Why did so many Nazis choose to escape to Argentina, and how did they manage to escape over the Atlantic undetected?
In: 3074
There were a lot of German emigrants in Russia (the Volga Germans, named after the are where they settled), who had originally been invited there by the Russian Empress Catherine the Great, who was of German descent. After her passing, the Russia government began to roll back many of the benefits/privileges that Catherine had provided them, so they looked to leave Russia. At the time, a lot of South American countries were trying to attract immigrants from Europe to boost their population and settle the land. Argentina and Brazil attracted a lot of these German emigrants, as they both had officially installed Roman Catholicism as their state religion (the Volga Germans were mainly Catholics).
So there was a large population of ethnic Germans in Argentina long before the world wars. This led to friendly relationships between Argentina and both Imperial Germany and Nazi Germany. After the Second World War, this made Argentina a prime destination for those who were associated with Nazi Germany and wanted to flee. With the destruction caused by the war, record-keeping was not great, so it was not very difficult for officials to travel under false identities/papers in order to escape detection.
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