Klaus Barbie

Klaus Barbie
Barbie during the war years.
Born	Nikolaus Barbie (1913-10-25)25 October 1913 Godesberg, Prussia, German Empire
Died	25 September 1991(1991-09-25) (aged 77) Lyon, France (incarcerated)
Nationality	German
Other names	Butcher of Lyon
Occupation	Hauptsturmführer
Known for	Working as a Nazi leader in France, torturing resistance members, and for being a drug lord and arms dealer in Bolivia
Political party	National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP)

Nikolaus 'Klaus' Barbie (25 October 1913 – 25 September 1991) was an SS-Hauptsturmführer (rank approximately equivalent to army captain), Gestapo member and war criminal. He was known as the Butcher of Lyon.

Early life and education

Klaus Barbie was born in Godesberg, later renamed Bad Godesberg, which is today part of Bonn. The Barbie family came from Merzig, in the Saar near the French border. His patrilineal ancestors were likely a French Catholic family named Barbier who had left France at the time of the French Revolution.^{[citation needed]}

In 1914, his father Nickolaus Barbie was drafted to fight in World War I. He returned an angry, bitter man. Wounded in the neck at Verdun and captured by the French, whom he hated, he never recovered his health. He became an alcoholic and abused his children. He was later diagnosed with cancer of blood, spine and prostate.

Until 1923 when he was 10, Barbie, a shy and quiet youth, went to the local school where his father taught. Afterward, he attended a boarding school in Trier and was relieved to be away from his abusive father. In 1925, the entire Barbie family moved to Trier.

In June 1933, Barbie's younger brother Kurt died at the age of eighteen of chronic illness. Later that year, their father died. The death of his father derailed plans for the 20-year-old Barbie to study theology or otherwise become an academic, as his peers had expected. He was passably intelligent without being brilliant, and reasonably popular without being considered a leader. While unemployed, Barbie was drafted into the Nazi labour service, the Reichsarbeitsdienst.^{[citation needed]}

On 26 September 1935 at the age of 22, Barbie joined the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the special security branch service of the SS {Nr. 272 284}, which acted as the intelligence-gathering arm of the Nazi Party. On 1 May 1937 he joined the Nazi Party {Nr. 4 583 085}. In April 1939, Barbie became engaged to Regina Margaretta Willms, a 23-year-old daughter of a postal clerk.

World War II

After the Nazi conquest and occupation of the Netherlands, Barbie was assigned to Amsterdam. In 1942, after the fall of France, he was sent to Dijon in the Occupied Zone. In November of the same year, he was assigned to Lyon as the head of the local Gestapo. He was 29 years old.

Historians estimate that Barbie was directly responsible for the deaths of up to 14,000 people. He arrested Jean Moulin, one of the highest-ranking members of the French Resistance and his most prominent enemy figure.

In April 1944, Barbie ordered the deportation to Auschwitz of a group of 44 Jewish children from an orphanage at Izieu. After his operations in Lyon, he rejoined the SIPO-SD of Lyon in Bruyeres-in-Vosges, where he led an anti-partisan attack in Rehaupal in September 1944.

US intelligence and Bolivia

After the war had ended, he was recruited by the Western Allies and worked for the British until 1947. After that, in 1947, Barbie was recruited as an agent for the 66th Detachment of the U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC). In 1951, he fled to Juan Peron's Argentina with the help of a ratline organized by U.S. intelligence services and the Croatian Ustashi Roman Catholic priest Krunoslav Draganović. When asked by Barbie why he helped such escapes, Draganović said, "We have to maintain a sort of moral reserve on which we can draw in the future."

Barbie emigrated to Bolivia, where he lived under the alias Klaus Altmann. Testimony of the Italian insurgent Stefano Delle Chiaie before the Italian Parliamentary Commission on Terrorism suggests that Barbie took part in the "Cocaine Coup" of Luis García Meza Tejada, when the regime forced its way to power in Bolivia in 1980.

In 1965 Barbie was recruited by the West German foreign intelligence agency Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) under the codename "Adler" (Eagle) and the registration number V-43118. He had excellent relations with high-ranking Bolivian officials and was known for his nationalist and anti-communist stance. His initial monthly salary of 500 Deutsche Mark was transferred in May 1966 to an account of the Chartered Bank of London in San Francisco. During his stint with the BND, Barbie made at least 35 reports to the BND headquarters in Pullach.

Che Guevara

See also: Ñancahuazú Guerrilla

Reviews of the 2007 documentary My Enemy's Enemy, directed by the British director Kevin Macdonald, note that it suggests Barbie helped the United States' CIA orchestrate the 1967 capture and execution in Bolivia of Che Guevara, a Marxist revolutionary who was active in Cuba and South America. In 1966 a disguised Guevara had arrived in Bolivia to organize the overthrow of its military dictatorship. According to the film, the CIA used Barbie for his knowledge of counter-guerrilla warfare.

Alvaro de Castro, a longtime confidant of Barbie, was interviewed for the film. He reportedly said:

"He (Barbie) met Major Shelton, the commander of the unit from the US. (Barbie) no doubt gave him advice on how to fight this guerrilla war. He used the expertise gained doing this kind of work in World War Two. They made the most of the fact that he had this experience."

De Castro adds that Barbie "had little respect for Che Guevara." In the film, the journalist Kai Hermann says, "He (Barbie) always boasted – though I cannot prove it – that it was he who devised the strategy for murdering Che Guevara."

Extradition and trial

Barbie was identified as living in Bolivia in 1971 by the Klarsfelds (Nazi hunters from France). On 19 January 1983, the newly elected government of Hernán Siles Zuazo arrested Barbie and extradited him to France to stand trial.

In 1984, Barbie was indicted for crimes committed while he directed the Gestapo in Lyon between 1942 and 1944. The jury trial started on 11 May 1987, in Lyon, before the Rhône Cour d'assises. Unusually, the court allowed the trial to be filmed because of its historical value. A special court room with seating for an audience of about 700 was constructed. The head prosecutor was Pierre Truche.

At the trial Barbie was supported by financier François Genoud, and defended by the lawyer Jacques Vergès. Barbie was tried on 41 separate counts of crimes against humanity, based on the depositions of 730 Jews and resistance figures, who cited his torture practices and murders. The father of the then-French Minister for Justice, Robert Badinter, had died in Auschwitz after being deported from Lyon during Barbie's tenure.

Barbie gave his name as Klaus Altmann (the name he had used while in Bolivia). Claiming that his extradition was technically illegal, he asked to be excused from the trial and returned to his cell at St Paul prison. This was granted. He was brought back to court on 26 May to face some of his accusers, during which he stated that he had "nothing to say".

Vergès had a reputation for attacking the French political system, particularly in the historic French colonial empire. His strategy was to use the trial to expose war crimes committed by France since 1945. The prosecution dropped some of the charges against Barbie due to French legislation that had protected people accused of crimes under the Vichy regime and in French Algeria. Vergès argued that Barbie's actions were no worse than the ordinary actions of colonialists worldwide, and that his trial was selective prosecution. During his trial, Barbie said, "When I stand before the throne of God I shall be judged innocent".^{[citation needed]}

On 4 July 1987, Barbie was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. He died in prison in Lyon of leukemia four years later, at the age of 77.

Further reading

• Peter Hammerschmidt: "Die Tatsache allein, daß V-43 118 SS-Hauptsturmführer war, schließt nicht aus, ihn als Quelle zu verwenden". Der Bundesnachrichtendienst und sein Agent Klaus Barbie, in: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft (ZfG), 59. Jahrgang, 4/2011. METROPOL Verlag. Berlin 2011, S. 333–349.
• Hilberg, Raul (1982). "Barbie (SS, Lyon)" (in German). Die Vernichtung der europäischen Juden (110 ed.). Olle & Wolter. p. 453. ISBN 978-3-88395-431-8. OCLC 10125090.  Case No. 77, Fn 908 KsD Lyon IV-B (gez. Ostubaf. Barbie) an BdS, Paris IV-B, 6. April 1944, RF-1235.
• Goni, Uki (2002). The Real Odessa: How Peron Brought the Nazi War Criminals to Argentina. Granta Books. ISBN 978-1-86207-403-3.  A chapter in this book also follows how top Nazis made their way to Argentina and Latin America.
• Bower, Tom (1984). Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyons. New York: Pantheon Books. ISBN 978-0-394-53359-9. 
• U.S. Samurais in Bruyeres Klaus Barbie found in the Vosges Mountains in Bruyeres after his surgery in Lyon. Barbie rejoins his unit the SIPO-SD of Lyon there and was responsible of the Massacre of Rehaupal in September 1944|year=1993 |publisher=Editions du CPL [1][2]

External links

• "Klaus Barbie and the United States Government A Report to the Attorney General of the United States." U.S. Department of Justice. August 1983.
• French Judicial Archives on Klaus Barbie (French)
• Klaus Barbie at the German National Library (German)
• Marcel Ophuls’s Hôtel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie (1988) at the Internet Movie Database
• Kevin Macdonald’s My Enemy’s Enemy (2007) at the Internet Movie Database
• L'avocat de la terreur at the Internet Movie Database (English: “Terror's Advocate”)