Argentina’s government will declassify all government-held files on Nazi fugitives who settled in Argentina after World War II, a top official has confirmed. Cabinet Chief Guillermo Francos announced Tuesday that President Javier Milei had ordered the release and declassification of the archives. The files will concern “Nazis who sought refuge in Argentina and were protected for many years,” Francos explained in an exclusive interview with journalist Alfredo Leuco for the DNEWS media outlet. The documents will likely include Nazi-linked bank accounts and archival records detailing the use of Nazi “ratlines” which were monetary and logistic pathways Nazis used to escape justice and flee Argentina following the war., as well as records held by Argentina’s Defence Ministry, said the official.
The Red Cross and the Vatican both helped thousands of Nazi war criminals and collaborators to escape after the second world war, according to a book that pulls together evidence from unpublished documents. The Red Cross has previously acknowledged that its efforts to help refugees were used by Nazis because administrators were overwhelmed, but the research suggests the numbers were much higher than thought. The documents include Red Cross travel documents issued mistakenly to Nazis in the postwar chaos.Gerald Steinacher, a research fellow at Harvard University, was given access to thousands of internal documents in the archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). They throw light on how and why mass murderers such as Adolf Eichmann, Josef Mengele and Klaus Barbie and thousands of others evaded capture by the allies.
Milei’s decision follows a meeting at the Casa Rosada on February 17, 2025, between the head of state and US Republican Senator Steve Daines, an ally of US President Donald Trump and advocate for public access to the documents. Francos made his announcement just a day after Presidential Spokesperson Manuel Adorni said that secret files on the actions of the Armed Forces during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship would be declassified. “The President has instructed that all relevant documents from any state institution be made public because there is no reason to keep them classified,” Francos said. Like Adorni’s announcement on the military files, he noted that an earlier government decree had ordered the release of these files, but that it had never been implemented. “What the President is saying is that these are historical records that must be available in the National General Archive so that anyone can access them,” explained the Cabinet chief.
A number of notorious Nazi war criminals escaped and found refuge in Argentina after World War II. Many of the fugitives arrived in the immediate post-war years, during the first government of Juan Domingo Perón, and were shielded from justice for decades. By comparing lists of wanted war criminals to travel documents, Steinacher says Britain and Canada alone inadvertently took in around 8,000 former Waffen-SS members in 1947, many on the basis of valid documents issued mistakenly. The documents – which are discussed in Steinacher’s book Nazis on the Run: How Hitler’s henchmen fled justice – offer a significant insight into Vatican thinking, particularly, because its own archives beyond 1939 are still closed. The Vatican has consistently refused to comment. Steinacher believes the Vatican’s help was based on a hoped-for revival of European Christianity and dread of the Soviet Union. But through the Vatican Refugee Commission, war criminals were knowingly provided with false identities.
The Red Cross, overwhelmed by millions of refugees, relied substantially on Vatican references and the often cursory Allied military checks in issuing travel papers, known as 10.100s. It believed it was primarily helping innocent refugees although correspondence between Red Cross delegations in Genoa, Rome and Geneva shows it was aware Nazis were getting through. “Although the ICRC has publicly apologised, its action went well beyond helping a few people,” said Steinacher. Steinacher says the documents indicate that the Red Cross, mostly in Rome or Genoa, issued at least 120,000 of the 10.100s, and that 90% of ex-Nazis fled via Italy, mostly to Spain, and North and South America – notably Argentina.
Former SS members often mixed with genuine refugees and presented themselves as stateless ethnic Germans to gain transit papers. Jews trying to get to Palestine via Italy were sometimes smuggled over the border with escaping Nazis. Steinacher says that individual Red Cross delegations issued war criminals with 10.100s “out of sympathy for individuals … political attitude, or simply because they were overburdened”. Stolen documents were also used to whisk Nazis to safety. He said: “They were really in a dilemma. It was difficult. It wanted to get rid of the job. Nobody wanted to do it.” The Red Cross refused to comment directly on Steinacher’s findings but the organisation says on its website: “The ICRC has previously deplored the fact that Eichmann and other Nazi criminals misused its travel documents to cover their tracks.”
The ICRC has reaffirmed its “open door” policy towards researchers looking into the organization’s role during the Second World War and its aftermath, following the resurfacing of reports in the media that Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele tricked the ICRC into issuing him a travel document. The ICRC document, which Mengele obtained by using a false name in Genoa (Italy) in 1949, enabled him to escape justice and flee to Argentina. The ICRC had already brought similar cases to light several years ago, when it publicly announced that Adolf Eichmann and Klaus Barbie had also obtained documents by using false identities. Writing in the International Herald Tribune on 10 March 1992,Yves Sandoz, Director of the ICRC’s Department of Principles and Law, wrote: “These men [Barbie, Eichmann and Mengele] and their secret supporters took shameless advantage of a humanitarian service which benefitted half a million people, mostly survivors of concentration camps and refugees from Eastern Europe.” In the wake of the Second World War and the mass population movements it caused, hundreds of thousands of people found themselves without legal documents, and sometimes with no nationality. Many wanted to start a new life on another continent. The ICRC helped tens of thousands of these people by giving them travel documents in accordance with guidelines agreed with the governments concerned. In a number of cases this system was abused.
“We are committed to dealing as openly as possible with painful and regrettable experiences from the past”, said Yves Sandoz. “We would not be human if we did not feel at least some of the anguish that survivors of Mengele s experiments and their relatives must have felt when they heard how this evil man managed to escape justice in the chaos of post-war Europe.” In 1996, the ICRC opened its detailed and extensive collection of archives to researchers. Since then more than 150 academics, journalists and students have consulted documents released under the 50-year rule.
Rene Kosirnik, the head of ICRC’s Working Group on the Second World War, said: “As an institution that seeks to learn from its past, the ICRC is keen to supplement its own research with independent, external scrutiny.” In recent years, after being supplied with a list of aliases used by war criminals and high-ranking Nazis who arrived in Argentina, ICRC researchers have discovered that at least ten of them received ICRC travel documents by deceitful means.They include Erich Priebke, Erich Muller and Gerhard Bohne. “This is not an exact science”, said Rene Kosirnik. “All we can do is check whether we issued travel documents that correspond to the aliases we have been given. Some correspond precisely, others less so.What is certain is that we will search our files as thoroughly as possible and address the issues that arise.” Former SS commander Erich Priebke, who is responsible for the Fosse Ardeatine massacre in Italy, settled in Argentina in 1948, living in Bariloche until his discovery in the 1990s and subsequent extradition to Italy.
Busts of German Nazi leader Adolf Hitler discovered by police in 2017 are displayed during a press conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina, October 2, 2019. (Natacha Pisarenko/AP)
Also among the most infamous was Adolf Eichmann, one of the chief architects of the “Final Solution” — the Nazi party’s genocidal plan to exterminate European Jews. Eichmann arrived in Argentina in 1950 under the alias ‘Ricardo Klement,’ using one of a series of international escape routes for fascists known as the “ratlines.” He lived discreetly in Buenos Aires until 1960, when he was captured by Mossad and taken to Israel, where he was tried and executed. Another notorious fugitive was Josef Mengele, the man known as Auschwitz’s “Angel of Death,” who was infamous for carrying out brutal medical experiments. Mengele arrived in Argentina in 1949 and lived there for a decade before fleeing to Paraguay and later to Brazil, where he died in 1979 under a false identity.
CIA declassified document
Long before American troops were shipped back home from Europe, US spy agencies were already on an anti-Communist footing. And considered Nazis to be assets to be protected and put to “good” use. It means these files Milei is promising to release might actually prove one of those assets was the Head fucking Nazi himself.- The one who painted Europe red with the blood of innocents.
After all these years, the generations that owe their life and liberty to the people who defeated Germany deserve to know. Still, it’s a “be careful what you wish for” scenario.
This truth might get very, very ugly.
