How did so many Nazi criminals escape?
The German infrastructure of railroads, highways, air routes and canals was in total shambles by early 1945, making even legitimate travel problematic. Allied troops occupied major travel hubs, and security by frontline troops and military police scrutinized the documents of any Germans attempting to travel, either those fleeing from the war or those few still attempting to go about their legitimate business. Europe was clamped down as tight as a drum, yet hundreds of Nazi officials, escaping war criminals, SS Officers, and more managed to escape the continent of Europe and find sanctuary in South America.
Ratlines were established and operational even before the war came to an end, providing a pipeline for escaping Nazis to Argentina, where they were welcomed by Juan Peron, and to other safe-havens. Two main routes were established, through Franco’s Spain and through Italy via Rome and Genoa. Initially independent of each other, they eventually came to work together. Both received the support of the Catholic Church at the destination points and along the routes.
Within a year of the war’s end in Europe, Spain was littered with thousands of former Nazis, including several hundred being sought by authorities for war crimes, and efforts by the US State Department to obtain the support of the Vatican turning them over to the United States were futile. From Spain, these refugees traveled to South America with the covert assistance of the Catholic bureaucracy in Spain, Portugal, and Argentina, including Argentine Cardinal Antonio Caggiano.
In Italy, the Vatican Secretariat of State established a liaison in the winter of 1944 to support the German interns in Italy, in the form of Bishop Alois Hudal, the rector of a seminary for Austrian and German priests in Rome. Through this liaison office, numerous Nazi war criminals received the credentials necessary to legally travel to South American countries, where they were welcomed as Catholic immigrants. Some of the war criminals who escaped via this route were Franz Stengl, the former commanding officer of the Treblinka death camp, Gustav Wagner, commandant of Sobibor, and the infamous Adolf Eichmann.
By 1947 and through at least 1950 the United States Army, through its own and other intelligence services, was actively working with these and other ratlines for the purpose of evaluating suspected Nazi war criminals rather than handing them over to the Russians for trial. Faced with the potential embarrassment of holding prisoners wanted by the Russians, the US Army allowed them to evacuate Europe via the ratlines, often with overt assistance.