Klaus Barbie - Ennat Leger - The Mirror online - Nazi Hunters TV - Guy Walters - Beate Klarsfeld - Uki Goni - Alvaro de Castro - Hunting Down the Nazis TV - Rise of the Nazis: The Ratline TV - Nazis in the CIA TV -
What is there to regret? I’m a committed Nazi, and if I had to be born a thousand times over, I would be a thousand times what I have been. Klaus Barbie
When I stand before the throne of God, I shall be judged innocent. Klaus Barbie
Perhaps you think that any fool could become a member of the SS. Do you really know what an SS soldier is? He is a superman. He is a professional chosen personally by Hitler. A soldier whose antecedents are analysed for four generations back before he is given the honour of being allowed to join this elite organization. Klaus Barbie, cited Brendan Murphy, The Butcher of Lyon: The Story of the Infamous Nazi Klaus Barbie
Had the eyes of a monster. He was savage. My God, he was savage! It was unimaginable. He broke my teeth, he pulled my hair back. He put a bottle in my mouth and pushed it until the lips split from the pressure. Ennat Leger
As the brutal Butcher of Lyon, notorious Nazi Klaus Barbie spent the Second World War torturing children and sending whole families to the death camps.
But when the conflict ended, the Gestapo captain didn’t face instant arrest and swift justice. Instead, the US allowed him to start a new life as a CIA spy, smuggling him into Bolivia where he helped hunt and kill the revolutionary Che Guevara.
It was a disastrous mistake. Once in South America, Barbie went on to join forces with some of the region’s most feared drug lords, including Pablo Escobar, to launch a global cocaine trade currently worth £60billion a year.
He even became a colonel in the Bolivian army, enlisted the help of terrorists called Fiancés of Death and used drug money to fund a military coup, creating a narco-state where the traffickers could build a cocaine empire immune from prosecution. Mirror online article 13 November 2015, ‘How Nazi butcher Klaus Barbie helped killed Che Guevara and helped unleash global cocaine scourge’
September 1971: German radical Beate Klarsfeld led a protest on the steps of a Munich court. She was outraged by the court’s decision to drop the case against Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie. Nazi Hunters: Klaus Barbie, 2009
Klaus Barbie: the former Gastapo chief in Lyon had the blood of thousands of French Jews on his hands. ibid.
The Klarsfelds’ hunt for Klaus Barbie has begun. Beate’s next move was to go public with the Barbie photos. ibid.
Peruvian authorities took action: but not against Beate. Hoping to avoid an international incident they forced Barbie to leave the country immediately. ibid.
But in seeking to expose a mass murderer she exposed herself to danger. ibid.
After four days in La Paz, Beate’s campaign gathers some momentum. But the government still refused to extradite him. Beate decided to continue her fight on home turf. ibid.
Bolivian authorities were pressured into taking action against Barbie ... The French President called for Barbie’s extradition. ibid.
August 1981: Klaus Barbie had new hunters on his trail. ibid.
Four years after his conviction Klaus Barbie dies in prison. He was 77. ibid.
Barbie was rightly called the Butcher of Lyons ... In Klaus Barbie they had the perfect man to do it. He was essentially a butcher, and he did just see people as flesh that he could beat around, cut, abuse, inject, do what he liked with. Guy Walters, author Hunting Evil
What Beate does is she reminds the authorities that the victims and the victims' families are still there. Guy Walters
It’s extraordinary to think this middle class Parisian housewife is also conducting this great fight for justice. Guy Walters
Doing that in a military dictatorship takes a lot of guts, particularly in the 1970s. Guy Walters
We decided one day to do something for Justice. Beate Klarsfeld
Never a word of regret. Beate Klarsfeld
After the War he [Klaus Barbie] was hired by the Americans as an anti-Communist agent. So he became an agent in the service of American Secret Service. And he was working for the CIA afterwards. Uki Goni, author The Real Odessa
He (Barbie) met Major Shelton, the commander of the unit from the US. (Barbie) no doubt gave him advice on how to fight this guerrilla war. He used the expertise gained doing this kind of work in World War Two. They made the most of the fact that he had this experience. Alvaro de Castro, cited David Smith, article Observer December 2007, ‘Barbie Boasted of Hunting Down Che’
The Barbie trial starts and it is an historical moment more than four decades after the fall of Nazism. Hunting Down the Nazis II
‘Barbie: He is on his own. He has no place to go. His greatest fear is getting caught and being executed for his crimes. And that is a real possibility.’ Rise of the Nazis s4e2: The Manhunt: The Ratline, historian, BBC 2023
The Americans find Barbie a new home. And offer him a generous monthly salary. ibid.
Armed with false papers, Klaus Barbie and his family travel along the secret escape route the Ratline, used to smuggle wanted Nazis out of danger. ibid.
Draganovic tells Barbie he has already helped many wanted war criminals flee to South America in the hope that the Nazis may one day return and rise again. ibid.
The Federal Criminal Police Office in Wiesbaden. The man who helped establish the agency has been its president for six years, Paul Dickpopf, a top official with an apparently clean record, suggests that he had been an opponent of the Nazis. Until 1971 and in the Brandt era he is West Germany’s top criminal investigator … In 1968 he becomes head of Interpol. Nazis in the CIA, Netflix 2012
They became willing helpers, spies, because the US Intelligence Services could use their past to blackmail them. ibid.
The American Intelligence services were fighting a new enemy, communism, with the help of Nazis who worked for them as spies. ibid.
‘They were used for covert operations and this type of thing.’ ibid. man in the know
The Americans search all over Germany for the former SS officer [mass murderer] Intelligence officer, Eugen Steimle. ibid.
German industry made arrangements to keep its capital safe. ibid.
It [CIA] recruits fascists in Italy during the Cold War. They are to fight communism on behalf of the Americans. Since the 1960s, Italy is shaken by a series of bomb attacks. Hundreds of people die. These acts are first blamed on leftists, but it has been shown that they were committed by the far right. Stefano Delle Chiaie became the leader of the new right. ibid.
In 1970 the fascists and their backers want to stage a coup in Italy and eliminate the left-wing parties. ibid.
The unit is named Gladio and it is under the control of the CIA. ibid.
Many Italians believe that Moro was killed because he wanted to pursue a third way that contradicted Yalta. ibid.
‘Andreotti was the puppet of the Americans.’ ibid. man in the know
Licio Gelli was master of the influential Propaganda Due Masonic Lodge. Gelli had been an American agent since the War. ibid.
After the War, Barbie was recruited by the American Intelligence Services. ibid.
The Americans hide Barbie and other war criminals first in Germany, then in South America. ibid.