From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratlines_(World_War_II)
Ratlines were a system of escape routes for Nazis and
other fascists fleeing Europe at the
end of World War II. These escape routes mainly led toward
havens in South America, particularlyArgentina, Paraguay, Brazil, Uruguay, Chile, and Bolivia. Other
destinations included the United
States, Great Britain, Canada and the Middle East.
There were two primary routes: the first went from Germany to Spain, then
Argentina; the second from Germany to Rome to Genoa, then South
America; the two routes "developed independently" but eventually came
together to collaborate.[1]
One ratline, made famous by the Frederick
Forsyth thriller The
Odessa File, was run by the ODESSA (Organisation
der ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen; "Organization of Former SS-Members")
network organized by Otto Skorzeny.[citation needed]
Early Spanish ratlines
The origins of the first ratlines are connected to various
developments in Vatican-Argentine relations before and during World War II.[2] As
early as 1942, Monsignor Luigi
Maglione contacted Ambassador Llobet, inquiring as to the
"willingness of the government of the Argentine Republic to apply its
immigration law generously, in order to encourage at the opportune moment
European Catholic immigrants to seek the necessary land and capital in our
country".[3] Afterwards,
a German priest, Anton Weber, the head of the Rome-based Society of Saint
Raphael, traveled toPortugal, continuing to Argentina, to lay the groundwork for
future Catholic immigration, this was to be a route which fascist exiles would
exploit - without the knowledge of the Catholic Church.[3]According
to historian Michael Phayer, "this was the innocent origin
of what would become the Vatican ratline".[3]
Spain, not Rome, was the "first center of ratline
activity that facilitated the escape of Nazi fascists", although the
exodus itself was planned within the Vatican.[4] Charles
Lescat, a French member of Action Française (an organization suppressed
by Pius XI and
rehabilitated by Pius XII), and Pierre Daye,
a Belgian with contacts in the Spanish government, were among the primary
organizers.[5] Lescat
and Daye were the first able to flee Europe, with the help of Argentine
cardinal Antonio Caggiano.[5]
By 1946, there were probably hundreds of war criminals in
Spain, and thousands of former Nazis and fascists.[6] According
to US Secretary of State James
F. Byrnes, Vatican cooperation in turning over asylum-seekers was
"negligible".[6] According
to Phayer, Pius XII "preferred to see fascist war criminals on board ships
sailing to the New World rather than seeing them rotting in POW camps in zonal
Germany".[7] Unlike
the Vatican emigration operation in Italy, centered on Vatican
City, the ratlines of Spain, although "fostered by the Vatican"
were relatively independent of the hierarchy of the Vatican Emigration Bureau.[8]
The Roman ratlines
Early efforts—Bishop Hudal
Bishop Alois Hudal was
rector of the Pontificio
Istituto Teutonico Santa Maria dell'Anima in Rome, a seminary for Austrian and German priests,
and "Spiritual Director of the German People resident in Italy".[9] After
the end of the war in Italy, Hudal became active in ministering to
German-speaking prisoners of war and internees then held in
camps throughout Italy. In December 1944 the Vatican Secretariat of State received
permission to appoint a representative to "visit the German-speaking civil
internees in Italy", a job assigned to Hudal.
Hudal used this position to aid the escape of wanted Nazi war criminals,
including Franz Stangl, commanding officer of Treblinka, Gustav Wagner, commanding officer of Sobibor, Alois
Brunner, responsible for the Drancy internment camp near Paris and
in charge of deportations in Slovakia to German concentration camps, and Adolf
Eichmann[10]—
a fact about which he was later unashamedly open. Some of these wanted men were
being held in internment camps: generally without identity papers, they would
be enrolled in camp registers under false names. Other Nazis were in hiding in
Italy, and sought Hudal out as his role in assisting escapes became known on
the Nazi grapevine.[11]:289
In his memoirs Hudal said of his actions "I thank God
that He [allowed me] to visit and comfort many victims in their prisons and
concentration camps and to help them escape with false identity papers." [12] He
explained that in his eyes:
"The Allies' War against Germany was not a crusade, but
the rivalry of economic complexes for whose victory they had been fighting.
This so-called business ... used catchwords like democracy, race, religious
liberty and Christianity as a bait for the masses. All these experiences were
the reason why I felt duty bound after 1945 to devote my whole charitable work
mainly to former National Socialists and Fascists, especially to so-called 'war
criminals'."
According to Mark Aarons and John Loftus in
their book Unholy Trinity,[13] Hudal
was the first Catholic priest to dedicate himself to establishing escape
routes. Aarons and Loftus claim that Hudal provided the objects of his charity
with money to help them escape, and more importantly with false papers
including identity documents issued by the Vatican Refugee Organisation (Commissione
Pontificia d'Assistenza).
These Vatican papers were not full passports, and not in
themselves enough to gain passage overseas. They were, rather, the first stop
in a paper trail—they could be used to obtain a displaced person passport from
the International Committee of the
Red Cross (ICRC), which in turn could be used to apply for visas. In
theory the ICRC would perform background checks on passport applicants, but in
practice the word of a priest or particularly a bishop would be good enough.
According to statements collected by Gitta
Sereny from a senior official of the Rome branch of the ICRC,[11]:316-17 Hudal
could also use his position as a bishop to request papers from the ICRC
"made out according to his specifications". Sereny's sources also
revealed an active illicit trade in stolen and forged ICRC papers in Rome at
this time.
According to declassified US intelligence reports, Hudal was
not the only priest helping Nazi escapees at this time. In the "La Vista
report" declassified in 1984, Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC)
operative Vincent La Vista told how he had easily arranged for two bogus
Hungarian refugees to get false ICRC documents with the help of a letter from a
Father Joseph Gallov. Gallov, who ran a Vatican-sponsored charity for Hungarian
refugees, asked no questions and wrote a letter to his "personal contact
in the International Red Cross, who then issued the passports".[14]
The San Girolamo ratline
According to Aarons and Loftus, Hudal's private operation
was small scale compared to what came later. The major Roman ratline was
operated by a small, but influential network of Croatianpriests,
members of the Franciscan order, led by Father Krunoslav Draganović. Draganović organized a
highly sophisticated chain with headquarters at the San Girolamo degli Illirici Seminary
College in Rome, but with links from Austria to the final embarcation point in
the port of Genoa.
The ratline initially focused on aiding members of the Croatian Ustashe movement,
most notably the Croat wartime dictator Ante
Pavelić.[15]
Priests active in the chain included: Fr. Vilim Cecelja,
former Deputy Military Vicar to the Ustashe, based in Austria where
many Ustashe and Nazi refugees remained in hiding; Fr. Dragutin Kamber, based
at San Girolamo; Fr. Dominik Mandić, an official Vatican representative
at San Girolamo and also "General Economist" or treasurer of the
Franciscan order - who used this position to put the Franciscan press at the
ratline's disposal; and Monsignor Karlo Petranović, based in Genoa. Vilim would
make contact with those hiding in Austria and help them across the border to
Italy; Kamber, Mandić and Draganović would find them lodgings, often in the
monastery itself, while they arranged documentation; finally Draganović would
phone Petranović in Genoa with the number of required berths on ships leaving
for South America (see below).
The operation of the Draganović ratline was an open secret
among the intelligence and diplomatic communities in Rome. As early as
August 1945, Allied commanders in Rome were asking questions about the use of
San Girolamo as a "haven" for Ustashe.[16] A
year later, a US State Department report of
12 July 1946 lists nine war criminals, including Albanians and Montenegrinsas well as Croats, plus
others "not actually sheltered in the COLLEGIUM ILLIRICUM [i.e., San
Girolamo degli Illirici] but who otherwise enjoy Church support and
protection."[17] The
British envoy to the Holy See, Francis Osborne, asked Domenico
Tardini, a high-ranking Vatican official, for a permission that would have
allowed British military police to raid ex-territorial Vatican Institutions in
Rome. Tardini declined and denied that the church sheltered war criminals.[citation needed]
In February 1947 CIC Special Agent Robert Clayton Mudd
reported ten members of Pavelić's Ustasha cabinet living either in San Girolamo
or in the Vatican itself. Mudd had infiltrated an agent into the monastery and
confirmed that it was "honeycombed with cells of Ustashe operatives"
guarded by "armed youths". Mudd also reported:
"It was further established that these Croats travel
back and forth from the Vatican several times a week in a car with a chauffeur
whose license plate bears the two initials CD, "Corpo Diplomatico".
It issues forth from the Vatican and discharges its passengers inside the
Monastery of San Geronimo. Subject to diplomatic immunity it is impossible to stop
the car and discover who are its passengers."[18]
Mudd's conclusion was the following:
"DRAGANOVIC's sponsorship of these Croat Ustashes definitely
links him up with the plan of the Vatican to shield these ex-Ustasha
nationalists until such time as they are able to procure for them the proper
documents to enable them to go to South America. The Vatican, undoubtedly
banking on the strong anti-Communist feelings of these men, is endeavoring to
infiltrate them into South America in any way possible to counteract the spread
of Red doctrine. It has been reliably reported, for example that Dr. VRANCIC
has already gone to South America and that Ante PAVELIC and General KREN are
scheduled for an early departure to South America through Spain. All these
operations are said to have been negotiated by DRAGANOVIC because of his
influence in the Vatican."
The existence of Draganović's ratline has been confirmed by
a Vatican historian, Fr. Robert
Graham: "I've no doubt that Draganović was extremely active in
syphoning off his Croatian Ustashe friends." However, Graham insisted that
Draganović was not officially sanctioned in this by his superiors: "Just
because he's a priest doesn't mean he represents the Vatican. It was his own
operation."[19] On
four occasions the Vatican intervened on behalf of interned Ustasha prisoners.
The Secretariat of State asked the U.K. and U.S. government to release Croatian
POWs fromBritish internment
camps in Italy. The presence of some pro-Utashe clergy at this time is
not surprising, but the Vatican itself condemned war crimes committed by the
Utashe, as well as the Communists.
US intelligence involvement
If at first US intelligence officers had been mere observers
of the Draganović ratline, this changed in the summer of 1947. A now
declassified US Army intelligence report from 1950 sets out in detail the
history of the people smuggling operation in the three years to follow.[20] According
to the report, from this point on US forces themselves had begun to use
Draganović's established network to evacuate its own "visitors". As
the report put it, these were "visitors who had been in the custody of the
430th CIC and completely processed in accordance with current directives and
requirements, and whose continued residence in Austria constituted a security
threat as well as a source of possible embarrassment to the Commanding General
of USFA, since the Soviet Command had become aware that their presence in US Zone of Austria and in some
instances had requested the return of these persons to Soviet custody".[20]
These were suspected war criminals from areas occupied by
the Red
Army which the US was obliged to hand over for trial to the Soviets.
The US reputedly was reluctant to do so, partly due to a belief that fair trial
could hardly be expected in the USSR (see Operation Keelhaul), and at the same time, their
desire to make use of Nazi scientists and other resources.[citation needed] The deal with
Draganović involved getting the visitors to Rome: "Dragonovich [sic] handled all phases
of the operation after the defectees arrived in Rome, such as the procurement
of IRO Italian and South American documents, visas, stamps, arrangements for
disposition, land or sea, and notification of resettlement committees in foreign
lands".[20] United
States intelligence used these methods in order to get important Nazi
scientists and military strategists, to the extent they had not already been
claimed by the Soviet Union, to their own centres of military science in the
US. Many Nazi scientists were employed by the US, retrieved in Operation Paperclip.[citation needed]
The Argentine Connection
|
In Nuremberg at that time something was taking place that
I personally considered a disgrace and an unfortunate lesson for the future
of humanity. I became certain that the Argentine people also considered the
Nuremberg process a disgrace, unworthy of the victors, who behaved as if they
hadn't been victorious. Now we realize that they [the Allies] deserved to
lose the war. (Argentine president Juan
Perón on the Nuremberg
Trials of Nazi war criminals.)[21]
|
”
|
In his 2002 book The Real Odessa[21] Argentine
researcher Uki Goñi used new access to the country's archives to
show that Argentine diplomats and intelligence officers had, on Perón's
instructions, vigorously encouraged Nazi and Fascist war criminals to make
their home in Argentina. According to Goñi, the Argentines not only
collaborated with Draganović's ratline, they set up further ratlines of their
own running through Scandinavia, Switzerland and Belgium.[citation needed]
According to Goñi, Argentina's first move into Nazi
smuggling was in January 1946, when Argentine bishop Antonio
Caggiano, bishop of Rosario and leader of the Argentine chapter of Catholic
Action flew with Bishop Agustín Barrére to Rome where Caggiano was due
to be anointed Cardinal. While in Rome the Argentine bishops met with French
Cardinal Eugène Tisserant, where they passed on a message
(recorded in Argentina's diplomatic archives) that "the Government of the
Argentine Republic was willing to receive French persons, whose political attitude during
the recent war would expose them, should they return to France, to harsh
measures and private revenge". Over the spring of 1946 a number of French
war criminals, fascists and Vichy officials
made it from Italy to Argentina in the same way: they were issued passports by
the Rome ICRC office; these
were then stamped with Argentine tourist visas (the need for health
certificates and return tickets was waived on Caggiano's recommendation). The
first documented case of a French war criminal arriving in Buenos Aires was Emile
Dewoitine — later sentenced in absentia to 20 years hard labour. He
sailed first class on the same ship back with Cardinal Caggiano.[22]
Shortly after this Argentinian Nazi smuggling became
institutionalised, according to Goñi, when Perón's new government of February
1946 appointed anthropologist Santiago Peralta as Immigration
Commissioner and former Ribbentrop agent Ludwig Freude as his
intelligence chief. Goñi argues that these two then set up a "rescue
team" of secret service agents and immigration "advisors", many
of whom were themselves European war-criminals, with Argentine citizenship and
employment.[23]
ODESSA and the Gehlen Org
Main article: ODESSA
The Italian and Argentinian ratlines have only been
confirmed relatively recently, mainly due to research in recently declassified
archives. Until the work of Aarons and Loftus, and of Uki Goñi(2002),
a common view was that ex-Nazis themselves, organised in secret networks, ran
the escape routes alone. The most famous such network is ODESSA (Organisation
of former SS members), founded in 1946 according to Simon
Wiesenthal, which included SS-Obersturmbannführer Otto
Skorzeny and Sturmbannführer Alfred
Naujocks and in Argentina, Rodolfo
Freude. Alois Brunner, former commandant of Drancy internment camp near Paris,
escaped to Rome, then Syria, by ODESSA. (Brunner is thought to be the highest-ranking
Nazi war criminal still alive as of 2007). Persons claiming to represent ODESSA
claimed responsibility in a note for the 9 July 1979 car bombing in France
aimed at Nazi hunters Serge and Beate Klarsfeld.[citation needed]According to Paul Manning (1980),
"eventually, over 10,000 former German military made it to South America
along escape routes ODESSA and Deutsche Hilfsverein ..."[24]
Simon Wiesenthal, who advised Frederick
Forsyth on the novel/filmscript The
Odessa File which brought the name to public attention, also names
other Nazi escape organisations such asSpinne ("Spider") and Sechsgestirn ("Constellation
of Six"). Wiesenthal describes these immediately after the war as Nazi
cells based in areas of Austria where many Nazis had retreated andgone to ground. Wiesenthal claimed that the
ODESSA network shepherded escapees to the Catholic ratlines in Rome (although
he mentions only Hudal, not Draganović); or through a second route through
France and into Francoist Spain.[25]
ODESSA was supported by the Gehlen Org, which employed many former Nazi party
members, and was headed by Reinhard
Gehlen, a former German Army intelligence officer employed post-war by the CIA. The Gehlen Org
became the nucleus of the BND German intelligence agency, directed
by Reinhard Gehlen from its 1956 creation until 1968.[citation needed]
[…]
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