Justice doesn’t exist
About 30 million innocent civilians died during the Second World War. Whether it was by persecution or by a military attack, their deaths were the consequence of a war they weren’t fighting. They weren’t guilty of anything.
It’s fair to ask, how many nazis survived? How many savage torturers survived after ruining the lives of around 6 million innocents? After the defeat of fascism, the high officials of the Third Reich fled to Latin America and South Africa to avoid being judged for their crimes against humanity. Many of them lived peacefully until their deaths, but others weren’t content with leading a crime-free life. Here is an example of a man whose supremacist ideology pushed him to start a new life following his precepts. He passed from being one of Hitler’s devoted soldiers to being an ally of Pablo Escobar. His name? Klaus Barbie.
The Butcher
Biographer and journalist Peter McFarren used the term “devil’s agent” to refer to this man’s life history, from his time as a Nazi general to his links with the most important drug dealer in history.
Barbie was born in October, 1913. When he was 22 years old, he joined the SS and started working as a spy for the National Socialist Party. Soon he was sent to Amsterdam and France, where he was promoted to leader of the Gestapo. His means of obtaining information were as efficient as they were cruel, for they involved physical, sexual, and psychological torture.
He abused prisoners with animals, would frequently use electroshocks, and broke the limbs of those he wanted information from. Due to his brutality, he earned the name of “the Butcher of Lyon”, a city under his control. There are multiple retellings of how he skinned people and other cruel torture methods that not even his soldiers were able to stomach. Besides that, he would gather and send Jewish children directly to Auschwitz, where they would be murdered. It’s said that he killed with his bare hands about 14 thousand people during the war. But this was just the beginning of a merciless life.
The American “hero”
His days of fun didn’t last long. When the war was over, his Nazi supremacist dreams vanished and Barbie was arrested. However, due to his ability and experience as an intelligence spy, he was seen as a valuable contact for the American government. Thus, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) decided to enroll him as a spy. His murders, tortures, and infanticides were forgotten by this organization that turned him into a key element in acquiring and revealing the plans of other countries linked to communism. Once he fulfilled his job, he moved to Bolivia to start, once again, a new life, now as an American serviceman.
Once he was settled in South America, he got involved in the political spheres, becoming friends with dictators like Hugo Banzer and Luis García Meza Tejada. Although there is no evidence, he bragged for a long time about his role in the “hunting” of Ernesto “Che” Guevara by giving first-hand information to his former employer, the CIA. Even though there is no sustainable evidence, it’s suspected that he, indeed, was partly responsible for finishing with Che’s dream for freedom. Once the libertarian was executed, Barbie became a hero for the American agency.
From a Nazi general to partner of Pablo Escobar
Anticommunist fears motivated him to make an alliance with Roberto Suárez Gómez, one of the most important drug lords of the eighties, who had strong bonds with Pablo Escobar. The three of them were interested in impulsing a coup against the State that would put García Meza Tejada as the leader of the army. This attempt would secure both Escobar’s drug empire and Barbie’s wellbeing.
Finally, on June 17, 1980, the coup against interim president Lidia Guelier Tejada began. With it, Barbie and Escobar managed to increase the power of the latter’s drug empire. The former Nazi earned ridiculous sums of money while the drug lord was still protected and free to do his business. The power of drugs defined the government under the schemes of this pair.
In Klaus’ biography there is a detailed description of how their alliance caused the first revolution financed with drug money, resulting in one of the most profitable businesses in history. Pablo Escobar controlled many officials in Colombia and Peru, so trafficking in Bolivia was never a real problem. Moreover, Klaus was happy to avoid being charged for his war crimes and his recent connections with the drug dealer.
Barbie’s connection with Escobar wasn’t a friendship but an arrangement that both took advantage of. However, this alliance wasn’t going to last forever.
The government of the Bolivian dictator didn’t last long, and soon Escobar was arrested. Barbie didn’t get his way either and was extradited to France, where he was sentenced to life in prison. The man was already 70 years old and died four years later of leukemia. His punishment, of course, wasn’t fair in proportion to the crimes he committed. This man was responsible for the deaths of thousands of people in two continents and died of natural causes while his victims perished in pain and despair.
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According to the Sunday Mirror, Escobar’s personal killer murdered about 300 hundred people. In the same way, he ordered the attack on more than 3 thousand people involved with the war. Klaus himself murdered 14 thousand. The wars they were involved in ended with the lives of about the third percent of the planet’s population, and their punishments were minimal compared with what they deserved.
So it’s true; justice doesn’t exist.
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Sources:
DailyMail
NUSO
Debate
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Translated by María Isabel Carrasco Cara Chards
