The government of Argentine President Javier Milei announced Monday that, based upon the request of a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, it intends to declassify and release all files related to former Nazis who found refuge in the South American country after the Second War War.

Guillermo Francos, the president’s chief of staff, said in an interview with DNews that the release would satisfy American curiosity and concern for transparency regarding the issue.

Milei spoke on February 22 at the Conservative Political Action Conference, the same day that President Donald J. Trump made his address. The two men met backstage, and Trump invited him to the White House then and there.

The day before Milei -- who holds postgraduate degrees in economic theory from the Institute of Economic and Social Development and in economics from the Torcuato Di Tella University -- spoke, he came onstage for Elon Musk’s CPAC address, where he presented the billionaire and DOGE hierarch with a commemorative chainsaw—the symbol of the president’s attack upon Argentina’s bureaucracy.

Francos said the order to release the files came directly from the president, and it would be part of a larger Milei project to declassify and release information about the 1970s military crackdown on government opponents, many of whom disappeared.

The government announcement came on March 24, which in Argentina is a public holiday to commemorate the victims of the political strife during the so-called Dirty War. The Dirty War ran roughly between the 1974 death of President Juan Peron and the subsequent 1976 military coup, through to the junta’s fall in 1983.

Peron, who was sent on a 1939 mission to learn about Italian fascism, is an essential figure in the Nazi migration to Argentina. He was a senior member of the fascist government coup that took over the country in 1943. That government declared war on Germany in February 1945, which could be seen as a fig leaf for its true leanings.

In a 1969 interview with historian Felix Luna, quoted by Tomas Eloy Martinez in his Wilson Center paper, “Peron and the Nazi War Criminals,” Peron said he reached out to influential members of the German community to explain that the war was over and Argentina needed to act. “Please understand, we have no choice but to go to war, for if we do not, we will go to Nuremberg.”

Eloy Martinez said Peron told him in 1970 that he orchestrated the effort to collect as many worthy Germans as possible—just as the United States, Russia, England, and France were doing—and because they were technically on the winning side, they would have a free hand. 

Peron, who began his first of three presidential terms in 1946, also said he coordinated with Spain’s Generalissimo Francisco Franco, who had remained formally neutral throughout the war.

"It was impossible to obtain their hardware; it had been destroyed. What remained were the men. We were also interested in this. We let the Germans know that we were going to declare war on them to save thousands of lives. We exchanged messages with them through Switzerland and Spain. Franco quickly understood our intentions and helped us. The Germans were in accordance. When the war ended, those useful Germans helped us build new factories and improve the old. In the process, they helped themselves."

The U.S. State Department, in its “Justice for Uncompensated Survivors Today Act Report” for Argentina, produced by its Office of Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues, estimated that there were 900 Argentine citizens who survived the Nazi-led Shoah.

The report also said: “Many Nazi war criminals and sympathizers also emigrated to Argentina after WWII to escape prosecution, including Josef Mengele, the SS doctor who performed experiments on prisoners at Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Adolf Eichmann, one of the organizing minds behind the Holocaust.”

Other Nazis said to have reached refuge in Argentina were: Erich Priebke, an SS officer connected to the Ardeatine massacre in Italy; Eduard Rochmann, the “Butcher of Riga;” Walter Kutshmann, a Gestapo officer connected with the extermination of members of the Polish intelligentsia; Franz Stranl, the commandant of the Sobibor and Treblinka death camps and Klaus Barbie,  who was the top Gestapo officer in France and known as the “Butcher of Lyon.”

In his book, "Argentina's Disappearing Odessa Files," Uki Goni quotes Priebke reminiscing about Argentina under Peron: "In those days Argentina was a kind of paradise to us." 

Odessa was the Nazi shorthand for a post-WWII Nazi homeland or continued operation.

The Nazis escaping to Argentina used routes, known as ratlines, some passing through Spain, others through Italy, both from Rome and Genoa. Many used forged travel credentials or legitimate credentials provided by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

In addition to planes and boats, at least two German submarines arrived in Mar del Plata after their government’s May 8, 1945, surrender, U-530 in July 1945 and U-977 in August 1945—but neither one docked with passengers, just crewmembers.

Francos said in the DNews interview that Milei ordered the release of all information in any state agency, most of which are held in the Defense Ministry, led by Luis Petri.

The chief of staff also said because there was no reason to withhold the information, and the government would also release any financial documentation related to the Nazis who escaped to Argentina. 

It is important to know the whole story, he said.

"There was a decree ordering the release of all these archives, but it was never done,” he said. “The president argues that these archives are part of Argentine history and must be made public.” 

The degree was issued in 2010.

Now, 80 years after the guns went silent, many Argentines embrace their Nazi connections, and tourists can hire a guide for the "German Footprint & Nazi Presence - Walking Tour in Bariloche," in the Alpine-like town that became the home away from home for Nazis on the run.