Third Position

Third Position is Juan Perón’s declared position against both Marxism and liberalism, but in the novel it is more than a formula for standing outside the left–right divide. At a postwar meeting in the Casa Rosada, the doctrine supplies the public language for a gathering whose practical purpose is to welcome Third Reich–linked personnel to Argentina and turn their expertise toward national power. The gap between the proclaimed ideological alternative and the work of accommodating Nazi fugitives gives the expression its political force.

The doctrine as public argument

Perón presents himself as an enemy of communism and capitalism alike, leading a popular movement that, he claims, transcends the division between left and right. The invited Europeans applaud; they have heard versions of this argument many times in their own languages. The scene makes Third Position legible as a familiar political performance, not simply an abstract midpoint between two systems. Its appeal lies in presenting an independent national course while defining both liberalism and Marxism as adversaries.

The setting makes that performance consequential. The meeting is held under the pretext that Perón will explain his position in the international order after the world war. Yet the ideological address quickly gives way to a discussion of whom Argentina should receive and for what purpose. Third Position thus functions as the declared rationale around a more specific political arrangement.

From doctrine to recruitment

Perón is interested in receiving civilians and military personnel, technicians and scientists, connected to the Third Reich, with the aim of making Argentina a power. He interprets the emerging Cold War as an opportunity: a new conflict between the West and the Soviet Union might turn the people treated as enemies today into allies tomorrow. Argentina, in this calculation, should be ready to welcome them. The doctrine’s rejection of both blocs therefore accompanies a strategic readiness to use the expertise of the defeated Nazi regime.

Perón’s right-hand man, Rodolfo Freude, organizes the meeting to address this project. Its attendees include people involved in networks assisting collaborators and war criminals who have taken refuge in Francoist Spain. The meeting is not only a statement of ideological identity; it is a step in organizing a route from European refuge to Argentine reception. Perón returns to the same group the next day to settle details and personally proposes a confidential official body to receive this class of immigrant.

Political context and contradiction

The novel presents Third Position against the realities of postwar power, not outside them. Perón’s expectation that the Cold War could recast yesterday’s Nazis as tomorrow’s useful allies turns ideological opposition into a practical test of political judgment. The claim to transcend the established camps coexists with an effort to recruit people associated with one of the defeated regimes, on the assumption that anti-communist usefulness may outweigh their recent political history.

That tension connects the Argentine gathering to a wider pattern in the book: the language of anti-communism can reorder who is treated as a threat and who is accepted as an ally. The doctrine’s significance lies in this conjunction of rhetoric and policy. It offers a distinct political vocabulary, while the meeting reveals how that vocabulary can serve a concrete postwar project of shelter, recruitment, and state-building.