Castro’s jobs for SS officers

FIDEL Castro recruited former SS officers to train Cuban troops during the Cold War, German documents have revealed.

The newly released files show that the communist leader also bought 4,000 pistols from men with links to the far right in Germany. The Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) intelligence agency disclosed that in October 1962 – the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis – four former members of the SS were invited to Cuba.

Two took Castro up on his offer, with documents stating they would receive ‘substantial wages’ of more than four times the average German salary at the time.

BND historian Bodo Hechelhammer said: ‘Evidently, the Cuban revolutionary army did not fear contagion from personal links to Nazism, so long as it served its objectives.’