This is a dramatization of supposed real events – the untold story of Adolf Hitler’s escape to Argentina at the end of WW2.
Based on interviews with eye witnesses in Argentina and years of detailed research, the film covers events from Hitler’s escape by air from the ruins of Berlin on April 28th, 1945, to Fuerteventura on the Canary Islands and then by U-boat to Argentina where he died tormented, demented and betrayed at a small house, ‘La Clara’ 45 miles from San Carlos De Bariloche in the Argentine Andes, at 3pm on February 13th, 1962.
Grey Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler was originally a 2011 book by Gerrard Williams and Simon Dunstan. The book was adapted as a drama documentary film in 2014 directed and written by Gerrard Williams and produced by Magnus Peterson.
After Allied forces defeated Germany in World War II, Europe became a difficult place to be associated with Adolph Hitler’s Third Reich. Thousands of Nazi officers, high-ranking party members and collaborators—including many notorious war criminals—escaped across the Atlantic, finding refuge in South America, particularly in Argentina, Chile and Brazil.
Argentina, for one, was already home to hundreds of thousands of German immigrants and had maintained close ties to Germany during the war. After 1945, Argentine President Juan Perón, himself drawn to fascist ideologies, enlisted intelligence officers and diplomats to help establish “rat lines,” or escape routes via Spanish and Italian ports, for many in the Third Reich. Also giving aid: the Vatican in Rome, which in seeking to help Catholic war refugees also facilitated fleeing Nazis—sometimes knowingly, sometimes not.
As thousands of Nazis and their collaborators poured into the continent, a sympathetic and sophisticated network developed, easing the transition for those who came after. While no definitive evidence exists that Hitler himself escaped his doomsday bunker and crossed the ocean, such a network could have helped make it possible.
Après ses documentaires « Vu du ciel », « Home » ou encore « Planète océan » ou le nouveau “Human“, voici le film évènement de Yann Arthus-Bertrand réalisé avec Michael Pitiot sorti il y a quelques années en arrière.
Après la guerre, nombre de criminels de guerre nazis ont réussi à échapper à la justice. Beaucoup sont partis pour l’Amérique du Sud. Mais il existe une autre destination, restée dans l’ombre jusqu’à aujourd’hui : le Moyen-Orient.
Grâce notamment à un accès inédit à des archives des services secrets d’Allemagne de l’Ouest (BND) et à d’autres sources internationales, ce documentaire révèle qu’après la guerre des dirigeants arabes en Egypte et en Syrie ont recruté plusieurs centaines d’anciens nazis et SS.
Ces anciens serviteurs du Reich ont contribué à reconstruire leurs armées et leurs services de renseignement pour les aider à combattre Israël. Certains anciens collaborateurs de Joseph Goebbels ont même apporté leur « savoir-faire » en matière de propagande.
La réalisatrice a pu reconstituer leur exil depuis Rome, plaque tournante des nazis en cavale. Parmi eux, Walther Rauff, l’un des logisticiens de la Shoah qui a coordonné le déploiement de camions à gaz dans l’Est de l’Europe pour exterminer les Juifs. Rauff organisera, avec l’aide de l’évêque Alois Hudal et sous le nez du Vatican et de la Croix-Rouge internationale, l’exil vers la Syrie d’une cinquantaine d’anciens nazis. Dont Franz Stangl et Gustav Wagner, chefs des camps d’extermination de Sobibor et de Trilinéaire.
Au Caire, grâce à des témoignages inédits, le film suit la trace de plusieurs d’entre eux : comme Artur Schmitt, général-major de l’Afrikakorps recruté par la Ligue arabe. Ou Gerhard Mertins, ancien Waffen-SS, trafiquant d’armes et spécialiste des combats de guérilla, qui sera plus tard impliqué dans la secte néonazie « Colonia Dignidad » au Chili.
En Egypte, le film retrace également le parcours de Johann von Leers, un ancien expert de la propagande nazie recruté parmi d’autres sous Nasser. Antisémite fanatique, Von Leers avait travaillé sous le Reich avec le Grand Mufti de Jérusalem à un rapprochement idéologique du national-socialisme et de la religion musulmane.
Ces activités d’anciens nazis au Moyen-Orient suscitèrent en secret des tensions diplomatiques entre la Grande-Bretagne et la République Fédérale d’Allemagne (RFA). L’ancienne puissance coloniale craignait pour son influence en Egypte, tandis que comme le révèle le film, dans le dos de Bonn le BND recrutait certains de ces hommes pour mieux s’implanter dans la région. Tels Gerhard Mertins et Johann von Leers et plus tard, Walther Rauff.
Mais les services secrets allemands ne sont pas les seuls à s’être ainsi compromis. En revenant sur leur parcours au Moyen-Orient, le documentaire apporte de nouvelles preuves de l’impunité dont ont bénéficié de nombreux nazis. Longtemps encore après la guerre, en Europe et ailleurs, les institutions politiques, religieuses et judiciaires censées les poursuivre ont brillé par leur inertie. Beaucoup d’anciens responsables nazis ont été protégés voire même recrutés par des Etats, des entreprises et des services de renseignement de tous bords.
Presse
« Grâce à de nombreux documents des services secrets ouest-allemands, Géraldine Schwarz analyse le contexte géopolitique qui a rendu possible l’installation de ces criminels de guerre au plus près du pouvoir en Syrie ou en Egypte. Ce récit riche en informations, en témoignages et en images d’archives, éclaire la période de la guerre froide qui mena à l’inertie face à l’influence de ces criminels. » – Télérama
Festivals
Sélection au Festival International du Film d’Histoire de Pessac
I hope that a radiant smile will soon be visible on these tired war faces in Syria and especially those of the young syrian children born into war conditions.
For Roula Tsokalidou, of the University of Thessaly, the Greek language enjoys special prestige in the Eastern Mediterranean area, both as a medium of commercial transactions and as an instrument of upward social mobility. It is a language which it is used to establish closer relations, for both professional and educational purposes, with a European country, which, nevertheless, is geographically and culturally close to the Middle East.
Touched by the Mediterranean Sea and all the delights that an Arabic country can offer, Al Hamidiyah is a small village that is not much different to any other found in Syria. Except its population speaks Greek. (Video in English:)
Before the war there were over 1 million Syrian Orthodox and Greek Orthodox worshipers – a phenomenal statistic in a strong Muslim country. This is a legacy of the Byzantine Greek presence in Syria. The Greek Orthodox Church is known as the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East (formerly a Syrian city that is now in Turkey). It is the successor to the church founded by Apostles Peter and Paul. The church is now based in Damascus.
Al Hamidiyah is a town on the coastal Syrian line about 3km from the Lebanese border. The town was founded in a very short time on direct orders from the Turkish Sultan ‘Abdu’l-Hamid II circa 1897, to serve as refuge for the Muslim Cretans fleeing the ethnic cleansing in Crete in the aftermath of the departure of Turkish troops from the island.
The community, though living away from Crete (and Greece) for over a century, still speaks a Cretan dialect and has held on to Greek customs. They keep up with Greek politics, current events, and entertainment by catching the Cyprus TV signal on their satellites.
Crete fell to the Turks in the sixteenth century, after long and stubborn resistance from the Venetians who had ruled the island until then. In the following centuries, many Cretans changed their religion, converting to the doctrines of Islam and becoming Alevites, the dominant religious sect among the Turks. In those days, it was not uncommon for people to change religions back and forth, following the tides of constant rebellion against the Ottoman Empire.
It was 1866 when the final revolution in Crete broke out, eventually culminating in the Greco-Turkish War of 1897.
Cretan rebels clashed with the occupying Ottoman army, seeking independence and union with Greece. The island was torn by strife and fratricide. As before, religion divided many Cretan families. The Ottomans employed bands of armed Muslim fanatics, some of whom were native Cretans, who rampaged through Christian villages.
To some, it seemed that allegiance to religion surpassed allegiance to one’s nation. And yet, there were many among the Cretan Muslims who fought beside their Christian brothers against the common foreign enemy.
Despite this, many Christians came to regard Muslims as their arch enemies, regardless of common bloodlines. After the final withdrawal of the Ottoman army from Crete, most Cretan Muslims fled the island, fearful of revenge.
The last Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Abdul Hammid, provided them with a safe haven on the Syrian coast, in a village named after him-Hamidiyah. Almost 100 years have passed since then.The Hamediyahians are Syrian citizens, fully integrated into their host society.
Many of them fought in the Six Day War, as well as in Lebanon, and were duly decorated for their bravery. They do, however, keep their distinct identity as Cretans. They speak Greek to each other in their everyday conversations. Their instincts and aspirations are also different from their surrounding fellow-Syrians.
They are extremely hard-working and well-off compared to them. They have a strong sense of community; very rarely does a Cretan marry a non-Cretan. They have kept the traditions of their motherland very much alive, insisting on following customs long extinct on Crete itself.
At the core of this phenomenon of cultural preservation seems to lie the bond of family.Hamidiyah is certainly not the most beautiful place in the world. The road leading there from Tartus follows the coastline, passing by the ruins of Amrit, the ancient Phoenician colony, and then rushes through cornfields and vegetable fields towards the Lebanese border. This is the southernmost corner of Syria and it is not pretty; the beaches here often serve as dumping grounds for non-recyclable plastic.
The village itself has a cold industrial air about it, aesthetics guiltlessly sacrificed to the altar of functionality. When you enter Hamidiyah, this is what you see: one-story, stone-built houses, each with a small patio in front; dirt roads separating a mosque, a school, and a caf?; posters of President Assad and his son, stuck like advertisements on every wall and every shop window; people sitting outside their homes drinking tea; and barefoot children playing on the beach.
A Cretan Muslim family sent to Turkey after the population exchange in 1923.
Despite all this,Hamidiyah is a true Cretan village. Most of the wounds caused by the violence of the late-nineteenth century have slowly healed. Many families in Hamidiyah still have Christian relatives in Crete with whom they maintain contact. Television plays an important role for ethnic minority communities like Hamidiyah. The proximity of Cyprus to the Syrian coast provides a rich source of cultural contact via Greek TV stations, whose programming is pivotal in helping Hamidiyahians maintain their language.
In Hamidiyah, mothers teach their infants Greek from the cradle. We speak it amongst ourselves. That’s how we managed to preserve it so far, for 100 years!
A tour to Hamidiyah may not be included in your visit to Syria, a country replete with ancient Greek monuments. However, a Greek visitor to Hamidiyah will be happily surprised to hear the Cretan dialect spoken by the residents of this Syrian village.
The Hamidiyahians speak the Cretan dialect in its unadulterated form, as it was spoken on Crete during the last century. They are very hospitable and friendly while the elders do not hesitate to relate the circumstances that forced them out of Crete at the end of the 19th century. Although natives of Crete, they had been forced to adopt the Muslim religion. However, this did not prevent them from joining the cause of their Christian compatriots against Turkish occupation of the island.
The Hamidiyahians love Crete. You can see it in the spark of their eyes when they speak of Crete. It comes as no surprise then that they have remained faithful to the Cretan customs and language. Occasionally, Hamidians employed on fishing boats come to Crete, to return to Hamidiyah, where they rekindle the love for the land of their forefathers.
Here, two travel bloggers recounts their travel experiences in Al-Hamidiyah. They write:
When you hear Cretan songs being sung from the heart, from a man who has never been to the island, you realise how strong the Cretan presence is felt in Al Hamidiyah. These songs spoke of Crete in a different age, they were beautiful to listen to.
I was told that the dialect they speak was learnt in the home as it is not taught at school. The Hamidiyans love Crete and this family is a clear example of that. You can see it in the spark of their eyes when they speak of Crete. It came as no surprise that they, like the rest of the village, appreciate the Cretan customs and language.
Observer of the Near East 