I'm guessing it had to do with similar political ideologies but I'm curious as to why the government was not ashamed to be associated with the Nazis(refusing to extradite them, ect) even after the scale of their terror was discovered after the war.
Argentina had a military coup in 1943 which was lead by a military secret group called the GOU (United Officers' Group) this organization was highly nationalist and took power to ensure that Argentina would not declare war against Germany. They were sympathisers with nazism and facism. They finally gave up to the pressures from the USA and took a stand against Germany one week before the war ended. As you can imagine, having shared interests with Germany, they just turned a blind eye against German immigration. Not because they had fear of what the general public would think but because of the pressure made by the USA and the allies. Also, president Juan Domingo Peron started a project to design a jet fighter, including Émile Dewoitine as the main designer. Dewoitine was a French designer who had helped the Germans when they occupied Paris. That project failed and the new Pulqui 2 started under the supervision of Kurt Tank, German engineer for the Luftwaffe. As you can see, the government took no hesitation when contracting German engineers because Nazi Germany had been the most technologically evolved country during the WW2. Argentina was welcoming because the government shared political ideas with nazi germany and facist italy and because after the fall of the 3rd reich they had the opportunity to get the best engineers available to work for them while providing them with security.
My source is in spanish, I don't know if it has an english translation but the book is called Breve historia contemporánea de la argentina by historian Luis Alberto Romero
EDIT: THANK YOU FOR THE GOLD! FIRST GOLD!
Here's some previous posts on this
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/v8nsf/why_did_argentina_allow_nazi_collaborators/
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1rgdiu/why_did_many_nazi_war_criminals_travel_to/
And it's on the common/wiki faq: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/wwii#wiki_nazis_in_argentina
Very interesting. What kind of numbers are we talking about? Is there a 'little germany' somewhere in argentina?
*etc.
I know a vast number of Croatia's fascist and their notorious leader A. Pavelic ended up in Argentina as well and most of that migration was arranged by Vatican and Catholic church. So I was wondering did it happen with other nazi collaborators as well? Like Slovakia or Romania for instance..