DOZENS OF U-BOAT SIGHTINGS off Argentina are faithfully recorded in police and naval doc.u.ments. Many of them took place within the crucial period between July 10, 1945, when the Type IXC boat U-530 surrendered at Mar del Plata, and August 17, when the Type VIIC boat U-977 surrendered at the same Argentine navy base. (U-977 allegedly took sixty-six days to cross the Atlantic, submerged all the way, and U-530 made it in sixty-three days.) On July 21, just a week before the landing at Necochea that delivered Hitler, the Argentine navy"s chief of staff, Adm. Hector Lima, issued orders to "Call off all coastal patrols." This order, from the highest echelon of the military government, effectively opened up the coast of Argentina to the landings described by the Admiral Graf Spee men. But despite the chase being called off by the navy, the reports of submarines off the coast kept coming in. There was a determined cover-up by highly placed members of the military government to ensure that U-530 and U-977 were the only "real" n.a.z.i submarines seen to have made it across the Atlantic. Columnist Drew Pearson of the Bell Syndicate wrote on July 24, 1945, Along the coast of Patagonia, many Germans own land, which contains harbors deep enough for submarine landings. And if submarines could get to Argentine-Uruguayan waters from Germany, as they definitely did, there is no reason why they could not go a little further south to Patagonia. Also there is no reason to believe why Hitler couldn"t have been on one of them.
Speaking from exile in Rio de Janeiro in October 1945, Raul Damonte Taborda-the former chair of the Argentine congressional committee on n.a.z.i activities, and a close colleague of Silvano Santander-said that he believed it was possible Adolf Hitler was in Argentina. Damonte said that it was "indicated" that submarines other than U-530 and U-977 had been sunk by their crews after reaching the Argentine coast; these "undoubtedly" carried politicians, technicians, or even "possibly Adolf Hitler."
AN AP ARTICLE published in the Lewiston Daily Sun, July 18, 1945: One of many newspaper reports taken seriously by U.S. authorities that Hitler and Eva Braun had been landed by submarine on the Argentine coast and were living in the depths of Patagonia.
Che Guevara"s father, Ernesto Guevara Lynch, who was an active anti-n.a.z.i "commando" in Argentina throughout the 1930s and "40s, was also convinced: "Not long after the German army was defeated in Europe, many of the top n.a.z.is arrived in our country and entered through the seaside resort of Villa Gessell, located south of Buenos Aires. They came in several German submarines."
When asked by the authors about the submarines as recently as 2008, the Argentine justice minister, Anibal Fernandez, said simply, "In Argentina in 1945, anything was possible."
Chapter 19.
TO PATAGONIA.
THE EXILES STAYED JUST ONE NIGHT at the Estancia Moromar. The first thing the couple would have done was bathe in an attempt to wash away the lingering stench of the U-boat. Fegelein had provided a selection of traveling outfits and now arranged for their old clothes to be burned. Hitler and Eva stayed in separate rooms. On the dressing table in Eva"s bedroom was her favorite perfume, Chanel No. 5; a bottle of Canadian Club whisky with an ice bucket and a tumbler; a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes and a silver cigarette case-which Fegelein had not had time to get engraved with her distinctive "EB" monogram; and a gold Dunhill "Unique" lighter.
The gra.s.s airfield at the ranch had been laid out in 1933, shortly after Carlos Idaho Gesell had bought the property. The next morning, July 30, 1945, Hitler, Eva, and Fegelein, accompanied by Blondi, boarded the same Argentine air force Curtiss biplane that had picked Fegelein up at Mar del Plata. They would travel the last leg of the months-long journey that had brought them nearly one-third of the way around the globe, from the rubble-strewn battlefield of Berlin to a world of huge, silent horizons.
Although Hitler had been thoroughly briefed about the vastness of Patagonia, such knowledge was theoretical, and during the daytime flight westward he was amazed at the physical spectacle unrolling below him. After what would have been a three-and-a-half-hour flight, the Curtiss Condor landed at another gra.s.s strip just outside the town of Neuquen in the north of Patagonia. None of the pa.s.sengers bothered to leave the aircraft as a small tanker truck drew up, and the pilot supervised a group of men in air force uniforms while they refueled it. Topped up, the Condor was soon back in the air and heading southwest, while from the right-hand windows the three pa.s.sengers watched the majestic, snow-capped Andes Mountains unrolling under the afternoon sun. Two hours later, with the waters of Lake Nahuel Huapi glinting below as dusk approached on July 30, the biplane came in to land again, b.u.mped over the gra.s.s, and taxied to a halt on the airfield at San Ramon.
In this region, the Estancia San Ramon was the first officially delineated estate to be fenced in. The ranch is isolated, approached only via an unsurfaced road past San Carlos de Bariloche"s first airfield. The family of Prince Stephan zu Schaumburg-Lippe-who had been, with his ardently patriotic princess, one of the regular poker players at the German Emba.s.sy in Buenos Aires-had bought the estate as long ago as 1910 and still owned it in 1945. In 1943 Prince Stephan and Wilhelm von Schon, respectively the n.a.z.i government"s consul and amba.s.sador in Chile, had been called back to Germany as part of the planning for Aktion Feuerland. They left South America through Buenos Aires, where they held lengthy discussions with the de facto amba.s.sador, the local millionaire Ludwig Freude.
A MAJOR VULNERABILITY IN THE PLAN had been the fact that it was Adm. Wilhelm Canaris of the Abwehr who had first spotted the Estancia San Ramon, when he had used it himself as a bolt-hole during his escape across Patagonia in 1915. In 1944, when Bormann was finalizing plans for the Fuhrer"s escape, Canaris"s knowledge of the estate, and of Villa Winter on Fuerteventura-which had been set up by his Abwehr agent Gustav Winter-was more than dangerous. Canaris-as mentioned in Chapter 2-was a long-time and effective conspirator against Hitler. Although Canaris had covered his tracks for years, he had still attracted suspicion from Himmler and the SS hierarchy, who, on general principles, had long wished to absorb Canaris"s military intelligence network under the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA). Canaris finally lost his ability to stay one step ahead of the SS and the Gestapo in February 1944, when two of his Abwehr agents in Turkey defected to the British just before the Gestapo could arrest them for links to an anti-n.a.z.i group. Canaris failed to account for the Abwehr"s activities satisfactorily to Hitler, who had had enough of the lack of reporting to the n.a.z.i hierarchy and instructed SS Gen. Hermann Fegelein to oversee the incorporation of the Abwehr into the RSHA. The admiral was dismissed from his post and parked in a pointless job as head of the Office for Commercial and Economic Warfare.
The involvement of Abwehr personnel in the July 20, 1944, bomb plot finally led to Canaris being placed under house arrest; the noose tightened slowly, but eventually he was being kept in chains in a cellar under Gestapo headquarters on Prinz-Albrechtstra.s.se in Berlin. On February 7, 1945, he was sent to Flossenburg concentration camp, but even then he was kept alive for some time-there have been suggestions that even at this late date Himmler thought that Canaris might be useful as an intermediary with the Allies.
Bormann could not take the risk that such a potentially credible witness to the refuge in Argentina and the staging post between Europe and South America would survive to fall into Allied hands. In the Fuhrerbunker on April 5, 1945, Bormann"s ally SS Gen. Kaltenbrunner presented Hitler with some highly incriminating evidence-supposedly, the "diaries" of Wilhelm Canaris. After reading a few pages marked for him by Kaltenbrunner, the Fuhrer flew into a rage and signed the proffered death warrant. On the direct orders of Heinrich "Gestapo" Muller, SS Lt. Col. Walter Huppenkothen and SS Maj. Otto Thorbeck were sent to Flossenburg to tie off this loose end. On the morning of April 9, stripped naked in a final ignominy, Adm. Canaris was hanged from a wooden beam. Although reports of his death vary, his end was not a quick one. At 4:33 that afternoon, Huppenkothen sent a secret Enigma-encoded message to Muller via Muller"s subordinate, SS Gen. Richard Glucks. The latter was "kindly requested" to inform SS Gen. Muller immediately, by telephone, telex, or messenger, that Huppenkothen"s mission had been completed as ordered. The only major figure who could have pieced together the details of Hitler"s escape and refuge in Argentina was dead.
IN 1945, THE GERMANS HAD COMPLETE CONTROL over access to San Carlos de Bariloche and the Estancia San Ramon. No one got in or out of the area without express permission from the senior n.a.z.is in the area. On July 24, Drew Pearson had written in his syndicated column, It may take a long time to find out whether Hitler and his bride Eva Braun escaped to Patagonia. The country is a series of vast n.a.z.i-owned ranches where German is spoken almost exclusively and where Hitler could be hidden easily, and successfully for years. The ranches in this southern part of Argentina cover thousands of acres and have been under n.a.z.i [note: there were Germans in the area long before the n.a.z.is dominated] management for generations. It would have been impossible for any non-German to penetrate the area to make a thorough investigation as to Hitler"s whereabouts.
The staff at the isolated San Ramon estate had been busy for days since being given advance warning of the impending arrival of important guests. The arrival of a security team of Admiral Graf Spee sailors a week before had already added to the staff"s workload, and two new faces had joined the weekly shopping trip into San Carlos de Bariloche to ensure that no gossip betrayed the guests" presence. The cook at San Ramon, Carmen Torrentuigi, would have been thoroughly briefed on her guests" dietary requirements. Her rightly famed "Cordero Patagonico," Patagonian lamb, was off the menu for the time being, as were many of the other meats from the traditional Argentine "asado" or barbecue. The menu was to be heavy on vegetables, but with cla.s.sic German dishes like liver dumplings and squab (baby pigeon). She was to find out later that that was "his favorite" of the many meals she would prepare for him and the woman who was soon to be his wife. The Germans on the estate had taken the official news of Hitler"s "death" with an air of calm disbelief; it was with little surprise that Carmen, dressed in a clean starched ap.r.o.n over her homespun clothes, was introduced to the guests before supper.
Hitler and Eva Braun stayed in the main house at San Ramon for nine months. Contact with Martin Bormann, who was still on the move in Europe, was infrequent, but his "Organization" in Argentina was finalizing security plans for the couple"s permanent residence. This more private and secure refuge was nearing completion; named Inalco, it was fifty-six miles from San Ramon, on the Chilean border near Villa Angostura.
URSULA, EVA"S DAUGHTER BY HITLER, arrived at the Estancia San Ramon in September 1945. The six-year-old Ursula, nicknamed "Uschi," had sailed first-cla.s.s from Spain; her uncle Hermann Fegelein met her off the ship in Buenos Aires and brought her to join her parents, flying into the airstrip on the hillside above the ranch on the same Curtiss Condor they had used. Uschi"s existence had been kept strictly secret from the German people, as indeed had her parents" relationship, although the rest of the world knew about Hitler and Eva as early as May 15, 1939, when Time magazine gave details of how "dark-haired, buxom Eva Braun, 28, had her apartment rent paid, as usual, by her old friend in Berlin.... To her friends Eva Braun confided that she expected her friend [Adolf Hitler] to marry her within a year." It was not to be. Hitler believed that his grip on the public mind depended upon his being seen as wholly dedicated to Germany"s destiny. The child was said to have been born in San Remo, Italy, on New Year"s Eve 1938. Her parents had not seen her since April 11, 1945, the last day of a secret three-day trip to Bavaria to visit Uschi for what they had both thought might be the last time. Hitler"s double Gustav Weber would have covered for the Fuhrer while the couple slipped away. Brought up largely by distant relatives of Eva"s mother, the blonde-haired little girl had spent many happy hours at Berchtesgaden playing with Gitta, the daughter of Eva"s childhood friend Herta Schneider, and was photographed and filmed extensively. After the war, she was variously described as Gitta Schneider"s sister or Hermann Fegelein and Gretl Braun Fegelein"s daughter-yet their only child, Eva, was born after the war ended. Uschi was neither. In 1945, she may have already spoken basic Spanish; in 1943, Bormann would have arranged for both her and her caregivers (her "family") to be issued with Spanish doc.u.ments, and on his instructions the "family" had spent much of 1944 learning the language.
When Uschi arrived in Argentina in September 1945, Eva Braun was again pregnant-"as a last mission for Hitler"-having conceived in Munich in March 1945. The couple was still unmarried, and rumors of her pregnancy had been rife among the people in the bunker. (It was in fact her third pregnancy; she had had a stillborn child in 1943. August Schullten, gynecologist and chief physician of the Krankenhausen Links, a hospital in Munich, attended. He died in a car crash later that same year.) With the family now safe in Argentina, and with Eva"s brother-in-law Hermann Fegelein on hand to give her away, the private Catholic chapel at San Ramon would have made a perfect place for the couple"s real marriage. (The doubles allegedly "married" in the bunker on April 29, 1945-over twenty-four hours after the real couple fled from Berlin. There were no surviving witnesses to the ceremony except for Bormann.) In March 1946, the San Ramon estate employees were called to a meeting and told that their guests had been tragically killed in a car crash close to the property. They were warned never to discuss the matter again. The trail in Patagonia was to go cold; not only were Hitler and Braun "dead" in the Berlin bunker, but now they were "dead" again in Argentina. If anyone managed to follow the Hitlers to Argentina, all they would find were more stories of corpses burned beyond recognition, this time in an automobile accident.
THE BRITISH AND U.S. GOVERNMENTS had put intense pressure on the Argentine authorities to repatriate to Germany all remaining members of the Admiral Graf Spee crew-those who had not escaped or disappeared-whether or not they had married local women. On February 16, 1946, the British troopship RML Highland Monarch, escorted by HMS Ajax (one of the Royal Navy cruisers that had driven the Admiral Graf Spee into Uruguayan waters in December 1939), arrived first in Buenos Aires, and then in Montevideo, to ship the German sailors home. The Argentine authorities turned over about nine hundred ident.i.ty books (military identification papers) in a couple of mailbags. The boarding was chaotic, the Highland Monarch was ordered to sea as soon as possible, and no one had the time to check the papers against the individuals who had embarked. Despite the Allies" insistence, many officers and men of the "pocket battleship" had simply disappeared into Argentina. It was only on the long voyage to Germany that the doc.u.ments and men were cross-referenced. Rumor had it that among them were eighty-six U-boat crewmen, whose presence in Argentina the Argentine, U.S., and British authorities were supposedly at a loss to explain, since the crews of the surrendered U-530 and U-977 had already been repatriated via the United States. In fact, doc.u.ments in the British National Archives prove that the British identified everyone on the Highland Monarch, and none of them were submariners-so the fate of the men from the other three boats, U-880, U-1235 and U-518, remains undoc.u.mented.
THE "STAUFFENBERG BOMB" of July 20, 1944, had injured Hitler more extensively than the n.a.z.i propaganda machine had made public. The deep cold of the Patagonian winter now contributed to his "rheumatism" and he suffered from inflamed joints and stiffness in his right hand, but more distressing was the fact that the surgeons had been unable to remove all the oak splinters that had sprayed from the table that saved his life. The constant pressure from an oak fragment lodged deep in the nasal bones between his eyes caused him acute neuralgic pain during the stay at Estancia San Ramon. Hitler needed surgery.
Since it was judged too much of a security risk for him to attend a hospital in Buenos Aires, he and Eva traveled north to the province of Cordoba and the n.a.z.i hospital and health spa at the Gran Hotel Viena, at Miramar on the Mar Chiquita lake. The Gran Hotel Viena was built by an Abwehr agent, an early n.a.z.i Party member named Max Pahlke, between 1943 and 1945-the same period as the construction of Villa Winter on Fuerteventura and the extension of the airfield at San Carlos de Bariloche. Pahlke, the capable manager of the Argentine branch of the German multinational Mannesmann, had acquired Argentine citizenship in the 1930s, but was well known to the Allies for his espionage work in South America.
The building contained eighty-four rooms, a medical facility staffed by doctors, nurses, and ma.s.sage therapists, a large swimming pool, a library, and a dining room that seated two hundred. Every room had air conditioning and heating, granite floors, walls lined with imported Carrara marble, and bronze chandeliers. The facilities included a bank, a wine cellar, a food warehouse, a bakery, a slaughterhouse, an electricity generating plant, and garages with their own fuel supply. Of the seventy hotel employees, only twelve were locals from Miramar, all of whom worked outside the facility and had no contact with hotel guests. The remaining fifty-eight employees were either from Buenos Aires or from Germany, and all spoke German. In addition to a modern telephone system that connected guests with the rest of the world, the Gran Hotel Viena also had a tall telecommunications antenna on the seventy-foot-high water tower. This vantage point, and a further tower just down the coast, enabled watchful guards to spot any approach to the hotel by land, water, or air.
The tiny market town of Miramar was a strange location for a huge, state-of-the-art hotel and spa complex, miles away from any major roads or other commercial routes. Pahlke, known for his business sense, had built Mannesmann Argentina into a ma.s.sively profitable business. Pahlke supervised the opening of the hotel from December 1945 to March 1946; he then left. A former German army colonel named Carl Martin Krueger, the Viena"s "chief of security," was put in charge. An immaculate figure known locally as "The Engineer," Krueger had arrived in Miramar in 1943. He did everything to make the Hitlers" stay at the medical facility as comfortable as possible; they had an exclusive suite complete with AH-monogrammed blankets, sheets, towels, and dishes.
With many local supporters, Hitler and his wife often took day-trips to Balnearia, a town some three miles from Mar Chiquita, to take tea. He had his photograph taken with other senior n.a.z.is and would sign copies of Mein Kampf for well-wishers. One witness to these mundane encounters said that Hitler was often "lost in thought" and would say, "Now, I am far from here." The Hitlers enjoyed their stay at the exclusive, luxurious waterside hotel. One of his bodyguards recalled that the couple would regularly walk along the sh.o.r.e, Hitler commenting on the wonderful sunsets. The operation to remove the splinters at first seemed to be successful, but the pain in Hitler"s face would return to plague him in later life.
In February 1946, Juan Domingo Peron was finally voted into untrammeled power as president of Argentina, which must have eased any latent fears of pursuit on the part of some of the fugitive n.a.z.is. During the late 1940s, Hitler himself would move fairly freely between strategic points in Argentina, around a triangle based on San Carlos de Bariloche; the home of his friends and early financial backers, the Eichhorns, at La Falda; and Mar Chiquita. He owned huge tracts of land in all three areas.
MEANWHILE, MARTIN BORMANN WAS STILL IN EUROPE, controlling the network in Argentina from afar. He was in regular contact with Ludwig Freude through the portable T43 encryption system. He also made good use of his wide-ranging contacts, most importantly inside the Vatican, to advance his own plans for exile. After his abortive trip to Flensburg in May 1945 (see end of Chapter 15), Bormann had hidden in the Bavarian hills for five months before risking a visit to the old n.a.z.i heartland of Munich, the Bavarian capital. J. A. Friedl, a former n.a.z.i Party member and senior sergeant of Munich police who had known Bormann since the early days, saw him there in October 1945. Friedl recollected that Bormann had been "with some other men in a car, parked in front of the Spanish Consulate." When Friedl approached the car and greeted his old comrade, they chatted briefly; Bormann told Friedl that he was trying to arrange a visa to enter Spain.
Bormann stayed in Munich until July 1946, when he was spotted again, this time by a man who held no love for him. Jakob Glas, a disgruntled former chauffeur of Bormann"s-who had been fired in a disagreement over stolen garden vegetables from the Fuhrer"s personal Berchtesgaden plot-also saw his old boss in a car, riding in the front seat next to the driver. The car was moving slowly, and Glas got a good look at Bormann; he was dressed in ordinary, rather shabby civilian clothes. According to the a.s.sociated press, Glas said, "There were some other men with him, but I didn"t get a close look at them. I was too busy staring after Bormann." Glas"s report prompted the U.S. Army to mount a house-to-house search for Bormann, but without success. He returned to his personal "Alpine Redoubt," where he was protected by two hundred former members of the Waffen-SS (see Chapter 21). Toward the end of the summer of 1947, it was time for Bormann to get on the move again.
DURING THIS PERIOD, THE FBI was taking reports of Hitler being in Latin America very seriously. Thousands of doc.u.ments pertaining to Hitler from these years are still cla.s.sified as Top Secret on both sides of the Atlantic; nevertheless, and despite the very heavy censorship of the few files released into the public domain, some information can be gleaned.
A report from the Bureau"s Los Angeles office to Director Hoover on June 5, 1947, details material that reached the office on May 16 of that year. The origin of the information was rather naively located near either Buenos Aires or Rio de Janeiro (thousands of miles apart), but it apparently came from a familiar and trusted contact. The contact knew a former French Resistance man, who had visited Casino, near Rio Grande, a town on the southeast coast of Brazil just above the Uruguayan border. The Frenchman claimed to have seen Eva Braun and Adolf Hitler sitting at a table in a crowded hotel dining room. This was enough to prompt Hoover to ask for more detail. He received it via secret air courier on August 6, 1947, in a seven-pager from his Rio de Janeiro office ent.i.tled "Adolph Hitler and Eva Braun Information Concerning." The former member of the French Resistance-who was traveling commercially in the Americas and had ambitions to move into journalism-had been told, through a number of contacts in Latin America, that the town of Casino in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande de Sol might provide something of interest. (The FBI was thorough in checking the provenance of their informant, whose name has unfortunately been lost to the censor"s pen.) The Rio office of the FBI described Casino as consisting "of approximately two hundred scattered residences. The majority of the inhabitants are German nationalists or are of German descent." The field officer also reported that "no one could live in Casino except persons who had homes there prior to the time it became a military area and blocked off from the rest of the surrounding community. This area allegedly became restricted three to four months before the end of the war in Europe." It is no coincidence that this was the time when Aktion Feuerland was getting into top gear and Bormann was moving people and materiel around. The Resistance veteran"s account continued: "This was an unusual community in as much as it was necessary to secure a pa.s.s to enter the vicinity of the town, and furthermore it was practically of one hundred percent German population. This area lacked commercial establishments and consisted of villas or homes and a large hotel, which had been remodeled and was very modern. It appeared in size out of proportion to the size of the community." Hotel Casino had one other feature in common with Villa Winter on Fuerteventura and Gran Hotel Viena at Miramar: a very large radio antenna, in this case parallel to the ground and fenced off.
The Resistance man had booked at the hotel in advance (and simultaneously arranged pa.s.ses to the area) as part of a group, with another Frenchman, a Russian, a Nicaraguan, an Australian, and an American. Their reason was ostensibly to attend three nights of entertainment, including a performance of Les Sylphides, the famous ballet in one act set to Chopin"s music. With the exception of the Russian-a man well known in Brazil, at whom the management apparently looked somewhat askance-the party were welcomed courteously, both at the hotel and when invited into local homes.
The first hint of something a little strange came when the Frenchman observed one of the hotel maids speaking to an attractive teenage girl with chestnut hair, who caught his eye when she gave the servant a "Heil Hitler" salute. For the first evening"s ballet performance, a large ballroom was filled to capacity by several hundred people, described by a stage manager as "rich South Americans," but the Frenchman noticed that they all spoke German. In the course of the evening, spotlights played extensively over the audience, and at one champagne-filled table the Frenchman suddenly recognized a distinctively scarred face. He identified him as a former n.a.z.i officer named Weismann-a man who he feared might remember his own face, from occupied Paris. The former Resistance man had been trained in the old Bertillon or portrait parle system of identification, and he was sure of his powers of recognition.
Now alerted, the Frenchman claimed also to have recognized-from her many photographs-a woman whom he identified as Eva Hitler, nee Braun. When he realized who she was he scanned the table more closely, and sure enough, "There was one man ... having numerous characteristics of Hitler." Though thinner, he had the same general build and age as. .h.i.tler, was clean-shaven (as described by almost all of the witnesses in Argentina), and had very short-cropped hair. He appeared to be friendly with everyone at his table.
Later that same evening, the Frenchman was introduced to the young girl he had seen earlier. She gave her name as Abava, a recent German immigrant who was now a Chilean citizen. He learned that she was a "niece" of the woman he had recognized as Eva Braun and that most of the group was from Vina del Mar in central Chile, close to Villa Alemana (literally, German Town), a small city founded by immigrants in 1896. The Frenchman did not believe her; he had the distinct impression that "this young girl as well as the persons believed to be Hitler and Eva Braun actually lived in Casino." (However, the couple was simply vacationing there.) His general curiosity about the town, expressed under the cover of planning to write a travelogue describing this delightful and uncommercialized location, prompted the girl"s immediate advice that it would not be a "fit subject" to write on-the people of Casino did not like tourists. Subsequent brushes with the hotel management and Casino chamber of commerce verified her opinion, and an hour after his meeting with the latter his party were asked abruptly to vacate their rooms, as "the hotel was full."
The next day, as the Frenchman was waiting, bags packed, for his car to pick him up, he saw the girl"s "aunt" and two other people leave the hotel and walk toward the sea. The woman was wearing a short beach skirt, and in the daylight he was even more positive that she was Eva Braun.
INITIAL REPORT TO J. Edgar Hoover of Hitler"s presence in Casino, Brazil, June 5, 1947. Hoover immediately asked for more details.
AN FBI REPORT to Hoover, dated August 6, 1947, giving further details of Hitler and Braun"s time in Casino, Brazil.
Chapter 20.
ADOLF HITLER"S VALLEY IN 1943 ADM. KARL DoNITZ had declared, "The German U-boat fleet is proud to have made an earthly paradise, an impregnable fortress for the Fuhrer, somewhere in the world." The following year Donitz told a graduating cla.s.s of naval cadets in Kiel, "The German Navy has still a great role to play in the future. The German Navy knows all hiding places for the Navy to take the Fuhrer to, should the need arise. There he can prepare his last measures in complete quiet."
Of all such possible locations, few fit the bill better than somewhere in Patagonia. The region extends over 386,000 square miles of Argentina and Chile-one and a half times the size of Texas. Its scenery is dramatically varied, from the windswept, barren coastal plains around San Matias Gulf to the alpine foothills of the Andes, from the lush pastures in the north to the glacier fields in the south. Philip Hamburger, writing for the New Yorker in 1948, was wrong when he dismissed it simply as "barren, wind-swept and rainy, a dreary, remote stretch of rock, thorn and sand, of black lava and volcanic ash. Only its western part is irrigated and under cultivation." However, he could not be faulted when he went on, "Scattered about are lonely sheep ranches, many of them owned by settlers of German descent. To an ex-Fuhrer ... Patagonia would presumably be an attractive refuge."
Hamburger continued: The way the Patagonian part of the stories goes, shortly after the arrival of the U-boats with their mysterious human cargo, travelers through this vast region began to hear tales of a huge estancia remote almost beyond imagination and surrounded by an electric fence. Behind the fence fierce dogs bark continuously. The Fuhrer is naturally behind the fence. He never leaves the estate. He is unable to do so. Drugs, defeat and the shattering of his nervous system have left him monumentally wrecked and insane. He looks like a man over seventy. Eva Braun stays with him, for there is no other place to go.
Hamburger based his account on numerous tales that he heard while visiting Argentina-"this strange country, so different from the rest of the world, so far removed and other-planetary."
SOME DETAILS OF THE n.a.z.iS" LIFE IN PATAGONIA, and of the refuge that Hamburger had imagined, were given to the Polish press in 1995 by a man who identified himself only as "Herr Schmidt." He said that his father had "worked in the Reich Main Security Office at Prinz Albrechtstra.s.se in Berlin ... in the Gestapo center." Schmidt explained that his father was a high-ranking SS official who during the war often traveled around Europe; where, and what crimes his father had committed, Schmidt didn"t know. In 1945, Schmidt was twelve years old and living with his mother and younger sister in Munich. His father had not come back from the war. Then, in 1948, his mother received extraordinary news: her husband was alive, living in Argentina, and his family was to join him. A few weeks later they went to Italy and from there sailed for Argentina on a Spanish ship. Ferdinand Eiffler, a senior Argentine n.a.z.i organizer and close a.s.sociate of Ludwig Freude, met them as they disembarked in Buenos Aires. The family was taken to a safe house in the suburb of Vicente Lopez, where they were given new ident.i.ty papers. A week later Schmidt"s father came to the house, and, after an ecstatic family reunion, Eiffler took them in his car on a two-day trip.
They drove through towns with "exotic" names until they saw the Andes on the horizon. On a rough rural road, which Schmidt said was "barely visible" at times, they drove through San Carlos de Bariloche and around Lake Nahuel Huapi, then through the village of Villa La Angostura. They arrived at a set of gates; Eiffler showed papers to an armed guard, the gates were opened, and the car drove in.
"Schmidt"s" description of his destination fits with similar accounts of the location of a n.a.z.i colony called "the Center." The Center in "Adolf Hitler"s Valley" (see map), was located around Inalco, the mansion owned by Hitler. The property surrounding Inalco-1.75 square miles-is known as Estancia Inalco. The Center was described by Heinrich Bethe, the former petty officer from the Admiral Graf Spee, who had met a second U-boat landing (the one not carrying Hitler) on the evening of July 28, 1945 (see Chapter 18). When Bethe"s party was being driven to the Center in 1947 from his temporary base in the city of Neuquen, "There were valleys at first, but then they began to see mountains on whose summits they could see perpetual snow." After more than nine hours" driving, they finally arrived at what was apparently one of the cla.s.sic ranches in the skirts of the Andes. After pa.s.sing the first gate, they kept going for about three miles until they began to see some people; after that they saw a house in the distance, then some sheds and the main building. This also mirrors the mention in Paul Manning"s book of Martin Bormann"s hideout in Patagonia, where he lived until 1955, when President Juan Peron was forced from power: "A mountain retreat in the Argentinean Andes, a 5,000-acre cattle and sheep ranch about 60 miles south of San Carlos de Bariloche."
"Schmidt"s" childhood memory was of three small neighborhoods widely spread out in a big, beautiful valley. In a solemn voice, his father told them that the place they had arrived at was called "Adolf Hitler"s Valley" and that the neighborhoods were called respectively Deutschland (Germany), Heimat (loosely, Homeland), and Vaterland (Fatherland). Schmidt recalled his father telling him that German submarines had come to Argentina carrying the immense treasures of the Third Reich and that other treasures captured by the SS during the conquests of Europe had come by various different means. The family moved into a big, attractive house with a garden in the Heimat community. After the hunger of postwar Germany, they led an "almost luxurious life"-the family even had a servant, an old SS subordinate of his father"s who took care of all the work in the garden and the house.
Heinrich Bethe also lived in the Center and described his more modest dwelling as "a small typical local cabin, it had one big room which served as a bedroom and living room, a small hearth, and all that was apparently needed to live comfortably in that area. On the left side was a bathroom and on the right a small room designed for keeping personal belongings." Bethe was allocated one of several offices off a corridor in one of the larger houses. The "quartermaster general" had his center of operations in the Center"s main building, where sixteen people worked looking after the facilities and the grounds; nine Germans, three Chileans, and four Argentines.
"Schmidt" was sent to the German school in San Carlos de Bariloche. On the cla.s.sroom walls there were portraits of Hitler, swastikas, and other decorations; it reminded the boy of his old school in Munich during the time of the Third Reich. All the students, regardless of age, had to join a youth organization. Although it was not called the Hitler Youth, it seemed very much like that paramilitary group to the young Schmidt. He recalled that he enjoyed the meetings, the marches, the drums, the military instruction, the war games, and the training with different firearms, all of which were pursued with an almost religious fervor. The discipline was severe, and youngsters were beaten for breaking the rules, poor grades, or a lazy att.i.tude. There were lessons about the Third Reich and Hitler"s activities, and everything was ill.u.s.trated with films, slides, and photographs. The school had a "splendid" library that contained many copies of Mein Kampf, Hitler"s and Goebbels"s speeches, Rosenberg"s books, annuals, old copies of the weekly n.a.z.i propaganda newspaper Das Reich, and other n.a.z.i books published during Hitler"s time or secretly in West Germany after the war. The children were told that the Center was a small piece of the Third Reich, a haven where one day the struggle for a new and great Germany would begin, where the survivors would begin to seek vengeance for the lost war. "We were educated as the avengers who would continue the work of our fathers." His schoolmates secretly told him that their fathers had also been in the SS or Gestapo or had held other important positions in the Third Reich, but they were not allowed to reveal their true surnames or ask others about theirs.
n.o.body lived outside the valley; the members of the community grew most of their own food, and anything else they needed was brought in from the outside, from the nearby towns of San Carlos de Bariloche and San Martin de los Andes. Philip Hamburger told a similar tale in the New Yorker: Once a month the gates of the estancia swing open and a large black truck races down the driveway, careens onto the main road and heads for the main hamlet many miles distant, where a dozen stalwart blond men hop down and wander through the streets for ten or fifteen minutes, purchasing a bite to eat here and a trinket there. Then they hop into the truck and race back to the estancia.
IN 1946, "ADOLF HITLER"S VALLEY" was controlled by a ma.s.s murderer and wanted war criminal, SS and Police Gen. Ludolf von Alvensleben, known to his friends as "Bubi" (Little Boy). Born in 1901, Alvensleben came from the Prussian officer cla.s.s and fought as a hussar at the end of World War I. After he became a n.a.z.i Party member of the Reichstag in 1933, his rise was rapid: he commanded the 46th SS Regiment in Dresden the following year and became senior adjutant to Reichsfuhrer-SS Himmler. During the war, he commanded SS and police units in the Crimea, and as commander of the Selbstschutz paramilitary forces in occupied western Poland he presided over ma.s.s executions and other atrocities. Married with four children, Alvensleben also fathered at least one illegitimate child as part of Himmler"s "Lebensborn" program to breed a master race-Himmler was the "G.o.dfather" to Alvensleben"s illegitimate son. Captured by the British in April 1945, Alvensleben walked out of his prison later that year while the guards at Neuengamme internment camp in Hamburg were celebrating Christmas. He fled with his family down the Vatican-organized ratlines through Italy (see Chapter 21), arriving in Argentina early in 1946. President Peron and his "Blessed Evita" would welcome many such ma.s.s murderers to the n.a.z.i home away from home among the lakes and mountains of Patagonia.
THE HITLERS MOVED INTO INALCO, THEIR NEW MANSION, after returning from holiday at Casino in Brazil in June 1947. Inalco Mansion is located in what had been plot number eight of the Nahuel Huapi agricultural colony, planned at the beginning of the twentieth century. The area was almost inaccessible until the 1960s, when the road that crosses the Andes into Chile was built. The area between San Carlos de Bariloche and Villa La Angostura in Rio Negro province looks and feels distinctly European-specifically, Bavarian. It is an area of outstanding natural beauty, with snow-capped mountains and several lakes set amid mile after mile of untouched forest.
A short distance from the international border with Chile, at the very furthest end of Lake Nahuel Huapi, Inalco is almost hidden from view from the lake by two small islands. The offshoot of the lake where the house was built is called ultima Esperanza or "Last Hope," since it was believed by early explorers to be the last hope of finding a water-borne route through to Chile. In the 1940s and "50s, Inalco was easily accessible only by boat or seaplane. One regular visitor, who was said to take Hitler on regular trips to meetings in the area, was a pilot coincidentally named Frederico Fuhrer, whose Grumman Goose seaplane was often tied up at the concrete jetty to the left of the main house"s lawn. In the boathouse next to the jetty was. .h.i.tler"s personal motorboat.
A ten-bedroom mansion, Inalco is a typical example of the style of famed Argentine architect Alejandro Bustillo, who openly acknowledged the influence of Albert Speer"s work. Known colloquially as "Peron"s favorite architect," Bustillo had designed the Llao Llao Hotel complex in San Carlos de Bariloche in 1939, and in mid- or late 1943 he was commissioned, almost certainly by Ludwig Freude, to work on a future home for Hitler. The mansion looks out on Lake Nahuel Huapi and the Andes-a stunning panorama of water, forest, and snow-capped mountains that rivals Obersalzberg. It is difficult to imagine a more beautiful alpine setting nor one that was so far beyond the reach of any but the most determined intruder. At the time, the house was accessible by motor vehicle only after an arduous journey along unmade roads and tracks from the nearest township, Villa La Angostura (as described by both "Schmidt" and Bethe). Lookout points were dotted around the neighboring forested hills, guarding the air and water approaches to the property. One puzzling aspect-considering how expensive the mansion must have been to build in the 1940s, and what a major task it must have been to bring the building materials to such an isolated location-was that its position, surrounded by hills and native towering trees, left it in constant shadow, never in direct sunlight.
Behind the house was a huge underground fuel tank that powered the electrical generators for the valley, and to one side a mound, now covered with trees, shows evidence of underground chambers and ventilation shafts. Heinrich Bethe"s account of the Center described underground steel-lined chambers beneath the offices, where the "most important and sinister doc.u.ments of that century" were kept. In 2008, the caretaker on the property warned that the mound was dangerous and kept collapsing in on itself. He said that when he first took over the job at Estancia Inalco he had to attend an interview at a local house where the property manager lived, and he remembered two ma.s.sive bronze plaques decorated with swastikas on the wall of the main hall.
As well as the main house, Bustillo also designed and built a pastiche of a medieval-style watchtower at Peninsula San Pedro called the "Saracen tower" by locals; invisible from the main road, it can be seen only from the waters of Lake Nahuel Huapi or from the air. From the top of the tower a watchful observer could see virtually the whole lake and any aircraft or boats approaching Inalco from the Argentine side. Omar Contreras, a former journalist who is now the minister of tourism for Rio Negro province, remembered visiting this tower as a young boy with his father at the end of the 1960s; Contreras senior worked for SS Col. Friedrich "Fritz" Lantschner"s construction company. Contreras remembered being surprised when he saw the tower; he thought it was a castle, and beyond it he could see Lake Nahuel Huapi. A tall, fair-haired German chatted with his father and took them into the tower; Contreras thought he was Friedrich Lantschner. The hall had a double wooden door leading to a big room. Being a curious boy, Contreras walked through, and he remembered being surprised at seeing a number of n.a.z.i flags inside-he recognized them from war comics. Back in the main room, he saw a group of about ten people talking in what he thought was German. In the car on the way home, he asked his father about the flags, but his father replied, "We do not talk about that."
INALCO WAs. .h.i.tLER"S MAIN RESIDENCE from June 1947 until October 1955, and it was here that the former Kriegsmarine petty officer, Heinrich Bethe, was to become his closest servant. For Eva and her young daughters, living at Inalco was at first idyllic; during the summers they swam in the ice-cold waters of the lake, and in the winter enjoyed the skiing at the nearby mountain resort Cerro Catedral. In the early years, President Peron would visit too, skiing and climbing in the mountains with his n.a.z.i friends from the Club Andino Bariloche, a mountaineering a.s.sociation set up in 1931 by Otto Meiling.
Hitler was in congenial company at the Center and on his regular trips to San Carlos de Bariloche; the town was home to hundreds of n.a.z.is after World War II. A small yellow-brick building in the town center housed a delicatessen once owned by SS Capt. Erich Priebke, who was also chairman of the board of governors of the city"s most prestigious German private school, Primo Capraro. (In 1996, after intense international pressure, Argentina finally extradited him. At the time of this writing in 2010, Priebke was serving a life sentence in Italy for his role in the ma.s.sacre of 335 Italians at the Ardeatine caves in Rome on March 24, 1944.) Across the road from Priebke"s delicatessen was the Club Andino Bariloche. Its membership from the late 1940s included the famous Stuka pilot Col. Hans-Ulrich Rudel, the Luftwaffe"s most highly decorated ace and a close confidant of Hitler, as well as Friedrich Lantschner and his brother Gustav.
The town was also home for many years to an Austrian SS sergeant named Josef Schwammberger, a noted s.a.d.i.s.t who was eventually convicted of killing thirty-four victims personally and being directly responsible for the deaths of 274 others in the Polish ghetto and camp at Przemysl. (Argentina finally agreed to his extradition in 1987; found guilty of murder by a West German court in 1992, he died in prison in 2004.) At the town hall, the "Angel of Death" Dr. Josef Mengele, the SS captain notorious for his medical experiments at Auschwitz, had to take his driving test twice in the 1940s. Others who lived in or visited the area at various dates included SS Lt. Col. Adolf Eichmann, the functionary who made Reinhard Heydrich"s "Final Solution" a reality; SS Capt. Eduard Roschmann, christened "the Butcher of Riga"; SS Capt. Aribert Heim, Mauthausen concentration camp"s own "Dr. Death"; and Martin Bormann himself. None of them except Eichmann were ever caught, and he only when he returned to live in the Argentine capital and became more accessible to his hunters.
President Juan Peron explained: "When the war was over, some useful Germans helped us build our factories and make the best use of what we had, and in time they were able to help themselves too."
IN 1947, WITH HITLER AND HIS FAMILY SECURE under the watchful eyes of senior SS officers and with Peron newly sworn in as president, Martin Bormann began to conclude his clandestine work in Europe. He was ready for his own final move to the south. One last meeting in Europe would seal his pact with the Perons.
Chapter 21.
GREEDY ALLIES, LOYAL FRIENDS.
ON JUNE 6, 1947, ARGENTINA"S FIRST LADY left for a "rainbow" tour of Europe aboard a Douglas DC-4 Skymaster lent by the Spanish government. The metaphor came from a July 14 Time magazine cover: "Eva Peron: Between two worlds, an Argentine rainbow." President Peron, most of his government, and thousands of well-wishers saw her off. A second plane followed, carrying the first lady"s wardrobe, the party"s luggage, and numerous boxes (with their contents making a second clandestine trip across the Atlantic)-the "Rainbow" was prudently carrying her pot of gold with her. Evita was accompanied by her brother Juan Duarte, her personal hairdresser Julio Alcaraz (who also guarded her extensive collection of jewelry), and two Spanish diplomats sent by Franco to accompany her to her first destination, Madrid. Also on the aircraft was Alberto Dodero, a billionaire shipping-line owner who financed the trip. Dodero was a "flashy free-spending tyc.o.o.n who dazzled even the free-spending Argentines." His ships would bring thousands of n.a.z.is and other European fascists to Argentina.
Traveling ahead of Eva"s party was Father Hernan Benitez, a Jesuit priest and an old friend of her husband"s. Benitez had been briefed by Cardinal Antonio Caggiano, the archbishop of the Argentine city of Rosario, who was a strong link in the chain that led escaping n.a.z.is to their new lives in Argentina. Caggiano had visited Pope Pius XII in Rome in March 1946 to collect his red hat. At a meeting with Cardinal Eugene Tisserant, Caggiano, in the name of the "Government of the Argentine Republic," had offered his country as a refuge for French war criminals in hiding in Rome, "whose political att.i.tude during the recent war would expose them, should they return to France, to harsh measures and private revenge." Now it was the turn of the Germans. Bishop Alois Hudal was Bormann"s main contact in the Vatican. A committed anticommunist, the Austrian-born, Jesuit-trained Hudal had been a "clero-fascist" (clerical supporter of Mussolini) and an honorary holder of the n.a.z.is" Gold Party Badge. Bishop Hudal was the Commissioner of the Episcopate for German-speaking Catholics in Italy, as well as father confessor to Rome"s German community. In 1944, he had taken control of the Austrian division of the Papal Commission of a.s.sistance (PCA), set up to help displaced persons. The PCA, with the help of Bormann"s money, was to form the backbone of the ratlines organized to help escaping n.a.z.i war criminals. (Note: ratline, a term often used in reference to n.a.z.i escape routes, is formally defined by the U.S. Department of Defense dictionary of military terms as an organized effort for moving personnel and/or materiel by clandestine means across a denied area or border.) Among the thousands of men Hudal helped to escape justice were the commandants of both Sobibor and Treblinka extermination camps, SS lieutenants Franz Stangl and Gustav Wagner. After escaping American captivity in Austria, Stangl reached Rome, where Hudal found a safe house for him, gave him money, and arranged a Red Cross pa.s.sport with a Syrian visa. Erich Priebke, Josef Mengele, and Eichmann"s a.s.sistant Alois Brunner were just a few of the infamous murderers who also pa.s.sed safely through the n.a.z.i bishop"s hands on the way to Alberto Dodero"s ships.
In 1947, Hudal"s activities were exposed for the first time when a German-language Catholic newspaper, Pa.s.sauer Neue Presse, accused him of running a n.a.z.i escape organization, but this did not stop him. On August 31, 1948, Bishop Hudal wrote to President Peron requesting 5,000 Argentine visas-3,000 for German and 2,000 for Austrian "soldiers ... whose wartime sacrifice" had saved Western Europe from Soviet domination.
WITH A LARGE ESCORT OF SPANISH FIGHTER PLANES, Evita"s airliner took off on June 7 from the town of Villa Cisneros (present-day Dakhla) in the Spanish Sahara, destination Madrid. A crowd of three million Madrilenos awaited her at the airport, which was decked with flowers, flags, and tapestries. Like visiting royalty, her arrival was marked by a twenty-one-gun salute, and she rode with El Caudillo-"the Leader"-Franco to the El Prado palace in an open-topped limousine, through adoring crowds chanting her name. Awaiting her was a cornucopia of expensive gifts. She was adored in every city she visited; the dazzling first lady behaved like a queen, and Spaniards-after years of civil war and the drab authoritarianism of the Franco regime-took the beautiful Argentinean to their hearts.
The all-conquering Evita left Spain for Rome on June 25, 1947. Father Benitez would smooth her way in the Vatican with the aid of Bishop Hudal. Two days after she arrived she was given an audience with Pope Pius XII, spending twenty minutes with the Holy Father-"a time usually allotted by Vatican protocol to queens." However, there was a more sinister side to the Rome trip. Using Bishop Hudal as an intermediary, she arranged to meet Bormann in an Italian villa at Rapallo provided for her use by Dodero. The shipowner was also present at the meeting, as was Eva"s brother Juan. There, she and her former paymaster cut the deal that guaranteed that his Fuhrer"s safe haven would continue to remain safe, and allowed Bormann to leave Europe at last for a new life in South America. However, she and her team had one shocking disappointment for Bormann.
PROVING THAT THERE IS NO HONOR AMONG THIEVES, the Perons presented Bormann with a radical renegotiation of their earlier understanding. Evita had brought with her to Europe some $800 million worth of the treasure that he had placed in supposed safekeeping in Argentina, and she would deposit this vast sum in Swiss banks for the Perons" own use. As her husband Juan Domingo reportedly said, "Switzerland is the country ... where all the bandits come together [and] hide everything they rob from the others." This treasure-comprising gold, jewels, and bearer bonds-likely went straight to Eva"s trusted contacts in Switzerland, who were awaiting her arrival later in her European tour to set up the secret accounts. The Argentines were leaving Bormann with just one-quarter of his looted nest egg in Argentina. This swindle had been accomplished with the connivance of Bormann"s most trusted Argentine contacts-Ludwig Freude, Ricardo von Leute, Ricardo Staudt, and Heinrich Doerge-all of whom had been signatories of the Aktion Feuerland bank accounts set up in Buenos Aires.
The remaining share was still huge, and Bormann had no option but to accept this brutal unilateral increase in the premium for his insurance policy. He had been planning his bolt-hole for four years; everything was in place. Hitler was already in Patagonia and with the crimes of the n.a.z.i regime now finally exposed for the world to see, there was nowhere else to go. Within the next nine months both Bormann and SS and Police Gen. Heinrich "Gestapo" Muller planned to settle in Argentina themselves, and they would need their reception arrangements to function smoothly. Bormann knew that Evita was a tough, experienced negotiator, whom he would later describe as far more intelligent than her husband.
However, the Bormann "Organization" had a keen memory. After the spring of 1948, when Muller based himself in Cordoba and became directly responsible for the security of the Organization, the bankers who had betrayed Bormann would begin to suffer a string of untimely deaths. Heinrich Doerge died mysteriously in 1949; in December 1950, Ricardo von Leute was found dead in a Buenos Aires street, and Ricardo Staudt would survive him by only a few months. Ludwig Freude himself, the kingpin of Aktion Feuerland in Argentina, died in 1952 from drinking a poisoned cup of coffee, and Evita"s younger brother Juan Duarte met his end in 1954 with a gunshot to the head. Officially he was said to have committed suicide.
AFTER ECSTATIC RECEPTIONS IN LISBON AND PARIS, Evita took a break at the Hotel de Paris in Monte Carlo, where Dodero introduced her to his friend, the Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Ona.s.sis. The predatory millionaire would later boast that he slept with her there and in the morning gave her a substantial check for one of her many charity organizations.
After her short layover, the "Rainbow" went to join her pot of gold in Switzerland. When she arrived in Geneva on August 4, 1947, she was met by the chief of protocol of the Swiss Foreign Service. He was an old friend; Jacques-Albert Cuttat had worked at the Swiss Legation in Buenos Aires from 1938 to 1946. He was deeply involved in the transfer of n.a.z.i a.s.sets to Argentina and had been one of the account holders of the many gold deposits in the city"s banks. After meeting Swiss president Philipp Etter and foreign minister Max Pet.i.tpierre, Evita dropped out of sight. She joined Dodero and other friends at the mountain resort of St. Moritz, but there was more business to take care of in Zurich, the banking capital of Switzerland"s German-speaking cantons. One meeting took place in a closed session at the Hotel Baur au Lac, where Evita was a guest of the Inst.i.tuto Suizo-Argentino. The president of the inst.i.tute, Professor William Dunkel, introduced her to an audience of more than two hundred Swiss bankers and businessmen, briefing them on the many opportunities in the "New Argentina." Many of these opportunities would be under the control of familiar friends and clients.
A MAY 15, 1948 memo to FBI director Hoover on a postwar n.a.z.i radio network that had mentioned Bormann by name twice in 1947 before being broken up by the British.
BORMANN RETURNED BRIEFLY TO HIS HIDEOUT in the Austrian mountains-by now a slimmer, fitter, and poorer man than he had been for years. Although believed by some to be dead, he had been tried in absentia by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in October 1946 and sentenced to death. In late 1947, the British Army had broken up a clandestine n.a.z.i radio network that had mentioned Bormann twice by name in May 1947, information the FBI took seriously (see doc.u.ment on opposite page). On August 16, 1947, a guide led him and his bodyguards over a secret route through the Alps to a base just north of Udine in Italy. In December he was ready for the next leg of his journey, but it would not pa.s.s unnoticed. Capt. Ian Bell, a war crimes investigator based in Italy from the British Army"s Judge Advocate General"s office, had been tipped off about Bormann"s presence. Bell, who had captured a number of wanted Italian war criminals, ordered a spotter plane to fly over the area where he had been told that Bormann and his two-hundred-man bodyguard were gathered. Two days later Bell called in an air strike; an American aircraft flew over and dropped a bomb, a number of the SS men made a break for it and were arrested, and under interrogation they admitted that they were shielding Martin Bormann. The SS told the British that Bormann was planning to flee, and provided details of the route and timing.
Bell and two of his sergeants lay in wait at a spot where they had been told Bormann would pa.s.s, reversing their jeep and trailer into a farm driveway. A short while later they saw a small convoy on the road below them-a large black car and two trucks with trailers. Capt. Bell estimated there were sixteen men in total, six in each truck and another three with Bormann in the staff car-too many for him and his two lightly armed NCOs to take on. They followed the convoy until Bell had the chance to use a telephone in a roadside inn to contact his headquarters. He was shocked by what his commanding officer told him: "Follow, but do not apprehend, now I repeat, do not apprehend." Over the next two days the British officer followed his quarry for more than 670 miles.
The German convoy pa.s.sed through police and military roadblocks without any trouble, arriving at the docks in the Italian port of Bari in the early hours of a December morning in 1947. From cover, Bell and his men watched the vehicles being hoisted aboard a freighter by cranes and Martin Bormann walking up the gangway. The moment the last vehicle was put into the hold, the cranes swung away, the mooring cables were thrown off, and the ship moved away from the quayside. When Bell checked the ship"s destination with the port authorities later that morning, he was told it was Argentina.
As Bell explained during an interview in a doc.u.mentary aired on British television in 1999, he "very much" regretted not arresting Bormann: We were absolutely devastated and it took us a little while to get over the trauma of seeing him get away, one of the biggest; Hitler"s right-hand man to just be at liberty to board a ship and go to freedom. After all the trouble and the journey we had and the strain of having to restrain ourselves from doing something was very hard on us. And just to see that, just go away like that and not be able to do anything about it, yes, I was very upset about, I was very disheartened. But that was life, we had to get on with it, and go back to headquarters and take on another role, another brief.
Bell was asked how Bormann could have been allowed to go free and who he thought was responsible.
We were sure that the Vatican had a lot to do with Martin Bormann"s escape, because nowhere down the whole line was he ever stopped by the Carabinieri [the military force charged with police duties among civilian populations in Italy] or any army personnel; he was allowed through with complete liberty. It had been well organized. Who else could do that but the cooperation [sic] between the Vatican and the Italian government?
Martin Borman arrived in Buenos Aires on May 17, 1948, on the ship Giovanna C from Genoa. (Although it is not evident when or where Bormann changed ship, the Giovanna C was almost definitely not the same vessel that Bormann and his vehicles had boarded in Bari.) He was dressed as a Jesuit priest, and he entered the country on a Vatican pa.s.sport identifying him as the Reverend Juan Gomez. A few weeks later he registered at the Apostolic Nunciature in Buenos Aires as a stateless person and was given Ident.i.ty Certificate No. 073, 909. On October 12, 1948, he was given the coveted "blue stamp" granting him permission to remain in Argentina permanently. With dreadful irony, Martin Bormann was now known, among other pseudonyms, by the Jewish name Eliezer Goldstein.
Bormann and the Perons met in Buenos Aires shortly after the Reichsleiter arrived. The final negotiations over the n.a.z.i treasure would have been heated and protracted. Doc.u.ments made public in 1955 after the fall of Peron, and later in 1970, showed that the Perons handed Bormann his promised 25 percent. The physical aspect of the treasure-outside of investments carefully structured by Ludwig Freude on behalf of his n.a.z.i paymaster, which the Perons had left untouched-was impressive: 187,692,400 gold marks 17,576,386 U.S. dollars 4,632,500 pounds sterling 24,976,442 Swiss francs 8,370,000 Dutch florins 54,968,000 French francs 192 pounds of platinum 2.77 tons of gold 4,638 carats of diamonds and other precious stones Bormann"s quarter of these physical a.s.sets was still a ma.s.sive fortune. Coupled with investments in over three hundred companies across the whole economic spectrum of Latin America-banks, industry, and agriculture-with Lahusen alone getting 80 million pesos-this money became "a major factor in the economic life of South America."
The sailor Heinrich Bethe was present when Bormann once again met with his Fuhrer at Inalco later the same year. Bormann, now disguised as "Father Augustin," arrived wearing priest"s clothing. He was there for just over a week. On the final day of his stay, Hitler and Bormann had a private meeting that lasted almost three hours, after which he left the Center.
By the time Bormann arrived in Argentina in 1948, the world was a very different place from the one in which Col. Peron had first got involved in Aktion Feuerland with the agents of the Third Reich. The time for swastikas and defiant rallies was long over; Bormann, ever the realist, recognized that, and he would be content (once he had settled certain scores) to oversee the substantial remaining part of the looted wealth. He would be a regular visitor to the Center, but, confident of the close protection he had bought from the Perons, he spent most of his time in Buenos Aires, where he could oil the wheels of the Organization and plan for a secure financial future.
TWO OF THE MOST IMPORTANT PLAYERS in the n.a.z.is" attempted seduction of Argentina were the millionaire La Falda hoteliers Walter and Ida Eichhorn. They had been supporters and friends of the n.a.z.i Party and Hitler since at least 1925, and Hitler would visit them-without Eva-in 1949 at La Falda.
The Eichhorns first came to the attention of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover in a couriered doc.u.ment from the American emba.s.sy in London in September 1945. After reporting what was known of the Eichhorns" relationship with Hitler, the doc.u.ment ends with a paraphrased quote