Émile Dewoitine
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Émile Dewoitine (1892-July 5, 1979) was a French industrial, Collaborationist war criminal who escaped after the war to Argentina, a major refuge of former Nazi members or Collaborationists.
Emile Dewoitine worked a lot in airplane company Aérospatiale in Saint-Eloi. Along with Georges Latécoère, he produced 1,000 planes between July 1917 to November 1918. Dewoitine created the Dewoitine company along with Marc Birkigt, President of the Hispano-Suiza automotive and engineering firm. He created numerous planes, such as the Dewoitine D.510 (1935) fighter aircraft, the Dewoitine D.520 (1938), etc.
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[edit] Industrial activities
Dewoitine realized prototypes and the chassis D.520 in 1929 along with Albert Caquot. In 1940, he produced planes without chassis in the US along with General Arnold and Henry Ford. Dewoitine participated to the production of 35 different types of planes between 1922 and 1940. He returned to France in 1940.
Commandant Stehlin, from the fighter plane group III/6, visited the Toulouse factory of Dewoitine D.520 on June 9, 1940, after the beginning of the German invasion of France. Cdt Stehlin declared: "Finally, on June 9, we went to the factory in Toulouse to take the twelve first Dewoitine 520 of the group. We have too much to choose , so many planes are available. Why haven't they been attributed to the units which had to fight and which continued to do so, with planes almost deprecated in comparison with those of the German fighters planes?" [1]
[edit] Collaboration and escape to Argentina
After the war, Dewoitine was condemned for Collaborationism ("intelligence with the enemy and attack on state security" [2]). He was affected in 1944 to the SIPA. Dewoitine is the first documented case of a French war criminal arriving in Buenos Aires. He escaped to Franquist Spain using ratlines, and then to Argentina in May 1946, in the same ship, first-class, as Cardinal Antonio Caggiano, archbishop of Buenos Aires from 1959 to 1965 [3]. There, he worked for the Industria Aeronáutica Militar, developing the Pulqui I, the first South American jet plane. France condemned him in absentia to a 20 years forced labour term in 1948 [4].
[edit] Switzerland
At the end of this carreer, he resided in Switzerland, and once his crimes were prescribed, he returned to France and finished his life in Toulouse. France started actively researching Collaborationist war crimes only in the 1980s, with the trials of Paul Touvier, Maurice Papon and Klaus Barbie. Emile Dewoitine managed to become director of the Aérospatiale in Toulouse starting in 1971 along with Bernard Dufour. He was invited on board of the Concorde plane on October 30, 1975.
[edit] References
- ^ Quoted in "Après les trente glorieuses, Synarchie financière et dérives fascistes," (part 12) Solidarité et Progrès, une 20, 2006, re-published by Alterinfo.net, here (French)
- ^ Peronismo y criminales de guerra-La sombra nazi, El País, June 27, 2003 (Spanish)
- ^ Uki Goñi, The Real Odessa: Smuggling the Nazis to Perón's Argentina. New York; London: Granta Books. ISBN 1-86207-581-6 (hardcover); ISBN 1-86207-552-2 (paperback, 2003) pp. 96–8)
- ^ American Jewish Year Book, 2006, p.266 available here (English)
