WWII, Nazis and Latin America

[OkieMan]

Since there has been much discusssion from several of you concerning the politics of several LA countries, as it concerns some WWII war criminals, etc; does anyone on this board remember that old Gregory Peck and Lawrence Oliver movie "The Boys of Brazil"?  I am not sure how much was fact and how much was fiction, but it basically showed the cruelty and cunning of the Nazis, and their hatred of anyone who did not agree with their warped ideas. (Also dealt with some wierd experiements!)  Also, as someone had earlier talked about, several of the Germans and other Europeans escaped and relocated to Argentina, and some other LA countries. However, my understanding that the biggest part of them settled in Argentina.  I am not exactly sure why.  But, it does seem fascinating. I am somewhat of a history buff as well.  I have a business in which I  market books to schools; and currently I have some very good books about WWII.

                               OkieMan

[thunderbolt]

... in response to WWII, Nazis and Latin America, posted by OkieMan on Jan 24, 2005

LA does have a large German population.  In fact Chile's pop'n is about 25% of German descent, also large numbers in Argentina and Brazil (the south of that country is largely German), large communities in Paraguay, Colombia, Mexico and other countries.  This made it easier for the escaping Nazis to adjust and disappear.  Also some of the local dictators were quite sympathetic...

It did backfire somewhat b/c USSR supported UK during their war with Argentina, precisely b/c of Argentina's past.  If they would have sided with Argentina and provided assistance (and the logic of Cold War dictated that), more than likely Argentina would have won.

[doombug]

... in response to WWII, Nazis and Latin America, posted by OkieMan on Jan 24, 2005

Though my wife has no German ancestry, two of her sisters do.  Your post got me really interested in this, Oakie.    Thanks a bunch!  My wife--or at least her sisters and mother-- might be a bit surprised to discover how much of their own heritage can be uncovered by browsing the Net.

War and famine did play a role in at least one account of European migration to Peru.  Probably more so than any escaping war criminals.  For a while, I naively assumed that maybe the latter was the case.  But, here's a brief account of one cause for migration, which lead to the Pozuzo colony, 2,802 ft above sea level, in the "high jungle's" of Peru:

"...Austrian and German colonists arrived in the 1850s. As part of the grand plan to establish settlements deep in the jungle - brainchild of President Ramon Castilla's economic adviser, a German aristocrat - eighty families left Europe in 1857; seven emigrants died at sea and six more were killed by an avalanche, which caused another fifty to turn back only 35km from here. Many of this unusual town's present inhabitants still speak German, eat schitellsuppe and dance the polka."

Another, more detailed, account:

"Pozuzo...was founded in 1859 when a group of colonists came from the European areas of Tirol and Prusia [Germany and Austria], after a hard and painful journey of 3 years. In 1853, as conditions in Central Europe were not good due to wars and famine, the baron Damian Freinbern Schutz-Holzhousen signed a contract with the Peruvian government to send 10,000 colonists to the virgin area of Alto Huallaga. They travelled to Callao port in Lima, Peru (for about 4 months) in the ship "Norton", which by the way, was the "church" for some couples who couldn't get married in Austria.

"Once in Callao, the problems arised because Peru was entering to a civil war status. A group of them decided to stay in Lima and the others took a ship to the port of Huacho (150km N of Lima). After arriving there, authorities ordered to put them in quarantine. For reaching the "Promised Land" they had to cross the coast, the highlands and then the jungle. Their hard journey took more than 2 years and in the way some left the dream and chose to work in the haciendas. The group get lost and finally reached the area known as Pozuzo where they decided to stay. From a total of 300 colonists that left Huacho, only 170 could finally arrive to Pozuzo."

A mountain biker, in reviewing his path through Pozuzo (the spelling errors are the only reason I included this):  

"Then we move to Pozuzo 4 hours by bus to meet the German town founded by colons arrived in 1920 after a sacrified trip, crossing the wild jungle of theese days, that huge adventure had make their habitants guardians of their original culture, someting unique in the middle of the jungle."

Totally gnarly, dude!

My wife was born in Pucallpa, a city along the Ucayali river--a tributary that feeds the Amazon river.  I found one artist who resides in the city, commenting on his own origins:

" NELSON N KROLL KOHEL [very atypical Peruvian name, eh?]

I was born in Pozuzo, in Tirolens, a small German colony in the high jungle of Cerro de Pasco, Peru, on March 29 1970. Both of my parents descend from Germany. When I was four years old the family moved first to Lima and then to Tingo Maria where I went to school. After five years we moved to Pucallpa. When I was thirteen I heard about the Usko Ayar Amazonian School of Painting and went there eager to improve my artistic qualities. I am now one of the art eachers. I have made paintings which have been exhibited in Europe."

And photos of Pozuzo, from a German website.  If you've been to Peru--heck, any place in LA--some of the structures look quite out of place:

http://www.pozuzo.at./

Check out the architectural style of the churches and cathedrals in these photos (use the arrow keys to advance through the photos):

http://paginasamarillas.com.pe/Turismo/pasco/galeriapas2.asp

This all leads me to a follow up question to Oakie's.  Do any of you think your novias/wives are as interested in the U.S. as you are in their home country?  Do they probe you about life here, where you were born, your family?

Recently, I've been scouring the web for topics on Peru; it's wars with Chile, social opinion polls, it's geography, food, etc.

Peace out!

[kented]

... in response to Re:  WWII, Nazis and Latin America, posted by doombug on Jan 25, 2005

Good question.  My wife is definately not as interested in the US as I am in Costa Rica.  

I do not like gringos who are culturally centristic (think the US culture is all that counts) but my wife is equally culturally centristic.  I think this may relate to education and intellectual interest.

[Payton]

... in response to WWII, Nazis and Latin America, posted by OkieMan on Jan 24, 2005

Hey Okie

The reason that the Nazi's were able to go to Argentina in large masses is because there were many Latin American Nations that were going to side with the Axis powers.  The United States feared this obviously and took many steps to make the Latin American Nations declare nuetrality. As far as Argentina goes I wonder if the Nazi's going over in Large droves had anything to do with the fact that there is a large Jewish Population in Argentina and perhaps they were planning to carry on.  Argentina was one of the sites that the UN was taling about creating a Jewish state in 1948.    

Here is an interesting fact about Colombia:  They were the only Latin American nation to send troops to Korea during the Korean War.

Sorry I am full of useless History information I have almost a MA in history and can not use any of the education!

[thunderbolt]

... in response to Re:  WWII, Nazis and Latin America, posted by Payton on Jan 24, 2005

Somalia used to be an Italian colony before WWII, and afterwards became a 'trusted territory' along with the formerly Japanese islands in South Pacific.  The latter were 'entrusted' to US, while Somalia was entrusted guess to whom?  Colombia!  So they were sort of a colonial power in Africa, albeit very briefly.

[thunderbolt]

... in response to Re:  WWII, Nazis and Latin America, posted by Payton on Jan 24, 2005

The Argentinian dictator Perron was a major Nazi sympathizer.  There are allegations that some other dictators were helping the Nazis (supposedly Trujillo was refuelling U-Boats off the northern coast of DR for example).  The major exceptions were Mexico and Brazil that sent troops to WW II (the former to the Phillipines, the latter to Italy).

Also Argentina has a large German population, so the Nazis could disappear rather easily.

[kented]

... in response to Re:  WWII, Nazis and Latin America, posted by Payton on Jan 24, 2005

Juan Peron in Argentina led the only fascist regime outside of Europe.  Obviously the whole world did not hate Nazis.  There is unfortunately a small segment that justified anti-semitism and unfortunately, this was the prevaling thought in Argentina of some government officials.

Adolf Eichmann was aprehended here by Israweli police and wisked out of the country but there are lots of ex-Nazis who sought refuge here.

[jfs]

... in response to Re: Re:  WWII, Nazis and Latin America, posted by kented on Jan 25, 2005

I was 'debating' the US action in Iraq with a "Peace activist".   She made
comment that I didn't know anything about the third world.  At which point I
explained to her that my family was from Argentina and that I had some
familiarity with living there.

She then accused my family of being rich upper class Argentinians and having
come there in the late 1940 and been of German decent.  (I had to just
laughed at that point).  

(For the record my family is upper lower class and my great-great-great-
great grandfather migrated there in the 1850's).

[thunderbolt]

... in response to Argentina and my discussions with a Peac..., posted by jfs on Jan 25, 2005

I am not familiar with the upper lower class category

I am not sure of course of why you support the war there, nor why she was against it.  What escapes me is that those 'peace activists' simply don't see the reality of this whole situation.  And a big part of the problem is IMO lack of desire by Bush admin to be clear about why they went there and why US is still in Iraq.

It is clear that Bush believed that Saddam was hiding the WMD's, and that he would gladly make them available to Al-Qaeda or whoever else was against the US.  Perhaps there were UN reports to the contrary, perhaps our intelligence was lacking, but Bush decided to err on the side of caution, went in, took out Saddam (an act for which the Iraquis IMHO should be very grateful), and well didn't find the WMD's.  So what should US do in this event?  Pull out and re-install Saddam?  At least they are trying to set up a civilized government there before they pull out.  Will this experiment succeed?  IMO, highly unlikely, but at least they will know they tried.

BTW, where were those 'peace' activists when France bombed out and occupied Cot d'Ivoire a few months ago?  Where were they when the same France backed the genocidal government in Rwanda?  The list can go on and on.

The bottomline, these 'peace' people are either blind, clueless, or just crazy.  But that's just my private opinion; I don't want to insult anyone.

[kented]

... in response to Re: Argentina and my discussions with a ..., posted by thunderbolt on Jan 25, 2005

I remember when the Yugoslavian dictator was killed in about 1990 as one of the final pieces of the soviet sphere of influence crumbling.  It unleased a decade of racial violence of Serbs versus Croatians versus Albanians.

Century old conflicts which no one except historians in the US ever heard about could now unlease their hatred, violence and ethnic cleansing.  Horrible dispotic leaders can often be the only way that ethnic groups with historic enmity can live in peace (throught the force and intimidation of the dictator).  

Saddam in his dispotic iron rule, did keep generations of racial animosity from developing into actual violence because of the threat of force.  The real challenge the US faces is that Iraq is potentially a long bloody civil war waiting to happen and it doesn't have anything to do with what the US hoped to achieve by bringing down Saddam.

[thunderbolt]

... in response to Re: Re: Argentina and my discussions wit..., posted by kented on Jan 25, 2005

Since Yugoslavia was a bit different, I will add about it separately...

A dictator there was not killed in 1990; he died peacefully around 1980.  Ever since then the presidency was shared between member states of the confederacy.  In 1990 the war broke out mainly as a power struggle between Croatia and Serbia, which were the biggest states.  Croats and Bosnians sided during WW II with the Nazis and killed 25% of the Serbs and almost all the Jews in their concentration camps, so the Serbs resented them for this ever since; after the war, most of the power and the capital were in Serbia, and the Croats resented that.

Albanians on the other hand just spontaneously settled southern Serbia, which was really a sign of the lack of immigration policy.  In 1914, they were less than 10% of population there, in 1990 they were over 90%.  They crossed the border in large numbers, and on top of that they have ON AVERAGE 10 kids per woman - I am not kidding.

[OkieMan]

... in response to Part Two (Yugoslavia), posted by thunderbolt on Jan 26, 2005

I went to Yugoslavia in 1976.  The few people that I got to meet seemed very nice.  I was in that country just a day or so, so I am far from any kind of expert; but I have read about it enough to know about the dictator Tito.  He did hold that country together, even though he was a dictator; but he did seem to have a little wiggle room with Moscow; not as brutal, I am told.  Needless to say, after the fall of the "Iron Curtain", the respective ethnic groups started fighting each other again.  As far as the Albanians, I know very little about them, except that my understanding is that they are mostly Muslim.  So, naturally, that is going to cause problems, and the rifles started barking again!  Ultimately, when you look below the surface of many of the countries in that part of the world, and further east, the people in those countries have a tendency to view themselves more in the ethnic, or tribal view.  They don't seem to look at themselves as "fellow countrymen".  In some cases, the modern day borders of those countries were altered in the Treaty of Versailles, at the end of WWI.  President Wilson and the other major European Powers of the day thought they could divide those countries as they did and all would be well.  Instead, it sowed the seeds of war until it started anew with WWII.

                           OkieMan

[thunderbolt]

... in response to Re: Re: Argentina and my discussions wit..., posted by kented on Jan 25, 2005

Kented, I must disagree with you.  Completely.  Actually the history of those dictators brings about IMO the strife as we see in Iraq.  Basically, Saddam made life peachy for the people of his area, while making it a nightmare for the others.  Do you know why the Sunnies are fighting against the other groups?  They are afraid that if the power will go to the Shias, they will be jailed and killed.  And they have good reasons to believe that, b/c that's how it has always been in the past.

The democrats in the US are not afraid that they will be rounded up and killed by the republicans, since the latter won the election.  (Well, maybe for a few nuts  But the losing faction in Iraq will have precisely this fear.

[kented]

... in response to Part One (Iraq), posted by thunderbolt on Jan 26, 2005

My point, quite simply, was that there are deep racial / ethnic / religious divisions between the Sunnies, the Shias and the Kurds.  Under Saddam they were unarmed, intimidated and under his control.  

Nobody trusts anybody and building a post war coolition to govern the country with the consent of the governed will not be easy.  This isn't a commentary of whether we sould have gone to war or not which is a separate issue.  

It will be difficult to make a quick exit wiothout a huge amount of bloodshed since there are three groups which believe that they should govern the country and that they will be jailed or killed if another group is in control.