Ratlines (World War II)

The origins of the first ratlines are connected to various developments in Vatican-Argentine relations before and during World War II.[7] As early as 1942, Roman Cardinal Luigi Maglione – evidently at the behest of Pope Pius XII – contacted an ambassador of Argentina regarding that country's willingness to generously accept European Catholic immigrants in a timely manner, allowing them to live and work.[8] German priest Anton Weber, the head of Rome's Society of Saint Raphael, traveled to Portugal with intentions to continue to Argentina, seemingly to lay the groundwork for Catholic immigration.[8]

Catholic leaders apparently accepted working with the Nazis in order to fight the common enemy of bolshevism. By 1944, ratline activity centered in Francoist Spain was conducted to facilitate the escape of Nazis.[9] Among the primary organizers were Charles Lescat, a French member of Action Française – an organization suppressed by Pope Pius XI and rehabilitated by Pius XII – and Pierre Daye, a Belgian with contacts in the Spanish government.[10] Lescat and Daye were the first to flee Europe with the help of Argentine cardinal Antonio Caggiano.[10]

By 1946, there were hundreds of war criminals in Spain, as well as thousands of former Nazis and fascists.[11] According to then-United States Secretary of State James F. Byrnes, Vatican cooperation in turning over these "asylum-seekers" was "negligible".[11] Historian Michael Phayer argues that Pius XII was primarily focused on fighting communism and would prefer "fascist war criminals [sail] to the New World rather than [rot] in POW camps".[12] Unlike the Vatican emigration operation in Italy which centered on Vatican City, the Spanish ratlines – though fostered by the Vatican – were relatively independent of the Vatican Emigration Bureau's hierarchy.[13]

Austrian Catholic bishop Alois Hudal, a Nazi sympathiser, 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".[14] 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; Erich Priebke, who was responsible for the Ardeatine Massacre; and Adolf Eichmann—a fact about which he was later unashamedly open.[15][16] Some of these wanted men were being held in internment camps; generally lacking identity papers, they would be enrolled in camp registers under false names. Other Nazis hid in Italy and sought Hudal out after learning about his role in assisting escapes.[17]

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."[18] 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, Hudal was the first Catholic priest to dedicate himself to establishing escape routes.[19] They claim that Hudal helped the Nazi fugitives with money, and more importantly with false identity documents from the Vatican Refugee Organisation (Pontificia Commissione di Assistenza). These Vatican papers were not full passports and thus were not enough to gain passage overseas. They were, rather, the first step 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 Austrian writer Gitta Sereny from a senior official of the Rome branch of the ICRC,[20] Hudal would 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 the time.

According to declassified U.S. 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".[21]

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 Croatian priests, members of the Franciscan order, led by Father Krunoslav Draganović, who organised 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 at the port of Genoa. The ratline initially focused on aiding members of the Croatian Ustaše including its leader (or Poglavnik), Ante Pavelić.[22]

Priests active in the chain included: Fr. Vilim Cecelja, former Deputy Military Vicar to the Ustaše, 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 cross 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 Ustaše.[23]

A year later, a US State Department report of 12 July 1946 lists nine war criminals, including Albanians and Montenegrins as 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."[24]

In February 1947, CIC Special Agent Robert Clayton Mudd reported ten members of Pavelić's Ustaša 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 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.[25]

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 supported by a highly respected historian of Vatican diplomacy, Fr. Robert Graham: "I've no doubt that Draganović was extremely active in syphoning off his Croatian Ustashe friends." Graham claimed that Draganović's ratline was approved by the Vatican: "Just because he's a priest doesn't mean he represents the Vatican. It was his own operation."[26] At the same time, there were four occasions in which the Vatican did intervene on behalf of interned Ustasha prisoners. The Secretariat of State asked the UK and US governments to release Croatian POWs from British internment camps in Italy.

If at first U.S. intelligence officers had been mere observers of the Draganović ratline, this changed in the summer of 1947. A now-declassified U.S. Army intelligence report from 1950 sets out in detail the history of the people-smuggling operation in the three years to follow.[27]

According to the report, from this point on U.S. 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 U.S. Zone of Austria and in some instances had requested the return of these persons to Soviet custody".[27]

These were suspected war criminals from areas occupied by the Red Army which the U.S. was obliged to hand over for trial to the Soviets. The U.S. reputedly was reluctant to do so, partly due to a belief that fair trials could hardly be expected in the USSR (see Operation Keelhaul), and also their desire to make use of Nazi scientists and other resources.

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".[27]

United States intelligence used these methods to get important Nazi scientists and military strategists to their own centres of military research in the US. Many Nazi scientists were employed by the U.S., retrieved in Operation Paperclip.

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[28]

The final period of German immigration to Argentina occurred between 1946 and 1950 when President Juan Perón ordered the creation of a ratline for prominent Nazis, collaborators and other fascists from Europe.

In his 2002 book, The Real Odessa,[28] 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.

According to Goñi, Argentina's first move into Nazi smuggling was in January 1946, when Argentine bishop Antonio Caggiano, leader of the Argentine chapter of Catholic Action, flew with another bishop, Agustín Barrére, to Rome where Caggiano was due to be anointed Cardinal. 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 Émile Dewoitine, who was later sentenced in absentia to 20 years of hard labour. He sailed first class on the same ship back with Cardinal Caggiano.[29]

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.[30]

The U.S. Secret Service imagines a disguise Hitler might use to try to evade capture (1944).

In 2014, over 700 FBI documents were declassified (as part of the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act), revealing that the US government had undertaken an investigation in the late 1940s and 1950s as to reports of the possible escape of Adolf Hitler from Germany. Some leads purported that he had not committed suicide in Berlin but had fled Germany in 1945, and eventually arrived in Argentina via Spain.[31][32] Within the pages of these documents are statements, naming people and places involved in Hitler's alleged journey from Germany to South America, including mention of the ratlines that were already in existence.[33] Additional CIA documents contain reported sightings and a photograph of a man alleged to be Hitler in 1954.[34] The claim related to the photograph made by a self-proclaimed former German SS trooper named Phillip Citroen that Hitler was still alive, and that he "left Colombia for Argentina around January 1955." The CIA report states that neither the contact who reported his conversations with Citroen, nor the CIA station, was "in a position to give an intelligent evaluation of the information".[34] The station chief's superiors told him that "enormous efforts could be expended on this matter with remote possibilities of establishing anything concrete", and the investigation was dropped.[35]