The genocide of World War II directed at Jews, Serbs, Roma, Soviets, and others by the Nazis and their allies generated vast amounts of loot and plunder including gold coins, wedding rings, and dental gold from concentration camps.
These genocide-tainted treasures were re-smelted at the Reichsbank and other central collection points and laundered through the Swiss banks, Bank for International Settlements and the Vatican Banks during and after WWII.
According to the chief expert witness retained for these lawsuits, John Loftus much of the postwar Ustashe and Vatican activity was cloaked in the guise of anti-Communist activities and was encouraged or actively sponsored initially by British Intelligence and later the CIA and in particular Alan Dulles and James Jesus Angleton.
Most remarkable among the Nazis postwar were the Croatian Ustashe. Unlike the Germans whose major criminals faced a war crimes tribunal at Nuremburg, virtually the entire Ustashe hierarchy including their leader or Poglavnik, Ante Pavelic, escaped justice.
And even more surprisingly they took with them into exile the monetary proceeds of the extermination of 750,000 Serbs, Jews, and Roma. Pavelic, known as the “butcher of the Balkans”, was an honored guest at the Vatican between 1945 and 1947 while other war criminals swing from a noose.
Artukovic, the Himmler of Croatia, the man responsible for death camps where hundreds of thousands of Serbs were shot, burned alive, or bludgeoned to death with special hammers, lived openly in Southern California for over thirty years, while private Congressional bills assured his safety from deportation.
Other Ustashe, such as the sadist Luburic, purchased villas in Spain or started new lives as businessman in Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela.
But, unlike other ex-Nazis, the Ustashe did not lose their fascist ideology, instead they openly reestablished their Nazi party in Buenos Aires and by 1956 were beginning a new campaign of terror which ultimately reached the United States in the 1970’s and 1980’s resulting in hijackings, bombings, and murders.
The Ustashe even in their pre-WWII days, had been one of the best organized terrorist organizations in Europe, successfully assassinating King Alexander II of Yugoslavia and the French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou in Marseilles in 1934.
Pavelic and other Nazis were housed and protected in Vatican castles and monasteries, often taking the guise of priests.
Key to these confusing happenings was the disposition of the mass murderer Pavelic and the Ustashe treasury in Rome and their assets in Switzerland.
Pavelic and part of his treasure were captured in Austria by the British, a deal was struck, Pavelic and his high command proceeded to the Vatican with British aid and the gold was soon to follow from Austria and Switzerland.
The Ustasha loot was used to set up the Ustashe as an anticommunist freedom fighter. So-called Ustashe Krizari (Crusaders) fought a rearguard action against Tito, who was in a standoff against the Americans at Trieste.
In 1943, the Croatians sensed the changing tides of war from the East, the loyalist of Nazi allies, the Croatian Legion had fought at Stalingrad and been destroyed there.
As insurance against an eventual Allied victory, Pavelic sent Draganovic to Rome as chief of intelligence, where postwar he was to become the chief facilitator of Ustashe plans.
Curiously, Draganavic also functioned as an American and British agent and may have later worked for the Tito government. As to where Draganovic’s ultimate loyalties lay is a mystery.
Draganovic ran the so called Vatican ratline procuring for Croatians but also other Nazi war criminals, like Adolf Eichmen, false papers and passage to new lives in South America and elsewhere.
By 1946, Draganavic was an American intelligence asset and soon the CIA was using the Vatican ratline and, according to some, funding it well into the 1950’s as a method of sending anti-communist ex-Nazis to Latin America.
Following the defeat of the Krizari in Yugoslavia, Pavelic’s presence in Rome was becoming a liability for the Vatican.
American special agents not compromised by Dulles had located Pavelic and were preparing to capture him when the order was countermanded.
Pavelic escaped via the ratline to Argentina, where he became a political advisor to Juan Peron. Other Ustashe were welcomed in fascist Spain.
Fifty years have passed since the events described herein transpired, the Independent State of Croatia has been reestablished with ensuing bloodshed and turmoil in Yugoslavia.
Yet the Vatican and CIA continue to suppress information about past operations, information that, if widely known, might have helped provide another perspective on the unfortunate fate of modern Yugoslavia.
Church and State Organization UK / ABC Flash Point News 2019.
Guided by the Jesuits?