Argentinian ski resort revealed as Nazi hideout

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Controversy has broken out between the Argentinian ski resort of Bariloche and its sister village, Aspen in Colorado, following recent revelations that Bariloche was a haven for Nazis.

Aspen's Jewish community are now concerned about the fraternity. The source of the controversy is an article that appeared in the Daily Telegraph in February.

This report from The Aspen Times.

With embarrassment breaking out all round, the same newspaper today reports that the Mayor of Aspen has apologised for the flak. A response from Bariloche has, however, been requested - which could be interesting.

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For some reason the first link seems to be temperamental but the second link is OK. I've tried re-entering the code, but no joy. Give it a couple of tries.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

Here's the Telegraph link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=%2Fnews%2F2004%2F02%2F14%2Fwnazi14.xml

Apparently Mengele took his driving test in the town (and failed the first time), while a former Hitler youth member is described as "the father of Argentine winter sports".

Of Hans Ulrich Rudel, former head of the Luftwaffe, the president of the local ski club comments:

"I know he was a Nazi, but it doesn't bother me at all. He was a great man and despite the fact that he had only one leg, he still managed to be an excellent skier."

How touching.

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I thought that was Goering?

The head of the Luftwaffe, not the one legged skiier that is.

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Rudel was the author of "Stuka Pilot" and was a much decorated aviator on the Eastern Front. I believe he was behind the Odessa organisation which rescued Nazis after the war.

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Yeah, looks like the Telegraph has its facts wrong. It appears that Rudel was a pilot and the most decorated German soldier in WW2. Lost his leg flying a mission. Remained committed to National Socialism until his death.

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crossed wires with chris there... Very Happy

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That fact that Nazis established themselves in the Andes is hardly surprising, really. Many of them were Bavarians, so they had a natural afinity with skiing and the mountains.

Sir Arnold Lunn writes in his history of skiing of encounters with Nazis in a famous Austrian ski resort before the war. I'll dig out the reference over the weekend. Hannes Schneider, the famous Austrian instructor, had a famous run-in with the Nazis because his status as a skier towered above theirs.

We should get some interesting mileage out of this thread!

One of Hitler's favourite film directors, Leni Riefenstahl, started out as an actress in pioneering documentaries about skiing...

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Does anyone know where exactly Hitlers 'Eagles Nest' was, was it near the Alps in Bavaria. Which region Austria was Hitler from? Was it corinthia or somewhere else?

Did Hitler like skiing?

I know that Mousillini founded Cervinia, was this so that he could nip over the top to Switzerland in case of trouble. Given that when the Yanks caught up with him at Como he was only a short hike from the border!

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'Aspen's Jewish community'?

Having seen a few Jackie Mason routines, it's the concept of Jews skiing I have difficulty with. Mason reckons they hate sport and spend all their holiday time eating.

It does'nt actually say that the Jews ski though. Probably rent property and sell stuff to those crazy Gentiles.

Visions of little Jewish guys wandering around and saying to one another in strong Noo Yoik accents ' Boy, da cake I had in Aspen!'

You know it makes sense.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

You can see it on the road from Saltzburg airport on the way to Kitzbuhel. You pass through a bit of Germany on the way. I got a photo on my way past in December last year.

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Speaking of Rudel, I read his book "Stuka Pilot", no-where I find evidence of him being a nazist (althought I think the Luftwaffe was the most "nazified" armed forces branch after the SS). A nationalsit maybe, one who fought for his country, "bis zum das bittere ende" yes.
A quote taken from here
http://members.aol.com/ab763/rudel.htm

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Matteo. Anyone who's read your posts on Epic and here would know that you're a very reasonable guy. No problems there.

The real reason I posted this thread is simply to ask why a place in Argentina hosted people who were presumably well-known fugitives, wanted for genocide? How come Simon Weisenthal never tracked them down? Some pretty extraordinary deals must have been struck. And what about these properties in Bariloche? Were they bought with Nazi loot?

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

The story in the Telegraph wasn't exactly news. Anyone who has been to Southern Argentina or Chile in the last 50 years would not fail to notice the German communities and the profussion of German speakers there. The flight of Nazi officials there post-WWII was well-documented at the time. Not sure why the Telegraph chose to pick up on it now?!

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I think there's plenty of evidence that Rudel was a Nazi, Matteo. He wrote pamphlets criticising the German army for failing to support Hitler and is said to have joined a neo-nazi party (Deutsche Reichspartei).

Here's how he's remembered on one fascist website:

"National Socialism does not suffer from a lack of heros and heroines. Their deeds, their accomplishments and above all their sacrifices serve us as an example, an obligation and a source of strength.

"My generation, the first "postwar generation", still had the chance to personally meet many of these heros. I remember visiting the famous Colonel Hans-Ulrich Rudel in his home in Kufstein, Tirol in the 1970s. A great honor!"

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wow - you can learn so much at Snowheads Shock

Alastair Pink, thanks so much for the article on Hannes Scheider. What a guy!
And you clearly know a bit about films
DB and Matteo, I now have a great mass of history to plough through, but so interesting.
Latchigo, you seem to forget that one of the star athletes in Chariots of Fire, Harold Abrahams, was Jewish. The Jackie Mason stereotype may be funny; it is also wrong.
David Goldsmith, please don't start any other threads like this one: far too distracting.

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I know, it could go on for another 60 years. The only thing that makes me smile when linking Nazis and skiing (or Basil Fawlty and skiing, if you recall his brilliant spoof) is that they'd make great goose-stepping cross-country performers. But they probably prefer going downhill like the rest of us.

Anyway, back to the serious stuff.

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If you scroll right down to the bottom of this page, you'll see a picture of grass skiing in the 30s, advocated by Strength Through Joy, the Nazi organisation devoted to ensuring workers made good use of their leisure... http://perso.wanadoo.fr/wwii/europe/allemagne/endoctrinement.htm

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Mark Hunter, no real suprise given the quality of the orders. It fact I saw a thing on the telly recently suggesting that Hitler was so deranged by the end that he was actually trying to lose the war. Much in the same way that some criminals leave clues for the police on purpose, or later contact the police themselves with further information.

And it must be true 'cos it was on the BBC.

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David Goldsmith, yes, sorry for what could have seemed an attempt at "thread hijack". I concentrated on Rudel because the rest of the story is for me, well, History. I mean, it was clear to me that Argentina hosted a great number of German Nazi (and probably Italian fascist too) after the war. I can only suppose that the then Argentinian governement attitude toward them was kind of:"create no troubles here and we will let you stay in peace", without going as far as to suppose connivions of sorts. I fail to understand how these "cases" are created at art every now and then. It was well known that Nazi had taken refuge in South America, and that some of them were apprehended by the Israelian secret service and transferred to Israel for trial...some to France and some to Italy.
And I guess that Simon Wiesenthal did track them all (or many of) down. But you know, political connivence can go a long way to stall/delay adn even halt extradictions/trials and the like.
The recent (dated mid '90s) wave of processes against former German soldiers in Italy has stemmed after "someone" found a closed cupboard in a room at the defence ministry in Rome (the cupboard was turned so that the doors were facing the wall)...
In there a whole lot of documents concerning the investigations on war criminals
and dated as back as the early '50s was found... Evil or Very Mad

And yes, I think that those who flew had already stored their whealth ouside Germany (possibly in Switzerland?). There are still so many secrets held about WWII that we'll probalby never know exactly what happened.
I'd like to quote a paragraph from Forshyt's "Dogs of war"...but I don't remember it verbatim. Anyway it reminds me what I learnt at school, the jist was that the Democracies used Nazism and Fascism to oppose the spreading Communism from Russia, and only after 1938 realized that all three were the brutal expression of greed, hate and what is worse in the human nature.
And had to resort to war to stop it. Let me remind also, that some generals, like Patton, in 1945 wanted to drive straigh through Germany, defeat it and move on against Russia. In Short, my enemy'senemy is my friend.
As far as I know, German (and its allied) war criminlas have been discovered taking refuge not only in South America, where dictatorships were blossoming, but also in democratic USA and Canada, isn't it?
DavidS Then, every German of that era must be considered a Nazi, and every Italian a Fascist, which is not true by all means. "We" have lost WWII, and while I'm a bit ashamed (especially for the about face of 1943 and the two/three following years of civil war in Italy), let me praise the Lord (or the Allied) for that! Only he (Rudel) knows why he's done what he's done, we shall never discover it now. But of course, being born in 1965 what do I know? Just what I've learned reading books, which is at best second hand, pre-digested and as such skewed by someone else personal point of view. Thanks for bringing up tis interesting discussion, apologies for driving away from skiing.
To make amend of this, let me say that both dictatorships posted great accent of sporting events, a few ones, the Olimpyc games of 1936... I still remember my grandfathers talking about thosetimes where everyone had to be fit, because it was a duty for the Country to be so, remember that every victory in sport was seen as proof of the superior way of living that these two "systems" had compared to the "corrupted" western democracies (sic!). Skiing was no exception. Just a name, Zeno Colo' was born in 1920, and so, had the war not erupted, would have become "someone" already before 1939-1945.

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marc gledhill, that theory has been expounded before, and Anthony Beevor mentions it in his account of Berlin 1944-45 The Downfall, although he discounts it completely. I'll have to re-read the exact reason, but I believe it was to do with Hitler's belief in his "divine right to win", as demonstrated by some of the bizarre and extreme military decisions that he took in the defence of Germany.

Apologies for going off piste...

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We have very little control over the regimes we live in and serve.

What a site this is becoming!

DavidS, those grass skis look a bit slow. Which country are they invading?

You know it makes sense.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

Chris Bish, yet they have a frightening amount of control over us.

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marc gledhill, That's my point. I'm by no means certain that had I grown up in Germany 80 odd years ago I would have seen what the outcome of Nazism would have been.

Rudel might well have been a brave man and fought for what he thought was right. History proves us all wrong in the end.

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Chris, having seen another BBC prog. relating to the methodology of enciting a whole people to commit genocide, I fear it could happen anywhere at any time.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

'I can only suppose that the then Argentinian governement attitude toward them was kind of:"create no troubles here and we will let you stay in peace".'

Seems a reasonably pragmatic outlook - especially if they bring wealth and talent to the country. More sensible than arresting all these 80somethings for alleged crimes committed years ago.

I think the Paraguay was also pretty well known Nazi haven.

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marc gledhill, "Anywhere"? Surely not in Snowheads?

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Latchigo - not sure that I follow your reasoning here. They were not, I believe, 80somethings when they moved to South America. Are you also suggesting that the severity of a crime, whether alleged or proven, diminishes with time?

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As one who grew up in Germany during the war, though I was only 13 years old when it ended, let me tell you that belonging to the National Socialist (nazi) part was a previlege not afforded to too many people, not that the average folks cared much about political things, they loved their Kaiser, raised their arms for Hitler and saluted the Allies. Just leave me alone and I'll serve whoever is in power at the time.

Right after the invasion when the Americans and the Soviets were racing to get the best Germans (the joke was whoever got the most Germans, wins.) The didn't care if Wernher von Braun and the others were nazis or not, nor that von Braun had been depicted with Hitler and was instrumental in developing rockets that did so much damage to your country.

Von Braun and his group lived a content life over here and garnered many honors. He had said that as a scientist he served science and having to conform to the government who happens to be in power at the time and spends the money for his research is a nuisence that he just has to cope with.

Also, belonging to the party did not automatically make people sadists, though many who were in Argentina indeed were. But as I read it, they did not continue their atrocities there.

The above is not meant to excuse what happened in Germany during Hitler's time, I just hate to see all Germans painted with the same broad brush that Hitler's regime painted the Jews .

Also, while many top nazis fled the country, the several hundred thousand nazis who stayed did not commit suicide attacks or shoot and attack the allied troupes as is now seen in Iraqe.

....Ott

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Ott and Lachigo. The first point I'd make is that if the internet had existed during the 1930s, perhaps - perhaps - the genocide of millions could have been avoided. Peaceful exchange of information and argument may prevent these disasters in future (though there is currently limited hope). Let's work for peace.

Secondly, I should remind you that 'obeying orders' as a scientist or a soldier does not absolve anyone from moral responsibility.

I am not a Jew, though my father is of German Jewish descent. He escaped Berlin with his family. My parents-in-law - more notably my late mother-in-law (also not a Jew) escaped Germany - there was persecution of her family - and never saw her parents again. At the age of 15 her life was ruined, and both her parents perished in a concentration camp. Every day of her future life was a torture.

You have to remember that the Nazis looked beyond immediate matrilineal lines of descent to define who was, and who was not, to be exterminated. Their hatred and evil was obsessive.

Please do not make excuses for Nazis. They were all part of the machine, and if they escaped to Argentina to avoid justice, and if they took the spoils of theft from the German population, then they should be condemned. Unreservedly.

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Argentinian ski resort revealed as Nazi hideout

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