RETIRED POLICEMAN Jorge Colotto, Juan Domingo Peron"s personal bodyguard, in a 2009 photograph. He saw Bormann in 1954 when the Brown Eminence met with Peron. Colotto was entrusted with the task of taking an envelope of cash from Peron every month to the Hotel Plaza in central Buenos Aires, to pay for Bormann"s expenses.
Chapter 17.
ARGENTINA-LAND OF SILVER IN 1536, SPANISH CONQUISTADORES established a settlement on the Rio de la Plata (River Plate) that was to become the cosmopolitan city of Buenos Aires. It lay on the edge of the vast pampas or plains that stretched hundreds of miles to the Andes Mountains on the western edge of South America. The conquistadores came in search of gold and silver. Such was their l.u.s.t for precious metals that they called the newfound territory Argentina, or Land of Silver, after the Latin argentum. There was little gold or silver to be had from the nomadic Native American hunter-gatherers living on the pampas, but the Spaniards brought with them something far more valuable: the horse and the steer. The pampas were ideal for the raising of cattle. The legendary gauchos (cowboys) tended immense herds, spending months at a time in the boundless countryside. The end product was leather, which was exported in huge quant.i.ties to Europe. It was a wasteful process, as the only monetary value lay in the hides and the meat was mostly discarded. And then in 1879, with the advent of refrigerated shipping, whole carca.s.ses of beef, lamb, and mutton were dispatched by the millions across the seas from specially constructed ports-Buenos Aires in Argentina, Fray Bentos in Uruguay, So Paulo in Brazil-to feed the workers of the industrial revolution and generate great wealth in South America.
With burgeoning populations in the Old World, many Europeans sought a new life in the Americas. Between 1850 and 1930, over six million immigrants flocked to Argentina: mostly Italians, but many Spaniards, British, and French as well. This medley of races gave rise to the quixotic nature of the Argentines, who have been described as "Italians who speak Spanish and think they are British living in Paris." The southern Europeans provided the labor while the Anglo-Saxons supplied the capital for the country"s growing infrastructure of railroads and ports. The English also purchased vast tracts of the pampas for their cattle farms, or estancias, and encouraged the widespread cultivation of wheat for export. After the unification of Germany in 1871, German immigrants began to arrive in Argentina in significant numbers, but the best lands of the pampas were in the hands of the English or the old, established Spanish families. The Germans were obliged to look elsewhere. Their eyes fell on the desolate hinterland of Patagonia that straddled the borders of Argentina and Chile to the south.
It is difficult to comprehend the scale of Patagonia: one and a half times the size of Texas or nearly four times that of Great Britain. Most tellingly, its population in 1945 was minimal. By comparison, if New York City had the same population density there would be just thirty-five people living in Manhattan. On one side, Patagonia is bordered by the magnificent Andes Mountains and on the other by the cold and forbidding waters of the South Atlantic. Although Imperial Germany had been stripped of all its colonial possessions by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, Patagonia, which remained in Argentine and Chilean sovereign territory, was a de facto German colony. When war broke out in 1939, there were 60,000 members of the overseas n.a.z.i Party living in Argentina, the largest group of National Socialists outside of Germany. The total German population of approximately 237,000-not including German Jews-represented a small, but economically and politically important section of Argentine society. Its influence at the government level far exceeded its numerical size.
IN GERMANY, STRATEGIC DREAMS for the Americas had predated Hitler"s rise to power by at least three decades. As early as 1904, Ernst Ha.s.se, president of the Pan-German League in Berlin, had even been moved to predict that "the Argentine and Brazilian republics and all the other seedy South American states will accept our advice and listen to reason, voluntarily or under coercion. In a hundred years, both South and North America will be conquered by the German Geist [philosophical mind-set], and the German Emperor will perhaps transfer his residence to New York."
During the n.a.z.i era, the two key figures in German penetration of Latin America were Adm. Wilhelm Canaris, from 1935 the head of the Abwehr, and Gen. Wilhelm von Faupel, head of the Ibero-American Inst.i.tute, the headquarters for German espionage and conspiracy in the Western Hemisphere.
Canaris knew Argentina and Chile well. He had joined the German Imperial Navy in 1905, and by the outbreak of World War I he was serving as an intelligence officer on board the SMS Dresden. The Dresden was the only German cruiser to escape destruction by the British at the Battle of the Falkland Islands in December 1914. The Royal Navy finally caught up with the Dresden in March 1915, at Robinson Crusoe Island off the coast of Chile. After a short battle against overwhelming odds, the German crew scuttled their ship and spent the rest of the war interned in Chile. Canaris escaped in August 1915; he was already fluent in Spanish, and during an early stage of his long journey back to Germany he was helped by German settlers in Patagonia, in particular at the Estancia San Ramon outside San Carlos de Bariloche, in the foothills of the Andes. Canaris even evaded capture in England during his sea voyages home (he also spoke good English). He then served as an undercover agent in Italy and Spain before ending World War I as a U-boat commander in the Mediterranean. His brilliant talents and unusual firsthand knowledge of the Patagonian region would be invaluable during the development of the n.a.z.i intelligence network in southern Argentina.
The preexisting basis and princ.i.p.al cover for this activity was the Lahusen company, a major enterprise with offices and shops throughout Patagonia since before World War I (now defunct). Central to its early profitability was the wool trade, supplied by the German sheep ranches of Patagonia; before refrigeration made meat shipments to Europe possible, wool was Argentina"s largest export and its trade fueled the country"s vibrant economy. The Lahusen organization facilitated the German espionage system throughout Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and Paraguay in both world wars. It employed over a thousand people and owned nearly a quarter of a million acres of land in the territory; its headquarters in the Montserrat district of Buenos Aires took up seven floors of a modern office building. Every town and village in Patagonia had its Lahusen store and agent, and it was a standing joke in Buenos Aires"s diplomatic circles that Hitler knew more about Patagonia than the Argentine government did.
Wilhelm von Faupel, the German General Staff"s primary expert on Argentina, also had experience in Argentine affairs that predated World War I. From 1911 to 1913 he was a professor at the military academy in Buenos Aires. At the outbreak of war, he was relocated to Spain, where he ran German espionage and sabotage activities in the Mediterranean. Following Germany"s defeat, he returned to Argentina as chief adviser to the Argentine General Staff. From 1927, Faupel supported the rise of the n.a.z.is in Germany; he recruited important German emigres-such as Walter and Ida Eichhorn-to help fund the National Socialist Party; the Eichhorns in particular would, for decades to come, play a central part in n.a.z.i plans for Argentina. From 1938, from a mansion on Fuerenstra.s.se in Berlin, Faupel organized the training of German and South American agents and saboteurs. He had contacts with the Falange Espanola-the Spanish fascist political party that underpinned the Nationalist uprising by rebel army officers in July 1936-and was instrumental in the creation of the Condor Legion soon afterward. This force combined cadres of German military instructors and squadrons of combat airmen that a.s.sisted the Nationalist forces-and acquired useful experience themselves-during the Spanish Civil War. Wilhelm von Faupel"s activities over three decades would bring him huge influence in Spain after the Nationalist leader, Gen. Francisco Franco, established his military dictatorship in 1939. In time, this influence would enable Martin Bormann"s plans for a "Fourth Reich in the South" to move toward reality.
TODAY, IF YOU VISIT VILLA GENERAL BELGRANO, San Carlos de Bariloche, Villa La Angostura, Santa Rosa de Calamuchita, or any of a hundred other German settlements in Argentina, it is still difficult to believe that you are in Latin America. The architecture and the almost exclusively Caucasian population are very obviously Central European. Each of the larger towns has always had its own German school, cultural inst.i.tute, beer hall, and restaurants. Even at the time of this writing in 2010, Argentines of German descent account for more than three million of the country"s population of forty-two million, and many of these families arrived in the country decades before National Socialism was born. Of course, not all German-Argentines were n.a.z.i sympathizers, but it is a common phenomenon for overseas settler communities to remain frozen in the conservatism of previous generations-and in the 1930s, a proportion of German-Argentines were fiercely nationalistic Volksdeutsche. When the Allies captured the n.a.z.i Party"s master membership files, they were found to contain nearly eight million names. Among the cards of the Ausland-Organisation ("Overseas Organization"), n.a.z.is were particularly numerous in Argentina. Estimates vary for the membership of the n.a.z.i Party and its affiliated organizations in that country, but the combined membership of both the official German NSDAP (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) and the home-grown equivalent stood at close to 100,000.
The n.a.z.i sympathizers in Argentina advertised and sought to extend their already widespread support of the party with brash displays on a grand scale. In the spring of 1938, more than 20,000 of them gathered for a "Day of Unity" rally at the Luna Park stadium in Buenos Aires to celebrate the Anschluss-the annexation of Austria into the Third Reich on March 12. German n.a.z.i banners flew alongside the Argentine flag while uniformed children marched past and gave the Hitler salute. The rally spurred citywide anti-German protests. The Argentine n.a.z.i Party was officially dissolved by presidential decree on May 15, 1939, but this ban had little practical effect. In 1941, a report submitted to the Argentine congress by Deputy Raul Damonte Taborda, chair of a congressional committee investigating Axis activities, stated: Do not believe that we are shouting in the dark. 22,000 perfectly disciplined men are ready, plus 8,000 Germans from the n.a.z.i Party, 14,000 members of the German Workers Front, 3,000 Italian Fascists, 15,000 Falangists, many others from the Juventud Germano Argentina [Argentina"s. .h.i.tler Youth organization], and many thousands of others affiliated with the Argentine Nationalist Alliance-all are ready to strike.
In 1943, the American author Allan Chase produced a detailed picture of the groups of n.a.z.i sympathizers across Latin America, centered in the external organization of the Spanish Falange. He summed up: Wherever you turn in Latin America, whether in small but strategic Panama or in large and powerful Argentina, the Falange Exterior hits you between the eyes. Upward of a million Falangistas and their dupes-acting on orders dictated by n.a.z.i General Wilhelm von Faupel in Madrid-are actively engaged in warfare against the United Nations, for the Axis. Hitler is not fooling-and the Falanges in Latin America are Hitler"s.
In 1943, when Germany"s disastrous defeats in Russia and North Africa and the collapse of Fascist Italy convinced the more clear-sighted of the n.a.z.is that ultimate defeat was inevitable, Argentina offered their last best hope for a postwar refuge. Martin Bormann, as always, was entirely clear-sighted, and during that year he put in hand his plan to prepare and fund that refuge-Aktion Feuerland. The n.a.z.i sympathizers in Argentina enjoyed a virtually free rein, continuing to operate schools with n.a.z.i symbols and ideology and meeting regularly (although by 1943 not as publicly as before), but the key conspirators were few-a group limited to people Bormann had reason to trust. These included a clique of powerful, venal bankers and industrialists such as Ludwig Freude; a charismatic, ambitious army officer, Juan Domingo Peron; and a beautiful, intelligent actress, Eva Duarte.
THE n.a.z.iS" PENETRATION OF ARGENTINA can be considered in two parts (though they were intimately linked): first, the creation of Bormann"s human network, and second, the infusion of a.s.sets, which included the funding of capital projects such as "Hitler"s Valley" and the Hotel Viena, and investment and banking deposits.
Ludwig Freude, labeled Argentina"s number one n.a.z.i by the U.S. State Department, was to be the power behind the military strongman Juan Peron. From October 1942, the year before Aktion Feuerland moved into gear, he was also the de facto n.a.z.i amba.s.sador in Buenos Aires. Freude had gone to Argentina from Germany in 1913 and built up a construction company that would eventually make him one of Latin America"s ten wealthiest men. (His son Rodolfo, appointed as Juan Peron"s private secretary, was a key n.a.z.i liaison after the spring of 1945.) Juan Domingo Peron, born in 1895, was brought up to ride and shoot in the cold, windswept south-"Argentina"s Wild West." He was not a son of the aristocratic estanciero cla.s.s-the rancher oligarchy that dominated Argentine politics and society-so he was fired by ambition rather than a sense of ent.i.tlement. After joining the army in 1911, Peron excelled in physical activities, but also earned approval as a student of military history (he would go on to publish five books on Napoleonic subjects), and by 1915 this "unusually intelligent, alert professional soldier" was one of the youngest full lieutenants in the service. In 1936, he was sent to Chile as a military attache, but was expelled for espionage. In 1938, before the outbreak of World War II, Peron was posted overseas to Mussolini"s Fascist Italy, where-already an expert skier-he was attached to the Italian Alpini mountain troops. On June 10, 1940, as Wehrmacht armor threatened the French capital of Paris, Mussolini finally decided that it was safe for Italy to enter the war on Germany"s side, and Peron was soon in Paris to watch the Germans" ceremonial parade through the surrendered capital. On his return to Argentina, Peron was to use his firsthand experience of Italian Fascism and German n.a.z.ism to build his own political model for a "New Argentina." By summer 1941, both he and his friend Eva Duarte (an opportunistic twenty-two-year-old actress whose film career had been limited to bit parts but who was becoming very popular on Argentine radio) would be among those Argentine citizens in the direct pay of Berlin-or more precisely, of Reichsleiter Martin Bormann.
AN FBI DOc.u.mENT from 1944 details where Hitler would find refuge in Argentina if he lost the war.
MUCH OF THE CREDIT FOR EXPOSING n.a.z.i links with leading Argentine figures belongs to the one-time Radical Party deputy for the province of Entre Rios, Silvano Santander. This dedicated anti-n.a.z.i had worked with Raul Damonte Taborda since 1939, and in 1944 their refusal to be silenced led to a warrant for their arrest, obliging them both to flee the country. Santander went only as far as Montevideo in Uruguay, just across the Rio del Plata from Buenos Aires, where he continued to work tirelessly in exile. In November 1952, he and his team traveled to West Germany, following a tip-off about a ma.s.s of doc.u.mentation uncovered by the war crimes commission in Berlin during its hunt for n.a.z.i links with Argentina. Santander subsequently published two books about the background of the Perons" rise to become Argentina"s first couple; his work was based on the doc.u.ments he had studied in Berlin, which had been authenticated by U.S. Department of State foreign service investigator William Sidney and Herbert Sorter, chief of the External a.s.sets Investigation Branch in the U.S. High Commissioner"s Office.
Among the doc.u.ments were confidential reports about diplomats and n.a.z.i agents, sent from South America to Bormann, Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, and the spymaster Gen. von Faupel. Among them were handwritten memos that had pa.s.sed between Bormann and the German amba.s.sador in Buenos Aires, Baron Edmund von Thermann (who, unsurprisingly, held the rank of SS major). In one such memo, Amba.s.sador von Thermann praised the Buenos Aires government as loyal supporters of n.a.z.ism and pointed out that the Buenos Aires provincial governor from 1936 to 1940, Dr. Manuel A. Fresco, had installed on his ranch, Estancia Monasterio, "a powerful radio transceiver by which they had a permanent communication system" between Argentina and Germany. This would be a crucial link in Bormann"s plans for Hitler"s escape, allowing for the likely use by Ludwig Freude of a Siemens & Haske T43 encryption machine that would have been delivered to Buenos Aires in 1944.
AS EARLY AS MAY 1940, many of the n.a.z.is" Argentine supporters would gather regularly for friendly games of poker at the German emba.s.sy in Buenos Aires. The German players included Amba.s.sador von Thermann; Prince Stephan zu Schaumburg-Lippe, a consular officer based in Chile; the naval attache Capt. Dietrich Niebuhr; the press attache Gottfried Sandstede; Ricardo von Leute, the general manager of Lahusen; and the multimillionaire banker Ludwig Freude. On the other side of the dealer, the Argentine players included various military and naval officers: Generals von der Becke, Pertine, Ramirez, and Farrell, and Colonels Peron, Brickman, Heblin, Mittelbach, Tauber, Gilbert, and Gonzalez (the number of German family names is striking). Occasionally Carlos Ibarguren, head of the legal department of the Banco de la Nacion, and Miguel Viancarlos, chief of investigations for the Argentine police, would also sit in. The n.a.z.is were "useless" at poker and lost heavily. Allied intelligence reported that the Argentines would leave with smiles on their faces, remarking how innocent their German opponents were, but Thermann would later tell the Allied war crimes commission, "We wanted to make our friends happy-we always let them win."
Press attache Gottfried Sandstede had two other roles: he was also an employee of the Delfino shipping line and Gen. von Faupel"s personal representative. The FBI suspected that Delfino SA was heavily involved in Bormann"s shipments of loot from Europe, at first by surface vessel and aircraft and later by submarine. On September 8, 1941, Time magazine reported: In the three months since thirty-two-year-old Deputy Raul Damonte Taborda began a [congressional] investigation of anti-Argentine activities he has stealthily and steadily crept closer to Argentina"s cuckoo nest: the German Emba.s.sy. Last week Deputy Damonte thought he had his hands on the biggest cuckoo in the nest.
The bird he was after was not Amba.s.sador von Thermann, but Gottfried Sandstede. Damonte believed that Sandstede was the senior n.a.z.i spy in Argentina and that Thermann actually took instructions from him-a suspicion that Thermann would later verify.
When Damonte came after him, Sandstede claimed diplomatic immunity, but, as an employee of Delfino, he was denied this status by the Argentine Foreign Ministry. Somebody tipped off the German emba.s.sy about Sandstede"s imminent arrest, giving him time to arrange his urgent departure. Police were posted outside his house and the German emba.s.sy and at checkpoints along the roads leading from the city to the airport. One of these pickets stopped a suspicious-looking car that tried to pa.s.s through the cordon, and arrested Karl Sandstede, the fugitive"s brother. Believing they had the wanted man, the police relaxed the cordon, and early the next morning Gottfried Sandstede boarded a plane for Brazil at Buenos Aires airport. Upon Sandstede"s arrival in Rio de Janeiro, Amba.s.sador von Thermann "announced blandly that Herr Sandstede had been recalled to Berlin to report on anti-German activities in Argentina."
The truth was more interesting. On the morning of the escape, the Kriegsmarine attache, Capt. Niebuhr, wrote to Gen. von Faupel, "We had to send our press attache Gottfried Sandstede from the country in haste. We received information from our Miss Eva Duarte, an Argentinean who is always excellently informed." The actress was more than simply an informant, however; she had played an active part in the escape by turning up at the German emba.s.sy in Col. Peron"s War Ministry staff car with an Argentine military uniform complete with greatcoat and cap: a disguise for Sandstede. Thus disguised as a senior Argentine military officer, with a stunning blonde beside him, Sandstede was simply waved through the police cordon. Three days after Sandstede"s flight, Deputy Damonte submitted to the Argentine congress a report by his investigative committee. Among its major conclusions, the report stated that, despite its official dissolution in May 1939, the Argentine n.a.z.i Party continued to operate cells throughout the country, organized on military lines, and that the German emba.s.sy partic.i.p.ated directly in the party"s activities.
The papers studied by Santander in 1952 revealed that Eva Duarte would soon enjoy the trust of the n.a.z.i agents to a remarkable degree. When Niebuhr himself had to leave the country after being "outed" for espionage activities, he wrote to von Faupel, "Luckily, with some exceptions, they did not have news of our most important staff or of our contacts." Niebuhr reported that he was actually pa.s.sing over responsibility for parts of the n.a.z.i network in the "Brazil and South Pacific [southern Chile] sections" to Duarte, whom he described as "a devilishly beautiful, intelligent, charming, ambitious, and unscrupulous woman, who has already caught the eye of Colonel Peron."
Three months after the flight of Gottfried Sandstede, the j.a.panese attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States into World War II. In January 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt"s government summoned a conference of all the nations of the Americas to meet in Rio de Janeiro. The State Department exerted pressure on all Western Hemisphere countries to cut diplomatic relations with j.a.pan, Germany, and Italy. Within two weeks, on January 28, all but two of the twenty-one republics announced their agreement; those that refused were Chile and Argentina. Despite the revelations of the Damonte report, it would be October 23, 1942, before Amba.s.sador von Thermann left Buenos Aires for good. His practical functions pa.s.sed, unofficially but unequivocally, to the banker and industrialist Ludwig Freude.
IN APRIL 1943, WHEN THE TIDE OF WAR was obviously beginning to turn in the Allies" favor, von Faupel traveled to Buenos Aires in person by U-boat. He was accompanied by Sandstede, who had not returned to the country since he had been spirited out with Eva Duarte"s help in September 1941. When they arrived on May 2, they were received by Argentina"s outspokenly pro-fascist and anti-American navy minister, Adm. Leon Sca.s.so. Von Faupel stayed in the German evangelist church on Calle Esmeralda in Buenos Aires. Before they departed on May 8, they held meetings with-among others-Ludwig Freude, Ricardo von Leute of the Lahusen company, and Col. Peron and Eva Duarte. Thermann would later tell the war crimes commission that "the real motive for Faupel"s visit was to make Argentina a safe place for the future, in the certainty of defeat."
Von Faupel told Peron that it was now possible that Germany would lose the war. In that case, he warned, Peron and his friends were going to end up facing charges of high treason. The n.a.z.i spymaster told his Argentine contacts that there was only one way to avoid this: they had to seize power and "maintain it at all costs." It would take less than a month for them to act on his advice.
On June 4, 1943, Gen. Arturo Rawson and the Grupo de Oficiales Unidos (United Officer"s Group, or GOU)-a secret clique of senior military officers in which Col. Peron played a significant part-launched a coup d"etat. It took about half a day to overthrow the three-year-old regime of Argentina"s conservative president, Ramon S. Castillo; Rawson himself would preside for less than two days, however, before being replaced by Gen. Pedro Pablo Ramirez. Germany, Italy, and the U.S. State Department immediately recognized the new regime; the United States hoped that Argentina would finally give up its neutrality and join the fight against the Axis. The precedent of the authoritarian Getulio Vargas regime in Brazil, which had joined the Allies in August 1942, was encouraging. However, the new Argentine government proved even less cooperative than the old one. Ramirez was president in name only; the real power lay with the GOU, known simply as "the Colonels," and well placed among them was Juan Domingo Peron. (One of the GOU"s early acts was to close down Deputy Damonte"s committee of enquiry into n.a.z.i activities.) Peron became an a.s.sistant to the secretary of war and, a short time later, the head of the Department of Labor. This then-insignificant ministry would provide him with an unsuspected power base.
At the German emba.s.sy, Capt. Niebuhr"s replacement in the n.a.z.i network was Erich Otto Meynen (another of the poker players), and he could hardly contain his triumph when he wrote to his predecessor: "I have spent day and night traveling or receiving Party members; they come from all parts of the country to see me. My efforts have not been in vain. The success of our friends" revolution has been complete." Eva Duarte had shown Meynen a letter that outlined Peron"s political philosophy: "The Argentine workers were born animals of the herd, and they will die as such. To rule them it is enough to give them food, work, and laws to follow, which will keep them in line." Niebuhr thought Peron followed "the good school."
AMERICAN ANGER AT ARGENTINA"S REFUSAL to curb n.a.z.i activities, and at the Ramirez government"s stubborn maintenance of an ostensible neutrality in the war, came to a head with the publication of a blistering exchange of letters between Argentine foreign minister Adm. Segundo Storni and U.S. secretary of state Cordell Hull in September 1943. The row was deliberately made public by the United States, causing a storm in Buenos Aires; Storni resigned, and anti-American feeling blossomed in Argentina. The press reported one typical young "hothead" as declaring, "To h.e.l.l with the U.S. We"re looking toward Europe, for now and after the war."
Continuing American pressure only made the Colonels more popular, but then Great Britain and the United States threatened to go public with detailed information on the n.a.z.is" links with members of the Argentine government-which would lead to global ostracization of Argentina. In January 1944, President Ramirez, folding under this threat, suspended diplomatic relations with Germany and j.a.pan. (Italy had already surrendered to the Allies on September 8, 1943.) The GOU immediately replaced Ramirez with his fellow poker player Gen. Edelmiro J. Farrell. Peron became vice president and secretary of war, while retaining his labor portfolio. His work in this ministry helped him to forge an alliance with the Argentine labor unions; together they put forward laws that strengthened the unions and improved workers" rights. Against intuition, the military conspirator Peron increasingly became the voice of the working people, and now he was just one step from the presidency.
PERoN"S PUBLIC RELATIONS BREAKTHROUGH followed the devastating earthquake that hit San Juan on January 15, 1944, which claimed over 10,000 lives and leveled the central-western Argentine city. Vice President Peron moved into overdrive; he was entrusted with fund-raising efforts and enlisted media celebrities to help. His work made a real difference in the region"s recovery and gained him great popular support. This was also the perfect time for his relationship with Eva Duarte to be revealed to the public. Accepted history tells us that Peron met the young radio star at one of his fund-raising events in May 1944; in reality, as we have seen, their working and romantic relationship went back considerably further. It was at this time that Eva"s public profile was created-as a girl from humble beginnings who used her achievement of stardom and social connections to work for the interests of the poor among whom she had grown up. It was a perception that fit neatly alongside Col. Peron"s pose as a defender of workers" rights. This image of a beautiful, glittering champion of the poor-los descamisados (the "shirtless ones")-would earn "Evita" unparalleled public affection, and indeed a sort of secular sainthood, which would endure in the hearts of many Argentines for generations after her death.
IN MARCH 1944, JOSEPH GOEBBELS made clear his vision for a new world order in Latin America. The German propaganda minister foresaw that Argentina will one day be at the head of a tariff union comprising the nations in the southern half of South America. Such a focus of opposition against the United States of America will-together with Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay-form a powerful economic bloc; and eventually, by way of Peru, it will spread northward to place the dollar colony of Brazil in a difficult position.
The following month, Vice President Peron echoed this expansive prediction: In South America it is our mission to make the leadership of Argentina not only possible but indisputable. Hitler"s fight in peace and war will guide us. Alliances will be the next step. We will get Bolivia and Chile. Then it will be easy to exert pressure on Uruguay. These five nations will attract Brazil and its important group of Germans [Brazilian-German immigrant communities]. Once Brazil has fallen the South American continent will be ours. Following the German example, we will instill the ma.s.ses with the necessary military spirit.
On June 22, 1944, the United States broke off diplomatic relations with Argentina; Great Britain followed suit, and shortly afterward so did much of Latin America. Argentina found herself in diplomatic quarantine, recognized only by n.a.z.i Germany and by fascist-leaning Chile, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Ecuador. Seeing this apparent setback as an opportunity, Peron rallied the extreme nationalists in the army and the labor movement behind him to defend their nation"s honor. However, the diplomatic freeze was followed by the threat of an Allied trade embargo (although such a move by Britain-which depended on Argentina"s huge meat exports at a time when the British population was suffering severe food rationing-would have caused Winston Churchill"s government extraordinary difficulties).
Despite the bellicosity of Argentine nationalists, the threat of a trade embargo and continued U.S. diplomatic rumblings did have some effect. In apparent moves to appease the U.S. State Department, the increasingly powerful vice president ostensibly clamped down on n.a.z.i activities and closed down some German-language newspapers. Behind this front, Ludwig Freude continued to further Bormann"s plans with Peron"s help, but he was advised by his friend to lower his profile.
On November 22, 1944, Freude wrote to Gen. von Faupel: In order to provide the smallest target possible and so as to facilitate the defense of our interests, I have resigned from all my duties in the German inst.i.tutions, as well as in the industrial and commercial companies, and I have adopted Argentine citizenship. Let the Allied diplomats waste their time now faced with my position, which is as unshakable as that of Peron himself.
Freude also explained to von Faupel how he would manage to maintain n.a.z.i a.s.sets in Argentina if-as by then seemed inevitable-Germany lost the war: "We have agreed to invent ... Argentine [reparation] demands to the Reich, and to guarantee they are fulfilled [by] impound[ing] all the German wealth in Argentina."
Freude made it clear that he reported directly to Bormann, and he asked von Faupel to smooth his way. He refused to have anything to do with either the Ausland Abwehr-the Office for Espionage, Counterespionage, Sabotage, and Foreign Information-or with von Ribbentrop"s Foreign Office. Von Faupel was in complete agreement; he had never trusted Adm. Canaris of the Abwehr (who had in fact already been removed from his post in February 1944 under suspicion of anti-n.a.z.i activities), and he considered von Ribbentrop a fool.
Gen. von Faupel knew how to keep his collaborators happy. Freude wrote that "the diamond necklace arrived with the last shipment, destined for our friend Eva from you. I have already handed it over, and have the duty to convey to you her warm and grateful greetings." Freude was also lavish with his presents; when the widowed Peron finally married Eva in October 1945, Freude gave her a house in the Buenos Aires suburb of Belgrano as a wedding present. She never lived there, but Juan Peron used it for "quiet meetings"; in 1953 he would meet Martin Bormann there.
IT WAS THE LOOT OF CONQUERED EUROPE that provided not merely Evita"s diamond necklace, but the whole funding for the structure of Bormann"s influence in Argentina and the preparation of the future n.a.z.i refuge. Apart from shipments from Italy and Spain by means of Bormann"s front-company shipping and airlines, a U-boat run began in August 1942, continuing at six- to eight-week intervals during 1943 and 1944. A single submarine made the trip each time, from Rota near Cadiz. A former officer of the scuttled Admiral Graf Spee, Capt. Paul Ascher, arranged the unloading in Argentina.
Among the many deposits made in Argentine banks, Reichsmarschall Hermann Goring had $20 million in an account transferred via Swiss banks in Geneva. Goring collected a whole range of high-paying government posts, but had also ama.s.sed a huge personal fortune from criminal activities. He had seized Jewish properties, taken bribes for allowing others to do the same, and-as detailed in Chapter 4-ama.s.sed an incredible collection of art looted from n.a.z.i-occupied territories. As part of his role as director of the Four-Year Plan-the n.a.z.i"s economic strategy to rearm and to reduce unemployment-he took huge bribes from industrialists bidding for contracts. He had even made money from supplying weapons to Spanish Republicans fighting Franco"s Nationalists. A plot to ship at least $10 million of Goring"s loot by U-boat to Buenos Aires was uncovered in 1943 by British intelligence, but the British dismissed it because they were dubious about the trustworthiness of their source, Ernesto Hoppe. Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels had $1.8 million in a safety deposit box at another bank, where Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop also had a box containing a more modest half million U.S. dollars. None of these three n.a.z.is, of course, would reach Argentina to enjoy his loot, but before von Ribbentrop"s execution he told one of his confidants, Otto Reinebeck, former German minister to the Central American Republics, "Argentina is the last German bridgehead in the Western Hemisphere, the maintenance and development of which are of the greatest significance for later on."
These personal sums are tiny, however-nothing but loose change when compared to the real scale of Bormann"s Aktion Feuerland shipments. The gold alone came to $1.12 billion at 1948 prices-the equivalent of at least $50 billion today-before one even considers the platinum, precious stones, coinage, art works, stocks, and bonds.
Ludwig Freude"s and Eva Duarte"s involvement in the smuggling operation was made clear in an Argentine police doc.u.ment of April 18, 1945. This detailed the operations of Freude, "agent of the Third Reich," and his dealings with an Argentine agent, "Natalio." This informant reported that Freude had made very substantial deposits in various Buenos Aires banks in the name of the "well-known radio-theatrical actress Maria Eva Duarte." Freude told Natalio that on February 7, 1945, a U-boat had brought huge funds to help in the reconstruction of the n.a.z.i empire. Subsequent police investigations revealed that cases from the U-boat, with the words Geheime Reichssache ("Reich Top Secret") stenciled on them, had been taken to a Lahusen ranch run by two "n.a.z.i brothers, just outside Buenos Aires." Deposits of gold and various currencies were later made in Eva"s name at the Banco Aleman Transatlantico, Banco Germanico, and Banco Tornquist.
Ludwig Freude was the central figure in the n.a.z.is" financial survival plan. His original operation had been relatively low-key; as president of the committee of the Argentine n.a.z.i Party he had set up local fund-raising, taking monthly dues from all party members and supporters. He kept offices at the Banco Aleman Transatlantico and was also president of many other n.a.z.i front companies. Most of these were set up during 1942 and 1943; they extended through every aspect of Argentine industry and owned huge tracts of land in Patagonia. More than two hundred German companies established major offices in Argentina between 1942 and 1944. Specialists were sent out from Berlin to a.s.sist Freude, among them Heinrich Doerge, a senior official at both the Reichsbank and the Ministry of Economics.
Doerge was Peron"s economics adviser and the man behind the transformation of the Argentine banking system; the Allies had him marked down as a "n.a.z.i considered dangerous for the security of the hemisphere." (Later he would also prove dangerous to the Bormann "Organization" and would be among the trail of corpses left behind as Bormann tried to regain control of the n.a.z.is" looted fortune in 1952, see Chapter 21.) Between them, Freude and Doerge managed to hide hundreds of millions of dollars of funds, shares, patents, and convertible bonds in a complex web of Argentine companies.
Eva Duarte"s original recruiting officer at the German emba.s.sy, Capt. Niebuhr"s colleague Gerda von Arenstorff, would tell war crime investigators in October 1945 that in February 1944 the German emba.s.sy had 47 million pesos in banks in Buenos Aires and that these funds were made to disappear by transfers to "trusted people." In February 1944, the German emba.s.sy also had seven safety deposit boxes in the Banco Germanico, holding gold and silver coins with a value of 115 million pesos. Ludwig Freude, in a 1944 memo to von Faupel found after the war, noted that other deposits to the value of $37.66 million had been made in a bank in Buenos Aires in the names of German and Argentine n.a.z.is. Keys to the deposit boxes were held by two of the original poker players, Erich Otto Meynen and Ricardo von Leute, who had countersigned the deposit doc.u.ments. (These men would also join the body count left by the purging of the "Organization" in December 1952; the coins simply disappeared.) Share certificates were just as transferable as bullion, jewels, and cash. When the Germans had invaded Holland in 1940, they found shares of Compania Argentina de Electricidad (CADE), Buenos Aires"s electrical supplier, to the value of $48.67 million, which were confiscated and sent to Argentina. Many major German companies were implicated in the transfer of a.s.sets to Argentina, including Siemens, Krupp, Mannesman, Thyssen, IG Farben, and Schroder"s Bank, dealing through local or Swiss holding companies.
THE HUGE SUMS AT THE DISPOSAL of Bormann"s and Ludwig Freude"s "Organization" had bought influence, blind eyes, protection, financial hiding-places, and cooperation in Aktion Feuerland to create safe refuges for important fugitives from the final collapse of the Third Reich. In the years to come, Peron"s regime would extend to thousands of n.a.z.is-many of them wanted war criminals-a discreet welcome and continuing concealment and protection. But Juan Peron had personal plans for his own and his country"s future, and whatever his other faults he was a patriotic Argentinean. If for nothing else, the world may at least be grateful that he would prove entirely unwilling to allow his state to be hollowed out as the nest for any insane "Fourth Reich in the South."
Juan Domingo Peron was a dictator, whose ruthlessness toward those who opposed him abused and alienated large sections of Argentine society. The "state of siege" that had been enforced by Argentina"s late president Ramon S. Castillo since shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor-including the m.u.f.fling of the press and the banning of oppositional political activity or public a.s.sembly-was "retained ... and improved on" by Peron. He briefly lifted the siege on August 20, 1945, ahead of promises of an election, but fifty-two days later he reimposed it. On October 8, 1945, Time magazine reported, "Argentina was back to normal. Anybody who was anybody was in jail. After fifty-two days of abnormal freedom, Vice President Juan Domingo Peron had again imposed the repressive "state of siege" under which Argentines had suffered for almost four years." Peron also smashed what was left of Argentina"s free press. He was desperate that the Argentine public should never learn of the revelations about his-and especially Evita"s-wartime payments from the n.a.z.is, divulged to the war crimes investigators by the former diplomats Prince Stephan zu Schaumburg-Lippe and Edmund von Thermann.
Peron was a fascist, in the true sense of that term. He had been greatly impressed by Benito Mussolini"s regime, and he openly supported the Axis. But like Mussolini, he did not have the character to become an ideological ma.s.s murderer. He recognized-as his successors in the juntas of the 1970s and 1980s would not-that despite the reactionary instincts of many Argentines, they would never tolerate for long a regime of actual concentration camps. Neither was Peron anti-Semitic; he had many Jewish friends and placed them in positions of authority in his postwar government. We might imagine that the ghastly revelations that followed the liberation of Hitler"s death camps by Allied troops in April and May 1945 shocked even Juan Peron. They did not prevent him honoring his undertaking to provide refuge for some of the men responsible for those horrors, but we may imagine that they made him watchful.
BY THE TIME THAT HITLER was on the ground at Villa Winter on Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands, preparing for his long and comfortless journey by submarine, the refuge organized and financed for him by Bormann"s Aktion Feuerland was built, decorated, and ready. Two months later, on the windswept coast of Argentina, the last U-boat of Gruppe Seewolf would land its pa.s.sengers.
PART IV.
THE GREY WOLF OF PATAGONIA.
Inalco, Hitler"s estate in Patagonia, Argentina, looks out on Lake Nahuel Huapi, seen here with the town of Bariloche in the distance.
Chapter 18.
THE U-BOAT LANDINGS.
THE AIRFIELD AT SAN CARLOS DE BARILOCHE, a lakeside town in Patagonia"s Rio Negro province, was opened in 1921 as part of the global boom in aviation following World War I. For the wealthy German estancia owners of Patagonia it opened up the region to commerce; the British-built railway did not arrive in the area until 1934.
The U.S. journalist Drew Pearson reported on December 15, 1943, that "Hitler"s gang has been working to build up a place of exile in Argentina in case of defeat. After the fall of Stalingrad and then Tunisia, they began to see defeat staring them in the face. That was their cue to move into Argentina." The airfield had been extended and modernized during 1943 as part of the Aktion Feuerland program. This improvement made it capable of handling long-range four-engined aircraft such as the Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor and Junkers Ju 290, several of the options that Bormann included in his contingency planning for Hitler"s escape. The airfield was situated on the extensive lands of the Estancia San Ramon, a little over twelve miles from San Carlos de Bariloche. A dirt road led from the airfield to a large timber-built house about three miles away from the airfield, where the young Lt. Wilhelm Canaris of the German Imperial Navy had been sheltered thirty years earlier during his escape from Chile (see Chapter 6, and Chapter 17). On July 26, 1945, German sailors-a handpicked party from among the stranded crew of the Admiral Graf Spee-were protecting the house in expectation of important visitors.
About 650 miles to the northeast, a smaller group of Admiral Graf Spee men were being mustered by Capt. Walter Kay on another airfield, this one on the Estancia Moromar near Necochea on the Argentine coast. Carlos Idaho Gesell had bought the property, covering more than 3,200 acres, in 1932. He developed the nearby town of Villa Gesell, which he named after his father; the family was wealthy and undoubtedly had close links to the Lahusen organization. The former first officer of the Admiral Graf Spee, Kay normally ran his operation out of offices on the seventh floor of the Banco Germanico on Avenida Leandro in Buenos Aires. Kay was central to facilitating the employment-by the n.a.z.i intelligence service in Argentina-of his supposedly "interned" sailors. The men of the Admiral Graf Spee had been interned by the Argentine authorities when they sought refuge after their humiliating defeat by the British Royal Navy in the Battle of the River Plate in 1939. However, the internment was at best loose, with many men simply disappearing from "captivity." Kay-despite his interned status-had helped more than two hundred of the ship"s gunnery, communications, and other specialists to return to Germany on ships sailing under neutral flags, but he had opted to stay on in the south, where he believed he could be of more use. Kay had motivated the remaining crew, many of them committed n.a.z.is, to regain some self-respect. Six years had been a long time to wait, but even now that the Reich had been defeated they would have a real chance to salvage something from the flames.
On July 28, 1945, three Admiral Graf Spee petty officers named Alfred Schultz, Walter Dettelmann, and Willi Brennecke were at the Estancia Moromar, equidistant between Necochea and Mar del Sur on the Argentine coast. With submachine guns slung from their shoulders, the sailors were organizing eight trucks to drive to the beach. The vehicles all carried Lahusen markings; five of them had been brought in by a potato farmer from his Lahusen-run property thirty-eight miles north of the Estancia Moromar, at Balcarce.
AFTER FIFTY-THREE DAYS at sea, U-518-carrying Hitler, Eva, and Blondi-arrives at Necochea on the Argentine coast. Fegelein is there to meet them. The next day the party flies to the Estancia San Ramon on the outskirts of San Carlos de Bariloche to begin their exile.
AT 1:00 A.M. ON JULY 28, 1945, SS Gen. Hermann Fegelein, wrapped in a borrowed greatcoat to protect him from the Argentine winter"s night, was waiting under a starlit sky on the beach at Necochea for his sister-in-law and his Fuhrer. U-518 arrived off the coast an hour later.
Hans Offermann brought his submerged boat as close to the sh.o.r.e as he could, moving dead slow and with a tense hydrophone operator straining for the sounds of surface vessels; the commander had little detailed or recent information about the coastline he was approaching. Eventually he ordered the boat to periscope depth and cautiously raised the observation periscope; a careful 360-degree sweep satisfied him that no vessels or aircraft were nearby and that the light signals from sh.o.r.e coincided with those in his orders. Still taking no chances, he ordered his gun crews to prepare to man the 37mm and 20mm antiaircraft cannons as soon as the boat surfaced, although they had little ammunition in the lockers.
Fegelein sent out a small motorboat belonging to the ranch to meet the submarine. For the middle of the Southern Hemisphere winter, the water was surprisingly calm. As the launch approached the beach, lit by sailors" flashlights, Fegelein raised his arm in the cla.s.sic n.a.z.i salute. The Admiral Graf Spee men splashed into the small breakers on the beach and helped pull the craft up onto the sand, and Fegelein moved forward to help Eva Braun from the boat. Hitler was helped down by the boat crew, returned Fegelein"s salute, and shook him by the hand.
The one-time ruler of the Thousand-Year Reich was almost unrecognizable. He was pasty-faced from the long voyage, the trademark moustache had been shaved off, and his hair was lank and uncut. Eva had made an effort to look good throughout the trip, but the prison-house pallor of her skin was highlighted by the lipstick and rouge she had applied before leaving the submarine. Of the three arrivals, Blondi probably looked the best; her excitement at being in the open air at last was controlled with the familiar red leather lead, gripped firmly in Hitler"s right hand as the party walked up the beach to a waiting car. No doubt Fegelein took the opportunity of the short drive to brief Hitler on the immediate arrangements. An avenue lined with tamarisk trees led to the main house of the Estancia Moromar, where they would spend the first night. Security at the ranch house was surprisingly light: the fewer people who knew about the visitors, the better.
The petty officers Shultz, Dettelmann, and Brennecke helped in the subsequent unloading of many heavy boxes, which were ferried ash.o.r.e from the U-boat on repeated trips by the motorboat and the submarine"s rubber boats. The boxes were loaded onto the farm trucks and driven to outbuildings on the Estancia Moromar; repacked in new boxes, the contents would be taken to Buenos Aires and deposited in n.a.z.i-controlled banks. At the end of the unloading, most of the crew from U-518 came ash.o.r.e in the rubber dinghies and marched in column in civilian clothes, their kitbags slung over their shoulders, to quarters on the estancia. Meanwhile, an eight-man skeleton crew took U-518 out on its final voyage, to be scuttled further from sh.o.r.e. They would return in the motorboat, to join their shipmates for their first fresh meal in two months. They did not know that their operation had almost been compromised.
DON LUIS MARIOTTI, THE POLICE COMMISSIONER at Necochea, had called his off-duty men in from their homes on the evening of the previous day, July 27, 1945, and ordered them to investigate unusual activity reported on the coast. The officers arrived at the beach to see an unidentified vessel offsh.o.r.e making Morse code signals, and they found and arrested a German who was signaling back. Interrogated through the night, he eventually admitted that the signaling vessel was a German submarine that wanted to put ash.o.r.e at a safe place on the coast to unload.
The next morning a six-man police squad led by a senior corporal decided to comb several miles of beach north and south of the place where they had caught the signaler. After some hours, they found a stretch of sand bearing many signs of launches and dinghies being beached; heavy boxes had also been dragged toward the tire tracks of trucks. The police squad followed the tire tracks along the dirt road that led to the entrance of the Estancia Moromar. The corporal sent one of his men back to the station with his report, and then, without waiting for orders, he decided to enter the farm. The five police officers had walked a couple of miles in along the tree-lined drive when they came to some low hills, which hid the main buildings. Four Germans carrying submachine guns challenged them. The corporal had no search warrant and was seriously outgunned; he decided to withdraw and report back to his superior.
Commissioner Mariotti telephoned the chief of police at La Plata. The call was taken by the latter"s secretary, who told him to do nothing and remain by the telephone. Two hours later Don Luis was ordered to forget the matter and release the arrested German. The following month an FBI message from Buenos Aires stated: "Local Press reports indicate provincial police department raided German colony located Villa Gesell ... looking for individuals who possibly entered Argentina clandestinely via submarine and during search a short-wave ... [illegible] receiving and transmitting set found. Other premises along beach near same area searched by authorities but no arrests made."
FBI REPORT RECORDED in August 1945, substantiated in Argentine police files, of the landings at Necochea and the support system awaiting Hitler.
ANOTHER SAILOR from the Admiral Graf Spee also had recollections of the landing. Petty Officer Heinrich Bethe, whose later role in Hitler"s life is discussed at length in Chapter 23, was interviewed by one Capt. Manuel Monasterio in 1977, when Bethe was living in the Patagonian coastal town of Caleta Olivia under the pseudonym Pablo Glocknick (he was also known as Juan Paulovsky). Bethe had repaired Monasterio"s car one day after it had broken down. The captain and the former Kriegsmarine petty officer immediately hit it off, and on a number of occasions over bottles of wine and local seafood, the former sailor recounted his time as. .h.i.tler"s companion in exile. Bethe said he had escaped the clutches of the Bormann organization after Hitler"s death in Argentina and had lived in obscurity on the coast, working as an occasional mechanic, his trade aboard the Admiral Graf Spee.
Petty Officer Bethe"s recollections of the U-boat landings are essentially similar to those of Schultz, Dettelmann, and Brennecke, but his description of the location of the landing site differs substantially (see map). Bethe spoke of a landing area "several hours" of driving over rough roads from the city of Puerto Madryn, which is much further south than Necochea. Bethe recalled that on the evening of July 28, he directed trucks to a determined point on the coast and from there proceeded to load a large number of boxes that came ash.o.r.e on rubber dinghies from two submarines. The trucks carried the boxes to two large depositories where they were carefully unloaded. Later, about seventy people disembarked from the U-boat. In Bethe"s opinion, "the cargo was very valuable, and the people that arrived were not common sailors like [himself], but presumably hierarchy of the Third Reich."
The two accounts may seem to describe the same landing, but there were in fact two such missions: one at Necochea that delivered Hitler, and one further south that unloaded the loot to finance his future. Ingeborg Schaeffer, the wife of First Lt. Heinz Schaeffer, commander of U-977, which surrendered at Mar del Plata on August 17, 1945, was asked in 2008 if her husband had brought Hitler to Argentina. Mrs. Schaeffer replied, "If he did not bring him, there were another two U-boats that could have brought him, and [my husband] could have given them food and so forth, because the others went on to Puerto Madryn." Although her comments are somewhat cryptic, she was obviously aware of other n.a.z.i submarines in Argentine waters at the same time as U-977, information she could have got only from her husband. Schaeffer"s U-977 was a Type VIIC from U-Flotille 31. The Allies had believed that Argentina was beyond the range of this smaller cla.s.s of U-boat, but the fact remains that Schaeffer reached Mar del Plata. However, Puerto Madryn was indeed beyond his range unless he stopped to refuel, as it was more than 500 miles away as the crow flies and much more following the coastline. Ingeborg Schaeffer"s testimony, and other evidence from Argentine navy doc.u.ments, clearly point to two separate groups of U-boats.
One pair was U-880, which likely pa.s.sed Fegelein over to a tug off Mar del Plata on July 23, and U-518, which is believed to have landed Hitler at Necochea on July 28. Both of these were Type IXC boats from U-Flotille 33, large enough to carry pa.s.sengers and cargo (as also were U-530 and U-1235).
A separate group included U-530, which First Lt. Otto Wermuth surrendered at Mar del Plata on July 10-two weeks ahead of the boat that brought Hitler. This boat was in terrible condition and contained nothing of value; it may already have offloaded cargo at Necochea for Estancia Moromar. Wermuth"s interrogation report-translated from German into Spanish, and finally into English by the U.S. Navy-says that he considered landing at "Miromar" before deciding to surrender at Mar del Plata. He said that he had left Kristiansand on March 3, 1945, and proceeded to Horten in Oslo Fjord, Norway, where for some reason "not stated" he remained for two days (possibly to load cargo). U-530 had no torpedoes, weapons, or ammunition on board; by contrast, U-977 was carrying its full complement of weapons and torpedoes when it surrendered on August 17-a full five weeks after U-530. Wermuth"s mention of "Miromar," and the fact that getting rid of the torpedoes would have provided s.p.a.ce for clandestine cargo, suggest that he may have had something to hide from his interrogators. He refused to say whether or not U-530 was alone, but he did say that he operated under direct orders from Berlin and that the last direct contact he had was on April 26. Wermuth said that he did not know of any other submarines headed for Argentina, but that if any more were coming, they would arrive within a week of his own arrival.
REPORT FROM FBI in Buenos Aires recorded in August 1945, concerning arrivals in Argentina by U-boat.
INGEBORG SCHAEFFER"S TESTIMONY suggests that a second group of boats, responsible for the landings near Puerto Madryn described by Heinrich Bethe, might have been escorted by her husband"s fully armed U-977, which left Kristiansand on May 2, 1945-the day before U-530 sailed. Both U-530, and U-1235 from Gruppe Seewolf, had the range for the southernmost landings. The presence of a second group of three boats is also suggested in two separate television interviews conducted in Buenos Aires with Wilfred von Oven. Oven was the personal press adjutant to Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels between 1943 and 1945. He had accompanied the Condor Legion in Spain as a war correspondent and was acquainted with Gen. Wilhelm von Faupel of the Ibero-American Inst.i.tute. Oven went into hiding in 1945 under an a.s.sumed name and fled to Argentina in 1951; a committed n.a.z.i, he was declared persona non grata by the Federal German Emba.s.sy in Buenos Aires. Before he died in 2008, Oven was asked about a "fleet" of n.a.z.i submarines coming to Argentina in 1945. On two occasions-once to an Argentine author, and again to a British TV crew-he replied, in what appeared to be almost a conversational slip, "No, there were only three, just three." His interviews are rambling and given in an arch manner suggesting that he knew more than he was willing to tell, but on the matter of the three U-boats he seemed quite lucid.
An Argentine government memorandum of October 14, 1952, stated: I bring to your attention that our agents [names deleted] have detected at Ascochinga, in the mountainous region of Cordoba province, a farm located on the Cerro Negro, which has been acquired by a former officer who disembarked from U-235 [sic] at the Mar del Plata naval base. This boat, together with other German submarines, came to Patagonia from Germany after the conclusion of hostilities.
The Canadian author William Stevenson also mentions a U-235: It was reported that members of the brotherhood began to quarrel over money during the 1960s, and this seemed probably true. The leader of the rebellion against Bormann was described as the commander of U-235. He was said to have brought his vessel to Argentine waters, discharged a cargo of stolen n.a.z.i treasures, scuttled the U-boat, converted the cargo to money and bought a large estate.
Confusion in these sources between the numbers U-235 and U-1235 seems quite plausible. It is certain that the real U-235, a Type VIIC, was lost with all hands in the Kattegat Bay area off the Danish coast on April 14, 1945, to a depth-charge attack in error by German S-boat T-17. There is no official record of a third boat in addition to U-530 and U-977-which might have been U-1235-surrendering to the Argentine authorities at Mar del Plata. However, on July 19, 1945, the Buenos Aires daily newspaper Critica reported that yet another U-boat had been "surrounded by Argentine Navy vessels thirty miles off the coast of Mar del Ajo" just north of Mar del Plata. Nothing more is ever heard of this boat.
The question of what happened to the crews that landed from those U-boats that were scuttled rather than surrendering-potentially, U-518, U-880, and U-1235-naturally arises. Despite the story that the commander of what was probably U-1235 (Lt. Cdr. Franz Barsch) survived to buy a farm in Cordoba, where he was still living in 1952, there are no reports of any of the other submariners surfacing in Argentina after the war. The three boats together had a total of about 152 crewmen. The simplest answer is that it would have been perfectly possible to disperse these sailors among the hundreds of German communities scattered across Patagonia. It is possible to imagine that numbers of them might have preferred this prospect over a return to ruined, starving, occupied Germany, especially if their families had perished in the air raids or were now lost somewhere in the Soviet zone. A much more sinister alternative explanation is that they may have been disposed of shortly after their arrival. n.o.body was looking for them in Argentina, after all, just as n.o.body was looking for Hitler, Eva Braun, Hermann Fegelein, or the masterminds of the entire escape plan, Martin Bormann and Heinrich "Gestapo" Muller. Bormann"s and Muller"s utter ruthlessness is beyond question; and Fegelein"s service in Russia had been spent commanding SS units employed in "antipartisan" warfare behind the fighting front.
IN 1945 THERE WAS NOTHING CONTROVERSIAL about the idea that German submarines were operating clandestinely along the coast of Argentina. The possibilities were outlined in a letter dated as early as August 7, 1939, from Capt. Dietrich Niebuhr, the naval attache at the Buenos Aires emba.s.sy, to his Berlin espionage controller Gen. von Faupel: "The strategic situation of the Patagonian and Tierra del Fuego coast lends itself marvelously to the installation of supply bases for [surface] raiders and submarines." The n.a.z.i-hunting Argentine congressman Silvano Santander had no doubts that such plans were carried out: "These [contact points] were established, and served to supply fuel to the German submarines and raiders. The Argentine government"s tolerance of this provoked numerous protests from the Allied governments. Later on, after the n.a.z.i defeat, these bases were also used so that mysterious submarines could arrive, bringing both people and numerous valuables." Allied intelligence services were aware of such possibilities from at least 1943, when the Americans began actively seeking a secret U-boat refueling and resupply base near the San Antonio lighthouse.
On May 22, 1945, after the end of the war with Germany, the Argentine foreign ministry informed the navy of "the presence of German submarine warships in the waters of the South Atlantic, trying to reach j.a.panese waters"; and on May 29, the Argentine navy carried out antisubmarine operations in the Strait of Magellan to prevent submarines pa.s.sing from the Atlantic to the Pacific. This did not stop the traffic. The federal police reported that on July 1, 1945, two persons landed from a submarine near San Julian, on the Atlantic coast near the southern tip of Argentina and the Strait of Magellan. The two Germans paddled ash.o.r.e in a rubber boat and were met by "a person who owned a sailboat." The police said that the submarine was refueled from "drums hidden along the coast." Such stories were nothing new. In January 1945, Stanley Ross, who had been a correspondent in Buenos Aires for the Overseas News Agency, reported that n.a.z.i submarines had intensified their activities, bringing "millions of dollars in German war loot to this hemisphere to be cached here until the n.a.z.i leaders could claim it." Ross went on to write, A n.a.z.i submarine surfaced near the Argentine coast at Mar del Plata. It was seen to transfer to a tugboat of the Axis-owned Delfino line of Buenos Aires some forty boxes, and the person of Willi Koehn, chief of the Latin American Division of the German Foreign Ministry. While the submarine