1913–1991
○ Life sentence for crimes against humanity
The Nazi Gestapo chief who made Lyon a center of terror
At his 1987 Lyon trial, he denied the Izieu roundup and said: “I fought the Resistance. It was war.”
Klaus Barbie was an SS and Sicherheitsdienst officer who commanded the Gestapo in occupied Lyon, organizing systematic persecution of the French Resistance and Jews. He arrested and tortured Jean Moulin at Caluire and was responsible for deporting 44 Jewish children and their teachers from Izieu to Auschwitz. After the war, U.S. intelligence used him in anti-communist operations and helped him escape to Bolivia, where he avoided justice for decades before his 1987 Lyon trial and life sentence for crimes against humanity. His case exposes both the continuity of Nazi criminal networks and the impunity produced by Cold War anti-communism.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1935Joined the SS and began service in the Sicherheitsdienst
- 1940–1941SD service in Amsterdam, targeting Jews and communists
- 1942Assigned to Dijon for security work in occupied France
- 1942–1944Head of the Lyon Gestapo, repressing the Resistance and deporting Jews
- 1947–1951Agent of the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corps
- 1951–1983Lived in Bolivia as Klaus Altmann
- 1987Lyon trial, convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to life
- 1991Died in Lyon prison
Related historical events
- 1940–1944The Fall of France and the Vichy RegimeGestapo chief in occupied LyonHe commanded the Gestapo in occupied Lyon, persecuting the Resistance and Jews.
- 1940–1944The French Resistance and the Liberation of FranceLyon Gestapo chiefHe was responsible for the Caluire arrests and the torture of Jean Moulin, crushing the resistance.
Thirty years in Bolivia as an anti-communist strategist
In 1951 Barbie left Europe for South America with the help of the U.S. Counterintelligence Corps and settled in Bolivia, where he lived for about thirty years in Cochabamba under the name Klaus Altmann. France had already sentenced him to death in absentia in 1947 and 1954, but Bolivia declined to hand him over. He built close ties with the Bolivian military: under René Barrientos in the 1960s he passed on intelligence, torture and interrogation techniques, and under Hugo Banzer in the 1970s he collaborated openly in the illegal arrest, interrogation and killing of opposition and progressive figures. In this period he held the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Bolivian armed forces, and in 1965 West Germany's foreign intelligence service, the BND, registered him under the codename "Adler" and received at least 35 reports from him.
His role in the 1980 coup led by General Luis García Meza is the most contested point. Research and testimony describe him as a link between the coup faction and the cocaine trafficker Roberto Suárez Gómez, and as the organizer of a paramilitary force of foreign neo-Nazis, the "Bridegrooms of Death." One account has him asking Suárez in 1979 for 5 million dollars to finance the coup. The exact extent of his role is weighted differently across sources and needs further verification. In February 1983 the newly elected civilian government of Hernán Siles Zuazo had him arrested in La Paz and handed him to France, ending thirty-three years of impunity.