The Ratlines
How the U.S. Government and the Vatican Helped Nazis Escape at the End of World War II
As World War II reached its end, Stalin’s army occupied vast regions of Europe. The threat of Nazism was quickly surpassed by the specter of Communism. Both the U.S. and the Vatican, two other influential powers in Europe, feared the growing influence of Communism. For the U.S., the threat was a militaristic one, as the Red Army was both vast and ruthless, as it clearly demonstrated in its conquest of the Nazi empire. For the Vatican, the threat was a religious one, as Communism was an explicitly secular ideology. However, in both cases, a key beneficiary of the these growing fears were the Nazis themselves. By simply being anti-Communist, many Nazis were able to avoid punishment for their crimes against humanity, in the form of escape routes known as “the ratlines,” which both the U.S. and the Vatican played a large role in creating.
For decades, the Vatican considered Communism to be its main ideological foe. This animosity largely started in the 1920s as Bolshevism arose throughout Europe, resulting in brutal killings of many Catholic clerics. Even into the 1940s, as Fascism established itself as another powerful and ruthless ideological force in Europe, the Vatican considered Communism to be the greater of two evils. In 1943, Monsignor Domenico Tardini, a secretary for the Holy See, conveyed this position in a report he made to Western diplomats: “If even one of these evils - Communism, for example - were to remain an active force, Europe would, within a few years, be in a situation identical with that in which it finds itself today.” Throughout the war, the Vatican exhibited a pattern of selective condemnation, openly denouncing the crimes committed by the Soviets, but remaining silent about the Nazis.
The Vatican’s tepid response to Nazi crimes can in part be attributed to the convictions of one man, Eugenio Pacelli, who later became Pope Pius XII. In 1919, the future pope was living in Munich, which at the time was the center of fierce fighting between Communist Separatists and anti-Communist troops. The Communist uprising in Munich was quickly put down, but not before brutal violence by both sides was inflicted. Pacelli’s residence was in the midst of a crossfire between the remaining Communist troops and the anti-communist forces. At one point, several Communist soldiers entered his residence and threatened Pacelli by aiming their guns at his head. Pacelli was able to convince them to leave by cooly saying, “it is never wise to kill a diplomat,” nonetheless, the experience left Pacelli with a deeply personal fear of Communism, which influenced his future policies as pope.
The Vatican’s denouncements of Communism but relative silence on Nazism created an environment of tolerance for many Catholic priests who sympathized with the Nazis, either secretly or openly. Such priests played a crucial role in the establishment of the ratlines. At the end of the war, there were millions of displaced persons throughout Europe. Many of these people could not return to their homes because they were destroyed, or because their homelands were now occupied by Stalin’s empire. The Vatican sponsored the establishment of camps for such persons, where they could provide humanitarian aid. However, in addition to legitimate refugees, these camps were full of former Nazis, who removed their uniforms in order to blend in with the rest of the population. While it is true that many priests provided aid to these Nazis unknowingly, there were also many who knew which displaced persons were Nazis, and helped them anyway, or even went out of their way to assist them.
Perhaps the most notorious of these Nazi-sympathizing priests was a Catholic Bishop by the Name of Alois Hudal. Before the war’s end, Hudal was outspoken about his support of the Nazi cause. His treatise, "The Foundations of National Socialism," openly praised Nazism, and throughout the war Hudal toured throughout Germany and Italy delivering public and widely attended pro-Nazi speeches. Hudal’s efforts did not go unnoticed by the Nazi party. Hudal established close contacts with many Nazis in the High Command, including Hitler’s Vice Chancellor, Franz Von Papen, and possessed a golden Nazi Party membership badge, granted only to the earliest and most faithful supporters of the Nazi cause.
Despite his proximity to the Nazis, Hudal was a trusted friend of Pope Pius XII, who promoted Hudal from the relatively low rank of rector at a German seminary to “Titular Bishop” a job which granted Hudal much more power within the Holy Office, a branch of the Vatican. Hudal used his newfound power to rescue former Nazis from internment camps. In particular, his new rank allowed him to establish contacts with the Pontifical Commission for Assistance, which was largely responsible for the Vatican’s refugee camps, and played the crucial role in issuing travel documents to displaced persons.
Following his promotion, Hudal was given permission to visit camps in Italy which housed German internees and work as a religious minister. These camps in particular were teeming with former Nazis, so it was remarkable that Hudal was chosen for the job, given his unabashed pro-Nazi sentiments. As Journalist Mark Aarons notes, “for the Vatican to obtain an Allied travel pass for Hudal to visit the German internees was a bit like giving whisky to an alcoholic and telling him not to drink; the resulting corruption was inevitable.” Hudal was a well-recognized figure among the Nazi ranks, so while visiting these camps, former Nazis naturally sought him out for assistance. Once made aware of the Nazis who needed his help, Hudal used his contacts in the Pontifical Commission for Assistance to obtain Vatican passports and other identity and travel documents, which he used to aid his Nazi friends.
Yet another way Hudal procured travel documents and identity papers for Nazis was through the Red Cross. The Red Cross was dealing with such a great number of displaced persons that there was not sufficient time to properly vet each applicant seeking identity papers. As such, only nominal requirements had to be met in order for a Red Cross passport to be issued. In most cases, all that was required was a name and a letter of voucher, both of which Hudal could easily supply to his Nazi friends, given his social status. As Gertrude Dupuis, who at the time was a senior official in the Rome branch of the Red Cross, recalls, “How could we refuse to accept the word of priests?”
In addition to using his rank to acquire passports and identity cards, Hudal also used his close ties to the Pope to acquire funding for the Pontifical Commission for Assistance, which he used to procure emigration visas, particularly to South American countries, which were “Catholic Nations” sympathetic to the Pontifical Commission’s mission. As historian Gerald Steinacher notes, “Pope Pius XII supported this aid organization wholeheartedly… it was something like the Pope’s pet project.” Once the necessary paperwork had been produced, Hudal helped the "former" Nazis make their way to the Italian port of Genoa, using his influence to establish a network of safe houses where they could stay while traveling. Once they arrived in Genoa, the former Nazis boarded ships bound for Argentina, where they could live new lives under false identities, evading justice for their crimes.
While the total number of Nazis who escaped using forged documents acquired by the Vatican may never be known, a number of notable examples have come to light. Among them are Adolf Eichmann, a key architect of the Holocaust, Josef Mengele, who tortured and performed medical experiments on prisoners in Auschwitz, and Klaus Barbie, a notoriously brutal Gestapo officer stationed in France. Among the Nazis assisted by Hudal in particular are Walter Rauff, who invented the mobile gas vans used to kill women and children, and Franz Stangl, who oversaw the Treblinka extermination camp. Throughout his life, Hudal showed no remorse over his role in helping war criminals escape justice: “I thank God that He (allowed me) to visit and comfort many victims in their prisons and concentration camps and (to help) them escape with false identity papers.”
While the Vatican’s religious fear of Communism created an environment of tolerance for Nazi sympathizers like Hudal, in the U.S., the fear of the Soviet military apparatus prompted a recruitment program for Nazi scientists known as “Operation Paperclip.” As the war drew to a close, Allied forces captured the plans for a number of Nazi weapons projects. In May of 1945, the U.S. captured a German submarine transporting Heinz Schlicke, a Nazi Scientist tasked with the research and development of new weapons for the German army. The submarine also contained a number of Schlicke’s plans, including blueprints for glide bombs, rockets, and jet airplanes (the first of their kind). U.S. forces also captured Nazi plans for lethal biological weapons, such as the nerve gas Sarin.
The U.S. feared that the scientists behind these plans would be captured by the Soviets. Additionally, many officers in the U.S. command thought that such weapons would be valuable in the ongoing war with Japan. They hatched a plan to extradite Nazi scientists, using a list of names they acquired from a Polish lab technician, dubbing the project “Operation Paperclip.” In August of 1945, the Pentagon contacted the Nazi scientists on the list who were tasked with developing rockets, offering them one year contracts, and allowing them to bring their families with them to the United States. Many of these scientists were aware that the Nazi empire was soon to fall, so they took the Pentagon up on its offer. In some cases, the Nazi scientists were flown directly to America from Germany. In others cases, like the Vatican, the U.S. funded the procurement of forged travel documents to South America. After arriving, the Nazi Scientists were welcomed to America by the Pentagon as legal immigrants.
While these scientists did not end up playing any significant role in the Pacific front, they were influential in the development of the American Space Program. Wernher Von Braun, a Nazi rocket scientist played a large role in the development of the Apollo space program, and the eventual Apollo moon landing. Another Nazi named Hubertus Strughold helped develop the pressurized space suits which astronauts wore while taking the first steps on the moon. 120 other Nazis worked on the Saturn V launch vehicle. In their “past lives,” such scientists were not merely technicians working on the R&D of Nazi projects , but were keenly aware of the Holocaust, and enthusiastic enablers of the atrocities being committed. Wernher Von Braun, for instance, hand selected slave laborers to build his rockets out of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp. Despite this history, which U.S. command was aware of, such Nazi scientists were publicly lauded as heroes of the Space Race. In fact, Wernher Von Braun was nearly awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by the Ford Administration.
In its ongoing competition with the Soviet Union, the U.S. also employed over 1,000 Nazis as spies in the Soviet occupied regions of Germany. The decision to employ these Nazis was made at the highest levels of U.S. intelligence agencies in including by the Directors of the CIA and FBI, Allen Dulles and J. Edgar Hoover, respectively. However, this decision was not based on any concrete evidence proving the worth of these Nazis as agents for the U.S. Many of these Nazis embellished both the degree of their anti-Communist beliefs and their history of working in anti-communist programs for Germany. The result was that these Nazis failed to provide any valuable intel. Additionally, many of them turned out to be Soviet double-agents. In short, the intelligence aspect of Operation Paperclip failed to do anything other than allow over 1,000 Nazis to escape justice for their crimes against humanity.
While there were few beneficiaries to the Cold War, an unexpected one was the Nazis. The all-encompassing fear of Communism- both religious and political- allowed the Nazis to be seen as the lesser of two evils, and, in the aforementioned cases, escape any form of justice. The fact that their role in the deaths of millions was so easily overlooked in light of the “abstract” threat posed by Communism is an enduring testament to the degree which antisemitism is still deeply ingrained in the hegemony of Western thought.
Sources
Aarons, Mark, and John Loftus. Unholy Trinity: the Vatican, the Nazis, and the Swiss Banks. New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 1999.
How Did Nazis Escape After the War/Gerald Steinacher. Oxford University Press, May 19, 2011. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_GcT4En78U.
Jacobsen, Annie. Operation Paperclip: the Secret Intelligence Program to Bring Nazi Scientists to America. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2014.
“The Ratlines: What Did the Vatican Know about Nazi Escape Routes?: .” DW.com, January 3, 2020.
Steinacher, Gerald. Nazis on the Run: How Hitler's Henchmen Fled Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
“US Used Nazis as Cold War Spies.” BBC News. BBC, October 28, 2014. https://www.bbc.com/ news/world-us-canada-29795749.
“World War II: Operation Paperclip.” Jewish Virtual Library, 2020. https:// www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/operation-paperclip.
Steinacher, Gerald. “With the Pope's Blessing? The Pontifical Commission for Refugees and Its Aid for Nazi and Axis War Criminals.” ResearchGate, January 2011.