Die Spinne

It is believed by some historians to be a different name for, or a branch of[2] ODESSA, an organisation established during the collapse of Nazi Germany, similar to Kameradenwerk and der Bruderschaft, and devoted to helping German war criminals flee Europe.

[4][5] Die Spinne helped as many as 600 former SS men escape from Germany to Francoist Spain, Juan Peron's Argentina, Paraguay, Chile, Bolivia, the Middle East and elsewhere.

[7][8][9] The idea for the Spinne network began in 1944 when Gehlen, then working as a senior Wehrmacht intelligence officer as the head of Foreign Armies East, foresaw a possible defeat of Nazi Germany[10] due to Axis military failures in the Soviet Union.

Tetens, an expert on German geopolitics and a member of the US War Crimes Commission in 1946–47, referred to a group overlapping with die Spinne as the Führungsring ("a kind of political Mafia, with headquarters in Madrid... serving various purposes.

[16] A coordinating office for international Die Spinne operations was established in Madrid by Skorzeny under the control of Francisco Franco,[17] whose victory in the Spanish Civil War had been aided by economic and military support from Hitler and Mussolini.

[22] War Crimes investigator Simon Wiesenthal claimed Joseph Mengele had stayed at the notorious Colonia Dignidad Nazi colony in Chile in 1979,[23] and ultimately found harbour in Paraguay until his death.

In Michael A. Kahn's legal mystery or thriller Bearing Witness an age discrimination case ultimately leads back to a decades-old post-war conspiracy involving American Nazis linked to Die Spinne.

Otto Skorzeny waiting in a cell as witness at the Nuremberg trials . On 27 July 1948 Skorzeny escaped with the help of former SS officers dressed in US Military Police uniforms. He later maintained that US authorities had aided his escape and had supplied the uniforms. [ 1 ]