The 1976 book, 'The Boys from Brazil' by Ira Levin told the story of fugitive Nazis unwilling to accept the defeat of Hitler's Germany in World War II escaped to South America determined to create a Fourth Reich by breeding a new generation of Adolf Hitler clones to advance the Aryan race. It was understood South American right-wing totalitarian regimes provided havens for the Nazis.
Operation Condor was an international assassination consortium of which Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, Brazil and Argentina were reportedly members as of 1979. In 'The Boys from Brazil', all 94 Adolf Hitler clones grew up in Europe (16 in Germany; 14 Sweden; 13 England; 10 Norway; 9 Austria; 8 Holland; 6 Denmark) and North America (12 in the U.S.; 6 Canada). However only one, Bobby, would go on to become leader of the Fourth Reich.
Ira Levin told John Barkham in 1976, "At first I thought of writing it as a play. I've had 8 plays produced and 7 of them reach Broadway. Though 5 vanished swiftly. But the more I thought about it, the more the idea of these surviving Nazis planning a mysterious conspiracy in Brazil seemed better fitted for a novel than for a play. Even as a novel I found the story difficult to write – so much so that at one point I thought of giving it up altogether. But that title - has a double meaning for the the reader to discover (also referring to the former Nazi S.S. officers) – was just too good to give up. Finally I worked it all out."
The book was made into a $12 million motion picture in 1978 directed by Franklin Schafiner and starring Gregory Peck as Dr. Josef Mengele, the Auschwitz "Angel of Death" and Sir Laurence Olivier as the Jewish investigator Ezra Lieberman (based on the real-life Simon Wiesenthal). 'The Boys from Brazil' was shot on location in London, Vienna, Salzburg, Pennsylvania (Lancaster County), the Austrian Alps and parts of Portugal.
The Associated Press reported that in terms of goods and services, movie makers had paid the Commerce Department over $5 million since 1976 for films made in Pennsylvania, the Keystone State. The film publicist made known 'The Boys from Brazil' was costing about $110,000 a day.
Michele Kuhar of the Office of Film Promotion, who previously worked for Ohio Film Bureau told the press, "The movie makers, they come, they spend their money, then they leave. They don’t pollute the air like new industry. They don’t require the state to build schools for their kids.
"Believe me a lot of money is left behind. About $10,000 a day when a feature film is being made. The movie people are interested in things the average tourist isn't. Things like ghettos, strip mines, steel mills. The key to this is to show the producers in Hollywood and New York that Pennsylvania can look like a lot of different places. There's nothing we can't offer them except the palm trees and deserts."
Of his role, Gregory Peck told the press, "Some of us remember when the Allies went into those concentration camps and uncovered such horrors. Nausea swept the world. I drew on those memories when preparing to play Mengele … People of my age (62 in 1978) already have a good deal of knowledge and experience of this horrendous event, the holocaust. I remember vividly in 1945 when the camps were opened up and we saw the ghastly sights … the sense of world guilt. In this role I tried to get inside Mengele's skin whilst hating the man and everything he stands for."
Ira Levin insisted, "I enjoyed writing this book although it took me a long time to start and to get it right. All I knew were the beginning and the end. What happened in between had to be worked out, and that gave me trouble. As it stands now (at the time of its release) I think it's about as satisfying a story as I've ever written, with better plotting than I've ever done before. Reality has become so overwhelming that I haven't yet figured out a way into what I want to do. But I’ll find it. I feel reality breathing down my neck. People nowadays are just too sophisticated."
Gregory Peck observed, "It's easier to be a bad guy because the script does so much for you, because it informs the audience and the other characters that when you come on you're going to do something intimidating, threatening, scary, terrorizing maybe. In those horrible concentration camps, Mengele performed operations without anesthetics and played Wagner to drown out the screams. There are a lot of compensations for getting older. Experience is something of value. You do find you can call on skills and take changes.
Schaffner came out to Universal while I was making 'MacArthur' and he asked to view the scenes in which I was harsh and domineering. Apparently he was satisfied, because I was hired."
The script originally called for Dr. Josef Mengele to have white hair, but Gregory Peck said the color "made me look like a television evangelist – dyed and absolutely phony." On the subject of human cloning, "It presents a myriad of social and philosophical problems and I am certainly not wise enough to solve them. But I am optimistic about man's future. I don't think we have any other possible course except to dream and fight for the brotherhood of man. I believe in the potential of the human race … that we are on the way to the stars."
In 1940, the German ambassador to Argentina, Baron Edmund von Thermann held a "board of strategy" meeting with his "inner circle" to lay the groundwork for the remapping of Central and South America. The Hitlerian's plan was to ensure the Nazi had total control of the supply of raw materials in Central and South America. Dr. Hermann Rauschning confirmed in 1941 underground information he received that such plan did exist.
It was reported Josef Mengele died in Brazil in 1985. Romeu Tuma who was head of the federal police in Sao Paulo, Brazil told the press, "I believe an Odessa-type organization exists for protecting escaped Nazis. Latin America was a good choice. It was far removed from the events of the war. Many foreigners already were living here. And there is a certain naivete among the people.”
Rabbi Henry Sobel of the Sao Paulo Jewish Congregation added, "Brazil is a big country (the world's 5th largest). It's easy to get lost here. There are lots of immigrants, and Nazis don’t stand out." Ronaldo Gomlevsky of the Rio de Janeiro Jewish Federation also told the press, "Another factor aiding Nazis in South America is that this region for a long time had authoritarian regimes, which tended to give cover to Nazi fugitives."
In 1972, 'Gannett News Service' published its special news report from London: "In early 1952, the Nazi underground in South America faced a major crisis, on the outcome of which depended its survival as a homogenous, gigantic cell of Nazis in the postwar world. The problem was manifold. For one thing there was dickering between different Nazi groups in different countries and fratricidal strife between individual survivors of the Third Reich in countries like Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Bolivia.
"At the root of the trouble was money. The bulk of the Nazi treasure which 'escaped' to South America was in the hands of a single potentate – Martin Bormann (known as Eliezer Goldstein, the name in his Vatican passport). Although certain of his colleagues – like Klaus Barbie in La Paz, Bolivia, and Frederick Shwen in Lima, Peru, have succeeded in striking it rich on their own, virtually all of the other fugitives were dependent upon Bormann's generosity, and he was a tight-fisted paymaster.
"By the autumn of 1952, all these strains surged to the surface and threatened the very existence of the Brown Mafia. An emergency convention of top Nazis in South America was summoned to Ascochinga in the Black Mountains of Serrana in northern Argentina. They came to a secluded estate owned by a former of U-235, one of the German submarines that had sneaked to the Mata Del Plata in 1944 and 1945, while the war was still raging, to unload the very treasure over which the controversy now raged.
"Conspicuous by his absence was Martin Bormann, called by his followers, 'Fuhrer of the South America.' The bone of contention was an organization the refugee Nazis called Dir Spinne, referred to as 'La Arana'. Founded in 1948 in an Allied detention camp at Glasenbach in Germany by a few fanatical S.S. prisoners, it soon spread its web all over Germany and then the world. That October meeting, however, sounded the death knell of La Arana as an affluent escape organization in South America capable of financing and sustaining the indigent fugitives.
"The conference failed to resolve any of the problems mainly because the key man, Bormann, preferred to remain aloof. He decided, as far as his own domain was concerned, to transform it into the base of which a financial empire could be built. It gradually lost its ideological and charitable background, and became instead, a hard-headed business organization controled by Bormann with an iron hand through various fronts and blinds, among them reputable businessmen who were not necessarily aware of the identity of their silent partner.
"The evolution was slow to begin, but gained impetus when President Peron fell from power, and the Nazis had to rearrange their system of protection and sources of livelihood. In the wake of Peron’s flight in 1955, Bormann, too, was forced to leave Argentina and moved to Brazil then to Santa Cruz, in Bolivia, living in the home of Jewish businessman, Hans Strauss, until he was asked to leave.
"He then became Augustin Von Der Lange Lerrbach, a lay member of the Redemptionist Order, taking up residence in one of the Order’s homes for transient priests in a town called Rurrenabaque, Bolivia. He was cut off from his huge funds. He compensated for his loss of the high life by functioning as a Catholic priest. He participated, during his stay in Bolivia in 1958 and 1959, in several Catholic services such as baptisms, weddings, and funerals. In 1960, he left Bolivia for Valdivia, Chile, probably the most Nazi-minded community in South America if not the world. It was from this stronghold, when reassured that he had escaped Adolph Otto Eichmann’s fate, that he regained control over his funds in Argentina and began to build a new empire."
Rabbi Henry Sobel of the Sao Paulo Jewish Congregation added, "Brazil is a big country (the world's 5th largest). It's easy to get lost here. There are lots of immigrants, and Nazis don’t stand out." Ronaldo Gomlevsky of the Rio de Janeiro Jewish Federation also told the press, "Another factor aiding Nazis in South America is that this region for a long time had authoritarian regimes, which tended to give cover to Nazi fugitives."
In 1972, 'Gannett News Service' published its special news report from London: "In early 1952, the Nazi underground in South America faced a major crisis, on the outcome of which depended its survival as a homogenous, gigantic cell of Nazis in the postwar world. The problem was manifold. For one thing there was dickering between different Nazi groups in different countries and fratricidal strife between individual survivors of the Third Reich in countries like Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Bolivia.
"At the root of the trouble was money. The bulk of the Nazi treasure which 'escaped' to South America was in the hands of a single potentate – Martin Bormann (known as Eliezer Goldstein, the name in his Vatican passport). Although certain of his colleagues – like Klaus Barbie in La Paz, Bolivia, and Frederick Shwen in Lima, Peru, have succeeded in striking it rich on their own, virtually all of the other fugitives were dependent upon Bormann's generosity, and he was a tight-fisted paymaster.
"By the autumn of 1952, all these strains surged to the surface and threatened the very existence of the Brown Mafia. An emergency convention of top Nazis in South America was summoned to Ascochinga in the Black Mountains of Serrana in northern Argentina. They came to a secluded estate owned by a former of U-235, one of the German submarines that had sneaked to the Mata Del Plata in 1944 and 1945, while the war was still raging, to unload the very treasure over which the controversy now raged.
"Conspicuous by his absence was Martin Bormann, called by his followers, 'Fuhrer of the South America.' The bone of contention was an organization the refugee Nazis called Dir Spinne, referred to as 'La Arana'. Founded in 1948 in an Allied detention camp at Glasenbach in Germany by a few fanatical S.S. prisoners, it soon spread its web all over Germany and then the world. That October meeting, however, sounded the death knell of La Arana as an affluent escape organization in South America capable of financing and sustaining the indigent fugitives.
"The conference failed to resolve any of the problems mainly because the key man, Bormann, preferred to remain aloof. He decided, as far as his own domain was concerned, to transform it into the base of which a financial empire could be built. It gradually lost its ideological and charitable background, and became instead, a hard-headed business organization controled by Bormann with an iron hand through various fronts and blinds, among them reputable businessmen who were not necessarily aware of the identity of their silent partner.
"The evolution was slow to begin, but gained impetus when President Peron fell from power, and the Nazis had to rearrange their system of protection and sources of livelihood. In the wake of Peron’s flight in 1955, Bormann, too, was forced to leave Argentina and moved to Brazil then to Santa Cruz, in Bolivia, living in the home of Jewish businessman, Hans Strauss, until he was asked to leave.
"He then became Augustin Von Der Lange Lerrbach, a lay member of the Redemptionist Order, taking up residence in one of the Order’s homes for transient priests in a town called Rurrenabaque, Bolivia. He was cut off from his huge funds. He compensated for his loss of the high life by functioning as a Catholic priest. He participated, during his stay in Bolivia in 1958 and 1959, in several Catholic services such as baptisms, weddings, and funerals. In 1960, he left Bolivia for Valdivia, Chile, probably the most Nazi-minded community in South America if not the world. It was from this stronghold, when reassured that he had escaped Adolph Otto Eichmann’s fate, that he regained control over his funds in Argentina and began to build a new empire."
