Sunday, December 30, 2012
Friday, December 28, 2012
Welcome to the Slavoj Zizek Show
By Philipp Oehmke
http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/the-most-dangerous-philosopher-in-the-west-welcome-to-the-slavoj-zizek-show-a-705164-2.html
[…]
Part 2: 'He'll Have to be Sent to the Gulag'
His repertoire is a mix of Lacanian psychoanalysis and
Hegel's idealist philosophy -- of film analysis, criticism of democracy,
capitalism and ideology, and an occasionally authoritarian Marxism paired with
everyday observations. He explains the ontological essence of the Germans,
French and Americans on the basis of their toilet habits and the resulting
relationship with their fecal matter, and he initially reacts to criticism with
a cheerful "Fuck you!" -- pronounced in hard Slavic consonants. He
tells colleagues he values but who advocate theories contrary to his own that
they should prepare to enter the gulag when he, Zizek, comes into power. He
relishes the shudder that the word gulag elicits.
"Take my friend Peter, for example, fucking Sloterdijk.
I like him a lot, but he'll obviously have to be sent to the gulag. He'll be in
a slightly better position there. Perhaps he could work as a cook."
One could say it's funny, especially the way Zizek delivers
it, in his exaggerated and emphatic way. But one could also think of the more
than 30 million people who fell victim to Soviet terror. Those who find Zizek's
remarks amusing could just as easily be telling jokes about concentration
camps.
"But you know?" Zizek says in response to such
criticism. "The best, most impressive films about the Holocaust are
comedies."
Two Posters of Stalin
Zizek loves to correct viewpoints when precisely the
opposite is considered correct. He calls this counterintuitive observation. His
favorite thought form is the paradox. Using his psychoanalytical skills, he
attempts to demonstrate how liberal democracy manipulates people. One of his
famous everyday observations on this subject relates to the buttons used to
close the door in elevators. He has discovered that they are placebos. The
doors don't close a second faster when one presses the button, but they don't
have to. It's sufficient that the person pressing the button has the illusion
that he is able to influence something. The political illusion machine that
calls itself Western democracy functions in exactly the same way, says Zizek.
His detractors accuse him of fighting liberal democracy and
of wanting to replace it with authoritarian Marxism, even Stalinism. They say
he is particularly dangerous because he cloaks his totalitarianism in pop
culture. The jacket of his book "In Defense of Lost Causes" depicts a
guillotine, the symbol of leftist terror decreed from above -- "good
terror," as Zizek has been known to say. The Suhrkamp publishing house
removed passages from the German edition of the book which reportedly toyed
with totalitarianism.
There are two posters of Josef Stalin on the wall in Zizek's
apartment in a new building in downtown Ljubljana.
"It doesn't mean anything! It's just a joke,"
Zizek is quick to point out.
He says that he'll be happy to remove the posters of Stalin
from the wall if they offend his visitors. And he says that he is tired of
being characterized as a Stalinist. He has been sharply criticized in recent
weeks in publications like the liberal, left-leaning US magazine The New
Republic, Germany's Merkur and the German weekly newspaper Die
Zeit. His critics write that Zizek's thoughts on communism ignore history and
are insufficiently serious, and that his theory of revolution is downright
fascist. And now he has even been accused, once again, of anti-Semitism. Even
Suhrkamp decided not to publish some of his writings, arguing that they could
-- maliciously -- be interpreted as anti-Semitic. These accusations are
opprobrious, but Zizek knows he isn't entirely innocent. His constant drilling,
poking and questioning is truly subversive, but sometimes it makes him
extremely vulnerable. He says that those who attack him in this way have rarely
comprehended his thoughts.
For Zizek, philosophy means thinking out of bounds -- far
removed from practical execution, as opposed to reality-based political
science, which must have its limits. When American leftist liberals accuse him
of making a case for a new leftist dictatorship, Zizek points out that it was
he, not they, who lived under (former Yugoslav dictator Josip) Tito and, as a
young professor, was barred from teaching.
The Itinerant Intellectual
Zizek's roughly 600-square-foot apartment looks as though
Tito were still in power. It consists of three rooms and is carelessly
furnished. A poster from a Mark Rothko exhibition hangs on the wall above the
sofa in Soviet-era colors; otherwise, the furnishings consist of a rack of
DVDs, bookshelves, mountains of "Star Wars" Legos and his laundry,
which he keeps in his kitchen cabinets. He serves iced tea in Disney cups.
He lives alone in the apartment, except when his son from
his second marriage stays with him. He also has a son from his first marriage.
His last wife was an Argentine lingerie model, 30 years his junior, the
daughter of a student of Lacan who, ironically enough, is named Analia.
Zizek wears jeans and a T-shirt, blue sandals from the Adlon
Hotel in Berlin and socks from Lufthansa's Business Class. "I haven't
bought any socks in years," he says. He stays in the best hotels, and he
has just returned from a trip to China and Los Angeles. He spoke about Mao in
China and Richard Wagner in Los Angeles. The Chinese had invited him because of
his status as a communist thought leader, but he doesn't believe that they
understand his theories.
"They translated 10 of my books, the idiots," says
Zizek. The Chinese translated the books as poetry and not as philosophical and
political works. The translators had supposedly never heard of Hegel and had no
idea what they were actually translating. To make up for these deficiencies,
they tried to make his words sound appealing.
The experience of meeting Zizek is initially fascinating for
everyone (for the first hour), then frustrating (it's impossible to get a word
in edgewise) and, finally, cathartic (the conversation does, eventually, come
to an end). Zizek begins to talk within the first few seconds, and in his case
talking means screaming, gesticulating, spitting and sweating. He has a speech
defect known as sigmatism, and when he pronounces the letter "s" it
sounds like a bicycle pump. He usually begins his discourse with the words
"Did you know…," and then he jumps from topic to topic, like a
thinking machine that's been stuffed with coins and from then on doesn't stop
spitting out words.
Empty Battery
Zizek has created an artificial character. His appearances
are performances, something between art and comedy. He says that he wants to
get away from these standup comedy appearances, and that he wants to give a
serious lecture in Berlin, mostly about Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, the
subject of his new book. He says that he has already written 700 pages. It
would take a normal person 10 years to write 700 pages about the man who may
have been the most difficult thinker in the history of philosophy. Zizek wrote
his 700 pages on airplanes in the last few months.
A comforting thing happens after exactly three hours in
Zizek time. Suddenly his battery seems to have run empty, and the machine
stops. Zizek has diabetes. His blood sugar is much too high, he says, or maybe
it's much too low. The symptoms seem to be particularly severe at the moment.
But Slavoj Zizek would not be Slavoj Zizek if he were to describe such a thing
in such banal terms. Instead, he says: "You know, my diabetes has now
become a self-perpetuating system, completely independent of external
influences! It does what it pleases. And now I have to go to sleep."
On the way to Berlin, Zizek has not managed to put together
his talk on the plane, as he had expected. While the speaker preceding him at
the Volksbühne, a short man from Turkey with long hair and a long beard,
is still speaking, Zizek is shifting papers from one stack to the next,
searching, writing things down and furiously reading his notes. Strands of hair
are pasted to his forehead. Zizek doesn't just sweat while speaking, but also
while thinking.
It is now the second day of the conference, and so far Zizek
has had to content himself by merely asking the speakers questions. Now, he
immediately attacks Negri who, on the previous day, had accused him and Badiou
of neglecting the class struggle. Negri's theory of the "multitude,"
that is, his concept of a revolutionary subject that sees commonality in the
differences among individuals, assumes that late capitalism eliminated itself,
and that this alone is the source of a revolutionary situation. This is far too
concrete and pragmatic for Zizek and Badiou. Zizek arms himself with Hegel's
concept of totality, with Plato's concept of truth and Heidegger's concept of
the event. He argues that to one has to be outside the state to abolish it, but
that Negri remains within the system, which is why his "multitude"
can never start a revolution.
'Think I'm an Idiot'
Negri, furrowing his leathery brow, reacts testily. Zizek,
he says, has lost the revolutionary subject, but without a revolutionary
subject there can be no resistance. Badiou observes the argument with the face
of an old turtle, as if he were wondering which of the two he would like to
send to a labor camp first. The moderator asks Badiou whether he would like to
comment. Badiou waves aside the question, flashes a wolfish grin, and says that
he intends to comment on Negri, and perhaps on Zizek, as well, the next day. It
sounds like a threat.
At the end of Zizek's lecture, an audience member asks a
complicated and unintelligible question. "You made a good point,"
says Zizek, and continues to talk about Hegel. His response has nothing to do
with the question, which in turn has nothing to do with the lecture. The game
could continue endlessly in the same vein. Suddenly Zizek pushes aside the
cardboard screen and interrupts his Hegel lecture. "Okay! It doesn't
matter. As I said already, you made quite a good point. And the truth is that I
have no response. In fact, my long-winded talk was also just an attempt to
cover up that fact!" The audience seems grateful, now that Zizek has said
that it's okay to say that you don't understand something and don't have a clue
as to what something is talking about. Even Zizek does it.
"I know that people often think I'm an idiot," he
says that evening, "that nostalgic Leninist. But I'm not crazy. I'm much
more modest and much more pessimistic."
Why pessimistic? In fact, it isn't absurd at all to assume
that capitalism and democracy have reached a dead end. "That's true,"
says Zizek, "but I believe that the left is, tragically, bereft of any
vision to be taken seriously. We all wish for a real, authentic revolution! But
it has take place far away, preferably in Cuba, Vietnam, China or Nicaragua.
The advantage of that is that it allows us to continue with our careers
here." He ends the conversation by saying that it's time for him to return
to his hotel -- you know, the diabetes, he says.
'See You Tomorrow!'
Late Saturday evening, just as the US and Ghana World Cup
match is in overtime, Zizek calls again. He sounds excited. "Did you watch
my clash with Negri today? Unbelievable! What is he talking about! That late
capitalism is doing away with itself?"
Zizek says that the revolution can never function without an
authority, without control, and that this was already the case during the
French Revolution and with the Jacobins.
He pauses. Zizek rarely pauses when he speaks, because it
makes him feel self-conscious for an instant.
Finally he says: The thing about the state and revolution
reminds him of women. "It's impossible to live with them, but even more
impossible without them."
He seems about to talk himself into a rage again, but just
as the machine is revving up he suddenly interrupts himself.
"Oh, let's forget about it. I'll see you tomorrow, my
friend!"
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
Žižek: A Brief bio
Personal Life
Žižek was born in 1949 in Ljubljana, the capital city of
Slovenia which was at the time a part of Yugoslavia. He spent a great part of
his childhood in the coastal town of Portorož. His parents moved back to the
Slovenian capital while he was a teenager and enrolled him to a prestigious
high school in Ljubljana. Žižek continued his education at the University of
Ljubljana where he studied philosophy and sociology. After receiving a Doctor’s
degree, he went to Paris where he studied psychoanalysis.
At the time Žižek began to study philosophy, the communist
Yugoslavia was entering a period of liberalisation. But he was studying French
structuralists even before he became a student of philosophy and sociology at
the University of Ljubljana. As a high school student, Žižek published the
first Slovene translation of Jacques Derrida.
Despite the fact that Žižek studied philosophy during the
era of liberalisation, he was influenced greatly by his teacher, Slovenian
Marxist philosopher Božidar Debenjak. The latter was a professor at the Faculty
of Arts in Ljubljana where he taught German idealism and Karl Marx’s Capital
from the Hegelian (philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel) perspective.
In the early 1970s, Žižek became an assistant researcher at
the University of Ljubljana and was promised tenure. However, soon thereafter
the Communist regime removed liberal leaders throughout Yugoslavia including
what was then the Socialist Republic of Slovenia. As a result of toughening of
the regime and Žižek’s Master’s work being evaluated as anti-Marxist, he lost
his position at the University of Ljubljana.
In 1977, after being unemployed for four years, Žižek found
a job at the Slovenian Marxist Center where he worked as a recording clerk. At
that time he also came into contact with a group of scholars who introduced him
to the theories of Jacques Lacan, a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who
had a major influence on his later work. In the late 1970s, Žižek returned to
the University of Ljubljana and was employed by the Institute of Sociology.
In the late 1980s, Žižek attracted a lot of attention both
at home and abroad. At home, he gained a lot of publicity as a columnist of the
alternative magazine called Mladina (“Youth”) which was critical towards the
Communist regime. Žižek who was a member of the Communist Party (like the
majority of scholars and intellectuals at that time) returned his membership
out of protest due to the so-called JBTZ trial. It was a trial held against two
Mladina journalists, the magazine’s editor and a sergeant at the Yugoslav
People’s Army for betrayal of military secrets in 1988. Žižek became active in
political and civil movements for democratisation and even ran for Presidency
of the Republic of Slovenia at the first free elections in 1990.
In the international scene, Žižek attracted attention in the
late 1980s with his book The Sublime Object of Ideology and established himself
as one of the most influential social theorist and contemporary philosopher.
Work
Despite the fact that Žižek was actively involved in the
democratisation process in Slovenia, he is committed to the communist idea and
describes himself as a “radical leftist” and “communist in a qualified sense”.
His political ideas and criticism of the existing political and economic
systems caused a great deal of controversy in the intellectual circles on the
one hand, and earned him the title of one of the foremost thinkers of modern
times and a near celebrity-status on the other.
[…]
Thursday, December 27, 2012
Ratlines (World War II)
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]
[…]
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)