[T]he U.S. had exfiltrated Klaus Barbie through the CIA because he was starting to be too much of a liability. He eventually ended up in Bolivia in 1951, officially as a wood mill owner but in the 1960s, Klaus secretly started working for the Bolivian dictatorship to help them track opponents to the régime — mainly socialists and communists.
Suspicions were mounting against Klaus Altmann. In the wood mill, he marked all tenth planks with a small swastika. Then, from 1966 to 1971, he headed the Compagnie Transmaritima Boliviana, the biggest Bolivian maritime shipping company that was also responsible for fuelling the drug and weapons trade in South America. In the ’70s, it seems he was once again hired by the CIA.
This was bringing him international attention, and people like the Klarsfelds, who made it their life mission to track ex-Nazis, were on his tail.
It all culminated in 1972. French Journalist Ladislas de Hoyos was set on unmasking Klaus Altmann once and for all. He organized an interview with Klaus which was to be monitored and overseen by the Bolivian government — then still an anti-communist dictatorship. The questions in the interview were sent to be approved beforehand and they would be asked in Spanish only. It would last only a few minutes and be monitored by Bolivian soldiers.
Click here for events that happened today (February 5).
1933: German emergency decree dissolved all elected bodies in Prussia.
1939: Spanish Nationalist troops captured Gerona.
1940: Fascist submarine U‐41 (Kapitänleutnant Gustav‐Adolf Mugler) damaged unarmed and unescorted 8,096‐ton Dutch tanker Ceronia at 0332 hours.
1941: Axis‐held hills near Dongolaas Gorge had to defend against the Allies as the Axis lost its ship Ryfylke two miles off the Norwegian coast near Stadlandet.
1942: The Axis captured Derna and Tmimi, Libya, but it lost its ship Konsul Schulte in the Porsanger Fjord off Honningsvaag, Norway. Axis troops assaulted the Pulau Ubin island to the northeast of Singapore, too.
1943: Benito Mussolini personally took over the Italian Foreign Ministry after firing his son‐in‐law Galeazzo Ciano.
1944: The Reich’s Naval High Command temporarily halted preparations for Operation Sealion, seeing that at this stage of the war an invasion of Britain was unlikely to happen, and Oberstleutnant Egon Mayer became the first Luftwaffe fighter pilot operating solely on the western front to reach 100 victories. Meanwhile, Axis and Allied artillery pieces bombarded each other at Anzio, Italy as the Sakurai Force of the Japanese 55th Division penetrated lines held by Indian 7th Division in Arakan, Burma undetected.
1945: The Ravensbrück concentration camp’s staff executed Allied POW Violette Szabo for insubordination. Meanwhile, Tōkyō named Vice Admiral Shigeru Fukudome the Imperiala Japanese 10th Area Fleet’s commander officer while still holding command of the 1st Southern Expeditionary Fleet; they also named Rear Admiral Bunji Asakura his chief of staff. On the same day, the Imperial Japanese Navy 13th Air Fleet transferred from the Southwest Area Fleet to become part of the 10th Area Fleet; it brought in the strength of two air flotillas and seven air groups.