From Hitler to the Junta and back: memories of a Wehrmacht Veteran in Argentina

This paper re-visits Nazi immigration to Argentina and poses the question of how German immigrants fleeing postwar Europe recovered from the collapse and re-articulated political subjectivities in their new homeland. Instead of centering high-profile Nazis, it is interested in ordinary Germans and analyzes the German language oral history testimony (2011) and Spanish language memoir (2010) of one Wehrmacht veteran. By scrutinizing the interplay between the legacies of Nazism and the last military dictatorship (1976-1983), the paper ultimately argues that it is these intertwined legacies that help this ex-Wehrmacht soldier re-articulate his political positions vis-à-vis the past and the present.