Hans-Ulrich Rudel

It also helped to have friends, and Mengele soon hooked up with other fugitive Nazis.

One was Luftwaffe fighter ace Hans Rudel.

Rudel had been the Red Baron of World War II.

A high-ranking Nazi hero, he would also end up in South America, where he's thought to have become a key player in the Nazis' old boys' network.

I think we got into some of that when we were talking about the post-war diaspora of national socialists in exile.

We were talking about how Der Weg, which Johann von Leers, as well as Otto Rehmer and Hans Rudel, was a major contributor to, both in terms of his work product and capital investment.

And when Argentina was no longer a friendly environment for that sort of partisan activity, going to Peron being forced out of office, Von Leers made his way to the court of Nasser, and Egypt and Syria in particular, were very much the loci of that kind of partisan activity.

And that's significant because that plays into not just the military culture of the region on the Arab side, many of whom were trained by former national socialists, and Wehrmacht veterans, but also it impacted the culture of resistance in profound ways.

But this is the general time as to what's happening around the time Yawkey is writing here.

Um, another thing that Yaki was writing to is there is at this point, there is still a very large portion, at least compared to later times of people who have the third Reich, like right in their memory, you know, Otto Reamer, uh, Hans Ulrich Rudel, uh, Other figures like that of the post-war, right? Juan Perón is still in power in Argentina.

Gatulio Vargas is, I think, still in charge in Brazil.

So basically, you still have this remnants of this mid-century sort of reactionary world order that a lot of these exiled Third Reich individuals are trying to put little footholds in.