question: Why was Peron's Argentina so welcoming to Nazi war criminals?
comment: Argentina had a lot of German immigrants and Peron was sort of fascist himself so he was somewhat sympathetic. He also though Argentina could benefit from taking in skilled Nazi members who didn't have the option to go anywhere else or be tried for their crimes.
passages: 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.
   After World War II officially ended, many Nazis and other fascists fled to South America through the use of ratlines. Many of these ratlines were supported by the Vatican and the Catholic church; the first movements to smuggle Nazis and fascists came in 1946 when two Argentinian bishops colluded with a French Cardinal to bring French war criminals into Argentina. Under Argentine president Juan Perón’s instructions, many European war criminals were brought into the country and given citizenship and employment. One such supposed escapee was Adolf Hitler himself, with the FBI launching an investigation in the 1940s and 1950s to investigate this possible escape
   The fifth category of German immigration to Argentina occurred between 1946 and 1950 when President Juan Perón ordered the creation of a ratline to provide an escape from Justice for prominent Nazis and collaborators from Europe. During this period Argentine diplomats and intelligence officers, on Perón's instructions, vigorously encouraged Nazi and Fascist war criminals to make their home in Argentina.
   In his 2002 book, "The Real Odessa", Argentine researcher Uki Goñi used new access to the country's archives to show that 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, they set up further ratlines of their own running through Scandinavia, Switzerland and Belgium.
   Eva Perón drove on the morning of Thursday the 11th with "Rudi" Freude, son of a friend, and Juan Duarte (brother of Eva Perón) to San Nicolás island first and then to the Delta, leaving Mercante with instructions to cooperate with police, rather than hide".
   According to Goñi, Argentina's first move into Nazi smuggling was in January 1946, when Argentine bishop Antonio Caggiano, leader of the Argentine chapter of Catholic Action flew with another bishop, Agustín Barrére, to Rome where Caggiano was due to be anointed Cardinal. In Rome the Argentine bishops met with French Cardinal Eugène Tisserant, where they passed on a message (recorded in Argentina's diplomatic archives) that "the Government of the Argentine Republic was willing to receive French persons, whose political attitude during the recent war would expose them, should they return to France, to harsh measures and private revenge".
   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; these 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 — later sentenced in absentia to 20 years hard labour. He sailed first class on the same ship back with Cardinal Caggiano.
   Recently, Goñi's research, drawing on investigations in Argentine, Swiss, American, British and Belgian government archives, as well as numerous interviews and other sources, was detailed in "The Real ODESSA: Smuggling the Nazis to Perón's Argentina" (2002), showing how escape routes known as ratlines were used by former NSDAP members and like-minded people to escape trial and judgment. Goñi places particular emphasis on the part played by Perón's government in organizing the ratlines, as well as documenting the aid of Swiss and Vatican authorities in their flight. The Argentine consulate in Barcelona gave false passports to fleeing Nazi war criminals and collaborationists. Recently declassified files from Brazil and Chile reveal that during WWII Péron sold 10,000 blank Argentine passports to ODESSA – the organisation set up to protect former SS men in the event of defeat.
   Tomás Eloy Martínez, writer and professor of Latin American studies at Rutgers University, wrote that Juan Perón allowed Nazis into the country in hopes of acquiring advanced German technology developed during the war. Martínez also noted that Eva Perón played no part in allowing Nazis into the country. However, one of Eva's bodyguards was in fact an ex-Nazi commando named Otto Skorzeny, who had met Juan on occasion.
  
  Section::::Fascist influence.:Jewish and German communities of Argentina.
   Among the most notable Nazis who immigrated to Argentina was Adolf Eichmann, a high-ranking official who had supervised the death camps; he lived near Buenos Aires from after World War II until 1960. Israeli agents tracked him down and abducted him from a Buenos Aires suburb to Israel for trial for war crimes. Eichmann faced trial in Jerusalem beginning in April 1961; he was convicted of crimes against humanity and hanged in May 1962. 
   As in the United States (Operation Paperclip), Argentina also welcomed displaced German scientists such as Kurt Tank and Ronald Richter. Some of these refugees took important roles in Perón's Argentina, such as French collaborationist Jacques de Mahieu, who became an ideologue of the Peronist movement, before becoming mentor to a Roman Catholic nationalist youth group in the 1960s. Belgian collaborationist Pierre Daye became editor of a Peronist magazine. Rodolfo Freude, Ludwig's son, became Perón's chief of presidential intelligence in his first term.
   Section::::History.:Claims of German Intelligence Service assistance.
  
  Journalist John Dinges has claimed that there was some degree of cooperation between the German Intelligence Service and Colonia Dignidad, including creation of bunkers, tunnels, a hospital, and runways for the decentralized production of armaments in modules (parts produced in one place, other parts in another). This subject was proactively hidden, because of the problems experienced at the time associated with Argentina.
  
  Section::::History.:Democratic transition.
   Examples of Nazis and collaborators who relocated to Argentina include Emile Dewoitine, who arrived in May 1946 and worked on the Pulqui jet; Erich Priebke, who arrived in 1947; Josef Mengele in 1949; Adolf Eichmann in 1950; former Commandant of Sobibor and Treblinka death camps Franz Stangl; Austrian representative of Spitzy in Spain Reinhard Spitzy; Charles Lescat, editor of "Je Suis Partout" in Vichy France; SS functionary Ludwig Lienhardt; German industrialist Ludwig Freude; and "SS-Hauptsturmführer" Klaus Barbie.
   In Nuremberg at that time something was taking place that I personally considered a disgrace and an unfortunate lesson for the future of humanity. I became certain that the Argentine people also considered the Nuremberg process a disgrace, unworthy of the victors, who behaved as if they hadn't been victorious. Now we realize that they [the Allies] deserved to lose the war.
   Argentina kept its doors open to Jewish immigration until 1938, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazis in Germany began to take more actions against Jews, and tensions rose across Europe in preparation for war. The government imposed new regulations on immigration; it was severely curtailed at a time of increasing persecution of Jews and the outbreak of World War II, when Jews sought a safe haven from the Nazis. Six million Jews died in Europe during the Holocaust.
   In Nuremberg at that time something was taking place that I personally considered a disgrace and an unfortunate lesson for the future of humanity. I became certain that the Argentine people also considered the Nuremberg process a disgrace, unworthy of the victors, who behaved as if they hadn't been victorious. Now we realize that they [the Allies] deserved to lose the war.br
  
  —Argentine president Juan Perón on the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi war criminals
   It was Argentine corruption, particularly that of Perón and his first wife, Eva Perón, that made it possible for Nazis such as Adolf Eichmann to settle in Argentina after World War II. Some historians have suggested that during her 1947 European tour Eva Perón may have opened secret Swiss bank accounts "to stash funds and valuables she allegedly received from Nazis in exchange for Argentine passports and visas."
   Finally, the newspaper "El Pampero", financed by the German embassy, supported Hitler.
   After the war, many former Nazis fled to South America, especially to Argentina, where they were welcomed by Juan Perón's regime. In the 1950s, former Dachau inmate Lothar Hermann discovered that Buenos Aires resident Ricardo Klement was in fact Adolf Eichmann, who had in 1948 obtained false identification and a landing permit for Argentina through an organization directed by Bishop Alois Hudal, an Austrian cleric with Nazi sympathies then residing in Italy. Eichmann was captured in Buenos Aires on 11 May 1960 by Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency. At his trial in Jerusalem in 1961, he was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging. Eichmann was quoted as having stated, "I will jump into my grave laughing, because the fact that I have the death of five million Jews [or Reich enemies, as he later claimed to have said] on my conscience gives me extraordinary satisfaction." Franz Stangl, the commandant of Treblinka, also escaped to South America with the assistance of Hudal's network. He was deported to Germany in 1967 and was sentenced to life in prison in 1970. He died in 1971.
   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, Monsignor Luigi Maglione contacted Ambassador Llobet, inquiring as to the "willingness of the government of the Argentine Republic to apply its immigration law generously, in order to encourage at the opportune moment European Catholic immigrants to seek the necessary land and capital in our country". Afterwards, a German priest, Anton Weber, the head of the Rome-based Society of Saint Raphael, traveled to Portugal, continuing to Argentina, to lay the groundwork for future Catholic immigration; this was to be a route which fascist exiles would exploit. According to historian Michael Phayer, "this was the innocent origin of what would become the Vatican ratline".
   BULLET::::- The Senate of Chile voted 30-10 in favor of the decision by President Juan Antonio Rios to break off diplomatic relations with the Axis powers, a move that was finalized the next day. The move left Argentina the only Western Hemisphere nation with delegates from Germany, Italy and Japan.
   Another suspicious death was that of Alfred Schaak, a representative of Paul Schäfer in Germany in charge of arms trafficking. In 1985, two couples who fled from Colonia Dignidad publicly denounced Schäfer's pedophilia. It seems that Schaak then wanted to denounce the arms trade. To prevent this, Winfried Schmidtke and Helmut Seelbach, who were received at the airport by Schaak, who was in perfect health, would have traveled from Dignidad to Germany. A few days later, in October, Schaak died suddenly. Dr. Hartmut Hopp went immediately to Germany and brought the body of Schaak to Chile. In the assembly of settlers he said that Schaak had died of fever and that in his will he left his property to the Colony. At the same time they reported – ten months after the fact – the escape of the couples, adding that their complaints in Germany had done them great harm.
   Section::::History.
  
  Section::::History.:First years.
   Timerman warned that Argentina was slipping back into totalitarianism, and wrote "I hardly live in Argentina anymore" due to fear of meeting a former torturer.
  
  "Almost all the torturers were free before this latest batch of pardons", wrote Timerman, "but now the leaders who conceived, planned, and carried out the only genocide recorded in Argentinian history are also at large."
   BULLET::::- Zhytomyr changed hands again as the Soviet 1st Ukrainian Front recaptured the city.
  
  BULLET::::- Argentina's President, General Pedro Ramírez, issued various year-end decrees, dissolving all political parties and (on the recommendation of the Education and Justice Minister, novelist Hugo Wast) restoring the requirement of Roman Catholic education in all Argentine public schools.
  
  BULLET::::- Born:
  
  BULLET::::- John Denver, American singer, songwriter and film actor, as Henry John Deutschendorf, Jr., in Roswell, New Mexico (killed in plane crash, 1997)
  
  BULLET::::- Sir Ben Kingsley, English film actor and Academy Award winner (for "Gandhi"), as Krishna Bhanji, in Snainton
  