Argentina's Disappearing Odessa Files
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Uki GoÖ±i. The Real Odessa: Smuggling the Nazis to PerÖ³n's Argentina. London: Granta Books, 2002. xxx + 410 pp. $27.95, cloth, ISBN 978-1-86207-581-8. Reviewed by Max Paul Friedman Published on H-German (April, 2004) Argentina's Disappearing Odessa Files the subject of a number of investigations, never "In those days Argentina was a kind of par‐ before have the mechanisms of the escape routes adise to us," reminisced Nazi war criminal Erich been laid out in such detail as in this painstaking Priebke in 1991, thinking back to the warm wel‐ study by Argentine journalist Uki Goñi.[2] Goñi come he and some of his comrades found when conducted some two hundred interviews and un‐ they fed postwar Europe for the country ruled by dertook six years of relentless digging in archives Juan Domingo Perón (p. 263). Priebke, Adolf Eich‐ in the United States, Europe, and frequently unco‐ mann, and Josef Mengele were only the most no‐ operative ministries in Argentina. His fndings are torious of a rogue's gallery of several hundred Eu‐ a catalog of cynical malfeasance and cover-up by ropean fascists who made their way to Buenos highly-placed officials in the Argentine govern‐ Aires in the late 1940s and 1950s. The story was ment and the Catholic Church, as well as actors immortalized in the best-selling novel The Odessa from other countries. File, Frederick Forsyth's dark fantasy of a conspir‐ Goñi's principal contribution is his in-depth atorial order seeking to launch a Fourth Reich look at the Argentine side of an organized smug‐ through the mythical ODESSA (Organisation der gling operation that had its genesis in German-Ar‐ ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen or Organization of gentine cooperation during the war and eventual‐ former SS members).[1] This image of Argentina ly involved Allied intelligence services, the Vati‐ as a sanctuary for villains escaping justice became can, and top Argentine officials in a network so widely understood in popular culture, even the stretching from Sweden to Italy. Among the key Blue Meanies thought of going there after their players in Goñi's account are two Argentines of downfall in the Beatles' cult cartoon "Yellow Sub‐ German descent: former SS captain Carlos Fuld‐ marine." ner, who ran "rescue" efforts from bases in If the fight of Nazi fugitives down the ratlines Madrid, Genoa, and Berne; and Rodolfo Freude, to Argentina is well known and has already been head of Perón's Information Bureau, who coordi‐ H-Net Reviews nated the work of intelligence and immigration nasty and sullen, and terminated their coopera‐ officials from his office in the Casa Rosada, Ar‐ tion. One of them then met him furtively in a park gentina's White House. Many of the Argentines in‐ across the street to confess that in 1996, Peronists, volved, as well as a multinational cast of Vichy fearing exposure, had carted most of the key doc‐ French, Belgian Rexists, Croatian Ustashi, and car‐ uments down to the riverbank and burned them. dinals from several countries, seem to have been But not all of them were burned. By entering motivated by the vision of an international broth‐ the data from the index cards alone into a com‐ erhood of Catholic anti-Communists. puter spreadsheet, Goñi found that the fles for Goñi has gone to great lengths to document Erich Priebke and Josef Mengele were numbered information about individual members of the op‐ consecutively, even though they arrived in Ar‐ eration and those it abetted. We learn, for in‐ gentina seven months apart. At the time of their stance, about SS Captain Walter Kutschmann, fre‐ applications, the Immigration Office was opening quent wartime travel companion of fashion de‐ new fles at a rate of over fve hundred per day. signer Coco Chanel and himself responsible for Thus a single person must have applied on behalf thousands of killings in Poland, who escaped to of both war criminals at once or processed them Argentina in the plain robes of a Carmelite monk. together, prima facie evidence of an organized ef‐ Goñi found documentary evidence of fort on behalf of Nazi fugitives. Kutschmann's support from the Casa Rosada in a Goñi made other important fnds. He draws place few people would have thought to look: effectively on the revealing unpublished diary of Kutschmann's early application for a taxi license, a Belgian fascist involved in the smuggling net‐ Goñi discovered, was backed by Fernando Imper‐ work in Buenos Aires, Pierre Daye, whose papers atrice, a member of Perón's presidential staff. were repatriated after his death and thus escaped Kutschmann retained friends in high places al‐ the Argentine bonfires. Historian Beatriz Gure‐ most until the end of his life. During a trial held vich, a member of CEANA (Comisión de Esclarec‐ by the Argentine military regime in the early imiento de Actividades Nazis en la Argentina), the 1980s, the former SS man went free "when the Argentine government commission investigating court lost the case dossier. It was found fve years Nazi links, who resigned in the late 1990s because later ... in the judge's safe" (p. 243). the commission did not dig deep enough, shared In an extraordinary tale from the archives, her fles with Goñi. He also worked in Chile, Den‐ Goñi describes spending fve months posing as a mark, Germany, Great Britain, Switzerland, and genealogist to look unobtrusively for crucial evi‐ the United States. In the end he was able to identi‐ dence in the records of the Argentine Immigration fy nearly three hundred war criminals who en‐ Office. From 1920 to 1970, the government rou‐ tered Argentina beginning in August 1946. (The tinely opened individual immigration fles for ev‐ entire staf of CEANA came up with only 180.) This ery applicant for a landing permit, whether job research, presented in such detail that at times seeker, refugee, or war criminal. Goñi eventually the narrative of events gears down into a register worked through "a couple of city blocks of shelves of names and places, is itself a great achievement. stacked with tightly packed cards," indexing the Goñi's interpretations of causality, however, are files to fnd ones he wished to order (p. 117). He more porous. At the center of the image of Ar‐ discovered entries corresponding to fles for Eich‐ gentina as a fascist paradise, and looming in the mann, Priebke, Mengele, and other lesser-known background throughout the story told here, is the fascists. But when he broke his cover and tried to highly disputed fgure of Perón himself. Did he, as order the relevant fles, the archivists turned Goñi argues, turn his country into an asylum for 2 H-Net Reviews the blood-spattered losers of the Second World during the war, giving him a self-interested mo‐ War out of ideological sympathy for European fas‐ tive for opposing the trials. Perón cannot simply cism? Or were other motives more important? be labeled a Nazi since he readily made alliances Goñi takes a clear stand: if Perón was not with Communists and Jews, maintaining an ideo‐ himself a Nazi, he liked Nazis, cooperated with logically fexible, populist approach as he tried to them before, during, and after the war, and co-opt workers' movements by meeting many of sought to save them from the "victor's justice" he their demands. Indeed, within the Argentine mili‐ saw at work at the Nuremberg tribunal because it tary and the right wing in general, there was far offended his soldier's sense of honor. "It was more admiration for Italian and Spanish fascism Perón's intention to rescue as many Nazis as pos‐ than for the German variety, which was consid‐ sible from the war crimes trials in Europe," Goñi ered too anti-Catholic. writes (p. 108). After the war, Perón did not just go looking To show the antecedents for the program, he for war criminals in Europe; he especially sought spends several chapters outlining how Argentina skilled labor and advanced technology for his steadily made it more difficult for Jewish refugees crash industrialization program. As Goñi notes, an to enter the country in the late 1930s and 1940s, Argentine agency based in Rome and implicated especially when the Immigration Office was head‐ in smuggling fascists actually "had orders to orga‐ ed by Santiago Peralta, a virulent and prolific nize the immigration of 4 million Europeans, at writer of anti-Semitic tracts appointed by the mili‐ the rate of 30,000 a month, to boost the economic tary government in 1943 and kept on by Perón and social revolution Perón envisaged for his until June 1947. country" (p. 237). It was an ambitious plan, partly realized in at least one respect: Argentina pro‐ Historians will no doubt contest whether anti- duced its own jet fghter in 1947 with the help of Semitism and pro-Nazi sentiment among Argen‐ imported Nazi engineers. tine officials, including Perón himself, can bear the explanatory weight Goñi assigns them in ac‐ This aspect seems worthy of more careful counting for the causes of this sordid episode. A analysis. Argentina was hardly the only country comparative frame of reference would also be to take advantage of the decommissioned human useful. Countries all over the world were closing resources of the Third Reich. The United States is their doors to Jewish refugees in the Nazi era, an famously indebted to rocketry expert Werner von appalling practice that did not in itself automati‐ Braun, who literally got NASA off the ground cally indicate a preference for fascist immigra‐ thanks to his experience building Hitler's V-2 tion.