First Peronist Period

The First Peronist Period is presented as a project of national transformation whose promise of dignity for workers and independence from foreign control was bound to a powerful leader-centered state. By 1946, Juan Perón and Eva Perón had become Argentina’s dominant political couple, supported by the Church, the military, nationalists, and workers. The period’s defining tension lies in the distance between its language of popular liberation and the authoritarian methods used to consolidate power; its violent end in 1955 also changes the political landscape through which Josef Mengele and other fugitives must navigate.

A project of national renewal

The Peróns announced an aesthetic and industrial revolution and a proletarian regime, presenting Peronism, or Justicialism, as a new beginning for Argentina. Juan Perón addressed mass audiences over the radio and in public, promising an end to humiliation and dependency and a more prosperous life. His political appeal rested on the claim that the country could escape both capitalism, which he described as exploitative, and communism, which he described as enslaving. Peronism was offered as a popular alternative capable of reconciling individual and collective interests, and of joining material well-being to spiritual values.

The government’s social and economic measures gave that promise institutional form. As secretary of welfare, Juan Perón cultivated support among workers; as president, he strengthened public services with backing from the General Confederation of Labour, bringing the national union into the state apparatus. His government challenged the privileges of the oligarchy and centralized or nationalized railways, the telephone network, and other strategic sectors held by foreign interests. The narrative places these policies against a vision of economic growth, self-sufficiency, national pride, and dignity, while also showing the concentration of authority that accompanied them.

Eva Perón and the politics of popular devotion

Eva Perón became the public face of the regime’s promise to the poor and of its active presence across the country. She received trade-union delegates in evening dress, visited hospitals and factories, opened new stretches of road, and distributed practical goods, including dentures and sewing machines. During tours by train, she threw bundles of pesos to crowds. Her foundation assisted people described as underprivileged, while her visits and public appearances turned welfare into a visible, personal relationship between the government and its supporters.

That relationship acquired a devotional character. Crowds gathered to see Eva Perón at the Ministry of Labour and at her foundation’s headquarters, and supporters treated contact with her as a form of blessing. In 1947, her international tour included meetings with Pope Pius XII and several heads of state. The account sets her generosity and relentless public work alongside the political uses of her image: banners across Buenos Aires joined her name to Juan Perón’s, presenting the couple as icons of the nation. Her role was not confined to ceremony. As the regime prepared for re-election, she hid weapons and made plans for a private workers’ militia, a sign that the period’s mass politics also carried an increasingly defensive and coercive edge.

Mass politics and centralized authority

The regime’s popular appeal did not prevent it from narrowing the space for opposition. Peronists reshaped universities, the press, and legal and administrative institutions, while expanding the secret service. The political order combined promises of inclusion and public provision with censorship, dismissals, and state pressure. Its popular imagery could be vivid and theatrical, but the institutional consequences were concrete: independent centers of influence came under attack, and dissent became more difficult to express.

The 1951 campaign for re-election brought these features together. As Juan Perón turned toward another victory, the regime increased propaganda and prohibited defamation of the authorities. The newspaper La Prensa was shut down, expropriated, and made an instrument of the General Confederation of Labour; military personnel numbers doubled, and dissidents were imprisoned. Juan Perón offered the vice presidency to Eva Perón. At a mass gathering on 22 August, hundreds of thousands assembled to hear the couple announce their candidacy. When the union’s secretary-general called for Eva Perón to be proclaimed vice-presidential candidate, she asked for time to decide. The crowd continued to demand an answer, and she promised to announce her decision on the radio that evening. The scene shows both the force of her personal following and the political pressure exerted by the crowd and the movement around her.

The book also places the Peronist spectacle beside the judgment of Nazi fugitives living in Argentina. Uli Rudel and Josef Mengele regarded the rally as evidence of what they saw as Juan Perón’s theatrical dictatorship; their disdain for the crowd is part of their own ideological perspective, not a neutral assessment of the movement. Away from the gathering, Uli Rudel passed Josef Mengele a confidential report that Eva Perón was seriously ill and suggested that her illness could leave Juan Perón in a precarious position. This private exchange contrasts with the public image of political unity and foreshadows the vulnerability beneath the regime’s display of strength.

Crisis and overthrow in 1955

By 1955, the political order was under mounting strain. On 16 June, anti-Peronist military leaders bombed the presidential palace and May Square. Juan Perón survived the attempt, but the confrontation intensified the crisis between the government and its opponents. The Church, angered by measures that included ending subsidies to religious schools and legalizing divorce and prostitution, became a center of opposition. Demonstrations and counter-demonstrations, arrests of priests, and attacks on churches marked a widening conflict. Juan Perón threatened severe reprisals against his enemies as mutinies and rumors of a coup spread.

In September, the navy blockaded Buenos Aires and threatened the refineries. With Argentina on the verge of civil war, Juan Perón resigned and fled aboard a Paraguayan gunboat bound for Asunción. A military junta took power, followed soon afterward by a government led by Pedro Eugenio Aramburu. The new regime declared its intention to purge the country of Peronism. Under the Liberating Revolution, union leaders were arrested and thousands of officials dismissed; the authorities renamed places associated with the Peróns and removed symbols of their rule. Eva Perón’s foundation was closed, its property dismantled, and statues of the couple toppled. These measures did not simply end a presidency: they attempted to erase its public language and symbols from everyday life.

Aftermath and the changing conditions of refuge

The overthrow also reshaped the political setting for Josef Mengele’s life in Argentina. In 1955, while seeking a national passport, he faced a lengthy bureaucratic process requiring recommendations, guarantees, and certificates; he had only a residence permit. After the fall of Juan Perón, he completed the paperwork amid rumors of another coup and renewed political violence. The narrative later characterizes earlier Peronist and military governments as more lenient toward Nazi fugitives than the democratically elected Argentine government that followed. That contrast made Mengele fear that Argentina might accept a West German extradition request.

The pursuit of Mengele makes the international consequences of this changing climate visible. Hermann Langbein, a former prisoner of Auschwitz who investigated Mengele, traced him partly through a 1954 legal notice announcing his divorce. On 25 February 1959, a prosecutor in Freiburg im Breisgau issued an arrest warrant for multiple counts of premeditated murder and attempted murder. The demand for extradition then entered a slow chain of legal and diplomatic procedures in Argentina, while a separate request was expected in Paraguay. In 1960, after the kidnapping of Adolf Eichmann, the hunt for Nazi war criminals became more public and a warrant for Mengele’s arrest was issued in Argentina. These later events fall beyond the period itself, but they show its continuing relevance in the book: the political transformations of 1955 altered the conditions of refuge without ending the cross-border struggle over accountability.