THE U.S. 🇺🇸 BACKED PRESIDENT OF BOLIVIA 🇧🇴 HAS FLED THE COUNTRY

[Kid Berwyn]

13. Dulles, Nixon, CIA and the NAZIs did the number on Bolivia

The second life of Klaus Barbie: A Nazi war criminal's rise in Bolivia

After fleeing Europe, the notorious "Butcher of Lyon" lived undisturbed in Bolivia for a quarter of a century.
Military generals used his knowledge to combat left-wing opposition.

by Werner J. Marti
NZZ, July 2, 2025

Summary

After World War II, Klaus Barbie, former head of the Gestapo in Lyon, managed to escape to Bolivia, where he served military regimes and drug lords.

He assisted the Bolivian dictatorship in their repression campaign against the communist opposition, brokered arms deals, and played a key role in the violent 1980 coup that brought the drug mafia to power.

After the fall of the military dictatorship, Barbie was arrested in 1983, extradited to France, and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Excerpt...

When the revolutionary government was overthrown in a military coup in 1964, new opportunities arose for Barbie. He managed to curry favor with the new government of General René Barrientos, which had dedicated itself to the fight against communism. Suddenly, Barbie's experience with combating the French Resistance was regarded as a useful tool in the government's fight against communist infiltration. He became an official military adviser on counterinsurgency, even receiving a Bolivian diplomatic passport.

The presence of radical left-wing forces among the revolutionaries had made the country a target for international communist infiltration. Fidel Castro, who had risen to power in Cuba in 1959, considered the troubled Bolivia a suitable starting point for spreading his revolution throughout South America. In early 1966, he sent Che Guevara to Bolivia with a small group of men, where they were tasked with establishing a guerrilla movement among local farmers. The operation failed, however: The group was wiped out and Che Guevara was shot while in captivity in October 1967. Barbie likely played a role behind the scenes.

Employee of the German intelligence service

In May 1966, Barbie was even recruited by the German foreign intelligence service BND, which, in the context of the Cold War, was now extending its reach to Latin America. Under the codename «Adler,» (eagle) he reported on the development of left-wing forces in Bolivia. Although the Germans were seemingly unaware of his true identity, they did not make any particular effort to inquire about his personal background either. When they wanted to bring him to Germany for training in late 1966 and Barbie refused to travel there, suspicions arose about his past. The BND then considered further cooperation too risky and terminated their working relationship with Barbie without providing any further details.

Starting in 1966, Barbie became involved in the arms trade, acting as the trading company Merex's representative in Bolivia. The company, owned by former Waffen-SS officer Gerhard Mertins, also worked with the BND to export weapons that the German armed forces no longer needed. Barbie further arranged the delivery of Austrian Steyr-Daimler-Puch tanks, which were later used in the military coup of 1980.

Source: https://www.nzz.ch/english/the-second-life-of-klaus-barbie-a-nazi-war-criminals-rise-in-bolivia-ld.1891151

Evil on behalf of the Ownership Class by Capitalism's Invisible Army.