The Rise of the Fourth Reich - ThereAreNoSunglasses

THE RATLINES 131rator general of the Catholic Order of German Knights. On May 1, 1933,in a Nazi- sanctioned celebration of the pagan Walpurgis holiday, Hudalmade a particularly impassioned speech in Rome before assembled Churchand Nazi leaders as well as the expatriate German community. “Germanunity is my strength, my strength is German might,” he told the crowd.It was, in fact, a Franciscan friar serving under Bishop Hudal whohelped arrange a Red Cross passport and visa to Argentina in 1950 forObersturmbannfuehrer Adolf Eichmann, the exterminator of Jews whohad managed to slip away from American captors at the end of the war.Bishop Hudal, in his later memoirs, thanked God he was able to help somany escape with false identity papers.Many of these “false identity papers” were documents issued by theCommissione Pontificia d’Assistenza, or the Vatican Refugee Organization.While not full passports themselves, these Vatican identity paperswere used to obtain a Displaced Person passport from the InternationalRed Cross, which, in turn, was used to gain a visa. Supposedly, the RedCross checked the backgrounds of applicants, but usually it was sufficientto have the word of a priest or a bishop. This method of aiding escapingNazis—the one favored by Bishop Hudal—came to be known as the“Vatican ratlines.”For example, Ante Pavelic, the wartime pro-Nazi fascist dictator ofCroatia, who was given a private audience with Pope Pius XII shortly aftertaking power in 1941, escaped to South America after the war with aRed Cross passport gained through a Vatican document.ONE OF THE countries in which the Auslandsorganisation worked withparticular success was Argentina. “There it has been able to operate withoutany disguise or front. All of the more than 200,000 Argentine Nazisare members, not of an Argentine subor ganization of the Nazi Party, butof the German Party itself, and hold membership cards signed by RobertLey, leader of the German Workers’ Front—which means, quite obviously,that Berlin considered, and still considers, Argentina not so muchan independent foreign country as a German Gau [district],” noted CurtReiss.