How did a hate group that ran an entire country seemingly disappear into thin air? Spoiler alert -
they didn’t. While World War II has fascinated historians and the public alike since 1945,
what happened to the perpetrators of one of the greatest evils of all time
is less often discussed. Today on Nutty History,
we’re examining the hard truth about what happened to the Nazis after World War II.
After the allied victory in World War II, Germany was divided into zones of occupation
between the U.S, Britain, France and the Soviet Union. The allies adopted various policies
under the general plan of “de-nazification.” De-nazification was a plan implemented to rid
German and Austrian society from Nazi power and influence. Life for detained Nazis was not equal
depending on the zone they lived in. The Soviet internment camps had the poorest conditions.
This prompted many to attempt to relocate to one of the Western zones
under the guise of anti-communist sentiments. Of the Western zones,
French occupied Germany was the most lenient area. In their view, Germany as a whole was responsible
for the war, and they put less importance on classifying between Nazis and non-Nazis.
In the five years following the war, about 400,000 Germans were detained in internment
camps while awaiting possible penalties. This sounds like a lot at first, but when you consider
that up to 45 million Germans at the time were either members or supporters of the Nazi party,
something doesn’t add up. The problem with de-nazification was one of sheer magnitude.
There were simply too many Germans involved to process who had done what. Imagine an entire
country in line at the DMV – that’s the kind of bureaucratic sluggishness we’re talking about.
Another issue was rebuilding Germany’s economy. According to de-nazification rules,
offenders were to be removed from higher ranking jobs and forced to do manual labor. But if every
Nazi and Nazi sympathizer was held responsible, there literally wouldn’t be enough skilled workers
for a functioning society. In the British zone, for instance, it was found that 90% of lawyers
were Nazis. Since they couldn’t very well have a functioning society without any law or order,
Britain determined that 50% of the German Legal Civil Services could be staffed by “nominal”
Nazis. Nazi but not Nazi Nazis. The French zone encountered a similar problem with teachers.
After firing three quarters of teachers due to Nazi influence, they had to rehire them in order
to have an education system. Reconstructing a country while simultaneously trying to categorize
and penalize a large number of culpable citizens was far from a simple process.
When de-nazification began, Eisenhower, an Army general at the time, estimated the process would
take 50 years. But by 1946, the allied powers had handed over the reins on de-nazification
to Germany. Wait what? Yep, Germany was now in charge of enforcing their own punishment.
A popular destination for the worst of the worst Nazis, South America
contained many sympathetic dictators at the time who opened their proverbial doors.
Up to 9,000 Nazi officials and collaborators are thought to have escaped to South America
after the war. While Brazil and Chile had their fair share of exiles, Argentina by far had the
most. Juan Perón, the Argentine president, was a pretty big fan of fascism himself,
especially after serving as a military attaché in Italy early on in World War II. He also sought to
grow his own country’s power by recruiting those with particular military and technical expertise.
Perón and his government officials worked to create “rat lines” for Nazi escape through
ports in Italy and Spain. He also aided in forging documents for leaving the country.
Most of the Nazis made their way down the Pacific using falsified Red Cross passports
stamped with Argentine tourist visas. Once they were in Argentina, most Nazis changed their name
for a time to go into hiding. But some resumed living under their real names as it became clear
that Argentina wouldn’t extradite them back to Germany, even if their identity was discovered.
Of course, Argentina wasn’t the only country to poach Nazis for their own gain. As an arms race
began between the United States and the Soviet Union, collecting expert scientists and engineers
became a higher priority to the respective governments than punishing crimes against
humanity. In 1945, the U.S. had secretly enacted the program “Operation Paperclip” to take German
scientists and engineers back to the mainland, many of them Nazis, essentially as human weapons.
Near the end of the war, Germany had realized the need for these skills, and German scientist
Wener Osenberg created a list identifying names. A Polish lab tech ended up finding the list torn up
in a toilet, which eventually made its way from MI6 to U.S. intelligence. In addition to wanting
these people for their own side, another crucial motivation of Operation Paperclip
was preventing the Soviets from gaining their technical expertise. While called
“an evacuation operation,” identified targets were essentially kidnapped and forced to the
U.S. where they were held for months at a time for interrogation. Still, many of these literal
rocket scientists went on to have incredibly successful careers in the U.S. and were part of
the NASA Space program, despite a suspected high level of Nazi involvement among them.
For the most serious offenders that hadn’t managed to escape into hiding,
the Nuremberg trials prosecuted Nazis in 1946 for war crimes, crimes against humanity,
and wars of aggression. These trials were important for determining international law,
specifically when it came to prosecuting war crimes. They were also a crucial step
in holding some of the most prominent criminals responsible for the Holocaust.
The first and most well-known trial indicted 24 men, with outcomes ranging from acquittal to ten
years imprisonment to execution. 12 were sentenced to death. While the trials represented justice for
some, twelve men receiving capital punishment pales in comparison to the millions that died
in the Holocaust, and the large number of perpetrators that were never held responsible for
their actions. Some have criticized the legality of the Nuremberg trials, calling them an example
of “victor’s justice” and judicially invalid. Other criticisms have pointed to a hypocrisy
of allied nations prosecuting crimes against humanity after their own various wartime actions.
After the allied powers gave up their de-nazification efforts after only a few months,
Germany was tasked with the challenge, though they were still occupied by ally countries.
Unsurprisingly, Germany adopted a looser set of rules when it came to identifying and punishing
Nazis. Anyone born after 1919 was considered “brain-washed” and exempt from punishment.
Of the public officials that the U.S. had removed from office,
75% were reinstated. And to avoid getting bogged down by the lengthy and pesky business of trials,
90% of Nazis were classified as lesser offenders. By 1948, the Cold War had become a greater concern
for the U.S., and any remaining cases were sped through with proceedings that were legally
sketchy, at best. By 1951, de-nazification ended and emphasis shifted toward paying reparations
to victims and their families. From pardons and amnesties enacted by the German government, nearly
800,000 people were freed from any punishment or penalty. So, was Germany finally “denazified?”
At the German Ministry of Justice at the time, 77% of senior officials were former Nazis.
Post-war, some of the most notorious Nazis managed to go into hiding and later escape Germany.
While some lived entire lives getting away with mass murder, other big names were captured by
Nazi Hunters, who popped up to deliver justice to war criminals who were living anonymously.
Adolph Eichmann, the mastermind behind Hitler's “Final Solution” and network of concentration
camps, fled to Buenos Aires where he worked in a Mercedes-Benz automotive plant and lived with his
wife and four children. It wasn’t until 1960 that Eichmann was captured by Israeli agents, drugging
him and flying him out of Argentina disguised as an Israeli airline worker who’d suffered a
head trauma. Despite protests for his return from Argentina, Eichmann was later tried and executed
in Israel. Not all Nazi hunters were government operatives, however. Simon Wiesenthal, a Holocaust
survivor turned Nazi hunter, tracked down Franz Stangl in São Paulo. Stangl was responsible for
the Aktion T-4 euthanasia program that killed those with mental and physical disabilities. After
Wisenthal discovered him, Stangl was extradited to West Germany and sentenced to life imprisonment.
As late as 2019 in the United States, Jakiw Palij was deported from the country at 95-years-old.
A historian at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum discovered that Palij had served as a guard
at a forced labor camp during the war, rather than working on his father’s farm as he claimed
in 1949. It’s an unfortunate truth that not all Nazis were held accountable for their crimes.
Nazi hunting has since died down as most people alive during World War II have since passed away.
That’s all for this episode of Nutty History. If you learned something new, please like this video
and let us know in the comments what historical time or event you’d like us to cover next time.