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 (up to 5,000),
Brazil (up to 2,000), and
Chile (up to 1,000). 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 Maglioneevidently at the behest of
Pope Pius XIIcontacted 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 Françaisean organization suppressed by
Pope Pius XI and rehabilitated by
Pope Pius XIIand
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 ratlinesthough fostered by the Vaticanwere 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 (commanding officer of the
Treblinka extermination camp),
Gustav Wagner (commanding officer of the
Sobibor extermination camp),
Alois Brunner (responsible for the
Drancy internment camp near Paris and in charge of deportations in Slovakia to
Nazi concentration camps),
Erich Priebke (who was responsible for the
Ardeatine massacre), and SS officer
Adolf Eichmann (architect of
the Holocaust); 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 [allowed me] 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 (ICRC) 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 (former Deputy Military Vicar to the Ustaše), who founded a branch of the Croatian Red Cross in Austria (which the ICRC only supported in an unofficial capacity). He used his Red Cross and U.S. 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 CIC for his Ustaše ties. Father
Dominik Mandić (an official Vatican representative at San Girolamo and treasurer of the Franciscans) 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 (Major) 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 (disguised as German labor organizations). Perhaps 5,000 seized memberships from the
German Labor Front and the German
trade union association were stored by the
Supreme Court of Argentina. German-Argentine millionaire Ludwig Freude, who oversaw
Buenos Aires's
German Overseas Bank (a subsidiary of
Deutsche Bank), made contact with Swiss banks; by 1941, Nazi supporters in Argentina held as many as 890 accounts. 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. 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. 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 (and five other Frenchmen) 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. (right),
Department 50 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 (an avowed
anti-Semite) as his immigration commissioner and Ludwig's son
Rodolfo Freude as the head of the country's
first intelligence bureau; performs a Hitleresque
Nazi salute (from Dept. 50's final probe). The CIA even received a purported
photograph of Hitler in
Colombia in 1954. According to Western scholars, the dictator's 1945 death is proven by his confirmed dental remains and eyewitnesses 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 . Additionally, the FBI supported Chilean police's
Department 50 as it probed Nazi spy activity within its borders during the war. In its last outing (–1947), Chile joined with other governments to probe Nazi activity in wider Latin America, dismantling networks in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and
Venezuela. It declassified numerous files and photographs in 2017. After entering Argentina under a false name,
Josef Mengele (known as the "Angel of Death" due to his role in the Holocaust) 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; In 1960, Argentine officials noted, "it appears that, while maintaining his real name, [Mengele] belonged to the SS Society". However, by that year, he had fled to
Paraguay (as noted by the Argentine police), 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 1990s, Credit Suisse investigated Jewish-held accounts that had been seized by the Nazis or stagnated after the killing of their owners. This led to a USD $1.25 billion settlement in 1999, but the bank was accused of ignoring Nazi-tied accounts. Since 2020, the SWC and businessman
Ronald Lauder (who estimates that an additional $5–10 billion was not released) have pushed Credit Suisse's owner,
UBS, to cooperate with a renewed investigation of loot-derived funds.
U.S. Senate Budget Committee heads
Chuck Grassley (R) and
Sheldon Whitehouse (D) launched an investigation and in 2024, former U.S. prosecutor
Neil Barofsky reported that he had "identified client documents and other evidence that demonstrate a significant connection between Credit Suisse and one of the key [escape] routes", specifically concerning "funds required to operate the ratline, including to pay for bribes, false identification documents, and transportation". the bank also interacted significantly with the SS. other key operatives held accounts, probably used for bribes (with Barofsky naming the French and Swiss). 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. 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.
Role of U.S. intelligence Although the CIC arrested Father Vilim Cecelja (who provided some Ustaše with false identities) in October 1945, the U.S. agency reportedly helped some of the Croatian nationalists flee from Europe. The CIC is also estimated to have aided the escapes of perhaps 70 Soviet defectors and informants to South America, as well as Klaus Barbie, Meanwhile, he learned about the Austria-based Document Disposal Unit (DDU), a U.S. State Department intelligence unit led by CIA director
Allen Dulles and staffed with
Office of Strategic Services (OSS) men, also sometimes operating as
War Department or
OSS entities. 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 [the
U.S. Forces in Austria], since the Soviet Command had become aware [of] their presence in [the] US Zone of Austria and in some instances had requested the return of these persons to Soviet custody. ... [Draganović] 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. According to the CIC, Draganović charged fees for his role in the escapes: USD $500 per child, $1,000 per adult, $1,400 for a
very important person and over $1,500 for individuals older than 60. ==Ratline escapees==