The Real Odessa: How Peron brought the Nazi War Criminals to Argentina Uki Goni Granta, 384pp, £20 ISBN 1862074038

Argentina is no longer the politically dangerous country it was in the 1970s, but journalists can still be made to feel uncomfortable there, even receiving death threats when they ask too many questions. So Uki Goni is all the more to be commended for a career in investigative journalism that began during the "dirty war", when he worked at the Buenos Aires Herald. This small, English-language publication was alone in reporting the daily horrors of the military dictatorship. Goni listened to the women who claimed that their children were disappearing - they would later be known as the Mothers of May Square - at a time when their allegations were widely ridiculed.

In this book, Goni investigates an earlier infamy, which, he believes, may somehow have opened the way for the excesses of the 1970s. The Real Odessa uses previously untapped sources, including CIA documents, to show how General Juan Peron helped Nazi war criminals to escape to Argentina, receiving them at the presidential palace and arranging jobs and new identities for them.

During the war, Peron had nurtured hopes of leading a pro-Nazi bloc in Latin America. His special envoy held meetings with Heinrich Himmler and Joachim von Ribbentrop, who outlined how a victorious Germany would transplant its ideology to Argentina. Young Argentinians would receive training in Nazi principles. Germany would support Argentina's claim to the Falklands and be a generous trading partner. "We could take everything that Argentina produced no matter how much it might be," said Ribbentrop.

Later, Peron considered the Nuremberg trials to be an outrageous affront to military honour. It was up to him to rescue Nazis, and to put their expertise, their Catholic sentiment and their money to work in the creation of a new Argentina.

What would the new country look like? In 1946, the National Ethnic Institute was established with the aim of remodelling, through immigration, Argentina's population over four generations. "We will choose the best within the white race to create the Argentina we all yearn for," promised the avowedly pro-Nazi head of immigration. This meant turning away thousands of Jews - unless they were old. To counter charges of anti-Semitism, Peron opened the door to some elderly Jews, "because they can leave no descendants and the community does not increase".

What Goni describes as "the greatest escape ever in the annals of crime" was co-ordinated in Buenos Aires from the information bureau, which occupied an office next to the president's and was headed by a German-Argentinian, Rodolfo Freude. Criminals (including, most notoriously, Adolf Eichmann, Josef Mengele and Erich Priebke) left Europe in ships and planes by the machinations of various shady organisations working in tandem with the Red Cross, corrupt diplomats, a cash-strapped airline (KLM) and, most shockingly, the Vatican.

In Rome, Father Draganovic and Bishop Hudal sheltered Nazis and arranged their safe transport to the Americas. Hudal's terror of communism made him proud "to devote my whole charitable work mainly to former National Socialists and Fascists, especially the so-called 'war criminals' ". He once asked Peron for 5,000 visas for German and Austrian "soldiers". Goni concludes that Pope Pius XII knew what was going on and provided money for the enterprise - "in driblets sometimes, but it did come", according to one monsignor.

In a country such as Argentina, where so much is hidden, the dogged pursuit of truth has become an obsession with some writers and journalists, film-makers and songwriters. That obsession is hard to appreciate in complacent and comfortable Britain. Sometimes Goni's narrative creaks under the weight of his detailed research, but elsewhere the story of his bureaucratic trawl is compelling, especially when it takes him to the filthy warehouse that houses immigration files, down by the docks in Buenos Aires.

After five months wooing the caretakers, he managed to get access to the off-limits section, a foul-smelling, broken-windowed "unholy nightmare". While he was working there, a cat gave birth to her litter among the strewn documents. The politically sensitive files that Goni sought were missing. "Do you want me to tell you that Immigration ordered us to burn all those files two years ago? I'm never going to admit that!" cried a frightened official.

But that is exactly what happened: one night in 1996, a bonfire was lit at the edge of the dock and files pertaining to Mengele, Eichmann and other Nazis went up in smoke. Like much else in this book, it is a cinematic image.

And what a typically Argentinian response to a problem - make it "disappear". Goni's sad conclusion to The Real Odessa is that "in no way had the Nazis signally influenced Argentina's genocidal generals of the 1970s. The evil seed was there before they arrived." His book is not only a fascinating expose, but an essential document in a country that needs it.

Miranda France's books include Bad Times in Buenos Aires (Orion)

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