CALIPH

You wrote, "WHAT T HOLY QURAN SAYS IS CORRECT AND WHAT YOU QUOTED IS WRONG AS THERE IS NO
ORIGINAL BIBLE WITH ORIGINAL LANGUAGE."

I didn't just quote, I also wrote, did you read any of it?

God did not become One of Us for us to set up a theocracy, if God wanted a theocracy, He would not have needed, nor would they have been a reason for Him to give us free will in the first place.

God gave us the capacity to think and it is up to us whether or not we wish to use that gift from God.

One day all will meet God and then they will know that God, to say the least, has been very much misrepresented by some who, knowing nothing about Him except in some cases His Name, claim to speak for Him.

Take care, be ready.

Sincerely, Thomas Paul Moses Baum.

Amazing how even the most evenhanded, hopeful and well intentioned statement unleashes such a flood of hate and fear mongering. I don't see the need to insult one another's holy books or gods. whatever for?
abhab wrote:

Suhail Khan says:

“And in doing so, we'll honor the memory of those, like Kareem Khan, who "gave the last full measure of devotion" so that we may all continue to live in freedom.”

Who are “we”? Do you mean to tell us that all Muslims in America honor Kareem Khan's service? I hope so , yet knowing what I know about the Muslim mindset, I very much doubt it."

Well, any reasonable person would have taken that sentence to mean "we" as in "we Americans." And honoring Khan ? He was an American soldier who died for this country. Every American should honor him. sickening how each time someone tries to appeal to our better nature in regards to American ideals, the haters crawl out of the woodwork and fight it. Makes me wonder what they think America is all about? If we are no longer willing to recognize the things that unite us are more important that the things that divide us, then we are no better than a Nazi Germany or a Spain that allowed the Inquisition or an Afghanistan run by the Taliban.

astoria, good for you! It's a tough crowd on these blogs- hopefully the voices that advocate freedom and equality will eventually win.

Myths copied onto any kind of writing surface and in any language are still myths.

If you could actually grasp this, you'd be able to debrief. Otherwise, if these are just words, you'll stay brainwashed.

Myths copied onto any kind of writing surface and in any language are still myths.

Caliph

The original Tanakh. was written on scrolls in Hebrew and Aramaic, long before Qu'ran.

Best,
Farnaz

THOMASBAUM:

WHAT T HOLY QURAN SAYS IS CORRECT AND WHAT YOU QUOTED IS WRONG AS THERE IS NO
ORIGINAL BIBLE WITH ORIGINAL LANGUAGE.

BEST REGARDS

OBSERVER12 cancer:

You are the greatest liar. Please read a famous book, Read and get rich and many other books.
The followings are from “THINK AND GROW RICH” WRITTEN BY A non-Muslim:

The rise of Islam began. Out of the desert came a flame, which would not be extinguished-, a democratic army fighting as a unit and prepared to die without wincing. Mohammad had invited the Jews and Christians to join him; for he was not building a new religion. He was calling all who believed in one God to join in a single faith. If the Jews and Christians had accepted his invitation Islam would have conquered the world. They didn’t. They would not even accept Mohammad’s innovation of humane warfare. When the armies of the prophet entered Jerusalem not a single person was killed because of his faith. When the crusaders entered the city, centuries later, not a Moslem man, women, or child was spared. But the Christian did accept one Moslem idea-the place of learning, the university.”

We don’t see any difference of the heart of those Crusaders a thousand years ago and now.

Present thousand years old war/crusade against World Muslims is not new. Anti-Christ forces of European powers in general and Anglo Saxons in particular destroyed Muslims everywhere, in Spain in 1492 and later in America, in India in 1757 and lastly in Arab world in 1916 with destruction of long 1300 years old Caliphate. None can write history and so rest is following latest books.

http://www.authorhouse.com/bookstore/ItemDetail~bookid~44552.aspx

http://www.authorhouse.com/bookstore/ItemDetail~bookid~55528.aspx

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN

In the bible Jesus said, "I Am the Way, the Truth and the Life, no one comes to the Father except thru Me", notice He did not say to God but to the Father.

Jesus also said, "I will send the Holy Spirit to guide you into all Truth".

At the baptism of Jesus by John, a Voice came from Heaven and spoke and the Holy Spirit came down in the form of a dove to let John know Who Jesus Was.

Jesus was either speaking the Truth or He was lying, there is no middle ground.

The god of islam says that Jesus is a liar and yet the god of islam claims Jesus as his prophet, second-rate at that behind Mohammed, could anyone tell me or anyone else why the god of islam denies what Jesus taught and calls it blasphemy and yet claims Jesus as his prophet?

Jesus is either God-Incarnate like He said or He is a liar, it is that simple.

I have met God and God is a Trinity and God is a BEING OF PURE LOVE.

God's Plan which He has had since before creation will come to Fruition and His Plan is for ALL OF HUMANITY to be with Him in His Kingdom, the new heavens and the new earth.

By the way, God is a searcher of hearts and minds, not of religious affiliations or lack thereof and it is important what one does and why one does it and what one knows.

Jesus did not become One of Us to set up a theocracy, Jesus also did not tell any of His followers to force themselves or their beliefs on others even tho many thru the age have attempted to do this but that is NOT what Jesus taught.

Can the same be said about Mohammed and what is written in the Koran?

Sharia law is totally UN-AMERICAN, is there anyone out there that agrees or disagrees with this statement?

It doesn't matter what "label" someone applies to themself, to force oneself on another is wrong.

Take care, be ready.

Sincerely, Thomas Paul Moses Baum.

What about the Islamo-fascist Nazi Holocaust of Jews in the Middle East, Africa, and Israel?

What about the Quorayza Jews?

WHAT ABOUT THE THREE MILLION JEWS IN EXILE FROM THEIR HOMES IN EGYPT, SYRIA, LEBANON, IRAQ, IRAN, ETC.

WHAT ABOUT THE CHRISTIANS IN EXILE FROM MIDDLE EASTERN COUNTRIES?

WHAT ABOUT THE HINDUS LIVING IN THE MIDDLE EAST?

ETC.

Continued from preceding post:

After the defeat of Nazi Germany, al Husseini fled to Egypt. His arrival in 1946 was a precursor to a steady stream of Third Reich veterans. Cairo became a safe haven for several thousand Nazi fugitives, including former SS Captain Alois Brunner, Adolf Eichmann’s chief deputy. Convicted in absentia for war crimes, Brunner would later reside in Damascus, where he served as a security advisor for the Syrian government.

Several of the Germans, recognizing British puppet King Farouk’s political weakness, soon began conspiring with Nasser and his “Free Officers,” who, in turn, were working closely with the Muslim Brotherhood, to overthrow the king. When Banna was assassinated by Egyptian officials in 1949, the movement was destabilized, but not for long. On July 23, 1952, a coup d’etat was carried out by the Free Officers with Brotherhood assistance. Newsweek marveled that, “The most intriguing aspect [of] the revolt ... was the role played in the coup by the large group of German advisors serving with the Egyptian army... The young officers who did the actual planning consulted the German advisors as to ‘tactics’... This accounted for the smoothness of the operation.”[10]

A key individual in the Islamic and fascist nexus, and go-between for the Nazis and Banna, became the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al Husseini, later the mentor of Yasser Arafat, from 1946 onward. Hajj Amin al Husseini was convicted in absentia after fleeing to Syria for his involvement in the 1920 attack on Jews at the Western Wall. However, despite his involvement and conviction, he was pardoned by the local British High Commissioner Herbert Samuel, and made the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in 1921.

Beginning in 1933, al Husseini regularly met with local Nazi representatives and openly expressed admiration for Hitler’s ideas. During these meetings, he served as a liaison for the Muslim Brotherhood to the Nazis. Between 1936-1939, Adolf Eichmann, oversaw funding from the SS to al Husseini and his associates, to aid their efforts in encouraging a revolt in the region.[6] However, in the late 1930’s, al Husseini openly called for direct aide from Germany to Arab forces, and had to flee to Syria. In April 1941, al Husseini assisted the pro-Nazi revolt in Iraq, and attempts by the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, or the Syrian Nazi Party, to support the revolt after the British moved to suppress it. Those involved included Saddam’s uncle Khairallah Tulfah, and the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, who formed the Baath Parties of Syria and Iraq.[7]

Thus, the mufti was to flee once again, ultimately reaching Berlin, to a hero’s welcome. He remained in Germany as an honored guest and valuable intelligence asset throughout most of the war, met with Hitler on several occasions, and personally recruited leading members of the Bosnian-Muslim “Hanjar” division of the Waffen SS. One member was Alija Izetbegovic, who later lead Bosnia’s move for independence.[8]

al Husseini and Hitler
In the summer of 1942, when German General Erwin Rommel’s Afrikakorps were poised to march into Cairo, Anwar Sadat, Gamal Nasser and their cronies were in touch with the attacking German force and, with help from the Muslim Brotherhood were preparing an anti-British uprising in Egypt’s capital.[9] A treaty with Germany had been drafted by Sadat, which included provisions for German recognition of an independent, but pro-Axis Egypt, and guarantying that “no British soldier would leave Cairo alive.” When Rommel’s push failed in the fall of 1942, Sadat and several of his co-conspirators were arrested by the British, and sat out much of the remainder of the war in jail.

asizk, asizk, asizk,

The koran is the greatest book ever written?? You must be kidding!!!

What the koran has brought to the contemporary world: oppression of women, global terror and the belief in a hallucinating, warmongering, womanizing, illiterate founder and long-dead Arab and his paranormal-based and sometimes very strange rules.

observer12 :

What about the slow holocaust of Palestinians
by the jews in occupied Palestine at the hands of the racist apartheid militaristic jewish theocrcay-israel?/

Collin Powell is a true American Satesman and Patriot.

The Holy Quran is the gretaest book ever written-it is a miracle of reason for all times and places;it came down to us intcat as was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad pbup from 610-632AD.

Any one with an open mind and seeking the truth and with a grain of objectivity and hoensty, would find the Quran a perpetual light unto humanity and founatin of wisdom and guidance.

CCNL writes "Worst Book/SOP Ever Written aka the koran"

Clearly you've never read any Alan Dean Foster, or another book called "The Texas Israeli War".
Regarding your note about Observor12, I have to agree.

logoimg
iconimg November 4, 2006
Press Trust Of India
Indore/Mumbai, October 23, 2008
First Published: 19:15 IST(23/10/2008)
Last Updated: 19:43 IST(23/10/2008)

Police suspects Hindu extremist group for Malegaon blast, 3 picked up from Indore

Three persons from Indore were picked up by Maharashtra police and are being interrogated in Mumbai in connection with the Malegaon bomb blasts amid suspicions that Hindu extremist groups could be involved in the recent explosions in Malegaon and Modasa in Gujarat.

Top police sources said in Indore that in a very secret operation, Maharashtra police had taken three persons -- Shyam Lal, Dilip Nahar and Dharmendra Bairagi-- into custody from the city in Madhya Pradesh on October 19 in connection with a theft of a motorcycle for assisting in the probe into the explosions.

Later, they were taken to Mumbai where their interrogation was going on in connection with bomb blasts in Malegaon in Maharashtra, the sources said.

Maharashtra police suspects that the trio had stolen the motorcycle which was used for Malegaon blasts in which five persons were killed.

In Mumbai, Maharashtra police said they were still investigating the alleged involvement of Hindu right wing groups in the September 29 explosions in Malegaon in Maharashtra and Modasa. One person was killed in the Modasa attack. In both the incidents, bombs were placed on motorcycles parked in crowded area to cause maximum human casualty.

"We are investigating the matter currently and will share the details of investigations at the appropriate time," an Anti-Terrorism Squad(ATS) official said in Mumbai when asked to comment on press reports that a Hindu right wing group based in Indore was involved in carrying out the two blasts.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/Print.aspx?Id=19659f76-0c93-4f42-8ba3-81af82326d3b
© Copyright 2007 Hindustan Times
****************************************************************************

Hindu fanatics in India belong to the political parties like the BJP and the RSS and militant groups like the Bahrang Dal. They are even committing acts of terrorism to put the blame on Christians and Muslims.

OBSERVER12 cancer

You are expert in propagandist.
Any Jew or Christian can read a book The Secret Jews by Joachim Prinz who was a famous Rabbi and Jewish leader in USA. Mr. Prinz mentioned in his famous book i.e. The Secret Jews that Ataturk was a Jew. Ataturk abolished Caliphate on 29th October, 1923.
So it was too late for any real Arab or Muslim leader to take any action for Caliphate as it was destroyed in 1916 by Anglo French conspiracy and it was abolished in 1923 by Ataturk and nothing changed since then. So whatever you quoted is the result of destruction and abolition of Caliphate. Traitors are taking advantage against Muslims and they forgot how Muslims or Arabs saved them in Spain to Turkey, from Morocco to India with shelter.
Any can read some good book like THE OTHER JEWS BY DANIEL J. ELAZAR and know the truth. Rest is here in:

http://www.authorhouse.com/bookstore/ItemDetail~bookid~44552.aspx

http://www.authorhouse.com/bookstore/ItemDetail~bookid~55528.aspx

OBSERVER12 cancer

You are expert in propagandist.
Any Jew or Christian can read a book The Secret Jews by Joachim Prinz who was a famous Rabbi and Jewish leader in USA. Mr. Prinz mentioned in his famous book i.e. The Secret Jews that Ataturk was a Jew. Ataturk abolished Caliphate on 29th October, 1923.
So it was too late for any real Arab or Muslim leader to take any action for Caliphate as it was destroyed in 1916 by Anglo French conspiracy and it was abolished in 1923 by Ataturk and nothing changed since then. So whatever you quoted is the result of destruction and abolition of Caliphate. Traitors are taking advantage against Muslims and they forgot how Muslims or Arabs saved them in Spain to Turkey, from Morocco to India with shelter.
Any can read some good book like THE OTHER JEWS BY DANIEL J. ELAZAR and know the truth. Rest is here in:

http://www.authorhouse.com/bookstore/ItemDetail~bookid~44552.aspx

http://www.authorhouse.com/bookstore/ItemDetail~bookid~55528.aspx

Oops, make that many of us (like Observer12) have been Bred, Born and Brainwashed in their religion. (And Observer12 proves it.)

Caliph Cancer,

There's nothing new here, but some may not be familiar with the theme. There are many more books on this. Tumor, I wouldn't post your diseased links here.

Chuck Morse's latest book, "The Nazi Connection to Islamic Terrorism, Adolf Hitler and Haj Amin al-Husseini," provides the clearest, most incisive history of how Islamo-fascism and Jihad terrorism have become the dominant political philosophy in the Arab world. It is the untold story of how Nazism took root in the Islamic world through the untiring efforts of the mufti of Jerusalem, whose aim it was to destroy the Jews in Palestine. Morse writes:

The Nazi Holocaust appears to have kicked into high gear on Nov. 25, 1941, during a Berlin meeting between the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini (1895-1974) and the Nazi Fuhrer of Germany, Adolf Hitler. At that well-documented meeting, Hitler promised al-Husseini, the Palestinian pan-Arab leader, that after securing a dominant military position in Europe, he would send the Wehrmacht, the Nazi war machine, on a blitzkrieg across the Caucasus and into the Arab world under the guise of liberating the Arabs from British occupation.

It should be noted that merely two months after the Hitler-Husseini meeting, the infamous Wansee Conference took place in which the Nazis produced their plan to exterminate the Jews of Europe.

Although Husseini spent the war in Germany, he managed to flee the advancing Allied forces and made his way to Cairo. While the captured Nazi leaders were tried at Nuremberg, Husseini escaped judgment and became the major force in transferring Hitler's program of genocide to the Arab world.

During the war, he had recruited Bosnian Muslims to serve in Nazi-Muslim SS Hanshar brigades which slaughtered Jews and Christian Serbs in Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia. Memory of that slaughter was one of the reasons why the Serbs went after the Bosnian Muslims 50 years later.

After the war, Husseini established working links between Nazis and Arabs in the Muslim world. He also got rid of anyone who stood in his way. That is why moderate Arabs are so rare. Husseini killed most of them.

He began his public career after World War I, when moderate Arab leader Emir Feisal signed an agreement with Chaim Weizmann recognizing the Balfour Declaration, which facilitated the development of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

Feisal believed that a Jewish Palestine would help the newly liberated Arab world develop into modern states with prosperous economies. But Husseini refused to accept a Jewish Palestine, and he instigated pogroms to force the Jewish settlers out. The first pogrom took place in 1920. Morse writes:

In 1921, shortly after the launching of the 1920 pogrom and for reasons that will forever remain shrouded in mystery, Sir Herbert Samuel, a British Jew who had been appointed as British High Commissioner of the Palestine Mandate that same year, appointed al-Husseini as Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.

Despite vigorous opposition to this appointment, Husseini proceeded to instigate violence against the Jews in Palestine and spread hatred of Jews throughout the Arab world, brutally purging any Arab who opposed him. In 1937, Husseini met with Adolf Eichmann in Palestine and became a full-fledged paid Nazi agent. In 1941, Husseini moved on to Baghdad where he helped organize the pro-Nazi Rachid Ali officers' coup against the British government in Iraq. When the coup failed, Husseini fled to Rome and then to the Third Reich.

One of the Iraqi coup plotters was Gen. Tufah Khariallah, uncle, guardian, mentor and future father-in-law of Saddam Hussein. The mufti was also a mentor to Yasser Arafat, who is believed to be Husseini's nephew.

Overlooked in the history books is the fact that about 100,000 European Muslims fought on the Nazi side in World War II. They included two Bosnian Muslim Waffen SS Divisions, an Albanian Waffen SS Division in Kosovo and Western Macedonia, the Waffengruppe der-SS Krim, formations consisting of Chechen Muslims from Chechnya, and other Muslim formations in Bosnia-Hercegovina.

Bosnian Muslims, who were in the Croatian pro-Nazi Ustasha, were especially brutal toward the Christian Serbs. In 1943, a report on Ustasha activities stated:

The Ustasha terror began in Mostar. The Ustashi, the majority of them local Mohammedans, are arresting, looking, and shipping off Serbs or killing them and throwing the bodies in the Neretva River. They are throwing Serbs alive into chasms and are burning whole families in their homes. Outside of Zagreb the strongest Ustasha hotbed is Sarajevo. The Muslims committed unbelievable barbarities for they murdered women and children even with scissors.

There are many answers with historical facts against all kinds hate mongering against Muslims in following books:

http://www.authorhouse.com/bookstore/ItemDetail~bookid~44552.aspx

http://www.authorhouse.com/bookstore/ItemDetail~bookid~55528.aspx

CCNL'S RELATIVES. DOINGS OF THIS GENERATION OF CCNL'S FAMILY COMING SOON.

FROM WIKEPEDIA, CCNL'S FAVORITE.

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 safe havens in South America, particularly Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil and Chile. Other destinations may have included the United States, Canada and the Middle East.

One ratline, made famous by the Frederick Forsyth thriller The Odessa File, was run by the ODESSA (Organisation der ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen; "The Organization of Former SS-Members") network organized by Otto Skorzeny. National governments and international institutions played a larger role than secret societies.[citation needed]

The Roman ratlines

Early efforts—Bishop Hudal
Catholic Bishop Alois Hudal was rector of the Pontificio Istituto Teutonico Santa Maria dell’Anima in Rome, a seminary for Austrian and German priests, and "Spiritual Director of the German People resident in Italy" [1]. After the end of the war in Italy, Hudal became active in ministering to German-speaking prisoners of war and internees then held in camps throughout Italy. In December 1944 the Vatican Secretariat of State received permission to appoint a representative to "visit the German-speaking civil internees in Italy", a job which was assigned to Hudal.

Hudal used this position to aid the escape of wanted Nazi war criminals, including Franz Stangl, commanding officer of Treblinka, Gustav Wagner, commanding officer of Sobibor, Alois Brunner, responsible for the Drancy internment camp near Paris and in charge of deportations in Slovakia to German concentration camps, and Adolf Eichmann [2] — a fact about which he was later unashamedly open. Some of these wanted men were being held in internment camps: generally without identity papers, they would be enrolled in camp registers under false names. Other Nazis were in hiding in Italy, and sought Hudal out as his role in assisting escapes became known on the Nazi grapevine [3]

In his memoirs Hudal said of his actions: I thank God that He [allowed me] to visit and comfort many victims in their prisons and concentration camps and to help them escape with false identity papers. [4]

He explained that in his eyes:

"The Allies' War against Germany was not a crusade, but the rivalry of economic complexes for whose victory they had been fighting. This so-called business ... used catchwords like democracy, race, religious liberty and Christianity as a bait for the masses. All these experiences were the reason why I felt duty bound after 1945 to devote my whole charitable work mainly to former National Socialists and Fascists, especially to so-called 'war criminals'."

According to Mark Aarons and John Loftus in their book Unholy Trinity [5], Hudal was the first Catholic priest to dedicate himself to establishing escape routes. Aarons and Loftus claim that Hudal provided the objects of his charity with money to help them escape, and more importantly with false papers including identity documents issued by the Vatican Refugee Organisation (Commissione Pontificia d'Assistenza).

These Vatican papers were not full passports, and not in themselves enough to gain passage overseas. They were, rather, the first stop in a paper trail—they could be used to obtain a displaced person passport from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which in turn could be used to apply for visas. In theory the ICRC would perform background checks on passport applicants, but in practice the word of a priest or particularly a bishop would be good enough. According to statements collected by Gitta Sereny from a senior official of the Rome branch of the ICRC [6], Hudal could also use his position as a bishop to request papers from the ICRC "made out according to his specifications". Sereny's sources also revealed an active illicit trade in stolen and forged ICRC papers in Rome at this time.

According to declassified US intelligence reports, Hudal was not the only priest helping Nazi escapees at this time. In the "La Vista report" declassified in 1984, Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) operative Vincent La Vista told how he had easily arranged for two bogus Hungarian refugees to get false ICRC documents with the help of a letter from a Father Joseph Gallov. Gallov, who ran a Vatican sponsored charity for Hungarian refugees, asked no questions and wrote a letter to his "personal contact in the International Red Cross, who then issued the passports" [7].

The San Girolamo ratline
According to Aarons and Loftus, Hudal's private operation was small scale compared to what came later. The major Roman ratline was operated by a small, but influential network of Croatian priests, members of the Franciscan order, led by Father Krunoslav Draganović. Draganović organized a highly sophisticated chain, head-quartered at the San Girolamo degli Illirici Seminary College in Rome, but with links from Austria to the final embarcation point in the port of Genoa. The ratline initially focused on aiding members of the Croatian Ustashi fascist movement, most notably the Croat wartime dictator Ante Pavelic [8].

Priests active in the chain included: Fr. Vilim Cecelja, former Deputy Military Vicar to the Ustashi, based in Austria where many Ustashi and Nazi refugees remained in hiding; Fr. Dragutin Kamber, based at San Girolamo; Fr. Dominic Mandic, an official Vatican representative at San Girolamo and also "General Economist" or treasurer of the Franciscan order — who used this position to put the Franciscan press at the ratline's disposal; and Monsignor Karlo Petranovic, based in Genoa.

Cecelja would make contact with those in hiding in Austria, and help them across the border to Italy; Kamber, Mandic and Draganović would find them lodgings, often in the monastery itself, while they arranged documentation; finally Draganović would phone Petranovic in Genoa with the number of required berths on ships leaving for South America. (See below for the operation of the South American end.)

The operation of the Draganović ratline was an open secret amongst the intelligence and diplomatic community in Rome. As early as August 1945, Allied commanders in Rome were asking questions about the use of San Girolamo as a "haven" for Ustashi [9]. A year later, a US State Department report of 12 July 1946 lists nine war criminals, including Albanians and Montenegrins as well as Croats, plus others "not actually sheltered in the COLLEGIUM ILLIRICUM [i.e., San Girolamo degli Illirici] but who otherwise enjoy Church support and protection." [10] The British government was annoyed by the Vatican's shelter of Ustashi-Fascist. The envoy to the Holy See, Francis Osborne, asked Domenico Tardini, a high ranking Vatican official for a permission that would have allowed the British Military police to raid ex-territorial Vatican Institutions in Rome. Tardini granted no permission and denied that the church sheltered war criminals. In February 1947 CIC Special Agent Robert Clayton Mudd reported ten members of Pavelic's Ustashi cabinet living either in San Girolamo or in the Vatican itself. Mudd had infiltrated an agent into the monastery and confirmed that it was "honeycombed with cells of Ustashi operatives" guarded by "armed youths". Mudd also reported:

"It was further established that these Croats travel back and forth from the Vatican several times a week in a car with a chauffeur whose license plate bears the two initials CD, "Corpo Diplomatico". It issues forth from the Vatican and discharges its passengers inside the Monastery of San Geronimo . Subject to diplomatic immunity it is impossible to stop the car and discover who are its passengers."[11]

Mudd's conclusion was the following:

"DRAGANOVIC's sponsorship of these Croat Quislings definitely links him up with the plan of the Vatican to shield these ex-Ustashi nationalists until such time as they are able to procure for them the proper documents to enable them to go to South America. The Vatican, undoubtedly banking on the strong anti-Communist feelings of these men, is endeavoring to infiltrate them into South America in any way possible to counteract the spread of Red doctrine. It has been reliably reported, for example that Dr. VRANCIC has already gone to South America and that Ante PAVELIC and General KREN are scheduled for an early departure to South America through Spain. All these operations are said to have been negotiated by DRAGANOVIC because of his influence in the Vatican."

The existence of Draganović's ratline is admitted by the Vatican historian Fr. Robert Graham: "I've no doubt that Draganović was extremely active in syphoning off his Croatian Ustashi friends." However Graham insisted that Draganović was not officially sanctioned in this by his superiors: "Just because he's a priest doesn't mean he represents the Vatican. It was his own operation." [12]

On 4 occasions the Vatican intervened on behalf of interned Ustashi-prisoners. The Secretariat of State asked the U.K. and U.S. government to release Croatian POWs from British internment camps in Italy.

US intelligence gets involved
If at first US intelligence officers had been mere observers of the Draganović ratline, this was to change in the summer of 1947. A now declassified US Army intelligence report from 1950 sets out in detail the history of the people smuggling operation in the three years to follow.[13]

According to the report, from this point on US forces themselves had begun to use Draganović's established network to evacuate its own "visitors". As the report put it, these were "visitors who had been in the custody of the 430th CIC and completely processed in accordance with current directives and requirements, and whose continued residence in Austria constituted a security threat as well as a source of possible embarrassment to the Commanding General of USFA, since the Soviet Command had become aware that their presence in US Zone of Austria and in some instances had requested the return of these persons to Soviet custody."[14]

That is, these were suspected war criminals and Quislings from areas occupied by the Red Army—legally US Forces were obliged to hand them over for trial to the Soviets. They were reluctant to do this partly because fair trial could hardly be expected in Stalinist USSR (see Operation Keelhaul). The deal with Draganović involved getting the visitors to Rome: "Dragonovich handled all phases of the operation after the defectees arrived in Rome, such as the procurement of IRO Italian and South American documents, visas, stamps, arrangements for disposition, land or sea, and notification of resettlement committees in foreign lands."[15] US intelligence used these methods in order to get important Nazi scientists and military strategists, to the extent they had not already been claimed by the Soviet Union, to their own centres of military science in the US. Many Nazi scientists were employed by the US, retrieved in Operation Paperclip.

The Argentine Connection
See also: Juan Perón and the Jewish and German communities of Argentina

“ 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.
Argentine president Juan Perón on the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi war criminals.[16]
”

In his 2002 book The Real Odessa [16] 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.

According to Goñi, Argentina's first move into Nazi smuggling was in January 1946, when Argentine bishop Antonio Caggiano, bishop of Rosario and leader of the Argentine chapter of Catholic Action flew with Bishop Agustín Barrére to Rome where Caggiano was due to be anointed Cardinal. While 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 Emile Dewoitine—later sentenced in absentia to 20 years hard labour. He sailed first class on the same ship back with Cardinal Caggiano [17]

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 [18].

ODESSA and the Gehlen Org
Main article: ODESSA
The Italian and Argentinian ratlines have only been confirmed relatively recently, mainly due to research in recently declassified archives. Until the work of Aarons and Loftus, and of Uki Goñi (2002), a common view was that ex-Nazis themselves, organised in secret networks, ran the escape routes alone. The most famous such network is ODESSA (Organisation of former SS members), founded in 1946 according to Simon Wiesenthal, which included SS-Obersturmbannführer Otto Skorzeny and Sturmbannführer Alfred Naujocks and in Argentina, Rodolfo Freude. Alois Brunner, former commandant of Drancy internment camp near Paris, escaped to Rome then Syria by ODESSA (Brunner is thought to be the highest-ranking Nazi war criminal still alive as of 2007). Persons claiming to represent ODESSA claimed responsibility in a note for 9 July 1979 car bombing in France aimed at Nazi hunters Serge and Beate Klarsfeld. According to Paul Manning (1980), "eventually, over 10,000 former German military made it to South America along escape routes ODESSA and Deutsche Hilfsverein..." [19]

Simon Wiesenthal, who advised Frederick Forsyth on the novel/filmscript The Odessa File which brought the name to public attention, also names other Nazi escape organisations such as Spinne ("Spider") and Sechsgestirn ("Constellation of Six"). Wiesenthal describes these immediately after the war as Nazi cells based in areas of Austria where many Nazis had retreated and gone to ground. Wiesenthal claimed that the Odessa network shepherded escapees to the Catholic ratlines in Rome (although he mentions only Hudal, not Draganović); or through a second route through France and into Francoist Spain [20]

ODESSA was supported by the Gehlen Org, which employed many former Nazi party members, and was headed by Reinhard Gehlen, a former Nazi intelligence officer employed post-war by the CIA. The Gehlen Org became the nucleus of the BND German intelligence agency, directed by Reinhard Gehlen from its 1956 creation until 1968.[citation needed]

Vatican involvement
Main article: Class action suit against the Vatican Bank and others
It is accepted that Catholic priests, notably Hudal and Draganović, were actively involved in smuggling wanted war criminals. What is disputed is the extent to which their actions were sanctioned by higher authorities within the Church.

In his role as apostolic visitor to the imprisoned Croats, Draganović reported to Bishop Giovanni Battista Montini, then secretary in charge of 'extraordinary affairs' at the Vatican's Secretariat of State - he would later become Pope Paul VI. Some evidence that Montini was aware that a ratline investigation was involved has come out recently in a San Francisco courtroom where a class action suit of holocaust survivors against the Vatican Bank is currently underway. One witness in the trial is William Gowen, a former US Army intelligence agent stationed in Rome in the years after the war, charged with investigating the Draganović ratline. Gowen's testimony has not been officially published, but a copy was obtained by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz which printed an article in January 2006 accusing Montini based on Gowen's evidence [21]. According to the Haaretz article:

"I personally investigated Draganovic - who told me he was reporting to Montini", emphasized Gowen. Gowen related that at a certain stage Montini learned, apparently from the head of the OSS unit in Rome, James Angleton, who nurtured relations with Montini and the Vatican, of the investigation Gowen's unit was conducting. Montini complained about Gowen to his superiors and accused him of having violated the Vatican's immunity by having entered church buildings, such as the Croatian college, and conducting searches there. The aim of the complaint was to interfere with the investigation. In his testimony, Gowen also stated that Draganovic helped the Ustashe launder the stolen treasure with the help of the Vatican Bank: This money was used to fund its religious activities, but also to fund the escape of Ustashe leaders on the Rat Line.[21]

Involvement of world powers
There have also been allegations of collusion or active support by various governments for the ratlines. Accusations have been levelled against the United States government of acting through the Central Intelligence Agency to help smuggle Nazi scientists and officers to safety. Similar accusations have been made against the KGB.

Ratline escapees
Nazis and war criminals who escaped using ratlines include:

Adolf Eichmann
Franz Stangl
Gustav Wagner
Erich Priebke
Klaus Barbie
Edward Roschmann
Aribert Heim
Andrija Artuković
Ante Pavelić
Walter Rauff
Alois Brunner
Josef Mengele

[edit] See also
Ex-Nazi

[edit] Endnotes
^ Aarons and Loftus, Unholy Trinity: The Vatican, The Nazis, and the Swiss Bankers (St Martins Press 1991, revised 1998), p. 36
^ Michael Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust
^ Gitta Sereny Into That Darkness Picador 1977, p. 289. Her account comes from testimony of Nazi war criminals helped by Hudal, such as Franz Stangl, Commandant of Treblinka extermination camp.
^ Hudal Römische Tagebücher (English translation quoted in Aarons and Loftus, p. 37)
^ Aarons and Loftus, chap 2 'Bishop Hudal and the First Wave'
^ Gitta Sereny, op. cit., pp. 316-7
^ See Aarons and Loftus, pp. 43-5
^ # Aarons and Loftus, chapter 5 'Ratline'
^ Declassified US Army File: 'Rome Area Allied Command to the CIC', 8 August 1945 Published on the website of the Jasenovac Comittee of the Holy Assembly of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church.
^ Declassified State Department File: 'Vatican Protection of Jugoslav War Criminals', 12 July 1946 Published on the website of the Jasenovac Comittee of the Holy Assembly of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church.
^ Declassified CIA File: 'Background Report on Father Krunoslav Draganovic', 12 February 1947 Published on the website of the Jasenovac Comittee of the Holy Assembly of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church.
^ Aarons and Loftus, p. 89
^ "History of the Italian Rat Line" (10 April 1950), document signed by "IB Operating Officer" Paul E. Lyon, 430th Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC), Headquarters of the US Forces in Austria [1].
^ Ibid.
^ Ibid.
^ a b From the 'Perón tapes' he recorded the year before his death, published in Yo, Domingo Perón, Luca de Tena et al.; this translation as quoted in Uki Goñi The Real Odessa: Smuggling the Nazis to Perón's Argentina, Granta (revised edition) 2003 p. 100
^ Uki Goñi, The Real Odessa: Smuggling the Nazis to Perón's Argentina, Granta (revised edition) 2003, pp. 96–8
^ Goñi ch. 8
^ Paul Manning, Martin Bormann: Nazi in Exile (Lyle Stuart, Inc., 1980, ISBN 0-8184-0309-8 (page 181)
^ Simon Wiesenthal Justice not Vengeance, George Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1989 - particularly chap. 6 'Odessa'.
^ a b 'Tied up in the Ratlines' by Yossi Melman, Haaretz, 17 January 2006

Bibliography
Mark Aarons and John Loftus, Unholy Trinity: The Vatican, The Nazis, and the Swiss Bankers, St Martins Press 1991 (revised 1998)
Gitta Sereny Into That Darkness, Picador 1977
Uki Goñi The Real Odessa: Smuggling the Nazis to Perón's Argentina, Granta (revised edition) 2003
Robert Graham and David Alvarez, Nothing Sacred: Nazi Espionage against the Vatican, 1939-1945, London: Frank Cass, 1998.
Simon Wiesenthal Justice not Vengeance, George Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1989
Gerald Steinacher The Cape of Last Hope: The Flight of Nazi War Criminals through Italy to South America, in: Klaus Eisterer, Günter Bischof (Ed.), Transatlantic Relations. Austria and Latin America in the 19th and 20th Century (Transatlantica 1) New Brunswick 2006, p. 203 – 224.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratlines_(history)"
Categories: Yugoslavia during World War II | Nazism | Neo-Nazism

Astoria:

I don't slander Islam. Nor do I slander you, but do say you're a moron. That's not slander. It's fact. The Ratline is not slander. It, too, is historical fact. See below, or ask someone to help you.

My publications are in response to this by CCNL, who, like the RatLine, the christian nazis it helped, and all the other christian nazis, is a pig. The pig is an intelligent animal; hence I do not so designate you. I also won't say that you take away respect for Islam with your ignorance and racism. Your stupidity is your strictly your own.

CCNL's POST SCROLL DOWN FOR THE ORIGINAL
Unfortunately many of us suffer from the Three B Syndrome i.e. we were Bred, Bord and Brainwashed in our religions.

With respect to the TANAKH, the sacred book of Judaism, consisting of the fictional Torah, the Fortune Tellers, and the Rock and Roll of the Jewish nation, it does provide much in the way of wishful/dream thinking.

It is also unfortunate that some of the examples in the Tanakh e.g. the slaughters overseen by Moses/Herod of young sons and by Joshua of all living things, to include women and children in Jericho set a disastrous precedent for later power brokers. One wonders though where Atila and the Huns got their plundering examples from

Oh, and for those tuning in late, General Powell's credentials were *impeccable* on foreign and military policy, till he spoke out against the Republicans, who not too long ago tried to get him to run for president under their ticket.

Now that he says Obama's got the better foreign policy, though, of course Powell was only ever about some 'black agenda.'

Rather than being our most respected military man, period.

That is if Petraeus's endorsment of Obama isn't good enoug for you.

Bu, nah, General Powell is all about the color of skin... Unlike any GOP people, of course....

The *best* thing about being American is you get to, if you remember to, point at all that below and say, 'Noise.'

Meanwhile, back in a government of the people, by the people, for the people, based on the informed consent of an educated populace, *baddabing...* Decision time.

I'm pretty immune to your constant slander of Islam Observer-
But on a post that is about plurality and inclusiveness-
your attack on CCML, and christianity-
is one of the ugliest and most vicious examples of bigotry mixed with personal hatred that I have ever seen spewed forth.

How can you possibly imagine you are attracting respect for Judaism while calling other faiths garbage.

You defame and shame your own people with such vitriol.

HERE IS THE SHORTLIST OF CCNL'S FAMILY. MUCH MORE TO COME, INCLUDING THE PRESENT GENERATION.

AS YOU'LL SEE, YOU CAN'T BLAME CCNL. IT'S HIS READING MATTER THE "NT" THAT'S WHERE IT STARTS.

Make a donation to Wikipedia and give the gift of knowledge!
Ratlines (history)
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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 safe havens in South America, particularly Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil and Chile. Other destinations may have included the United States, Canada and the Middle East.

One ratline, made famous by the Frederick Forsyth thriller The Odessa File, was run by the ODESSA (Organisation der ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen; "The Organization of Former SS-Members") network organized by Otto Skorzeny. National governments and international institutions played a larger role than secret societies.[citation needed]

Contents
[hide]
1 The Roman ratlines
1.1 Early efforts—Bishop Hudal
1.2 The San Girolamo ratline
1.3 US intelligence gets involved
2 The Argentine Connection
3 ODESSA and the Gehlen Org
4 Vatican involvement
4.1 Involvement of world powers
5 Ratline escapees
6 See also
7 Endnotes
8 Bibliography

[edit] The Roman ratlines

[edit] Early efforts—Bishop Hudal
Catholic Bishop Alois Hudal was rector of the Pontificio Istituto Teutonico Santa Maria dell’Anima in Rome, a seminary for Austrian and German priests, and "Spiritual Director of the German People resident in Italy" [1]. After the end of the war in Italy, Hudal became active in ministering to German-speaking prisoners of war and internees then held in camps throughout Italy. In December 1944 the Vatican Secretariat of State received permission to appoint a representative to "visit the German-speaking civil internees in Italy", a job which was assigned to Hudal.

Hudal used this position to aid the escape of wanted Nazi war criminals, including Franz Stangl, commanding officer of Treblinka, Gustav Wagner, commanding officer of Sobibor, Alois Brunner, responsible for the Drancy internment camp near Paris and in charge of deportations in Slovakia to German concentration camps, and Adolf Eichmann [2] — a fact about which he was later unashamedly open. Some of these wanted men were being held in internment camps: generally without identity papers, they would be enrolled in camp registers under false names. Other Nazis were in hiding in Italy, and sought Hudal out as his role in assisting escapes became known on the Nazi grapevine [3]

In his memoirs Hudal said of his actions: I thank God that He [allowed me] to visit and comfort many victims in their prisons and concentration camps and to help them escape with false identity papers. [4]

He explained that in his eyes:

"The Allies' War against Germany was not a crusade, but the rivalry of economic complexes for whose victory they had been fighting. This so-called business ... used catchwords like democracy, race, religious liberty and Christianity as a bait for the masses. All these experiences were the reason why I felt duty bound after 1945 to devote my whole charitable work mainly to former National Socialists and Fascists, especially to so-called 'war criminals'."

According to Mark Aarons and John Loftus in their book Unholy Trinity [5], Hudal was the first Catholic priest to dedicate himself to establishing escape routes. Aarons and Loftus claim that Hudal provided the objects of his charity with money to help them escape, and more importantly with false papers including identity documents issued by the Vatican Refugee Organisation (Commissione Pontificia d'Assistenza).

These Vatican papers were not full passports, and not in themselves enough to gain passage overseas. They were, rather, the first stop in a paper trail—they could be used to obtain a displaced person passport from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which in turn could be used to apply for visas. In theory the ICRC would perform background checks on passport applicants, but in practice the word of a priest or particularly a bishop would be good enough. According to statements collected by Gitta Sereny from a senior official of the Rome branch of the ICRC [6], Hudal could also use his position as a bishop to request papers from the ICRC "made out according to his specifications". Sereny's sources also revealed an active illicit trade in stolen and forged ICRC papers in Rome at this time.

According to declassified US intelligence reports, Hudal was not the only priest helping Nazi escapees at this time. In the "La Vista report" declassified in 1984, Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) operative Vincent La Vista told how he had easily arranged for two bogus Hungarian refugees to get false ICRC documents with the help of a letter from a Father Joseph Gallov. Gallov, who ran a Vatican sponsored charity for Hungarian refugees, asked no questions and wrote a letter to his "personal contact in the International Red Cross, who then issued the passports" [7].

[edit] The San Girolamo ratline
According to Aarons and Loftus, Hudal's private operation was small scale compared to what came later. The major Roman ratline was operated by a small, but influential network of Croatian priests, members of the Franciscan order, led by Father Krunoslav Draganović. Draganović organized a highly sophisticated chain, head-quartered at the San Girolamo degli Illirici Seminary College in Rome, but with links from Austria to the final embarcation point in the port of Genoa. The ratline initially focused on aiding members of the Croatian Ustashi fascist movement, most notably the Croat wartime dictator Ante Pavelic [8].

Priests active in the chain included: Fr. Vilim Cecelja, former Deputy Military Vicar to the Ustashi, based in Austria where many Ustashi and Nazi refugees remained in hiding; Fr. Dragutin Kamber, based at San Girolamo; Fr. Dominic Mandic, an official Vatican representative at San Girolamo and also "General Economist" or treasurer of the Franciscan order — who used this position to put the Franciscan press at the ratline's disposal; and Monsignor Karlo Petranovic, based in Genoa.

Cecelja would make contact with those in hiding in Austria, and help them across the border to Italy; Kamber, Mandic and Draganović would find them lodgings, often in the monastery itself, while they arranged documentation; finally Draganović would phone Petranovic in Genoa with the number of required berths on ships leaving for South America. (See below for the operation of the South American end.)

The operation of the Draganović ratline was an open secret amongst the intelligence and diplomatic community in Rome. As early as August 1945, Allied commanders in Rome were asking questions about the use of San Girolamo as a "haven" for Ustashi [9]. A year later, a US State Department report of 12 July 1946 lists nine war criminals, including Albanians and Montenegrins as well as Croats, plus others "not actually sheltered in the COLLEGIUM ILLIRICUM [i.e., San Girolamo degli Illirici] but who otherwise enjoy Church support and protection." [10] The British government was annoyed by the Vatican's shelter of Ustashi-Fascist. The envoy to the Holy See, Francis Osborne, asked Domenico Tardini, a high ranking Vatican official for a permission that would have allowed the British Military police to raid ex-territorial Vatican Institutions in Rome. Tardini granted no permission and denied that the church sheltered war criminals. In February 1947 CIC Special Agent Robert Clayton Mudd reported ten members of Pavelic's Ustashi cabinet living either in San Girolamo or in the Vatican itself. Mudd had infiltrated an agent into the monastery and confirmed that it was "honeycombed with cells of Ustashi operatives" guarded by "armed youths". Mudd also reported:

"It was further established that these Croats travel back and forth from the Vatican several times a week in a car with a chauffeur whose license plate bears the two initials CD, "Corpo Diplomatico". It issues forth from the Vatican and discharges its passengers inside the Monastery of San Geronimo . Subject to diplomatic immunity it is impossible to stop the car and discover who are its passengers."[11]

Mudd's conclusion was the following:

"DRAGANOVIC's sponsorship of these Croat Quislings definitely links him up with the plan of the Vatican to shield these ex-Ustashi nationalists until such time as they are able to procure for them the proper documents to enable them to go to South America. The Vatican, undoubtedly banking on the strong anti-Communist feelings of these men, is endeavoring to infiltrate them into South America in any way possible to counteract the spread of Red doctrine. It has been reliably reported, for example that Dr. VRANCIC has already gone to South America and that Ante PAVELIC and General KREN are scheduled for an early departure to South America through Spain. All these operations are said to have been negotiated by DRAGANOVIC because of his influence in the Vatican."

The existence of Draganović's ratline is admitted by the Vatican historian Fr. Robert Graham: "I've no doubt that Draganović was extremely active in syphoning off his Croatian Ustashi friends." However Graham insisted that Draganović was not officially sanctioned in this by his superiors: "Just because he's a priest doesn't mean he represents the Vatican. It was his own operation." [12]

On 4 occasions the Vatican intervened on behalf of interned Ustashi-prisoners. The Secretariat of State asked the U.K. and U.S. government to release Croatian POWs from British internment camps in Italy.

[edit] US intelligence gets involved
If at first US intelligence officers had been mere observers of the Draganović ratline, this was to change in the summer of 1947. A now declassified US Army intelligence report from 1950 sets out in detail the history of the people smuggling operation in the three years to follow.[13]

According to the report, from this point on US forces themselves had begun to use Draganović's established network to evacuate its own "visitors". As the report put it, these were "visitors who had been in the custody of the 430th CIC and completely processed in accordance with current directives and requirements, and whose continued residence in Austria constituted a security threat as well as a source of possible embarrassment to the Commanding General of USFA, since the Soviet Command had become aware that their presence in US Zone of Austria and in some instances had requested the return of these persons to Soviet custody."[14]

That is, these were suspected war criminals and Quislings from areas occupied by the Red Army—legally US Forces were obliged to hand them over for trial to the Soviets. They were reluctant to do this partly because fair trial could hardly be expected in Stalinist USSR (see Operation Keelhaul). The deal with Draganović involved getting the visitors to Rome: "Dragonovich handled all phases of the operation after the defectees arrived in Rome, such as the procurement of IRO Italian and South American documents, visas, stamps, arrangements for disposition, land or sea, and notification of resettlement committees in foreign lands."[15] US intelligence used these methods in order to get important Nazi scientists and military strategists, to the extent they had not already been claimed by the Soviet Union, to their own centres of military science in the US. Many Nazi scientists were employed by the US, retrieved in Operation Paperclip.

[edit] The Argentine Connection
See also: Juan Perón and the Jewish and German communities of Argentina

“ 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.
Argentine president Juan Perón on the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi war criminals.[16]
”

In his 2002 book The Real Odessa [16] 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.

According to Goñi, Argentina's first move into Nazi smuggling was in January 1946, when Argentine bishop Antonio Caggiano, bishop of Rosario and leader of the Argentine chapter of Catholic Action flew with Bishop Agustín Barrére to Rome where Caggiano was due to be anointed Cardinal. While 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 Emile Dewoitine—later sentenced in absentia to 20 years hard labour. He sailed first class on the same ship back with Cardinal Caggiano [17]

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 [18].

[edit] ODESSA and the Gehlen Org
Main article: ODESSA
The Italian and Argentinian ratlines have only been confirmed relatively recently, mainly due to research in recently declassified archives. Until the work of Aarons and Loftus, and of Uki Goñi (2002), a common view was that ex-Nazis themselves, organised in secret networks, ran the escape routes alone. The most famous such network is ODESSA (Organisation of former SS members), founded in 1946 according to Simon Wiesenthal, which included SS-Obersturmbannführer Otto Skorzeny and Sturmbannführer Alfred Naujocks and in Argentina, Rodolfo Freude. Alois Brunner, former commandant of Drancy internment camp near Paris, escaped to Rome then Syria by ODESSA (Brunner is thought to be the highest-ranking Nazi war criminal still alive as of 2007). Persons claiming to represent ODESSA claimed responsibility in a note for 9 July 1979 car bombing in France aimed at Nazi hunters Serge and Beate Klarsfeld. According to Paul Manning (1980), "eventually, over 10,000 former German military made it to South America along escape routes ODESSA and Deutsche Hilfsverein..." [19]

Simon Wiesenthal, who advised Frederick Forsyth on the novel/filmscript The Odessa File which brought the name to public attention, also names other Nazi escape organisations such as Spinne ("Spider") and Sechsgestirn ("Constellation of Six"). Wiesenthal describes these immediately after the war as Nazi cells based in areas of Austria where many Nazis had retreated and gone to ground. Wiesenthal claimed that the Odessa network shepherded escapees to the Catholic ratlines in Rome (although he mentions only Hudal, not Draganović); or through a second route through France and into Francoist Spain [20]

ODESSA was supported by the Gehlen Org, which employed many former Nazi party members, and was headed by Reinhard Gehlen, a former Nazi intelligence officer employed post-war by the CIA. The Gehlen Org became the nucleus of the BND German intelligence agency, directed by Reinhard Gehlen from its 1956 creation until 1968.[citation needed]

[edit] Vatican involvement
Main article: Class action suit against the Vatican Bank and others
It is accepted that Catholic priests, notably Hudal and Draganović, were actively involved in smuggling wanted war criminals. What is disputed is the extent to which their actions were sanctioned by higher authorities within the Church.

In his role as apostolic visitor to the imprisoned Croats, Draganović reported to Bishop Giovanni Battista Montini, then secretary in charge of 'extraordinary affairs' at the Vatican's Secretariat of State - he would later become Pope Paul VI. Some evidence that Montini was aware that a ratline investigation was involved has come out recently in a San Francisco courtroom where a class action suit of holocaust survivors against the Vatican Bank is currently underway. One witness in the trial is William Gowen, a former US Army intelligence agent stationed in Rome in the years after the war, charged with investigating the Draganović ratline. Gowen's testimony has not been officially published, but a copy was obtained by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz which printed an article in January 2006 accusing Montini based on Gowen's evidence [21]. According to the Haaretz article:

"I personally investigated Draganovic - who told me he was reporting to Montini", emphasized Gowen. Gowen related that at a certain stage Montini learned, apparently from the head of the OSS unit in Rome, James Angleton, who nurtured relations with Montini and the Vatican, of the investigation Gowen's unit was conducting. Montini complained about Gowen to his superiors and accused him of having violated the Vatican's immunity by having entered church buildings, such as the Croatian college, and conducting searches there. The aim of the complaint was to interfere with the investigation. In his testimony, Gowen also stated that Draganovic helped the Ustashe launder the stolen treasure with the help of the Vatican Bank: This money was used to fund its religious activities, but also to fund the escape of Ustashe leaders on the Rat Line.[21]

[edit] Involvement of world powers
There have also been allegations of collusion or active support by various governments for the ratlines. Accusations have been levelled against the United States government of acting through the Central Intelligence Agency to help smuggle Nazi scientists and officers to safety. Similar accusations have been made against the KGB.

[edit] Ratline escapees
Nazis and war criminals who escaped using ratlines include:

Adolf Eichmann
Franz Stangl
Gustav Wagner
Erich Priebke
Klaus Barbie
Edward Roschmann
Aribert Heim
Andrija Artuković
Ante Pavelić
Walter Rauff
Alois Brunner
Josef Mengele

[edit] See also
Ex-Nazi

[edit] Endnotes
^ Aarons and Loftus, Unholy Trinity: The Vatican, The Nazis, and the Swiss Bankers (St Martins Press 1991, revised 1998), p. 36
^ Michael Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust
^ Gitta Sereny Into That Darkness Picador 1977, p. 289. Her account comes from testimony of Nazi war criminals helped by Hudal, such as Franz Stangl, Commandant of Treblinka extermination camp.
^ Hudal Römische Tagebücher (English translation quoted in Aarons and Loftus, p. 37)
^ Aarons and Loftus, chap 2 'Bishop Hudal and the First Wave'
^ Gitta Sereny, op. cit., pp. 316-7
^ See Aarons and Loftus, pp. 43-5
^ # Aarons and Loftus, chapter 5 'Ratline'
^ Declassified US Army File: 'Rome Area Allied Command to the CIC', 8 August 1945 Published on the website of the Jasenovac Comittee of the Holy Assembly of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church.
^ Declassified State Department File: 'Vatican Protection of Jugoslav War Criminals', 12 July 1946 Published on the website of the Jasenovac Comittee of the Holy Assembly of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church.
^ Declassified CIA File: 'Background Report on Father Krunoslav Draganovic', 12 February 1947 Published on the website of the Jasenovac Comittee of the Holy Assembly of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church.
^ Aarons and Loftus, p. 89
^ "History of the Italian Rat Line" (10 April 1950), document signed by "IB Operating Officer" Paul E. Lyon, 430th Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC), Headquarters of the US Forces in Austria [1].
^ Ibid.
^ Ibid.
^ a b From the 'Perón tapes' he recorded the year before his death, published in Yo, Domingo Perón, Luca de Tena et al.; this translation as quoted in Uki Goñi The Real Odessa: Smuggling the Nazis to Perón's Argentina, Granta (revised edition) 2003 p. 100
^ Uki Goñi, The Real Odessa: Smuggling the Nazis to Perón's Argentina, Granta (revised edition) 2003, pp. 96–8
^ Goñi ch. 8
^ Paul Manning, Martin Bormann: Nazi in Exile (Lyle Stuart, Inc., 1980, ISBN 0-8184-0309-8 (page 181)
^ Simon Wiesenthal Justice not Vengeance, George Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1989 - particularly chap. 6 'Odessa'.
^ a b 'Tied up in the Ratlines' by Yossi Melman, Haaretz, 17 January 2006

[edit] Bibliography
Mark Aarons and John Loftus, Unholy Trinity: The Vatican, The Nazis, and the Swiss Bankers, St Martins Press 1991 (revised 1998)
Gitta Sereny Into That Darkness, Picador 1977
Uki Goñi The Real Odessa: Smuggling the Nazis to Perón's Argentina, Granta (revised edition) 2003
Robert Graham and David Alvarez, Nothing Sacred: Nazi Espionage against the Vatican, 1939-1945, London: Frank Cass, 1998.
Simon Wiesenthal Justice not Vengeance, George Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1989
Gerald Steinacher The Cape of Last Hope: The Flight of Nazi War Criminals through Italy to South America, in: Klaus Eisterer, Günter Bischof (Ed.), Transatlantic Relations. Austria and Latin America in the 19th and 20th Century (Transatlantica 1) New Brunswick 2006, p. 203 – 224.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratlines_(history)"
Categories: Yugoslavia during World War II | Nazism | Neo-Nazism
Hidden categories: NPOV disputes from April 2008 | All NPOV disputes | All articles with unsourced statements | Articles with unsourced statements since September 2008 | Articles with unsourced statements since July 2007
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CCNL :
Unfortunately many of us suffer from the Three B Syndrome i.e. we were Bred, Bord and Brainwashed in our religions.

With respect to the TANAKH, the sacred book of Judaism, consisting of the fictional Torah, the Fortune Tellers, and the Rock and Roll of the Jewish nation, it does provide much in the way of wishful/dream thinking.

It is also unfortunate that some of the examples in the Tanakh e.g. the slaughters overseen by Moses/Herod of young sons and by Joshua of all living things, to include women and children in Jericho set a disastrous precedent for later power brokers. One wonders though where Atila and the Huns got their plundering examples from.

_________________________

Moron,Putz

The NT is a bloody piece of fictional garbage that imagines a deity so demented that he sends his "son" to earth to be bled to death.

In true cannibal fashion, his disgusting followers have ritualistically eaten his flesh and drunk his blood. Materially, they have bled the world dry, murdered hundreds of millions, and most recently, through their primitive arrogant greed sent us, that is, the human race into a world wide economic crisis.

Thus the NT (Natty Trash) has set the standard for slaughter, theft, greed, you name it for two thousand years.

Take your Natty Drekkament and shove it.

Unfortunately many of us suffer from the Three B Syndrome i.e. we were Bred, Bord and Brainwashed in our religions.

With respect to the TANAKH, the sacred book of Judaism, consisting of the fictional Torah, the Fortune Tellers, and the Rock and Roll of the Jewish nation, it does provide much in the way of wishful/dream thinking.

It is also unfortunate that some of the examples in the Tanakh e.g. the slaughters overseen by Moses/Herod of young sons and by Joshua of all living things, to include women and children in Jericho set a disastrous precedent for later power brokers. One wonders though where Atila and the Huns got their plundering examples from.

American political culture has always had a bipolar personality, at once tolerant and intolerant, inclusive and exclusionary.

Anti-immigrant bigotry and religious intolerance have a long history in our country. Puritans hanged Quakers in Boston Common, signs proclaimed, "No Irish need apply," and laws prohibited Chinese immigrants from becoming citizens.

Benjamin Franklin expressed concern over foreign immigration in 1751. He feared the influx of German-speaking immigrants, who he said were not as white as the English. Franklin asked, "Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion."

The American Revolutionary leader Samuel Adams expressed the virulent anti-Catholic sentiment that was shared by many Americans at the time. In "The Rights of Colonists," a proclamation that was adopted by the town of Boston on Nov. 20, 1772, Adams wrote "that there shall be liberty of conscience allowed in the worship of God, to all Christians except Papists."

Catholics, or "Papists," could not be afforded religious tolerance, Adams said, because their allegiance to the pope meant that they "teach Doctrines subversive of the Civil Government under which they live." The fear and antipathy toward Catholicism among many Americans in the 18th and 19th centuries was as deeply felt as is the fear of Islam today.

The best antidote to religious intolerance, then or now, can be found in the words of Thomas Jefferson. In his "Notes on Virginia" in 1785, Jefferson said that alternative religious beliefs are not "injurious to others" and should not be restricted by government. "It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."

At Philadelphia in 1787, Jefferson's understanding of religious tolerance won out. Nowhere in the Constitution is it required to swear on a Bible, nor is even "swearing" required -- one may choose either oath or affirmation. Most important, according to Article VI, "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."

KUDOS TO COLIN POWELL AND DISGUST FOR THE BIGOTS WHO POST THEIR PREJUDICES. DO THEY HATE THE U.S. CONSTITUTION?

“All faiths are American faiths” – Suhail Khan’s fulsome affirmation seems to imply that the gist of all religions - what’s most valuable about them - is in fact identical to the values represented by the term “America”. So in their deepest sense Koran = America; Cross = America; Messianic hope = America; Nirvana = America; Moksha = America, that is, the various religions all imply America – their own true essence, come not to abolish them, but to fulfil them. America patronises the faiths so that they, in turn, endorse America, which thereby becomes a byword for all deeply held values. America claims the heart’s core, was there all along. One can see why this might appeal to Suhail Khan. After all, Islam, like America, sees itself as the natural, default setting of the human heart. Transcendent aspiration, meet aspirational transcendence! Imperium kisses Empire.

As long as the Worst Book Ever Written aka the koran is the operating manual of Islam, Muslims of any stripe cannot be trusted.
To be fair, the OT is the Second Worst Book Ever Written
"The NT has a small bit of wholesome history but 70%"

Moron,Putz,

1. There is no such thing as the OT (sic), except as it exists in your diseased mind. There is the TANAKH, a sacred text of a religion not yours.

2. The NT (sic) is fiction, ugly, bloody fiction.
In its name hundreds of millions have been slaughtered and continue to be. Filthy stuff.

All Muslims demonize themselves via the history of Islam as seen in their founder, an illiterate, hallucinating, warmongering, greedy and lust-filled, long-dead Arab. As long as the Worst Book Ever Written aka the koran is the operating manual of Islam, Muslims of any stripe cannot be trusted.

To be fair, the OT is the Second Worst Book Ever Written. It differs from the koran in being mostly fiction. The Ten Commandments are its only saving grace.

The NT has a small bit of wholesome history but 70% of the passages are embellishments added to create a deity out of a simple preacher man. There "ain't" many pages left once the
embellishments are removed. Said authentic passages would fill less than fifty pages making it simply a very short story of the life
of said simple preacher man.

Those who violate our Commandment-based laws for example by screaming "Kill OB" at JB rallies simply are lower than low class "red neckers" who now have their pictures recorded on FBI and Homeland Security tapes. Christians they ain't and they risk spending time in jail for making significant threats against our leaders.

I mean, hey, Concerned Christian, as much as you seem to feel the need to constantly demand all Muslims everywhere rewrite their holy book to your satisfaction, I've yet to see you come anywhere near remonstrating those conservative Christians who show up at McCain/Palin rallies, falsely accuse Senator Obama of what you feel is the 'horrible crime' of being Muslim, and then of course cry out 'Kill him!.'

I mean, before you go complaining about the mote in someone's eye, maybe you could pull the *pool cue* out of your optic orbit, I think it's jamming you up in the cerebellum.

"The answer is yes as long as Muslims of all stripes and in all countries follow the dictates of the Worst Book/SOP Ever Written aka the koran. Eliminate the death to all infidels and oppressive to women passages in said book and then we might buy the message of Islam being a peace-loving religion. Until then!!!"

As I've been saying it since the first day we met, CCNL, demand this of 'all Christians' first: they're closer and have more sway in America, much to our detriment.

General Powell has stimulated a much needed topic of discussion in America with his conscience driven words.
Just as there are disagreements in any community, Muslims also come in many different mindsets.
I am having a disagreement right now with a Muslim girl who is talking about the corrosive far left influence in America.
She actually validated her statement with a quote of the Moral Majority.

It was no different whatsoever than other conversations I have had in my life with judgemental, controlling, fundamentalists who spew stupidity.

The fact that she found more in common with the ideology of the christian right- than with a woman who shares her religion- proves just how ridiculous it is to make distinctions based solely on religious beliefs.

I'm not going to stop being American, and I'm not going to stop being a Muslim.

What is so hard to understand about the following:

"Colin Powell reminded us of this important fact Sunday morning asking, "Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?"

The answer is yes as long as Muslims of all stripes and in all countries follow the dictates of the Worst Book/SOP Ever Written aka the koran. Eliminate the death to all infidels and oppressive to women passages in said book and then we might buy the message of Islam being a peace-loving religion. Until then!!!

By disrespecting his religious beliefs, you are basically disrespecting everything that Kareem Khan fought and died for. Here was a kid that was 14 when the 9/11 attacks happened. Being from the New Jersey suburbs of NY, he probably breathed in some of the toxic fumes from the WTC. He grew up to join the Army to defend the country that he loved. That's more than I can say for the snotty rich kids who grew up to be investment bankers and hedge fund managers, who drove our economy into the toilet.

Suhail Khan says:

“And in doing so, we'll honor the memory of those, like Kareem Khan, who "gave the last full measure of devotion" so that we may all continue to live in freedom.”

Who are “we”? Do you mean to tell us that all Muslims in America honor Kareem Khan's service? I hope so , yet knowing what I know about the Muslim mindset, I very much doubt it.

I think if people fear a *Muslim* religious takeover someday in America, maybe they shouldn't be trying to erode the separation of our governmental power from what *any* religious authority demands.

Like any religious minority, Muslim Americans often are among those who hold American religious liberty *most dear,* cause they, like we, count on it every day of our lives.

Trying to alienate Muslims from American ideals: to say 'You have no stake in this and never *can,*' is precisely the *wrong* way to go about things.

Americans should know better by now.

Kudos to General Powell for speaking it, even if the party which once tried to get him to run for President now thinks he's 'just a black guy supporting the other black guy.'

He lost some prestige for presenting Bush's case about the Iraq war (after warning precisely how it would go down, but still doing his job,) but on this, we should all remember that part of the American story.

Fact is, he was a black Republican before it was 'cool,' ...whatever Republicans may think of his expert endorsement of both Obama's policies and his standing against their fearmongering, the GOP should not trivialize it.

One thing General Powell has never been called was fickle.

Till now.

"Colin Powell reminded us of this important fact Sunday morning asking, "Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?"

The answer is yes as long as Muslims of all stripes and in all countries follow the dictates of the Worst Book/SOP Ever Written aka the koran. Eliminate the death to all infidel and oppressive to women passages in said book and then we might buy the message of Islam being a peace-loving religion. Until then!!!