Ratlines (World War II)

The ratlines (German: Rattenlinien) were systems of escape routes for German Nazis and other fascists fleeing Europe from 1945 onwards in the aftermath of World War II. These escape routes mainly led toward havens in the Americas, particularly in Argentina, though also in Paraguay, Colombia, Brazil, Uruguay, Mexico, Peru, Guatemala, Ecuador, and Bolivia, as well as the United States, Canada, Australia, Spain, and Switzerland.
Two primary routes developed independently but their operators eventually collaborated. The first went from Germany to Spain, then Argentina; the second led to Rome, then Genoa, and finally South America. The ratlines were supported by some clergy of the Catholic Church, such as Austrian bishop Alois Hudal and Croatian priest Krunoslav Draganović. Starting in 1947, U.S. Intelligence used existing ratlines to move certain Nazi strategists and scientists.
While consensus among Western scholars is that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler died by suicide in 1945, in the late 1940s and 1950s the U.S. investigated claims that he survived and fled to South America.
The origins of the first ratlines are connected to various developments in Vatican-Argentine 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 Saint Raphael's Society [de], travelled to Portugal with intentions to continue to Argentina, seemingly to lay the groundwork for Catholic immigration.
Some Catholic leaders accepted working with the Nazis to fight the common enemy of Bolshevism. By 1944, ratline activity centered in Francoist Spain was conducted 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 Pius XII – and Pierre Daye, a Belgian with contacts in the Spanish government. Lescat and Daye were the first to flee Europe with the help of Argentine cardinal Antonio Caggiano.
By 1946, there were hundreds of war criminals 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.
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 then held in camps throughout Italy. In December 1944, the Vatican Secretariat of State received permission 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; 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:
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.
A small but influential network of Croatian priests, members of the Franciscan order, 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 an embarcation point in Genoa. The ratline initially focused on aiding members of the Croatian Ustaše including its leader, Ante Pavelić.
Priests active in the chain included: Fr. Vilim Cecelja, former Deputy Military Vicar to the Ustaše, based in Austria where many Ustashe and Nazi refugees remained in hiding; Fr. Dragutin Kamber, based at San Girolamo; Fr. Dominik Mandić, an official Vatican representative at San Girolamo and treasurer of the Franciscans, who put the Franciscan press at the ratline's disposal; and Monsignor Karlo Petranović, based in Genoa. Vilim would make contact with those hiding in Austria and help them cross the border to Italy; Kamber, Mandić and Draganović would find them lodgings, often in the monastery itself, while they arranged documentation; finally, Draganović would phone Petranović in Genoa with the number of required berths on ships leaving for 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 US 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. He concluded that:
The existence of Draganović's ratline has been supported by a highly respected historian of Vatican diplomacy, Fr. Robert Graham: "I've no doubt that Draganović was extremely active in syphoning off his Croatian Ustashe friends." Graham stated that Draganović's ratline was not approved by the Vatican: "Just because he's a priest doesn't mean he represents the Vatican. It was his own operation." At the same time, there were four occasions in which the Vatican did intervene on behalf of interned Ustasha prisoners.
According to a declassified U.S. Army intelligence report from 1950, by mid-1947 U.S. forces had begun to use Draganović's established network to evacuate "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 USFA, since the Soviet Command had become aware that their presence in U.S. Zone of Austria and in some instances had requested the return of these persons to Soviet custody". The deal with Draganović involved getting the visitors to Rome: "Dragonovich [sic] 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."
Argentine president Juan Perón spoke out against the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals (1945–1946). The final period of German immigration to Argentina occurred between 1946 and 1950 when Perón ordered the creation of a ratline for prominent Nazis, collaborators and other fascists from Europe.
According to Argentine researcher Uki Goñi, who had recently gained access to the country's archives for his 2002 book, Argentine diplomats and intelligence officers had, on Perón's instructions, vigorously encouraged Nazi and fascist war criminals to make their home in Argentina. According to Goñi, the Argentines not only collaborated with Draganović's ratline, but set up additional ratlines running through Scandinavia, Switzerland, and Belgium.
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.
Over the spring of 1946, a number of French war criminals, fascists and Vichy officials made it from Italy to Argentina in the same way; they were issued passports by the Rome ICRC office, which were then stamped with Argentine tourist visas. (The need for health certificates and return tickets was waived on Caggiano's recommendation.) The first documented case of a French war criminal arriving in Buenos Aires was Émile Dewoitine, who was later sentenced in absentia to 20 years of hard labour. He sailed first class on the same ship back with Cardinal Caggiano.
Shortly after this Argentinian Nazi smuggling became institutionalised, according to Goñi, when Perón's new government of February 1946 appointed anthropologist Santiago Peralta as Immigration Commissioner and former Ribbentrop agent Ludwig Freude as his intelligence chief. Goñi argues that these two then set up a "rescue team" of secret service agents and immigration "advisors", many of whom were themselves European war-criminals, with Argentine citizenship and employment.
In March 2025, President of Argentina Javier Milei ordered the declassification of related government documents, including those regarding the financing of the ratlines.
From 1944, a network of extreme right-wing Finns and Nazis in Finland, founded by Sturmbannführer (Major) Alarich Bross operated in Finland. Organized to engage in armed struggle against the Soviet occupation which never occurred, it smuggled out those who wanted to leave the country for Germany or Sweden. It created a system of safehouses in Finland 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 in 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 Finnish Nazis and fascists, officers and intelligence personnel, Estonian and East Karelian refugees and German citizens out of the country. Hundreds of people were assisted in Sweden, including more than a hundred German prisoners of war who had fled the Finns. Transport to Germany took place after the September 1944 break in German submarines, smuggling hundreds of people.
In 2014, over 700 FBI documents were declassified (as part of the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act), revealing that the US government had undertaken an investigation in the late 1940s and 1950s as to reports of the possible escape of Adolf Hitler from Germany, as had been suggested by the Soviet Union after capturing Berlin. Some leads assert that Hitler did not commit suicide in 1945 but fled Germany via Francoist Spain and then entered Argentina.
CIA documents contain additional reported sightings and a purported 1954 photograph of Hitler as claimed by a self-proclaimed former German SS trooper named Phillip Citroen, who said Hitler "left Colombia for Argentina around January 1955". The CIA report states that the agency was not "in a position to give an intelligent evaluation of the information" and that "enormous efforts could be expended ... with remote possibilities of establishing anything concrete", so the investigation was dropped.
Claims of Hitler's escape as well as an alleged Soviet autopsy of his corpse have been dismissed by Western historians, according to whom Hitler's dental remains prove that he died in 1945.
Some of the Nazis and war criminals who escaped using ratlines include:
Media related to Nazis in South America at Wikimedia Commons