ODESSA

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See Odessa (disambiguation) for other uses of the word "Odessa".

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ODESSA (German Organisation der ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen; "The Organization of Former SS-Members") was/is a national socialist German network set up towards the end of World War II by a group of SS officers, among whom were Martin Bormann and Heinrich Himmler. This group's purpose was to establish and facilitate secret escape routes out of Germany to South America and the Middle East for hunted members. With alleged ties to Argentina, Egypt, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and the Vatican, ODESSA ostensibly operated out of Buenos Aires and helped Adolf Eichmann, Josef Mengele, Erich Priebke, Aribert Heim and many other Germans 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 this organization, but these suppositions have never been proven. Similarly, General Reinhard Gehlen's entire intelligence organisation that was employed and protected by US 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.

ODESSA claimed responsibility in a note for the 9 July 1979 car bombing in France aimed at anti-Nazi activists Serge and Beate Klarsfeld.

In November 2005, Spanish newspaper El Mundo reported that Mauthausen concentration camp's Nazi doctor Aribert Heim, protected by ODESSA, had possibly been hiding in Spain for the past 20 years. According to sources from the Simon Wiesenthal Center quoted by El Mundo, former soldiers of Otto Skorzeny (who died from cancer in Madrid in 1975) had helped maintain the organization in Spain, especially in the region around Malaga and Alicante Template:Ref.

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The existence of ODESSA

According to Simon Wiesenthal, ODESSA was set up in 1946 to aid persecuted national socialists. 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.

To some extent whether ODESSA was an organisation that protected and smuggled out politically persecuted people or an informal network by which various German and Allied elements protected "useful" former SS anti-communists from war crimes charges is purely a matter of viewpoint since, short of finding a genuine documentary constitution for it, any facts or actions would fit both descriptions equally.

Long before the ZDF TV network, biographer Gitta Sereny wrote in her 1974 book Into that Darkness (see References below) that the ODESSA network was of minor importance if it existed at all. She attributed the fact that several SS-men could escape due to the post war chaos and the lack of means of the Catholic Church, the Red Cross and the American military to verify the claims of people who came to them for help or were imprisoned. She also wrote that one pro-German bishop called Aloïs Hudal in Rome who knowingly helped several ex-SS men to escape out of Europe must have had some help or permission from other people in the church hierarchy. One of the ex-SS men that he helped is the former commander of the extermination camp at Treblinka, Franz Stangl.

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 real 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 a much larger and more menacing fact.

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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 writer Uki Goñi. This legislation, though already in disuse for many years, was finally vetoed on 8 June 2005.

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Pertinent quotes

  • "We knew what we did. It was absolutely necessary that we used every son of a bitch as long as he was an anti-communist". Harry Rositzke, CIA-Russia expert (in translation from ZDF.de's article "Mythos Odessa: Wahrheit oder Legende?" (see External links, below)
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List of national socialists helped by the ODESSA

Many national socialists subject to political persecution was helped by the ODESSA.

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See also

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Endnotes

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References

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External links

es:ODESSA fr:ODESSA it:ODESSA nl:ODESSA ja:オデッサ (ODESSA) no:ODESSA pl:ODESSA (organizacja) sv:ODESSA

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