US Operation Condor: Echoes of Nazi German, Imperial Japanese, and Soviet Atrocities

I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government.

Martin Luther King

The Operation Condor Initiative, a covert collaboration among several South American dictatorships during the Cold War, bears striking similarities to the wartime atrocities committed by Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and the Soviet Union. As we delve into the historical intricacies of these seemingly disparate events, a compelling narrative emerges, revealing parallel patterns of authoritarianism, state-sponsored violence, and the erosion of human rights. This exploration not only sheds light on the shared strategies employed by these distinct regimes but also invites critical reflection on the ethical dimensions of international interventions, raising important questions about the pursuit of power and the implications of geopolitical alliances. In this investigation, we will navigate the historical landscapes of Operation Condor, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and the Soviet Union to draw meaningful connections that illuminate the dark undercurrents of political repression and human suffering that transcend time and borders.

Operation Condor - United States of America

Operation Condor was a formal system to coordinate repression among the countries of the Southern Cone that operated from the mid-1970s until the early eighties. It aimed to persecute and eliminate political, social, trade-union and student activists. Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Uruguay, Chile, and Argentina joined forces with the goal to eliminate socialists, guerrillas, and any political dissidents.

Authoritarian regimes inspired by the National Security Doctrine expanded across the length and breadth of South America under the geopolitical context of the Cold War. Authoritarian regimes swept across the region, beginning with Paraguay in 1954, followed by Brazil in 1964, and then came another wave of military coups that struck Bolivia in 1971, Uruguay and Chile in 1973, and, finally, Argentina in 1976. The regimes brutally and systematically repressed all forms of opposition, targeting not only members of leftist armed groups, but also political leaders, teachers, students, journalists, union leaders, and political and socialist activists. Though there were some differences between the dictatorships, they collectively perpetrated thousands of crimes against humanity such as extrajudicial executions, illegal captures, forced disappearances, torture and inhumane treatment, baby stealing, and sexual violence.

Operation Condor was officially founded on November 28, 1975 in Santiago, Chile during the closing session of the First Meeting of National Intelligence, and it was signed by intelligence representatives from Argentina (Jorge Casas, Navy captain, SIDE−the Argentine State Intelligence Secretariat), Bolivia (Carlos Mena, Army major), Chile (Manuel Contreras Sepúlveda, head of the DINA−the National Intelligence Office), Uruguay (José Fons, Army coronel) and Paraguay (Benito Guanes Serrano, Army coronel).

Within the context of Operation Condor, the coordinated repression passed through different phases:

• In the first, a centralized database was created on guerrilla movements, left-wing parties and groups, trade unionists, religious groups, liberal politicians and supposed enemies of the authoritarian regimes involved in the operation.

• In the second, people considered political “enemies” at the regional level were identified and attacked.

• In the third and final phase, operations were carried out to track down and eliminate persons located in other countries in the Americas and Europe.

Operation Condor began under the context of the cold war, as the defining ideals of U.S. foreign policy were to fiercely oppose communism. This fear of communism led to the Domino Theory, which was the idea that one country “falling” to communism in a region would lead to other countries in the region becoming communist, and countries would fall like dominoes in support of communism.

The actions performed under Operation Condor are symptomatic of a theme common throughout late 20th-century US foreign policy: the notion of an “imperial presidency”. This theme emerged in the 1960s, involving the president making key foreign policy decisions and committing great numbers of US troops without regard to the views of Congress. “Imperial presidency” was especially prevalent after and during the Vietnam Conflict and the Watergate scandal, allowing the Cold War era as a period where US presidents took more personal control over foreign policy than ever before. This helps to assess the motives behind Operation Condor, a campaign largely enacted without the permission of Congress. It is evident that the presidents bypassed Congress due to the fact that they were likely to forbid intervention in South America, with the explanation that there was insufficient evidence for levels of terrorism requiring foreign intervention: the true motives were therefore likely economic, due to the presidents’ unwillingness for their motives to be uncovered by the government. The president’s more personal rule would make the US more inclined to intervene based on economic gain: without a consultative body, these motives are seen as the most significant matters and, as Marx predicted, dwarf the comparitively futile ideas of ideology.

The Shlaudeman memorandum is entitled “The ‘Third World War‘ and South America.” It highlights how, over 35 years ago, close allies of the US had developed both a set of specific practices implemented in secret and aimed at fighting “the terrorists”, and a full discourse emphasising at every turn the fact that they were “at war” against “terrorism”. It also shows that the US government was clearly aware of the extreme nature of the methods used by the Condor states. Thus, Shlaudeman explains that “the terrorists … have provoked repressive reactions, including torture and quasi-governmental death squads”, and that these governments resorted to “bloody counter terrorism”.

The casualties from the Operation are staggering and atrocious. It’s estimated that there were 60,000-80,000 deaths in South America due to Condor, along with 400,000 political prisoners captured. Operation Condor utilised kidnappings, assassinations, and state-sanctioned terrorism.

Operation Condor is incredibly recent history for the United States, and demonstrates the horrors that the U.S. has had a hand in across the globe. The U.S.’s involvement in the kidnapping of political prisoners and the assassinations of professors, politicians, and other left-wing luminaries is entirely antithetical to the beliefs that supposedly fuel the United States. The U.S.’s obsession with free-market capitalism and unequivocal hatred of communism led to the state being willing to look past incredibly dramatic human rights abuses. The U.S. must look to rectify their past mistakes regarding Operation Condor, and look at the leaders that they support with much more nuance and criticism. If this doesn’t happen, the U.S. is doomed to repeatedly support regimes that commit the same atrocities that happened in Latin America during Operation Condor.

The Holocaust - Nazi Germany

The Holocaust (1933–1945) was the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million European Jews by the Nazi German regime and its allies and collaborators. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum defines the years of the Holocaust as 1933–1945. The Holocaust era began in January 1933 when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power in Germany. It ended in May 1945, when the Allied Powers defeated Nazi Germany in World War II. The Holocaust is also sometimes referred to as “the Shoah,” the Hebrew word for “catastrophe.”

The Holocaust was a Nazi German initiative that took place throughout German- and Axis-controlled Europe. It affected nearly all of Europe’s Jewish population, which in 1933 numbered 9 million people. The Holocaust began in Germany after Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor in January 1933. Almost immediately, the Nazi German regime (which called itself the Third Reich) excluded Jews from German economic, political, social, and cultural life. Throughout the 1930s, the regime increasingly pressured Jews to emigrate. But the Nazi persecution of Jews spread beyond Germany. Throughout the 1930s, Nazi Germany pursued an aggressive foreign policy. This culminated in World War II, which began in Europe in 1939. Prewar and wartime territorial expansion eventually brought millions more Jewish people under German control.

Nazi Germany’s territorial expansion began in 1938–1939. During this time, Germany annexed neighboring Austria and the Sudetenland and occupied the Czech lands. On September 1, 1939, Nazi Germany began World War II (1939–1945) by attacking Poland. Over the next two years, Germany invaded and occupied much of Europe, like most of Northern and Western Europe (Denmark, Norway, France, Belgium, Netherlands, and Luxembourg) as well as western parts of the Soviet Union and other Eastern European countries like Yugoslavia and Greece. Nazi Germany further extended its control by forming alliances with the governments of Italy, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria. It also created puppet states in Slovakia and Croatia. Together these countries made up the European members of the Axis alliance, which also included Japan.

The Nazi “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” (“Endlösung der Judenfrage”) was the deliberate and systematic mass murder of European Jews. It was the last stage of the Holocaust and took place from 1941 to 1945. Though many Jews were killed before the "Final Solution” began, the vast majority of Jewish victims were murdered during this period. As part of the “Final Solution,” Nazi Germany committed mass murder on an unprecedented scale. There were two main methods of killing. One method was mass shooting. German units carried out mass shootings on the outskirts of villages, towns, and cities throughout eastern Europe. The other method was asphyxiation with poison gas. Gassing operations were conducted at killing centers and with mobile gas vans.

The Holocaust specifically refers to the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews. However, there were also millions of other victims of Nazi persecution and murder. In the 1930s, the regime targeted a variety of alleged domestic enemies within German society. As the Nazis extended their reach during World War II, millions of other Europeans were also subjected to Nazi brutality. The Nazi regime also targeted Germans whose activities were deemed harmful to German society. These included men accused of homosexuality, persons accused of being professional or habitual criminals, and so-called asocials (such as people identified as vagabonds, beggars, prostitutes, pimps, and alcoholics). Tens of thousands of these victims were incarcerated in prisons and concentration camps. The regime also forcibly sterilised and persecuted Afro-Germans.

The Nazi regime employed extreme measures against groups considered to be racial, civilisational, or ideological enemies. This included Roma (Gypsies), Poles (especially the Polish intelligentsia and elites), Soviet officials, and Soviet prisoners of war. The Nazis perpetrated mass murder against these groups. 13,038,045 people would perish to Nazi’s Germany’s agenda of hate and racial supremacy.

Japanese Imperial Oppression - Imperial Japan

It all began in 1931 when Japan, seeking to increase the size of its empire and exploit China’s vast natural resources, invaded and occupied the province of Manchuria. Six years later, judging its occupation a success, Japan mounted a full-scale invasion of China, a move that sparked a full blown war. After the Japanese captured the Chinese city of Nanjing in December 1937, they perpetrated one of the worst massacres of the 20th century (and there’s some stiff competition for that). In Nanjing, Japanese troops “let loose like the hordes of Genghis Khan,” writes British historian Edward Russell. Soldiers rampaged the streets, murdering anyone they saw. Russell found burial statistics indicating more than 150,000 people were buried in mass graves, most with their hands tied behind their backs. He estimated 200,000 had died; later estimates range to more than 300,000 in a period of just 6 weeks. Hirohito (1926 - 1989), the emperor of Japan knew of the slaughter and responded by bestowing military honours on the commanders in charge. Also, Hirohito would sanction the three alls policy in China “Kill all, Burn all, Loot all”. As the China war began, Hirohito established an ‘Imperial Headquarters’ within his palace in Tokyo, from where he acted as Supreme Commander of the armed forces.

In 1910, Korea was annexed by the Empire of Japan after years of war, intimidation and political machinations; the country would be considered a part of Japan. In order to establish control over its new protectorate, the Empire of Japan waged an all-out war on Korean culture. Schools and universities forbade speaking Korean and emphasized manual labor and loyalty to the Emperor. Public places adopted Japanese, too, and an edict to make films in Japanese soon followed. It also became a crime to teach history from non-approved texts and authorities burned over 200,000 Korean historical documents, essentially wiping out the historical memory of Korea. During the occupation, Japan took over Korea’s labor and land. Nearly 100,000 Japanese families settled in Korea with the land they had been given; they chopped down trees by the millions and planted non-native species, transforming a familiar landscape into something many Koreans didn’t recognize. Nearly 725,000 Korean workers were made to work in Japan and its other colonies, and as World War II loomed, Japan forced hundreds of thousands of Korean women into life as “comfort women”—sexual slaves who served in military brothels.

Hirohito reacted to the events in North China by first considering the possible threat from the Soviet Union. One week earlier, on June 30, Japan’s recently mutinous First Division had been building fortifications on Kanchazu Island in the Amur River. At that point along the ambiguously demarcated border between northern Manchukuo and the Soviet Union, Russian troops came onto the island, a firefight ensued, and the Japanese destroyed two Soviet gunboats. Japan turned its military interests to northeast China, a region bordering the Soviet Far East, and disputes over the demarcation line led to growing tensions with the Soviet Union. Border conflicts between Imperial Japan and the Soviet Union, as well as their client states Manchukuo and Mongolia, such as the Battle of Khalkhin Gol in 1939, resulted in a Soviet-Mongolian victory

Inspired by Nazi Germany's victories in Western Europe in 1940 following the Fall of France, Japan aspired to seize Southeast Asian colonies held by European powers. The first conquest was French Indochina, where Japan, with the consent of the Vichy France government, annexed the territory and established military bases. In response to Japan's invasion of Indochina, the United States, under the leadership of Franklin D. Roosevelt, imposed an oil embargo on Japan. On September 27, Japan signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy. Hirohito’s Imperial Conference played a role in defining the steps to attacking Pearl Harbour, the final decision sanctioned by the conference consisted of three parts. First, Japan "will complete preparations for war" with the United States, Great Britain, and the Netherlands by the last ten days of October. Second, Japan "will concurrently take all possible diplomatic measures vis-à-vis the United States and Great Britain" to attain its objectives. Third, if there is no prospect of Japan's demands being met "by the first ten days of October through the diplomatic negotiations," Japan "will immediately decide to commence hostilities against the United States, Great Britain, and the Netherlands.” This ultimately led to the attack on Pearl Harbour on December 7, 1941, with Hirohito’s attitude shifting from reluctance to acceptance of the attack. The attack prompted the United States to declare war on Japan, followed by declarations of war from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy against the United States.

Subsequently, Japan under Hirohito continued its expansion in Southeast Asia by invading other European colonies such as British Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, Australian Papua and New Guinea, the Philippines, British Borneo, Portuguese Timor, and British Burma. Japan also gained an ally in Thailand due to fear of it being conquered by Japan and losing its sovereignty. Japan desired for a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere that was used by Japan as an excuse to invade Southeast Asia and East Asia, in the name of fighting Western imperialism in Asia. Japan would commit a series of war crimes in the newly occupied Southeast Asian countries like massacres, forced labour, rape, looting, and many more. 9,317,081 would lose their lives thanks to Imperial Japan.

Stalinist Terror - Soviet Union

Stalin’s collectivisation policies led to the Holodomor (death by hunger, in Ukrainian) refers to the starvation of millions of Ukrainians in 1932–33 as a result of Soviet policies. The majority of Ukrainians, who were small-scale or subsistence farmers, resisted. The state confiscated the property of the independent farmers and forced them to work on government collective farms. The more prosperous farmers (owning a few head of livestock, for example) and those who resisted collectivization were branded kulaks (rich peasants) and declared enemies of the state who deserved to be eliminated as a class. Thousands were thrown out of their homes and deported. The Holodomor can be seen as the culmination of an assault by the Communist Party and Soviet state on the Ukrainian peasantry, who resisted Soviet policies. This assault occurred in the context of a campaign of intimidation and arrests of Ukrainian intellectuals, writers, artists, religious leaders, and political cadres, who were seen as a threat to Soviet ideological and state-building aspirations.

The creation of a system of concentration and correctional labour camps began in the Soviet Union in 1919 but “blossomed” during Stalin’s reign of terror. The word Gulag is actually an acronym (used from 1930) for (Glavnoye Upravleniye LAGerey), or Main Camp Administration, which was a special division of the secret police and the Soviet Ministry of the Interior overseeing the use of the physical labour of prisoners. Alongside criminals and recidivists, the majority of Gulag prisoners were completely innocent people locked up for a broad variety of political reasons – on the basis of trumped up charges or ethnicity, or even without apparent cause. These political prisoners suffered the most because, on top of the brutal hard labour conditions and the despotism of guards, they were terrorised by criminal prisoners. Historians estimate the total number of Gulag prisoners at 15-18 million, of whom at least 1.5 million did not survive their incarceration.

The Soviet Union's attitude towards Nazi Germany shifted on August 23, 1939, when they signed the controversial Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. This pact, between two of the largest totalitarian states of the time, outlined plans for the division of Eastern Europe into spheres of influence between the two powers. This decision was influenced by Stalin's desire to restore the Soviet Union to its pre-1918 borders, and it aligned with Hitler's shared values of authoritarianism. The first victim of this expansionist agenda was Poland, invaded by Germany on September 1, 1939, followed by the Soviet Red Army on September 17, 1939, resulting in the partitioning of Poland between the two powers. Subsequently, the Soviet Union attempted to annex Finland on November 30, 1939, but their efforts were thwarted by the skilled Finnish troops. A peace treaty between the Soviet Union and Finland was signed on March 12, 1940, in which Finland had to cede some territories back to the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union also annexed the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) as well as Bukovina and Bessarabia from Romania on June 15, 1940, and July 28, 1940, respectively.

The Soviet Union committed war crimes in the territories they occupied. In Poland, the Soviet NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs) executed thousands of Polish military officers, police, and intelligentsia in the Katyn Forest and other locations. The mass killing was part of a broader series of executions carried out by the Soviet authorities. In Finland, the USSR conducted at least 45 terrorist attacks against Finnish civilians living in the undefended villages along the border areas. At least 181 civilians were killed in the attacks. In the newly annexed Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, thousands of people were deported or executed during the occupation. In the newly annexed Romanian regions of Northern Bukovina and Bessarabia, the Romanian population faced displacement and persecution.

After the end of World War II, the Soviet Union established pro-Soviet puppet governments in East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia (until 1948), and Albania (until 1960s). The Soviet Union quelled down rebellions in all these countries to consolidate rule. The rebellions suppressed are:

1. East Germany (1953)

2. Poland (1956 and 1981)

3. Czechoslovakia (1968)

4. Hungary (1956)

5. Bulgaria (1944-1956)

6. Romania (1944-1962)

13,038,405 would lose their lives thanks to the Soviet Union’s Stalinism.

Conclusion

In conclusion, examining the parallels between the Operation Condor Initiative pursued by the US and the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and the Soviet Union reveals a sobering reflection on the dark facets of power dynamics and geopolitical manoeuvring. While each historical context has its unique nuances, the common thread of human rights abuses, suppression of dissent, and the prioritisation of strategic interests over ethical considerations cannot be ignored. It serves as a stark reminder that even nations championing democracy and freedom may, at times, find themselves entangled in actions that echo the transgressions of their adversaries. Acknowledging these uncomfortable similarities prompts us to scrutinise the complexities of international relations, urging us to aspire towards a world where justice and human rights prevail over the pursuit of unchecked power.