While Rudel was interned, his family
fled from the advancing Red Army and found refuge with Gadermann's parents in
Wuppertal. Rudel was released in April 1946 and went into private business. In 1948, he emigrated to
Argentina via the
ratlines, travelling via the Austrian
Zillertal to Italy. In
Rome, with the help of
South Tyrolean smugglers, and aided by the Austrian bishop
Alois Hudal, he bought himself a fake
Red Cross passport with the cover name "Emilio Meier", and took a flight from Rome to
Buenos Aires, where he arrived on 8 June 1948. Rudel authored books on the war, supporting the regime and attacking the
Oberkommando der Wehrmacht for "failing Hitler".
In South America After Rudel moved to Argentina, he became a close friend and confidant of the
President of Argentina Juan Perón, and Paraguay's dictator
Alfredo Stroessner. In Argentina, he founded the "
Kameradenwerk" (
lit. "comrades' agency"), a relief organization for
Nazi war criminals. Prominent members of the "
Kameradenwerk" included
SS officer Ludwig Lienhardt, whose extradition from Sweden had been demanded by the Soviet Union on war crime charges, Kurt Christmann, a member of the
Gestapo sentenced to 10 years for war crimes committed at
Krasnodar, Austrian war criminal Fridolin Guth, and the German spy in Chile, August Siebrecht. The group maintained close contact with other internationally wanted fascists, such as
Ante Pavelić and
Carlo Scorza. In addition to these war criminals that fled to Argentina, the "
Kameradenwerk" also assisted Nazi criminals imprisoned in Europe, including
Rudolf Hess and
Karl Dönitz, with food parcels from Argentina and sometimes by paying their legal fees. In Argentina, Rudel became acquainted with notorious Nazi concentration camp doctor and war criminal
Josef Mengele. Rudel, together with
Willem Sassen, a former
Waffen-SS and
war correspondent for the
Wehrmacht, who initially worked as Rudel's driver, helped to relocate Mengele to Brazil by introducing him to Nazi supporter Wolfgang Gerhard. In 1957, Rudel and Mengele together travelled to Chile to meet with
Walter Rauff, the inventor of the
mobile gas chamber. In Argentina, Rudel lived in
Villa Carlos Paz, roughly from the populous
Córdoba City, where he rented a house and operated a
brickworks. There, Rudel wrote his wartime memoirs
Trotzdem ("Nevertheless" or "In Spite of Everything"). The book was published in November 1949 by the Dürer-Verlag in Buenos Aires, the publisher of a variety of
apologia by former Nazis and their collaborators. Discussion ensued in
West Germany on Rudel being allowed to publish the book, because he was a known Nazi. In the book, he supported Nazi policies. This book was later re-edited and published in the United States, as the
Cold War intensified, under the title,
Stuka Pilot, which supported the German invasion of the Soviet Union.
Pierre Clostermann, a French fighter pilot, had befriended Rudel and wrote the foreword to the French edition of his book
Stuka Pilot, while RAF ace Douglas Bader wrote the foreword in the English version In 1951, he published a pamphlet
Dolchstoß oder Legende? ("Stab in the Back or Legend?"), in which he claimed that "Germany's war against the
Soviet Union was a defensive war", moreover, "a crusade for the whole world". In the 1950s, Rudel befriended
Savitri Devi, a writer and proponent of
Hinduism and
Nazism, and introduced her to a number of Nazi fugitives in Spain and the Middle East. With the help of Perón, Rudel secured lucrative contracts with the Brazilian military. He was also active as a
military adviser and arms dealer for the Bolivian regime,
Augusto Pinochet in Chile and Stroessner in Paraguay. He was in contact with
Werner Naumann, formerly a
State Secretary in Goebbels' Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda in
Nazi Germany. Following the
Revolución Libertadora in 1955, a military and civilian uprising that ended the second presidential term of Perón, Rudel was forced to leave Argentina and move to Paraguay. During the following years in South America, Rudel frequently acted as a foreign representative for several German companies, including
Salzgitter AG,
Dornier Flugzeugwerke,
Focke-Wulf,
Messerschmitt,
Siemens and Lahmeyer International, a German consulting engineering firm. According to the historian Peter Hammerschmidt, based on files of the German
Federal Intelligence Service and the US
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the BND, under the cover-up company "Merex", was in close contact with former
SS and Nazi Party members. In 1966, Merex, represented by Walter Drück, a former
Generalmajor in the
Wehrmacht and BND agent, helped by the contacts established by Rudel and Sassen, sold discarded equipment of the
Bundeswehr (German Federal armed forces) to various dictators in Latin America. According to Hammerschmidt, Rudel assisted in establishing contact between Merex and
Friedrich Schwend, a former member of the
Reich Security Main Office and involved in
Operation Bernhard. Schwend, according to Hammerschmidt, had close links with the military services of Peru and Bolivia. In the early sixties, Rudel, Schwend and
Klaus Barbie founded a company called "La Estrella", the star, which employed a number of former SS officers who had fled to Latin America. Rudel, through La Estrella, was also in contact with
Otto Skorzeny, who had his own network of former SS and Wehrmacht officers. Rudel returned to West Germany in 1953 and became a leading member of the
Neo-Nazi nationalist political party, the
German Reich Party (
Deutsche Reichspartei or DRP). In the
West German federal election of 1953, Rudel was the top candidate for the DRP, but was not elected to the
Bundestag. According to
Josef Müller-Marein, editor-in-chief of
Die Zeit, Rudel had an
egocentric character. Rudel heavily criticized the
Western Allies during World War II for not having supported Germany in its war against the Soviet Union. Müller-Marein concluded his article with the statement: "Rudel no longer has a
Geschwader (squadron)!" In 1977, he became a spokesman for the
German People's Union, a
nationalist political party founded by
Gerhard Frey.
Public scandals In October 1976, Rudel inadvertently triggered a chain of events, which were later dubbed the
Rudel Scandal (
Rudel-Affäre). The German
51st Reconnaissance Wing, the latest unit to hold the name "Immelmann", held a reunion for members of the unit, including those from World War II. The
Secretary of State in the
Federal Ministry of Defence,
Hermann Schmidt authorized the event. Fearing that Rudel would spread Nazi propaganda on the
German Air Force airbase in
Bremgarten near
Freiburg, Schmidt ordered that the meeting could not be held at the airbase. News of this decision reached
Generalleutnant Walter Krupinski, at the time commanding general of
NATO's
Second Allied Tactical Air Force, and a former World War II fighter pilot. Krupinski contacted
Gerhard Limberg,
Inspector of the Air Force, requesting that the meeting be allowed at the airbase. Limberg later confirmed Krupinski's request, and the meeting was held on
Bundeswehr premises, a decision to which Schmidt still had not agreed. Rudel attended the meeting, at which he signed his book and gave a few autographs but refrained from making any political statements. During a routine press event, journalists who had been briefed by Schmidt questioned Krupinski and his deputy
Karl Heinz Franke about Rudel's presence. In this interview, the generals compared Rudel's past as a Nazi and Neo-Nazi supporter to the career of prominent
Social Democrat leader
Herbert Wehner, who had been a member of the
German Communist Party in the 1930s, and who had lived in Moscow during World War II, where he was allegedly involved in
NKVD operations. Calling Wehner an
extremist, they described Rudel as an honorable man, who "hadn't stolen the family silver or anything else". When these remarks became public, the Federal Minister of Defense
Georg Leber, complying with §50 of the '''' (Military law), ordered the generals into early retirement as of 1 November 1976. Leber, a member of the
Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), was heavily criticized for his actions by the
Christian Democratic Union (CDU) opposition, and the scandal contributed to the minister's subsequent retirement in early 1978. On 3 February 1977, the German
Bundestag debated the scandal and its consequences. The Rudel Scandal subsequently triggered a military-tradition discussion, which the Federal Minister of Defense
Hans Apel ended with the introduction of "Guidelines for Understanding and Cultivating Tradition" on 20 September 1982. During the
1978 World Cup, held in Argentina, Rudel visited the
Germany national team in its training camp in
Ascochinga. The German media criticized the
German Football Association, and viewed Rudel's visit as being sympathetic to the
military dictatorship that ruled Argentina following the
1976 Argentine coup d'état. During the
1958 FIFA World Cup in Sweden, he visited the German team at
Malmö on 8 June 1958. There he was welcomed by team manager
Sepp Herberger. ==Personal life, death and funeral==