Stories about an organization of former SS members and the transfer of Nazi assets dominated our common wisdom of the Nazi's escape routes to South America after the World War II for a long time. As soon as historians began to tackle this subject, they realized that most of these narratives lacked any factual foundation and belong to the realm of myth-making. But why did these narratives nevertheless become so influential to the broader public? This article asks which groups and individuals

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... responsible for the creation and promotion of these myths and what their motives were. It demonstrates that the creation of the myths was a result of the interaction between the economic interests and security needs of the United States with the interests of the Argentine opposition movement. Some years later, however, activists like Simon Wiesenthal and Beate Klarsfeld took up the myths, adapted and instrumentalized them in order to promote the prosecution of the nazi criminals. During the 1990s, the SS organization and its money became an important argument in the debate about the restitution of Nazi-looted assets.