Die Spinne, translated as The Spider, is believed by some to be a secret organization established and led in part by Otto Skorzeny, Hitler’s commando chief, as well as Nazi intelligence officer Reinhard Gehlen which helped as many as 600 former SS men escape from Germany to Spain, Argentina, Paraguay, Chile, Bolivia and other countries.

Die Spinne, translated as The Spider, is believed by some to be a secret organization established and led in part by Otto Skorzeny, Hitler’s commando chief, as well as Nazi intelligence officer Reinhard Gehlen which helped as many as 600 former SS men escape from Germany to Spain, Argentina, Paraguay, Chile, Bolivia and other countries. Die Spinne was established by Skorzeny using the cover names of Robert Steinbacher and Otto Steinbauer, and supported by either Nazi funds or, according to some sources, Austrian Intelligence. Later, Skorzeny, Gehlen and their network of collaborators had gained significant influence in parts of Europe and Latin America. Skorzeny travelled between Francoist Spain and Argentina, where he acted as an advisor to President Juan Perón and bodyguard of Eva Perón, while fostering an ambition for the “Fourth Reich” centred in Latin America. According to Glenn Infield, “The Secrets of the SS”. Stein and Day, New York, (1981), the idea for the Die Spinne network began in 1944 as Hitler’s chief intelligence officer Reinhard Gehlen foresaw a possible downfall of the Third Reich due to Nazi military failures in Russia. T.H. Tetens, expert on German geopolitics and member of the US War Crimes Commission in 1946-1947, referred to a group overlapping with die Spinne as the Führungsring “a kind of political Mafia, with headquarters in Madrid… serving various purposes.” The Madrid office built up what was referred to as a sort of Fascist International, per Tetens. According to Tetens the German leadership also included Dr. Hans Globke, who had written the official commentary on the Nuremberg Laws. Globke held the important position of Director of the German Chancellery from 1953 until 1963, serving as adviser for Konrad Adenauer, During the period from 1945 to 1950, Die Spinne leader Skorzeny facilitated the escape of Nazi war criminals from war-criminal prisons to Memmingen, Bavaria, through Austria and Switzerland into Italy. Certain US military authorities supposedly knew of the escape, but took no action. The Central European headquarters of Die Spinne as of 1948 was in Gmunden, Austria. A coordinating office for international Die Spinne operations in Madrid, Spain, by Otto Skorzeny, under the control of Generalissimo Francisco Franco, whose victory in the Spanish Civil War was guaranteed by economic and military support from Hitler and Mussolini. When a Die Spinne Nazi delegation visited Madrid in 1959, Franco stated, “Please regard Spain as your second Fatherland.” Skorzeny used the resources of Die Spinne to allow Nazi concentration camp doctor Josef Mengele to escape to Argentina in 1949. Die Spinne leader Skorzeny requested the assistance of ultra-wealthy German industrialist Alfried Krupp, whose company controlled 138 private concentration camps under the Third Reich, and this was granted in 1951. Skorzeny became Krupp’s representative in industrial business ventures in Argentina, a country which harboured a strong pro-Nazi political element throughout World War II and afterwards, regardless of a nominal declaration of loyalty to the Allies as World War II ended. With the help of Die Spinne leaders in Spain, by the early 1980s Die Spinne had become influential in Argentina, Chile and Paraguay, including ties involving Paraguayan dictator Alfredo Stroessner. War Crimes investigator Simon Wiesenthal claimed that Josef Mengele had stayed at the notorious Colonia Dignidad Nazi colony in Chile in 1979, and ultimately was harboured in Paraguay until his death. As of the early 1980s, Die Spinne’s Mengele was reported by Infield to have been advising Stroessner’s ethnic German Paraguayan police on how to reduce native Paraguayan Indians in the Chaco Region to slave labour. A wealthy and powerful post-World-War-II underground Nazi political contingent held sway in Argentina as of the late 1960s, which included many ethnic German Nazi immigrants and their descendants. Die Stille Hilfe für Kriegsgefangene und Internierte (German for “Silent assistance for prisoners of war and interned persons”) abbreviated Stille Hilfe is a relief organization for arrested, condemned and fugitive SS members, similar to the veterans’ association, set up by Helene Elizabeth Princess von Isenburg (1900–1974) in 1951. The organization has garnered a reputation for being shrouded in secrecy and thus remains a source of speculation. Operating covertly from 1946, the organization that later became publicly active as “Stille Hilfe”, aided the escape of hunted Nazi fugitives, particularly to South America. Thus Adolf Eichmann, Johann von Leers, Walter Rauff and Josef Mengele could escape to Argentina. In 1949 Catholic Bishop Johannes Neuhäusler (who himself had suffered from the Nazi regime in Dachau concentration camp) and Evangelical Lutheran Bishop Theophil Worm founded “the Christian prisoner assistance”. Neuhäusler said he wanted to break the cycle of hatred and revenge by reconciling even with those who sided with his persecutors. After the main exponents of the later association had already long formed an active network, it was decided a non-profit association should be formed primarily to facilitate a donations campaign. On 7 October 1951 the founders’ meeting was held in Munich and on 15 November 1951 the organization was entered in the register of associations in the Upper Bavarian city Wolfratshausen. The first president, Helene Elizabeth, Princess von Isenburg was chosen because of her good contacts in the aristocracy and conservative upper middle-class circles as well as the Catholic Church. Founding members of the committee included church representatives Theophil Worm and Johannes Neuhäusler, as well as high-ranking former functionaries of the Nazi state such as the former SS-Standartenführer and head of department in the Central Reich Security Office (RSHA), Wilhelm Spengler, and SS-Obersturmbannführer Heinrich Malz, who was the personal adviser of Ernst Kaltenbrunner. Helene Elizabeth, Princess von Isenburg explained its objectives in such a way: “From the start of its efforts‚ the Stille Hilfe sought to take care of, above all, the serious needs of the prisoners of war and those interned completely without rights. Later their welfare service was active for those accused and arrested as a result of the war trials, whether in the prisons of the victors or in German penal institutions”. From the beginning of the Nuremberg Trials, the group sought to influence public opinion to prevent the execution of the death penalty. In press campaigns, personal and open letters and petitions, the war criminals were usually represented as innocent victims – pure command-receivers, irreproachable and often also having a blind faith in the Führer–who would have to suffer bitter injustice by victor’s justice. Because Princess von Isenburg was particularly devoted to the war criminals condemned to death in Landsberg prison, she was affectionately known as “Mother of the Landsbergers” in order to let “Stille Hilfe” be seen primarily as a charitable organization. The legal assistance for arrested war criminals was first organized by the attorney Rudolf Aschenauer (1913–1983), who also formulated and submitted requests for grace and revisions. The organization paid vacation, dismissal and Christmas benefit to the prisoners and also supported their families. They were not only limited to humanitarian activities but also pursued a past-ideological and revisionist objective. Princess Isenburg, a strict Catholic, tirelessly pleaded the criminals’ cause in conservative circles and with high-ranking church representatives (even up to the Pope). Johannes Neuhäusler (1888–1973) in particular, who not only had suffered detention/imprisonment by the Gestapo, but also had been held by the Nazis in the Dachau concentration camp as a special prisoner, was most effective in public opinion, even among western Allied officials. The motives of the Bishops lay probably less in a conscious ideological identification with the war criminals, but rather in the effort regarding reconciliation with the German past and the start of the new post-war society in West Germany. Neuhäusler explained the he wanted to repay “the bad with good”. The further connections of Princess Isenburg and Aschenauer led particularly to former SS organizations such as Gauleiterkreis under Werner Naumann, which was already partly formed in Allied prisoner-of-war camps. Princess Isenburg initiated a whole series of organizations as “The working group for the rescue of the Landsberger prisoners”, who were essentially financed by the churches. The churches to a large extent withdrew support with the end of the main Nuremberg Trials and the release of the time-serving Nazi war criminals from Landsberg prison in 1958. In the following decades Stille Hilfe worked somewhat in secret with revisionist organizations and prominent protagonists of the “Auschwitzlüge” (Auschwitz Lie) like Thies Christophersen and Manfred Röder and co-operated with relevant foreign organizations and personalities e.g. (Florentine Rost van Tonningen, Leon Degrelle). By a not insignificant number of inheritances and by regular donations, the organization controls considerable funds. Since Stille Hilfe does not publish end-of-year figures, one can only estimate the influx of capital; however, perhaps donations (not including inheritances) were annually circa €60000 to 80000, at least to the end of the 1990s.

 

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