Chapter 24: Neo-Nazi Boomers

108      the primary destination for Nazis escaping prosecution . . . Argentina was “the most popular” destination for fleeing Nazis. The Perfect Hideout: Jewish and Nazi Havens in Latin America, online exhibition, Wiener Holocaust Library, accessed January 10, 2025, wienerholocaustlibrary.org/exhibition/the-perfect-hideout-jewish-and-nazi-havens-in-latin-america.

108      fled to the Southern Cone on “ratlines”  There were two main ratlines: “the first went from Germany to Spain, then Argentina, and the second from Germany to Rome to Genoa, then South America (Brazil, Chile or Argentina).” Pablo del Hierro, “The Neofascist Network and Madrid, 1945–1953: From City of Refuge to Transnational Hub and Centre of Operations,” Contemporary European History 31, no. 2 (May 2022), www.cambridge.org/core/journals/contemporary-european-history/article/neofascist-network-and-madrid-19451953-from-city-of-refuge-to-transnational-hub-and-centre-of-operations/6C48E036A479484B4631CD7C17B43F12, 176.

108      created by Catholic and South American officials such as . . .  Oliver Pieper, “What Did the Vatican Know About the Nazi Escape Routes?” Deutsche Welle (DW), March 1, 2020, p.dw.com/p/3YVyO; Eric Stover et al., Hiding in Plain Sight: The Pursuit of War Criminals from Nuremberg to the War on Terror (Oakland: University of California Press, 2016), 63–64. Find the library book at search.worldcat.org/title/940558999. Larry Rohter, “Argentina, a Haven for Nazis, Balks at Opening Its Files,” New York Times, March 9, 2003, www.nytimes.com/2003/03/09/world/argentina-a-haven-for-nazis-balks-at-opening-its-files.html; and The Perfect Hideout, wienerholocaustlibrary.org/exhibition/the-perfect-hideout-jewish-and-nazi-havens-in-latin-america.

108      199 Nazi leaders were tried during the Nuremberg Trials “Nuremberg Trials,” Holocaust Encyclopedia, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, January 5, 2018, encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-nuremberg-trials.

108      as many as 9,000 Nazis escaped to South America German public prosecutor Kurt Schrimm, who then led Germany’s Central Office for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes, reviewed South American files and reported this figure and the following figures to the Daily Mail, hence its citation. Allan Hall, “Secret Files Reveal 9,000 Nazi War Criminals Fled to South America After WWII,” Daily Mail, March 19, 2012, www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2117093/Secret-files-reveal-9-000-Nazi-war-criminals-fled-South-America-WWII.html.

108      Upwards of 5,000 came  Hall, “Secret Files Reveal 9,000 Nazi War Criminals Fled to South America After WWII,” www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2117093/Secret-files-reveal-9-000-Nazi-war-criminals-fled-South-America-WWII.html.

108      As many as 2,000  Hall, “Secret Files Reveal 9,000 Nazi War Criminals Fled to South America After WWII,” www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2117093/Secret-files-reveal-9-000-Nazi-war-criminals-fled-South-America-WWII.html.

108      Nearly 1,000  A German government legal team investigating Nazi war crimes estimated “around 500 to 1,000” Nazis escaped to Chile. Hall, “Secret Files Reveal 9,000 Nazi War Criminals Fled to South America After WWII,” www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2117093/Secret-files-reveal-9-000-Nazi-war-criminals-fled-South-America-WWII.html.

108      amid the hundreds of thousands of German immigrants “Before the outbreak of the war in 1939, there were approximately 250,000 people of German descent” living in Argentina. They generally “enjoyed considerable influence in many spheres of life: in the economy, the military, and the academic world.” Raanan Rein, “From the Blue Book to CEANA Report and Back,” in Nazis and Nazi Sympathizers in Latin America after 1945, eds. Linda Erker and Raanan Rein (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2024), 18. Find the library book at search.worldcat.org/title/1434177551.

108      like New Zealand . . . and the United Kingdom “After the war,” Australia “opened its borders to refugees from war-torn Europe, including survivors of the Holocaust. In theory, Nazi war criminals were denied entry, but hundreds lied about their past, won permission to immigrate and eventually became naturalized citizens. Australia was not alone; hundreds entered the U.S., Canada and Britain in the same way.” Richard C. Paddock, “Nazis Find an Aussie Sanctuary,” Los Angeles Times, January 10, 2001, www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-jan-10-mn-10552-story.html. On Nazis in New Zealand, see Lance Morcan, “New Zealand Still Not Opening Files on ‘Resettled’ Alleged Former Nazi Emigres,” Times of Israel, June 5, 2021, www.timesofisrael.com/new-zealand-still-not-opening-files-on-resettled-alleged-former-nazi-emigres/.

108      documented the presence of Nazis in Australia  Paddock, “Nazis Find an Aussie Sanctuary,” www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-jan-10-mn-10552-story.html; and Irene Nemes, “Punishing Nazi War Criminals in Australia: Issues of Law and Morality,” Current Issues in Criminal Justice 4, no. 2 (1992), www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/10345329.1992.12036563 142. Access the journal article at search.worldcat.org/title/7128320080.

108      knew about their past but allowed them in  Paddock, “Nazis Find an Aussie Sanctuary.” Access the journal article at search.worldcat.org/title/7128320080.

108      changed their names to avoid detection and prosecution Alan Riding, “Where Nazi Refugees Found the Climate to Their Liking,” New York Times, June 16, 1985, nyti.ms/3Fn1aDE, 160; and The Perfect Hideout, wienerholocaustlibrary.org/exhibition/the-perfect-hideout-jewish-and-nazi-havens-in-latin-america.

108–109           “Angel of Death” . . . mostly children “Josef Mengele,” Holocaust Encyclopedia, November 15, 2024, encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/josef-mengele.

109      assumed aliases, hopped around the Southern Cone . . . in 1979  “Josef Mengele,” Holocaust Encyclopedia, encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/josef-mengele.

109      who escaped to the Southern Cone . . . never caught “The number of suspects that have been brought to trial is a tiny percentage of the more than 200,000 perpetrators of Nazi-era crimes, said Mary Fulbrook, a professor of Germany History at University College London.” Atika Shubert and Nadine Schmidt, "Most Nazis Escaped Justice: Now Germany Is Racing to Convict Those Who Got Away,” CNN, December 15, 2018, www.cnn.com/2018/12/14/europe/germany-nazi-war-trials-grm-intl/index.html. See also The Perfect Hideout, wienerholocaustlibrary.org/exhibition/the-perfect-hideout-jewish-and-nazi-havens-in-latin-america.

109      One of the first, Magnus Hirschfeld Historian Laurie Marhoefer explains that Hirschfeld’s “book Racism (1938), which came out in English several years after he died, was for a time listed in the Oxford English Dictionary as the earliest use of the term ‘racism’ in the English language. A much earlier use was subsequently found: the earliest use of the term according to the OED now is 1903. The equivalent term in German, Rassismus, was also in use before 1938. Nevertheless, Hirschfeld still gets credit for being an early adopter of the term.” Laurie Marhoefer, Racism and the Making of Gay Rights: A Sexologist, His Student, and the Empire of Queer Love (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2022), 88. Find the library book at search.worldcat.org/title/1289927657.

109      renowned scholar of human sexuality “Hirschfeld became a well-known public figure in the early twentieth century. He was recognized as an expert on sex, sexuality, and gender.” “Magnus Hirschfeld,” Holocaust Encyclopedia, December 17, 2021, encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/magnus-hirschfeld-2.

109      Scientific-Humanitarian Committee . . . first gay rights organization In an article for the New Yorker, Alex Ross characterizes the committee as “the first gay-rights organization.” Historian Ralf Dose provides fuller context, explaining, “This committee marked the first successful creation of an organization that advocated homosexual rights. Earlier attempts . . . had failed or had only limited effect.” Dose adds, “The committee’s main activity was petitioning for the repeal of Paragraph 175 of the German penal code, which dated from 1871. It criminalized male homosexual conduct. From 1897 until the 1920s, petitions were repeatedly presented to parliament and failed each time.” Alex Ross, “Berlin Story,” New Yorker, January 19, 2015, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/01/26/berlin-story; and Ralf Dose, Magnus Hirschfeld: The Origins of the Gay Liberation Movement, trans. Edward H. Willis (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2014), 41–42. Find the library book at search.worldcat.org/title/870272914.

109      published his most important work  Clayton J. Whisnant, Queer Identities and Politics in Germany: A History, 1880–1945 (New York: Harrington Park Press, 2016), 29. Find the library book at search.worldcat.org/title/942745098.

109      surveying homosexuality in cultures around the world  Hirschfeld wrote in the book’s opening pages, “Over the course of years, I saw 10,000 homosexual men and women in ever-increasing numbers, homosexuals from every status and class, from every people and nation, people who, except for the same sexual orientation, often had nothing in common . . . I saw thousands of homosexuals not only in Germany, in Berlin, in Paris, and London, but also in almost every nation in Europe, in the East, in America, Africa, and Asia . . . In the world at large, the homosexual part of humanity makes up a world in itself, small compared to the rest, but large enough in size and significance so that it should be thoroughly explored.” Hirschfeld insisted on the “inborn nature of homosexuality”: “In an extensive body of literature, homosexuality has been traced back to almost one hundred different motives. But none of these reasons stands the test of careful research, so that an unbiased study of these supposedly decisive factors must lead to the conclusion that genuine homosexuality cannot be acquired by external elements, but rather is always an absolutely endogenous nature grounded exclusively in the congenital constitution and linked to the individuality of a person inseparably and immutably.” Magnus Hirschfeld, The Homosexuality of Men and Women, trans. Michael A. Lombardi-Nash (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2000), 24, 25, 383. This 2000 translation by Lombardi-Nash was the book’s first English translation. Vern L. Bullough, “Introduction,” in Hirschfeld, The Homosexuality of Men and Women, 11. Find the library book at search.worldcat.org/title/41090824?oclcNum=41090824.

109      After a lecture . . . walked back to his hotel Eden Paul and Cedar Paul, “Biographical Introduction,” in Magnus Hirschfeld, Racism, trans. Paul and Paul (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1938), archive.org/details/Magnus-Hirschfeld-Racism/page/24/mode/2up, 25. This source incorrectly dates the attack as occurring in October 1922, but contemporaneous newspaper accounts show it happened in October 1920. See, for example, “Deny Professor Hirschfield Is Dead,” New York Times, October 15, 1920, nyti.ms/40ziI7m, 15.

109–110 recently founded Nazi Party was growing rapidly  Munich was “the party’s base, its nerve center” in its early years. Nazi Party membership grew from 226 in February 1920, the month of the party’s official founding, to 1163 the following October, when Hirschfeld was attacked. Donald M. Douglas, “The Parent Cell: Some Computer Notes on the Composition of the First Nazi Party Group in Munich, 1919–21,” Central European History 10, no. 1 (March 1977), www.jstor.org/stable/4545788, 55, 70.

109–110 spellbinding thirty-one-year-old orator Adolf Hitler  Hitler was the “propaganda leader” of the German Workers’ Party, the precursor to the Nazi Party, by late 1919, and personally delivered the twenty-five-point Nazi Party Platform to a crowd in Munich on February 24, 1920, “an event that is often regarded as the foundation of Naziism.” Douglas, “The Parent Cell,” www.jstor.org/stable/4545788, 57; and Lily Rothman, “How a Speech Helped Hitler Take Power,” Time, February 24, 2015, time.com/3712734/1920-nazi-party-history/.

110       brutally beat him, fractured his skull, and left him for dead Paul and Paul, “Biographical Introduction,” archive.org/details/Magnus-Hirschfeld-Racism/page/24/mode/2up, 25.

110       recovered reading his obituaries  On October 12, 1920, the New York Times printed a story dated October 11 misreporting that Hirschfeld “died in Munich today of injuries inflicted upon him by an anti-Jewish mob.” The paper corrected the mistake on October 15. “Kill Dr. M. Hirschfeld,” New York Times, October 12, 1920, nyti.ms/43IIfLq, 14; “Deny Professor Hirschfield Is Dead, 15,” nyti.ms/40ziI7m; and Paul and Paul, “Biographical Introduction,” archive.org/details/Magnus-Hirschfeld-Racism/page/24/mode/2up, 25.

110       “Down with the Jews!” “Shortly after the first Reichstag session ended, Nazi mobs celebrated their party’s emergence as a powerful presence by rampaging through the nearby fashionable shopping districts, hurling rocks through the plate-glass windows of numerous Jewish-owned department stores and other Jewish enterprises, and shouting insults at—and beating—anyone they believed to be a Jew . . . Celebrating the demolition, the mob marched down Leipziger Strasse, Berlin’s major shopping street, singing Nazi ‘war songs’ and battle cries: ‘Germany, awake!’ and ‘Down with the Jews!’” Stephen H. Norwood, Prologue to Annihilation: Ordinary American and British Jews Challenge the Third Reich (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2021), 19. Find the library book at search.worldcat.org/title/1245250562.

110       down with homosexuals  “During the Nazi era, between 5,000 and 15,000” people “were imprisoned in concentration camps as ‘homosexual’ (‘homosexuell’) offenders.” The German criminal code “criminalized sexual relations between men. It did not apply to sexual relations between women. Nonetheless, beginning in 1933, the Nazi regime harassed and destroyed lesbian communities and networks.” “Not everyone arrested under Paragraph 175 identified as a man. During the German Empire and the Weimar Republic, Germany was home to a developing community of people who identified as ‘transvestites.’ Magnus Hirschfeld coined the term ‘transvestite’ (‘Transvestit’) in 1910. Initially, this term encompassed people who performed in drag, people who cross-dressed for pleasure, as well as those who today might identify as trans or transgender. Today, in English, the term ‘transvestite’ is outdated and offensive. However, it was widely used at the time. Some self-identified transvestites were arrested under Paragraph 175. These were people who were assigned male sex at birth, but identified—and often dressed and lived—as women. When they engaged in sexual relations with men, the Nazi regime saw this as male-male sex. But, many transvestites did not see themselves as ‘homosexual’ (‘homosexuell’). They did not consider their sexual relations with men as male-male sex. Nonetheless, they were punished according to the regime’s definition.” See “Gay Men Under the Nazi Regime,” Holocaust Encyclopedia, May 28, 2021, encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/gay-men-under-the-nazi-regime; “Lesbians Under the Nazi Regime,” Holocaust Encyclopedia, March 31, 2021, encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/lesbians-under-the-nazi-regime; and “Paragraph 175 and the Nazi Campaign Against Homosexuality,” Holocaust Encyclopedia, May 4, 2021, encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/paragraph-175-and-the-nazi-campaign-against-homosexuality.

110       down with women not abiding by “the three K’s”  “Young girls learnt the importance of the three Ks (kinder, küche and kirche; children, kitchen and church) through compulsory membership of the League of German Maidens, and later the National Socialist Women’s League (NS-Frauenschaft). Under the Law for the Encouragement of Marriage, newlyweds were given a state loan of 1,000 reichsmarks (approximately £3,000) of which they were allowed to keep a quarter for each child they had—in effect, a bribe to procreate.” The Nazis also established Reich Bride Schools, “training academies set up by the Nazis to educate women, many of them teenagers, to be suitable wives.” A newspaper article published around the time of the first such school’s opening in 1937 stated that the institution’s purpose was “‘to mould housewives out of office girls.’” “[B]y 1940 there were at least nine” Reich Bride Schools “in Berlin, as well as others in Oldenburg and Tübingen . . . Initially, the attendees were fiancées of prominent SS members and the Nazi party elite. Later, attendance was opened to all German women who were deemed suitable brides for Hitler’s superior race.” Sarah Rainey, “Nazi Bride Schools: ‘These Girls Were the Nucleus of the Reich,’” Daily Telegraph, August 16, 2013, accessed via Wayback Machine, August 17, 2013 capture, web.archive.org/web/20130817181923/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/10247550/Nazi-Bride-Schools-These-girls-were-the-nucleus-of-the-Reich.html.

110       raided Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science  Hitler became chancellor in January and Nazis raided the Institute for Sexual Science in May. Paul and Paul, “Biographical Introduction,” archive.org/details/Magnus-Hirschfeld-Racism/page/26/mode/2up, 26–27.

110       more than 10,000 volumes from his library  Paul and Paul, “Biographical Introduction,” archive.org/details/Magnus-Hirschfeld-Racism/page/26/mode/2up, 26–27.

110       became the Nazi way of “banning” books  See “Nazi Book Burnings,” Holocaust Encyclopedia, last edited July 28, 2025, encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/book-burning.

110       had already bolted into exile “Hirschfeld settled in Switzerland shortly before Hitler was appointed as chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933 . . . Hirschfeld never returned to Germany. Experiencing several health issues, he relocated to the Mediterranean coast of France for its warm climate.” See “Magnus Hirschfeld,” Holocaust Encyclopedia, December 17, 2021, encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/magnus-hirschfeld-2; and Paul and Paul, “Biographical Introduction,” archive.org/details/Magnus-Hirschfeld-Racism/page/26/mode/2up, 26.

110       a fatal stroke on his sixty-seventh birthday  Paul and Paul, “Biographical Introduction,” archive.org/details/Magnus-Hirschfeld-Racism/page/28/mode/2up, 28. Charlotte Wolff, Magnus Hirschfeld: A Portrait of a Pioneer in Sexology (London: Quartet Books, 1986), 413. Find the library book at search.worldcat.org/title/16923065.