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PROLOGUE

When the Edificio Libertador was built (1935–38) to house the headquarters of the Argentine army, known as the “Ejército Argentino,” the twenty-story structure was the largest building ever constructed in Argentina. It had been commissioned by President Agustín Justo, a retired general who had been minister of War before moving into the Casa Rosada, Argentina’s pink equivalent of the United States’ White House.

Justo’s directions to architect Carlos Pibernat had been essentially to “do it properly”—which Pibernat interpreted to mean that cost was not to be a consideration. Argentina was prosperous; it had the world’s largest gold reserves and liked to think of itself as a world power.

Argentines took a smug pride when they heard the phrase “As rich as an Argentine.”

This was not a new state of mind. For example, when at the turn of the century Argentina decided it needed a new opera house, the government’s instructions to the architects were essentially “make it bigger, better, and more grandiose than the Paris Opera, the Vienna Opera, and any other opera house in the world.”

When the Edificio Libertador was completed on an eight-acre plot east of the Casa Rosada, it was what today would be called state of the art. It had high-speed Siemens elevators, and a communications system installed by Siemens and other German firms to the high standards of the German army.

The Ejército Argentino had a close, admiring relationship with the German Wehrmacht and the leader of the German people, Adolf Hitler, who was in the process—nearly finished in 1938—of bringing Germany out of the disaster caused by the Weimar Republic and the Versailles Treaty. Argentine officers were sent to the Kriegsschule in Germany, and the Wehrmacht sent officers to train the Ejército, whose uniforms closely resembled those of the Wehrmacht.

There was also a great admiration among Ejército Argentino officers for “Il Duce,” Benito Mussolini, the Italian dictator and founder of Fascism, who, it was said, made the trains run on time. Argentina, like the United States, was a nation of immigrants. There were more Argentines of Italian ancestry than of Spanish or any other nationality.

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In 1938, Fascism and its cousin, Nazism, were clearly on the rise, and war was as clearly on the horizon. Nevertheless, it took five years, until 1943, to settle the differences between various factors of

the Ejército vis-à-vis who got which wings and floors of the Edificio Libertador.

By then, it appeared almost certain that Fascism was to be the New World Order. The Wehrmacht, using a new tactic of fast-moving armored formations called “Blitzkrieg,” had brought France—and the rest of Continental Europe—to its knees in just over a month, May 10 to June 14, 1940. Britain was isolated.

On June 22, 1941, Germany launched OPERATION BARBAROSSA against Russia, and by August 20 the Wehrmacht was on the outskirts of Leningrad.

On December 7, 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Territory of Hawaii, sinking most of the U.S. Pacific fleet, and quickly turned their attention to the Philippine Islands. Germany declared war on the United States, and the conflict became the Allies—Britain and the U.S.—versus the Axis—Germany, Japan, and Italy.

The British bastion in the Far East, Singapore, fell to the Japanese on February 15, 1942, the largest capitulation in British history.

And on May 6, 1942, Lieutenant General Jonathan M. Wainwright unconditionally surrendered the Philippines to the Japanese. It was the worst defeat in American history.

Although Argentina was neutral, most of the Ejército Argentino—but not all—cheered the Axis triumphs.

The Argentine navy, which had been trained by the Royal Navy, was disheartened.

The British had been in Argentina for a long time in such numbers that they tended to think of it as almost a British colony. The Brits had built—and owned—the Argentine railway system. There was an Argentine branch of Harrods, the famed London department store, in downtown Buenos Aires, and many members of the upper class had been educated and continued to educate their children in Argentine versions—Saint Paul’s, for example—of British “public”—actually private—schools.

Anglo-Argentines volunteered for service in the British armed forces, as did Germano-Argentines for service to the Third Reich. There were daily English- and German-language newspapers in Buenos Aires. The government permitted them to continue publishing but forbade their reporting of war news.

Both the Germans and the British, as in the First World War, turned to Argentina for foodstuffs. This was a very profitable business for Argentina.

One of Argentina’s neighbors to the north, Brazil, had declared war on the Axis shortly after Pearl Harbor. This was to give the United States airbases in Brazil from which specially equipped B-24 bombers could be used against German submarines. The Nazi Unterseeboots—U-boats—had been interdicting British merchant ships carrying Argentine beef and other foodstuffs to England.

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On April 18, 1942, sixteen B-25 bombers took off from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet and bombed Tokyo. Not much physical damage was done, but the raid destroyed the notion of Japanese invincibility.

On November 8, 1942, American forces staged a successful invasion of North Africa, and many historians consider this the turning point of World War II. Certainly, things went, slowly but inexorably, downhill for the Axis after that date.

On November 19, 1942, the Russians at Stalingrad were in a position whereby they could launch a counteroffensive—and did so. They quickly surrounded the German Sixth Army, which Hitler had ordered to fight until the last man and the last round.

On January 31, 1943, Field Marshal von Paulus surrendered the southern sector, and on February 2, 1943, General Schreck surrendered the northern group. Ninety thousand German soldiers became prisoners and perhaps at least that number were in unmarked graves.

The Russian march to Berlin began.

On September 3, 1943, Anglo-American forces landed in Italy. The same day, Italy surrendered unconditionally to the Allies.

On June 6, 1944, the Allies landed in France. The Germans surrendered Paris on August 25.

On October 20, 1944, MacArthur made good his promise—“I shall return”—by landing his Sixth Army on Leyte Island in the Philippines.

The U.S. and Royal Air Forces began day-and-night one-thousand-bomber raids on the German homeland, as Allied forces fought their way to Germany.

On January 16, 1945, the Red Army breached the German front and marched—as much as twenty-five miles a day—through East Prussia, Lower Silesia, East Pomerania, and Upper Silesia, to a line forty miles east of Berlin along the Oder River.

On March 27, 1945, Argentina, finally realizing that defeat was imminent, declared war on Germany.

On April 30, 1945, Adolf Hitler committed suicide as Russian tanks rolled through the streets of Berlin. A week later, on May 7, 1945, Germany surrendered unconditionally.

On August 6, 1945, the United States obliterated Hiroshima, Japan, with an atomic bomb. Three days later, a second atomic bomb obliterated Nagasaki.

On September 2, 1945, a formal surrender ceremony was performed in Tokyo Bay, Japan, aboard the battleship USS Missouri.

World War II was over.

Not a single Argentine soldier or sailor had died in the war.

Not one bomb or artillery shell had landed on Argentine soil.

And, as a result of supplying foodstuffs to both sides, Argentina was richer than ever.

Argentina’s role in World War II, however, was by no means over.

When—as early as 1942—the most senior members of the Nazi hierarchy, as high as Martin Bormann, generally regarded as second in power only to Hitler, and Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, realized the Ultimate Victory was not nearly as certain as Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels had been telling the German people, they began in great secrecy to implement OPERATION PHOENIX.

Should the Thousand-Year Reich have a life shorter than they hoped, by establishing refuges in South America—primarily in Argentina and Paraguay—to which senior Nazis could flee, National Socialism could rise, phoenix-like, from the ashes.