Ok, conspiracy story questions, so right up everybodies alley here at SD:
I’m watching The Odessa Files movie. The text at the front of the movie claims that the existence of a group of Hitler’s Nazis from Germany, called Odessa, did some work for Nasser, including designing rockets that were to wipe out Israel. How much is true and what else did the group do, if it existed. Simon Weisenthal was a consultant on the movie it appears, too. The movie is based on a novel by Forsyth.
I don’t know why any of it would be true considering Israel, as a Jewish nation, did not exist until 1947.
The story takes place well after 1947. Odessa was formed by Nazi’s after WWII. Sorry for the confusion, but by saying Hitler’s Nazis, I meant to differentiate from neo-nazis, etc.
Forsyth did his research (Eduard Roschmann, the Maximilian Schell character, was a real wanted war criminal), but he was heavily dependent on Weisenthal and that colours the end result.
Weisenthal certainly believes that Odessa existed, but others have disagreed. Cecil covers some of the controversy in this column. As an example of a researcher who doesn’t believe that the organisation existed, Gitta Sereny looked for evidence, but concluded that there was nothing convincing. Her Into That Darkness (Deutsch, 1974) is an excellent examination of Franz Stangl, the commandant of Treblinka, partly based on interviews with him after his arrest and trial. Since Stangl had fled to South America, he’s exactly the sort of case where the issue of Odessa is relevant and Sereny discusses how he may have escaped in some detail.