On the morning of 14 July 1950 a man holding a Vatican-issued International Red Cross travel document and an Argentine entry permit, both in the false name Riccardo Klement, walked off the gangway of the Italian liner Giovanna C onto the dockside at the port of Buenos Aires, presented his papers to the Argentine immigration officer at the dockside booth, was waved through with a perfunctory stamp, retrieved his single suitcase, and walked the half-mile from the dock to the small hotel on the Avenida de Mayo where his contacts had reserved him a room. The man was Adolf Eichmann. He had been the head of the Reich Security Main Office’s Department IV B 4 from 1939 to 1945 and had organised the deportation of approximately 2.5 million Jews to the killing centres of Operation Reinhard and Auschwitz. He had been a prisoner of the United States Army from May 1945 until his escape from the Cham detention camp in February 1946. He had been hiding in Lower Saxony under various false identities until his evacuation through the Vatican network in May 1950. He had spent the previous fortnight in Genoa awaiting embarkation. He had paid approximately fifty United States dollars for his passage. He had carried with him approximately three hundred dollars in cash and a small suitcase of personal effects. The Argentine immigration officer at the dockside on the morning of 14 July 1950 was on duty for an eight-hour shift. He processed approximately forty arrivals from the Giovanna C in that shift. He did not, on the available record, give Eichmann’s papers any particular attention. The papers were in good order. The standard procedure was followed. Eichmann walked into Argentina under the name Klement and lived in Argentina for the next ten years.
Eichmann was one of approximately 9,000 German nationals who entered Argentina in the period 1947 to 1955 through the Perón government’s parallel immigration channel, the channel that operated alongside the regular Argentine immigration administration and that was administered by the German-emigré former SS officer Carlos Fuldner under direct presidential patronage. Of the 9,000, approximately two to three hundred were senior figures of the killing apparatus. The remainder were lower-ranking personnel: SS men of intermediate rank, Wehrmacht officers, civil servants, party functionaries, and a substantial number of ordinary Germans whose connection to the regime had been peripheral but who had used the Perón channel because it was more convenient than the regular immigration channels. The aggregate effect was to make Argentina the principal single Latin American destination for the postwar German emigration, including for the senior figures of the killing apparatus. Brazil and Paraguay received smaller but operationally important populations, principally as transit destinations for figures who had become uncomfortable in Argentina or who had been forced out of Argentina by the post-1955 changes of government.
The Perón policy
The Argentine immigration policy that produced the postwar German reception had three foundations. The first was the longstanding Argentine government interest in attracting European immigrants for economic development purposes. The Argentine economy of the 1940s and 1950s was, by Latin American standards of the period, substantial and modernising; the Argentine government had been actively recruiting European immigrants for several decades and had developed an immigration administration capable of processing substantial volumes. The German emigration was, in the regular Argentine immigration framework, simply an extension of an existing policy.
The second was the specific personal preference of President Juan Perón, who had served as a junior Argentine military attaché in Italy in 1939 to 1941 and had developed during that period substantial sympathies with the European fascist movements. Perón’s wartime political position had been broadly pro-Axis, although Argentina had remained formally neutral until the closing weeks of the war when it had finally declared war on Germany on 27 March 1945. Perón’s personal preference, as President from 1946 to 1955, was for a generous postwar immigration policy with respect to former Axis personnel, including specifically former SS personnel whose technical and military skills he believed would be of value to Argentina’s economic and military development.
The third was the wider Argentine geopolitical position. Perón’s Argentina had developed, in the late 1940s, a foreign policy that positioned itself as a leader of a Third Position between the United States and the Soviet Union. The reception of substantial numbers of former Axis personnel was understood by the Perón administration as part of the wider positioning. The personnel were understood as representing a European political tradition that would be useful to Argentina’s claims to leadership of the Third Position in Latin America.
Carlos Fuldner
The operational figure who ran the parallel immigration channel was Carlos Fuldner. Fuldner was a German-Argentine, born in Buenos Aires in 1910 to German immigrant parents, who had returned to Germany in the 1930s, joined the SS in 1939, served in various capacities in the SD during the war, and returned to Argentina in 1947 with Perón’s specific patronage. Fuldner’s role in the immigration channel was administered through the Argentine government’s Information Bureau, an executive office under the President’s direct authority, and through the Argentine consular network in Italy and Spain.
The methodology Fuldner developed was the methodology that became the model for the wider operation. Fugitives in Italy and Spain would obtain their International Red Cross travel documents through the Vatican-administered ratlines (see Vatican and Catholic Clergy in the Ratlines). They would then present the documents at the Argentine consulate in Genoa, Madrid, or Barcelona, where Fuldner-trained officials would process the entry permits with minimal additional documentary requirements. The fugitives would then book passage on Italian or Spanish shipping lines for Buenos Aires, with the cost typically funded by family resources, by the Anima funds, by the Stille Hilfe, or by the German emigré community in Argentina. On arrival in Buenos Aires they would be met at the dock by Fuldner-coordinated reception parties and would be assisted in finding work and accommodation in the Buenos Aires region.
The reception network on the Argentine side included a substantial number of ongoing institutional and personal contacts. The principal industrial firms with German management included the Mercedes-Benz Argentina plant at González Catán (which employed Eichmann from 1953 to 1959 and a number of other senior figures), the Bayer Argentina pharmaceutical operations, the Siemens Argentina electrical operations, and a number of smaller firms. The principal community institutions included several German-language Lutheran and Catholic parishes in Buenos Aires, the Goethe-Schule on the Avenida Cabildo, and the German Club at the Avenida Corrientes. The principal social network ran through several German-emigré families that had been established in Buenos Aires before the war and that had maintained connections to Germany during and after the war.
The senior figures who reached Argentina
The senior figures who passed through or settled in Argentina under the Perón parallel immigration channel included, in addition to Eichmann: Josef Mengele (the Auschwitz doctor, in Argentina 1949 to 1959 before moving to Paraguay and then Brazil); Walter Kutschmann (the Brody and Drohobycz killings administrator, in Argentina 1948 to 1985 when he was identified by Wiesenthal); Erich Priebke (the Italian Ardeatine Caves massacre commander, in Argentina 1948 to 1995 when he was identified and extradited to Italy); Ante Pavelic (the Croatian Ustase leader, in Argentina 1948 to 1957 when he fled to Spain after an assassination attempt); Eduard Roschmann (the Riga ghetto commandant, in Argentina 1948 to 1977 when the Forsyth novel forced his departure to Paraguay); Klaus Barbie (the Lyon Gestapo chief, briefly in Argentina in 1951 before settling in Bolivia under the Vatican-CIC arrangement); Walter Rauff (the gas van administrator, briefly in Argentina before settling in Chile); Gerhard Bohne (the T4 administrator, in Argentina 1949 to 1966 when he was extradited to West Germany for trial); and several dozen others.
The aggregate population of senior figures who settled in Argentina under the Perón channel was approximately one hundred and fifty to two hundred. Most lived in the Buenos Aires region. Many worked at the Mercedes-Benz, Bayer, or Siemens operations or at smaller firms with German management. Several established their own businesses or professional practices. They lived openly under their assumed names and, in many cases, with the knowledge of the Argentine government and a sympathetic part of the Buenos Aires German-emigré community.
The post-1955 shift
The Perón government was overthrown by an Argentine military coup on 16 September 1955. The successor Aramburu government and the Frondizi government that followed in 1958 were less sympathetic to the German-emigré community than the Perón administration had been. The parallel immigration channel was wound down. The reception network continued to function for the population that had already arrived but did not receive substantial numbers of new fugitives after 1955.
The post-1955 Argentine governments were also more cooperative with West German and Israeli requests for the location of specific individuals. The cooperation was patchy and was frequently obstructed at operational levels by sympathetic officials, but it was a substantial change from the active obstruction of the Perón period. The Mossad’s seizure of Eichmann in May 1960 was, on the documented record, conducted without operational cooperation from the Argentine government but also without substantial active obstruction; the Mossad operational team had been able to operate in Argentina without interference from Argentine intelligence services. The post-1960 Argentine governments accepted, after the initial diplomatic protest, that the Eichmann seizure had been conducted and did not press the matter.
The post-1976 military government of Jorge Videla was, paradoxically, both more cooperative with foreign intelligence services on Nazi-related questions and more obstructive on humanitarian-rights questions in connection with its own Argentine domestic operations. The Videla government’s cooperation with foreign Nazi-hunting operations was understood to be, in part, a way of distracting international attention from its own Argentine human-rights record. The post-1983 democratic governments under Alfonsín and Menem were substantially more cooperative with Nazi-hunting operations and produced, in the late 1990s declassification of the wartime Argentine immigration records, the documentary base that has supported the subsequent historical reconstruction.
Brazil
The Brazilian reception was the smaller of the two major Latin American operations. Approximately 1,500 to 2,000 German nationals entered Brazil in the period 1947 to 1955 under arrangements broadly similar to the Argentine ones, though without the Perón-style centralised parallel channel. The Brazilian reception was managed principally through the Brazilian consular networks in Italy and Spain on a more decentralised basis than the Argentine operation, with substantial discretion exercised by individual consular officials.
The senior figures who passed through or settled in Brazil included Mengele (in Brazil 1960 to 1979), Franz Stangl (in Brazil 1959 to 1967), Wolfgang Gerhard (the Mengele protector, in Brazil from 1948 to his death in 1978), and a smaller number of others. The Brazilian reception was particularly important as a secondary destination for figures who had become uncomfortable in Argentina, particularly after the post-1960 Eichmann-related panic in the Argentine German-emigré community.
The Brazilian government’s cooperation with foreign Nazi-hunting operations was, throughout the postwar period, generally limited but not actively obstructive. The major test case was the Stangl extradition to West Germany in 1967, which the Brazilian government granted within several months of the West German request. The post-1985 democratic governments have been more cooperative with subsequent extradition and identification operations.
Paraguay
Paraguay was the smaller of the three principal Latin American destinations and was operationally important as a destination for figures who had become uncomfortable in Argentina or Brazil. Approximately 200 to 300 senior and intermediate-rank figures passed through or settled in Paraguay in the period 1948 to 1980. The Paraguayan government under President Alfredo Stroessner (in office 1954 to 1989) was the most actively sympathetic of the three principal Latin American governments, providing direct presidential protection to fugitives in particular cases.
The senior figures who settled in Paraguay included Mengele (in Paraguay 1959 to 1960 before moving to Brazil), Eduard Roschmann (in Paraguay May to August 1977), Klaus Barbie’s senior associate Friedrich Schwend (in Paraguay 1948 to 1971 when he was deported to Peru), and a smaller number of others. The Stroessner government’s protection was substantial; the Paraguayan authorities routinely declined extradition requests from West Germany, France, and Israel throughout the Stroessner period. The post-1989 democratic governments under Rodríguez and Wasmosy have been substantially more cooperative with foreign requests, but the question had become largely academic by the late 1980s as the principal surviving figures were either dead or beyond the reach of meaningful prosecution.
The Bolivian and Chilean cases
The smaller Latin American destinations included Bolivia and Chile. Bolivia received Klaus Barbie under the 1951 Vatican-CIC arrangement (see Vatican and Catholic Clergy in the Ratlines and the Klaus Barbie Trial pages); Barbie lived in La Paz for thirty-two years before his eventual extradition in 1983 under the post-García Meza democratic government. Chile received Walter Rauff in 1958; Rauff lived in Punta Arenas in southern Chile until his death in 1984. The Pinochet government after 1973 actively protected Rauff and declined repeated West German extradition requests.
What the Latin American reception shows
The Latin American reception of postwar German fugitives was the operational endpoint of the wider postwar evacuation operation. It produced, over the period 1947 to 1955, the safe placement of approximately 250 to 300 senior figures of the killing apparatus and approximately 9,000 to 11,000 lower-ranking personnel in countries where they could expect to live without facing prosecution for their wartime conduct. The reception was, by the operational measures the participants had set themselves, substantially successful: most of the senior figures lived out their lives in Latin America without facing trial.
The wider lesson of the Latin American reception is the lesson of postwar political opportunity. The receiving governments, particularly Argentina under Perón and Paraguay under Stroessner, used the reception as part of their wider positioning in the postwar international system. They received the fugitives because the reception served their political purposes; they would not have received the fugitives if the reception had not. The Vatican-administered ratlines and the various smaller European networks were the operational delivery mechanism. The Latin American reception was the operational landing ground. Together they constituted the working postwar evacuation system.
The eventual identification, prosecution, and (in some cases) extradition of the senior figures occurred over a period of approximately seventy years from the end of the war and was, in the aggregate, partial. Approximately a fifth of the senior figures who reached Latin America were subsequently identified and faced some form of legal proceeding. The remaining four-fifths lived out their lives without facing prosecution. The disproportion between the moral seriousness of the conduct and the practical accountability that followed it is the wider feature of the postwar Latin American reception. The figures who had organised the killing of millions lived on into old age in pleasant Buenos Aires suburbs, in São Paulo apartments, in Paraguayan country towns, and on Chilean farms. Most died in their beds. Most died unprosecuted. The Argentine, Brazilian, and Paraguayan governments cooperated with foreign Nazi-hunting operations only after the principal figures had died or had become too old for meaningful prosecution. The wider accountability that Nuremberg had imagined as following from the war was, in the Latin American reception, substantially defeated.
See also
- Adolf Eichmann
- Josef Mengele
- Italy
- Klaus Barbie
- The Vatican and Catholic Clergy in the Ratlines
- Franz Stangl
Sources
- Uki Goñi, The Real Odessa: How Perón Brought the Nazi War Criminals to Argentina, Granta, 2002
- Gerald Steinacher, Nazis on the Run: How Hitler’s Henchmen Fled Justice, Oxford University Press, 2011
- Daniel Stahl, Nazi-Jagd: Südamerikas Diktaturen und die Ahndung von NS-Verbrechen, Wallstein, 2013
- Ronald C. Newton, The “Nazi Menace” in Argentina, 1931 to 1947, Stanford University Press, 1992
- Holger Meding, Flucht vor Nürnberg: Deutsche und österreichische Einwanderung in Argentinien 1945 bis 1955, Böhlau, 1992
- Argentine government, Comisión para el Esclarecimiento de las Actividades del Nazismo en la Argentina (CEANA), final report, 1999
- Gerald Posner and John Ware, Mengele: The Complete Story, McGraw-Hill, 1986
- Heinz Schneppen, Walther Rauff: Organisator der Gaswagenmorde, Metropol, 2011