>> use our web site, booktv.org, and press the alert button. or use your mobile phone. text the word "book" to 99702. standard message rates apply. >> up next, gerald steinacher reports on the many nazi war criminals who averted capture following the end of world war ii. the author examines the routes that were used for escape and questions the role the vatican and the international committee of the red cross had in allowing passage. this is about an hour. >> good evening, ladies and gentlemen. my name is nick mueller, and i'm still the president and ceo of the national world world war ii museum, since some of you have been here and seen me great you before. and welcome to all of our regulars as well as our newcomers to our lecture series and presentations that we have here at the national world war ii museum. it's just great to have you and to see the continued vitality of this program. and you're here tonight to receive a wonderful presentation, and it's also especially great to welcome c-span. to broadcast this evening's presentation and the discussion which will be viewed far and wide. but before we start tonight's program, i'd like to ask if we have any world war ii veterans here in the audience with us tonight. it's our tradition to recognize you if you are here. please, stand up. if you're standing, wave your hands. but do we have any world war ii veterans here tonight? here we have one right here. [applause] >> we're honored to have you here, sir, and honored by your presence. of course, you're a volunteer here, so we're happy to have you with us. we also have some distinguished friends, general sands who's a frequent visitor. he's almost a regular. he could come up here and do my introduction, i think he's been here so many times and a great friend of this museum. i think history professor and former vice chancellor bobby dupont i see in the background was involved in the early years with launching this museum when we were still thinking it might one day be at the research park, and we got some sense into us and brought it downtown. tonight's event is an outgrowth of a special relationship between the national world war ii museum and the university of new orleans which is the home to many fine programs in military history and public history. as some of you may know, stephen ambrose and i started this museum. i was an administrator and professor of history back from 1969 until i retired there in 2002, and we were colleagues at the university of new orleans and had established the eisenhower center for american studies. and this was the center that was the early repository for the oral histories that form a foundation of our collections which have now grown, heard from our resident historian, keith, to almost 3,000. most of them now high-definition video. but it was the oral histories collected by steven am rose for -- ambrose for his great work on d-day and citizen soldiers back in the '90s that ultimate -- '80s that ultimately led to the idea of this great museum which is now not any longer the d-day museum, although locals continue to refer to it that way as i do myself, but congress changed our name, as you all know, in 2003, and we are expanding and growing. and within a few months you're going to see steel coming up out of the ground over there by the down ramp on camp street for the united states freedom pavilion, the boeing center, which is going to be the iconic pavilion on this museum campus. as some of you know, i was also involved in the founding of another wonderful center at the university of new orleans in the 1990s, and that is also closely related to our museum. and that is center us a ri ya -- austria. and be center austria is the co-sponsor of tonight's event. tonight's presentation, you'll hear in just a moment as you hear that introduction of our or speaker, focuses on the nazi era, the post-nazi era. and as all of you know that hitler and the nazi german period is a source of endless fascination for people not only in this country, but around the world. as is evidenced by the strong showing of people here for this session this evening. so i'd now like to introduce the director of center austria, dr. gunther establishoff, and i would like to say that our speaker has also got a special collection to the university of new orleans going back to the '90s. and now a connection especially to this museum as well. so, gunther? [applause] >> thank you very much, dr. mueller. my name is gunther establish shaw, i teach history at the university of new orleans. it's a great pleasure to introduce this evening's speaker. before i do that, just a couple special welcomes. a special welcome from friends from vienna that are here. so the visitor come from far and wide as we all know, so special welcome to the family from vienna and to my world war ii seminar graduate students this spring at unl. special welcome to you too. [applause] i'm very pleased to have the opportunity to introduce dr. gerald steinacher who is from austria. he did his studies at the university of innsbruck and while studying at the university of i innsbruck like many studen, like myself, given the intimate relationship between the university of i said brook and new orleans and a relationship that dr. nick mueller, in fact, started with a summer school almost 40 years ago, i had the pleasure to study with dr. ambrose at unl, and actually dr. steinacher when i started teaching at unl fell into my hands when in 1996, 1995-'96 he came as a student for a year as so many innsbruck students do. we will have this fall more than 50 students coming from innsbruck studying for a semester. dr. steinacher was working then, beginning to work on a dissertation on the -- [speaking german] we're going to hear about that. after the fall of italy it was sort of a special region that the nazis organized in the northern italian region. and he was still groping with the sources, and we did a special course together where i recommended to him that he work on intelligence sources. that is, you can't do this without also looking at oss sources. and this was a bit of a revelation to him. but then lo and behold once he delved into the oss sources, he became a veritable historian of intelligence. and, in fact, his dissertation about the region at the end of the war and to oss' work in that region which was very important at the end of the war really became his dissertation. a very notable book. and then he continued to work wk this that area. he became an archivist after he finished his ph.d. in the provincial archives of the south, region. the region south of the brenner pass that, as we like to say in austria, due to woodrow wilson became italian. so woodrow wilson is a president that's still not very much love inside austria because we lost the region as a result of him we say. [laughter] so he continued to work at that region as an archivist and then began his work on the book he is going to present to us tonight which was -- [speaking german] that postdoctoral thesis that a person who wants to become a professor in the german-speaking world needs to do. and he finished that and publish bed a book out of -- published a book out of it which was the traveling version of the book that was just now published by oxford university press in be english and is already getting rave reviews in publications like "the wall street journal" and "the statesman." he has been a fellow at the u.s. holocaust museum. this past year he was a fellow at harvard university at the center of the european studies there. this is one of the most distinguished fellowships that an us austrian can hold in the united states, i think comparable to a rhodes if you though what that is. and he is just finishing in cambridge, and he has the very good luck of gotting a ten-year track position at the university of nebraska. now, you might say, wow, nebraska. who would want to teach there? but if you're a historian in this day and age, you're very happy to get a tenured position anywhere. [laughter] and he is. without further ado, i'd like to introduce gerald steinacher to talk about "nazis op the run -- on the run." a flight through italy to latin america. dr. steinacher. [applause] >> thank you very much for that kind introduction. and thank you very much for having me. it's great to be back in new orleans after so many years. [laughter] little bit older and with some gray hair. [laughter] i will talk for half an hour half an hour to present my book, that's not much time, but i will do my best, kind of give you an overview what my book is about. and after 35 minutes, 30 minutes we will have time for a q&a. and i'm sure you have many questions, and i'm hoping that i can answer at least some of your questions. you're going to raise. i'll show you some slides a little powerpoint presentation, some documents. i hope you can see the documents more or less well. it's a little bit bright light in here, so i will do my best. um, but i think it's important to have original documents so you can have, you know, a firsthand look on the research i did or i am doing about this work after '45. just before i start just a few remarks. my book is not just about war criminals, perpetrators of the holocaust, but also former nazis, ss members, collaborators from all over europe. so fascists, for example, from croatia, fascists from italy, from slovenia and so on and so on. so, actually, my book you have very high numbers if you consider these people who maybe not in a legal sense were criminals, but they were former fascists and nazis, ask i talk about them in my book because these people, they use the same underground routes the same way like the major perpetrators, like eichmann. you know, a simple nazi member or former ss officer took the same route as eichmann. and in the next 0 minutes i'll -- 30 minutes i'll try to explain how these people gowt got out of europe and at least e caped justice for many years, some of them forever. they were never caught and never brought to justice. >> and before we start to talk about the facts, we have to talk about fiction first. um, just let me start with one other remark. 66 years after the second world war, after the end of the second world war -- and this is still very much in some ways an open topic. sure, most of you will know the case of -- [inaudible] he was a ukrainian who worked, as we now know, as a camp guard in soviet extermination camps. and in 1951 he emigrate to the united states and later became a u.s. citizen. and just in may of 2011 he was convicted by a german court. so very recently. you see, this topic is very much still alive, and for many years we didn't really know how these people got out from europe and how they escaped justice. and the explanation was after '95 for decades, mythical one. i'm sure you heard about the odessa organization. odessa stands sort for organization of former ss members -- [speaking german] and the odessa story is, basically, based on books, writings by the famous nazi hunter from vienna. he wrote in his books that thanks to this odessa organization, perpetrators, war criminals could escape justice after 1945. and for him this was an organization who was kind of almighty, who had unlimited resources of swiss banks, who had very influential people in politics and everywhere. so according to simon it was the odessa organization who enabled eichmann and many others to escape justice after the war. simon worked closely with a british writer, frederick forsyth, and frederick forsyth's novel, "the odessa file," became famous as you probably all know. based on on the novel, a film was made, very successful with famous people, actors mic max mill yang shell, fellow austrian, and the music was composed by andrew lloyd weber. so it was really a best seller, and the movie was all over the place. and since then imagination was dominated by the odessa. whenever you were talking about these perpetrators, of eichmann and many other well known perpetrators, you would immediately talk about odessa. but the to december saw was -- but the odessa was mostly fiction. an organization like the odessa almighty with unlimited resources and responsible, kind of worldwide responsible for the escape of these perpetrators never did exist. it's, basically, fiction. it's a mythical story. it has nothing to do with the facts. the reality was much more complex. simon, why did he do it? there are a couple reasons for that. one reason was, certainly, he wanted to keep this topic alive. in the 1950s and 1960s especially in austria, but, yeah, basically in the whole western world and in the east the same, people were not interested anymore in these so-called old stories. it was the time of the cold war, and simon was reminding people in austria and elsewhere that there are still perpetrators out there who are not brought to justice, who made it to america and other destinations and still live there. and he used this popular imagination for his o own goalses and to his own, you know, interests. but anyway, only since the end of the end of the cold war, basically, after 1989 things started to change. we moved away from fiction from this model of the odessa, from the odessa organization to history writing. and why after '89? the explanation is quite simple; it was the end of the world war, and there were two reasons why suddenly research on this particular topic was possible. the first reason was a political reason. the layer of protection dropped away for nazi war criminals still alive and in hiding. and in the 1990s there were a couple of war crimes trials. for example, in italy very prominent ones like the trial against -- [inaudible] who was responsible for war crimes in rome in march 1944 for executing 335 italians, italian partisans, military and jews. he lived in this argentina all those years under his real name and was extradited only in the 1990s to italy and then persecuted. by the way, he's still very much alive. he's under house arrest in rome. and, um, so the -- [inaudible] case is also very good example for this n. the 1990s things started to change, and these people were brought to justice. there was no political protection anymore. the cold war was not there anymore, so justice departments began to investigate again and to find these old files in some old archives. the other thing maybe more important even, archives opened. suddenly there were a commission of historians who are kind of dealing with this past, not, you know, very important was the commissioner of historians in argentina. they opened the archives there, the swiss archives, the red cross archives very important to my research, actually, archives in many other countries. and these archives enabled us to look deeper at what happened after '45 and how some of these people were protected by governments and intelligence agencies. so as a consequence, more and be more structures came to light, and we started to understand how these people got away from justice after 1945. and, again, this was one of the few areas that were not very well researched until the 1990s. again, until the 1990s you still had to the deal with the odessa. still to this very day whenever i talk to people about my research, they say, yeah, yeah, i know what you're writing, you're writing about the odessa. [laughter] i say, no, i'm not. and then, of course, i have to explain to them it's a fictional story, but it really stick with the people, and nowadays you have to write against the odessa myth, basically. so let me talk about my findings, how did it really work, how did -- what criminal perpetrators of the holocaust, ss members and nazis, actually got away, got out of europe? one of the fist things i learned -- first things i learned being an archivist in italy was most of these people got out through italy. italy, basically, was the nazi escape hatch for most of these perpetrators. for most of these war criminals and nazis who got out of europe after 1945, italy was the way out. and you may ask, why italy? well, a couple of reasons for that. one reason is for people in central europe, in southern germany and austria, italy is the closest way, especially the italian seaboard. from yes noaa you had, you know, the ships going overseas, and it was easy to reach this area. one other reason is in italy there was no allied military government anymore. ending in the december '45, the allies kind of, you know, stopped the military government, and the italians were in charge again. so once these perpetrators, nazis and fascists from all over europe made it to italy, made it over the border to italy they kind of were safe. they kind of were protected. the border area of south tirile, it's a little bit -- no? see it here? played a particular role. gunther mentioned it, talked about woodrow wilson, and this border area was and is still mostly german speaking. and the people there, of course, were very german-friendly. and so german-speaking refugees of people on the round there, german background, they were not handed over to the italian authorities. they were hidden by the people there. and south tirile really became the perfect hideout for these nazis on the run. italy was the lodge cay way. south tirile was the first stopover, and it was one of, basically, the only region german-speaking without allied control over the war. so it was perfect location for acquire agnew identity and to get new identity papers. the situation in south tirile and in italy in general was also unique because there were many refugees in europe. millions of people were on the move after 1945, survivors of the holocaust, slave laborers, prisoners of war, all kinds of people. and many of these people wanted to get to italy in order to get to the seaports and in order to leave europe and to start a new and better life. not just the perpetrators, not just the nazis and not just the fascists but also, for example, the victims, the survivors of the holocaust. and simon describes it well in one quote. he writes about the strange situation in italy where perpetrators and victims actually met after the war. both groups trying to get out of europe and to start a new life. and there's a very good quote by simon, and i show you this quos. he writes: i know a small inn where every now and then illegal nazi transports and illegal jewish transports spent the night under the same roof without knowing about each other. the jews were hidden on the second floor and instructed not to stir; and the nazis on the ground floor were urgently warned not to let themselves be seen outside the establishment. i'm not sure where this location or where this hotel, where this place exactly is. it doesn't really matter. what he describes, he describes it very well. the situation's a very unique situation in italy when you have all these refugees there, perpetrators and victims meeting. sometimes using the same routes, the same smugglers, the same hiding places, the same structures in order the get out of europe. and also sometimes using the same ways in getting new travel documents, sometimes on on the real, sometimes under false names in order to leave europe. and italy was the best place and the easiest way to do so, to get out of there. once in italy you had, basically, only one problem; you needed travel documents in order to travel overseas. most of these refugees from all over europe didn't have pass ports, of course. sometimes they could hardly save their own lives, and they didn't have documents whatsoever. so they would have the international red cross to issue them travel documents, and that's where the international red cross comes into place. this was especially true for ethnic germans who were expelled from central and eastern europe, hundreds of thousands of them were in italy. they were hoping to get out from italy to south america and elsewhere. and the international refugee organization set up by the allies declared itself not responsible for ethnic germans. the international refugee organization was saying, well, we are responsible for the victims of the war, and the victims of the nazi regime but not for the ethnic germans. so the international red cross out of humanitarian need would kind of champion and be help out and issue ethnic germans travel documents from the international red cross. the problem was, there was a problem that the international red cross had not much previous experience with issuing these documents or passport authority kind of. they had no way of screening these people, in be double checking what the background really is, if this is the correct name, the date of birth, the citizenship, whatever. and this turned out to be a problem. um, forgot something. [laughter] happens. thanks for the slide. the south tirile situation, let me go back a little bit in italy. um, this is a very good picture that illustrates the situation in south tirile at the end of the second world war, and i think it's also a very good picture for the museum here, because i'm sure all of you will recognize the person on your left. this is an american g.i., right? clearly, from the uniform. we are in northern italy in south tirile. it is the delegation of the international red cross. these two people, of course, guarding the delegation of the international red cross, and it's two weeks after the end of the second world war, in may 1945. there is a g.i., but who is the young man on the other side next to him? is he an american soldier? probably not, no. it's a young german soldier. but it's not just a german soldier. you cannot see it because the light is too strong here. but on his cap he has a skull. so he's a young ss man. so you have this situation at the end of the war, two weeks after the end of the war in northern italy that the american g.i. and the german ss soldier are guarding together the red cross delegation in northern italy. and reporters of "the stars and stripes," they came to italy, and they were completely surprised. they didn't know what was going on here. they were writing about this, about the scenes that they saw. this was just one photo to illustrate it a little bit. and can the title was, "did we win the war or not?" in northern italy one couldn't say. [laughter] so it's a very good description of the situation in northern italy in may 1945, and, of course, it has to do with operation sunrise w the german surrender in northern italy, the special secret surrender of the german ss forces in northern italy and the deal made between oss forces, american wartime secret service and these ss forces in italy. so a very unique situation in northern italy, but it even more illustrates the situation was very unique, perfect for people who had a certain past. so now you're in south tirile, you're safe, you're in italy, you need travel documents. and you would, of course, ask is the international red cross for these travel documents. for the travel document, you kind of had to fulfill one condition. the condition was you had to be stateless. but, of course, these things were not double checked. you just go to the red cross and say i am stateless, i'm an ethnic german from somewhere, and i have no papers, and, you know, i want to travel overseas and, please, give me one of these travel documents. also -- [inaudible] ricardo. i'm not sure if you can actually read the document. probably not. it's too bright here. but i will tell you what it says. it's an application for a red cross document for one of these travel documents from the international red cross for ricardo, born in abort san know who wants to go to argentina and who is a stateless, ethnic german from south tirile according to this document. and the red cross issues him one of these travel documents. maybe you cannot read the name and be the date of birth and all the information, but can you see the photo attached to the document? do you see the photo more or less? well, maybe you have seen the photo of eichmann before. this is adolf eichmann applying for one of these travel documents of the international red cross under the name of ricardo clement from south tirile. so while he was on italy on the way to the sea port to yes noaa, he was applying for this red cross document, and this red cross document was issued to him. well n in italy -- well, in italy there was a close cooperation between the international company of the red cross and catholic institutions, especially between the vatican commission for refugees, also the catholic church realized you have to do something for these refugees in italy, especially the people who had catholic background. and these vatican commission for refugees was set up in 1945, '44, sorry, 1944. and be as i said, had a close relationship with the delegations of the international red cross in italy, in rome. if you look who were the people who were in charge especially of this national -- [inaudible] of the vatican commission for refugees, then you get a better idea that it was a perfect place for these perpetrators to ask for help there. the head of the german-austrian section of the vatican commission for refugees in rome was a bishop by the name of -- vuve -- huvel. he was an admirer of hitler. he always considered himself as a bridge builder between the nazis and the catholic church. in 1937 he published his book -- [speaking german] "the basic ideas of national socialism as a catholic bishop." just want to underline that. and he dedicated his book to adolf hitler. of course, it was very helpful to have such a man as the head of the german-austrian section of the vatican commission for refugees, especially if people like adolf eichmann would knock at his door in rome after '45. and how this close cooperation between the vatican commission for refugees and the red cross worked, i want to show you in a very simple example just to illustrate it. see, you have a letter of recommendation from the vatican commission for refugees, the letterhead of the vatican. and it's a very simple piece of paper, very simple letter just saying, well, address to the international comity of the red cross, in rome in this case, asking the red cross, please, could you give mr. stanley power who is stateless and be who wants to travel to argentina a red cross travel document? he has no travel documents anymore, he lost everything. please, issue him a travel document. and the red cross, of course, later went to rome with this letter of reference from the vatican and tell the red cross delegation, well, my name is stanley bauer, i was born in this and be this place, and i'm stateless, and i'm catholic, of course, and i want to go to argentina. and as proof, as only proof of my identity and my background, here is this letter of reference from the vatican. and the red cross, of course, the people who worked for the red cross would believe that, and without any further screening or no questions asked, they would just copy this information given on this letter of reference and hand out, issue a travel document for these people. these documents are very, very, very useful. they are, you know, application documents for the red cross. they are at the archives of the international red cross in geneva. the archives are open since the 1990s. you can do research there, and they are a very, very important source. because they don't -- not only show these travel documents from the red cross, but also the close cooperation between the vatican authorities and the red cross. this particular document, paul was not his real name, almost his real name, i have to say. he changed it a little bit. his real name was franz stanger, not paul, and he was the commander of an extermination camp. an austrian, by the way. and the austrian bishop in rome who was the head of the austrian-german section of the vatican commission for refugees, he helped him personally. and when you probably don't see that document, but -- does it work? is -- ah. maybe you'll see this one. luigi hudel. so this document was confirmed, the identity, the informations given were confirmed by the bishop. and stanger later told in interviews it was the bishop who insisted to change his name from franz to paul. and stanger was protesting. well, bishop, my name is franz stanger, not paul stanger. you're making a mistake here. and the bishop said, well, it's better to let sleeping dogs lie. so, of course, the bishop knew exactly who he was helping. so you have in italy strong cooperation between the international red cross and the vatican authorities. and the numbers are very high. the international red cross issued about 150,000 of these red cross documents. and sometimes, you know, in large numbers. for example, in 1947 a whole division of ss members, the whole -- [speaking german] got out of italy with the help of the vatican authorities and these red cross travel documents. so you had 9,000 people at once, former ss members, who used these documents to travel overseas. so you had very large numbers if you include collaborators and ss members and nazis and not just look at convicted war criminals and the most famous perpetrators. the americans knew very early on about the whole system, about war criminals, perpetrators going to italy, spending some time in south tirile acquiring new identities, getting these red cross travel documents with the help of the vatican commission for refugees. all this was already known in '46 by the state department. and the state department informed the red cross and told them, this is a big problem. this is a big issue here because you are or not able to double check the background of the people. there are also criminal, criminals, you know, among them, also perpetrators using your travel documents after using your humanitarian aid in order to escape from justice. so they were very concerned. and in may 1947 a state department official, vincent, in the rome wrote this report, the famous report. and in this report he kind of explained everything already in 1947 what we know today after many years' research. although he really kind of realized what was happening, and he was reporting to the state department. and the state department was considering to do something against it and to stop this underground road in many italy. but in summer of '47 instead of, you know, cutting off and ending this underground road in italy, they decided to use it themselves. '47 the cold war kind of started out in if italy, and the situation changed. and there was no interest to hinder this kind of illegal traffic in italy, at least that's how it looks like. especially the intelligence services used the underground railroad, and they labeled it the ratline. the u.s. intelligence called it the u.s. ratline for smuggling out spies and intelligence personnel. it was the same system and one of the famous classes is klaus who was gestapo officer in leon, in france. was wanted for war crimes in france, and instead of being tried and convicted he was recycled by the u.s. intelligence services, especially by the cic to fight the communists, especially the german communists and the communists in france. he was considered useful like so many others and recycled for intelligence purposes in the early cold war. and you see here it was the same system. once he was not considered useful anymore, he became too dangerous. the french were knowing too much where he was hiding, that he was living and maybe was used by u.s. intelligence. they brought him to south america, they used the same system i just explained. he was brought to italy, he got travel documents from the international red cross. he got a new name, became an ethnic german -- stateless, of course. this was the precondition for being able to get these travel documents from the red cross. and then he could get to south america, to bolivia and live there after the war. there are many other of these, many other, you know, famous cases. one of the most maybe very unique case is the the case of carl hass, a get stat poe -- get gestapo officer in rome and he was responsible for the killing of 335 italians in march 1944 together with the man i mentioned earlier and others. after the war he was for a short period of time in custody, american custody. he got out three time, escaped prisoner of war camps three times. and in '47 the cic, the american counterintelligence corps, invited him to work for them because he had anti-communist knowledge. he knew the communists in italy very well. so he was recycled for the early cold war purposes and worked especially in italy, but also in southern germany for the counterintelligence corps. officially, he was wanted by the italians, of course, for the war crime he committed in italy in 1944. and he was living in italy, he was not harmed. he got a new identity, worked first for americans and later for the italian intelligence services, also interesting. there are and in 1969 -- and in 1969 you could see him very prominently in all movie theaters in italy and be probably all over the world in a movie by visconti, one of the famous italian directors. and carl hass was playing himself in this a visconti movie. he was playing a nazi officer commanding an execution squad. basically, his role he played in 1945 when he committed the war crime. in 1969 he was still wanted by the italian authorities. he was all over the place. but he was officially declared dead, and he remained unharmed this the 1990s. the 1990s, again, changed the whole situation after the world war ended. he was not protected anymore, and he was tried and convinced -- convicted for war crimes in the late 1990s. so it's almost an unbelievable story, but a true story, the story of hass, and it describes the situation of the cold war and be how things changed after '89. um, just a few remarks about the destinations of these people because i'm a little bit running out of time, i think? yeah. the people not just went to south america, to argentina. there were, of course, popular destinations, but experts, anti-communist experts and other experts, for example, from the war production experts, you know, in the air force technology and so on, they were hired -- all kinds of countries had an interest in german minds. also egypt, for example. this is a very good picture to illustrate. it's an austrian engineer with his family who made it safely to egypt in 1948. and, of course, there were people hired in the u.s., too, and this is one of the most famous cases just to illustrate the situation after 1945. and this hiring of these experts. and, again, it was not just the u.s. hiring these experts or the soviet union, the british or the french who were an occupation or controlling power in germany, but all kinds of countries had an interest in these german experts, the german minds and technology. i have to finish a little bit over time already. um, just want to finish with one remark. just want to say one of the conclusions you can draw from my book and my research, one of the many, i guess, was the thing really changed. nowadays our understanding of guilt and responsibility is a very different one. when you look at the is situation in 1948, '49, the moment when most of these people escaped from justice -- actually, adolf eichmann got out in the 1950 -- what happened in europe? 198 was the universal declaration of human rights. for the first time the concept of genocide was formulated as a legal term. nuremberg as an international war crime tribunal was something new. so all these standards were not established yet, and these institutions, like the international red cross or the vatican, at the time had a very different understanding of guilt and responsibility as we have nowadays. and my book is not about judging, but it's about understanding. thank you very much. [applause] >> if there are any questions, please, raise your hand and wait until i come to you so that we can all hear your question. >> oh. um, hi. there was something in today's paper, i think, about rudolph hess' bones. did you see the article? >> yes. >> it said the thing about how he only went to england to make himself important, not to actually do any good. and i just wondered what you thought about it. >> well, i didn't research about this, but t interesting that you're mentioning it. the president of the international red cross was a swiss ambassador in london at the time, and rudolph his went to great britain. and he had some secret talks with rudolph hess kind of in private. and he was absolutely convinced that rudolph his kind of acted as, you know, in the name of the german government, and can yeah. >> given the chaotic conditions after the war, was it even possible for the red cross to do background checks? >> there it's a very good question. you know, the red cross was already criticized very early on in if '46 when people realized this was massive abuse going on, and the italian authorities caught, you know, groups of people with these false papers. and there were also trials. it was very well known in the newspapers at the time, it was not a secret that these travel papers were a ruse. and it was very interesting for me to see the correspondence between the international red cross in rome and general what reporting back to the headquarters and telling them, begging them, basically, please, we have to improve, we have to do something about that. we have to have clearer lists, we have to work together with the italian authorities, with the police authorities and so on and so on. but there were a couple of meetings in geneva, but at the end they didn't do much about it. and it's clear from the correspondence and the proposals made from the people in italy, in yes noaa, in rome that they could have improved these kind of checks ask screenings. and screening. >> it's clear from your presentation that the red cross around kentuckys -- archives were very important to you. would you say just a bit about the research into the vatican part of this? are all of those archives closed? were you able to find sources there, or did it all come to you indirectly through the red cross archives? >> when i was talking about the changes in the 1990s, the very positive changes for historians, the archives opening all over the place and commission of historians established, something the working group at the national archives releasing cia materials on this topic and so on and so on. but the vatican is an exception here. [laughter] so the vatican archives are still closed to this time period meaning the time period after 1939. so for everything after 1939, the second world war and the cold war years, the archives, the vatican archives are closed. and that's why the red cross archives are so important, even more important be. it's not just the red cross papers and the correspondence and these travel documents and so on. you also have the correspondence between the vatican and the red cross. and it helps to fill be a gap a little bit at least, yeah. >> the huge numbers of documents issued by the red cross, is it possible to give an estimate of what percentage this procedure was misused by war criminals -- [inaudible] and things like this? >> yeah. thank you very much for this question. um, gives me a chance to explain how difficult it is to really work with these papers. let's say, well, in the case of adolf eichmann you have a document which claims he was born in 1913. so what you do is you go to the archives, to the church archives, you look up, you know, the registers, who was born by the name of ricardo clement in 1913 on this date, and you will find no one, like, with this name, of course, because he never did exist. it's a faked identity. and you can, of course, work with this kind of technique or procedure, but you cannot check 150,000 documents and names scattered all over europe. of course, these alleged places where these people came from. so you can only give estimates. and it's also interesting that in many cases people didn't change their name at all. they stated their real names, their real date of birth and be everything. except one exception. they never said, well, i'm an austrian or german, they would always say i'm stateless because that was the condition to get these travel documents. but in many cases they would state their real names without any whatsoever problem. and sometimes they would even say the letters of -- [inaudible] a lot of people from the vatican would say, well, he was a former member of the nazi party. he's not able to get austrian citizenship back or the german because of his past. but, please, could you, please, issue him a travel document from the red cross? so that's, that was, that's the thing -- i meant different understanding of guilt and responsibility. back at the time, it seems to me at least, that these people were seen as not really responsible or just following orders. and the really people responsible were, you know, the big shots, hitler and be a few people who were maybe tried and convicted at nuremberg, and the rest was more or less following orders, something like that. a very different understanding than we have nowadayses also about human rights and, you know, genocide and all these issues, completely changed especially in the last 30 years. so it's hard to give you numbers. the red cross, of course, they're stating very low numbers. the argentinean commissioner of historians set up by the argentinean government, they also say, well, there were maybe 300 people. it's also matter of definition. i'm saying, please, include all the people who were nazis, nazi members who were in the ss, who were collaborators, who were fascists from all over europe. then you have, of course, very high numbers. if you exclude all these people and just say, well, i'm focusing on only germans and can the most well known cases, the numbers are rather small. so it's also, you know, sometimes interesting. >> you just alluded to the red cross helping out. have they issued any sort of official statement on this? do they have any response to your book? the vatican as well? are they trying to keep it quiet? >> yeah, the red cross is actually very helpful, they're supporting, very much supporting my research, and i'm writing my next book about the red cross and the holocaust. [laughter] and, i mean, they opened the archives in the 1990s, they have archivists working there now. they're really interested to learn more what happened 60 years ago because their leadership now, they don't know especially the story of these travel documents. even the activists don't really know how these travel documents were issued, when they were introduced, on what legal basis they were introduced. some delegations blue and in other delegations they're brown. nobody can answer all these questions. also, again, the legal basis for these travel documents. so there's still many open questions. the red cross is really very helping and supportive and interested. yeah, vatican, yeah. [laughter] >> we have time for two more questions. >> i know you said earlier in your lecture and speech of 9,000 people slipping through. >> yeah. >> is there any way that you were able to determine an estimate of the total number that came through this system one way or another? >> again, it's very difficult to state exact numbers, very, very difficult. but it's definitely more than a few hundred people. that's for sure. there are of course, it depends very much on the definition you use. um, and, um, i'm not -- my definition not just, you know, focusing on people who were perpetrators of the holocaust and war criminals, but a more broader context because i'm very much interested in the way how these people got out. and like i stated at the beginning, a so-called simple nazi member or ss member used the same ways and means and tricks to get out like eichmann and others. and that's what i was interested in. but it's very difficult to state exact numbers. >> i lied. we have two >> especially for the argentinean, for the army and the air force, especially for argentina air force. the argentineans smuggled many of these, you know, experts through italy with these travel documents to argentina in order to modernize the argentinean air force. so argentina was defini