section_path: Industrial age/World War II
section_name: World War II
paragraph_text: World War II
  
  After the Second World War began in September 1939, the Church condemned the invasion of Poland and subsequent 1940 Nazi invasions. In the Holocaust, Pope Pius XII directed the Church hierarchy to help protect Jews and Gypsies from the Nazis. While Pius XII has been credited with helping to save hundreds of thousands of Jews, the Church has also been accused of antisemitism. Albert Einstein, addressing the Catholic Church's role during the Holocaust, said the following: "Being a lover of freedom, when the revolution came in Germany, I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but, no, the universities immediately were silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love of freedom; but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks... Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for suppressing truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly." Other commentators have accused Pius of not doing enough to stop Nazi atrocities. Debate over the validity of these criticisms continues to this day. In dismembered Yugoslavia, the church favoured the Nazi-installed Croatian Catholic fascist Ustaše regime due to its anti-communist ideology and for the potential to reinstate Catholic influence in the region following the dissolution of Austria-Hungary. Despite being informed of the regime's genocide against Orthodox Serbs, Jews and other non-Croats, the church did not publicly speak out against it, preferring to exert pressure through diplomacy. In assessing the Vatican's position, historian Jozo Tomasevich writes that "it seems the Catholic Church fully supported the regime and its policies."