Though seemingly the stuff of wild conspiracy theories flying around out there, the idea of the Third Reich surviving the WW 2 defeat is really nothing new. And, in fact, on various levels their continuation is very real. At the very least, it is no secret that the remarkable technological aspect of Nazi Germany was allowed to continue in other countries such as the U.S. and Soviet Union.   For example, we know that many of NASA's founding fathers and leaders of the aerospace industry - such as Wernher von Braun (director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center), Walter Dornberger (vice president of Bell Aircraft Company and Bell Aerosystems Company), Dr. Kurt H. Debus (director of Kennedy Space Center), Richard Gompertz (head of NASA's Chrysler space division) - were former Nazi scientists/officials. Many of these former Nazis were connected to one of Germany's most secret weapons programs, the V-2 rocket. Their contribution to the US space program was such that it would not be an exaggeration to state that without the technological 'gift' from the Reich, the Apollo missions to the Moon, one of the greatest achievement of mankind, would not have been possible. In a sense, interestingly, the intense space race between the US and Soviet Union, which also acquired many Nazi technological secrets at the end of the war, was collectively the continuing legacy of Nazi technology.

It was in 1945 or so that the United States began a top-secret operation to recruit valuable Nazi scientists and specialists. Under this ethically questionable project, code-named 'Overcast' before evolving into 'Paperclip', many hundreds or thousands of those deemed valuable were brought into the United States. Officially, Operation Paperclip was cancelled by September 1947. In actuality, it is reported that the project only hid itself in the ultra-secret 'deep black' realm and continued its recruitment activity until the mid-1950s. The covert activity is understandable when we consider how advanced Nazi technology and scientific ideas were, compared to the rest of the world at the time (many years, if not a century, ahead).

Through this process, 'seeds' or 'viruses' of the Third Reich were transported to other powerful nations, most notably the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The victorious nations, in a sense, made deals with the devil. And the head of this devil was Hans Kammler, in charge of all secret high-tech weapons programs of Germany, who cleverly viewed those weapons and specialists as his ticket to freedom. In this light, the unknown fate of Kammler after the war, who mysteriously disappeared and is scarcely mentioned in official documents anywhere including the Nuremberg war crimes (despite being one of the most influential Nazi figures) is certainly suspicious. 

And then there are the stories of the Nazis escaping to Spain, South America (especially Argentina), etc. More speculative, but there were also persistent rumors of Hitler's deputy Martin Bormann running a secret Nazi empire from South America. It is known that near the end of the war, August 10, 1944, Bormann held a meeting in the Hotel Maison Rouge at Strasbourg and told Nazi officials and German business leaders that it was necessary to prepare a postwar strategy to ensure eventual resurgence of Germany. Thus was born 'Operation Eagle Flight'. With the help of major foreign banks and businesses, it successfully created hundreds of front corporations all over the world, enabling the continuation of Nazi activities in the postwar era.

Also, as a part of this scheme, a secret organization called ODESSA (Organization der Ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen, The Organization of former SS members) was created to orchestrate the escape of SS officers from justice.

This group's purpose was to establish and facilitate secret escape routes, called ratlines, out of Germany to South America and the Middle East for hunted members. With alleged ties to Argentina, Egypt, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and the Vatican, ODESSA ostensibly operated out of Buenos Aires and helped Adolf Eichmann, Josef Mengele, Erich Priebke, Aribert Heim and many other war criminals find refuge in Latin America and the Middle East. 

SS-Obersturmbannführer Otto Skorzeny and Sturmbannführer Alfred Naujocks were both believed to have been active in this organization, but these suppositions have never been proven. Similarly, General Reinhard Gehlen's entire intelligence organisation that was employed and protected by US intelligence within a few months of the end of the war (and which subsequently became an important part of NATO intelligence in eastern Europe as well as of Gladio, NATO's secret "stay-behind" paramilitary organizations), came under suspicion. In Argentina, Rodolfo Freude was allegedly a member of the network. 

ODESSA claimed responsibility in a note for the 9 July 1979 car bombing in France aimed at anti-Nazi activists Serge and Beate Klarsfeld. 

In November 2005, the Spanish newspaper El Mundo reported that Mauthausen concentration camp's Nazi doctor Aribert Heim, protected by ODESSA, had possibly been hiding in Spain for the past 20 years. According to sources from the Simon Wiesenthal Center quoted by El Mundo, former soldiers of Otto Skorzeny (who died in an accident in Madrid in 1975) had helped maintain the organization in Spain, especially in the region around Malaga and Alicante.

According to Simon Wiesenthal, ODESSA was set up in 1946 to aid fugitive Nazis. Other sources, such as many interviews by the ZDF German TV station with former SS men, suggest that ODESSA never was the single world-wide secret organization that Wiesenthal described, but that there were several organizations, both overt and covert (including the CIA and several Latin American governments), that helped ex-SS men.

To some extent whether ODESSA was a criminal conspiracy that protected and smuggled out war criminals or an informal network by which various German and Allied elements protected "useful" former SS anti-communists from war crimes charges is purely a matter of viewpoint since, short of finding a genuine documentary constitution for it, any facts or actions would fit both descriptions equally.

Long before the ZDF TV network, biographer Gitta Sereny wrote in her 1974 book Into that Darkness that the ODESSA network was of minor importance if it existed at all. She attributed the fact that several criminal SS-men could escape due to the post war chaos and the lack of means of the Catholic Church, the Red Cross and the American military to verify the claims of people who came to them for help or were imprisoned. She also wrote that one pro-German bishop called Aloïs Hudal in Rome who knowingly helped several ex-SS men to escape out of Europe must have had some help or permission from other people in the church hierarchy. One of the ex-SS men that he helped is the former commander of the extermination camp at Treblinka, Franz Stangl.

Uki Goñi, in his 2002 book The Real Odessa: Smuggling the Nazis to Perón's Argentina suggests that Sereny's more complex, less conspiratorial, story is closer to the real truth. The book prompted a US House of Representatives resolution in 2003, urging Argentina to open their hitherto secret documents concerning this matter. 

Of particular importance in examining the postwar activities of high-ranking Nazis is Paul Manning's book Martin Bormann: Nazi in Exile, which details Martin Bormann's rise to power through the Nazi Party and as Hitler's Chief of Staff. During the war, Manning himself was a correspondent for the fledgling CBS News along with Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite in London, and his reporting and subsequent researches present Bormann's cunning and skill in the organization and planning for the flight of Nazi-controlled capital from Europe during the dimming years of the war (notwithstanding the established fact of Bormann's death in Berlin on May 1, 1945). 

According to Manning, "eventually, over 10,000 former German military made it to South America along escape routes ODESSA and Deutscher Hilfsverein...." . While in Manning ODESSA itself is incidental, the continuing existence of the Bormann Organization is a much larger and more menacing fact.

And, though very much in the realm of myth, it has been suggested by some that the Nazis had built a secret base in Antarctica where they sought refuge after the war.

Argentina 'held Nazi gold'
Argentina's central bank stands accused of holding Nazi gold after World War II

BBC News Online
Tuesday, April 27, 1999

Researchers investigating the activities of the Nazis in Argentina say they have obtained a letter signed by the country's former foreign minister, saying he asked for the gold to be deposited in the bank in 1946.

Until then, the money was being held for the Germans by the Swiss embassy in Buenos Aires.

"For the first time we do have Argentine evidence that Argentina was the recipient of Nazi gold," said Ignacio Klich, research co-ordinator of the commission of inquiry on Nazi activities in Argentina.

The letter was written in 1955, shortly after the overthrow of Juan Domingo Peron - the populist leader who gave asylum to a number of high-profile Nazi war criminals fleeing prosecution.

The commission of inquiry was created by the government in 1997, in response to accusations that some of the Nazi gold looted from Jewish victims of the Holocaust might have been transferred to Argentina.

The commission's historians have yet to ascertain the amount of the Nazi gold deposited in the central bank, and also lack proof that it was taken from Holocaust victims.

But proof that the gold was looted or formed part of a money-laundering operation would bring Argentina closer to the current debate over reparations to the victims of Nazi Germany.


What's the true story on South American Nazis?

After the war Argentina and Paraguay were run for years by nationalist strongmen, Juan Peron and Alfredo Stroessner respectively, who liked to strut around in military regalia and brutalize dissidents. Argentina had remained officially neutral until early 1945, when economic pressure forced it to throw in with the Allies, but until that point was in intimate contact with Hitler's regime and the fascist Franco government in Spain. Postwar Brazil was still fascist-friendly, a legacy of deposed dictator Getulio Vargas. Surely it's no surprise that the leaders of these countries nurtured fraternal feelings for fleeing Nazis.

Not all fugitives from the Third Reich ended up in South America--quite a few are said to have headed for Spain or the Middle East, and the U.S. imported a crowd of Nazi rocket scientists during Operation Paperclip.

That said, the true story of how war criminals like Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele wound up in the land of the gauchos has never been fully told, and even now it's difficult to separate fact from fiction.

Leading candidates for chief enabler of the great escape include:

Odessa. Part of the popular consciousness ever since Frederick Forsyth's best-selling 1972 novel The Odessa File, this secret group (the name is an acronym for Organization der ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen, "Organization of Former SS Members") supposedly used stashed war booty and connections in high places to spirit Nazi big shots out of reach of the Allies. Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal says he first heard about Odessa during the Nuremberg trials, and in his 1989 book Justice, Not Vengeance he seems convinced it exists, or rather existed. He offers little evidence, though, and others have their doubts. Even some believers say the organization was amateurish and short-lived.

The Catholic church. The claim that members of the Catholic hierarchy were instrumental in obtaining documents, cash, and safe passage for many escaping Nazis is only barely scandalous these days. The benign view is that individual clerics acted out of humanitarian concern, believing they were aiding refugees from postwar communist persecution, and were unaware of their charges' sordid pasts. Others say the Vatican knew quite well what was going on but wanted former Nazis as allies in its struggle against the reds. A figure commonly named in this context is Alois Hudal, an openly pro-Nazi German bishop in Rome who is said to have helped engineer the escapes of dozens if not hundreds of Nazis--including Eichmann, who was living in Argentina when the Mossad caught him in 1960, and Franz Stangl, commandant of the Treblinka death camp, who ultimately made his way to Brazil and was captured there in 1967.

The Catholic church. The claim that members of the Catholic hierarchy were instrumental in obtaining documents, cash, and safe passage for many escaping Nazis is only barely scandalous these days. The benign view is that individual clerics acted out of humanitarian concern, believing they were aiding refugees from postwar communist persecution, and were unaware of their charges' sordid pasts. Others say the Vatican knew quite well what was going on but wanted former Nazis as allies in its struggle against the reds. A figure commonly named in this context is Alois Hudal, an openly pro-Nazi German bishop in Rome who is said to have helped engineer the escapes of dozens if not hundreds of Nazis--including Eichmann, who was living in Argentina when the Mossad caught him in 1960, and Franz Stangl, commandant of the Treblinka death camp, who ultimately made his way to Brazil and was captured there in 1967.

The above plus Peron. Argentine journalist Uki Goñi, in The Real Odessa: Smuggling the Nazis to Peron's Argentina (2002), offers what amounts to a synthesis of earlier theories. The "real Odessa," he says, consisted of about a dozen energetic ex-Nazis and Nazi collaborators from several nations, including a few wanted war criminals, working in concert with the Peron regime and sympathetic Catholic officials in both Europe and Argentina. Goñi makes a plausible case that the cabal, which was organized in Buenos Aires following Peron's election as Argentina's president in 1946, orchestrated the emigration of hundreds, perhaps thousands of Nazis and other unsavory types to the country in the late 1940s and early 1950s. (He also claims that the cabal was based at the presidential palace, and that many of its members were given important jobs in Peron's government.) The old Nazis made frequent trips to Europe to troll for more fugitives; some war criminals had to be smuggled out, but in other cases countries were glad to unload their troublesome Nazi refugees. Visas and landing permits were handed out freely, the chief concern being that no communists or Jews be allowed in by mistake. How many ex-Nazis made it to Argentina is not known. Goñi says he identified 300 during six years of research, and it's easy to believe there were many more.

It's a lot to swallow, no question, and notwithstanding his 591 footnotes Goñi concedes that many key Argentine records that would've corroborated his story have been destroyed. Still, he avoids the overheated claims of other writers, and the plain fact is that all those Nazis didn't wind up in South America by coincidence--they were going where they were welcome. As for the details? Given the current worldwide consensus that Nazis represent the ultimate human evil (and the resulting disinclination of officials in Argentina and elsewhere to come clean), Goñi's book may be as close as we'll get to the truth.

 




Which Nazis Fled To South America?
The dead, the captured and the fugitives
Marcelo Mackinnon

After June 6, 1944, when the Allied forces launched the biggest military invasion in history at Normandy, the Nazi leaders realized that their military defeat was imminent and formed an organization to evacuate themselves and all the assets they had plundered during World War II.

The organization was called ODESSA, whose name was an acronym created from the German phrase "Organization der Ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen," or "The Organization of Former SS Members." As its name states, it would only help members of the SS or Schutz Staffel (Protection Corps), which was the elite structure of the Nazi party and also Hitler's personal guards.

At the end of the war, the SS was estimated to have 600,000 members, all members of the Nazi Party who were committed to its ideology, in contrast to the members of the German Armed Forces (Wehrmacht) who were citizens conscripted into its ranks.

Why did ODESSA choose South America? Many Germans began to immigrate to the continent since the mid-19th century, mainly to Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Paraguay. This helped the fugitives integrate into the communities without arising suspicion. But the main reason was that Germany had longstanding ties with the political power structures in these countries, for example, Prussian military officers trained the Chilean army in the early 1900s.


During World War II, Argentina declared its neutrality but continued to trade with the fascist regimes in Germany, Spain and Italy. Allegedly, Argentinia President General Juan Peron sold 10,000 blank Argentine passports to ODESSA and the many Nazis who arrived in South America using fake Argentine identities can prove this version.

Such was the case of Adolf Eichmann, who joined the Austrian Nazi party in 1932 and was recruited by the SS to serve as a guard in the Dachau concentration camp. Eichmann rose quickly up the ranks under the protection of Heinrich Himmler, one of the main Nazi leaders.

In 1941, Eichmann was head of the Department for Jewish Affairs in the Gestapo, who was responsible for the death of 3 million Jews in extermination camps. At the end of WWII, Eichmann was captured but strangely enough was able to escape from an American P.O.W. camp and flee to Buenos Aires in 1950. In the Argentine capital, Eichmann assumed the false identity of Ricardo Klement, where he hid until 1960, when he was captured by Israeli "Mossad" agents and secretly taken to Tel Aviv. After a five-month trial, Eichmann was sentenced to death and executed in 1962.

Josef Mengele joined the SS in 1938, the same year he received his medical degree, and from then on would be known by the alias of "The Doctor." In 1940, Mengele was recruited by the "Waffen" Division of the SS, (the highest honor for a devout Nazi), and sent to the Ukrainian front. Mengele was seriously wounded during combat, and was therefore posted to the Race and Resettlement Office in Berlin, and also promoted to the rank of Captain.

In May 1943, Mengele was appointed to "serve" in the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. In the camp, Mengele would always be seen showing off his black SS uniform and medals, and his ruthless treatment of the prisoners made him feared even among the other SS officers. Mengele was in charge of selecting those prisoners that would be killed in the gas chambers and those on which he would carry out his cruel "genetic experiments" such as the dissection of live infants, the castration of male prisoners without anesthetics and attempting to change the color of eyes with injections of dyes.

In 1949, along with other members of ODESSA, Mengele was smuggled to Argentina, then ruled by Peron. The Doctor spent the next 30 years on the run from Israeli agents who attempted to capture him as they had done with Adolf Eichmann. The ODESSA sheltered Mengele in Paraguay, then ruled by General Alfredo Stroessner, and later on moved him to Brazil where his body is said to have been identified by local forensic authorities on June 6, 1985.

However, Mengele's victims have always doubted this version, since posing dead was a ploy frequently used by fleeing Nazis to escape persecution, as in the case of Walter Rauff, who chose to settle in Chile after WWII.

Rauff was also a high ranking SS officer who invented the "Death Trucks" with which 500,000 prisoners were murdered with lethal gas at Auschwitz. Like Mengele, his colleague at Auschwitz, Rauff arrived in South America in 1950, where Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal detected his presence.

After many years of extradition demands by the German justice, Rauff was arrested in 1963 and spent three months in a Santiago jail. Surprisingly, the Chilean Supreme Court freed Rauff because "the crimes had taken too long ago, Rauff had shown good behavior in Chile and was a prosperous businessman."

It seems that there was a powerful "Reason of State" that made the Chilean authorities harbor Rauff, since not even President Salvador Allende, a declared anti-fascist, allowed the Nazi to be extradited. Rauff then settled in the southern city of Punta Arenas, but in 1988 was reported to have "died" in Santiago. During the Pinochet regime, it is alleged that Rauff designed the concentration camps where thousands of political prisoners were confined.

Paul Schäffer began his career in the "Hitler Youth" and during WWII and took part in the Russian front as a medical assistant. At the end of the war, Schäffer remained in Germany working in orphanages where the police arrested him for "pedophile" activities. In 1957, Schäffer formed a religious sect called the "Private Social Mission" that apparently would help orphans and neglected children.

After being prosecuted by the German justice, Schäffer mysteriously managed to end up in Chile in 1960, along with hundreds of German children and their parents, many of whom were former Nazis. With the approval of Chilean authorities, Schäffer was granted a large terrain in the south of the country near the town of Parral that Schäffer named the "Dignity Colony".

A small settlement called "Villa Bavaria" was built, where the men, women and children would sleep in separate quarters. To the adults, Schäffer would be known as "The Führer" and to the children as "The Uncle," and they would have to work seven days a week, from morning to night and without any pay.

Psychological abuse, torture and drugs were used to control the followers. With their slave labor, the "Colony" began to prosper and became a powerful agricultural farm, which the Chilean authorities presented as an "exemplary charity organization." However, several of the followers rebelled and escaped from the Colony, and the truth was known about Schäffer and his gang. Many of the residents of the Colony were taken to court to testify, but the Chilean justice system proved inefficient. This situation continued until 1993, when Schäffer went into hiding, only to be arrested on May 2004 in Argentina and deported to Chile. In May 2006, Schäffer was sentenced by the Chilean Supreme Court to 20 years in prison accused of sexual abusing hundreds of children.

The "Uncle" is also accused of assisting Pinochet's secret police in the torture and murder of 150 political prisoners after 1973.

Martin Bormann was the highest-ranking SS officer to take refuge in South America, specifically in Chile and Argentina. Bormann joined the Nazi party in 1925, and by the end of WWII was Adolf Hitler's personal assistant.

Bormann became so powerful that he was appointed by Hitler to collect the financial donations made by the richest German businessmen to the Nazi party, and also to look after Hitler's private estate, the Berghof in Bavaria. In 1941, Bormann was appointed Chancellor of the Nazi Party, whereby all official matters and meetings with Hitler had to be previously approved by Bormann.

In 1945, as the Soviet troops advanced on the Berlin Bunker, Bormann witnessed Hitler and Eva Braun's wedding. After the ceremony Hitler ordered Bormann to escape and save his life to carry out a mysterious "final mission."

There are many versions as to how Bormann escaped from Berlin, some claim that he died others that he escaped. Bormann's final fate remained an enigma until 1996 when a passport was found in Chile with Bormann's photo but under the name of Ricardo Bauer.

SS Captain Erich Priebke was discovered to be living in Bariloche, Argentina during the 1990's. Priebke was accused of ordering the massacre of 335 Italians in March 1944. The killings occurred at the Ardeatine Caves in Rome, after which Priebke ordered that the entrance be blown up to bury the bodies. Finally, Priebke was extradited to Italy and in 1997 Priebke was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Priebke is now 93 years old, the oldest Nazi prisoner in custody. After Priebke's detention, further investigations revealed that Bariloche had become a hideout for many other SS officers, many of whom are still living there.

The last case recently exposed is that of Aribert Heim, head doctor at the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, whose daughter is a resident of Vina del Mar, Chile. There are many reasons to believe that Heim may still be in that South American country.






Übersee Süd:
The Ultimate Truth about Nazis Fled to South America

After WW II, at least five German U-boats reached Argentina with no less than 50 high ranking Third Reich officials on board. During the trip they sunk a US battle ship and the Brazilian cruiser Bahia with a death toll of more than 400, including US citizens. Both the US and the British Government have systematically covered up the operation. Why? Did they take Hitler to Patagonia?

Supporting their research with irrefutable first hand documentation, two Argentine investigators, Carlos De Napoli and Juan Salinas, made an extraordinary contribution to unveil what has been called the last secret of World War II. Übersee Süd, "Overseas South" in English, is the name of the operation that, according to this investigation, helped high Nazi officials to escape from the Soviet fist under the umbrella of the British Government and the US hawks.

"WWII finished on May 7th 1945 and the first submarine arrived in Argentina on July 10. The second one, on August 17", says De Napoli. The Argentine investigator makes reference to the well-known landing of the German U-boats U-530 and U-977 that surrendered to the Argentine Navy in those days.

This is a fact, as their commanders Otto Wermuth and Heinz Schäffer, respectively, were arrested and interrogated several times in Buenos Aires, Washington and London. However, what has been systematically covered up by US and British authorities is the fact that they sunk the USS Eagle 56 battle ship in front of the US coasts and the Brazilian cruiser Bahia, amid three other vessels. So, the immediate question is why the British and the Americans (from the North and the South) harbored the assassination of more than 400 people when the war had finished two months ago?

"There was a conspiracy against the USSR. It was the Operation Sunrise (Crossword for the British) designed to stop the advance of Stalin troops over Europe. Therefore, the English needed to count on German officers and soldiers to continue the war against Russia and destroy communism. Übersee Süd is part of this large operation", explains Juan Salinas, former investigator of the bomb attack to a Jewish club in Buenos Aires in 1995.

Unfortunately is impossible to check this information with official sources as documents related to Operation Sunrise have been classified by both the US and British authorities: Top Secret. It means that they are kept out from the insidious sight of investigators for 75 years. Another detail: they are the only ones that remain classified about World War II.

"Churchill was the mastermind of the escape. The Argentine Navy established a free zone to let Germans to disembark without disturbs, following British instructions", told Salinas to PRAVDA.Ru. In fact, there exists an order issued by Argentine authorities to stop attacks to German submarines operating close to the Argentine beaches. The cautious reader may point out why other forces attacked the German U-boats if the British Government was behind the operation. De Napoli answers: "Churchill successors (Tories lost the elections immediately after the war and the Labor Party came into power), did not want the operation to go on."

However, as facts show, the operation went ahead and no less than 50 Third Reich high officials found cover in the desolated lands of Southern regions of Argentina and Chile. It is important to notice that the Patagonia holds the largest German community of Latin America and many Nazi and Ustasha's criminals lived there after the war: Mengele, Eichmann, Martin Bormann, Ante Pavelic and Erich Priebke among others. According with documentation supplied by the Argentine, Brazilian and US navies, the Norwegian and Danish Embassies in Buenos Aires and the United States National Archives and Record Administration -NARA-, Salinas and De Napoli could recreate the trip of the U-boats. Juicy data has been also provided by the memories of Heinz Schäffer, Commander of the U-977.

A fleet of almost 20 submarines sailed out from the Norwegian port of Bergen, between May 1st and the capitulation of the Third Reich, six days later. They joined another group of U-boats coming from the US coasts (the U-530 and others) in Cape Verde, an Atlantic archipelago close to Africa. There, they got notfied that the Flensburg Government, headed by Great Admiral Dõnitz after Hitler's death, and kept alive by the Western Allies until May 23rd 1945, had fallen.

Consequently, German commanders, who expected a new turn on international politics based on the outbreak of a conflict between the Soviet Union and the Anglo-Saxons, became aware that they would have to go on by their own. Some Kriegmarine Officers decided to sink their U-boots, surrender to the enemy or come back to Europe. However, at least six U-boats, including the U-530 and the U-977, headed South to Argentina carrying "heavy" passengers and gold.

"Then, the tragedy came", points out Salinas. "Disguised as fishing vessels, the German submarines sailed on the sea. Shortly after crossing the Equator Line, they came across the operation to guide US planes to Japan. The route Natal - Dakar." The Brazilian cruiser Bahia, was taking part in the operation when, according to the results of the investigations, it was shot by two acoustic torpedoes fired by the U-977. The toll: 336 crewmembers died in what is, by far, the largest-ever catastrophe of the Brazilian Navy.

William Joseph Eustace, Andrew Jackson Pendleton, Emmet Peper Salles and Frank Benjamin Sparks, were the four US radio operators of the Bahia. They died after the shooting, but the US Government reported them as "disappeared". Obviously, this is the main reason why the German Government did not cooperate on Salinas and De Napoli's investigation. The Brazilians said that the sinking of the Bahia was a fatal accident; exactly the same speech as did the US Navy on the shooting of the USS Eagle 56... until last year. Then, the U-977, the U-530 and others went down to Argentina and the first two surrendered to the local authorities.

Was Adolf Hitler a passenger on one of these U-boats? De Napoli answers, "We think that Hitler, Eva Braun, Gretl Braun and Martin Bormann escaped thanks to this operation. However, we cannot assure whether Hitler landed in Argentina or not."

Martin Bormann died in Paraguay. Perhaps, Stalin's suspects became true: "Hitler fled either to Spain or to Argentina", he told to the that time US Secretary of State, James Byrne. But this is subject to further investigations.

~Hernan Etchaleco
Argentina

This article is based on the book "Ultramar Sur. La Ultima operacion secreta del Tercer Reich", published by Grupo Editorial Norma, and conversations with Juan Salinas and Carlos De Napoli co-writers of the book.



Did Hitler Escape To South America?

As World War II ended, a female Nazi Intelligence Officer named Magda Zeitfeld offered her services to the United States Government. One of Germany`s top intelligence agents, she stripped off her uniform, put on a fetching red dress and surrendered to Col. Kevin Stapleford, head of the OSS (Allied Intelligence).

Magda`s father had operated the largest plastic surgery clinic in Germany, well financed by the Nazis, due to their obsession with physical perfection. He pioneered in implanted facial prosthetics, using highly advanced silicates to build up weak jaws and noses to fit the German fashion of chiseled strength. The father had put her and her brother through medical school to eventually join the family business. All three were accredited plastic surgeons. When war broke out, Magda received a direct commission into the German Army and was then hand picked by the SS due to her beauty, intelligence and medical background.

She told Allied intelligence about three men, exceptionally high level Nazi officials, that were brought to her father’s clinic under a veil of extreme security and secrecy in the fall of 1943. Her father and brother were required to drastically alter the appearance of each of the men. The father and the son studied the faces of each of them for a few days, becoming acquainted with their features and bone structure. Unbeknownst to the Nazis, they also consulted Magda for her artistic abilities and opinion and asked her assistance in the final drawings.

Three different sketches were made for each man, indicating the potential changes that could be made to each of their faces. Strangely enough, they each chose faces with very large, exaggerated Semitic, Jewish noses. Through various bits of information they deduced that these men were preparing to board a submarine that was being prepared at Bremerhaven. They had to be ready by a certain time, a schedule the doctors barely met. When their faces were altered, the post-op performed, the stitches removed, and the scars sufficiently healed, the three men disappeared - just as stealthily as they had arrived under the same supreme security. The men’s names were never given to the plastic surgeons. No identities, nothing. The doctors were only given as much information as they would need to conduct the surgery requested. There were no documents and no paperwork.

Unknown to the SS, Magda was very well aware of who two of these men were. They were Martin Borman and Adolf Hitler. The third she did not recognize.

Magda had supervised a program which created four "Doppelgängers" or doubles for Hitler. Some of that work was also performed earlier at her family’s clinic. This was all just considered a smart security decision. The four doubles were all the same height and build as the Führer, which was not a problem, because he was a very `average` looking man. The doubles were given voice and movement instruction, and they mastered Hitler’s soft conversational voice and distinctive walk. Their faces were altered. One thing that none of these Doppelgängers could ever hope to duplicate was Hitler’s charismatic public speaking style. His ability to sway a crowd had never been matched or equaled. The doubles were used for public appearances, parties, meetings, and briefings where Hitler was not expected to have that much interaction with his underlings. Hitler never gave a public speech after the fall of 1943, and most of his personal private staff were dispersed, relocated or given other assignments in the fall of that year.

Two weeks after the three men left her family’s clinic, the hospital was raided. The entire staff, including both Magda’s father and brother, were brutally murdered, and the clinic was burned to the ground, files and all. In fact, there was not a single record left in all of Germany that could be used to identify Hitler after the war. Every doctor that had ever been affiliated with him, having even second hand knowledge, had simply vanished into thin air. The one exception was a lone dental assistant who been called in to help the dentist she worked for, clean Hitler`s teeth on two occasions. When the incinerated "bones" of Hitler were brought out of their Berlin bunker, the Russians asked her to draw a picture of what she remembered Hitler`s teeth to look like. After days of brutal interrogation of the hapless nurse, with Patton breathing down their neck, and the eyes of the world upon them, the Russians decided the sketch and the teeth matched.

Stalin was never convinced, but went along with the public version of the story. He did not want to tarnish the Russian victory or embarrass his country by letting the world know that they had let Adolf Hitler slip through their fingers. But they had.

In 1993, in Ecuador, a reclusive Catholic Priest named Father Krespi was laid to rest at the supposed age of 90. Over two thousand people came from all over the world to attend his funeral, which had all the trappings and ceremony of that of a president or king. The white marble sepulchre is still polished and cleaned every week, and is constantly adorned with flowers, paid for by anonymous admirers. After he died, some interesting things were found out about him. Father Krespi left behind millions of dollars worth of artwork that was identified by the aging Magda and others as belonging to Hitler’s private art collection.

Hitler, an artist himself, had accumulated quite a collection, which was never located. Witnesses say Krespi’s collection was transported to the Vatican in two cargo jets soon after the funeral, on May 16, 1993 .Magda confirmed the belief of US Army (Ret.) Colonel Wendell Stephens, who had met Father Krespi in 1981 on a trip to Ecuador. He believed a priest he had met in a small town called Cuenca was Adolf Hitler. He examined hundreds of pictures of Hitler and was convinced he had met him in person. He also saw and described priceless European artwork he saw at Krespi’s secluded home in the mountains. Stephens couldn’t get anyone to pay attention to his assertions that he had found Hitler - nobody cared anymore.

Father Krespi`s background is mysterious, and correlates directly to the story told by Magda. Krespi claimed to have come from an Italian/Austrian family in Northern Italy, and came to the Vatican to study in 1943. He took seminary, did his time as a novitiate and was ordained into the priesthood, all within the protective walls of the Vatican, an unheard of practice that has never been repeated before or since. In fact, Krespi never set foot outside Vatican City, which has the status and diplomatic immunity of a Sovereign Country, recognized by every nation state in the world. Krespi was given a position far above his humble rank and status as a Novitiate, of Art Curator of the Vatican Archives, more popularly called `The Catacombs`, because they consist of a series of highly secure tunnels and vaults under Vatican City.

This made him responsible for viewing and cataloging a collection valued at billions of dollars, and put him in the singularly unique position of being the receiver of the priceless collections that had been looted by the Nazis in Europe, much of which some how fell into the Vatican’s hands.

Stephens reported that Father Krespi spoke fluent Italian, with a perfect accent to all the other priests and the people on his staff. Hitler’s mother was a staunch Roman Catholic from northern Italy. His first language was Italian, and it was all he spoke until he was 12 years old. This is why in news reels you never see an interpreter between him and Mussolini. He spoke Italian to his staff in the Chancellor’s office all the time. He would even revert to it when he got angry. It is probably where he got the rhythm that hypnotized people.

In 1956 Krespi was sent as a priest to Cuence, a town known to "Nazi-hunters" as the hideout of Martin Borman and other German war criminals. He lived a very reclusive life, and paid the villagers to protect his "mission" there. Townfolk say he was often visited by German men. The Chief of Police in Cuence reported that advance teams of European men invaded the town the day before the funeral, and that several German funeral guests had armed escorts. As more information has become available, a growing number of historians are believing the unthinkable - that the most diabolical man in human history escaped his fate and posed as a man of God for 40 years.