When I was at UVa, I was in a distinguished history majors seminar and we had to read a dopey anthropology book on Eva Peron for Brian Owensby. In the discussion, I reasonably asked why the book never even mentioned Juan Peron's ties to the Nazi regime. Owensby was really dismissive and said that there was absolutely no connection between Peron and the Nazis. The next week, Thomas F.X. Noble, the faculty coordinator, played some silly game where people supposedly got upset by some comment or something.
Of course, they were utterly wrong.
Peron's autobiography Yo, Juan Domingo Peron states -
"En Nuremberg se estaba realizando entonces algo que yo,
a titulo personal juzgaba coma una infamia y como una
funesta leccion para el futuro de la Humanidad. Y no
solo yo, sino el pueblo argentino. Adquiri la certeza
de que los argentinos tambien consideraban el proceso
de Nuremberg como una infamia, indigna de los vencedores,
que se comportaban como si no lo fueran. Ahora entonces
dandonos cuenta de que merecian haber perdido la guerra.
Cuantas veces durante mi gobierno pronuncie discursos a
cargo de Nuremberg, que es la enormidad mas grande que no
perdonara la historia!"
My Spanish may be a little rusty but condemning the Nuremberg War Trials, stating that the Allies deserved to lose the war, and repeatedly telling his nation that the war crimes trials themselves were the great misdeed that would not be forgiven by history seems to show Nazi sympathies.
Of course, systematically rescuing and harboring Nazi war criminals would tend to confirm it.
In 1984, Argentine journalist and author Tomas Eloy Martinez published a study of Peron and Nazi war criminals at the Wilson Center -
"Perón’s motivation for harboring Nazis is somewhat less clear, but was likely the result of a combination of factors. Perón’s early military training at the Superior War College had instilled in him an appreciation for German military doctrine and his own authoritarian conception of politics made him sympathetic to the Axis. The influx of Germans into Argentina also served a utilitarian purpose. In 1944, Perón introduced an industrialization policy that he envisioned would free Argentina from its history of economic dependence, first on Great Britain, and more recently on the United States. He believed that “useful Germans” would provide crucial technical support for this process. In reality, few scientists were among the Nazis that entered Argentina, but the accomplishments of these few were widely publicized and celebrated by Perón. While German and Croat war criminals may not have made significant contributions to Argentina’s scientific fields, Eloy Martínez concludes that their presence, nonetheless, impacted Argentine history; “No country can open its doors to this class of criminal and sleep soundly. No nation crosses these dark boundaries of history with impunity.”"
In 1995, the year of our class discussion, Martinez, then director of Latin American studies at Rutgers, published "Santa Evita." It would go on to be the most successful novel in Argentine history. In an interview from the time, he was skeptical of more provocative claims about Eva Peron's own actions that lacked direct historical evidence but said that she possessed "many of the qualities I detest in any human being: authoritarianism, intolerance, fanaticism."
Subsequent historical research in Argentina archives has only strengthened the case against the Peron regime. In 2003, Uki Goni published his critically acclaimed "The Real Odessa: How Peron Brought the Nazi War Criminals to Argentina" -
"It has long been known that Adolf Eichmann, Josef Mengele, Erich Priebke and many other Nazi war criminals found refuge in Argentina. In this book, a courageous Argentinian writer shows exactly how it was done, and reveals that the escapes were organized with the enthusiastic support of President Juan Peron. Even at this late date, when so much is known about the complicity of the Catholic Church and Allied intelligence agencies in the flight of the Nazis, Goni's material still has the power to shock. The paperback edition of The Real Odessa includes a revised introduction and conclusion, with a new afterword containing material that Uki Goni has recently researched and which focuses on Vatican complicity in providing sanctuary for war criminals."
So Brian Owensby said some really dumb things. Oh well, he's probably better suited for such intellectual pursuits as Semester at Sea cruises or whatever global studies thing he's doing. As for Tom Noble, one would have thought he wouldn't have acted in a way that kind of concealed the Vatican's involvement in helping Nazi war criminals escape before he went to Notre Dame. Then again I always had to listen to this Jesuit priest on the faculty at UVa, Gerald Fogarty, take extreme umbrage at people pointing out ties between the Vatican under Pius XII and the Nazis.
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