Nazi Scholars on the Run: Oswald Menghin and Armin Dadieu Fleeing to Argentina After 1945

Abstract

Oswald Menghin and Armin Dadieu had two things in common: both were academics and Austrian National Socialists who served as political functionaries after the Anschluss in 1938. At the end of the Second World War, they fled Allied justice and thus became ‘Nazis on the run’. This article argues that from this point onwards, we must understand Dadieu and Menghin as agents in the history of flight. We must regard their illegal escapes via Italy and their new beginnings in Argentina in 1948 as part of the great (forced) migration movement and thus as part of research on the history of postwar displacement. Even after their transformation from functionaries to fugitives, both remained part of the (former) Nazi elite. Their postwar biographies lie at the intersection of research on the perpetrators of the Holocaust and scientific migration, and they established loyal, multilayered support networks. After the unconditional surrender of the German Wehrmacht, their wives and lovers, friends and former political associates helped them to reestablish their social lives on the run; the Catholic Church enabled their migration; and Juan Perón's modernization project in Argentina helped them to establish their careers. The local and global assistance that they received from these networks ultimately made both Nazi scholars privileged migrants.