Nazis on the Run: How Hitler's Henchmen Fled Justice by Steinacher Gerald

Author:Steinacher, Gerald [Steinacher, Gerald]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2011-06-02T00:00:00+00:00

5. The Ratline Players

From 1947 until 1950 Jim Milano served as director of the CIC in Austria and was one of the founders of the ratline. The political parameters had changed, and only a few years after the war, the antagonism between East and West occupied the centre ground. Even fifty years later, Milano justified his ratline with particular reference to political targets: ‘In their favor, it can be argued that, at least after 1949, the Western Allies, as a matter of policy, suspended all war crime prosecutions and consciously allowed former Nazi officials, SS officers, judges, and others to assume senior posts in West German government and industry.’136 Milano, who had spent the war in Italy as an agent, officially wanted to save agents who had worked for the West and who were now in the Soviet sphere of influence. As early as 1945, the Lieutenant Colonel established a Nazi escape route in Austria. At first this operation assumed a very simple form: the CIC simply procured forged travel documents, which it either produced itself or bought on the black market. Most of the forgery was performed in the CIC’s offices in Salzburg. But it was only during a later phase that Nazis managed to profit from these services. At first the clientele consisted of agents and specialists from the Soviet-occupied part of Austria. After the Russians had started intensifying their checks, at the end of 1947 a better ratline had to be constructed. It was the creation of Milano and his colleague Paul Lyon. People who had previously worked in church border-crossing operations were now recruited by the CIC in Austria, Germany, and Italy.

The SS officer Karl Hass was a particularly important intermediary between the Americans and church circles in the context of the ratline. Karl Hass, born on 5 October 1912 in Elmchenhagen near Kiel, had an unusual career. Even while studying political science at Berlin University, he joined the SS, which would soon have a positive professional effect. A friend in the SS found him a job with the SS intelligence service (SD) in Berlin. Hass worked in the press department there, mostly assessing newspapers from Italy. After Mussolini’s fall in July 1943, Hass became director of the SD in Rome and built up his own spy network. After the liberation of Rome in June 1944, the staff of which Hass was a part moved back to Parma. In April 1945 Hass went first to stay with Erich Priebke in Bolzano and finally settled in the mountains of South Tyrol, where he must have felt very safe. On 15 July 1945 the wanted man even got married to Anna Maria Giustini in Bolzano. He was arrested six times, but was always able to escape. Finally he was transferred to the prisoner-of-war camp in Rimini, from which he escaped on 20 July 1946, fleeing to Rome. At the time, Hass was chiefly assisting Nazis who were escaping via Rome and Genoa to South America. US agent Vincent La Vista reported about it in detail and also quoted Hass’s code name, ‘Franco’.

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