Why did so many Nazis choose to escape to Argentina, and how did they manage to escape over the Atlantic undetected?
In: 3074
German and Italian Nazi/Facists come over in multiple ways, one for sure was using the Catholic Church as a method through the Vatican. Getting red cross passports etc. there is a series on History Channel called Hunting Hitler that goes in debt on that, they go to various South American countries and find amazing things in relation to your question.
Choose to escape? Maybe they ran because they knew they had committed a bunch of horrific crimes and knew the penalties would be equally horrific.
CIA operation paperclip.
we brought them (higher ranking officers and scientists) across the atlantic because we (good ole USA), wanted to exploit their knowledge and technology regarding rockets and mind control, and whatever else may have been considered useful.
why argentina? because we “hid” them in south america. while we pretended that they were all subject to nuremberg trials.
[Here’s an old askhistorians post about it](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/bapdx8/the_first_complaint_brought_up_in_the_un_was/ekewo9n/?context=3)
TL;DR [“Argentina is Naziland”](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ArgentinaIsNaziLand) is a meme that started from bad blood between America and Argentina.
A large German community there, and the Atlantic Ocean is huge? Also, the passenger manifests aren’t published in a newspaper?
My Dad was in the CIC after the war, working to track down SS officers before they could escape. I can’t answer the “why” part of the question, but as for the “how”: one of the most reliable escape routes was evidently through Italy. Many of the fleeing war criminals were hoping to get to Italy and secure transportation across the Atlantic from there.
The “maximum leader” of Argentina, Juan Peron (the husband in ‘Evita’) was also a fascist and even before the war ended asked his diplomats to set up a network to help war criminals escape.
Some references:
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/capsule-review/2003-01-01/real-odessa-smuggling-nazis-perons-argentina
https://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/04/world/americas/halfcentury-later-a-new-look-at-argentinenazi-ties.html
The Nazis escaped because they had lost the war and didn’t want to go before the USA and Israel to be charged for war crimes. They escaped by posing as the very people that they were torturing. They did this by putting fake numbers on their wrist and dressing like the Jewish people. However, the Jewish formed a group to capture and charge the Nazis that had escaped.
To answer how they escaped you have to remember that there wasn’t a very good identification system. You had a few people making fake ID, some sympathetic neighbors and friends that were not criminals and corrupt officials you could take advantage of. Once you got to a port that wasn’t being searched you were basically home free.
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Oh and the Catholic Church smuggled hundreds of war criminals out of Europe.
Yeah dude most of the ffffed up nazis who should have been trialed long ago are already in untouchable places in the USA … Argentina just got the the notoriety
No one was trying to stop the nazis from fleeing since they had their hands full splitting the cake that is germany between the allies
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