Vatican Ratlines For Nazis After WW II

Only recently have I learned about the escape routes for Nazis and other fascists at the end of WW II. The word 'ratlines' refers to rats climbing the lines of a sinking sailboat's mast. It would be the last escape route before the ship sunk. So it was for many Nazis. 

I recently read the hard cover edition of  Unholy Trinity: The Vatican, The Nazis, and The Swiss Banks [Paperback] - Head-spinning documentation of how Vatican immunity shielded Nazi war criminals from just punishment--and unwittingly aided the Communist cause. - By Mark Aarons, an Australian expert on Nazi fugitives and John Loftus (The Belarus Secret, 1982), former chief prosecutor of the Justice Department's Nazi War Crimes Unit.

Further online comments include:

• It is now public knowledge that war criminals  like Klaus Barbie, Adolf Eichmann, Heinrich Mueller, Franz Stangl and a whole list of other war criminals escaped war torn Europe via the Catholic Church. Most of these men escaped through the work of one man, a Roman Catholic Bishop named Alois Hudal, Rector of the Pontificio Santa Maria dell’ Anima. "During the war Hudal served as Commissioner or the Episcopate for German speaking Catholics in Italy, as well as Father Confessor to Rome’s German community." [2] Hudal harbored anti-Semitic feelings and his pro Nazi stance was well known throughout the Catholic community. During Hitler’s rule, Bishop Hudal often spoke about the unity between the Catholic Church and the Nazi government.

• Ratlines were systems of escape routes for Nazis and other fascists fleeing Europe at the end of World War II. These escape routes mainly led toward havens in South America, particularly Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil, and Chile. Other destinations included the United States and perhaps Canada and the Middle East. There were two primary routes: the first went from Germany to Spain, then Argentina; the second from Germany to Rome to Genoa,  then South America; the two routes "developed independently" but eventually came together to collaborate.

• Pope Paul VI was connected says Haareetz: "It is possible that within a short time a court in the United States will prohibit the publication of the account before us. In the meantime, Haaretz has obtained the testimony given last month by William Gowen, a former intelligence officer in the United States Army, at a federal court in San Francisco. The testimony contains historical and political explosives. It links Giovanni Battista Montini, who later became Pope Paul VI, to the theft of property of Jewish, Serb, Russian, Ukrainian and Roma victims during World War II in Yugoslavia."

I leave you to do your own searching. . . and commenting.