Reinhard Kopps

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Reinhard Kopp (aka Hans Mahler ; * 29. September 1914 in Hamburg , † 11. September 2001 in Bariloche , Argentina ) was a German Nazi - intelligence officer and Nazi smugglers .

Life

As an intelligence agent and anti- Masonic -expert Kopp was in the era of National Socialism in the Balkans and Hungary used. According to the NARA archives, Kopps joined the NSDAP in Hamburg on March 1, 1940 under membership number 7.524.143.

Allegedly, Kopps handed over 25 Jews in October 1944 false papers in order to save them from deportation to Auschwitz , and was therefore sentenced to death and persecuted by SD agents. He was apparently rescued by General Leo Rupnik , the president of the Slovenian satellite state created by the Nazis. As a member of the Nazi secret service, he was arrested by the British in Klagenfurt in 1945 . After a year he fled and bought false papers under the name of Hans Mahler. Then he went to Rome .

After the Second World War, Kopps became the most important assistant to the Nazi escape helper, Bishop Alois Hudal , to enable war criminals to escape via the rat line or monastery route to Argentina. Kopps had the task of looking after Nazis who were looking for the support of the Catholic Church. To this end, Kopps first established connections with Croatian and Hungarian clergy who also wanted to bring war criminals to safety. "Officially, Kopps was employed in the library of the Casa Generalizia of the German-dominated Salvatorian Order ... This work offered Kopps an excellent camouflage for his activities to help escape the Nazis, as he admitted decades later in his memoirs."

Kopps' integration into the National Socialist escape aid also took place through close cooperation "with Perón's DAIE offices in Via Alberao 38" in Rome. He lived with German and Croatian war criminals who were "protected" by Monsignor Karlo Petranović . “Petranovic acted as Auxilium representative and Draganovic's agent in the port of Genoa . He was himself a war criminal: The Ustasha -Hauptmann he was a close associate of the local Ustasha leader in Ogulin been a district, about 2,000 Serbs were killed in the wartime. The monsignor had incited and organized these murderers; he also personally ordered the imprisonment and execution of 70 prominent Serbs. "

Kopps also maintained close ties with Father Edoardo Dömöter from the San Antonio community in Genoa. Domöter signed Adolf Eichmann's application for a Red Cross passport . "Like Petranovic, Siri and Dragonovic, Dömöter also works closely with Bishop Hudal."

Kopps worked closely with the former Italian officer Franz Ruffiengo , Krunoslav Draganović and the Argentine immigration office DAIE and later worked in the Juan Perons escape assistance office in Genoa. "In mid-1948 Kopps himself fled to Argentina, from where he maintained contact with Hudal and developed a lively neo-Nazi propaganda activity under the name of Juan Maler."

After 1945 Kopps published writings under pseudonyms in which he esoterically transfigured Hitler and Nazi ideology. He worked as an editor of the National Socialist newspaper Der Weg , which spread not only among Nazi refugees, but also in Europe in Nazi circles. For a while he was South America correspondent for the Nazi apologetic magazine Nation - The Political Magazine for Germans .

In the 1990s, the Simon Wiesenthal Center found out where he was. Kopps lived in San Carlos de Bariloche , a small Argentine town where numerous Nazi criminals such as Josef Schwammberger and Josef Mengele were able to hide. On May 6, 1994, the reporter Sam Donaldson of the US broadcaster ABC surprised him with a camera team on his doorstep . In a panic, Kopps asked the reporter to interview the "real" war criminals instead of him, and revealed the whereabouts of SS-Hauptsturmführer Erich Priebke . Priebke was a close associate of the Gestapo head of Rome Herbert Kappler and was involved in the massacre in the Ardeatine Caves near Rome on March 24, 1944 , in which 335 hostages were shot. Erich Priebke's escape papers went through Kopp's hands. When Priebke applied for a passport, he was able to provide a guarantee from the Pontifical Auxiliary Commission ( PCA ). Uki Goñi writes: “There is no doubt that these churchmen [meaning the PCA] coordinated their actions closely with Nazi agents like Reinhard Kopps. It is also clear that their projects were enthusiastically supported by the officials in Perón's DAIE who greeted them with 'Heil Hitler' . "

literature

  • Uki Goñi : The Real Odessa , English original edition, Granta Publications, London 2002, revised edition Granta Books July 9, 2003, German: Odessa: The true story. Escape aid for Nazi war criminals . Translated from the English by Theo Bruns and Stefanie Graefe. 2nd Edition. Association A, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-935936-40-8 .
  • Gerald Steinacher : Nazis on the run. How war criminals escaped overseas via Italy . Studien-Verlag, Innsbruck u. a. 2008, ISBN 978-3-7065-4026-1 ( Innsbruck research on contemporary history 26. At the same time: Innsbruck, Univ., Habil.-Schr., 2007).

Web links

References and comments

  1. a b Uki Goñi, English edition 2003, page 232
  2. Argentinisches Tageblatt , September 15, 2001 ( Memento of October 8, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 128 kB) page 2
  3. Mariano Cordero: Murió un ex oficial nazi denunciado por crímenes de guerra , Clarín (Argentina) , September 12, 2001 (Spanish)
  4. ^ Uki Goñi, English edition 2003, page 231
  5. Uki Goñi especially p. 225, see also: Uki Goñi. Pp. 224-232, 240, 224, 251f, 267, 278, 281.
  6. Uki Goñi p. 227, see also: Uki Goñi. Pp. 224-232, 240, 224, 251f, 267, 278, 281.
  7. Uki Goñi p. 227.
  8. Theo Bruns: The Vatican and the Rat Line. How the Catholic Church smuggled Nazis and war criminals into South America . In: ila 301
  9. Bruns is apparently referring to the book by Uki Goñi. The name Hans Mahler was probably changed to Juan Maler . Juan is the usual Spanish form for the German first name Hans and was also a kind of password for admirers of President Juan Perón
  10. Described in detail in: Friedrich Paul Heller, Anton Maegerle: Thule. From folk occultism to the New Right . Butterfly, Stuttgart 1995.
  11. ^ Anton Maegerle : Not aware of any guilt . bnr 17/97, ​​p. 5.
  12. See Uki Goñi. Pp. 224-232, 240, 224, 251f, 267, 278, 281. Quote: Uki Goñi p. 240.