The true story of South American nazis

[Strengthandhonour]

Come now. 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. I might also point out that not all fugitives from the Third Reich ended up in South America--quite a few are said to have headed for Spain or the Middle East, and the U.S. imported a crowd of Nazi rocket scientists during Operation Paperclip. That said, the true story of how war criminals like Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele wound up in the land of the gauchos has never been fully told, and even now it's difficult to separate fact from fiction. Leading candidates for chief enabler of the great escape include:

• Odessa. Part of the popular consciousness ever since Frederick Forsyth's best-selling 1972 novel The Odessa File, this secret group (the name is an acronym for Organization der ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen, "Organization of Former SS Members") supposedly used stashed war booty and connections in high places to spirit Nazi big shots out of reach of the Allies. Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal says he first heard about Odessa during the Nuremberg trials, and in his 1989 book Justice, Not Vengeance he seems convinced it exists, or rather existed. He offers little evidence, though, and others have their doubts. Even some believers say the organization was amateurish and short-lived.

• The Catholic church. The claim that members of the Catholic hierarchy were instrumental in obtaining documents, cash, and safe passage for many escaping Nazis is only barely scandalous these days. The benign view is that individual clerics acted out of humanitarian concern, believing they were aiding refugees from postwar communist persecution, and were unaware of their charges' sordid pasts. Others say the Vatican knew quite well what was going on but wanted former Nazis as allies in its struggle against the reds. A figure commonly named in this context is Alois Hudal, an openly pro-Nazi German bishop in Rome who is said to have helped engineer the escapes of dozens if not hundreds of Nazis--including Eichmann, who was living in Argentina when the Mossad caught him in 1960, and Franz Stangl, commandant of the Treblinka death camp, who ultimately made his way to Brazil and was captured there in 1967.

• All of 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.

It's a lot to swallow, no question, and notwithstanding his 591 footnotes Goñi concedes that many key Argentine records that would've corroborated his story have been destroyed. Still, he avoids the overheated claims of other writers, and the plain fact is that all those Nazis didn't wind up in South America by coincidence--they were going where they were welcome. As for the details? Given the current worldwide consensus that Nazis represent the ultimate human evil (and the resulting disinclination of officials in Argentina and elsewhere to come clean), Goñi's book may be as close as we'll get to the truth.
--CECIL ADAMS

[Dr. Solar Wolff]

Juan Peron marched at Hitler's side into Paris. The SS hid moutains of gold, machine tools, speciality metals, blueprints, and scientists in South America. Peron even set up Dr. Ronald Richter on his own island in a lake inside Colonia Dignidad--yes a mad scientist on the island of a mad scientist! Otto Skorzeny trained Peron's spy services. Nazis walked around in uniform for a time after the war. Nazis bought huge tracts of land and set up secure zones. What didn't they do?

[ÅnÐReS]

Originally Posted by Dr. Solar Wolff

Peron even set up Dr. Ronald Richter on his own island in a lake inside Colonia Dignidad--yes a mad scientist on the island of a mad scientist!

Actually, Colonia Dignidad was in Chile. Ronald Richter was in Huemul Island, in Nahuel Huapi Lake, near the city of Bariloche, Argentina.


In 1948, Dr. Richter presented Perón a project to develop a controlled Nuclear Fusion; which hadn't been done anywhere else in the world at that time and, in theory, implies an unlimited source of energy that was thought to be used for industries and the development of nuclear weapons. This project was to be known as Proyecto Huemul. Perón got enthusiasted about this and the project started off.

The project "carried on" until Perón's opposers and the Argentine and International scientific communities struggled so that the whole issue went through investigation. Then, in September 1952, an Inspection Board visited the Island and found out that it was all a hoax.

To make it short, one looney fooled another looney. The difference being that one of them was a clever man and the other was a rimbombantic ignorant, who was also our president.

Source in Spanish

[Dr. Solar Wolff]

Originally Posted by ÅnÐReS

Actually, Colonia Dignidad was in Chile. Ronald Richter was in Huemul Island, in Nahuel Huapi Lake, near the city of Bariloche, Argentina.


In 1948, Dr. Richter presented Perón a project to develop a controlled Nuclear Fusion; which hadn't been done anywhere else in the world at that time and, in theory, implies an unlimited source of energy that was thought to be used for industries and the development of nuclear weapons. This project was to be known as Proyecto Huemul. Perón got enthusiasted about this and the project started off.

The project "carried on" until Perón's opposers and the Argentine and International scientific communities struggled so that the whole issue went through investigation. Then, in September 1952, an Inspection Board visited the Island and found out that it was all a hoax.

To make it short, one looney fooled another looney. The difference being that one of them was a clever man and the other was a rimbombantic ignorant, who was also our president.

Source in Spanish

Andres, thank you for responding to a subject near and dear to my heart. You are well informed but this is a cover story. I know because I have the US Paperclip file on Dr. Ronald Richter. Fusion was done first outside of Huemul Island at Suhl, Thuringia, Germany in 1942 at Richter's home! What happened in Germany is still secret---I have a hint but if I reveal it, my source might be exposed and the German government has censored this item. Anyway, Richter's speciality was ultra-sound shock waves. He used them as a means of compression and containment. Today, this process has been re-discovered and named "sonofusion". Richter managed to create an controlled, sustainable fusion reaction, injectiong lithium and boron into the fusion reaction to sustain it. He made all his own instruments--measuring as well as working instruments. After Peron's deminse, the new government considered Richter a Peron favorite and he go no more funding----but the Americans were very interested and they came in droves--several committees, even the FBI. Nobody understood what the hell Richter was talking about in 1958. Finally, he was called crazy or, alternately, a man working in the scientific world of circa 1970---nobody knew for sure. Meanwhile Richter needed work. He had a young daughter and wife to support. He wrote down everything in some detail, more detail than the average non-scientist can understand, and sent it to the American intelligence services looking for a job---he told them exactly how to do it!!!!!!! Nobody in America was even remotely qualified to comment on Richter and so stated in the intelligence reports.

How and why this document was de-classified is a big mystery to me but there is much, much more which I won't comment upon. I have sent copies to interersted parties in Europe just incase someone recognizes this mistake and wants it back.

Andres, Richter had a daughter who must be in her mid-fifties now, named Monika. I suspect she is either in Argentina or Chile or is in Austria. Would there be any way to find her in South America?

[ÅnÐReS]

Originally Posted by Dr. Solar Wolff

Andres, Richter had a daughter who must be in her mid-fifties now, named Monika. I suspect she is either in Argentina or Chile or is in Austria. Would there be any way to find her in South America?

I don't know. There is a book (in Spanish) about the issue; it's called "El secreto atómico de Huemul" (Huemul's atomic secret) written by Mario Mariscotti, one of the scientist that went to the island to investigate the project. I haven't read the book, but there might be a hint on it.

About Richter, i know that (after looking into it on the web) in 1984 it was said on a TV show that he was dead, but a few months after a journalist interviewed him in his own house, in a small town outside Buenos Aires.

[Dr. Solar Wolff]

Originally Posted by ÅnÐReS

I don't know. There is a book (in Spanish) about the issue; it's called "El secreto atómico de Huemul" (Huemul's atomic secret) written by Mario Mariscotti, one of the scientist that went to the island to investigate the project. I haven't read the book, but there might be a hint on it.

About Richter, i know that (after looking into it on the web) in 1984 it was said on a TV show that he was dead, but a few months after a journalist interviewed him in his own house, in a small town outside Buenos Aires.

If Mario Mariscotti was one of the scientists who went to the island to investigate immediately after Peron lost power, then they were part of a witch hunt which took place when the new government (I forget its leader but it is in the Paperclip file) sent representatives there in order to discredit Richter. Peron had announced sustained fusion power in practical sort of terms when what happened to date was experimental. Dr. Richter objected to this to Peron and thereafter Peron wouldn't take Richter's calls. Richter was called to testifiy during the time of the transition and was even briefly jailed. Richter was cut off from funds and harrassed by the new government which pushed him to contacting the Americans. They wasted no time but the first one or two visits made to the island were by scientists who had no clue (which may have been the case with the Argentine post-Peron investigation team also. Even when the USA finally sent a top nuclear scientist, he even admitted that there were things here that were beyond him so that either Richter was "working circa 1970" (this was 1958) or Richter was a fraud. As it turned out, "working circa 1970" was a great understatement.

Another small tidbit from the Paperclip file was Richter's statement which agrees with those of Josef Ernst in which it was said that the Germans had considered during the war a method of refining (cracking) crude oil (into gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, kerosene, lubricating oil, naptha, benzine, etc.) using, not a refining tower as they still do today, but seperating the constituent parts using ultra-sound. This method would be far cheaper and faster than the current method and take far less actual machinery.