The Pope and it heirachy will protect the Church (a reasonable mission). The Church rightly feared communisim and made a few bad choices that it would later regret (as did many goverments in that time era). Things in hindsight are much easier to see then at at the time when the only two choices are bad, and not as bad. The people running the church are just men, without armies, it can't really even control what its underlings do (even at the Bishop level), so it tries to protect the name of Jesus, its followers, followers of other faiths, and perhaps cynically their own positions. No one in that time era could have predicted the evil the Nazis would do, it is still so incredible that is is hard for some to believe today.