Argentina

Rumors in southern Argentina were always constant and Abel Basti stated in his book, "Following in the Footsteps of Hitler", the definitive research on the Nazi leader postmortem exile in Argentina and other countries in the region, published in Basti Editorial Planeta and summarizing 20 years of hard work: "I ended up believing it when I started interviewing witnesses who had been with Hitler in Argentina".

Such is the case of Eloisa  Luján, who was one of the "tasters" of the of the meals served Hitler to assure him that the foodstuffs were not poisoned, and Angela Soriani, the niece of Hitler's cook, Carmen Torrentegui at  Hacienda San Ramon.

"The presence of the German leader in this corner of Patagonia was an open secret,..it was not that everyone knew that Hitler was on that estate but those who did know, such as employees of the Hacienda, downplayed the topic","said Basti.

"For rural people the war was practically nonexistent, no radio, newspapers were sent once a month and not everyone read them. They there had been a war but did not have the dimension of the conflict nor the particular characters", he added.
 
Basti, in his book also includes data on the Regentröpfchen operation, which was supposedly the escape plan designed by the Nazis in 1944 to evacuate westward men - military, scientific, technical - currencies, gold, inventions, technological developments, etc.  in order to leave nothing in the hands of the Russians, and recorded  some 20-30,000 Nazis who arrived in Argentina.

Hitler "did not live cloistered" but freely moved not only around Bariloche but also visited other South American countries like Paraguay, Brazil, and Colombia. He used different identities but the most important one was Kurt Bruno Kirchner. Under that name he traveled to Asuncion after the overthrow of Gen. Juan Domingo Perón in 1955.

Then there is the testimony of a Brazilian, Fernando Nogueira de Araujo, son of a Nazi leader, which states that the Führer died on 5 February 1971 and is buried in a crypt in an old underground Bunker Nazi in Paraguay, where today rises a "modern and exclusive hotel".

Abel Basti in his book states that Nogueira de Araujo was an active sergeant in 1973 and was 29 years old when he received a special invitation from his friend Harold Ernest, son of a Brazilian Nazi leader to travel for some days to Paraguay, with fully paid trip and accomodation.

"Fernando was the only Brazilian representative invited to participate in this incredible event attended by about forty selected people, mostly elderly who had known Hitler'.
 
Nogueira de Araujo with wife traveled to Paraguay, according to the story, but she could not attend the ceremony because women were denied access.

"Already nearly forty or so guests were gathered, Fernando was the only Brazilian. They descended in an elevator to the lower levels of the Bunker. There was a door to a staircase leading to a crypt, where Hitler's coffin was placed.

"When the whole group was assembled, it was announced that the entrance to the crypt would be sealed, and one of the people who were present took a bucket of cement and a trowel.

Then, he began to lay bricks to close the narrow entrance to the crypt of the Führer, building a wall that blocked access to the coffin that holds the mortal remains of Hitler. After that job was done, the ceremony concluded  and the guests left".

Given that this story sounded fanciful, reporter Diego Ponce de León, the prestigious journal of "Post Brasilia", sought to at least confirm whether such Sergeant Fernando Nogueira de Araujo existed in reality.

Not only did he find him, but Nogueira de Araujo sent him a current photograph of himself, at 70 years of age, the first to be disclosed in the press.

In the Army Group North Sector probably the most famous Sturmgeschütz Ace was 
Knight’s Cross Holder
Wachtmeister Kurt Kirchner [StuG.Abt.667].

With his Assault Gun III
[Sd.Kfz. 142] in three days of fierce fighting in February of 1942,  
he destroyed 30 enemy tanks of the Red Army.  Sturmgeschütz III, short version E "Stub" [fitted with a low-velocity 75 mm StuK 37 L/24 gun to destroy soft-skin targets and fortifications], was actually powerless against the KW-1 and T-34 tanks of the enemy, only the long version F [Sd. Kfz. 142/1] equipped with a high-velocity 75 mm StuK 40 L/43 main gun] had a chance.  Nevertheless, Kirchner proved that even with the short barreled main gunit was possible by deft maneuveringand clever use of terrain for the StuG III to overpower the most fearsome armored adversaries.
He was awarded the Knight's Cross
for this outstanding performance.

Nogueira de Araujo did not want to give an interview, but agreed to answer through his friend and eventual spokesperson, freelance journalist Marcelo Netto, Sao Paulo, giving the same information he gave to Basti, for inclusion in his controversial book .
 
"When he [Fernando] was invited to attend the ceremony, he did not know what it was. He figured that he would only find his friend Harold [Ernest]," said Netto. "The certainty that was Hitler began to take shape during the ceremony itself, all took for granted that it was the corpse of Hitler.

"Any doubts were dispelled when he [the sergeant Nogueira Araujo] returned to Brazil and found two other people who had participated in the event".

Nogueira de Araujo, as well as Netto and Basti, refuse to give further details about where the crypt could be found, the name of the alleged German hotel and its exact location.

Fact or fantasy?  In the absence of more concrete evidence, doubts remain.  But at least the indirect testimony of the former Brazilian sergeant is another element that confirms the version already established previously by other authors, such as the Paraguayan historian Mariano Llano, who in the first edition of his book "Hitler and Nazis in Paraguay", published in 2004, argued that Hitler died in Paraguay.?

With the fall of Juan Domingo Perón in 1955, several Nazis preferred to leave Argentina and they chose to go to live in Paraguay.  Perón himself, in the face of the uprising that overthrew him, opted to flee into exile on a Paraguayan warship to Asuncion, the capital of that bordering country [he would then continue on his way to Central America and finally to Spain].

By that time, Paraguay and Chile were the safest countries for the Nazis in the South American continent.  Alfredo Stroessner maintained close relations with the United States and received credits and military aid North American by its anti-communist policy.  But, in spite of that help, it was characterized by not allowing the Americans to have a direct interference in his government.  He was not a docile ally and for this reason, in 1989, the CIA orchestrated a coup d'etat that deposed him.  

Stroessner is known to have harbored important Nazis such as Martin Bormann, Hans Rudel, Otto Skorzeny, Eduard Roschmann and Dr. Josef Mengele, among other fugitives.  But is it possible that the Führer himself has been residing in Paraguay governed by dictator Stroessner?

Rodolfo Freude, the scion of a wealthy Argentine German family, was a close advisor of Argentine President Juan Perón and served as his Director of the Information Division [División de Informaciones]. Perón named him his Chief of Intelligence in 1946.

According to Argentinian historians, he was a savior to some of the most notorious war criminals in history. Thanks to him, hundreds of Nazi officers and alleged French, Belgian and Croatian collaborators found a haven in this faraway South American country.

According to documents, Freude's agency organized a network of agents who smuggled the fugitives to Buenos Aires through way stations in Milan, Italy, Madrid, and other cities.

The revelations in Uki Goni's "The Real Odessa," have led Jewish organizations to demand that the government release documents related to the Nazis.

In polite, brief letters, the Secret Service and the Foreign Ministry have said their files contain no such documents.

"It's totally inconceivable that the Argentine Secret Service has nothing on this period," Goni, a writer and investigative journalist, said in an interview.

Freude was part of a secret assistance network for suspected Croatian, Belgian, French and German war criminals, according to documents uncovered by Goni and other investigators.

Given new identities by Argentine spies and by sympathizers in the Italian church, the suspects would receive visas from immigration officials here to work as "technicians."

Josef Mengele, the infamous doctor of Auschwitz, escaped to Argentina in 1949 thanks to the network, arriving in Buenos Aires still in possession of the records of his ruthless experiments on twins in the Nazi death camps.

Beatriz Gurevich, an investigator with the Delegation of Argentine Israelite Assns., traveled to Argentine embassies and consulates in Stockholm, Milan and other cities to pore through their records.

But it was in the National Archives in Buenos Aires that Gurevich found perhaps the most revealing document. It detailed the existence of "secret advisors" with the authority to smooth the passage of suspected war criminals through Argentine immigration.

"Their signatures carried the weight of law," Gurevich said, even though most of the advisors were themselves suspected war criminals, such as Branko Benzon, who was ambassador to Berlin for the Nazi puppet state in Croatia. "The documents made it clear their authority had come directly from the president."

Perhaps the most important man in the Argentine Intelligence network aiding the entrants was Carlos Fuldner, an Argentine-born captain of German descent who served in Hitler's SS.

After the war, Fuldner joined Freude's secret service, establishing "rescue offices" in Italy and Switzerland. Some fleeing suspected war criminals were granted an audience with President Peron just days after their arrival in Buenos Aires, according to documents uncovered by Goni.

A strongman who ruled Argentina from 1946 to 1955 and from 1973 to 1974, Peron told friends privately that he believed the Nazi leadership had gotten a raw deal in the landmark war crimes trials at Nuremberg.

Mythology:  Books assure that Hitler lived in Argentina.  It is a version that has multiplied like a Legend....
By Isidoro Gilbert

Ian Kershaw is considered the most important biographer of Hitler and one of the most important historians of the period 1936-1945.  About the last moments inf the Führer Bunker in the Chancellery in Berlin on 30 Apri l1945 he wrote:

"Hitler retreated behind the doors of his studio for the last time.  Eva Braun followed him almost immediately.  It is almost 3:30 pm.  During the next few minutes, Göbbels, Bormann, [...] and other of the Bunker community wait.  Günsche stood guard at the door of the room ... It was Linge who took the initiative after waiting about ten minutes without being having heard anything in the room of Hitler, with Bormann, and opened the door cautiously.  Hitler and Eva Braun were sitting together on the small sofa in the narrow and cramped study.  She was slumped to the left of it.  Her body gave off a strong odor of bitter almonds, the characteristic odor of prussic acid.  Hitler's head hung limply.  A bullet hole in his right temple dripped blood.  At his feet was his pistol, a Walther 7.65 mm....."

However, a myth was born. Hitler did not die in the Bunker and survived, in Patagonia, for example. 

Kershaw then tells how both bodies were cremated outside the Bunker and that after the Soviets arrived there on 2 May found the remains. 

"Nine days later they showed a cigar box containing part of a jaw and two dental bridges" that dentists, checking their files, said belonged to Hitler and Eva. 

Academics and Intelligence came to the same conclusion about the end of Hitler and Eva Braun.  But not the Argentine journalist Abel Basti, who argues that the dictator and his wife came to Argentina in the winter of 1945. Basti, "Ambito Financiero" correspondent in Bariloche and editor of the "South", repeating the subject, has published another work, "In the Footsteps of Hitler" - The final research - His life in Argentina -  Who hid it - Where he died.

Basti states that the fugitive couple arrived in a submarine departed from Hamburg to a point in the Patagonia.  In San Antonio Oeste he took the train line, under guard, to Bariloche where a Mercedes Benz took him to the Estancia San Román, owned by a German and Nazi businessman.  He traveled to Cordoba, where a family friend, with whom he had corresponded in the past, owned La Falda Hotel Eden;  Also to Mar del Plata and Chubut from where he watched the Atlantic sitting on a bench, seen by locals who identified him as Hitler.  He also traveled to other places according to the story, even traveling to Colombia, Brazil and Paraguay.  In the last country he died and his remains were stored inside a concrete block under an unnamed hotel.  Braun had conceived two children with him.  In all places where the Führer was he was "greeted with respect and honor" he had talks even with Juan and Eva Perón, Jorge Antonio and other leaders of Perónism, as well as the Croatian Ante Pavelic, Bormann and other Nazis, all, Basti says, protected by Perón. Something else: he died the dictator, Bormann later had differences with Perón, and in anger, financed the military coup against him in 1955.

Basti filmed thirty witnesses in different places as he walked "in the footsteps of Hitler". Few said they had seen him, most remember hearing the story from a member of their family.

Given the conditions  of many thousands of Germans coming to Argentina after World War II, the Legend is easy to weave. The ease with which criminals managed to reach Argentina after the war, can be easily been demonstrated, not only Germans but Austrians, Croatians, Italians, Serbs, Romanians, White Russians.  The idea that eventually became widespread is the underwater arrival on Patagonian beaches or at the Villa Gesell; unloading bullion, jewelry and especially former officers preparing the ground for Myth, or rather Legend.  It is not a minor detail that since before World War II, Argentinia was based on a strong German community with acute Nazi influence with some bastions: Belgrano, Villa Ballester, Villa General Belgrano, La Falda, La Cumbrecita, Bariloche. This helped encourage the power of the Legend. 

There  is also public skepticism about many events.  For instance, even now 11% of Americans disbelieve that man reached the moon in 1969. How many, not only in Argentina, have doubts about the fate of Adof Hitler?

Fernando Nogueira de Araujo admitted to the "Brazilian Mail" that he participated in the ceremony in which the Nazi leader was buried in Paraguay.  
By Andrés Colmán Gutiérrez and Stefi Céspedes
10 March 2014

"I Buried Hitler" reads the title of a report published in the Brazilian newspaper "Correo Braziliense", along with a photograph of retired sergeant Fernando Nogueira de Araujo, first published in the press.

In the article, the ex-military man admits -through a spokesman- he in fact, participated in a secret ceremony held in 1973, somewhere in Paraguay, where the Nazi leader -according to official history committed suicide in Berlin in 1945- was buried in a secret Bunker, now concealed in the basement of a hotel.

This version, investigated by reporter Diego Ponce de León, of the prestigious newspaper of Brasilia, confirms that the alleged witness, quoted by the Argentine writer and journalist Abel Basti, in his book "Following the Footsteps of Hitler", really exists and currently is 70 years old.

Nogueira de Araujo did not want to give a personal interview, but agreed to respond through his friend and eventual spokesman, the independent journalist Marcelo Netto, from Sao Paulo, the same that gave the information to Basti, to include in his controversial book .

According to Abel Basti, Fernando Nogueira de Araujo was an active sergeant in 1973 and was 29 years old when he received a special invitation from his friend Haroldo Ernest, the son of a Brazilian Nazi leader, to travel during for some days to Paraguay, with transport and stay completely paid.

Fernando says that he was the only Brazilian representative invited to participate in this incredible event that would have been attended by about forty selected people, mostly older people who had met Hitler," Basti emphasizes in the book.

Nogueira de Araujo traveled to Paraguay with his wife, according to the story, although she could not attend the ceremony, because the women were not allowed access.

"Once in the place, with their identities accredited, the nearly forty guests were gathered -Fernando being the only Brazilian- and they descended, in an elevator, to the lowest levels of the Bunker, to a staircase that led to a crypt, where Hitler's coffin was located," the story continues.

"When the whole group was assembled, it was announced that the entrance to the crypt would be closed, and one of the people who was present took a bucket with cement and a mason's spatula to the narrow entrance to the Führer's crypt, building a wall that blocked access to the coffin that holds Hitler's dead remains. After that work was completed, the ceremony concluded and the guests ascended, "concludes Basti.

Because of the fantastic elements of this version sounded, the reporter Diego Ponce de León, of the "Brazilian Mail", tried to confirm if at least the said Sgt. Fernando Nogueira de Araujo exists in real.

Not only did he find him, but Nogueira de Araujo gave him a picture of himself at the age of 70, the first to be known to the press.

"As in the book, Fernando preferred to give his statements through the same journalist Marcelo Netto, who also gave the first data on the subject to Abel Basti, who happened, in a certain way, to represent him in  2007 in search of the publication of the results of the investigation on the Nazi presence in Brazil, and Fernando is a fundamental piece in Netto's investigations, "says Ponce de León, in a report published last 6 March in the "Brazilian Mail".

The material, through Netto, the former sergeant Nogueira de Araujo fully confirms to the Brazilian journalist that he was in Paraguay in 1973, at the supposed funeral ceremony of the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

"When he [Fernando] was invited to participate in the ceremony, he did not know what it was about," Netto said, conveying the former military man's version. "The certainty that it was Hitler began to take shape during the ceremony itself", emphasizes the version given to the journalist.

At the ceremony, which supposedly happened in a Bunker, on the grounds of a site where a German hotel was built, in an undisclosed location in Paraguay, everyone assumed that it was Hitler's corpse.

Exerpts from Abel Basti's "Following the Footsteps of Hitler"

Research by Rainer Tilch  writes:

Paraguayan-German journalist Rainer Tilch is the person who knows most about Hitler's life in Paraguay. I established a relationship with him several years ago, during which time we exchanged information to clarify details of the presence of the Nazi leader in South America. 

Tilch's arguments for maintaining that Hitler lived in Paraguay are based on the testimony of Professor Karl Bauer, an old German scientist who died in 1995; Hermann Rademacher, a German who lived in Caacupé, who was murdered in 2001 in the Chaco; and Helmut Janz, a Mennonite, an official of the German embassy and editor of the newspaper "Neues für Alle", who died in 2007. I also had an interview with history professor Mariano Llano, who wrote his own book on Hitler's life in Paraguay.

Tilch, in 1990, received information from professor and ornithologist Karl Bauer, a resident of Ytú, Caacupé.  Bauer -who carried out archaeological and anthropological research in Paraguay  told Tilch that he knew the history of Hitler, especially through the Germans in the Altos region, and particularly because one of them had revealed that he had personally met the Nazi leader. 

Tilch recalled that "one night we were discussing military matters from World War II when he [Bauer] suddenly told me that all the tales about Hitler's suicide were false". Bauer told Tilch that Hitler "had, like every ruler, the last means available to escape and made use of them. He fled to Argentina and later came to Paraguay". 

As Tilch replied that he did not believe in that version, Bauer, with emphasis, told him:

"If you do not want to believe me, I'm going to introduce you to some old Germans from the Altos area, who know a lot more about it than I do. One who personally knew the Führer. Come one day Sunday and I go with you to Altos".

Unfortunately that trip was never made because Tilch did not believe that Hitler had survived the war; of course that now that he has more data, he deplores not having co-ordinated with Bauer a trip to visit the German who claimed to have been with the Nazi leader in Paraguay.

Adolf Hitler buried in a Crypt in the "Hotel del Lago" in San Bernardino in Paraguay
Oy Bey
12 January 2016

There is an increasingly widespread conviction about Adolf Hitler's stay in Argentina, and the certainty that he died and is buried in Paraguay, where he moved from Argentina -under the alias of Kurt Bruno Kirchner- in 1955 when President Juan Domingo Perón was overthrown, as did many other Nazis who left Argentina to neighboring countries, mainly Paraguay.

In the idyllic city of San Bernardino, near Lake Ypacarai, it is always whispered that the Führer, who died on 5 February 1971, is buried in a crypt where the Hotel del Lago rises. That in the first week of each month of February this hotel establishment closes its doors so that an exclusive group of Nazis can honor its leader.

The small town of San Bernardino was founded in 1888 by German families, paradoxically a year before the birth of Adolf Hitler, and today still houses an important German colony. In the mid-1930s, Nazism became popular later in Stroessner's Paraguay and especially in San Bernardino in which Bernhard Förster tried to create an Aryan colony in Paraguay.

Every day there is more doubt about the version of the suicide montage of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun in the Bunker of the Chancellery of the Reich in 1945.

Current is the thesis of Hitler and Braun fled from Hörsching [Austria] to Barcelona in a plane piloted by Werner Baumbach, then to Cantabria -in the Las Quebrantas Lodge in the village of Somo, south of the bay of Santander- from there to Vigo -according to the British MI6 version- and in a submarine to the Argentine Patagonia, after a brief technical stopover in the Canary Islands, where they landed between July and August 1945. They settled near the city of Bariloche.

It is well known that the main Intelligence agencies in the world knew the presence of Hitler in South America, and that there was all kinds of documentary evidence and they never did anything.

The Ratlines organization provided escape routes for Nazis and fascists fleeing Europe after their defeat in World War II.

These routes led mainly to Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Paraguay; United States, Canada and the Middle East. Continuing with the Ratlines organization, there is a hypothesis of its relationship with the Pro-Deo Vatican intelligence service, whose founder, the Belgian Dominican Father Félix Morlion, who escaped in 1941 to the United States -worked in Psychological Warfare until 1944 - when persecuted by the Nazis because of his activities at the Pro Deo center in Brussels. Its role was vital in curbing the movements of Marxist ideology in Europe - especially in Italy - and America.

On the other hand, Bishop Alois Hudal, Rector of the Roman Pontifical Teutonic Institute Santa Maria dell'Anima, which was a seminary for priests from Germany and Austria, used this post to help escape sought-after Nazi war criminals by providing money and false identity documents, always supported by the Commissione Pontificia d'Assistenza [Vatican Refugee Organization] - documents that would be the first step to later obtain the desired passport of the International Committee of the Red Cross [ICRC], which relaxed identity checks in Basel due to the confidence put in the single word of Bishop Hudal.

Hudal wrote in his diary:

"The Allied war against Germany was not a Crusade, but a rivalry between economic complexes that fought for victory. For these reasons after 1945 I felt obliged to dedicate all my charitable work, mainly to former National Socialists and fascists, and especially to the so-called 'War Criminals'.

Protected prominent escapees by Bishop Hudal in the clandestine flight were the Nazis Erich Priebke, Klaus Barbie, Edward Roschmann, Walter Rauf, Alois Brunner, Franz Stangl, Gustav Wagner, Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele. Not to speak of the curious trajectory of the Nazi ideologue and personal secretary of the Führer, Martin Bormann, of whom the official version of his death crossing the Spree River in Berlin was known during the fall of the capital to Soviet hands on the night of 1 May 1945 when the reality is that a body was not found until 1972 when a group of workers excavated in the area to carry out works and found two corpses. One being  Bormann, responsible for the laundering of immense funds of the NSDAP with the collaboration of some great bankers.

The Argentine Federal Police always had a large file on Bormann, which tells how his body was repatriated to Germany in 1970 and that he was buried in the same place where he was said to have died. When his skull was tested by DNA in 1988, it was discovered that Bormann's skull was covered with a solid red earth. The expert on the part of the German state wanted to record in the record of the autopsy that this soil, which does not exist in Europe, was really Paraguayan soil.

The most powerful Nazi organization to help theirs evade their legal responsibilities for war crimes -preferably former SS officers-  is the organization known as ODESSA - Organisation der Ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen [Organization of Former SS Members] founded in 1946, which completed the protection work that had been started by previous organizations. ODESSA was made known by Simon Wiesenthal, who always maintained that it was not the only secret organization worldwide, but that there were several organizations, both open and covert [including OSS, now known as the CIA, several Latin American governments and networks of Catholic clergymen from Italy], who helped the ex-SS flee Germany.

During the Perón government, about 5,000 Nazis arrived in Argentina out of a total of 9,000 who arrived in South America through the ODESSA organization. It is known that Perón's government sold a total of 10,000 blank passports to ODESSA.

In 1938 following Hitler's policy on Jews in transit, the Argentine government secretly issued an Immigration Law restricting access to any individual "despised or abandoned by the government of his country". This implicitly pointed to Jews and other minorities fleeing Germany at this time. This legislation, although in disuse for many years, was revoked on 8 June 2005.

In the last days of the Third Reich a great number of high-ranking Nazi leaders escaped. How easy it would have been for the Führer to include himself among them.

It is possible to think that Hitler had the opportunity, the means and the opportunity to plan the farce of his suicide, that the Allies swallowed voluntarily - in exchange for powerful reasons as negotiated with the Allies who kept him under a protective shield of sectors of Anglo-American power, the same ones who had financed him so that, from humble painter, he became Chancellor of Germany, within a supposed Washington-Berlin secret pact that contemplated a plan of Nazi evacuation for people, technology, documents and currencies - which materialized especially in the transfer of nuclear technology, which, Germany having lost the war on the European stage, served to accelerate the end on the complicated front of the Pacific where the contest seemed to have no end.

The price seemed reasonable considering that the United States of Vice President Harry S. Truman -President in April 1945- would have an immense saving in the enormous cost of lives and resources in a war of attrition against Japan.

Stalin himself maintained until his death in 1953 that Hitler had fled and so let the Allies know in 1945. In the Russian archives there are three stark versions of Stalin who testified that he held his conviction to the end.
 

According to a FBI report, dated
21 September 1945
-a follow-up to the earlier
14 August 1945
report of Hitler after the
fall of Berlin arriving by
German U-Boat
in the south of Argentina
- File 65-53615-
the information could
not be verified 

Hitler's flight to Argentina

The Soviets crushed the German defense forces of the city and finally entered the previously unassailable refuge of Berlin to apprehend Hitler.

At this point in time-the Nazis already knew that they would have lost the war for a couple of years and had therefore prepared an evacuation plan - the Führer, the great enemy who had once seemed invincible, was defeated.  But he was still useful in the fight against Communism in Europe.  The Allies knew this, and Hitler's death would have represented a great loss -if not the greatest one that could befall anti-Communist leaders- for a future struggle against the Soviets.  Consequently the United States, and especially the interests of the Anglo-American right, had made it clear that Hitler had to be saved.

A small part of the "Nazi front line" was condemned by the Nuremberg courts, but "Number One" could not be sacrificed.  His legitimate wife, Eva Braun, as well as some hierarchs who were never captured, also enjoyed absolute protection.

That is why Hitler was evacuated -the original plan was conceived by the Nazis, as well as its instrumentation - but could only be executed from the moment that Berlin received the green light of Washington- to a place safe and secure in the world. It was Patagonia.

When Soviet troops entered Hitler's refuge, Russian leader Josef Stalin immediately called for a report on the fate of the Führer.  The news that his generals gave him was definite: the most wanted man had escaped.  In these same terms Stalin communicated this to the United States.  The expansion of the shocking initial information is disturbing since the Soviets also affirmed that Hitler had fled in submarine, with presumed destiny to Spain or Argentina.

All of the above is documented -even published by the newspapers of the time- and anyone who wants to question the flight of Hitler should start by knowing this part of the official history which was then covered with official misinformation.

Newspapers and periodicals published a large number of articles about Hitler's escape and his arrival in Patagonia, either through their own investigations or by reproducing the statements of military leaders, both Soviet and American.

For example, this is a reference to a story initially published by the American newspaper "Chicago Times", in its 17 July 1945 edition.

It was clear at the time -with Stalin's military forces in Germany and much of Europe- that it was the dawn of a new world situation, involving a growing tension between the Allied countries and the Moscow government. In short, Capitalism faced atheistic Communism.  The Nazis rejected the ideology of Karl Marx and, unlike the ideology of the left, allowed the existence of capital and private initiative.  The German economy had strong state control, but it consented to private enterprises and private property.  Therefore the position of the Third Reich was closer to Washington than to Moscow.

Hitler's "rescue" meant a triumph in the face of the threatening "Red Danger", ready to advance over other countries of the globe.  It was a guarantee, a precaution.  A way to ensure the survival of a leader who, no doubt, might be useful in the future.  That future moment was perceived as a third World War -to push back the Russians of Europe to the East by all possible means- that could begin a few months after the end of the Second.  This was already in the plans of the Allied powers.

- Who could command that battle in Europe against the Soviets?
- Who with a single speech would raise the German army?
- Who would raise the masses against Moscow?

Obviously the most capable leader for this "crusade" was Hitler.  And the ideologically best prepared army, for that fight against Communism, was the Nazi one.

When Berlin surrendered, on 8 May 1945, strategists were seeing the day after, the division of the world, the next conflict at the gate and all that it meant.

This explanation, about the "obligation" to save Hitler, might not have been understood a few years ago when in the Western world it was still thought that there was one good and one bad side.  The first one led by the United States, made up of countries as well as business sectors and related politicians, with common interests, and with "good intentions" take on Nazism.  Had Hitler really been like that, he would have had no escape.

Today, instead, the truth is that good people are not so good.  It is understood that the cause of the great evils of the world are the strong economic interests that make and break countries, generate wars, and kill millions of innocent people.

Today, instead, the truth is that good people are not so good.  It is understood that the cause of the great evils of the world are the strong economic interests that make and break countries, generate wars, and kill millions of innocent people.

Perhaps now, with this vision of the different planet, accessible to all by modern communication circuits, the story of Hitler's escape becomes credible and understandable.  Or at least a topic of debate and not a mere truth imposed by the interests of the shift.  Perhaps those who criticize this new vision of history can do so from a perspective that enriches the theme, because one thing is certain, only from the confrontation of ideas does the truth arise, and every day more everything seems to indicate that this was very different from the one that they told us.

Testimonials:

"I saw Hitler when my bosses ordered me to cut branches in a timber yard near Otto Hill. I was sitting on a chair and I recognized him from the pictures of the newspaper," said Celestino Quijada. 

"My mother told us on different occasions that her parents had attended to Hitler in the reservation of the stay San Ramón, located at the entrance of Bariloche," said Victor Then.

These testimonies taken by "Revista Noticias" in Patagonia renew the controversy over the alleged presence of Adolf Hitler in Argentina and the house in which he would have taken refuge.

The Hypotheses: 

"In a secret document of the CIA of 17 October 1955, there is a photo in which Hitler is seen in 1954 with another Nazi, Phillip Citroen, in Colombia", says journalist and researcher Abel Basti. 

Sitting in the living room of his house in Bariloche, he exhibits a facsimile of this find and already dreams of getting the original photo.

Hitler was in Tunja [Colombia] in 1954, according to CIA documents, declassified May 2001 including a testimony of Philip Citroen, a former Waffen-SS member, who worked in South America for the KNSM ["Koninklijke Nederlandse Stoomboot-Maatschappi" - Royal Dutch Steamboat Company- an Amsterdam-based shipping company].

In 1954 Citroen had once a month contact with Adolf Hitler who lived then under the name "Adolf Schüttelmer in Tunja. He told in September 1955 in confidence about his meetings with Hitler to an American friend, who worked for the CIA.

In the CIA file on Hitler, the full report is available of Citroen's encounters, including photos of him and Hitler,alias Adolf Schüttelmeyer..

According to his book "Follwing the Footsteps of Hitler" Basti says that Hitler visited several countries of South America with different false identities, including that of Kurt Bruno Kirchner that he used during his stay in Paraguay.  He said that "he did not live cloistered" but that he moved with total freedom not only within the Argentine territory, but also in countries like Brazil, Colombia and Paraguay, and the main Intelligence agencies in the world, such as the American CIA and the British MI6, had reports and photographs confirming Hitler's presence in South America after 1945.

Although at the end of World War II it was announced that Adolf Hitler had committed suicide in his Bunker along with wife, Germany did not officially declare him dead until 10 years later. 

"In fact, he had for many years a strange legal status, since he was not condemned and there was not even a warrant for his capture".

Basti, who has been trying to rebuild Hitler's route to Argentina for years, believes his escape would not have been possible without the complicity of the United States, which considered that its enemy would be a "key piece" in the fight against the communism in the postwar period.

"I have no doubt that at the end of World War II Hitler escaped from Germany under a protective shield of Anglo-American sectors of power, the same ones who had financed him so that, as a humble painter, he became Chancellor of Germany".

Basti also speaks of the existence of a supposed Washington-Berlin pact that contemplated a plan of Nazi evacuation for people, technology, documents and currencies.

Is Hitler dead? Examiner
[Launceston, Tas]
6 July 1945

The report that a body found in the Chancellery in Berlin resembling in some respects that of Hitler definitely is not the genuine article has strengthened the rather widely held belief that the creator of Nazism is alive and in hiding.

Even those who formerly rejected this theory must now, in the light of the failure of searchers to discover any trace of Hitler or his woman friend, be disposed to entertain it. All other top- ranking Nazis have been accounted for, dead or alive. It is strange that the one wanted most of all seems to have disappeared without trace. We may be certain, though, that if Hitler is still alive he will soon be found. There is no country in which he could consider himself safe very long.

The principal objective of the United Nations in Europe was the wiping out of the evil structure built by Hitler. The apprehension and punishment of individuals, though an important aim, was subsidiary. But it is painful to think that a man with so much blood on his hands may be escaping, even for a brief while, the pre-trial prison cell.

Former US Secretary of State Jimmy Byrnes in his book, "Speaking Frankly", says that during the Potsdam conference in August 1945, when he asked Stalin about his Hitler death theory, the Soviet leader replied: "He is not is dead.  He escaped to Spain or Argentina".

The hypothesis that Hitler escaped on 27 April 1945 and days later embarked on a submarine to Patagonia, with his wife Eva Braun, was reflected shortly afterwards in the main news agencies and newspapers around the world.

The recent appearance in Britain of the book "Gray Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler", where journalist Gerrard Williams and historian Simon Dunstan claim that Hitler faked his suicide and escaped to Argentina, has again unleashed the controversy over the true end of the Nazi leader and the hidden network of conveniences by which the Allies facilitated their escape.

According to the evidence gathered, the Führer and his mistress Eva Braun left on a secret flight from Germany in April 1945 bound for Argentina, thanks to the help of US Intelligence that would have been an accomplice in the escape, In exchange for access to Nazi warfare technology.

The FBI continued to process information concerning the Nazi leader until the early 1970s, when it appears to have been "closed," a circumstance that could indicate that this occurred when Hitler's real demise occurred.

Captain Monasterio published his book, "Hitler murio en la Argentina" [Hitler Died in Argentina] in 1987, and although he claims he made part of it up -to avoid trouble with the Argentine authorities at the time- he insists that the most salient points are true.

Video interviews with eyewitnesses filmed in the 1990s while Abel Basti was working for "Ambito Financiero", one of Argentina's most respected daily newspapers, are compelling. It is the words of these witnesses, on a tape given to us by the paper's editorial director Ricardo D'Aloia, that have contributed to the findings published in "Grey Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler":

"In over twenty research trips to Argentina, a beautiful country full of wonderful people, one thing has always surprised us: everyone we spoke to about the possibility of Hitler living there after the war believes it was eminently possible and in many cases definitely true.

"It is often dropped into conversation quite innocently. On one investigative trip, we were in the city of Córdoba planning a foray to the dilapidated Hotel Viena on the shores of Mar Chiquita, a large inland salt lake. We asked the young receptionist at our hotel for the best route from Argentina's second city to Mar Chiquita. Without knowing why we were going to Mar Chiquita, she took our map and politely showed our interpreter the best route to get there. After we had finished with the map, she said to us:

'Oh, you must try the fish, it's sea fish in the middle of Argentina! And then if you're bored you can visit the Hotel Viena where Hitler and his wife used to stay after the war'.

"Similar stories greeted us throughout our trips. On 20 April 2007, we were in San Carlos de Bariloche smoking cigarettes outside the town's casino. A man in his seventies approached us and asked for a light and then, somewhat incongruously, inquired if we were South African. Explaining that Gerrard was Welsh and Simon English, we asked him where he was from. "Chile," he replied, explaining that he ran a fish-farming business there. We offered him a cigarette and commented that Bariloche felt very German and there were a lot of German speakers everywhere, much of the food, architecture, and culture was Germanic, and many of the street names were in German. He replied that the place was full of Nazis, particularly tonight, the anniversary of the Führer's birthday. He should know, he said; his father was the "Gauleiter" [Nazi Party regional leader] of Hamburg, Germany, and when Hitler visited Hamburg he would always stay at their home. With a cheerful 'Auf Wiedersehen', he then walked off into the night. We had scores of similar encounters in the deepest reaches of Patagonia....."

-- Simon Dunstan and Gerrard Williams

Funeral Ceremony