This was the ‘Ratlines’: the transoceanic escape routes along which thousands of Nazis fled after the Second World War

‘Ratlines’ or also known in Spanish as the rat routes. And yes, sometimes life can be very ironic and you could say fair too. Although a priori it might seem that the nickname given to the clandestine routes that the Nazis used to escape after the fall of the Third Reich had to do with a line of rodents, the truth is that their name has to do with the ships. However, whether you like it or not, the name doesn’t even fit.

Within nautical jargon, the word ‘ratlines’ refers to the ropes placed like ladders on the mast. The reason for this name is because technically these were used as a last resort in the event that the ship sank, in the same way that these routes were used after the fall of Adolf Hitler’s regime.

Three routes and a common destination

Although it may seem that these routes were improvised and desperate escapes, the truth is that they were journeys planned to the millimeter even before the defeat. Before the liberation of the concentration camps and the fall of the Third Reich, senior officials already imagined what was soon going to happen, so with the help of other countries sympathetic to the regime they created the ‘ratlines’.

These consisted of crossing different European countries with the sole purpose of reaching a port and being able to escape the continent by boat. Two of the best-known ‘ratlines’ were the so-called ‘Nordic route’, which passed through Denmark to Sweden, and the ‘Iberian route’, which is said to have used the ports of Galicia with Franco’s approval.

Although there is little research on the matter, the Holy See played a fundamental role in what is known as the ‘Vatican Route‘. The ‘modus operandi’ was as follows: once they managed to cross the Alps, they received asylum in the monasteries of northern Italy, where after a considered time they traveled to Rome where the Vatican provided them with a series of false documents. After that, the last stop was Genoa bound for Latin America, mainly to Argentina.

This was the case of Franz Stangl, the former Hauptsturmführer of the SS, who after two years in the Austrian prison of Linz managed to flee to Brazil and that of more than 90% of the senior officials of the Hitler regime to avoid being prosecuted in the Nuremberg trials.

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