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After the war Argentina and Paraguay were run for years by nationalist strongmen, Juan Peron and Alfredo Stroessner respectively, who liked to strut around in military regalia and brutalize dissidents. Argentina had remained officially neutral until early 1945, when economic pressure forced it to throw in with the Allies, but until that point was in intimate contact with Hitler's regime and the fascist Franco government in Spain. Postwar Brazil was still fascist-friendly, a legacy of deposed dictator Getulio Vargas. Surely it's no surprise that the leaders of these countries nurtured fraternal feelings for fleeing Nazis.
The above plus Peron. Argentine journalist Uki Goñi, in The Real Odessa: Smuggling the Nazis to Peron's Argentina (2002), offers what amounts to a synthesis of earlier theories. The "real Odessa," he says, consisted of about a dozen energetic ex-Nazis and Nazi collaborators from several nations, including a few wanted war criminals, working in concert with the Peron regime and sympathetic Catholic officials in both Europe and Argentina. Goñi makes a plausible case that the cabal, which was organized in Buenos Aires following Peron's election as Argentina's president in 1946, orchestrated the emigration of hundreds, perhaps thousands of Nazis and other unsavory types to the country in the late 1940s and early 1950s. (He also claims that the cabal was based at the presidential palace, and that many of its members were given important jobs in Peron's government.) The old Nazis made frequent trips to Europe to troll for more fugitives; some war criminals had to be smuggled out, but in other cases countries were glad to unload their troublesome Nazi refugees. Visas and landing permits were handed out freely, the chief concern being that no communists or Jews be allowed in by mistake. How many ex-Nazis made it to Argentina is not known. Goñi says he identified 300 during six years of research, and it's easy to believe there were many more.
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The organization was called ODESSA, whose name was an acronym created from the German phrase "Organization der Ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen," or "The Organization of Former SS Members." As its name states, it would only help members of the SS or Schutz Staffel (Protection Corps), which was the elite structure of the Nazi party and also Hitler's personal guards. At the end of the war, the SS was estimated to have 600,000 members, all members of the Nazi Party who were committed to its ideology, in contrast to the members of the German Armed Forces (Wehrmacht) who were citizens conscripted into its ranks.  During World War II, Argentina declared its neutrality but continued to trade with the fascist regimes in Germany, Spain and Italy. Allegedly, Argentinia President General Juan Peron sold 10,000 blank Argentine passports to ODESSA and the many Nazis who arrived in South America using fake Argentine identities can prove this version. Such was the case of Adolf Eichmann, who joined the Austrian Nazi party in 1932 and was recruited by the SS to serve as a guard in the Dachau concentration camp. Eichmann rose quickly up the ranks under the protection of Heinrich Himmler, one of the main Nazi leaders. In 1941, Eichmann was head of the Department for Jewish Affairs in the Gestapo, who was responsible for the death of 3 million Jews in extermination camps. At the end of WWII, Eichmann was captured but strangely enough was able to escape from an American P.O.W. camp and flee to Buenos Aires in 1950. In the Argentine capital, Eichmann assumed the false identity of Ricardo Klement, where he hid until 1960, when he was captured by Israeli "Mossad" agents and secretly taken to Tel Aviv. After a five-month trial, Eichmann was sentenced to death and executed in 1962. Josef Mengele joined the SS in 1938, the same year he received his medical degree, and from then on would be known by the alias of "The Doctor." In 1940, Mengele was recruited by the "Waffen" Division of the SS, (the highest honor for a devout Nazi), and sent to the Ukrainian front. Mengele was seriously wounded during combat, and was therefore posted to the Race and Resettlement Office in Berlin, and also promoted to the rank of Captain. In May 1943, Mengele was appointed to "serve" in the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. In the camp, Mengele would always be seen showing off his black SS uniform and medals, and his ruthless treatment of the prisoners made him feared even among the other SS officers. Mengele was in charge of selecting those prisoners that would be killed in the gas chambers and those on which he would carry out his cruel "genetic experiments" such as the dissection of live infants, the castration of male prisoners without anesthetics and attempting to change the color of eyes with injections of dyes. In 1949, along with other members of ODESSA, Mengele was smuggled to Argentina, then ruled by Peron. The Doctor spent the next 30 years on the run from Israeli agents who attempted to capture him as they had done with Adolf Eichmann. The ODESSA sheltered Mengele in Paraguay, then ruled by General Alfredo Stroessner, and later on moved him to Brazil where his body is said to have been identified by local forensic authorities on June 6, 1985. However, Mengele's victims have always doubted this version, since posing dead was a ploy frequently used by fleeing Nazis to escape persecution, as in the case of Walter Rauff, who chose to settle in Chile after WWII. Rauff was also a high ranking SS officer who invented the "Death Trucks" with which 500,000 prisoners were murdered with lethal gas at Auschwitz. Like Mengele, his colleague at Auschwitz, Rauff arrived in South America in 1950, where Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal detected his presence. After many years of extradition demands by the German justice, Rauff was arrested in 1963 and spent three months in a Santiago jail. Surprisingly, the Chilean Supreme Court freed Rauff because "the crimes had taken too long ago, Rauff had shown good behavior in Chile and was a prosperous businessman." It seems that there was a powerful "Reason of State" that made the Chilean authorities harbor Rauff, since not even President Salvador Allende, a declared anti-fascist, allowed the Nazi to be extradited. Rauff then settled in the southern city of Punta Arenas, but in 1988 was reported to have "died" in Santiago. During the Pinochet regime, it is alleged that Rauff designed the concentration camps where thousands of political prisoners were confined. Paul Schäffer began his career in the "Hitler Youth" and during WWII and took part in the Russian front as a medical assistant. At the end of the war, Schäffer remained in Germany working in orphanages where the police arrested him for "pedophile" activities. In 1957, Schäffer formed a religious sect called the "Private Social Mission" that apparently would help orphans and neglected children. After being prosecuted by the German justice, Schäffer mysteriously managed to end up in Chile in 1960, along with hundreds of German children and their parents, many of whom were former Nazis. With the approval of Chilean authorities, Schäffer was granted a large terrain in the south of the country near the town of Parral that Schäffer named the "Dignity Colony". A small settlement called "Villa Bavaria" was built, where the men, women and children would sleep in separate quarters. To the adults, Schäffer would be known as "The Führer" and to the children as "The Uncle," and they would have to work seven days a week, from morning to night and without any pay. Psychological abuse, torture and drugs were used to control the followers. With their slave labor, the "Colony" began to prosper and became a powerful agricultural farm, which the Chilean authorities presented as an "exemplary charity organization." However, several of the followers rebelled and escaped from the Colony, and the truth was known about Schäffer and his gang. Many of the residents of the Colony were taken to court to testify, but the Chilean justice system proved inefficient. This situation continued until 1993, when Schäffer went into hiding, only to be arrested on May 2004 in Argentina and deported to Chile. In May 2006, Schäffer was sentenced by the Chilean Supreme Court to 20 years in prison accused of sexual abusing hundreds of children. The "Uncle" is also accused of assisting Pinochet's secret police in the torture and murder of 150 political prisoners after 1973. Martin Bormann was the highest-ranking SS officer to take refuge in South America, specifically in Chile and Argentina. Bormann joined the Nazi party in 1925, and by the end of WWII was Adolf Hitler's personal assistant. Bormann became so powerful that he was appointed by Hitler to collect the financial donations made by the richest German businessmen to the Nazi party, and also to look after Hitler's private estate, the Berghof in Bavaria. In 1941, Bormann was appointed Chancellor of the Nazi Party, whereby all official matters and meetings with Hitler had to be previously approved by Bormann. In 1945, as the Soviet troops advanced on the Berlin Bunker, Bormann witnessed Hitler and Eva Braun's wedding. After the ceremony Hitler ordered Bormann to escape and save his life to carry out a mysterious "final mission." There are many versions as to how Bormann escaped from Berlin, some claim that he died others that he escaped. Bormann's final fate remained an enigma until 1996 when a passport was found in Chile with Bormann's photo but under the name of Ricardo Bauer. SS Captain Erich Priebke was discovered to be living in Bariloche, Argentina during the 1990's. Priebke was accused of ordering the massacre of 335 Italians in March 1944. The killings occurred at the Ardeatine Caves in Rome, after which Priebke ordered that the entrance be blown up to bury the bodies. Finally, Priebke was extradited to Italy and in 1997 Priebke was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Priebke is now 93 years old, the oldest Nazi prisoner in custody. After Priebke's detention, further investigations revealed that Bariloche had become a hideout for many other SS officers, many of whom are still living there. The last case recently exposed is that of Aribert Heim, head doctor at the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, whose daughter is a resident of Vina del Mar, Chile. There are many reasons to believe that Heim may still be in that South American country.  |
| This article is based on the book "Ultramar Sur. La Ultima operacion secreta del Tercer Reich", published by Grupo Editorial Norma, and conversations with Juan Salinas and Carlos De Napoli co-writers of the book. |
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Three different sketches were made for each man, indicating the potential changes that could be made to each of their faces. Strangely enough, they each chose faces with very large, exaggerated Semitic, Jewish noses. Through various bits of information they deduced that these men were preparing to board a submarine that was being prepared at Bremerhaven. They had to be ready by a certain time, a schedule the doctors barely met. When their faces were altered, the post-op performed, the stitches removed, and the scars sufficiently healed, the three men disappeared - just as stealthily as they had arrived under the same supreme security. The men’s names were never given to the plastic surgeons. No identities, nothing. The doctors were only given as much information as they would need to conduct the surgery requested. There were no documents and no paperwork. Unknown to the SS, Magda was very well aware of who two of these men were. They were Martin Borman and Adolf Hitler. The third she did not recognize. Magda had supervised a program which created four "Doppelgängers" or doubles for Hitler. Some of that work was also performed earlier at her family’s clinic. This was all just considered a smart security decision. The four doubles were all the same height and build as the Führer, which was not a problem, because he was a very `average` looking man. The doubles were given voice and movement instruction, and they mastered Hitler’s soft conversational voice and distinctive walk. Their faces were altered. One thing that none of these Doppelgängers could ever hope to duplicate was Hitler’s charismatic public speaking style. His ability to sway a crowd had never been matched or equaled. The doubles were used for public appearances, parties, meetings, and briefings where Hitler was not expected to have that much interaction with his underlings. Hitler never gave a public speech after the fall of 1943, and most of his personal private staff were dispersed, relocated or given other assignments in the fall of that year. Two weeks after the three men left her family’s clinic, the hospital was raided. The entire staff, including both Magda’s father and brother, were brutally murdered, and the clinic was burned to the ground, files and all. In fact, there was not a single record left in all of Germany that could be used to identify Hitler after the war. Every doctor that had ever been affiliated with him, having even second hand knowledge, had simply vanished into thin air. The one exception was a lone dental assistant who been called in to help the dentist she worked for, clean Hitler`s teeth on two occasions. When the incinerated "bones" of Hitler were brought out of their Berlin bunker, the Russians asked her to draw a picture of what she remembered Hitler`s teeth to look like. After days of brutal interrogation of the hapless nurse, with Patton breathing down their neck, and the eyes of the world upon them, the Russians decided the sketch and the teeth matched. Stalin was never convinced, but went along with the public version of the story. He did not want to tarnish the Russian victory or embarrass his country by letting the world know that they had let Adolf Hitler slip through their fingers. But they had. In 1993, in Ecuador, a reclusive Catholic Priest named Father Krespi was laid to rest at the supposed age of 90. Over two thousand people came from all over the world to attend his funeral, which had all the trappings and ceremony of that of a president or king. The white marble sepulchre is still polished and cleaned every week, and is constantly adorned with flowers, paid for by anonymous admirers. After he died, some interesting things were found out about him. Father Krespi left behind millions of dollars worth of artwork that was identified by the aging Magda and others as belonging to Hitler’s private art collection. Hitler, an artist himself, had accumulated quite a collection, which was never located. Witnesses say Krespi’s collection was transported to the Vatican in two cargo jets soon after the funeral, on May 16, 1993 .Magda confirmed the belief of US Army (Ret.) Colonel Wendell Stephens, who had met Father Krespi in 1981 on a trip to Ecuador. He believed a priest he had met in a small town called Cuenca was Adolf Hitler. He examined hundreds of pictures of Hitler and was convinced he had met him in person. He also saw and described priceless European artwork he saw at Krespi’s secluded home in the mountains. Stephens couldn’t get anyone to pay attention to his assertions that he had found Hitler - nobody cared anymore. Father Krespi`s background is mysterious, and correlates directly to the story told by Magda. Krespi claimed to have come from an Italian/Austrian family in Northern Italy, and came to the Vatican to study in 1943. He took seminary, did his time as a novitiate and was ordained into the priesthood, all within the protective walls of the Vatican, an unheard of practice that has never been repeated before or since. In fact, Krespi never set foot outside Vatican City, which has the status and diplomatic immunity of a Sovereign Country, recognized by every nation state in the world. Krespi was given a position far above his humble rank and status as a Novitiate, of Art Curator of the Vatican Archives, more popularly called `The Catacombs`, because they consist of a series of highly secure tunnels and vaults under Vatican City. This made him responsible for viewing and cataloging a collection valued at billions of dollars, and put him in the singularly unique position of being the receiver of the priceless collections that had been looted by the Nazis in Europe, much of which some how fell into the Vatican’s hands. Stephens reported that Father Krespi spoke fluent Italian, with a perfect accent to all the other priests and the people on his staff. Hitler’s mother was a staunch Roman Catholic from northern Italy. His first language was Italian, and it was all he spoke until he was 12 years old. This is why in news reels you never see an interpreter between him and Mussolini. He spoke Italian to his staff in the Chancellor’s office all the time. He would even revert to it when he got angry. It is probably where he got the rhythm that hypnotized people.
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