Argentina’s President Javier Milei Moves to Declassify Files on Nazi Fugitives: A Bold Break with Secrecy

Edited by: Fern Sidman

In a historic move aimed at lifting the veil on a dark chapter of global postwar history, Argentine President Javier Milei has vowed to fully declassify government records concerning Nazi war criminals who fled to Argentina following the fall of the Third Reich. As reported by The Gateway Pundit on Tuesday, this sweeping effort promises to expose long-shrouded details about how senior members of Hitler’s regime—and their collaborators—sought and secured refuge in South America.

The effort stands in sharp contrast to countries such as Canada, where, as The Gateway Pundit report noted, former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has refused to disclose documents relating to Ukrainian Nazi collaborators who settled in Canada during and after World War II. By comparison, Milei’s initiative signals an uncompromising commitment to transparency and a reckoning with both Argentina’s past and the broader legacy of World War II.

According to the information provided in The Gateway Pundit report, the push to open the Nazi files was catalyzed by a meeting between Milei and Senator Steve Daines, a Montana Republican who led a congressional delegation to Buenos Aires. It was Daines, according to sources cited by The Gateway Pundit, who personally requested the declassification, to which Milei responded by giving an unequivocal green light.

“The President gave orders that all the documentation that existed in any State agency be released so that everything is known,” explained Argentina’s Chief of Staff Guillermo Francos, in remarks reported by Argentine media outlet El Clarin and translated by The Gateway Pundit.

This initiative will reportedly involve every level of the Argentine state, with a special focus on records held by the Ministry of Defense and other branches of the federal government. The Gateway Pundit reported that files may include banking records, financial transactions involving Swiss banks, and immigration-related data that could help identify how, and with whose help, prominent Nazi figures assimilated into Argentine society.

Francos emphasized that the effort extends beyond Nazi migration and is part of a broader push to declassify archives from Argentina’s military dictatorship in the 1970s—a period during which state repression and clandestine operations left behind a complex and often suppressed paper trail.

“There was a decree ordering the release of the archives, and it had not been done,” Francos noted, as per the report in The Gateway Pundit. “What the President proposes is that they are archives of a part of history that has to be public, that has to be in the General Archive of the Nation so that anyone can have access.”

Argentina’s postwar history has long been entangled with that of escaped Nazi officials, many of whom found sanctuary in the country under the rule of President Juan Perón, who governed during and after World War II. Also indicated in The Gateway Pundit report, while some Nazis arrived in South America through underground networks like the so-called “ratlines,” others entered legally under false identities, assisted by sympathetic elements within governments, churches, and even intelligence agencies.

Among the most notorious Nazi fugitives to settle in Argentina were Adolf Eichmann, one of the chief architects of the Holocaust, who lived in Buenos Aires until he was kidnapped by Israeli Mossad agents in 1960, and Josef Mengele, the infamous doctor of Auschwitz, who evaded capture for decades and is believed to have traveled between several South American countries, including Argentina, the report in The Gateway Pundit said.

The documents that President Milei seeks to declassify are believed to contain details not only about these high-profile individuals but also about the broader logistical and institutional mechanisms that facilitated the Nazi diaspora into Argentina—a process shrouded in bureaucratic secrecy and aided by a then-sympathetic regime.

Milei’s move—though bold—is not unprecedented. Historians and activists have long called for complete transparency surrounding postwar Nazi migration. However, few governments have shown the political will to confront the implications of such disclosures.

As The Gateway Pundit report highlighted, Canada’s refusal to release similar records, particularly concerning Ukrainian collaborators with Nazi forces, has drawn international criticism and hampered public understanding of how many former Axis supporters quietly assimilated into North American life.

In this context, Argentina’s action may serve as a catalyst for broader international archival transparency—especially if the documents reveal transnational financial networks or implicate foreign institutions in shielding or enabling Nazi war criminals.

President Milei’s policy, while controversial to some, is ultimately a reaffirmation of democratic values rooted in truth, historical accountability, and access to information. The decision reflects a growing understanding that democracies cannot selectively forget the past without distorting the present.

For Argentina, whose 20th-century legacy includes both harboring war criminals and enduring its own military dictatorship, the declassification of these files represents an opportunity for institutional redemption and civic healing. For historians and descendants of Holocaust survivors, it opens the door to long-delayed answers.

And for the world, it serves as a reminder that justice delayed does not have to be justice denied, especially when political leaders choose transparency over silence.