Did Klaus Barbie Help Kill Che?

I thought that I Am Legend was at the top of my Christmas movie list — but then I read about My Enemy’s Enemy, a new documentary by Kevin Macdonald that explores the possibility that the capture and subsequent murder of Che Guevara in Bolivia was orchestrated by… Klaus Barbie:

Guevara was the Marxist guerrilla who helped Fidel Castro seize power in Cuba. Barbie was the Gestapo chief in Lyon whose crimes included the murder of 44 Jewish children, taken from an orphanage and sent to Auschwitz. Improbably, the men’s paths crossed in Bolivia. My Enemy’s Enemy, a documentary directed by Macdonald, whose previous films include Touching the Void and The Last King of Scotland, examines how Barbie’s record was disregarded when he was recruited by US intelligence after the Second World War as a useful tool against communism. He evaded French justice by fleeing to Bolivia where, living under the alias Klaus Altmann, he was welcomed by fascist sympathisers. Meanwhile, in 1966 a disguised Guevara arrived in Bolivia to organise the overthrow of its military dictatorship.

The Americans had been hunting Guevara and, according to the film, turned to Barbie for his first-hand knowledge of counter-guerrilla warfare: he had attempted to crush the French Resistance and was responsible for the death of its celebrated leader, Jean Moulin. Alvaro de Castro, a longtime confidant of Barbie interviewed for the film, says: ‘He met Major Shelton, the commander of the unit from the US. Altmann [Barbie] no doubt gave him advice on how to fight this guerrilla war. He used the expertise gained doing this kind of work in World War Two. They made the most of the fact that he had this experience.’

De Castro adds that Barbie had little respect for Che Guevara. ‘Altmann said once, “This poor man wouldn’t have survived at all if he fought in the Second World War. He was a pitiful adventurer, nothing like his popular image. The people have turned him into a myth, a great figure. But what has he actually achieved? Absolutely nothing”.’

Kai Hermann, a journalist, tells the film-makers: ‘He [Barbie] always boasted – though I cannot prove it – that it was he who devised the strategy for murdering Che Guevara.’

[snip]

In October 1967 the Bolivian army, with CIA help, captured the 39-year-old Guevara and killed him.

I have no idea whether there is anything to the story, but it’s fascinating nonetheless. And as anyone who has seen Touching the Void or the Academy-Award winning One Day In September knows, Macdonald is a master documentarian.

My Enemy’s Enemy airs in the UK on Thursday. With luck, it will appear on DVD soon thereafter.