After the end of World War II, the world scrambled to return to normal, while the
Allied victors attempted to bring justice to the Nazis for their crimes against humanity.
"Rudolf Hess, you must plead guilty or not guilty."
"Nein."
While some were captured, imprisoned, and executed,
many managed to flee Germany and live their lives away from the grasp of the Allies.
And new evidence shows that some surprising groups helped the Nazis
and their collaborators escape to a life of freedom — either by mistake or by design.
Some of this aid was unwitting. Over 8,000 Nazis were able to travel to Britain and Canada,
because they had mistakenly been approved travel documents from the Red Cross. The organization
both admitted to and apologized for this, blaming overworked administrators. That said,
the number of accidental approvals on the part of the Red Cross seems to be much higher than
previously admitted. Although Britain and Canada took around 8,000 Nazis in 1947,
most made their way to Spain and the Americas. In particular, many sought refuge in Argentina,
which ironically took in a significant number of Jewish refugees as well.
Not every Nazi that reached freedom was an accident, though. In particular, the
Vatican had a hand in sending thousands of Adolf Hitler's henchmen to a peaceful post-war life,
by giving them false identities in a purported scheme to return Christianity to the peak of its
powers. While the Vatican had an interest in preserving former Nazis within Europe,
the Pope himself had his reasons for keeping Adolf Hitler's followers alive and well.
Pope Pius XII was staunchly anti-Semitic and anti-Communist, and as one of his first acts as
supreme pontiff, he rehabilitated a French far-right fascist group condemned by his
predecessor. The length of his involvement in the Nazi migration is not fully known,
but his support for the Nazis who aided anti-communist governments in South America
suggest he likely would have approved of the Vatican's methods. In addition,
the Red Cross was overwhelmed with refugees at the time, and asked the Vatican to help deal with
the thousands of travel papers that had piled onto their desks. The result was the spread of
Nazis across Europe, North America, and South America — sometimes along with escaping Jews.
Though the organization has since condemned its own inaction,
at the time it deemed itself too busy with other refugees to fully deal with the situation.
Meanwhile, a Nazi-sympathizing bishop named Alois Karl Hudal helped create a series of
so-called "ratlines," along which Nazis could flee with their newly-acquired false papers.
Hudal thought himself a charitable man, rescuing scapegoats of the war,
yet reportedly personally secured the safety of significant Holocaust officials.
The ratlines extended across Europe, helping some of the most despicable war criminals of the Second
World War escape into peace and obscurity in the years following 1945. For example,
the concentration camp commander and mass murderer Franz Stangl was escorted to the Vatican and
personally met by Bishop Alois Karl Hudal, who saw Stangl off to Syria and eventually Brazil.
The networks of sympathetic houses and hideouts, many of them churches, stretched over the Alps,
allowing thousands of Nazis to scurry from Austria to Genoa,
where they could board ships to sail across the Atlantic. The escape system was so heavily
associated with the Catholic Church that it was even referred to as the "monastery route."
This wasn't a highly organized system, however, and it relied heavily on word-of-mouth — and
a lot of waiting around on the part of the escaping Nazis. Indeed, the entire operation
would likely have fallen apart without the aid and guidance of the Church itself.
While the extent of Pope Pius' XII's involvement in organizing the ratlines isn’t entirely known,
his inaction before, during, and after the war had aided Hitler's cause greatly.
Newly opened documents from the closely-guarded Vatican archives have revealed the Pope's silence
surrounding the genocide of the Jews was not one out of ignorance. He learned of the Holocaust in
late 1942, albeit having been told by his pontiff that the reports were exaggerated.
Still, he subsequently told the American government that they were not
able to confirm whether the Nazis were committing war crimes.
By the war's end, Nazis such as Adolf Eichmann, Josef Mengele, and Klaus Barbie had all made it
to the shores of South America, each with their own Church-earned passport in hand.
While some would eventually be captured, tried, and executed, others lived the rest
of their lives in their adopted homes, never to face justice for their heinous crimes.
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