ODESSA
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- See Odessa (disambiguation) for other uses of the word "Odessa".
ODESSA (German: Organisation der ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen, "Organization of Former SS-Members") is the name commonly given to an international Nazi network alleged to have been set up towards the end of World War II by a group of SS officers. Some historians, while acknowledging that there were secret postwar organisations of former SS members, deny that any organisation called ODESSA ever existed.
The purpose of such groups was to establish and facilitate secret escape routes, called ratlines, out of Germany to South America and the Middle East for hunted members. With alleged ties to Argentina, Egypt, Brazil, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and the Vatican, they operated out of Buenos Aires and helped Adolf Eichmann, Josef Mengele, Erich Priebke, Aribert Heim, Eduard Roschmann and many other SS members find refuge in Latin America and the Middle East.
SS-Obersturmbannführer Otto Skorzeny and Sturmbannführer Alfred Naujocks were both believed to have been active in such organizations, but these suppositions have never been proven. Similarly, General Reinhard Gehlen's entire intelligence organisation that was employed and protected by U.S. intelligence within a few months of the end of the war (and which subsequently became an important part of NATO intelligence in eastern Europe as well as of Gladio, NATO's secret "stay-behind" paramilitary organizations), came under suspicion. In Argentina, Rodolfo Freude was allegedly a member of the network. It is alleged that Hans Rudel was active in Argentina/ODESSA, as was James Jesus Angleton of the OSS postwar and Juan Peron as well as Eva Peron. Alois Brunner is alleged to have escaped to Syria via ODESSA.
Persons claiming to represent ODESSA claimed responsibility in a note for the 9 July 1979 car bombing in France aimed at anti-Nazi activists Serge and Beate Klarsfeld.
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[edit] History
According to Simon Wiesenthal, ODESSA was set up in 1946 to aid fugitive Nazis. Other sources, such as many interviews by the ZDF German TV station with former SS men, suggest that ODESSA never was the single world-wide secret organization that Wiesenthal described, but that there were several organizations, both overt and covert (including the CIA and several Latin American governments), that helped ex-SS men.
Long before the ZDF TV network, historian Gitta Sereny wrote in her 1974 book Into that Darkness, based on interviews with the former commander of the extermination camp at Treblinka, Franz Stangl (see References below), that ODESSA had never existed. She wrote: "The prosecutors at the Ludwigsburg Central Authority for the Investigation into Nazi Crimes, who know precisely how the postwar lives of certain individuals now living in South America have been financed, have searched all their thousands of documents from beginning to end, but say they are totally unable to authenticate 'Odessa.' Not that this matters greatly: there certainly were various kinds of Nazi aid organisations after the war—it would have been astonishing if there hadn't been."[1]
In his interviews with Sereny, Stangl denied any knowledge of a group called ODESSA. Recent biographies of Adolf Eichmann (who also escaped to South America) and Heinrich Himmler, the alleged founder of ODESSA, make no reference to such an organisation. [2]
Sereny attributed the fact that SS members could escape more to postwar chaos and the inability of the Roman Catholic Church, the Red Cross and the American military to verify the claims of people who came to them for help than to the activities of an underground Nazi organisation. She identifies a Vatican official, Bishop Aloïs Hudal, not former SS men, as the principal agent in helping Nazis leave Italy for South America.
Uki Goñi, in his 2002 book The Real Odessa: Smuggling the Nazis to Perón's Argentina (see References) suggests that Sereny's more complex, less conspiratorial, story is closer to the truth. The book prompted a US House of Representatives resolution in 2003, urging Argentina to open their hitherto secret documents concerning this matter.
Of particular importance in examining the postwar activities of high-ranking Nazis is Paul Manning's book Martin Bormann: Nazi in Exile (Lyle Stuart, Inc., 1980, ISBN 0-8184-0309-8, also available online), which details Martin Bormann's rise to power through the Nazi Party and as Hitler's Chief of Staff. During the war, Manning himself was a correspondent for the fledgling CBS News along with Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite in London, and his reporting and subsequent researches present Bormann's cunning and skill in the organization and planning for the flight of Nazi-controlled capital from Europe during the dimming years of the war (notwithstanding the possibility of Bormann's death in Berlin on May 1, 1945).
According to Manning, "eventually, over 10,000 former German military made it to South America along escape routes ODESSA and Deutsche Hilfsverein…" (page 181.) While in Manning ODESSA itself is incidental, the continuing existence of the Bormann Organization is, according to him, a much larger and more menacing fact. None of this has been convincingly proved.
[edit] Argentina's Nazi files
On 14 May 2003, based on the revelations contained in (Uki Goñi's book) The Real Odessa, the United States House of Representatives passed a resolution urging Argentina to release its secret Nazi records; the resolution was sponsored by New York Representative Maurice Hinchey.
The following is an extract of House Resolution 235 (for the full text, see the External links section):
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 14 May 2003
(...)RESOLUTION Urging the Government of Argentina to build upon the steps it has taken to shed light on the relocation to Argentina of Nazis and other war criminals following the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945 and the subsequent end of World War II and release all official records pertaining to the relocation to Argentina of Nazis and other war criminals following these events.
Whereas Nazis and other war criminals seeking to avoid prosecution for their role in the Holocaust, one of the most horrific crimes ever witnessed by human kind, were permitted to relocate to Argentina following the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945 and the subsequent end of World War II.
Whereas some of the most notorious criminals of the Holocaust resided in Argentina, including Adolf Eichmann, Edward Roschmann, Erich Priebke, Kurt Christmann, and Ante Pavelic.
(...)Whereas Argentina has not responded to requests from numerous researchers for access to Argentina's archives on the relocation of Nazis and other war criminals.
(...)Whereas the release of such records by the Government of Argentina will be viewed as an important and positive gesture to all people who seek an accurate accounting of history: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that the Government of Argentina should--
(1) build upon the steps it has taken to shed light on the relocation to Argentina of Nazis and other war criminals following the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945 and the subsequent end of World War II.
(2) make public all of Argentina's official records pertaining to the relocation to Argentina of Nazis and other war criminals.
From December 2002, the Argentine government in Buenos Aires refused calls from the Wiesenthal Center for the release of 58 files dealing with the escape of national socialists to Argentina. In July 2003, two months after the passing of House Resolution 235, two of the files were opened.
Also, Argentina's government had, in 1938 (on the verge of World War II, and with Hitler's politics regarding Jews already on the move), sanctioned an immigration law restricting access to any individual scorned or forsaken by his country's government. This was implicitly targeted for Jews and other minorities fleeing Germany at the time. This law was discovered and denounced by Argentine writer Uki Goñi. This legislation, though already in disuse for many years, was finally repealed on 8 June 2005.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Gitta Sereny, Into that Darkness (Pimlico 1974), 274
- ^ David Cesarini, Eichmann: His Life and Crimes (Vintage 2004); Peter Padfield: Himmler: Reichsfuhrer SS (Macmillan 1990)
- "A la caza del ultimo Nazi", El Mundo, October 30, 2005.
- Goñi, Uki (2002): The Real Odessa: Smuggling the Nazis to Perón's Argentina. New York; London: Granta Books. ISBN 1-86207-581-6 (hardcover); ISBN 1-86207-552-2 (paperback, 2003)
- Sereny, Gitta (1974): Into that Darkness. From Mercy Killings to Mass Murder. Republished (1983) as Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience. New York: Vintage. ISBN 0-394-71035-5.
- Martin A. Lee (1997): The Beast Reawakens. Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 0-316-51959-6.
[edit] External links
- Information on ODESSA – From the Jewish Virtual Library
- ZDF.de (2002). "Mythos Odessa: Wahrheit oder Legende?" (German) ("The Myth of ODESSA: Truth or legend?")
- ODESSA and Nazis in Latin America – From The Straight Dope syndicated column's website
- Full text of (US) House (of Representatives) Resolution 235: "Argentina urged to open Nazi files" – From Uki Goñi's website
