Ratlines (World War II)

The ratlines were systems of escape routes used by German Nazis and other fascists to flee Europe from 1945 onwards in the aftermath of World War II. These routes mainly led toward havens in South America – particularly Argentina – in addition to Brazil, Chile, and Paraguay. Some escapees also settled at the various transfer points or used them to flee elsewhere.
Two primary routes from Germany to South America developed independently with their operators eventually collaborating; the first transferred through Spain and the second through Rome and Genoa. The ratlines were supported by some clergy of the Catholic Church, such as Austrian bishop Alois Hudal and Croatian priest Krunoslav Draganović, as well as some outlets of the International Committee of the Red Cross. The Nazis paid Argentine officials to shield their agents, bolstering the rise of Juan Perón, whose regime set up additional ratlines through Scandinavia and Switzerland.
Starting in 1947, the United States utilized Draganović's network and an official at the International Refugee Organization to help Gestapo leader Klaus Barbie flee to Bolivia. Decades after the end of WWII, the ratlines remain a subject of investigation and cultural interest.

Overview

Two primary routes developed independently but their operators eventually collaborated. The first went from Germany to Spain, then Argentina; the second led from Germany to Rome, then Genoa, and finally South America. As many as 9,000 Nazi war criminals and their collaborators reportedly escaped to Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. Some refugees immersed themselves in Latin America by pretending to be farmers and/or Catholic.

Francoist Spain

The origins of the first ratlines are connected to various developments in Vatican-Argentina relations before and during World War II. As early as 1942, the Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Luigi Maglione – evidently at the behest of Pope Pius XII – contacted an ambassador of Argentina regarding that country's willingness to accept European Catholic immigrants in a timely manner, allowing them to live and work. Anton Weber, a German priest who headed the Roman branch of, travelled to Portugal with the intention to travel to Argentina, seemingly to lay the groundwork for Catholic immigration.
Some Catholic leaders decided to work with the Nazis in an attempt to fight against their common enemy of Bolshevism. By 1944, ratline activity which was centered in Francoist Spain was conducted in an attempt to facilitate the escape of Nazis. Among the primary organizers were Charles Lescat, a French member of Action Française – an organization suppressed by Pope Pius XI and rehabilitated by Pope Pius XII – and Pierre Daye, a Belgian with contacts in the Spanish government. Lescat and Daye were the first to flee from Europe with the assistance of the Argentinian cardinal Antonio Caggiano.
By 1946, hundreds of war criminals were living in Spain, as well as thousands of former Nazis and fascists. According to U.S. Secretary of State James F. Byrnes, Vatican cooperation in turning over these "asylum-seekers" was "negligible". Unlike the Vatican emigration operation in Italy which centered on Vatican City, the Spanish ratlines – though fostered by the Vatican – were relatively independent of the Vatican Emigration Bureau's hierarchy.

Italian ratlines

Bishop Hudal's network

Austrian Catholic bishop Alois Hudal, a Nazi sympathiser, was rector of the Pontificio Istituto Teutonico Santa Maria dell'Anima in Rome, a seminary for Austrian and German priests, and "Spiritual Director of the German People resident in Italy". After the end of the war in Italy, Hudal became active in ministering to German-speaking prisoners of war and internees who were being held in camps throughout Italy. In December 1944, the Allies allowed the Vatican to appoint a representative to visit the German-speaking civil internees in Italy, a job assigned to Hudal.
Hudal used this position to aid the escape of wanted Nazi war criminals, including Franz Stangl, Gustav Wagner, Alois Brunner, Erich Priebke, and SS officer Adolf Eichmann ; Hudal was later unashamedly open about his role. Some of these wanted men were being held in internment camps; generally lacking identity papers, they would be enrolled in camp registers under false names. Other Nazis hid in Italy and sought Hudal out after learning about his role in assisting escapes. In his memoirs, Hudal said of his actions, "I thank God that He to visit and comfort many victims in their prisons and concentration camps and to help them escape with false identity papers." He explained that in his eyes:

The Allies' War against Germany was not a crusade, but the rivalry of economic complexes for whose victory they had been fighting. This so-called business... used catchwords like democracy, race, religious liberty and Christianity as a bait for the masses. All these experiences were the reason why I felt duty bound after 1945 to devote my whole charitable work mainly to former National Socialists and Fascists, especially to so-called 'war criminals'.

According to Mark Aarons and John Loftus, Hudal was the first Catholic priest to dedicate himself to establishing escape routes. The Rome office of the International Committee of the Red Cross issued refugees Laissez-passer documents allowing passage from Italy. These were accepted as de facto passports in South America. Although typically required to be signed for in person, blank forms were accessible to Hudal and the signature of the ICRC official was confirmed to be forged in a number of cases.

Croatian Franciscans

A small but influential network of Croatian Franciscan priests led by Father Krunoslav Draganović organised a highly sophisticated ratline with headquarters at the San Girolamo degli Illirici Seminary College in Rome, with links from Austria and an embarkation point in Genoa. The ratline initially focused on aiding members of the Croatian Ustaše including its leader, Ante Pavelić.
A number of priests participated, included Father Vilim Cecelja, who founded a branch of the Croatian Red Cross in Austria. He used his Red Cross and United States papers to travel freely around Salzburg, where many Ustashe and Nazi refugees remained, providing Red Cross identities to numerous individuals who lacked identification. In October 1945, Cecelja was arrested by the U.S. Army's Counterintelligence Corps for his Ustaše ties. Father Dominik Mandić, used his Italian secret police connections to ensure that the Franciscans' identity cards would be considered sufficiently official to issue them Italian identity cards. Finally, Draganović would phone Monsignor Karlo Petranović in Genoa with the number of required berths on ships to South America.
The Draganović ratline was an open secret among the intelligence and diplomatic communities in Rome. As early as August 1945, Allied commanders in Rome were asking questions about the use of San Girolamo as a "haven" for Ustaše. A U.S. State Department report of 12 July 1946 listed nine war criminals, including Albanians and Montenegrins as well as Croats, plus others "not actually sheltered" at San Girolamo Seminary who "enjoy Church support and protection".
In February 1947, CIC Special Agent Robert Clayton Mudd reported ten members of Pavelić's Ustaše cabinet living either in San Girolamo or in the Vatican itself. Mudd had infiltrated an agent into the seminary and confirmed that it was "honeycombed with cells of Ustashe operatives" guarded by "armed youths". Mudd reported a car protected under diplomatic immunity transported unidentified people between the Vatican and the seminary. Additionally, by mid-1947, British intelligence was aware that Petranović mainly helped war criminals.

Nordic shelter

In 1944, Sturmbannführer Alarich Bross founded a network of collaborationist Finns and Nazis in Finland. Organized to engage in an armed struggle against the Soviet occupation that never occurred, it smuggled out those who wanted to leave Finland for Germany or Sweden. A system of Finnish safehouses were created under the cover of a company called 'Great Fishing Cooperative' with routes provided by a 50–70-man maritime transport organization. Its targets in Sweden were secret loading bays in the small town of Härnösand, western Norrland. Others were smuggled to Sweden from the north over the Tornio river. Access to Europe was opened through the Swedish safehouse network.
Through the safehouse routes, the resistance movement transported German citizens, officers, intelligence personnel, Finnish Nazis and fascists, and Estonian and East Karelian refugees out of Finland. Hundreds of people were assisted in Sweden, including more than a hundred German prisoners of war who had fled the Finns. Hundreds were spirited to Germany via after the September 1944 break. In 1946, Finnish industrialist Petter Forsström was convicted of treason for helping Nazis flee from Finland to Sweden, for instance by buying them motorboats.

Argentine haven

The Nazis had a presence in Argentina before the war, peaking with 2,110 members in 1935. In June 1941, Germany sent 83 boxes of documents from its embassy in Tokyo, Japan, via the MS Nana Maru to Buenos Aires. Customs agents impounded the boxes, which were searched by Argentina's foreign ministry. Five boxes contained Nazi propaganda hidden amid material labeled as "scientific, literary and cultural", while the others housed mostly children's books, magazines and war photographs. A month later, Argentine officials raided the secret offices of the banned Nazi Party. Perhaps 5,000 seized memberships from the German Labor Front and the German trade union association were stored by the Supreme Court of Argentina.
At some point, German-Argentine millionaire Ludwig Freude, who oversaw Buenos Aires's German Overseas Bank, established contacts with Swiss banks. In May 1943, SS functionary Walter Schellenberg secured a secret agreement with the Argentine military that excluded Nazis from arrest in Argentina and established a diplomatic pouch exchange system between the two regimes. The Argentine nationalists conducted a coup d'état that June, opening a way for Juan Perón's rise to power. Meanwhile, German wealth derived from looting Holocaust victims was placed in a Reichsbank account under the false name of Max Heiliger. By 1944, this was worth millions of Reichsmarks, in addition to shipments to the Reich Chancellery headquarters of Martin Bormann. SS officer Otto Skorzeny facilitated the international transfer of wealth from the account, reportedly depositing it in the name of Perón's future wife, Eva. According to The New York Times, the U.S. State Department reported in 1945 that "the personal fortunes of Nazi officials" were delivered to Buenos Aires via diplomatic pouch, with Nazi higher-up Hermann Göring possessing over USD $20 million and a loaded with Nazi loot.
After Germany's surrender on 8 May 1945, the captain of ', then operating in the northern Atlantic Ocean, opted to surrender to the Argentine Navy in Mar del Plata, Buenos Aires Province, which occurred on 10 July. He was unable to explain why the voyage had taken two months nor the absence of usual documents. The Navy reported that no officers were aboard, while the police purportedly reported that Adolf Hitler and perhaps Eva Braun had been seen disembarking from a submarine. The captured and its crew were sent to North America, which did not discourage the ' from surrendering in Buenos Aires in mid-August in hopes of being sheltered.
On 18 January 1946, Bishop Antonio Caggiano, leader of the Argentine chapter of Catholic Action, flew to Rome to be consecrated as cardinal by Pius XII. Both Caggiano and French cardinal Eugène Tisserant heavily interceded in helping Lescat and Daye and their associates emigrate from Spain to Argentina. In early 1946, Caggiano implored the Argentine consul in Rome to stamp the passports of three confirmed French war criminals with Argentine tourist visas, regardless of missing return tickets and health certificates. The first documented case of a French war criminal arriving in Buenos Aires was Émile Dewoitine on 28 May 1946, after sailing first class on the same ship with Caggiano.

Perón's Argentina

Reportedly aligned with Nazi intelligence, Ludwig Freude coordinated contributions from Nazi collaborators to Perón's 1946 presidential campaign. Perón appointed anthropologist Santiago Peralta as his immigration commissioner and Ludwig's son Rodolfo Freude as the head of the country's first intelligence bureau; the two Péron subordinates evidently aided European war criminals by streamlining their pathway to citizenship and employing them within their departments. Perón's regime collaborated with Draganović's ratline and operated additional ratlines through Scandinavia and Switzerland. As many as 5,000 Nazi war criminals escaped to Argentina, some as late as 1950, the year Adolf Eichmann arrived. Perón later stated that he helped as many Nazi officials as possible in a reaction to the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals, which he thought were a "disgrace".
From the late 1940s to the 1950s, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and Central Intelligence Agency investigated reports that Hitler had not died in 1945, but escaped to South Americatypically via Argentina, as the Soviets suggested after taking Berlin. The CIA even received a purported photograph of Hitler in 1954. According to Western scholars, the dictator's 1945 death is proven by his confirmed dental remains and eyewitnessesexcluding the possibility of mandibulectomy and supporting deception. The FBI and CIA began declassifying relevant files in 1999 in accordance with the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act and started to publish them online.
After entering Argentina under a false name, Josef Mengele reclaimed his surname in the mid-1950s to marry his brother's widow in Uruguay, then brought her to Argentina. In 1959, he used his real name to apply for a passport at the German embassy in Buenos Aires; the same year, West Germany unsuccessfully requested extradition. In 1960, Argentine officials noted, "it appears that, while maintaining his real name, belonged to the SS Society". However, by that year, he had fled to Paraguay, and Brazilian authorities suspected his presence. He died in Brazil in 1979, with his remains identified via DNA analysis in 1992. The same year, Argentina's government declassified a voluminous file regarding Nazi escapees. In the mid-1990s, Argentine president Carlos Menem created a commission to investigate the country's Nazi past. Its initial 1998 report claimed that Argentina had only received 150–180 Nazi criminals. The Simon Wiesenthal Center dismissed this quantity as far too low and noted a lack of disclosures regarding alleged deposits of Nazi gold into the Central Bank of Argentina.
Since 2020, the SWC and businessman Ronald Lauder have pushed Credit Suisse's owner, UBS, to cooperate with a renewed investigation of alleged undisclosed funds from Holocaust plunder, potentially linked to financing the ratlines. Credit Suisse has been accused of omitting Nazi-tied accounts in its 1990s probe which led to a USD $1.250 billion settlement. In 2024, former U.S. prosecutor Neil Barofsky reported to the U.S. Senate Budget Committee that he had "identified client documents and other evidence that demonstrate a significant connection between Credit Suisse and one of the key routes", specifically concerning "funds required to operate the ratline, including to pay for bribes, false identification documents, and transportation". Barofsky's final report is expected in early 2026.
In early 2025, Argentine president Javier Milei met with representatives from the SWC, who requested in conjunction with the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee for cooperation in the latter's investigation of Credit Suisse's Nazi patronage. Late in April 2025, Argentina published 1,850 such documents online. In May 2025, United Press International reported that these files indicate that the Nazis may have bribed Perón's government with USD $200 million in gold, some of which was allegedly delivered via before being delivered to Eva Perón. The funds were reportedly handled by German "bankers" said to include Rodolfo Freude. Milei's administration also provided the SWC with additional documents, including some from Fabricaciones Militares related to about USD $64.5 million spent from 1945 to 1950 to finance national defense research and secret missions to Europe to hire unknown "technical personnel".
Additionally, in May 2025 the Supreme Court of Argentina announced its discovery of a dozen boxes of archived material, which included thousands of party membership documents, as well as Nazi propaganda, passports, postcards, and photographs. The court associated the boxes with those impounded from the MS Nana Maru in June 1941, but Argentine historian Julio Mutti pointed out that the party memberships seem instead to match the material confiscated during the July 1941 raids on Nazi offices in Argentina. As of December 2025, these documents, said to total 6,000, were undergoing restoration and digital preservation for possible legal actions and public access. That same month, it was announced that the Buenos Aires Holocaust Museum would analyze and likely report the contents of some of the documents, excluding those with "personal or sensitive data" such as party memberships.

Role of U.S. intelligence

In April 1947, the 430th CIC, based in Allied-occupied Austria, began protecting Klaus Barbie, known as the "Butcher of Lyon" for his Gestapo leadership in Lyon, France. The French demanded Barbie's extradition in 1950, as rumors circulated that he had been employed by the 66th CIC. Barbie gave the CIC access to knowledge about the French occupation zone in Germany, the Communist Party of Germany, and former SS officers. Meanwhile, Barbie learned about the Austria-based Document Disposal Unit, a U.S. State Department intelligence unit led by CIA director Allen Dulles and staffed with Office of Strategic Services men, also sometimes operating as War Department or OSS entities. Fearing that France may have fallen to communism and wanted to extract CIC intel from Barbie, the State Department claimed that he could not be found in the U.S. Zone of Austria, and by 1951, facilitated his escape via Draganović's route through Rome. This ratline was reinforced by the DDU, which aimed to eliminate French and British control. Barbie settled in Bolivia and spent 33 years there before his arrest.
The 430th reported in 1950 that in mid-1947, the Army instructed them to begin using Draganović's Roman network to evacuate some people out of Austria, supported by a U.S. official at the International Refugee Organization. The directive applied to:

visitors who had been in the custody of the 430th CIC and completely processed in accordance with current directives and requirements, and whose continued residence in Austria constituted a security threat as well as a source of possible embarrassment to the Commanding General of, since the Soviet Command had become aware their presence in US Zone of Austria and in some instances had requested the return of these persons to Soviet custody. ... handled all phases of the operation after the defectees arrived in Rome, such as the procurement of IRO Italian and South American documents, visas, stamps, arrangements for disposition, land or sea, and notification of resettlement committees in foreign lands.

After June 1951, the 430th was no longer responsible for aiding ratline escapees, which the CIA was then slated to perform. Former SS officer Tscherim Soobzokov was enlisted as a CIA spy early in the Cold War to gain intel from Soviet-aligned contacts in the Middle East. He moved to the U.S. and later worked for the FBI.

Ratline escapees

Notable Nazis and war criminals who escaped using the ratlines include:

Andrija Artuković entered the U.S. as a tourist. After decades of overstaying his visa and resulting legal battles, he was arrested in 1984 and extradited to SFR Yugoslavia in 1986, where he died in prison in 1988.
Klaus Barbie was sheltered by the CIC from April 1947 and fled to Bolivia in 1951 with help from the U.S. In 1983, he was extradited to France, where he died in prison in 1991.
Alois Brunner fled to Syria, where he died perhaps as late as 2010.
László Csatáry fled to Canada. His citizenship was stripped in 1997 and he fled, but was placed under house arrest in 2012. He died the next year while awaiting trial.
Herberts Cukurs fled to Brazil by 1946. He was assassinated by Mossad agents in Uruguay in 1965.
Léon Degrelle intended to flee to South America in 1945, but his escape plane crashed at the Spain rendezvous. He was detained, but fled his hospital in 1946 while recovering. He died in Spain in 1994.
Adolf Eichmann fled to Argentina in 1950. He was captured in 1960 and executed in Israel on 1 June 1962.
Hans Fischböck escaped to Argentina before returning to Europe under amnesty
Aribert Heim fled Germany in 1962 and most likely died in Egypt in 1992.
Friedrich Kadgien escaped with loot to Switzerland in 1945, later going to Brazil and around 1950 Buenos Aires, where he died in 1978.
Olavi Karpalo fled to Venezuela, dying there in 1988.
Aarne Kauhanen fled to Venezuela. He was arrested in 1947 and died in 1949.
Josef Mengele fled to Argentina in 1949, then to Paraguay around 1960 and then Brazil, where he died in 1979.
Arvid Ojasti fled to Norway in 1945, then Sweden, and finally Venezuela. In December 1963, he was shot and killed under unclear circumstances.
Ante Pavelić escaped to Argentina in 1948, surviving an assassination attempt in 1957, then moved to Spain, where he died from his wounds.
Erich Priebke fled to Argentina and was arrested there in 1994. In 2013, he died at the age of 100 during his house arrest in Rome.
Walter Rauff fled to Ecuador then Chile, where he was shielded by dictator Augusto Pinochet and where he died in 1984.
Eduard Roschmann escaped to Argentina in 1948, then to Paraguay, where he died in 1977.
Hans-Ulrich Rudel fled to Argentina in 1948 and aided other fugitives. He later moved to Paraguay and died in Germany in 1982.
Dinko Šakić fled to Spain then Argentina in 1947. He was arrested in 1998 and extradited to Croatia. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison for war crimes and crimes against humanity. He died in 2008.
Otto Skorzeny escaped an internment camp in 1948 and fled to Spain. He made many trips to Argentina, serving as a bodyguard for Eva Perón. He died in Spain in 1975.
Boris Smyslovsky fled to Argentina in 1948 from neutral Liechtenstein, where he later returned and died in 1988.
Franz Stangl fled to Syria in 1948 then Brazil in 1951. He was arrested in 1967 and extradited to West Germany, where he died in 1971.
Ludolf von Alvensleben fled to Argentina. Although Poland sentenced him to death in absentia, he evaded justice by remaining in Argentina until his death in 1970.
Gustav Wagner fled to Brazil in 1950 and was arrested there in 1978. The country refused to extradite him and he committed suicide in 1980.

In popular culture

Fictional works about the ratlines include a novel by Stuart Neville and stories based on Hitler's alleged escape, the hypothetical ODESSA organization and/or the Fourth Reich. They also inspired the revived Galactic Empire in the Star Wars sequel trilogy.
Since late 2024, the ratlines have sometimes been satirically invoked by comedians in relation to U.S. president Donald Trump and his father, Fred Trump. After Donald claimed that his father had told him never to say "Nazi" or "Hitler", Stephen Colbert joked that Fred had only told his son not to take Hitler's name in vain or he would have to put money in a swear jar for his "uncles in Argentina". In early 2025, after Trump declared that the U.S. would provide $20–40 billion to Argentina, Colin Jost jested that Trump administration officials might be preparing to flee there.