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.