While some called him the “Barber of Lyon,” Klaus Barbie also received the label “Butcher of Lyon” from others. Whichever characterization is chosen, each indicates that Barbie had the distinction of being viewed as a horrible torturer and executioner by those who fell under his control. A member of the SS, Barbie served in France from 1942 to 1944, at which time he was head of the Gestapo in Lyon. During his tenure thousands of Jews and resistance fighters were tortured by the Gestapo and sent to concentration camps, resulting in the death of most of them. After the war a French military tribunal tried Barbie in absentia and sentenced him to death. In 1963, when he was discovered in Bolivia, the French government began efforts to have Barbie deported to France. They finally succeeded in 1983, but then the allegations that Barbie had provided postwar intelligence information to the United States surfaced—complicating the story and extradition efforts. This prompted an investigation by the Office of Special Investigations. How did Barbie become a U.S. employee, albeit briefly? How could the United States employ such a horrible person? Who was Klaus Barbie?
On 25 October 1913 Nikolaus and Anna (née Hees) Barbie had their first child—Nikolaus Klaus—who was born in Bad Godesberg. The German town is located on the Rhine River south of Bonn. The family belonged to the local Roman Catholic Church. Although his early profession was as an office worker, Nikolaus Barbie—the elder—switched careers and became a teacher, like his wife. He taught at Noder Primary School, where his son became a pupil when he reached school age. The elder Barbie, a veteran of World War I, fought in the Battle of Verdun. The battle would have a life-altering effect on him, on his wife, and on his young son, who was only four years old when his father left for war. Wounded when a bullet struck him in the neck, a bitter Barbie returned from the war. In his dejection he turned to the bottle, to the detriment of the family. Alcohol quickly contributed to the abuse that the elder Barbie directed toward those dependent on him. Apparently, young Klaus Barbie became a victim, and a student, of his father’s methods of abuse.
In 1923 multiple events affected Klaus Barbie’s life, when he was an impressionable nine years old. First, the small town where the Barbie family lived in the Saarland became occupied by the French. In addition, “a German Freikorps leader was captured and shot.”1 If Barbie had not harbored hatred for the French before 1923, the seed for his hatred became planted that day. Second, the young Barbie left the Noder School because he was ready to commence the next phase of his education—and to escape from his abusive father. He was accepted by a boarding school, the Friedrich-Wilhelm Grammar School, located in Trier, approximately a hundred miles from Bad Godesberg. In his new school the focus of his education was the classics, especially Latin and Greek. Unfortunately, Barbie was only briefly removed from interaction with his family—particularly his father. Two years after he enrolled in the boarding school, Nikolaus Barbie retired and moved his family to Trier. Less than a decade later, the family faced great challenges.
The year 1933 was another watershed year for Barbie. He graduated, which meant the beginning of the next phase of his life, but 1933 also brought with it much tragedy that would send him down a different path than he had intended. Barbie’s younger brother, who suffered from a chronic illness, died of heart failure, as did their father, who succumbed to a neck tumor that resulted from the wound he suffered during World War I. Barbie wanted to attend university and focus his studies on the law, archaeology, or theology, but his father’s passing had left him without the financial resources to pursue his preferred career choice. Barbie’s grandfather, who controlled his father’s estate, refused to give the surviving son his rightful share.2 The ironies of fate played on his frustration and his building anger against his father—and now his grandfather. He would find a way to redirect his feelings of dissatisfaction with the hand that life had dealt him. Swept up in enthusiasm for Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, Barbie made a life-changing decision in 1933. He joined Hitler Youth. Demonstrating his leadership capabilities, he quickly became a patrol chief—or Fahnenführer—tasked with supervising 120 boys.
The lack of the money that would have allowed him to attend university meant that Barbie could not delay fulfilling mandatory service. He signed up for a “six-month work detail” under a “compulsory labor service” requirement and departed for his assignment in Schleswig-Holstein. At the same time his work with the Nazi Party took shape. By February 1935 he had a new position within the party in the town of Trier. Barbie became “personal adjutant to the head of the local Nazi party office.” It was at this same time that his work with the SD—Sicherheitsdienst, or SS Intelligence Agency, of the Nazi Party—began, although he was not officially a member of the group. That changed, however, on 26 September 1935, when, following the advice of an older party member, he signed on the dotted line and thus officially joined the SS and was posted “to the central office of the SD—the IV-D.” Barbie’s SS membership number was 272,284.3 His associations with the SS and SD would afford Barbie with an avenue for advancement, particularly since he lacked the funds necessary to pursue a higher education. It would not take long for him to realize that he had found his calling.
A few months after his induction into the SS, Barbie spent a year furthering his education—but it was not an academic one. He attended the SS school in Bernau, approximately twenty miles from Berlin, where he received SS training, which consisted of lectures on Hitler’s life and the “doctrine of racial selection” and physical and military exercises. Among those who lectured on the “Jewish question” to the new SS recruits was Adolf Eichmann. By the time he graduated from the SS school in 1937, Barbie was truly representative of the German Nazi, who would follow Hitler to the end. He embraced the führer’s antisemitic and anticommunist ideology. “He believed in the crusade against Jews and Bolsheviks. He believed that his mission in life was to serve the goals of his Führer. He was ready to do the bidding of his superiors.” Furthermore, Barbie understood that the rules of engagement were changing and that civilian targets were no longer off-limits. “There had once been a concept of honor in war. You didn’t kill civilians, or torture suspects, or take hostages in reprisal. But that concept was not taught at Bernau.”4 Not a stranger to violence growing up, Barbie took to the training at Bernau like a duck drawn to water. He found peace in a system that allowed him to unleash his internal demons.
On 1 May 1937 Barbie became a “full-fledged” Nazi Party member. In addition to completing training at Bernau, he also participated in an “elite leadership course” in Berlin. Upon graduation Barbie’s first posting was to Düsseldorf, where he was attached to an SD unit. After his arrival in Düsseldorf, he registered with the local Nazi Party. For three months in 1938, he completed military service with an infantry unit, the Thirty-Ninth Infantry Regiment.5
As Barbie rose in the Nazi Party, there were changes in his personal life as well. He met and courted Regina Margareta Maria Willms, whose father was a postal clerk. Unlike Barbie, she had not completed high school, but, after finishing a cooking course, she initially found domestic work in Berlin. In 1937, however, she moved to Düsseldorf, where her path would cross that of Barbie’s. In addition to working at a Nazi Women’s Organization day care, Willms joined the Nazi Party that year. In April 1939, on the eve of the outbreak of war, the couple became engaged. As Nazi Party members, however, the next step was not a foregone conclusion: “In order to marry, Klaus and Regina had to present evidence of their racial purity. Regina submitted character references as well, and both passed medical examinations, replied to questions about family medical history and supplied pictures of themselves in bathing suits so they could be scrutinized for possible racial defects.”6
A year later, on 25 April 1940, five days after Barbie’s promotion to SS-Untersturmführer, or SS second lieutenant, the couple married in a “special SS ceremony” performed by Barbie’s unit commander. “The symbolism of Nazi weddings was Teutonic. Traditional wedding flowers were replaced by sunflowers and fir twigs representing natural earth. The couple exchanged rings and received a gift of bread and salt representing the fruitfulness and purity of the earth. An eternal flame burned in an urn before them.” The newly married couple, although Catholic, embraced a new religion—that of the SS of the Nazi Party.7
Events in Europe guaranteed that Klaus and Regina Barbie would have only a short honeymoon. The storm clouds that were gathering as they became engaged erupted with the outbreak of war on 1 September 1939. It was only a matter of time before Barbie would receive orders to proceed to the front. The lull that occurred after Poland succumbed to pressure from both Germany and the Soviet Union had given the young couple time to become joined in an SS ceremony. Their lives changed, however, as the German offensive in western Europe began. It would not take long for Barbie to receive new orders.
The expected orders arrived. Barbie’s SD unit was already in the Low Countries, attached to an invading army. Following his 29 May 1940 orders, Barbie traveled to Holland to join his unit, which was under the direct control of the SD commander in the Hague—Willy Lages. Barbie’s unit soon received a new directive: to proceed to Amsterdam for attachment to the Central Bureau for Jewish Emigration, or the Zentralstelle. There Barbie’s task was to facilitate the removal of Jews and other groups, including freemasons and German émigrés. He carried out his orders enthusiastically. His promotion to Obersturmführer (first lieutenant) soon followed. Before long events would occur that would enable Barbie to facilitate the mass deportation of Jews from Amsterdam.8
On 12 February 1941 Dutch Nazi Party military formations unleashed attacks against homes and businesses owned by Jews. The Nazis were surprised to meet resistance from Jews—and non-Jews. The expectation that the containment and deportation of Jews would be a walk in the park did not materialize. During a fight with Dutch dockworkers, Hendrik Koot, a Dutch Nazi, lost his life. German officials seized on Koot’s death to take drastic steps against Jews in Amsterdam. First, Hans Rauter, of the Dutch SS high command, ordered retaliation that resulted in the death of six defenders, the physical removal of “non-Jewish inhabitants,” and the isolation of the “Jewish Quarter.” “Canals leading into the quarter were closed, with the exception of one that could be closely monitored. The fighting went on for weeks, and when calm was finally restored, the Jews of the old quarter of Amsterdam found themselves living in a permanently sealed ghetto.”9 Jews in the ghetto received orders to relinquish all weapons. This was not a new SS tactic. It had worked in Warsaw—why not in Amsterdam?
In addition to helping close off the Jewish Quarter, Barbie led an SD raid against Jews on 19 February. One of the targets was the Koco—an ice cream parlor owned and run by Ernst Cahn and Alfred Kohn, German Jewish refugees. The two men resisted the Dutch Nazi attack during which a previously installed “protective device” activated and doused the attackers with ammonia.10 There was an immediate reaction from Barbie, who had orders to arrest—not kill—Cahn and Kohn, when he arrived on the scene. How dare the Jews resist and use weapons against his men? This required harsh punishment! Using an ashtray, Barbie personally struck one of the men in the head. Both Cahn and Kohn received death sentences for their resistance. Ernst Cahn’s execution occurred on 3 March 1941 on the Waalsdorpervlakte. The firing squad was under the command of Barbie. Although he escaped execution at the same time as his partner, Kohn did not survive the concentration camp. Barbie would subsequently receive an award for his zealous actions in the Jewish Quarter—the Iron Cross, second class.11
Barbie would not let the grass grow under his feet. Three days later further retaliation occurred. Under Barbie’s direction, the SS launched a raid against Amsterdam’s Jewish Quarter. The targets were primarily young men. The SS arrested approximately 425 Jews between the ages of twenty and thirty-five. Deportation to Mauthausen followed immediately. None of these men would survive their incarceration there. Outraged, the Dutch population initiated a general strike in protest—an action that virtually paralyzed the nation, an action that the Germans could not and would not tolerate. The Germans acted swiftly in the face of Dutch defiance. They imposed martial law and harshly restored order. Thus, they quenched Dutch resistance—virtually, for good.
Once the Amsterdam ghetto had been firmly established and general Dutch resistance derailed, Barbie set his sights on Jews living under the radar in Amsterdam. On 11 June 1941 he presented himself to Abraham Ascher and David Cohen, who administered the Jewish Council. Underneath his calm exterior, Barbie had a definite agenda. He acknowledged that approximately 300 young Jews, who had formerly lived on a farm colony outside Amsterdam, had received sanctuary within the city from ordinary Dutch citizens. Claiming a German command decision to allow these young men to return to the colony, Barbie requested information about their current locations. Aware of the official notification, Ascher and Cohen complied with his request. Ever the polite gentleman, Barbie thanked the men and took his leave—giving the impression of a peaceful relocation in the offing. On 13 June, however, more than 230 young men were arrested and deported to the Mauthausen concentration camp—none to return. Afterward, Ascher and Cohen received a summons to SD headquarters, where they learned that the Jewish boys had in fact been arrested in reprisal for a 14 May 1941 bomb attack on the German officers’ club.12
Barbie was well on the way to establishing a name for himself—at the very time when his family was expanding. On 30 June his daughter, Ute Regina, was born. The Barbies’ life was also about change in other ways. The Germans found themselves battling resistance throughout their occupation zones. Key Germans, such as Barbie, received orders to proceed to Germany to undergo “counterinsurgency techniques” training. As his daughter neared her first birthday, Barbie received a mission that would enable him to implement his new counterinsurgency training. In June 1942, traveling to Gex in the German-occupied zone on the French-Swiss border, Barbie prepared to carry out his orders—the capture of three spies. He had some flexibility for successfully completing his mission. He believed that he was up to the task and anticipated a successful outcome. Little did he know, however, that things would not go as planned: “Barbie devised an intriguing, rather comical scheme to make his arrests by actually living in a house that stood on the border and had doors into either country; but his quarry escaped, and Barbie returned empty-handed.”13 Luckily for him, Barbie’s failure did not derail his meteoric rise within the SD and SS—or within the Nazi Party writ large.
As 1942 wound down, the German war effort, which had been achieving one victory after another, suffered a series of setbacks. First, in October Gen. Bernard Montgomery and the British Eighth Army gained the upper hand over Field Marshal Erwin Rommel and the Afrika Korps at El Alamein. Then, on 8 November Allied forces landed in North Africa—at Oran, Algiers, and Casablanca. A couple of weeks later German troops attacking Stalingrad found themselves surrounded by Soviet forces. As the Soviets tightened the noose at Stalingrad, German armed forces moved into Vichy, and the German occupation of France was completed. By occupying southern France, the Germans hoped to close and bar the backdoor, which would prevent an Allied leap from North Africa into France. Occupation also opened the door to Barbie’s next posting, in Lyon.
Barbie’s next position—chief of Section IV, Intelligence, or head of the Gestapo, Lyon—was a real feather in his cap. He would have unprecedented authority to carry out the wishes of his party, particularly with regard to the elimination of the Jewish and the French Resistance presence. November 1942 brought not only occupation and a new Gestapo chief to southern France but also a dramatic increase in the French Resistance footprint in the region—a footprint that Barbie hoped to erase. When he arrived in Lyon, Barbie believed that a “hundred years of German history and the whole of his lifetime had prepared him for this moment.” The time had come to fulfill his destiny, and he would use every resource at hand to do so.14
Although initially based in Hôtel Terminus—adjacent to Perrache railway station—Barbie established new headquarters in June 1943 in the École (du Service) de Santé Militaire on Avenue Berthelot. This was a more spacious facility that could accommodate the torture chambers that Barbie had built. While in Lyon, Barbie brought torture, deportation, and execution to a new level. Numerous documented cases bear witness to his cruelty—to his psychotic behavior. The horror, which will unfold in these pages, is not for the faint of heart.
On 6 June 1944—the day that Allied forces landed on the Normandy beaches and the liberation of France had begun—a French neighbor denounced Simone Lagrange and her parents as Jews. The Gestapo arrested the family and brought them to headquarters, where Mlle Lagrange met Klaus Barbie for the first time. He was a well-dressed man, who did not immediately strike her as someone to fear. According to Lagrange, who later testified against the “Butcher,” “He was caressing the cat. And me, a kid 13 years old, I could not imagine that he could be evil because he loved animals. I was tortured by him for eight days.” Lagrange rarely found relief during that time, as Barbie used beatings to loosen her tongue. He sought information that he could use in his efforts to eliminate resistance and the existence of “undesirables.”15
Another victim, who lived to give testimony to Barbie’s atrocities, was Lise Lesevre, who was working with the Resistance at the time of her capture. Mlle Lesevre endured nine days of torture in 1944. Not only did Barbie beat her, but he also almost drowned her in a bathtub. According to Lesevre, “she was hung up by hand cuffs with spikes inside them and beaten with a rubber bar. She was ordered to strip naked and get into a tub filled with freezing water. Her legs were tied to a bar across the tub and Barbie yanked a chain attached to the bar to pull her underwater. During her final session with him, Barbie ordered her to lie flat on a chair and struck her on the back with a spiked ball attached to a chain. It broke a vertebrae, and she suffered the rest of her life.”16
Barbie’s cruelty and sadistic treatment of the captured earned him multiple nicknames, not the least of which was the Butcher of Lyon. Those who fell victim to him learned to fear him. According to Ennat Leger, who lived to testify against him, Barbie “had the eyes of a monster. He was savage. My God, he was savage! It was unimaginable. He broke my teeth, he pulled my hair back. He put a bottle in my mouth and pushed it until the lips split from the pressure.”17 Sent to Ravensbrück when Barbie finished torturing her, Leger lost her eyesight, which she never regained.
The more Barbie abused his captives, the greater his reputation became, and so did his stature. The reality of his appearance was somewhat different—and unexpected. He was short and stocky with dark hair and “piercing blue eyes.” As Leger articulated, the way that Barbie stared at his victims was forever etched in their minds. His eyes were the first feature that many survivors mentioned when asked to describe their tormentor. The way that he carried himself reflected his confident arrogance. It was all part of the process—humiliation and physical destruction.
He kicked heads, injected acid into human bladders and hung almost lifeless people upside down from ceiling hooks while he took a break from business to play a little love song on the piano. “Parlez-moi d’amour” was one of his favorites. Women were always tortured naked, to the deep enjoyment of their torturers. Barbie kept two German shepherd dogs. One was trained to lunge and bite. The other was trained to mount naked women who had first been ordered on their hands and knees, a humiliation that could cut deeper than the whip, than having one’s fingernails pulled out, or one’s nipples burned with cigarettes. He threatened the lives of his victims’ families, sometimes presenting them in person, or pretending they were just downstairs about to be tortured. He led his victims to understand he was just about to shoot them.18
Barbie had learned how to torture—at the hands of his father and in his SS training—but he took it to new levels. When the torture ended, deportation guaranteed that the nightmare would continue. Not all of Barbie’s victims survived long enough to be deported to a concentration camp. The captives who suffered at Barbie’s own hands number in the thousands. The capture of forty-four Jewish children, whom the citizens of the village of Izieu had hidden, and their deportation to Auschwitz falls squarely at Barbie’s door.19 He had no sympathy for them. He was just doing his job—a job that he embraced wholeheartedly.
The most famous Frenchman to fall into Barbie’s hands and not survive was one of the highest-ranking members of the French Resistance—Jean Moulin, who was credited with uniting the numerous resistance groups that had sprung up spontaneously around France into an organized unit. Under his guidance the newly organized French Resistance became an effective movement that resisted the German occupier and one that worked as much as possible with allies based outside of France. Moulin was the epitome of the French Resistance leadership that Barbie was determined to eradicate.
Born on 20 June 1899, Jean Moulin enlisted in the army in 1918, but the war had ended before he had a chance to do his part. After World War I he decided to devote himself to public service. Joining the civil service, Moulin worked hard and rose quickly through the ranks. He earned the distinction of becoming the youngest prefect, or regional administrator, of Chartres. Because of his extreme left-leaning politics, however, Moulin quickly came to the Germans’ attention following their occupation of northern France. In June 1940 the Gestapo arrested him and applied their unique methods to him because they suspected that he was a communist. Moulin’s effort to commit suicide by slitting his own throat while in custody was thwarted by a German guard. After recovering in a hospital, Moulin returned to his job, where he took a stand against an order mandated by the Vichy government in November 1940. Ordered to fire “all elected left-wing officials,” Moulin refused and, as a result, lost his own government position.20
Moulin, determined to fight against treasonous laws issued by the Vichy government and against the German occupiers, had a new focus in life—resistance. He realized, however, that crucial to success was connection with resistance outside of France. In September 1941, with help from his friends, Moulin left France and traveled to London, where he made a connection with the Free French. He met with Gen. Charles De Gaulle and “other exiled French leaders.” Four months later, armed with the code name Max, Moulin returned to his homeland, via parachute, and proceeded to organize the various resistance groups from around France into one unified movement.21
Moulin organized the French Resistance movement and orchestrated various actions against the Germans for over a year before falling victim to the Gestapo again—and to Klaus Barbie more specifically. In a May report Moulin acknowledged that while he was on the Gestapo and Vichy police radar, they did not know what he looked like. He hoped to use that to his advantage to avoid capture while continuing his work. Little did Moulin know that his days of freedom were, in fact, limited. On 7 June 1943 Barbie arrested René Hardy, a member of the Resistance, and proceeded to apply his tried-and-true methods at information extraction on him. Although he initially endeavored to resist, Hardy eventually gave Barbie the information that he needed to capture other members of the movement, including Pierre Brossolette, Charles Delestraint, and Jean Moulin. Two weeks after the arrest of Hardy, on 21 June, Barbie arrested Jean Moulin and Raymond Aubrac, who claimed to be “Claude Ermelin” from Tunisia. Moulin, Aubrac, and others, including the newly freed Hardy, had assembled for a meeting. In the ensuing chaos of the arrest, Hardy was slightly wounded but escaped. He would later face charges of treason.
Initially, Barbie did not know which of the captured Resistance members was the highly sought after “Max.” It did not take him long, however, to figure out that Jean Moulin and Max were one and the same. Soon the torture began. By all accounts, Moulin’s torture was merciless, as Barbie and his men unleashed their worst on the Resistance leader. “Hot needles were shoved under his fingernails. His fingers were forced through the narrow space between the hinges of a door and a wall and then the door was repeatedly slammed until the knuckles broke. Screw-levered handcuffs were placed on Moulin and tightened until they bit through his flesh and broke through the bones of his wrists.”22 Despite repeated beatings on his head and whippings, Moulin refused to talk. While Barbie admired Moulin’s strength and unwillingness to break, the Frenchman’s resilience fueled the fire within the German and drove him to increase the torture. The beatings continued until Moulin fell into a coma.
Although Moulin was unresponsive, the “Butcher” was not yet finished with him. He ordered the prison barber—Christian Pineau—to shave the unconscious man. According to Pineau,
Moulin was unconscious, his eyes pushed into his skull as though they had been punched through his head. A horrible blue wound scarred his temple. A rattling sound came out of his swollen lips. Pineau asked the guard for soap and water, and while he was waiting he felt Moulin’s face and hands. His skin was cold. Suddenly Moulin opened his eyes. Pineau wasn’t sure he had recognized him. “Water,” Moulin whispered. Pineau asked the guard for water. The latter, clearly compassionate, took the shaving bowl to rinse it. A few words in English escaped Moulin’s mouth. Pineau did not understand what he was saying. Pineau held the water to Moulin’s lips; Moulin sipped a few drops, then fell into unconsciousness again.23
He was put on display at Gestapo headquarters, and Barbie forced other captured Resistance members to view their physically broken leader. On 7 July Moulin’s unconscious body was carried away to be sent to Germany, but he died on the way. The dead Moulin was returned to Paris, cremated, and buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery.24
With the capture of Moulin, Barbie had hit the mother load! He was aptly rewarded for his work in Lyon, particularly for his capture and torture of Jean Moulin. Hitler awarded him the “First Class Iron Cross with Swords.” Despite Hitler’s appreciation, circumstances of the war caused a change in Barbie’s situation in the summer of 1944. The Allies’ successful landing in Normandy and deeper drive into France made Barbie’s position untenable. With Allied troops breathing down his back, he returned to Germany, reported for duty, and received new orders. Following his new orders, he traveled to Halle, but when it came to reporting for front-line service, Barbie baulked. His training had not prepared him to fight on the front lines. He was at his best hunting down, arresting, and torturing Jews and members of the French Resistance—not carrying a weapon into the fray. His arrogance let him down, and he fled. After a brief visit to Berlin, where it was not exactly safe since he had abandoned his post, Barbie decided to wait for the end in Düsseldorf. Barbie’s own words condemn his final actions as the war ended:
My war ended in Wuppertal. We turned a garage into a stronghold. Nearby were two trucks loaded with civilian clothes for the Werewolf’s [sic] (the abortive German resistance movement). But no one had made any plans to continue the fight underground, probably because no one thought that we would lose the war. So I buried my gun.
The four youngsters I was with and myself changed our clothes, got some false papers from the police headquarters and headed off through the forests and pastures towards the Sauerland. It was very hard. From one day to the next, I’d become a beggar.25
How the mighty have fallen! At the end of the war, Barbie was on the run. In his own words, he had “become a beggar.” His efforts to escape capture and punishment for his actions were only partially successful. He certainly avoided punishment for decades. Capture was a different story, but the outcome of his initial detention was unexpected. In a stroke of bad luck, Barbie was stopped near Hohenlimburg, in Westphalia, Germany. He failed to navigate an American roadblock successfully. Although he was arrested and placed with other prisoners in a school, Barbie’s incarceration was short lived, a brief setback on the road to freedom. Ultimately, his luck would hold. Because he was traveling with false papers, the Americans had no idea that the Butcher of Lyon was in their hands. In fact, had they known his real name, it is possible that the Americans would still have not held him. Word of who he was and what he had done had not yet begun to spread—or at least it had not yet spread far enough for Barbie to be on the right Watch List to result in his permanent detention. It would not take long, however, for the Barbie name to become better known, but would it make a difference to the postwar Americans tasked with making Europe safe from the new threat to the east?
What Barbie did immediately after the war in Europe ended is not completely clear. What is known is that at some point the Western Allies recruited him, and he found himself in the employ of the British until 1947. How the notorious Butcher of Lyon came to be recruited is a mystery, but the story becomes even more bizarre as things got even murkier. By April 1947 the U.S. Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) had set up shop in Memmingen, which is located in Bavaria, Germany. On a spring day in April, Robert Taylor, who was an operations officer in the Memmingen CIC Field Office, was working the desk when Kurt Merk approached him. During the war Merk had been an Abwehr lieutenant. During the course of their conversation, Merk mentioned a couple of things that Taylor found interesting. Merk had recently reconnected with an old friend who had been posted to France during the war. This friend, Klaus Barbie, was at loose ends and was seeking employment. Barbie was willing to work for the Americans—for a price. While he recognized the benefits from hiring Merk’s friend, who might provide useful, actionable intelligence, Taylor quickly made the connection between the friend’s name and “two Allied lists of wanted war criminals.”26 Taylor knew that Barbie’s name was on both lists. Unwilling to make a decision about Barbie on his own, Taylor contacted Lt. Col. Dale Garvey, his superior, who was based in Munich.
Taylor and Garvey discussed the pros and cons of hiring Barbie. On the definite con side of the ledger was the German’s status as a “wanted war criminal.” The two men concluded, however, that the plus side—Barbie as a “valuable asset”—far outweighed the negative. With Garvey’s approval in hand, Taylor arranged to meet Barbie in Merk’s Memmingen apartment. Barbie, who turned on the charm, made a “favourable impression” on Taylor, who knew nothing of the German’s history as the Butcher of Lyon. Barbie did not enlighten the American because it served his best interests to be hired by the other side. Negotiations commenced between Barbie and Taylor, and they reached agreement. According to an American intelligence officer, in addition to protection, the United States paid Barbie “$1,700 a month for intelligence information.”27
Despite the agreement negotiated between Taylor and Barbie, Taylor’s superiors had to approve Barbie’s recruitment. That process would not prove smooth sailing. When the paperwork hit his desk at CIC’s Frankfurt headquarters, Operations Officer Earl Browning could not believe his eyes. Shocked and appalled, Browning sent a directive to the Munich CIC in October. He ordered the arrest of Barbie and his transfer to Frankfurt for “detailed interrogation.”28 Thus began a two-month struggle between Browning and Garvey over Barbie. Garvey argued that Barbie’s arrest would have an unintended consequence—CIC informants would lose trust in them. By December Browning achieved victory of sorts with Barbie’s arrest. For the next six months Barbie underwent extensive questioning. By the time his interrogation ended in May 1948, Barbie had revealed little, and none of it was new. He basically just confirmed his SS membership.
Following Barbie’s interrogation, the CIC issued a report. According to the report, the impediment to turning Barbie over for trial was his knowledge about the CIC’s operations—information that could potentially be damaging if released during a public trial. Basically, the report’s recommendation was that the CIC not prosecute or facilitate the prosecution of Barbie for war crimes. Browning was not pleased with the report or the requirement to comply with it. Like a dog with a bone, Browning continued to press his colleagues to “drop” Barbie from their list of assets, but he was ignored. Upon his release, Barbie resumed his “intelligence activities” for the CIC at the very time that more information about his tenure in Lyon found its way into the public realm.29
Merk soon learned that working with his old friend was not a picnic. By early 1949 the relationship between the two men hit a major snag. Because the rift seemed irreparable, Merk decided to approach his CIC employers and come clean about Barbie’s role in Lyon during the war; therefore, he sought out Barbie’s handler, Erhard Dabringhaus. In 1948 Dabringhaus, emeritus professor at Wright State University, was a civilian employee of the CIC. Merk told Dabringhaus, “If the Americans found out what Barbie did in France, the atrocities he committed—not even your General Eisenhower could protect him.” Merk also admitted that he had personally seen “some French Resistance fighters hanging by their thumbs, day after day, until they died.” Although what he revealed about Barbie was damning, the CIC decided to part ways with Merk, the whistle-blower—not with Barbie. Barbie continued to work for the CIC. He provided weekly reports that included information about specific groups of interest. Targeted groups included “other missing Nazis, the Communists in East Germany and Eastern Europe as well as French Communists.”30
Soon, however, the CIC had to deal with other troublesome information about Barbie and to make a decision about how to proceed. A Paris newspaper published an article—“Arrest Barbie Our Torturer”—in May 1949. When the headline grabbed his attention, Browning continued reading. According to the article, “During the occupation, he [Barbie] burned his victims with an acetylene torch to make them confess during interrogations that lasted more than 48 hours.” The situation was worse than Browning had originally imagined. There was no denying Barbie’s liabilities. When he brought the article to his superior, Browning did not receive the response he had expected. Instead, Col. David Erskine claimed that the article, which was based on the testimony of “former Resistance fighters,” was unreliable. After all, most of them, according to Erskine, were “communists” and, therefore, could not be trusted to tell the truth.31
Although still unwilling to part ways with Barbie or to turn him over to “war crimes” authorities, the CIC recognized the prudence in removing his name from their records. That would give them “plausible deniability.” Erasing his name from their records did not mean, however, that the CIC was giving Barbie the boot. Unfortunately, the situation did not improve with time. By early 1950 Browning had returned to the United States. With the troublemaker no longer in Germany, CIC officials prepared for the dust to settle and to get back to work as normal. That did not happen because actions by the French complicated matters further. The French government decided to begin extradition proceedings and submitted a formal request. An extradition request was not so easy to ignore. How would the CIC officials respond? What were their options?
Colonel Erskine decided decisive action was required, and he took it on 4 May 1950. Citing an alleged strong connection between the French intelligence services and the Soviet Union, Erskine refused the French request. He thwarted French efforts to get their hands on Barbie, but he went further than that. In addition to arguing that acquiescing to the French was impossible on intelligence grounds, Erskine and the CIC also claimed not to know where Barbie was. Luckily for Erskine and the CIC, who would have been outed, Barbie evaded capture. Although a disaster had been—albeit briefly—avoided, the CIC acknowledged that Barbie had become a liability—a “difficult disposal case.” Consequently, the CIC decided to eliminate the problem by helping Barbie and his family relocate. Out of sight, out of mind. Right?32
Relocation could be a tricky business—unless the right channels were known and available. After World War II the International Red Cross was in the relocation business. The organization provided ethnic Germans with the necessary travel papers. It did not take Nazis and war criminals long to figure out how to exploit the system, particularly since the vetting process was superficial at best. The International Committee of the Red Cross, in all likelihood overwhelmed by the sheer number of applicants, earned the reputation for providing travel documents to “ethnic Germans” without investigating claims of “ethnic German” status. As a result, dubious characters succeeded in obtaining the travel documents necessary for relocation, even though the name on the materials was frequently a fictitious one. With some help, Barbie took advantage of this committee.33
CIC headquarters in Germany recognized that the first thing that Barbie needed for relocation was a new identity for himself and his family. By this time the Barbie family numbered four. In addition to Barbie; his wife, Regina; and daughter, Ute, there was a son, Klaus-Georg. Once travel documents in their new names were available, the next step would be to help the family travel to Italy. From there the Barbie family would proceed to their final destination, in South America. Surely that would get Barbie far enough away to avoid damage to the CIC’s—and by extension to the United States’—reputation. What would the family’s new identity be? Interestingly, Barbie was involved in the process of choosing a new identity. Deciding that it was necessary only to change his last name and his ethnicity, Klaus Barbie became Klaus Altmann, an “ethnic German from Romania,” which meant that he was “officially deemed to be stateless.” But, in reality, he needed more than a name change. He needed a way out. For that, he and the CIC turned to a “rat line.”34
A rat line was an escape route established in 1947. It was initially designed to help people employed by the United States in Soviet-occupied Europe who needed to relocate because they had been compromised and their lives were in danger. Generally, they found temporary accommodation in a safe house and received “false identification documents” and transportation to a safer location, frequently in South America. Initially, people sent along the rat line were not war criminals, but people who had provided a useful service, such as spying, for the Americans. That changed over time, and the rat line came to be a vehicle “to smuggle senior Nazis” and war criminals “into the U.S. along ‘illegal routes.’” To be fair, the United States did not help just any dubious character. They focused on helping those who had helped the United States in the past or who could perform a useful service in the future. The CIC turned to the rat line in the Barbie case only when it became expedient to help him “disappear.” The final destination was not, however, the United States, but a South American country, which made using the rat line to relocate Barbie an acceptable move.35
March 1951 was a big month for the Barbie—or Altmann—family. Their arrival in Genoa marked the completion of the first leg of their relocation. While in Genoa, they received important documentation, including a visa for Bolivia and travel documents from the International Committee of the Red Cross, made out to Klaus, Regina, Ute, and Klaus-Georg Altmann. On 23 March the family began the next phase of their relocation trip via a boat, the Corrientes. The ship set sail for Bolivia on that momentous day. According to U.S. intelligence files that justified CIC efforts to facilitate Barbie’s relocation, “In 1951 because of the French and German efforts to apprehend subject, the 66th Detachment resettled him in South America. Subject was documented in the name of Klaus Altmann and routed through Austria and Italy to Bolivia. Since that time, Army has had no contact with Subject.”36 The final sentence indicated that the U.S. Army was washing its hands of Barbie. The hope was that Barbie would fade into the sunset, that there would be no fallout from his employment by the CIC, and that Barbie would be forgotten. Only time would tell if the U.S. Army’s wish list would be fulfilled.
By the time the family arrived in Bolivia, Barbie had fully embraced his new identity—and his new life. He was no longer the Butcher of Lyon. He was now Klaus Altmann, businessman, but he was no ordinary businessman, although it was essential that he establish himself as such. As he became integrated into La Paz society, no one could know that he was really Klaus Barbie, the man whom the French had tried and convicted of war crimes in absentia—not once, but twice—in 1952 and 1954. No one could know that he had a death sentence hanging over his head. He had to become Altmann and put his past behind him. Under certain circumstances, however, that would prove difficult, particularly when he created “brutal internment camps” for Hugo Banzer (Suárez).37
Over the next three decades Barbie, or Altmann, had his finger in numerous pies, both legitimate and illegitimate. In addition to his “businessman” persona, Barbie became an integral member of the “German colony” in La Paz, Bolivia. In addition to opening a lumber business and becoming director of Transmarítima Boliviana, which was a shipping company, he quickly established relationships with various generals and government officials. As a “legitimate” businessman, he traveled to the United States and several European countries without anyone being the wiser that Klaus Barbie was in town.38
Unfortunately for Barbie, his business ventures were not all smooth sailing, but lucky for him, he had reestablished contact with an old friend, Fritz Schwend. In fact, Barbie recorded the benefit of this reconnection:
We, Herr Schwend, you and I now have every reason to team up together, as we have become the victim[s] of a particular race where hatred for us will probably never end.
I regret to an extraordinary degree what happened. . . . You can depend all the more on my and Herr Schwend’s help and comradeship. I too have lately, after a long-prepared action by the German embassy, been removed from the German Club here, on the basis of a committee decision, for supposed “anti-Semitic statements.”39
As Barbie noted, sometimes his views were not well received, but his connections to people like Schwend would serve him in good stead. In 1970 he suffered a temporary business setback that forced him to leave La Paz for a time under a cloud of the “fraudulent collapse of his country.” He turned to Schwend, who not only arranged a Peruvian “resident permit” for him but also introduced him to certain “Peruvian businessmen.” These connections helped Barbie get back on his feet, which allowed him to return to La Paz.40 But Barbie did not rely just on business connections and overt activities to provide support for himself and his family.
There is some evidence to suggest that not only were the ties between the United States and Barbie not severed, but that he also did intelligence work for the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND; Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service). When the Barbie family set sail for Bolivia on the Corrientes on 23 March 1951, there was a collective sigh of relief in the CIC that Barbie was no longer their problem. Apparently, however, Barbie just moved from one American intelligence agency to another—the Central Intelligence Agency—but his work included more than gathering information. Barbie made contact with another member of the German colony: Col. Hugo Banzer. Trained in the United States, Banzer served as Bolivian education and culture minister from 1964 to 1966. By the early 1970s not only had Banzer been promoted to general, but he had also seized dictatorial powers in Bolivia. At some point between 1966 and 1970, Banzer turned to Barbie for help in acquiring weapons. Believing that Banzer was a staunch opponent of communism, Barbie willingly helped him. The connection between the two men became more than arms dealing. Barbie provided some of the muscle behind Banzer’s efforts to stamp out opposition to his leadership. As a result of Banzer’s repressive measures during his tenure as dictator, many Bolivians lost their lives. In many cases Barbie was responsible. His old tried-and-true methods found new targets: “Barbie was in charge of the murders of many Bolivian citizens, including priests and members of the opposition.”41
Old habits die hard. Before he became Banzer’s enforcer, Barbie was engaged in several intelligence ventures. Sometime between the early 1950s and the mid-1960s, the connection between Barbie and the CIA, which had been established, faded. By 1964 the CIA wanted to reconnect with Barbie and other former agents operating in South America in order to determine which remained “valuable.” The CIA knew, however, that they had to tread carefully where Barbie was concerned. France still wanted him back to face punishment for his war crimes. Because it was possible that a CIA-Barbie connection might not remain secret, “U.S. authorities” were aware of the potential negative press that could result from exposure. On 5 April 1967 the CIA formally weighed in when it issued a memorandum intended to remain secret: “The war criminal charges against Altmann require serious consideration, since exposure of CIC’s role in evacuating him from Germany to avoid prosecution would have serious consequences for the U.S. government; these would be still graver if a current operational relationship could be claimed (or demonstrated).”42 While the CIA mulled over the pros and cons of employing Barbie/Altmann again, another opportunity opened up which allowed Barbie to pursue another intelligence avenue.
Never one to miss a beneficial opportunity, Barbie expanded his intelligence work to include another organization. Wilhelm Holm’s job for the BND was to scout out new talent and notify headquarters in Pullach, a municipality near Munich. In 1965 Holm spent four weeks in La Paz interacting with members of the German colony. There he met a “staunch German patriot,” who was a “committed anti-communist.” Both were useful Cold War attributes. In a late November meeting between the two men, Holm admitted that he was “looking for an agent for a Hamburg company.”43 When asked if he was interested, Barbie responded positively. Holm raved about the transplanted German to his superiors. Within a few weeks the new man had been hired as an agent by the BND, given a code name (Adler [eagle]) and a registration number (V-43118). The new man was all set. Who was “Adler”? He was Klaus Barbie. As far as Holm knew, however, the new man was Klaus Altmann. Obviously, Barbie could not apprise Holm of his real identity. After all, he was a wanted man, but it is possible that Holm’s superiors who approved hiring Barbie knew the truth about his identity and hired him anyway. After all, fighting the communist threat to the east was what was most important during the Cold War.
According to BND files, Pullach sent Barbie his first payment of 500 deutsche marks in May 1966. They subsequently paid him “performance bonuses.” All moneys were paid through the wire transfer of funds to a Chartered Bank of London account in San Francisco. The BND assigned “Solinger” as Barbie’s handler.44 Barbie traveled to Santiago, Chile, in May 1966 to meet Solinger. During that meeting Solinger “officially” hired Barbie, gave him “intensive” training, and worked out arrangements for the transfer of information collected by Barbie. “The two men agreed that important information would be disguised as economic news from the lumber industry” and sent “to a teacher in Bad Bevensen in northern Germany, who would then forward the letters, unopened, to a post office box in Hamburg.”45
Interestingly, Barbie received a “political source” classification from his new employers. A short time after signing on the dotted line with BND, Barbie “became the Bolivian representative for Merex AG, a Bonn-based company that sold Bundeswehr military surplus materials worldwide on behalf of the BND.” It was Barbie’s responsibility to contact Merex whenever Bolivia suffered a weapons or ammunition shortfall. Apparently, the BND was more than satisfied with the information provided by Barbie in the thirty-five reports that he submitted. They applied words such as “intelligent,” “very receptive and adaptable,” and “discreet and reliable” to Barbie, also known as Altmann or “Agent 43118.” All did not, however, prove to be smooth sailing in the relationship between Barbie and the BND.46
During their first meeting Solinger asked Barbie for details about his background—and he kept a record of that information. It did not take much digging to ascertain Barbie’s true identity and information about this past, including the fact that he was wanted in France to face war crimes charges. Even if they knew the truth about Barbie, the powers that be in the BND initially chose not to act. Furthermore, they kept that information close to their chests. Red flags were raised, however, “when agent V-43118 refused to travel to Germany for training.” Uninformed BND intelligence officials began to ask questions. On 13 September 1966 one official raised the possibility about an SS past. Within weeks the word was out. The Wiesbaden “public prosecutor’s office” had initiated a search for Barbie “on the basis of a preliminary investigation by the Central Office for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes in Ludwigsburg.” Things were about to get hot. News of the investigation, coupled with information of a “run-in” between the German ambassador to Bolivia and Barbie, forced the BND’s hand. By the fall of 1966 the BND had decided to sever ties with Barbie “to avoid later complications and difficulties.” Unfortunately, as the BND would learn, that was not exactly possible, even though they had closed the book on Adler. In an effort to keep the lid on a situation that could potential blow up in their faces, the BND made the decision to keep Barbie’s whereabouts a secret, even though he was a “person of interest” to the “German judicial authorities” and he faced charges for murder and war crimes. Barbie’s cover remained secure until the early 1970s. It helped that he had government protection.47
As long as Banzer was dictator, Barbie was safe from extradition to France, even once he was outed. In 1972 a series of events began that eventually led to Barbie’s extradition and to the OSI investigation.48 At some point between 1954 and 1971, the French and German governments abandoned the search for Barbie. When the official search was suspended, husband-and-wife Nazi-hunting team—Beate and Serge Klarsfeld—took up the mantle. They were determined to bring Barbie to justice. In late December 1971 the couple received a tip from Herbert John, the “manager of a publishing company owned by . . . Peruvian industrialist, Luis Banchero Rossi,” who had business connections with Altmann and Schwend. According to the tip, Altmann and Barbie were one and the same. Based on the details about Altmann’s background provided by John, the Klarsfelds believed that they had found Barbie, but they needed proof—photographic proof. Within weeks they had that proof. Beate Klarsfeld traveled to Bolivia and made a public statement on 28 January 1972. In her statement Klarsfeld dropped two bombshells. First, she claimed that Klaus Altman was in fact Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyon. Then, she laid blame at the door of the United States when she asserted that the United States could have turned Barbie over to French authorities in 1950 but had refused to do so.49
With Klarsfeld’s announcement, the cat was out of the bag. The French government immediately issued an extradition request to the Bolivian government. There is some suggestion that the French government knew as early as 1963 that Barbie, or Altmann, resided in Bolivia but chose not to act on extradition until forced to do so by Beate Klarsfeld. Once the French officially requested extradition, however, there was a question about whether or not the Bolivian government would turn Barbie over to the French. It was quickly apparent that Banzer would not be supportive. Extensive reports in the French press and pressure from various French groups demanding justice just made the Bolivians dig in their heels. Beate Klarsfeld did not help matters by publicly criticizing Banzer’s government for shielding Barbie and by organizing a protest demonstration in La Paz. Even the U.S. government weighed in on the matter. On 8 March the U.S. secretary of state, William Rogers, contacted his counterpart in La Paz.50 He said, “While we recognize that Bolivia’s disposition in the Altmann case is an internal Bolivian matter, the hope of the U.S. government is that justice will be done in this matter.”51
Despite pressure from all sides, including from the U.S. government, the Bolivians denied the French extradition request both in 1972 and in 1975. In addition to the protection Banzer gave Barbie, who had been his supporter on multiple levels, the Bolivian government justified its refusal on the lack of an extradition treaty between France and Bolivia. The French government had no recourse but to accept the Bolivian decision—at least in the short term. It seemed apparent that as long as Banzer remained dictator a stalemate would exist. One could only hope for a miracle, and one seemed in the offing in 1978, when Banzer was forced from office. Recognizing that he could regain power only if he changed, Banzer worked to “establish his democratic credentials,” which he accomplished by 1985. In the meantime France decided to push for Barbie’s extradition again.52
Issuing new charges of “crimes against humanity” against Barbie, the French again petitioned for the criminal’s return for trial. While the sticking point again was the lack of an extradition treaty between France and Bolivia, the new government found a creative solution that allowed compliance with the French request and kept the French in the loop as the plan was put in motion. Charging him “with making a fraudulent loan” to the government, the Bolivians put Barbie on a plane and shipped him to French Guyana, where French officials were waiting as he stepped off the plane. Barbie was immediately arrested and put on a plane to France. On 6 February 1983 Barbie arrived back to the place where he had perpetrated his most egregious crimes—Lyon. Although he had been tried and convicted in absentia, “the statute of limitations had expired.” The French courts would have to retry Barbie.53
Barbie’s return to French soil opened the whistle-blower floodgates. All the secrets about Barbie’s employment by the CIC, about the refusal of Americans to tell the French about Barbie’s whereabouts, and about Barbie’s trips to the United States in the 1960s and 1970s became public. As a result, the media demanded a government investigation to determine the exact nature of the relationship between the United States and Barbie, if one indeed existed. The question then became which government agency—the “Justice Department, the State Department, the CIA, [or] the Defense Department”—would receive the task. The chair of the House Judiciary Committee contacted Attorney General William French Smith and made a recommendation. According to the chair, the OSI
could play a unique and valuable role in any investigation conducted by the Executive Branch. Given the expertise of OSI’s staff, and the fact that attorneys and investigators there have the necessary security clearances, it would seem that the office would be ideally suited to coordinate such an inquiry. More importantly, OSI, with no direct ties to the intelligence community and no vested interest in any predetermined outcome, is sufficiently detached to assure its findings would be viewed as complete and honest. . . . While the primary function of the OSI must remain the prosecution of denaturalization and deportation actions involving suspected Nazi criminals in this country, the case of Klaus Barbie is potentially too important a part of the historical record to be left unattended.54
Although he acknowledged that the assignment would be outside their mandate, the chair made a compelling case for assigning the investigation to the fledgling division within the Department of Justice.
Despite the chair’s recommendation, there was resistance to the idea. Various groups voiced their support or opposition to the OSI conducting the investigation. Initially, the attorney general resisted the chair’s recommendation, but one phone call changed the dynamic. An ABC reporter, who had pursued the story in Bolivia, telephoned Allan Ryan, the director of OSI. According to the reporter, he had proof not only that Barbie had been employed by U.S. intelligence but also that the United States had facilitated his relocation to Bolivia even though he was wanted by the French. The reporter guaranteed that his story would air that night. Dismayed, Ryan informed the attorney general, who within hours “authorized the Department to conduct an inquiry” into the matter.55
Assistant Attorney General D. Lowell Jensen placed Ryan in charge of the investigation. Furthermore, Ryan became “AAG [Assistant Attorney General] Jensen’s Special Assistant for the duration.” Ryan and his team completed the investigation and released a report in five months. According to the “218 page report (with over 600 pages of attachments),” not only had
the Army used Barbie as an informant after the war, but it had ignored several requests by the French for extradition, had misled the State Department (which then passed on this misinformation to the French) as to Barbie’s whereabouts, and had used the services of a shady intermediary to help Barbie escape to Bolivia in 1951 under the name Klaus Altmann. Once he was there, the U.S. no longer protected or used him. He obtained Bolivian citizenship and twice made business trips to the United States under his new name; the visits were not connected to any agency or activity of the U.S. government.56
The report, in addition to containing minute details about Barbie, rendered certain conclusions that ultimately reflected Ryan’s evaluation of the facts, particularly with regard to the decisions made by army officials “to use and protect Barbie, even after they had reason to suspect he was a war criminal.” According to Ryan, they were motivated by “two reasons: (1) surrender of Barbie would “embarrass” the U.S. by revealing it had worked with a former Gestapo official, and (2) it would risk compromising procedures, sources, and information.” A further extenuating circumstance was the American belief “that French intelligence had been penetrated by Communists.” The end result would be the compromising of U.S. assets.57
In his final assessment Ryan did not condemn or condone the decisions made at the time. In addition to demonstrating an understanding about why they were made, he suggested alternative ways in which the situation could have been handled:
I cannot conclude that those who made the decision to employ and rely on Klaus Barbie ought now to be vilified for the decision. Any one of us, had we been there, might have made the opposite decision. But one must recognize that those who did in fact make a decision made a defensible one, even if it was not the only defensible one. No one to whom I spoke in this investigation was insensitive to the horrors perpetrated by Nazi Germany, nor entirely comfortable with the irony of using a Gestapo officer in the service of the United States. They were, on the whole, conscientious and patriotic men faced with a difficult assignment. Under the circumstances, I believe that their choice to enlist Barbie’s assistance was neither cynical nor corrupt.58
Ryan did not, however, completely exonerate the army officials involved from actions taken after Barbie’s war crimes had become known. The decision to lie to the Department of State compromised the assessment of France’s extradition request; therefore, Ryan concluded that “the Army’s actions amounted to a criminal obstruction of justice.”59
Ryan’s condemnation suggested the need for punishment and the implementation of steps to prevent an occurrence of actions similar to those taken by the army. He admitted, however, that the “statute of limitations” on the “obstruction of justice” charge had run out. He also lacked confidence that “legislative or regulatory reforms would be effective.” He did believe that U.S. intelligence agencies, over the thirty years since Barbie had been employed, had acquired a “greater sense of accountability”; therefore, there was hope for the future. At the end of the day, Ryan did not give the army a complete pass on the actions that it took with regard to Barbie between 1947 and 1951.60
Ryan made one final recommendation, which although originally in the report, was eventually sent as a “separate memorandum to the Attorney General.” He recommended that the United States apologize to France publicly. Because there was some resistance from the Department of State, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Mark M. Richard stepped in to negotiate a solution with the Department of State. At the end of the day, those involved recognized that Ryan was correct about the need for an official apology. On 12 August 1983 a meeting between the Department of State and the French chargé d’affaires occurred. During that meeting the Department of State submitted two documents to the French representative: the complete OSI report, “along with a note expressing the United States’ ‘deep regret over the actions taken in Germany . . . to conceal Barbie.’” Less than a week later both documents were made public. The cat was completely out of the bag.61
The OSI investigation and the subsequent report did not affect Barbie’s situation—his trial or its outcome. Although Barbie and his French escorts arrived in Lyon on 7 February 1983, a legal battle between groups representing the victims delayed the actual trial for over four years. On 11 May 1987 the trial began. Barbie, the sole defendant, faced charges of “crimes against humanity.” Numerous survivors, including Simone Lagrange, Lise Lesevre, Ennat Leger, and Christian Pineau, bore witness against the Butcher of Lyon, while he sat and smiled. Otherwise he displayed little emotion throughout the trial, which lasted for eight weeks. On 4 July 1987 the court rendered its verdict—guilty. By the time the trial occurred and the verdict was rendered, Barbie was seventy-three years old. He received “France’s highest punishment”—life in prison. Unlike the outcome of his previous two trials in the 1950s, Barbie avoided the death penalty because it had been abolished in 1981. Barbie would have been eligible for parole in 2002 at the age of eighty-eight had he survived that long, but he died of cancer in the Lyon prison hospital on 25 September 1991.62
Even at the end, as he awaited his trial for “crimes against humanity,” Barbie remained unrepentant. In an interview with Agence France-Presse in 1985, he suggested that his actions were nothing more than wartime acts. According to Barbie, “In times of war there are no goods and no bads. I am a convinced Nazi. I admire the Nazi discipline. I am proud of having commanded one of the best corps of the Third Reich. If I should be born 1,000 times I would be 1,000 times what I have been. I am not a fanatic. I am an idealist.”63 Sadly, Barbie’s victims would not agree with his personal assessment; neither does history. He learned violence at the hands of his father. He honed those skills during SS training. He took torture and sadism to new levels in Lyon—and then again in Bolivia. Nikolaus “Klaus” Barbie earned the Butcher of Lyon moniker, and he seemed to wear it proudly to the end.