism and the persecution of Jews? How would the Third Riech, with a huge Catholic minority, react to such words from the Pope? How bad could Nazi-Vatican relations get? Could there be a scenario late in the war, where German tanks and soldiers march into the Vatican and take the Pope prisoner as was done by General Berthier to Pius VI in 1798? And how would it affect the future of Catholicism?During World War II, the Cardinal was an outspoken opponent of Fascism, and asked that Catholics take Jewish refugees and Gypsies into their homes.[2] Fossati even convinced the German Army to avoid Turin, thus sparing the city from devastation, in its 1945 retreat.[3]