Hitler's Final Days in the Bunker

Christopher Condon
21 June 2014

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Argentine province of Patagonia became a popular destination for German immigrants. Patagonia had a great deal to offer. Roughly the size of Texas but much more sparsely populated, Patagonia was a place where German immigrants could start from scratch and, instead of assimilating into another culture, create a society of their own. As time passed and more and more Germans moved to Patagonia, German became the principal language in many of the schools, and the German flag was often flown in preference to the Argentine flag. Many of the local German businesses went so far as to hire only German immigrants instead of native Argentines.  It might seem remarkable that the central government in Buenos Aires would sit back and allow Patagonia to become virtually a German colony.  Buenos Aires, however, was not minding the store. The Argentine Government kept such a low profile in Patagonia in those days that a traveler working his way through Patagonia might not have known that it was a province of the nation of Argentina.

In the 1920’s and 1930’s, many Patagonian Germans supported the emerging National Socialist movement in Germany, led by Adolf Hitler. As National Socialism advanced more and more in Germany, German schools and other institutions in Patagonia started to display pictures of Hitler, the Nazi Swastika, and other Nazi paraphernalia. Some critics accused Hitler of planning to formally annex Patagonia as a German colony, but Hitler strenuously denied this.

It is not surprising that with the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, many Nazi officials fled Europe and found a warm welcome in Argentina, then led by Juan Peron, a dictator and admirer of Hitler. In addition to his sympathy with the Nazi ideology, Peron had selfish reasons to take the Nazis in. The ambitious Peron, who ruled the eighth largest nation on earth in terms of land area, believed that the German refugees would bring with them extensive scientific and military technology that might enable Argentina to dominate South America or even become a world power.

Now just as some Nazis were settling in Argentina, others were settling in neighboring Paraguay, a country that in those days was ruled by Alfredo Stroessner, the son of a German immigrant and, like Peron, a Nazi sympathizer. When Peron was overthrown in 1955 and the climate in Argentina became less friendly to the Nazis, many Nazis who had initially settled in his country moved next door to Paraguay, where Stroessner continued to rule unhindered.

Could the fallen German dictator, Adolf Hitler, have been among those Nazis who found refuge in South America? To most historians, the idea is preposterous because everyone knows that Hitler committed suicide in an underground Bunker in Berlin at the very end of WWII.  But the notion that Hitler had fled Europe did not seem preposterous at the time. Did not Admiral Dönitz, the head of the German Navy, once state that the German Navy had prepared a safe haven for Hitler somewhere in the world in the event that Hitler’s position in Europe became untenable? In the immediate aftermath of the war, there was world-wide speculation that Hitler had escaped. For example, on 17 July 1945, the "Chicago Sun Times" reported that that Hitler was still alive and living on a ranch in Argentina. Some well-informed persons in high places, notably General Dwight Eisenhower and Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, took these reports quite seriously. The latter adamantly insisted until he died in 1953 that Hitler had escaped to either Spain or Argentina. But these doubters were increasingly ignored and the view that Hitler had committed suicide in Berlin became the official view and eventually hardened into dogma. Now and again, a few people in South America claimed to have seen Hitler on their continent, but these sightings were regarded in the same light as sightings of Elvis Presley are today.

But the case for Hitler’s suicide had never been airtight. No one had seen Hitler commit suicide and no one had recovered his body. The closest thing to hard evidence of Hitler’s demise that anyone ever had was a skull fragment that was found near the place where he supposedly committed suicide. Scientists from the University of Connecticut, however, have since proved that this fragment belonged to a woman and therefore could not have come from Hitler. Two witnesses did claim to have seen his dead body after he allegedly committed suicide. These accounts, however, are questionable for two reasons. First, they differ greatly in key details, making one suspect that either or both of them are unreliable. Did these two witnesses really see Hitler’s dead body, or were they merely told to say so and did they then fail to coordinate their stories? Secondly, if these witnesses really did see a dead body, was it Hitler’s body or that of someone else? Eyewitnesses tell of very drastic changes in Hitler’s personality during the closing days of WWII. The conventional interpretation of these changes is that Hitler was crumbling psychologically under the pressure of imminent defeat. But it has come to light that Hitler, like many controversial politicians through the years, had a double, a fact not known even to some of his closest associates. Could it be that the changes observed in Hitler’s personality were merely the reflection of the fact that the real Hitler had fled and that his place had been taken by his double?

In recent years, a number of investigators have taken a new look at this matter, and many have come to the conclusion that Hitler did escape after all. What has brought about this shift is considerable new evidence that was not known to previous historians and investigators. Much of this new evidence was dug up by Argentine journalist Abel Basti. Basti has been traveling up and down South America doing research on Hitler for many years and has published several books on this subject in the Spanish language. Recently, he combined all his findings into a new German language book entitled Hitler "Überlebte in Argentinen" [Hitler survived in Argentina]. "Hitler Überlebte in Argentinien" also contains new research by Basti not published in any of his previous books as well as contributions from other writers.

Much of this new evidence consists in FBI files dating from the 1940’s and 1950’s and declassified at the end of the 1990’s. For example, a number of FBI documents dating from before the end of WWII express an official fear that even if Germany lost the war, Hitler could still escape justice by finding refuge in South America. Other FBI documents dating from after the end of WWII showed that the FBI continued to look for Hitler in South America long after he had supposedly committed suicide in Berlin. For example, three FBI documents dating from the late summer of 1945 suggested that Hitler was living on a ranch in the foothills of the Andes Mountains in western Argentina. Yet another FBI document from February, 1955 mentions an eyewitness who claimed that he had seen Hitler in South America several years earlier. In fact, the FBI did not close its 700-page file on Hitler until 1970. How can all this FBI activity be explained if Hitler had really committed suicide in 1945?

The Argentine Government, by the way, has still not declassified its own files relating to Adolf Hitler, intensifying our doubts regarding the official version of Hitler’s death. If Hitler had committed suicide before he even had a chance to reach South America, then what could the Argentine files possibly contain that would be worth keeping secret seventy years later? The need for secrecy, however, might make sense if after the war Hitler took up residence in Argentina under the protection of the Argentine Government.

Additional evidence for the escape of Hitler and other Nazis to South America is to be found in the sightings of German submarines off the coast of Argentina. It is not disputed that two German submarines appeared near the seaside resort town of Mar de la Plata, Argentina around two months after the war was over and all German military forces had supposedly surrendered to the Allies. In addition, other eyewitnesses saw other German submarines elsewhere along the Argentine coast. Some Argentines go so far as to insist that a defunct German submarine has long been stuck in the sand under the water off the Gulf of San Matias, and that this submarine can still be seen from the shore on those rare occasions when the ocean drops to an exceptionally low level.

There have been many additional eyewitnesses who claim to have seen not just German submarines but Hitler himself alive and well in South America after the war. A long list of perhaps 30 of these is given in the appendix to Basti’s book. Let us look at two of the very best.

When Catalina Gamero was a young girl in Argentina, she was continuously unwell in her home town. Her parents therefore thought it best to send her to live with Walter and Ida Eichhorn of LaFalda, Argentina, just outside Cordoba. Since LaFalda had a much drier climate than Catalina’s home town and was situated at a modest elevation, her parents thought that Catalina would do much better there than in her home town. For their part, the Eichhorns had no children of their own and were happy to take in Catalina. The Eichhorns could easily afford to do so because they had made a considerable fortune by owning and operating the Eden Hotel, a world class resort hotel in La Falda that in its heyday could compete with the finest hotels in North America and Europe.

Now the Eichhorns, who were German immigrants, had rather controversial political views. To be specific, they were passionate supporters of the National Socialist Party in general and Adolf Hitler in particular. 

In the early days of the National Socialist Party, the Eichhorns made huge financial contributions that played a role in the rise of the Nazi Party to power. Hitler was certainly very grateful to the Eichhorns for their contributions because he knew that without them he might not have come to power at all. Over time the Eichhorns became acquainted with Hitler on their annual trips to Germany. Eventually a friendship developed between Hitler and the Eichhorns. The closeness of the friendship is demonstrated by the fact that whenever the Eichhorns were in Germany, they stayed at the same hotel as Hitler and were free to visit Hitler in his hotel room whenever they pleased. They did not have to follow the normal protocol and wait to be announced by Hitler’s aides.

After Catalina Gamero had settled in with the Eichhorns, she became part of the family and took care of many of the household chores, including cooking. Now in 1949, the Eichhorns told Catalina that a male guest would soon be arriving who would spend several days in the upstairs bedroom. The Eichhorns said that their guest did not want to go down to the dining room to eat his meals, so they instructed Catalina to prepare three meals a day and take them upstairs to his room. Catalina followed the instructions and waited on the mysterious guest until he departed three days later. The very first time she saw him, she recognized him as the same Adolf Hitler whose photographs she had seen all over the Eichhorns’ home. Catalina further reported that after her adoptive father, Walter Eichhorn, passed away in 1961, Hitler called Ida Eichhorn once a week from his home in Mendoza, Argentina just to say hello and wish her well. Hitler continued this practice virtually up to the day Ida Eichhorn died in 1964.

Mafalda Falcon was born in Germany where as a young woman she took up the profession of nursing. During the early days of WWII, she worked in a field hospital run by the International Red Cross. There she looked after German soldiers who had been wounded during the French campaign. One day Adolf Hitler showed up at the hospital to visit the troops and give them encouragement. While Hitler was there, Falcon got a very good look at him. Although they did not exchange words, Falcon particularly noted his very unusual and unmistakable eyes.

After the war was over, Europe was in a terrible state and not a decent place in which to live. Falcon and her husband, however, were offered an opportunity to emigrate to Argentina, a paradise compared to postwar Europe. Needless to say, they took the opportunity, moved to Argentina, and settled in the province of Patagonia. Falcon resumed her career as a nurse by taking a job in a hospital in Comodoro Rivadavia, a small city on the Atlantic Ocean. Now while Falcon was working in this hospital, a former German soldier who had been wounded in the war was admitted for follow-up treatment. During the time that this former German soldier was Falcon’s patient, a group of three German men arrived at the hospital to visit him and wish him well. When Falcon observed these three men at a distance of about 10 feet, she immediately identified one of them as the same unforgettable AdolfHitler that she had seen in a German hospital years earlier. Without putting words into the patient’s mouth or attempting to lead him, she asked the German soldier who this man was, and the patient immediately confirmed that it was indeed Hitler whom she had seen.

It is possible to trace Hitler’s meanderings in South America to some extent. According to Basti, Hitler landed along the coast of Argentina in the late spring of 1945 and went first to the remote San Ramon Ranch on Lake Nahuel Huapi, near the budding Andean resort town of San Carlos de Bariloche. The San Ramon Ranch was a huge tract of contiguous land assembled from purchases over the years by German immigrants. Because of the size of the San Ramon Ranch and the fact that it was entirely under German control, it would have been easy for someone with connections to the local German population to live there undetected. While in the same area, Hitler may also have stayed for a time in a mysterious house right on Lake Nahuel Huapi. This was no ordinary house. Unlike most houses, this one came equipped with all sorts of elaborate security devices.

Because of its unusual appointments, some investigators believe that this house, which still stands today, was built specially for Hitler on the orders of Juan Peron. Like the aforementioned San Ramon Ranch, the lake house would have been a good choice for someone who wanted to live a quiet life undetected. It was not accessible by car. To reach it, visitors had to park their cars on the other side of the lake from the house and then cross the lake by boat. The house could also be reached without taking a boat at all, but only by those hardy enough to hike all the way around the lake. In addition to the aforementioned locations, Hitler probably lived for a time in Mendoza and Paraguay. It is not clear whether he ever visited Buenos Aires or Brazil.

Inasmuch as Hitler was born in 1889, he could not still be alive today. Exactly when, where, and how Hitler died, however, remains a mystery. We suspect from his reported weekly telephone calls to Ida Eichhorn that he was still alive in Mendoza in late 1964. Since the FBI closed its file on Hitler in 1970, it is likely that Hitler died somewhere in South America sometime between late 1964 and 1970. And what became of Eva Braun, who had accompanied him to South America? She was 23 years Hitler’s junior and was rumored to be living in the swanky Recoleta neighborhood of Buenos Aires as late as the 1990’s. In fact, Eva Braun could just possibly be alive today. If an investigative reporter were to track her down in a South American nursing home at the ripe old age of 102, it would certainly be the shocker of the century and maybe the millennium.

There is reason to suspect that Hitler had children. There have been rumors that Hitler left behind a son who eventually did advanced studies of some sort under an assumed name in Switzerland and today lives in the South American nation of Brazil. A law firm in Buenos Aires told Abel Basti on condition of anonymity claims that it is acquainted with and knows the whereabouts of a daughter of Hitler. Around 1985, a woman claiming to be a daughter of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun visited a non-governmental charitable organization in Argentina known as the Center for Legal and Social Studies [CELS]. She asked for legal assistance, was interviewed once, and then told to return later for another interview. Unfortunately, she never showed up for the follow-up interview and her current whereabouts are unknown. But the woman who interviewed her looked at photographs of Eva Brain, and said that there was a striking resemblance between her and the mysterious woman who had claimed to be Hitler’s and her daughter. If Hitler did indeed leave behind children, they might be reluctant to come forward and identify themselves. But as WWII recedes more and more into the past and passions die down, they might eventually do just that.

If Hitler and several thousand highly ranked Nazis secretly escaped from Berlin toward the end of WWII, it is difficult to see how they could have done so without the knowledge of the United States Government. The growing number of investigators who believe that Hitler and many of his associates did escape suspect that it was by submarine that they made their way from Northern Europe to South America. By the end of the war, the United States Government had developed the ability to track any and all enemy ships on the Atlantic Ocean. It is difficult to see how they could have failed to notice a large convoy of German submarines, especially when those submarines would have had to surface and refuel at least once along the way.  So if the German submarines made it all the way to South America without being stopped, they must have had the tacit approval of somebody with authority in Washington.

 

How Nazis Escaped Justice in South America
By Felix Bohr
24 January 2913

After World War II, dozens of Nazi criminals went into hiding in South America. A new study reveals how a 'coalition of the unwilling' on both sides of the Atlantic successfully stymied efforts to hunt and prosecute these criminals for decades.

All it took was a transposed number -- 1974 instead of 1947 -- for Gustav Wagner to be allowed to stay in Brazil. It was a mere slip of the pen by the man who had translated the German document into Portuguese that prompted Brazil's supreme court to deny West Germany's request to extradite the former SS officer. And yet Wagner stood accused of complicity in the murders of 152,000 Jews at the Sobibor extermination camp in German-occupied Poland

Josef Mengele, the notorious concentration camp doctor at Auschwitz, also benefited from mistakes and delays because French officials with Interpol, the international police force then headquartered in Paris, refused to conduct international searches for Nazi war criminals. And, in the case of SS Colonel Walther Rauff, who helped developed mobile gas chambers used to kill Jews, it was an official with the German Foreign Ministry who sabotaged his own government's extradition request to Chile for 14 months.

As a result of these breakdowns, all three of these Nazi thugs were never tried in German courts after the war. Wagner, the "beast" of Sobibor, died in São Paulo, Mengele drowned in Brazil, and Rauff died of a heart attack in Chile. Of the hundreds of guilty Nazi officials and mass murderers who had fled to South America after the surrender of Nazi Germany, only a handful of them were ever held to account.

How could so many criminals manage to go unpunished, even though they were clearly guilty? It's a conundrum that mystifies academics to this day. Was it because of the lack of cooperation by West German officials? The lack of interest on the part of South America regimes? Were there even secret ties and collaboration between Nazis on both sides of the Atlantic/

Historian Daniel Stahl has conducted research in European and South American archives in the process of writing a new book entitled "Nazi Hunt: South America's Dictatorships and the Avenging of Nazi Crimes". The work supplies a certain and disgraceful answer to what has long been suspected: that there was a broad coalition of people -- across continents and within the courts, police, governments and administrations -- that was unwilling to act or even thwarted the prosecution of Nazi criminals for decades.

Thwarted by Former Nazis

Stahl believes that the motives for being part of what he calls a "coalition of the unwilling" differed widely. West German diplomats sabotaged the hunt for Nazis out of solidarity. French criminal investigators feared that cooperation might expose their own pasts as Nazi collaborators. And South America dictators refused to extradite former Nazis out of concern that trials of war criminals could direct international attention to the crimes their own governments were then committing.

It wasn't hard for this coalition to torpedo the hunt for Nazis. Countless players -- in politics, the judiciary, the government and the administration -- had to work together in order to arrange and execute successful criminal prosecutions. Indeed, a small mistake or minor procedural irregularity was enough to foil the arrest of the criminals.

Stahl leaves no doubt that the West German judiciary was especially guilty of serious lapses. His findings confirm that it neglected to forcefully pursue Nazi murderers for decades.

Walther Rauff, for example, was able to travel between South America and Germany after the war as a representative of various companies. But he never ran into any difficulties because his name didn't appear on any lists of wanted criminals. It wasn't until 1961 that the public prosecutors office in the northern city of Hanover issued a warrant for Rauff's arrest on almost 100,000 counts of murder.

Finding Rauff's address in Chile wasn't a problem, and the German Foreign Ministry instructed Ambassador Hans Strack in Santiago to request extradition of the Nazi war criminal. But Strack, who had also worked at the Foreign Ministry before 1945, ignored the instructions from the ministry in Bonn and allowed the case to drag on for 14 months.

It wasn't until after justice officials in Hanover notified federal colleagues that they were "extremely disconcerted" over the fact that the embassy was treating the case "with such hesitancy" that the government disciplined the recalcitrant ambassador. Strack, a known opponent to redressing the crimes of Nazi Germany, finally applied for Rauff's extradition, which led to his arrest in late 1962.

But, by then, it was too late to punish Rauff because murder came under the statute of limitations in most South American countries at the time. Chile's supreme court denied Germany's request to extradite the former SS colonel. Despite international protests, Rauff continued to live as a free man in Chile for decades.

In other cases, a lack of cooperation by Interpol thwarted the pursuit of Nazis. Stahl uncovered one particularly revealing document, the minutes of a meeting of Interpol's executive committee from May 1962. A short time earlier, the World Jewish Congress had asked Interpol to participate in the global search for Nazi war criminals. Interpol's then-secretary general, Marcel Sicot, responded angrily. Why should war criminals be prosecuted, the Frenchman is quoted as asking in the minutes, "since the victor always imposes his laws, anyway? No international entity defines the term 'war criminal.'" In fact, Sicot regarded the criminal prosecution of Nazi crimes as "victor's justice".

In 1960, there were rumors that Josef Mengele, the concentration camp doctor known as the "Angel of Death," was hiding in Brazil or Chile. The German Justice Ministry advised the Federal Criminal Police Office to conduct a manhunt -- but without involving Interpol. Officials in Bonn were apparently trying to avoid bothering international investigators with the case, but Mengele's hiding place was never found.

Stahl attributes Interpol's failure to arrest Nazis and their collaborators to the wartime past of many French police officers. "As henchmen of the Vichy regime, (they) collaborated with the Nazis until 1944," Stahl writes. "They stood opposed to the criminal prosecution of Nazi crimes".

Stahl also notes that one of the major obstacles in the hunt for Nazi criminals was the fact that South American dictators wanted to cover up their own crimes. On 22 June 1979, the German ambassador in Brasilia wrote that the extradition of someone who had committed war crimes almost 40 years earlier would "bolster the demands of those who insist that all crimes should be prosecuted, including those committed by the military and the police". A short time earlier, the administration of then-Chancellor Helmut Schmidt had requested the extradition of Wagner, the former deputy commandant of Sobibor, a request that the judges on Brazil's Supreme Federal Court had denied.

In Germany, a new generation had entered the government bureaucracy -- and one that wasn't afraid to use unconventional means to put Nazi criminals behind bars. In 1982, the Munich public prosecutor's office initiated proceedings to apply for the extradition of Klaus Barbie, the former chief of the Gestapo in Lyon, France. Fearing that Barbie could be acquitted in Germany for lack of evidence, Justice Ministry officials asked their Foreign Ministry counterparts to hint to Bonn's French allies that "they should also seek Barbie's deportation, specifically from Bolivia to France."

When Paris agreed, the Foreign Ministry instructed the German embassy in La Paz, the Bolivian capital, to "encourage such a development with suitable means".

In early 1983, Barbie was deported to France. The notorious "Butcher of Lyon" died in a hospital in that city in 1991.

-- Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

 

Reports that archaeologists were examining stone buildings in the Argentinian jungle seemed to give new life to a Second World war myth. Here’s the real story 
'Nazi hideout' in the jungle: why the discovery is more fiction than fact
Uki Goñi in Buenos Aires
23 March 201

As Soviet tanks rolled into Berlin in the spring of 1945, Adolf Hitler and his new wife Eva Braun escaped from their underground Führerbunker through a secret tunnel.

Behind them, they left the bodies of two doubles murdered to fool the Allies into believing that the Nazi leader had taken his own life rather than admit defeat.

By the time victorious Red Army troops entered the bunker, Hitler was on board the last Luftwaffe plane to fly out of Europe, heading south on the long journey that would eventually take him to Argentina.

Or at least that’s the story.

Ruins found in remote Argentinian jungle 'may be secret Nazi hideout'

The idea that senior Nazis escaped the collapse of the Third Reich to live out their days in the sweltering jungle of South America has long been a staple of fiction and “counterfactual” alternative histories.

This weekend, however, reports that archaeologists were examining three recently discovered stone buildings in the jungle of Argentina’s northern Misiones province seemed at last to provide evidence that the notion could have a base in fact.

“Apparently, halfway through the Second World War, the Nazi air force devised a secret project of building hideouts so that the highest-ranking Nazis could escape after their defeat – inaccessible sites in the middle of deserts, in the mountains, on a cliff or in the middle of the jungle like this,” Argentinian archeologist Daniel Schavelzon told the Buenos Aires daily "Clarín" on Sunday.

Schavelzon, who finances his digs with contributions from private funders, told the newspaper that he believed the ruins he was exploring in Teyú Cuaré national park were exactly that: a bolthole for Nazis on the run.

But the truth is a little more mundane. For a start, the dilapidated buildings were not recently “discovered” – they have actually been open to the public for decades, along with other ruins which date back to the 17th and 18th century settlements established by Jesuit missionaries – and which give the region its name. Not far from the “Nazi” site are the remains of San Ignacio Miní, a Baroque monastery which is one of the area’s most-visited tourist attractions.

At least 10 years ago, the local tourist board erected a sign on the path to the Teyú Cuaré site, saying that the ruins were originally part of a Jesuit site.

Below that, the sign makes the astounding claim: “In the 1950s they were refurbished and inhabitated by Hitler’s most faithful servant, Martin Bormann.”  

The idea that Hitler’s deputy somehow escaped to Argentina is an integral part of the Nazis-in-South-America myth, and a key element of Ira Levin’s novel "The Boys from Brazil" and the 1978 movie of the same name.

The Bormann story is based on files sold by Argentinian police officers to Hungarian historian Ladislas Farago in the 1970s, but those files are widely held to be fakes. In 1998, DNA tests showed that bones recovered in Berlin were Bormann’s, confirming reports that Hitler’s secretary had been killed while fleeing the bunker on 2 May 1945.

In an interview with the "Guardian", Schavelzon admitted that evidence linking the Teyú Cuaré ruins to a supposed Nazi safe haven plan is slim.

“There is no documentation, but we found German coins from the war period in the foundations,” he said.

But does a handful of old German coins provide sufficient proof of a secret Nazi hideaway plan in northern Argentina?

“That was just speculation on my part,” Schavelzon said. “The press picked it up and magnified it.”

And the discovery of Second World war-era German coins in Misiones seems less surprising when you consider that Argentina has long been a destination for European immigrants, and that the country’s population includes about 3 million people of German descent.

One of the largest and oldest German communities is in the northern province of Misiones, founded by a large influx of German immigrants who arrived in the early 20th century.

Argentina did, of course, give refuge to some of the worst Nazi criminals, including Auschwitz doctor Josef Mengele and Adolf Eichmann, one of the main architects of the Holocaust.

Thousands of former SS officers and former Nazi party members were welcomed with open arms by Argentina’s then-president Juan Perón, who sent secret missions to Europe to rescue them from Allied justice between 1945 and 1950.

But they settled in comfortable suburban homes outside Buenos Aires, like the cozy chalet Eichmann lived in with his family at 4261 Chacabuco Street in the middle-class northern suburb of Olivos, where many other Nazi officers also settled.

Not in the steamy, damp, pre-Amazon jungles of northern Argentina.

---

Uki Goñi is the author of "The Real Odessa: Smuggling the Nazis to Perón’s Argentina"

 

"Hunting Hitler": 5 wild theories about what really happened to Adolf Hitler
History's documentary series challenges the history books and proposes that the Nazi leader lived past 1945.
Alex Fletcher  
29 January 2018
 
History's hit series "Hunting Hitler" has been exploring conspiracy theories about Adolf Hitler's death for three seasons.

Trekking around the globe, visiting Spain, Argentina and Chile, a team of journalists, ex-CIA veterans and army officers are determined to prove that Hitler didn't die in his Führerbunker in 1945.

The investigation's leader Bob Baer, a 21-year CIA veteran, said at the end of season one: "History is not fixed as we receive it. I will never stop searching for the truth, I never take facts at face value and I never will."

Here are five of the most shocking theories from the Hunting Hitler team.

1. The Bunker mystery

The starting principle of the series is that the death of Hitler we have all read in History books - that he took his own life with wife Eva Braun - is a lie.

Russians raided the Bunker and reportedly took the German leader's remains with them. However, the only DNA evidence available, a skull with a gun shot, belongs to a female.

"Until we have a corpse, it will be an open investigation," insists Bob Baer.

2. The escape from Germany

If Hitler didn't die in his Bunker, then where did he go? The "Hunting Hitler" team believe that there were multiple escape routes, tunnels and possible methods for him to get out of Berlin - even when it was heavy attack from the Russians.

They have identified routes to potential flight exits, either at Tempelhof or a make-shift runway at the Brandenburg Gate. Potential destinations for the plane were either Denmark or Franco’s Spain, which would have provided refuge for the Nazi leader.

3. The U-Boats theory

Most alleged sightings of Hitler after 1945 came in South America and not Spain, so the problem for the "Hunting Hitler" squad is how he could have travelled that distance safely.

The theory they develop is that he could have travelled via U-Boat and the team discover in series two, evidence to back up the conspiracy.

During a visit to the Hotel Reina Cristina, the team find a direct link from the hotel, down a route of tunnels, which could have been used as a secret shuttle to take people secretly to the ocean.

4. Hitler was hidden and protected in Argentina

The right-wing Argentina Juan Peron was a Nazi sympathiser and could potentially have been an ally for Hitler. The "Hunting Hitler" team have discovered several possible buildings, hidden networks and eye-witnesses, which suggest that there were Nazis running operations from South America.

The mysterious military structures in the middle of jungles and connecting networks of towers and Bunkers that they discover also plays into the theory that the buildings were being used to protect a high value target.

Burrowed tunnels into mountains, safe houses and sightings of senior Nazis close to Hitler help stack up some handy evidence for the investigation team.

5. The Fourth Reich theory

Perhaps the most outlandish theory from the Hunting Hitler team is that Adolf Hitler didn’t just go on the run, but that he was actually fully operational in South America.

They suggest that Hitler and the Nazis were developing a “Fourth Reich” from Argentina and that they were hoping to develop weapons of mass destruction to take out the United States.

 

6 incredible "facts' conspiracy theorists believe prove Adolf Hitler faked his own deathBy Dave Masters
Mirror
15 January 2018

According to documents declassified by the FBI in 2014, Adolf Hitler may have survived World War Two, faked his own death and fled to South America following the fall of Nazi Germany.

A new series of HISTORY’s hit TV show "Hunting Hitler" continues the ultimate manhunt, It follows CIA veteran Bob Baer zeroing in on Hitler's potential escape route using the same man-hunting strategy that Intelligence agencies across the globe use to find and capture high-value targets, known as Asset Mapping.

The list of six reasons come from a combination of sources and cover the biggest issues, including how he supposedly how escaped, where he went and was last seen...

1. Evidence suggests he may have escaped his infamous Führerbunker by using a secret tunnel.

Under Nazi rule, Berlin's underground was expanded into sprawling web of 93 miles of interconnected tunnels and Bunkers. Hitler would have had these at his disposal to make his escape.

2. FBI files suggest Hitler may have fled to Argentina at the end of WWII.

The FBI report - dated 21 September1945 - details claims that several officials secretly landed Hitler onto Argentine soil after arriving by submarine. He was allegedly then hidden in the foothills of the Andes mountains.

3. According to investigators, Hitler fled Europe following the fall of Berlin on a U-Boat.

There are claims Hitler was swept out of Europe on a "ghost convoy" after the fall of Berlin.

We know several high-profile Nazis – including 'architect of the Holocaust' Adolf Eichmann and Dr Josef Mengele, the "Angel of Death" – did indeed escape to Argentina. The theory is he joined them there.

4. A CIA informant claimed to have spotted Hitler in Colombia in 1955.

Among the recently declassified CIA documents about the JFK assassination was a report that claimed Hitler survived the Second World War and was living in Colombia.

The informant, codenamed ‘Cimelody-3’, told the US Iintelligence chief for Venezuela that he was in contact with a former SS agent, Philip Citroen, who met a man claiming to be Adolf Hitler in the city of Tunja.

5. A Nazi island is said to have existed off the coast of Chile.

It’s believed that thousands of Nazis fled to South America after WW2 and many believe there were attempts to rebuild the Third Reich on a secret island there.

6. It was only 11 years after WWII that the German court declared Hitler’s death.

The official line was that the Nazi leader killed himself by taking a cyanide pill before shooting himself. But it took more than a decade before it was recognised by the German courts.

 

Hitler to Argentina? Unlikely Escape or Grand Hoax?
David Weiss
18 May 2016

The Smart Money…

Adolf Hitler retreated to his Führerbunker in Berlin on 16 January 1945, a sure sign that he knew the end was near. The generally accepted narrative is that Adolf Hitler along with his wife Eva Braun committed suicide on 30 April 1945. 

It all seemed, in a sense, to be a pretty straightforward and irrefutable chain of events that lead to the end of this truly evil life.

Here is the official account 
{Excerpt from “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.” By William Shirer]

The Russians now were only a few blocks away. He had lunch as usual at 2 o'clock in the afternoon with his two secretaries and his cook. He now began making systematic preparations to commit suicide. He supervised the poisoning of his beloved dog Blondi and her pups and shortly after 3 p.m. he and Eva Braun bade farewell to the staff, assembled in the bunker, and retired to their private room to carry out their decision. They bit into thin glass vials of cyanide - as he did so, Hitler also shot himself in the head with a 7.65 mm Walther pistol.

Heinz Linge, Hitler's personal valet, later recalled how he entered Hitler's suite and saw him almost upright in a sitting position on a blood-soaked sofa. Eva Braun lay on the sofa beside him, but she had made no use of the revolver at her side, preferring to take the poison instead. A small hole showed on his right temple and a trickle of blood ran slowly down over his check. The pistol lay on the floor where it had dropped from his right hand.  No mark showed on Eva Braun's face: "It was as though she had fallen asleep ", Linge remarked.

Hitler's Final Moments In the Bunker

"Hitler is terrified of being taken alive...The closer the Soviets get, the closer Hitler is to taking his own life"/

Hitler had given precise instructions for disposal of the bodies - they were wrapped in a blanket and placed in the garden of the Chancellery. Hitler's SS adjutant Otto Günsche poured gasoline over the two corpses and set fire to them with a lighted rag. While a heavy Russian bombardment was in progress, Josef Göbbels, Bormann, Burgdorf, Kempke, and Günsche stood at attention and for the last time gave the Hitler salute. On the evening of the following day Radio Hamburg announced that "our Führer Adolf Hitler died for Germany in his command post in the Reich Chancellery this afternoon, fighting to his last breath against Bolshevism"..

On the other hand….

But the suspicion that Hitler and Braun were still alive began almost immediately. The theory that Hitler did not commit suicide but rather escaped with Braun was pushed by the Soviet government right at the end of the war. At the Potsdam Conference, President Truman asked Stalin about Hitler’s death and was told that Hitler had indeed escaped . The Soviet Union had reasons to push the story that Hitler survived, so this alone would not discredit the earlier reports that he and Braun had killed themselves on 30 April. The Soviets wanted Truman and the British to still be wary of unrest and perhaps take a lighter approach in their escalating disagreements with the Soviet Union. 

President Eisenhower said in 1952 that he did not know of any proof that Hitler was dead .

Another sticking point was that the investigation by the British was seen as amateurish.

It was conducted by Major Trevor-Roper, not viewed as a heavyweight in the investigative community. The report was also not very complete. The handling of evidence by the Russians outside the Bunker was also not very well-organized. They allegedly moved any remnants around so Hitler’s body/remains could not be celebrated. Soon it would be discovered that the FBI had believed that Hitler may have escaped to Argentina. Nazi Captain Peter Baumgart claimed in court testimony that he flew Hitler and a few others on an airplane to Denmark and then to Barcelona en route to their eventual South American destination. Baumgart’s detailed court testimony in 1947 added additional fuel to the fire. Many varied pieces were certainly ‘out there’.

In modern times, the theory that Hitler escaped has gained additional popularity. 

Did Hitler and Eva Die in the Bunker? Or Did They Flee to Argentina?

The book “Grey Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler” has given mainstream legitimacy to the idea that Hitler survived and escaped. British authors Simon Dunstan and Gerrard Williams propose that Hitler and Braun did not commit suicide, but escaped to Argentina. According to Dunstan and Williams, Hitler arrived in Argentina and lived there until his death in 1962. According to Dunstan and Williams, around 1954, Eva Braun left Hitler and moved to the city of Neuquén with their daughter, Ursula. After the release of the book, Gerard Williams produced a controversial drama-documentary  ”Grey Wolf”. It ended with an extensive list of people who claimed to have seen Hitler in Argentina.

Respected Israeli filmmaker Naom Shalev added additional legitimacy to the idea that Hitler may have escaped in his well-researched 2012 research. Shalev does not claim to know when Hitler died but states that it could have been anytime between the early 1950’s and mid-1960’s. While Dunstan and Williams portray Hitler’s South American life being more serene, Shalev believed that Hitler lived more of a tortured life with few luxuries. Shalev said that he found no trace of Eva Braun in South America. It was as if she disappeared   

The History Channel also did a special series call “Hunting Hitler” which explored the viability of Hitler living out his final years in Argentina. They ended the series without a definitive conclusion.

​Another bit of news came in 2009 

University of Connecticut professor Nick Bellantoni’s DNA research confirmed that the skull kept by the Russians was not Hitler’s. It was the skull of a lady under 40 years of age. When this was pieced together with released FBI files, the idea that Hitler may have escaped Germany gained more steam.

Did Hitler Escape?

I began my interest in this topic thinking that Hitler’s survival was a conspiracy theory which was as silly as the 9-11 conspiracy theories. After reading, watching and listening to as much as I possibly could, I conclude that it is not just another completely crazy, far flung conspiracy theory. It is, however, a long shot and unlikely.

I am almost certain that Hitler died in the Bunker in Germany. This is, however, a 95% to 5% type belief. I think Hitler was probably scheming until the very end and when he felt the world was closing in on him, he decided to kill himself. He seemed to have planned everything out from his quick marriage to Eva Braun to the quick writing of a Will to the plans to have his body burned so it couldn’t be desecrated as Mussolini’s had when he was captured. It makes sense and seems logical. The evidence may not have been handled or investigated properly, but that doesn’t mean Hitler didn’t kill himself in the Bunker. Just because there isn’t absolute evidence doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. I imagine that he saw some nobility in suicide as well.

It was certainly possible for Hitler to escape. He could have flown to Denmark and then to Spain and/or the Canary Islands. The logistics were doable. He was also known to use a body double which could have assisted in this overall effort. It was reported that Hitler was seen in Spain. The Canary Islands had a huge Nazi support system. Nazis did escape in U-Boats to Argentina so that is also plausible. 

A main issue I have with this is that Hitler would have had difficulty surviving a U-Boat trip across the Atlantic with his Parkinsons and generally failing health. I also question whether Hitler could and would have left the Bunker in Berlin in those turbulent times. While possible, it seems unlikely.

It is undeniable that Hitler could have found safe refuge in Argentina. Many Nazis did 

I was stunned to find while researching this topic that people in South American [not just Argentina] were so loyal to the Nazi movement. It is dangerous to ask too many questions there still today. Locations like the alleged home that Hitler lived in are still entirely off-limits and held in a shroud of secrecy. There are many Nazi remnants in Argentina and the size of the support system they had and the secrecy they still keep is significant, relevant and disturbing. Even if we never get any definitive answers on the question of how, when and where Hitler died, we have learned that far too many murderers found refuge and got to live out their final years peacefully in South America

I do find the interviews with people who said they saw Hitler after the war to be very compelling. The fact is, however, people do claim to have seen things that they didn’t really see. It could have been someone else, another prominent Nazi or something their mind created.

As far as the skull, the Russians have never claimed that the skull was the only evidence. The jawbone fragments and a dental bridge were found and shown to Käthe Heusermann and Fritz Exhtmann, the longtime dental assistants of Hitler's dentist, Hugo Blaschke. Both identified them as being Hitler's. This is another nudge toward Hitler committing suicide in the Bunker.

Dunstan, Williams and Shalev successfully made the case that Hitler could have escaped and lived out his life in Argentina. Overall, however, it isn’t nearly enough to overturn theconventional conclusion that April 30th, 1945 was probably the end of Hitler’s life. With all of the Nazi Hunting that has gone starting in 1945, if Hitler was alive in South America, I believe he would have been captured.

Either Way, a Disturbing Ending

Whether or not he survived, the Nazis certainly had the infrastructure in place for Hitler to live comfortably and covertly in South America.

That fact alone is extremely disturbing and a sign of the enormous evil that existed in the aftermath of the Holocaust. It teaches us the depths of hatred that existed and grew.​