Wartime Impact
Sargo with his fellow Nazi Spy. www.cdvandt.org.
Pressure from US diplomats and Elizebeth’s background operations not only prevented coups and thwarted sabotage missions, but led previous hotspots of Nazi activity to finally declare war on the Axis powers. With the mass roundup of German spies, the networks no longer posed threats to the Western Hemisphere.
In April of 1945, Johannes Siegfried Becker was arrested in Buenos Aires by the Argentine state police. He was released only a year later by the newly-elected Juan Peron, but not before his address book of contacts, which led the police to hundreds of Nazi sympathizers throughout the continent, was revealed. He then vanished.
Newspaper clipping shortly before Sargo's arrest. Newspapers.library.in.gov.
Formal document stating Sargo’s arrest. www.cdvandt.org.
Johannes Siegfried Becker (SARGO). Nsa.gov.
Sargo in 1944. www.cdvandt.org.
After the war, Elizebeth was released from the Navy. Prior to her leave, she signed an oath promising her silence about any decryption work from 1941 to 1945. Hoover classified her documents, then created a film glorifying the FBI’s efforts in uncovering the espionage in South America, erasing the contributions of Elizebeth and her team.
“She was always fixing messes men had created or solving problems they could not solve.”
-Jason Fagone
Becker's endeavors in Argentina. Interrogation of Karl Gustav Arnold. 1946.
F.B.I. & J Edgar Hoover star in a video promoting the FBI's role in the South American Nazi crisis. "Battle of the United States". 1940s.