Unholy Trinity: How the Vatican's Nazi Networks Betrayed Western Intelligence to the Soviets

by Mark Aarons

Book Overview

Written in rivetings fashion by the coauthors of The Secret War Against the Jews, Unholy Trinity tells one of the darkest tales of World War II. After the war had ended, fearing a surge of Soviet growth, the Papacy entered into an espionage alliance with British and American intelligence agents. Subsuming justice to the nascent Cold War ideology, these three powers ferreted Nazi criminals out of Europe so that they could be used in the supposedly...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312071116
• ISBN13: 9780312071110
• Release Date: January 1992
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Length: 372 Pages
• Weight: 1.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Powerful Truth Exposes Vatican Hypocrisy

I read the authors book "The Secret War Against the Jews" and had to have this one. In the controversy of today about whether or not the Vatican really helped jews during the Holocaust, this book should set the record straight. The Vatican has no morals whatsoever. Its nothing but the worlds largest tax exempt business. A few years back the 60 Minutes program did a story on how the CIA helped nazis escape all in the name of stopping communisms spread. Well they did a pretty poor job as all of eastern Europe fell under Soviet domination. this book fills in the the whole story on Vatican/CIA collaboration with Nazis. The worse item i read in this book was about the Croatian Priest Dragonovich. He and the Utashe were brutal. They murdered Serbs, Jews and Gypsies in the most horrific way. This priest was then honored by the Vatican. The Vaticans now infamous "Ratline" helped thousands of Nazis escape to South America. To this day, the Vatican will not release their records from WW2. Could it be that the reason why the Pope has been so "nice" to Jews for the past 20 years is because if the Vatican does fully release the WW2 records, then he will spared any criticism??? The book also tells how Ukranian Catholics were more than nice enough to volunteer for an SS unit and they killed thousands of jews. The Vatican is an organization thats need to be torn down.

Kim Philby+Vatican spies+Swiss banks = nightmare

I discovered this book and its authors when researching a TV documentary for Canadian public television's investigative program THE FIFTH ESTATE, about our last WW2 war crimes suspect to face criminal prosecution, in 1993. The book has since been updated and its conclusions expanded to encompass the amazing---but painstakingly researched and documented---conclusion that billions in Nazi assets were laundered to Argentina and elsewhere via the Vatican bank in 1945/6. The architect of this scheme, corporate lawyer Allen Dulles, operating as US intelligence's chief spy in wartime Switzerland, would later head the CIA from 1953-1962. Dulles' clients included many German corporations and banks, as well as several Swiss banks and the Vatican itself. He was perfectly placed both to execute and to help his clients profit from the moneylaundering crime of the century.Aarons and Loftus further detail how the entire Dulles/Swiss banks scheme hinged on the willing participation of the Vatican and its agents to move both Nazi war crimes suspects and the corporate assets of that regime---often part-owned by the giants of American commerce like Standard Oil, Dupont, etc---to Argentina.The twists and turns of this non-fiction book are breathtaking: there are no heroes, only greed, expedience, and a blind eye turned toward those who perpetrated some of the worst crimes of this century...but who were thought to be useful in the West's fight against Communism.That the very highest reaches of the Vatican were complicit is crystal-clear, despite recent denials. Even as this book sells, recenlty declassified files in the UK, Argentina, France, Italy, and Switzerland point to the Vatican's role in laundering the proceeds of Nazi criminality---proceeds which dwarf the earthly assets of the millions of Jews killed in the Final Solution now making the headlines.The scholarship is impeccable and the conclusions inescapable: people are capable of anything in the name of temporal power---even the Pope himself. And in the end, the scheme to use the Ratline escape routes to smuggle Nazis and their loot out of Allied-occupied Europe was all for nought.Why? Kim Philby had betrayed the entire ploy to Moscow. Stalin and his spies had the last laugh---and the West was seeded with the worst Nazis and their most ardent collaborators for the balance of the century. This book puts the very best of espionage fiction to shame. Buy it and pass it on. Then read SECRET WAR AGAINST THE JEWS, the sprawling followup, a peek behind the veil---you'll see how the 20th Century really worked...the wars since 1939, secret or otherwise, were all about the struggle, not for peace and justice, but for oil.

A disturbing account of Vatican aid for fleeing Nazis

First published in Britain under the title Ratlines in 1991, and in the United States the following year under the title Unholy Trinity: the Vatican, the Nazis and Soviet Intellegence, the current revised edition of the book replaces "Soviet Intellegence" in the subtitle with the Swiss Banks." This latest title change reflects the recent direction of the international investigations into the Vatican's role in WWII. The bulk of the book (Chapters 1-12) remains unchanged from earlier editions. The authors have, however, added an introduction and a new chapter of revised conclusions Using previously classified government documents, the authors give the most detailed account in print of the Catholic Church's collaboration in the smuggling of Fascist and Nazi war criminals out of Europe at the end of the Second World War. Officials at the Vatican who helped these men get false papers and safe passage included then Monsignor Montini (later Paul VI) and Bishop Hudal, author of the clero-fascist Foundations of National Socialism. Among those who thus escaped justice, at least temporarily, were Adolph Eichmann, chief administrator of the holocaust, Walter Rauff, director of the mobile gas truck extermination program, Franz Strangel, Commandant at Treblinka, and Ante Pavelic, fascist Croatian dictator. Many other ex-Nazis were recruited by the church to become "freedom fighters" against the Eastern bloc. Aarons and Loftus argue Vatican's primary motivation throughout this operation was an anti-communism so fanatical that it knew no moral limits. The second half of the book recounts how the church's smuggling operation was infiltrated and turned against the West by the Soviet Union. Although the authors' analysis of the motivations and culpability some of the figures involved can be questioned (most notably their exoneration of Pius XII on charges of complicity with the Nazis in the rise of fascism), this book remains a remarkable history of a little known dark chapter in modern church history.In their introduction to the new edition, Loftus and Aarons detail how some of their original investigative work led to the capture and arrest of Erich Priebke, the SS officer who directed the infamous massacre at the Ardeantine Caves near Rome. Priebke had escaped through the Vatican Ratlines to Argentina and was sheltered by the church even during his 1997-1998 trials. The authors also point out some of the connections between their investigations and the ongoing highly-publicized attempts to trace the Nazi gold held in Swiss banks. More detail on this is given in their revised conclusion (ch 13) in which they suggest that financial motives may have been as important a motive in the Vatican's decision to establish the Ratlines as anti-communism. The Vatican invested the $29 million cash settlement that it received from Mussolini as part of the deal for the Concordat in Germany. During the 1930s, it attempted to p