Pius XI wanted Cardinal Pacelli to be his successor. A week before he died he told Monsignor Tardini that he had sent Pacelli on a visit abroad to prepare him, and that ‘he will make a fine Pope’. At the consistory of cardinals in December 1937, when he expected soon to die, he spoke too meaningfully to the cardinals about his successor, using the words of the first chapter of St John's Gospel (the words of St John the Baptist about the coming Christ: ‘Among you stands one whom you know not.’) The Vatican newspaper Osservatore Romano made the text apply to all the cardinals; but only the five new cardinals were then in the room, with a sixth, who was his Secretary of State, Cardinal Pacelli. But many Popes want their Secretary of State to succeed, and a dead Pope has no influence in a Conclave.

In February 1939 it mattered more to the Powers who the new Pope was than at any election since the earlier nineteenth century. When Pius XI died he was (in a political aspect) part of the alliance of democratic powers resisting Hitler; and especially resisting Hitler's growing influence over Italy. His ideals of peace and justice, his denunciation of racialism, supported the convictions of the democratic powers and helped to win American opinion to their side and caused scruples to many Italians and perhaps caused scruples even to a few Austrians and Bavarians.