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cover of episode The Nazi Fugitive Who Created The Modern Cocaine Cartel & Befriended Escobar

The Nazi Fugitive Who Created The Modern Cocaine Cartel & Befriended Escobar

2024/12/31
logo of podcast The Underworld Podcast

The Underworld Podcast
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Klaus Barbie, also known as the "Butcher of Lyon," evaded capture and fled to Bolivia, where he played a crucial role in the 1980 cocaine coup. His alliance with drug lords and fascists led to immense suffering and upheaval in Bolivia.
  • Klaus Barbie was a former Nazi officer known for his brutal methods in Lyon, France.
  • Barbie fled to Bolivia, where he aligned with drug lords and fascists.
  • He played a significant role in the 1980 Bolivian cocaine coup.
  • Barbie's methods included torture and repression, reminiscent of his Nazi past.
  • The coup was backed by significant drug money, leading to the term "cocaine coup."

Shownotes Transcript

When Klaus Barbie, the “Butcher of Lyon”, escaped Europe at the end of the war and fled to Latin America, he didn’t follow his fellow Nazis into hiding. In fact, Barbie remained on the books of western spy agencies, including the CIA, and reaped enormous wealth, power, and protection.

Barbie then hooked up with the fascists and druglords of Bolivia, christened a death squad called the “Bridesgrooms of Death” — and took the country in a brutal coup backed so far to the hilt by marching powder, that Bolivians still call it the “Cocaine Coup”.

But Barbie’s work wasn’t done there. As reporters and Nazi hunters uncovered his true identity, the fugitive mass-murderer connected Bolivian “King of Cocaine” Roberto Suarez Gomez with the cartels of Colombia, birthing the modern-day blow industry. And he would even become friends with nascent narco-terrorist Pablo Escobar.

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