A note purportedly from ODESSA claims responsibility.

A note purportedly from ODESSA claims responsibility.

In October 2005, El Mundo revealed that Nazi Aribert Heim ( aka " Doctor Death ") had been living in Spain for 20 years, probably with help from the ODESSA network, in collaboration with Otto Skorzeny, who had helped set up one of the most important ODESSA bases of operation in Spain, during the rule of the late dictator Francisco Franco.

At the time, Gehlen had been chief of the German Bundesnachrichtendienst secret agency, founder of the Gehlen Org and co-founder of the ODESSA network, which helped exfiltrate Nazis from Europe.

These escapes are said to have been assisted by an organization known as ODESSA, an acronym of the German phrase Organisation der ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen, which translates as the Organization of Former Members of the SS.

Interviews by the ZDF German TV station with former SS men suggest instead that the ODESSA was never the single world-wide secret organization that Wiesenthal described, but several organizations, both overt and covert, that helped ex-SS men.

According to Manning, " eventually, over 10, 000 former German military made it to South America along escape routes set up by ( the ) ODESSA and the Deutsche Hilfsverein ..." ( page 181 ).

Conspiracy theorists, such as American writer Jim Marrs, claim that some ex-Nazis, who survived the fall of the Greater German Reich, along with sympathizers in the United States and elsewhere, given safe haven by organizations like ODESSA and Die Spinne, have been working behind the scenes since the end of World War II to enact at least some of the principles of Nazism ( e. g., militarism, imperialism, widespread spying on citizens, corporatism, the use of propaganda to manufacture a national consensus ) into culture, government, and business worldwide, but primarily in the U. S ..

The name ODESSA is an acronym for the German phrase " Organisation der Ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen ", which translates as “ Organization of Former Members of the SS ”.

* ODESSA, an organization of former members of the Nazi SS ( Organisation Der Ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen )

One ratline, made famous by the Frederick Forsyth thriller The Odessa File, was run by the ODESSA ( Organisation der ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen ; " Organization of Former SS-Members ") network organized by Otto Skorzeny.

“ Mythos Odessa: Wahrheit oder Legende ?” (“ The Myth of ODESSA: Truth or Legend ?”)

The ODESSA itself was incidental, says Manning, with the continuing existence of the Bormann Organization a much larger and more menacing fact.

Liddy coined his own sensitivity indicator for the group in the form of " ODESSA " for " Organization Directed to Eliminate the Subversion of the Secrets of the Administration ".

The purpose of the ODESSA was to establish and facilitate secret escape routes, later known as ratlines, to allow SS members to avoid their capture and prosecution for war crimes.

) In the novel, Forsyth's ODESSA smuggled war criminals to Latin America, but also attempted to protect those SS members who remained behind in Germany, and plotted to influence political decisions in West Germany.

He is alleged to have helped Otto Skorzeny run " ODESSA " in covertly helping former SS officers to escape to Latin America to avoid prosecution.

The novel alleges that ODESSA is an international Nazi organization established before the defeat of Nazi Germany for the purpose of protecting former members of the SS after the war instead of a war veterans ' group.

But Miller's identity has been compromised, in part by his ill-advised decision to use his own car ; the impoverished SS man he is impersonating would not have been able to afford a sports car, and ODESSA sets its top hit man on Miller's trail.

* One of the potential candidates for the assassin considered by both Rodin and Lebel is an elderly ex-SS officer formerly employed as a contract killer for ODESSA, the underground organization of ex-Nazi war criminals.

The reporter discovers him via the diary of a Jewish Holocaust survivor who committed suicide earlier, but he is being shielded by an organization that protects ex-Nazis, called ODESSA.

Special attention is given to ODESSA actions during the Cold War, international fascist networks, and political inroads to the right-wing mainstream.

Miller is asked to infiltrate ODESSA and agrees.

Miller visits a lawyer working for ODESSA and after passing a severe scrutiny is sent to meet a passport forger who supplies those members who wish to escape.

Miller, momentarily off guard, is disarmed and knocked unconscious by another ODESSA man who leaves in Miller's car but is killed when he drives over a snow-covered pole and detonates the bomb.

Infiltration of Nazi support and escape organisations ( the most famous one being the ODESSA network and its various " ratlines ") and those believed to be aiding and abetting them.

In his 2008 book, The Rise of the Fourth Reich: The Secret Societies That Threaten to Take Over America, Jim Marrs argues that some surviving members of Germany's Third Reich, along with sympathizers in the United States and elsewhere, given safe haven by organizations such as ODESSA and Die Spinne, have been working behind the scenes since the end of World War II to enact at least some of the principles of Nazism ( e. g. militarism, fascism, conquest, widespread spying on citizens, use of corporations and propaganda to control national interests and ideas ) into culture, government, and business worldwide, but primarily in the United States.

Other issues that the Center deals with include: the prosecution of Nazi war criminals, fighting against ODESSA networks ; Holocaust and tolerance education ; Middle East Affairs ; and extremist groups, neo-Nazism, and hate on the Internet.

However, while Nazi concentration camp supervisors denied the existence of the ODESSA, neither US War Crimes Commission reports nor American OSS officials did.

Other motives included were the fear that a " Nazi underground " of some kind existed, such as the ODESSA which could allow the enemy to somehow regroup for their proclaimed Fourth Reich.

Individuals purporting to represent the Nazi ODESSA claimed responsibility for the attack.

Long before the ZDF TV network, historian Gitta Sereny wrote in her 1974 book Into That Darkness, based on interviews with the former commandant of the Treblinka extermination camp, Franz Stangl ( see References following ), that the ODESSA had never existed.

The couriers had applied for their jobs under false names, and the Americans in Munich had failed to check them carefully ... ( the ) ODESSA was organized as a thorough, efficient network ... Anlaufstellen ( ports of call ) were set up along the entire Austrian-German border ...

According to Simon Wiesenthal, the ODESSA was set up in 1946 to aid fugitive Nazis.

In Lindau, close to both Austria and Switzerland, ( the ) ODESSA set up an ' export-import ' company with representatives in Cairo and Damascus.

For Walters, the reports received by the allied intelligence services during the mid-1940s suggest that the appellation " ODESSA " was " little more than a catch-all term use by former Nazis who wished to continue the fight.

In his interviews with Sereny, Stangl denied any knowledge of a group called the ODESSA.

Wechsberg studied Simon Wiesenthal's memoirs on the ODESSA and verified them with his own experiences in the book The Murderers Among Us.

In a note, people claiming to represent the ODESSA claimed responsibility for a 9 July 1979 car bombing in France, which was aimed at anti-Nazi activists Serge and Beate Klarsfeld.

Recent biographies of Adolf Eichmann, who also escaped to South America, and Heinrich Himmler, the alleged founder of the ODESSA, made no reference to such an organization.

However, Hannah Arendt, in her book, Eichmann in Jerusalem, states that " in 1950, succeeded in establishing contact with ODESSA, a clandestine organization of S. S. Veterans, and in May of that year, he was passed through Austria to Italy, where a Franciscan priest, fully informed of his identity, equipped him with a refugee passport in the name of Richard Klement and sent him on to Buenos Aires.