[1] Although an unknown number of wanted Nazis and war criminals escaped Germany and often Europe, most experts deny that an organisation called ODESSA ever existed.
The term itself is only recorded certainly as an American construction, coined to cover a range of planning, arrangements, including those enacted and those simply envisaged, and both known and hypothesised groups.
"[3] Guy Walters, in his 2009 book Hunting Evil, stated he was unable to find any evidence of the existence of the ODESSA network as such, although numerous other organisations such as Konsul, Scharnhorst, Sechsgestirn, Leibwache, and Lustige Brüder have been named,[1] including Die Spinne ("The Spider") run in part by Hitler's commando-chief Otto Skorzeny.
[7][need quotation to verify] The codeword Odessa—as used by the Allies—appeared for the first time in a memo dated 3 July 1946, by the United States Army Counterintelligence Corps (CIC) whose principal role was to screen displaced persons for possible suspects.
[9] Similarly, historian Gitta Sereny wrote in her book Into That Darkness (1974), based on interviews with the former commandant of the Treblinka extermination camp, Franz Stangl, that an organisation called ODESSA had never existed although there were Nazi aid organisations: The prosecutors at the Ludwigsburg Central Authority for the Investigation into Nazi Crimes, who know precisely how the postwar lives of certain individuals now living in South America have been financed, have searched all their thousands of documents from beginning to end, but say they are totally unable to authenticate (the) 'Odessa.'
For Walters, the reports received by the allied intelligence services during the mid-1940s suggest that the appellation ODESSA was "little more than a catch-all term used by former Nazis who wished to continue the fight.
The couriers had applied for their jobs under false names, and the Americans in Munich had failed to check them carefully... (the) ODESSA was organized as a thorough, efficient network... Anlaufstellen (ports of call) were set up along the entire Austro-German border...
Recent biographies of Adolf Eichmann, who also escaped to South America, and Heinrich Himmler, the alleged founder of the ODESSA, made no reference to such an organisation.
[15] Sereny attributed the escape of SS members to postwar chaos and the inability of the Catholic Church, the Red Cross and the United States Armed Forces to verify the claims of people who came to them for help, rather than to the activities of an underground Nazi organisation.
She identified a Vatican official, Bishop Aloïs Hudal, not former SS men, as the principal agent in helping Nazis leave Italy for South America, mainly Brazil.
[17] German historian Heinz Schneppen [de] has examined an idea of ODESSA as a myth, or inflation of real circumstances (which remained largely unknown for a long time), suggesting reasons why such a phenomenon may become popular.
According to a young man and spy on his trail, Mengele is activating the Kameradenwerk for a strange assignment: he is sending out six Nazis (former SS officers) to kill 94 men, who share a few common traits.
[21] The BBC TV Serial Kessler is a fictional account of the uncovering by investigative journalists and western intelligence agencies of the ODESSA-like Kameradenwerk organisation responsible for the escape and support of Nazis after the war.