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The following is put together from a variety of sources as part of the research being undertaken writing The Elements.
World War Two had barely ground to a final halt when, in 1947, Allied strategists set about planning for World War Three. Even as British and US intelligence officials scoured Europe seeking to apprehend Nazi’s wanted on war crimes charges, other more secretive US and British intelligence units were actively engaged in helping those same Nazi’s to escape.
NATO’s Secret Stay Behind armies had as a central focus the Gehlen Org — also involving the ODESSA "ratlines" — named after Reinhard Gehlen who would become West Germany's first head of intelligence, while the predominantly Italian P2 masonic lodge was composed of many members of the neofascist Italian Social Movement (MSI), including Licio Gelli. Its clandestine "cells" were to stay behind (hence the name) in enemy controlled territory and to act as resistance movements, conducting sabotage, guerrilla warfare and assassinations.
'His organization, the Gehlen Org, quickly regained control of the majority of his former agents inside the Iron Curtain, and with the help of many of his former staff, put them back to work. Though he agreed not to hire any former Gestapo, SS or SD members, he sought them out and put them on the payroll - the CIA's payroll - regardless of his promise. And the CIA did not stop him.Among his recruits were Dr. Franz Six and Emil Augsburg. Six and Augsburg had been members of an SS mobile Death's Head killing squad that hunted down and killed Soviet Jews, intellectuals and partisans wherever they could be found. Six was known as a Streber, or Eager Beaver, for the enthusiastic manner in which he pursued his job.
Gehlen also recruited the former Gestapo chiefs of Paris, France, and Kiel, Germany. Then, that not being enough, he hired Willi Krichbaum, the former senior Gestapo leader for southeastern Europe.’
(General Reinhard Gehlen and the OSS by Craig Roberts)
Ratlines
The means of escape were the Vatican run “Ratlines.” Operated with the knowledge and blessing of highly placed US and British government officials, the Ratlines guided 30,000 wanted Nazi’s to sanctuary. Safe haven locations included the US, Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the favourite bolt hole of them all: South America.
Those who reached safety in this manner read like a “Who’s Who” of the most wanted Nazi war criminals. Klaus Barbie, the cruel Gestapo officer known as the “Butcher of Lyons;” Franz Stangl, Commandant of the notorious Treblinka extermination camp; Gustav Wagner Commandant of Sorbibor extermination camp; Alois Brunner, a brutal official in the Jewish deportation programme. Of the most famous to escape along the ratlines were Adolf Eichmann, the chief architect of the “Holoucast” and Dr Joseph Mengele, the “White Angel” of Auschwitz concentration camp. Not least was Deputy Fuhrer Martin Bormann.
An entire Waffen SS division - the notorious “Galician Division” from the Ukraine - consisting of 8000 men were given “free settler” status.
(The Division surrendered to British forces after Germany’s capitulation. Its veterans were held in Rimini, Italy in a POW camp for two years. They were released in 1947; most of the veterans settled in Canada, the United States and Britain.)
Secretly granted immunity these and thousands of other battle hardened Nazi soldiers were to form the fighting nucleus of a top secret Allied contingency group conceived by the first Director of the CIA, Allen Dulles. Loosely known as operation “Stay Behind,” the idea was to build a Europe wide secret network of anti communist guerrillas who would fight behind the lines in the event of a Soviet invasion. The plan was later codified under the umbrella of the Clandestine Co-ordinating Committee of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), the military arm of NATO.
Links
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2341611/SS-leader-Michael-Karkoc-tracked-living-American-SIXTY-YEARS.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratlines_%28World_War_II_aftermath%29
