Grey Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler (63 page)

196    
“mansion on Fuerenstrasse”:
Sayers and Kahn,
Plot Against the Peace
.

196    
Falange:
Allan Chase,
Falange: The Axis Secret Army in the Americas
(New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1943).

197    
“obviously Central European”:
Authors’ travels through Patagonia, 2007–09.

197    
Nazi Party membership:
The Associated Press, Berlin, October 17, 1945. See also
http://www.archives.gov/research/holocaust/finding-aid/civilian/rg-84-argentina.html
.

197    
“to celebrate the Anschluss”:
U.S. War Department film, MID 2093, Buenos Aires, April 1938.

198    
“ready to strike”:
Report to Argentine Congress by Deputy Raúl Damonte Taborda, chair of a congressional committee to investigate Nazi activities, September 1941, cited in Chase,
Falange
.

198    
“Wherever you turn”:
Chase,
Falange.

198    
Freude, Perón, Duarté:
New York Times
, “Argentina Evades Its Nazi Past,” March 22, 1997,
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E02E2DD153BF931A15750C0A961958260
.

199    
“number one Nazi”:
U.S. Government,
Blue Book on Argentina, Consultation among the American Republics with Respect to the Argentine Situation; Memorandum of the United States Government
, Washington, DC (New York: Greenberg, 1946).

199    
Perón’s early career:
Multiple sources consulted by researcher Nahuel Coca, Buenos Aires, 2010.
Time
magazine, “Argentina: Boss of the GOU,” November 27, 1944,
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,796883,00.html
.

199    
Perón in Paris:
“O Holocausto, Perón e la Argentina,”
http://www.arlindo-correia.com/140402.html
.

199    
“direct pay of Berlin”:
In 1945, the former diplomat Prince Stephan of Schaumburg-Lippe (an SS lieutenant colonel—who thus outranked the German ambassador to Argentina, Edmund von Thermann) would tell the war crimes commission in Berlin of some specific checks among many such payments: check number 463803, dated June 26, 1941, made out to Eva Duarté in the amount of $33,600; and check number 682117, dated June 30, to Col. Juan Domingo Perón in the sum of $200,000. In 1942, “Evita” was able to buy her own apartment at 1567 Calle Posadas in the exclusive Buenos Aires neighborhood of Recoleta; see Roberto Vacca,
Eva Perón
(Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1971). Von Thermann, the former German ambassador, would confirm the handing over of such payments. He told war crimes investigators that one of the embassy’s messengers was the personal representative of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler and that one of Thermann’s own valets—he was never able to find out which—was the highest-ranking officer in the spy service, in direct communication with Reichsleiter Martin Bormann at the Reich Chancellery. See Silvano Santander,
Técnica de una Traición [The Technique of Treachery]: Juan D. Perón y Eva Duarté—Agentes del Nazismo en la Argentina
(Montevideo, Uruguay: Editorial Antygua 1953); see two notes down, and Von Thermann’s testimony detailed in online PDF entitled “Vier Prinzen zu Schaumburg-Lippe,” listing Supplement of January 15, 1946 to the Consolidated Interrogation Report No. 4, Attachment 76: “Partial List of Purchases for Linz Made in Germany,”
http://edocs.fu-berlin.de/docs/servlets/MCRFileNodeServlet/FUDOCS_derivate_000000000030/
vierprinzen_letzte_fassung_copia.pdf;jsessionid=452DFAE5507E3516FFD859EB792902B6?hosts=
, hosted by Freie Universität, Berlin. The “authorized version” of Evita’s life has her meeting Juan Perón only in May 1944 during relief work following the San Juan earthquake; the documents studied by Santander refute this date.

201    
“tirelessly in exile”:
Ladislas Farago,
Aftermath: Martin Bormann and the Fourth Reich
(New York: Simon & Shuster, 1974). Santander, like other Argentine politicians opposed to the Péron regime, had to go into exile on several occasions. After the war he worked closely with the Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal and was hailed as a “staunch and liberal friend of the Jews” (Jewish Telegraph Agency, Buenos Aires, December 3, 1964).

201    
Santander’s published work:
After publication, in Montevideo in 1953, of Santander’s book
Técnica de una Traición
, there was a concerted effort to silence him. His work was dismissed by several Argentine historians, and the (U.S.-authenticated) documents that he quoted were denounced as “communist fakes”; however, none of the libel suits against him succeeded. In 1956, Santander went back to West Germany to look for further proof of the Nazis’ transfer of their wealth to Argentina with Perón’s complicity. On December 26 that year, the German news magazine
Der Spiegel
published a virulent attack on him titled “The Painstaking Forger.” Many of Santander’s 1953 accusations in
Técnica de una Traición
have subsequently been proved true by the work of researchers, including the authors of this book, as well as by the testimony of contemporary sources such as Von Thermann and Gerda von Arenstorff.

201    
Von Thermann’s memorandum:
Santander,
Técnica de una Traición.

201    
“Siemens & Haske T43 encryption machine”:
Based on the reports that the final messages from Berchtesgaden were to agents in South America, discussed in Mitchell,
Hitler’s Mountain
.

202    
“We always let them win”:
Santander,
Técnica de una Traición
. Also “Final Interrogation Report of Edmund Freiherr von Thermann,” July 11, 1945, NARA, Record Group 59, Records of the Department of State, 862.20235/7-1145. Regarding Niebuhr’s naval rank, “captain” is our translation of
Kapitän zur See
—see “Treatment of Military Ranks” on p. xiv.

202    
Delfino shipping:
Manning,
Bormann
; also “Axis Espionage and Propaganda in Latin America
,
” NARA, Record Group 319, Records of the Army Staff, Records of the Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, Military Intelligence Division. Separate Binder. Quoted in R. L. McGaha, “The Politics of Espionage: Nazi Diplomats and Spies in Argentina, 1933–1945” (PhD dissertation, Ohio University, 2009): “The F.B.I. suspected that the Delfino company and Sandstede’s office were a cover for the movement of German agents, funds, and propaganda materials from Europe to South America.… Sandstede used his cover as a Casa Delfino employee to spy for the Nazis.”

203    
“recalled to Berlin”:
Time
magazine, “Argentina: Hunting a Nazi,” September 8, 1941. See also
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,849464,00.html
.

203    
“simply waved through”:
Santander,
Técnica de una Traición.

203    
Damonte report:
Damonte Taborda, cited in Chase,
Falange
.
Time
magazine (see two notes above) suggested that it would not be long before Ambassador von Thermann would have to “pack his trunks.” This expectation was premature by a year.

203    
“enjoy the trust of the Nazi agents”:
Santander,
Técnica de una Traición.

204    
Faupel’s voyage:
Paul Meskil,
Hitler’s Heirs
(New York: Pyramid Books, 1961); Santander,
Técnica de una Traición.

204    
Scasso:
Marysa Navarro Gerassi, “Argentine Nationalism of the Right,”
Studies in Comparative International Development
1, no. 12 (1965).

204    
“maintain it at all costs”:
Santander,
Técnica de una Traición.

205    
Meynen-Niebuhr correspondence:
Ibid.

206    
“To hell with the U.S.”:
Time
magazine, “The Americas: Misunderstood Argentina,” September 20, 1943,
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,774570,00.html
.

206    
“Vice President Perón moved into overdrive”:
Joseph Page,
Perón: A Biography
(London: Random House, 1983).

207    
Goebbels’s article:
Das Reich
, March 26, 1944, from Sayers and Kahn,
Plot Against the Peace
.

207    
Perón’s vision:
Sayers and Kahn,
Plot Against the Peace.

207    
“threat of an Allied trade embargo”:
Time
magazine, “Argentina: Action Ahead,” July 10, 1944,
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,791494,00.html
. See also Roosevelt’s letter to Winston Churchill at docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/PSF/BOX37/a335bb02.html. Britain’s continuing desperate need for food imports in the immediate postwar years, when food rationing was even more severe than during the war, may explain the unwillingness of British governments to draw attention to Argentina’s postwar dealings with Nazis refugees.

208    
1944 Freude-Faupel correspondence:
Santander,
Técnica de una Traición.

209    
“he would meet Martin Bormann there”:
Authors’ conversation with Jorge Silvio Adeodato Colotto, Perón’s former police bodyguard, Buenos Aires, 2008.

209    
Paul Ascher:
“German Disembarkation at San Clemente del Tuyu,” declassified Argentine document, Coordinación Federal CF-OP-2315 from Central de Reunión to Navy Ministry, April 18, 1945, Argentine National Archive in Buenos Aires. For facsimile copy, see Farago,
Aftermath
. Captain junior grade is our translation of
Fregattenkapitän
—see “Treatment of Military Ranks” on p. xiv.

209    
Hermann Göring:
U.S. State Department report, 1945. Cited in Chesnoff,
Pack of Thieves
. See also Corky Siemaszko, “Memo Hit Swiss Over Nazi Loot,”
New York Daily News
, December 5, 1996,
http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/news/1996/12/
05/1996-12-05_memo_hit_swiss_over_nazi_loot.html
.