Unholy Trinity [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

The book has since been updated and its conclusions expanded to encompass the amazing---but painstakingly researched and documented---conclusion that billions in Nazi assets were laundered to Argentina and elsewhere via the Vatican bank in 1945/6.

The architect of this scheme, corporate lawyer Allen Dulles, operating as US intelligence's chief spy in wartime Switzerland, would later head the CIA from 1953-1962. Dulles' clients included many German corporations and banks, as well as several Swiss banks and the Vatican itself. He was perfectly placed both to execute and to help his clients profit from the moneylaundering crime of the century.

Aarons and Loftus further detail how the entire Dulles/Swiss banks scheme hinged on the willing participation of the Vatican and its agents to move both Nazi war crimes suspects and the corporate assets of that regime---often part-owned by the giants of American commerce like Standard Oil, Dupont, etc---to Argentina.

The twists and turns of this non-fiction book are breathtaking: there are no heroes, only greed, expedience, and a blind eye turned toward those who perpetrated some of the worst crimes of this century...but who were thought to be useful in the West's fight against Communism.

That the very highest reaches of the Vatican were complicit is crystal-clear, despite recent denials. Even as this book sells, recenlty declassified files in the UK, Argentina, France, Italy, and Switzerland point to the Vatican's role in laundering the proceeds of Nazi criminality---proceeds which dwarf the earthly assets of the millions of Jews killed in the Final Solution now making the headlines.

The scholarship is impeccable and the conclusions inescapable: people are capable of anything in the name of temporal power---even the Pope himself. And in the end, the scheme to use the Ratline escape routes to smuggle Nazis and their loot out of Allied-occupied Europe was all for nought.

Why? Kim Philby had betrayed the entire ploy to Moscow. Stalin and his spies had the last laugh---and the West was seeded with the worst Nazis and their most ardent collaborators for the balance of the century.

This book puts the very best of espionage fiction to shame. Buy it and pass it on. Then read SECRET WAR AGAINST THE JEWS, the sprawling followup, a peek behind the veil---you'll see how the 20th Century really worked...the wars since 1939, secret or otherwise, were all about the struggle, not for peace and justice, but for oil.

Using previously classified government documents, the authors give the most detailed account in print of the Catholic Church's collaboration in the smuggling of Fascist and Nazi war criminals out of Europe at the end of the Second World War. Officials at the Vatican who helped these men get false papers and safe passage included then Monsignor Montini (later Paul VI) and Bishop Hudal, author of the clero-fascist Foundations of National Socialism. Among those who thus escaped justice, at least temporarily, were Adolph Eichmann, chief administrator of the holocaust, Walter Rauff, director of the mobile gas truck extermination program, Franz Strangel, Commandant at Treblinka, and Ante Pavelic, fascist Croatian dictator. Many other ex-Nazis were recruited by the church to become "freedom fighters" against the Eastern bloc. Aarons and Loftus argue Vatican's primary motivation throughout this operation was an anti-communism so fanatical that it knew no moral limits. The second half of the book recounts how the church's smuggling operation was infiltrated and turned against the West by the Soviet Union. Although the authors' analysis of the motivations and culpability some of the figures involved can be questioned (most notably their exoneration of Pius XII on charges of complicity with the Nazis in the rise of fascism), this book remains a remarkable history of a little known dark chapter in modern church history.

In their introduction to the new edition, Loftus and Aarons detail how some of their original investigative work led to the capture and arrest of Erich Priebke, the SS officer who directed the infamous massacre at the Ardeantine Caves near Rome. Priebke had escaped through the Vatican Ratlines to Argentina and was sheltered by the church even during his 1997-1998 trials. The authors also point out some of the connections between their investigations and the ongoing highly-publicized attempts to trace the Nazi gold held in Swiss banks. More detail on this is given in their revised conclusion (ch 13) in which they suggest that financial motives may have been as important a motive in the Vatican's decision to establish the Ratlines as anti-communism. The Vatican invested the $29 million cash settlement that it received from Mussolini as part of the deal for the Concordat in Germany. During the 1930s, it attempted to protect that growing investment against the looming international conflict by setting up a money laundering scheme which involved secret exchange protocols between the Vatican Bank and banks in Switzerland. Recognising this, the authors have moved fairly far away from the conclusion of their original edition that the Vatican was not involved on the build up of fascism in Germany. In fact they now even cite a passage from La Popessa which claims that Pacelli (later Pius XII) gave money to Hitler in 1919 to suggest early links between the Nazis and the Vatican.