Thread by @rinalu_

The Vatican and the Nazi Escape Networks: The Ratlines

🧵👇

The Vatican was the single most significant institution involved in the postwar smuggling of Nazi war criminals.

According to declassified U.S. intelligence files and investigative research, between 30,000 and 40,000 Nazi and fascist collaborators were assisted in escaping Europe through Vatican-supported ratlines.

This is clearly stated in a 1947 report by Vincent La Vista, officer of the U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC), who investigated Vatican ties to Axis networks:

“The Vatican has been directly involved in the illegal evacuation of German and Croatian war criminals… operating through religious institutions, it has become a central hub of what can only be described as a ratline.”

(National Archives, La Vista Report, 1947)

Operation “Vatican Corridor” (or “Monastery”)

This covert smuggling operation involved Cardinal Giovanni Battista Montini, then Vatican Undersecretary of State and later Pope Paul VI. He oversaw the use of Catholic infrastructure: monasteries, seminaries, and dioceses - to shelter and move war criminals south toward Genoa, where they were shipped to Latin America under false identities.

Montini personally communicated with U.S. officials and coordinated logistics via trusted Church agents. According to declassified OSS and CIC documents, his office functioned as an “unofficial channel for protected transit” not only for Germans and Italians, but especially for Croatian Ustaša officials, whose Catholic affiliation and ideological alignment with the Church made them a priority for Vatican-sponsored escape routes.

The broader network of ratlines also facilitated the evacuation of Axis collaborators from Austria, Hungary, Romania, France, and even Francoist Spain all under the larger umbrella of anti-communist realignment. The Vatican’s goal was to preserve a transnational conservative Catholic elite that could oppose Soviet influence worldwide.

Main Destinations of Nazi Fugitives via Vatican Ratlines

🔸 Argentina
(the main destination thousands of Nazis and Ustaše officials resettled here)
🔸 Brazil
🔸 Paraguay
🔸 Chile
🔸 Bolivia
🔸 Uruguay
🔸 Venezuela
🔸 Spain
(under Franco both a destination and a key transit hub)
🔸 Portugal
(a neutral country, often used as a temporary safe haven)
🔸 Syria
(sheltered some individuals via French Mandate connections)
🔸 Canada
🔸 United States
(mainly through Operation Paperclip or the Displaced Persons Act, used to import “anti-communist specialists”)

The Order of Malta: Deep Vatican

The smuggling operation relied not only on rogue priests but on The Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM) - a Catholic lay religious order with international diplomatic status, wealth, and influence.

🔸The Knights of Malta had access to passports, safe-conducts, and bank networks, and provided cover identities for SS officers and fascist collaborators.
🔸The Order’s sovereign status gave it diplomatic immunity and control over communications, which it used to shield fugitives.

U.S. historian John Loftus, former DOJ investigator, writes:

“The Vatican ratlines were supervised by members of the Knights of Malta… with full knowledge and cooperation of senior church officials and Western intelligence.”

The SMOM thus acted as a “deep Vatican,” operating beyond ecclesiastical oversight, linked to banks, intelligence services (CIA, MI6), and postwar military-industrial elites.

Vatican - U.S. Intelligence Partnership

While Pope Pius XII publicly declared neutrality, the Holy See cooperated with both Nazi and Allied forces. After the war, the Vatican increasingly aligned itself with U.S. interests, especially in the fight against communism.

During this time, Myron Taylor, chairman of United States Steel and a Knight of Malta, served as Roosevelt’s personal envoy to the Pope, creating financial and intelligence backchannels.

Financial Alliance with the U.S.

By the early 1940s, the U.S. had become the Vatican’s main financial patron:

🔸In 1940, the Vatican transferred its gold reserves from London to Fort Knox, entrusting them to the U.S. Treasury - a symbolic and practical act of reliance.

🔸The Federal Reserve functioned as the Vatican’s de facto central bank throughout the war.

ncronline.org/news/vatican/v…

Intelligence Exchange: The Global Catholic Spy Web

In return, Washington gained access to the Vatican’s vast and decentralized global network, which often reached regions beyond the scope of conventional espionage:

🔸 Parish systems across Europe, Latin America, and Africa
🔸 Catholic missions in remote or unstable areas
🔸 Monasteries and religious orders acting as informal reporting nodes
🔸 Apostolic nunciatures with full diplomatic immunity

According to historians and former insiders, this informal network provided not only local intelligence, but moral cover and soft power for Western interests during the Cold War.

Some Vatican watchers, including former Jesuit Malachi Martin, describe the Church as operating an internal intelligence service:

“The Church has its own intelligence capability, as real as the CIA’s, and often more efficient.”
(Martin, The Jesuits, 1987)

Insider accounts refer to legacy systems dating back to the Counter-Reformation, sometimes called the “Sacred Alliance”- a term used to describe the Vatican’s unofficial global intelligence apparatus.
Additionally, a rumored “Pian Action” under Pope Pius X in the early 1900s allegedly functioned as a papal counter-espionage initiative, although the Vatican has never officially confirmed such a structure.

Vatican Cover-Up: Croatia and the Ustaše

When Montini became pope in 1963, he ordered the sealing of Vatican archives related to the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) and the Ustaše, a fascist regime responsible for the genocide of Orthodox Serbs, Jews, and and Eastern Orthodox Slav, particularly Rusyns and Russian settlers in Slavonia and Bosnia - often with the support of the Catholic clergy.

“The destruction of Orthodox Christianity in the Balkans was presented as a holy war by Catholic bishops. Entire dioceses were turned into extermination zones.”
(Avro Manhattan, “The Vatican’s Holocaust”, 1986)

Documents implicating high-ranking Croatian clergy (e.g., Archbishop Stepinac) and their collaboration with Ante Pavelić’s regime were hidden from public access, preserving the image of Vatican innocence.

Cold War: Vatican as Anti-Communist Operator

By 1945, the Vatican was a full-blown ideological partner of the United States in shaping postwar Europe:

🔸It promoted right-wing regimes, legitimized former Nazis, and opposed socialist and communist movements.
🔸The ratlines, with the help of U.S. and British intelligence, evacuated thousands of Axis fugitives
🔸Many later assisted in forming pro-Western intelligence and paramilitary units.

The Vatican’s massive presence through dioceses, missions, and schools gave it global soft power, which U.S. planners recognized and utilized.

Political Manipulation and Infiltration

The Vatican strongly promoted Catholic political parties such as the Christian Democrats across postwar Europe as a bulwark against secular ideologies.

In 1949, Pope Pius XII approved an official decree forbidding Catholics from joining communist or atheistic movements, declaring such affiliation incompatible with the faith and subject to excommunication.

Many evacuated fascists were quietly integrated into these new institutions, especially in Italy and Latin America, where they supported pro-American regimes under Catholic moral legitimacy.

The American Exception

Unlike in Italy and Latin America where many former fascists were absorbed into public political and ideological life, the United States integrated Nazi and fascist fugitives more discreetly.

Operation Paperclip

Beginning in 1945, Operation Paperclip brought over 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and medical researchers to the U.S., many of whom had ties to the Nazi regime and the SS. These individuals were recruited to work in weapons development, rocketry, and aerospace, including for NASA and the Department of Defense.
- Wernher von Braun, a former SS officer and architect of the V-2 rocket program, became a leading figure at NASA.
- Hubertus Strughold, who participated in unethical human experiments during the war, became known as the “father of space medicine.”

“We didn’t recruit Nazis, we recruited anti-communists. It just so happened many of them were Nazis.”

CIA officer, quoted in Christopher Simpson’s Blowback (1988)

Displaced Persons Act (1948)

Under the guise of humanitarian aid and Cold War necessity, the Displaced Persons Act allowed more than 400,000 people from Eastern Europe to enter the U.S.
Among them were members of Waffen-SS units, including the Ukrainian Division “Galicia”, Baltic Legionnaires, Croatian Ustaše, and Romanian Iron Guard members, many of whom slipped through background checks due to their anti-Soviet stance.

“In the fight against communism, war crimes became negotiable.”
John Loftus, former U.S. Nazi hunter, in Unholy Trinity (1992)

Dozens of former Nazis and fascist collaborators were recruited into the CIA, U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corps (CIC), and Radio Free Europe. They played a role in:

🔸anti-Soviet propaganda,
🔸psychological warfare campaigns,
🔸covert operations in Eastern Europe.

This secretive integration turned Nazi expertise into Cold War assets. But unlike Argentina or Italy, the U.S. never offered open political refuge to former fascists.

Their presence was concealed, sanitized, or classified.

Now it should make perfect sense:

https://twitter.com/pontifex/status/1938939307026264505