The Rise of the Fourth Reich

by Jim Marrs

  But the biggest fish to get away was Reichsleiter Bormann, the ultimate power behind the Nazi super-science projects and the architect of Operation Eagle Flight. In 1972, Munich bishop Johannes Neuhausler made public a postwar church document stating that Bormann had escaped Berlin during the final days and gone to Spain by airplane. The next year, after journalist Paul Manning published an article in the New York Times detailing Bormann’s escape from justice, West German officials held a news conference proclaiming that Berlin workmen had unearthed two skeletons near the ruins of the Lehrter railroad station and that one of the skeletons had been identified as Bormann. He died in 1945 trying to escape Berlin, they stated.

  However, the entire case for the Berlin death of Bormann rested on dental records prepared from memory by a dentist who had been a loyal Nazi for many years, and the sole statement of a dental technician who had been imprisoned in Russia due to his proclaimed knowledge of Bormann’s dental work. Adding to suspicions that Bormann’s death announcement was most convenient for anyone wishing to cover Bormann’s tracks was the fact that Willy Brandt’s government canceled all rewards and warrants for Bormann and instructed West German embassies and consulates to ignore any future sightings of the Reichsleiter.

  These suspicions were compounded by statements from several persons who told Paul Manning that the body found near the railroad station was placed there in 1945 by SS troops commanded by “Gestapo” Mueller, who was known to have used decoy bodies on other occasions.

  Bormann’s death notice did not convince the late Simon Wiesenthal of the Documentation Center in Vienna, who said, “Some doubts must remain whether the bones found in Berlin are really those of Bormann.” One of Bormann’s relatives had no doubts. In 1947, Walter Buch, the father of Bormann’s wife, Gerda, declared on his deathbed, “That damn Martin made it safely out of Germany.”

  According to Manning, Bormann was escorted from dying Berlin by selected SS men who passed him along a series of “safe houses” to Munich, where he hid out with his brother, Albert. In early 1946, Bormann was escorted on foot over the Alps to the northern Italian seaport of Genoa. There Bormann was housed in a Franciscan monastery. All this was arranged by “Gestapo” Mueller.

  In mid-1946, a steamer ship carried Bormann, provided with false identification papers, to Spain, where he entered the Dominican monastery of San Domingos in the province of Galicia, once the home of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, a supposed neutral who covertly supported Hitler. Manning noted that in 1969, when Bormann became aware that Israeli agents were sniffing along his escape route, there was a fire in San Domingos. Curiously, the fire started on the very shelves where the monastery kept its book of visitors, which contained Bormann’s name. This incriminating record suspiciously was destroyed.

  In the winter of 1947, a large freighter carrying Bormann and several SS officers anchored in the harbor of Buenos Aires, where an organized network of supporters awaited them.

  Even before the shooting war ended, lesser-known SS members and hardcore Nazis were fanning out across the world through covert distribution systems. The means was a loosely knit collection of escape routes from Europe, called “ratlines.” Chief among these ratlines were the Kameradenwerk and the ODESSA, the Organization der ehemaligen SS-Angehorigen, or the organization of former SS members. ODESSA was created by Bormann and Mueller, but later administered by Otto Skorzeny, who had escaped war crimes convictions.

  Documentation of these ratlines is so incomplete and fragmentary that some historians, taking their cue from the corporate world, have denied that ODESSA existed outside the fevered dreams of fanatical SS men. Ladislas Farago, author of popular histories as well as an acclaimed biography of General George Patton, also wrote that he had proof of Bormann’s postwar survival. He acknowledged ODESSA’s existence but wrote it was “actually little more than a shadowy consortium of a handful of freelancers and never amounted to much in the Nazi underground.”

  But then, in 1976, Louis L. Snyder, professor of history at the City College and the City University of New York, produced the mammoth Encyclopedia of the Third Reich. Snyder described ODESSA as a “vast clandestine Nazi travel organization” to aid the escape of SS members and top Nazis. He noted that the main terminal point for ODESSA was Buenos Aires.

  According to Farago, the Kameradenwerk was the real focal point for escaping Nazis. It was founded by Luftwaffe colonel Hans Ulrich Rudel, an air ace who lost a leg flying 2,530 combat missions for Germany. After the war, Rudel almost alone put together one of the most far-reaching and best financed of the rescue groups—the Kameradenwerk. Rudel’s group had help but, according to Farago, it did not come from the Bormann underground but from “the vast organization and the enormous resources of the one agency that, in the end, took care of more Nazis than all the others combined—the refugee bureau of the Vatican.”

  To understand the seemingly puzzling relationship between Hitler’s Nazis and the Holy Roman Church, one must look back to a 1929 agreement signed between the Vatican and the government of fascist Italy. Under this concordat, known as the Lateran Treaty, the Italian government bought favor from the Church by paying almost a billion lire in gold as compensation for church property taken during the nineteenth-century Risorgimento, or reorganization, that helped create modern Italy. The Lateran Treaty also established Vatican City in Rome as a sovereign state, as well as making Roman Catholicism the only state religion in Italy.

  On July 20, 1933, a similar concordat was reached between Pope Pius XI and Nazi Germany. Treaty negotiations were handled by Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, who signed on behalf of the pope and later became Pope Pius XII. This concordat, still in effect today, was signed by Franz von Papen on behalf of German president Paul von Hinderburg. Von Papen was tried at Nuremberg but released despite being denounced as a primary mover in Hitler’s aggression in Europe.

  According to the 1933 concordat, there was to be no interference by the Church in political affairs. It also required all bishops to take a loyalty oath to the state and required all priests to be German citizens and subordinate to government officials. Prior to the concordat’s ratification, the Nazi government also reached similar agreements with the major Protestant churches. Hitler, who at a young age trained at a Catholic monastery school and strived to reach accommodations with the German churches, once proclaimed, “I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator.”

  Rumors have circulated for years that a secret codicil of the concordat involved papal leniency toward National Socialism in exchange for Catholicism being proclaimed the state religion of Europe after an appropriate period of time of total Nazi control. Regardless, it mattered little, as Hitler quickly took steps against all churches, including the Catholics. His sterilization laws, attempts to dissolve the Catholic Youth League, and arrests of priest, nuns, and lay leaders all angered the Catholic community. In March 1937, Pope Pius XI issued an encyclical letter titled “Mit Brennender Sorge,” or “With Burning Sorrow.” In the letter, the pope accused the Nazis of both violating and evading the concordat and even foresaw “threatening storm clouds” of war and extermination. A year later, Pius XI addressed the Nazi persecution of the Jews by proclaiming worldwide, “Mark well that in the Catholic Mass, Abraham is our patriarch and forefather. Anti-Semitism is incompatible with the lofty thought which that fact expresses…. I say to you it is impossible for a Christian to take part in anti-Semitism. It is inadmissible. Through Christ and in Christ we are the spiritual progeny of Abraham. Spiritually, we are all Semites.”

  But if Pius XI’s turn against National Socialism was legitimate, it unfortunately was short-lived. On February 10, 1939, the day before Pius XI was scheduled to deliver yet another scathing public attack on fascism and anti-Semitism, he died, reportedly of a massive heart attack. Copies of his planned antifascist speech have never been found. Vatican officials have stated they may have been misfiled. Rumors implicated Dr. Francesco Saverio Petacci
in the pope’s sudden death. Petacci, one of the Vatican physicians at the time, was the father of Clara Petacci, the longtime mistress of Fascist leader Benito Mussolini. The whispers were that Petacci gave the pope an injection that caused his fatal attack. Strong support for this rumor came some years later, when the same allegation was found in the personal diary of French cardinal and former French Army intelligence agent Eugene Tisserant.

  Pope Pius XII, born Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli, was certainly less antagonistic toward fascism and, in fact, had been an honored guest at the society wedding of Clara Petacci and Italian Air Force Lieutenant Riccardo Federici in 1934. The marriage did not last long, and Clara was soon visiting Mussolini at night via a secret staircase in the Palazzo Venezia.

  Catholic historian and journalist John Cornwell, in 1999, stunned the Catholic world with his book Hitler’s Pope. A former seminary student, Cornwell explained that he originally intended to defend the actions of Pope Pius XII but as his research in Vatican archives progressed, his attitude changed. “By the middle of 1997, nearing the end of my research, I found myself in a state I can only describe as moral shock. The material I had gathered, taking the more extensive view of Pacelli’s life, amounted not to an exoneration but to a wider indictment,” Cornwell wrote. The author eventually saw that this pope’s actions—or inaction—actually aided in Hitler’s rise to power and the ensuing Holocaust.

  Needless to say, Cornwell’s perception was immediately and savagely attacked as inaccurate reporting and misinterpretation. In the December 9, 2004, edition of The Economist, Cornwell waffled, writing, “I would now argue, in light of the debates and evidence following Hitler’s Pope, that Pius XII had so little scope of action that it is impossible to judge the motives for his silence during the war, while Rome was under the heel of Mussolini and later occupied by Germany.”

  Regardless of motives, it is historical fact that many top Nazis and SS men escaped Europe with passports issued by Catholic officials. Luftwaffe ace Rudel admitted as much in 1970, stating, “In Rome itself, the transit point of the escape routes, a vast amount was done. With its own immense resources, the Church helped many of us to go overseas.”

  One of those helpful clerics was Bishop Alois Hudal, who voiced opinions comparable to those of Hitler’s Viennese friend Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels, publisher of Ostara, a magazine with occult and erotic themes. A Cistercian monk who founded the anti-Semitic secret Order of the New Templars, von Liebenfels and his mentor Guido von List sought to revive the medieval brotherhood of Teutonic Knights, those heroes of Hitler’s youth, who had used the swastika as an emblem. While von Liebenfels headed his Order of the New Templars, Bishop Hudal was named procurator general of the Catholic Order of German Knights. On May 1, 1933, in a Nazi-sanctioned celebration of the pagan Walpurgis holiday, Hudal made a particularly impassioned speech in Rome before assembled Church and Nazi leaders as well as the expatriate German community. “German unity is my strength, my strength is German might,” he told the crowd.

  It was, in fact, a Franciscan friar serving under Bishop Hudal who helped arrange a Red Cross passport and visa to Argentina in 1950 for Obersturmbannfuehrer Adolf Eichmann, the exterminator of Jews who had managed to slip away from American captors at the end of the war. Bishop Hudal, in his later memoirs, thanked God he was able to help so many escape with false identity papers.

  Many of these “false identity papers” were documents issued by the Commissione Pontificia d’Assistenza, or the Vatican Refugee Organization. While not full passports themselves, these Vatican identity papers were used to obtain a Displaced Person passport from the International Red Cross, which, in turn, was used to gain a visa. Supposedly, the Red Cross checked the backgrounds of applicants, but usually it was sufficient to have the word of a priest or a bishop. This method of aiding escaping Nazis—the one favored by Bishop Hudal—came to be known as the “Vatican ratlines.”

  For example, Ante Pavelic, the wartime pro-Nazi fascist dictator of Croatia, who was given a private audience with Pope Pius XII shortly after taking power in 1941, escaped to South America after the war with a Red Cross passport gained through a Vatican document.

  ONE OF THE countries in which the Auslandsorganisation worked with particular success was Argentina. “There it has been able to operate without any disguise or front. All of the more than 200,000 Argentine Nazis are members, not of an Argentine suborganization of the Nazi Party, but of the German Party itself, and hold membership cards signed by Robert Ley, leader of the German Workers’ Front—which means, quite obviously, that Berlin considered, and still considers, Argentina not so much an independent foreign country as a German Gau [district],” noted Curt Reiss.

  Although many Nazis found safe havens in Brazil, Paraguay, Chile, and Uruguay, no South American nation was more accommodating than the Argentina of Dictator Juan Domingo Peron and his lovely second wife, Eva Maria Duarte de Peron, popularly known as Evita.

  After participating in a successful military coup in 1943, Peron was voted in as president in 1946 by a majority of voters, who lauded his efforts to eliminate poverty and dignify workers. He was elected against the intense and overt opposition of the United States. Such opposition appeared justified, for soon after his election Peron began to nationalize and expropriate British and American businesses. As their influence in Argentina dwindled, that of the Germans grew.

  Luftwaffe pilot Rudel, who created the Kameradenwerk ratline, became a trainer for Peron’s air force and in the process brought with him about one hundred members of the wartime Luftwaffe staff. Likewise, many Nazi SS and Gestapo fugitives from justice served in the Argentine Army and police forces. Among them was Kurt Tank, who headed a large group of Nazi scientists. Tank, a fighter plane designer and former director of the Focke-Wulf aircraft factory, had slipped away from Germany in disguise and, armed with false identity papers provided by Peron himself, arrived in Buenos Aires with microfilm of aircraft designs hidden in his pants. Soon, about sixty of his old Nazi comrades had joined him, using the same system.

  THE MAN MOST responsible for fostering pro-Nazi feelings in South America was General Wilhelm von Faupel. In 1900, Faupel went to China as a member of the German military legation. He later went to Moscow in the same capacity. In 1911, he joined the staff of the Argentine War College in Buenos Aires. Faupel returned to Argentina after serving Germany in World War I and obtained the job of military counselor to the inspector general of the Argentine Army. Von Faupel not only imparted military theories to the armies of Argentina, Brazil, and Peru, he also instilled in them the political theories of National Socialism. “Hating the [Weimar] republic passionately, he did not return to Germany until the Nazis were about to take power,” wrote Curt Reiss. “But while he was away he had kept up excellent relations with industrialists such as Fritz Thyssen, Georg von Schnitzler, and Herr von Schroeder. After all, these gentlemen had elaborate interests in Latin America. And so had von Faupel. In fact, he boasted openly among German military and industrial men that he could conquer the whole of Latin America.” Faupel most likely was speaking for many globalists who had significant holdings in South America and did not wish to relinquish them to leftists, communists, nationalists, or reformers.

  Although he is widely seen as a dictator, many “Peronists” still view Juan Peron as a champion of the working man. Few realized at the time that he was stashing away an estimated $500 million in Swiss bank accounts. According to Manning, at least $100 million came from the Bormann organization. Peron reciprocated for this generosity by allowing many war criminals to immigrate, legally and illegally, to Argentina. He reportedly provided more than a thousand blank passports for escaping Nazis.

  Peron was an admirer of Hitler. He had learned German at a young age so he could read Mein Kampf. His private secretary, Rudolfo Freude, also was chief of internal security. The Argentine dictator was greatly honored to shelter Deputy Fuehrer Bormann. After several low-key meetings with Bormann, Peron saw Borman
n’s flight capital program as a means of boosting the Argentine economy.

  “Both realized that the capture of Bormann was a clear and ever-present danger,” noted Paul Manning, “and so Peron instructed the chief of his secret police to give all possible cooperation to Heinrich Mueller in his task of protecting the party minister, a collaboration that continued for years.”

  Evita took on the role of liaison between her husband and Nazis seeking asylum. “Born in 1919 as an illegitimate child, she became a prostitute to survive and to get acting roles,” wrote investigative reporter Georg Hodel. “As she climbed the social ladder lover by lover, she built up deep resentments toward the traditional elites. As a mistress to other army officers, she caught the eye of handsome military strongman Juan Peron. After a public love affair, they married in 1945.”

  In June 1947, Eva Peron embarked on a much-publicized “Rainbow Tour” of Europe, greeted royally by Spain’s Franco and a private audience with Pope Pius XII. While in Spain, she reportedly met with Otto Skorzeny, who headed a ratline known as die Spinne or the Spider, and arranged the transfer of millions in Nazi loot to Argentina. She also traveled to Genoa, where she met with Argentine shipping fleet owner Alberto Dodero, who within a month was ferrying Nazis to South America. But the primary purpose of the trip appeared to be the meetings Evita held with bankers in Switzerland.

  “According to records now emerging from Swiss archives and the investigations of Nazi hunters, an unpublicized side of Evita’s world tour was coordinating the network for helping Nazis relocate in Argentina,” wrote Hodel. “Though Evita’s precise role on organizing the Nazi ‘ratlines’ remains a bit fuzzy, her European tour connected the dots of the key figures in the escape network. She also helped clear the way for more formal arrangements in the Swiss-Argentine-Nazi collaboration.”