The Ratlines That Saved Thousands of Nazis from Prosecution

Three years after World War II ended, Frank Stangl, a leading Nazi war criminal, escaped prison in Austria. Stangl was the commander of both the Sobibor and Treblinka extermination camps.

Stangl made his way to the Vatican, where he met Bishop Alois Hudal, a fellow Austrian. Hudal handed him forged documents that allowed a Nazi war criminal to travel to Syria.

In 1951 the whole family emigrated to Brazil; this man went from mass murderer to assembling cars for Volkswagen.

Stangl was not alone; he was one of the thousands of Nazis helped to flee by the Catholic Church using an underground network known as the Ratlines.

Ratlines

Most of the Nazis that escaped boarded ships heading directly to South America. Argentina was the last country to declare war on Nazi Germany and a popular destination for these criminals afterwards.

The two primary routes escaping Nazis would use, the first went from Germany to Spain and then Argentina. The second went from Germany to Rome and then to South America.

"The ratlines were not a thoroughly structured system but consisted of many individual components," said Daniel Stahl, a historian at the Department of Modern and Contemporary History at Jena's Friedrich Schiller University. "It was more of a spontaneous cooperation of different institutions that gradually established itself after World War II."

The Ratlines was a significant connection of many elements, including the Vatican, Red Cross and the USA. Whether the Red Cross knowingly did this is a matter of much debate.

Many of these Nazi criminals knew a great deal about the Soviet regime and, in exchange for their freedom, could help American intelligence at the start of the Cold War.

The Vatican

Another significant proportion of criminals fled across the Alps to Italy to seek the help of the Vatican. They would stop first in the south of the country, staying at the Teutonic Order in Merano.

This was one of many monasteries used to hide war criminals. Whilst there, they would collect money to fund the next part of their journey. Ironically sometimes, the criminals were housed right beside the Jews who were heading to Israel.

Once the correct funds were established, the next stop would be Rome, where the Nazis could obtain a letter from the Catholic Church confirming their identity, or rather their false identity.

The identity papers were enough for the International Committee of the Red Cross to hand them a passport. It is estimated that between the end of the war and 1951, the Red Cross issued 120,000 papers for travel.

Bishop Hudal was the main point of contact for these papers within the Vatican. He had established himself early on as a Nazi sympathiser. Later, he would claim that he snatched the persecuted Nazis away from their tormentors with false identity papers.

Hudal was also made the head of the Austrian section of the Pontifical Commission for Assistance, created in 1944 by Pope Pius XII to help refugees.

How much did the Pope know?

It is unclear how much Pope Pius XII knew about the Ratlines. Although some of his documents that have been released, they tell of secret meetings with a younger Hitler.

In August 1939, as Hitler was negotiating the invasion of Poland, he was also negotiating with Pope Pius XII. This meeting seems to have been admitted by the official records of the Vatican.

Even when the Nazis rounded up more than a thousand Jews in Rome on 16 October 1943, the Pope refused to comment.

It is possible that the Pope issued direct instructions to help all Nazis as he was a sympathiser, or he could have issued a general order to help anyone without papers, and Hudal used this to his advantage.

It may be when the vault containing these documents is opened to the public that there is evidence the CIA convinced the Vatican to help because Communists were actively trying to overthrow the continent.

What is known is Pius XII had a fear of communism. Many considered communism the greatest threat to the Catholic Church.

Italy Post War

If you need further evidence that Italy and the US government were working together, look no further than the 1948 election.

Italy post-war was a country with many enemies to defeat, some imaginary, some very real. Europe and the USA had become extremely worried about the rise of communism in Italy.

Two main parties ran for power in April; the first was led by Pius XII, who buried any links he may have had to Mussolini and racism. The party called themselves the Christian Democrats. The second was the Italian Communist Party which boasted an impressive 2 million members.

The US were worried that if the Communist Party were elected, this would allow the Soviet Union to have a perch in Europe. The concern was short-lived, with the Christian Democrats roaring to victory, clearly supported by both the US and the Vatican.

Nazis that used the Ratline

So who were these Nazis that were helped to escape justice? One of the most famous was Josef Mengele, a sadistic Nazi concentration camp doctor who experimented on all who came into contact with him, even children.

Mengele fled to South Tyrol in 1949, helped by the Catholic Church. Here his supporters provided him with a new passport which gave him safe passage to Argentina. President Juan Peron strongly supported the Nazi regime, having been an officer in Mussolini's army in the 1930s. He also believed that the Nuremberg trials were an "insult to military honor," and he was only too willing to offer a home for such criminals.

Mengele lived in Argentina, dying when he had a stroke while swimming and drowned in 1979. Two other Nazis who lived in Argentina were Adolf Eichmann, who organised the holocaust and Erich Priebke, an SS Captain.

Klaus Barbie, known as the 'Butcher of Lyon', travelled to South America under the name of Klaus Altmann; he escaped trial with the help of the CIA.

The Nazi who invented the mobile gas chamber, Walther Rauff, fled through the Ratline with his wife and children, first to Ecuador and then to Chile.

Was there any justice?

It was not always a life of tranquillity for the Nazis that managed to escape justice. Famous Jewish Nazi hunter and Holocaust survivor Simon Wiesenthal located some of the names above.

Once identified, agencies would try to extradite the criminal to face charges, or in some cases, they were kidnapped and taken forcibly to stand trial.

According to author John Le Carre, who researched this for many novels, this was the tip of the iceberg. He believes that the Ratlines helped 10,000 Nazis escape. He also claims that it was not a matter of the Americans knowing about the Ratlines but that they created them.

It would take a very naive person to believe that America was the only country to use these Nazi criminals for the information they held. It is more likely that many countries were involved and benefited from their knowledge when facing the Soviet Union in the Cold War.

There is also enough evidence to show that members of the Catholic Church were well aware of who they were helping; whether the Pope knew he was helping Nazis escape is a matter of contention. It seems a huge coincidence that a man who arranged a secret meeting with Hitler and never condemned him would not help his men escape, especially considering that the Catholic Church does not recognise the term 'war crimes.'