The leadership of the Third Reich answered for its crimes almost immediately after the surrender. Military leaders, ministers and the Fuhrer's associates were either executed or sent to prison. However, many Nazis managed to evade responsibility. Trials of those who were found in different parts of the world continue to this day. Amateur. media chose five criminals who were searched for the longest time.
Martin Bormann
Hitler's closest ally and head of the party chancellery, Martin Bormann, died a few days before Germany's surrender. A witness at the Nuremberg trials that he saw the body of a Nazi at a bus stop in Berlin, from where Bormann tried to escape. According to an eyewitness, there was a bitter smell of almonds coming from him - desperate to hide, the Fuhrer's secretary bit into an ampoule of potassium cyanide.
Martin Bormann died a few days before the German surrender
However, problems arose with the evidence in 1946 and no one believed the version of suicide. However, Bormann was sentenced to death in absentia, and the search for him continued until the end of the 20th century. Reports of the discovery of his remains came even from Leningrad. It was also alleged that Bormann was hiding in Latin America after the war. The disputes ended thanks to DNA testing. She showed that the body found in early May 1945 in the German capital still belonged to Bormann. In 1999, his ashes were cremated and scattered over the Baltic Sea.
Adolf Eichmann
In Hitler's Empire, Adolf Eichmann was responsible for the "Final Solution" Jewish question" After the defeat of Germany, he managed to pass himself off as an ordinary SS lieutenant who fought on the Eastern Front. Eichmann managed to escape to Italy. Argentine diplomats granted his request to emigrate, and the Franciscan monk Eduardo Demoter helped with the documents, issuing a false Nansen refugee passport in the name of Ricardo Clement.
Adolf Eichmann was responsible for the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question"
Having moved along the “rat trails” from Europe to Argentina, Eichmann lived an ordinary life: he started a family, worked at a Mercedes-Benz dealership. But in the late 1950s they managed to figure it out. The Israeli intelligence services showed interest in his person, and in those years announced a real hunt for Nazi criminals.
Mossad agents conducted a special operation in Argentina to capture Eichmann. He was captured near his home, interrogated and secretly flown to Israel. Several years were spent on the investigation and trial of Eichmann. At the end of May 1962, the man responsible for the genocide of the Jews was executed by hanging.
Mossad agents conducted a special operation in Argentina to capture Eichmann
Ladislaus Chizhik-Chatari
During World War II, Cizik-Csatary was the head of the Hungarian police unit in the Slovak city of Kosice and was responsible for the Jewish ghetto. It was on his orders that in April 1944, almost 16 thousand people were deported from there to Auschwitz. Laszlo Csatary was extremely cruel and often took part in the abuse of prisoners. For example, he forced them to dig frozen ground with their bare hands. After the end of the war, the criminal fled to Canada, where he lived quietly until the mid-90s, selling art objects. When local authorities found out the whole truth about Chizhik-Chatari, they were going to deport him to Hungary (In Europe, he was sentenced to death in absentia half a century ago). However, the Nazi managed to escape without waiting for extradition. It was only possible to find him in 2012. Journalists found him in one of the quiet quarters of Budapest, where he lived in a modest two-room apartment. Soon Chizhik-Chatari was detained, but due to his advanced age, he was placed under house arrest. He did not live to see the trial, dying at the age of 98.
Vladimir Katryuk
A participant in the punitive operation in the Belarusian village of Khatyn died in the spring of 2015 in Canada. Witnesses said that Katryuk, who served in the SS, took direct part in the massacre of residents, driving them into a barn, and then shot those who managed to escape from the fire. The victims of the tragedy, which happened on March 22, 1943, were 149 people. Two years after these events, Katryuk surrendered to the French, was kept in a filtration camp, then lived in France, and in the early 1950s he left for Canada, where he received asylum. He settled near Montreal and was engaged in beekeeping. Claims against him arose only in the late 90s. Canadian authorities, having received information about the crimes he had committed, deprived him of his citizenship, although ten years later he was fully restored to his rights. An attempt to bring Katryuk to justice on the eve of the 70th anniversary of the Victory was made by Russian investigators. In Moscow, a case was opened against him under the article “genocide,” but Ottawa refused to extradite the 93-year-old punisher.
Oscar Groening
Most likely, one of the last trials of Nazi criminals ended in the summer of 2015 in Germany. The Lüneburg City Court sentenced the elderly Oskar Gröning to 4 years in prison. The press calls him “the accountant of Auschwitz.” At the age of 20, he voluntarily enlisted in the SS and got a job in a concentration camp. There he took prisoners' personal belongings and kept records of their valuables. Then he transported it all to Berlin. He did not directly participate in the extermination of people, however, the court considered that through his actions Groening provided economic support to the Third Reich. He was found guilty of complicity in the murder of 300 thousand people.
Groening was convicted only the second time
Groening was convicted only the second time. In the 1970s, an investigation was already carried out against him, which ended inconclusively due to lack of evidence. The situation changed a few years ago. After the verdict in the case of Ivan Demuniak, who worked as a guard in some Nazi camps, German justice changed the story of Groening: even one proven fact of serving in the Auschwitz administration was enough to bring the 94-year-old criminal to justice.
It is well known that after the defeat Nazi Germany its main leaders either committed suicide, were convicted at the Nuremberg trials and executed, or were sent to prison for many years. But many of those who took part in the crimes committed managed to hide in distant countries and avoid punishment for a long time. Some were never caught.
Let us remember the high-profile stories of those Nazis who were nevertheless overtaken by the punishing hand of justice - even if decades later and on the other side of the Earth.
Jewish retribution
The most famous Nazi criminal caught after the end of the Nuremberg Tribunal, Adolf Eichmann is considered one of the main organizers of the Holocaust.
Being a native of Germany, Eichmann, like Adolf Hitler, grew up in Austria and even for some time attended the same school in the city of Linz as the Fuhrer. Two years after joining the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP), he was assigned to work in the newly formed “Jewish” department. Immediately after the outbreak of World War II, the policy of the Third Reich towards Jews changed: from “voluntary” emigration (to which the people despised by Hitler were forced by all means) it was decided to move to forced deportation. It was Eichmann who developed its various options, including the creation of a reservation for Jews in Madagascar (!). In 1941, a new directive appeared: the “Untermensch” were to be physically exterminated. This is what Eichmann did until the end of the war, organizing the process.
After the defeat of Germany, the Americans arrested him, but did not have time to identify him: first he presented false documents, and then managed to escape altogether. After which, under a new name, he rented a plot of land in a Saxon village, where he lived until 1950. In 1948, with the help of the Franciscan monk Edward Dömöter, who was part of the circle of Nazi-sympathizing Catholic clergy, Eichmann received documents in the name of Ricardo Clement and began to prepare the ground for moving to Argentina. Two years later, he managed to obtain a humanitarian passport from the Red Cross. With him he reached Italian Genoa, hiding in monasteries along the way, and boarded a ship to Buenos Aires.
Eichmann did not show off in Latin America, but this did not stop him from moving his wife and three children there from Europe. And soon the former Nazi was helped by his now democratic homeland: he got a job at the local branch of Mercedes-Benz, where he rose to the rank of head of the department. With the new funds, the family was able to build a house. And everything would be fine, but some people overseas really wanted to find Eichmann. And they waited for their chance. In this they were helped by a vigilant resident of Argentina, Lothar Herman, a half-German, half-Jew who emigrated from Germany in 1938. His daughter once started dating a young man named Klaus Eichmann, and her father suspected something was wrong, which he reported to the German prosecutor. And that’s why the information got to the Israeli intelligence service Mossad. Knowing that the Argentine government was in no hurry to extradite former Nazis, the Israelis decided to take Eichmann out on their own. They successfully carried out this operation on May 11, 1960, capturing their target right on the street of Buenos Aires and injecting her with a tranquilizer, and then loading her onto a plane as a member of the official Israeli delegation who became “unwell.” In the Promised Land, he was interrogated for almost a year, preparing the trial, which it was decided to make as open as possible.
Both during the investigation and at trial, Eichmann adhered to one line: he did not consider himself guilty, because he only followed the orders of “responsible leaders,” of whom he was not one. True, at one of the meetings, the Israeli prosecutor quoted the Nazi’s own words, which he said in 1945: “I will go to my grave laughing, because the feeling that I have five million lives on my conscience gives me great satisfaction.” Eichmann initially explained that he meant “enemies of the Reich” such as the Soviet Union, but later admitted that he was talking about Jews.
Eichmann was sentenced to death by hanging. He was executed on the night of June 1, 1962 at the age of 56. His last words began: “Long live Germany! Long live Argentina! Long live Austria! These are the three countries I was most associated with and I will never forget them. I salute my wife, family and friends. I'm ready. We will meet you soon, because this is the fate of all people. I die with faith in God.”
Butcher from Lyon
The fate of this criminal amazes with its bizarre turns and just begs to be written into the pages of an adventure novel. A man with the funny name Klaus Barbie was born in 1913 in Germany, in a family with French roots (the ancestors' surname was Barbier). His father was drafted into the Kaiser's army, where he fought in World War I against the French, a hatred of whom he apparently passed on to his son. Returning home after being wounded in the neck near Verdun and being held captive, Klaus Barbie Sr. drank heavily and often engaged in assault. His son also acquired a taste for violence well.
Barbie's party career was rapid, and at the age of 29 he headed the Gestapo department in occupied French Lyon. There, in the homeland of his ancestors, the young SS man showed his full potential. At his headquarters, he personally carried out the brutal torture of all suspected members of the Resistance, regardless of their gender and age. Thus, the daughter of one of the leaders of the local partisans claims that Barbie ordered to skin him alive, and then plunge his head into a bucket of ammonia, which is why he died.
Historians claim that in total Barbie was involved in the deaths of 14 thousand people in France, for which he received the nickname “The Butcher of Lyon.” At the same time, the command greatly valued the effective employee, and in 1943 Hitler personally awarded him the Iron Cross, First Class.
The end of the war suddenly opened up new career prospects for Barbie. In 1947, after being imprisoned, he was recruited by the American Counterintelligence Corps to help the United States fight communism (and all other enemies along the way). Over the years, intelligence work in Europe became more and more difficult for him, because the French, who had sentenced him to death in absentia, began to demand that the Americans hand over “The Butcher.” They, however, refused, and in 1951 they even helped him emigrate to Bolivia, using Catholic clergy (already mentioned in the section about Eichmann) as cover.
Barbie with friends in Bolivia
In South America, Barbie continued to work for the Americans, and in 1965 he was also recruited by West German intelligence. Many of his overseas affairs are poorly known, but it is believed that he helped the CIA capture the legendary Ernesto Che Guevara, and also contributed to the growth of the criminal empire of the equally legendary drug lord Pablo Escobar.
Pablo Escobar
In Bolivia, Barbie, known as Klaus Altmann, became his own man, rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel in the local army and was friendly with two dictators, Hugo Banzer and Luis García Mesa. He, in fact, helped the second one come to power. At the same time, in Europe the location of the Lyon executioner was revealed in the early 1970s, but Bolivia ignored all French requests for extradition. It was only in 1983 that the new democratic government arrested Barbie and sent her to trial overseas.
In 1987, the French hater, who was already 73, was sentenced to life imprisonment. In court, he said: “When I appear before the throne of God, I will be acquitted.”
Four years later, Barbie died in the prison of the same Lyon where he committed his main atrocities. He was simultaneously diagnosed with leukemia, spinal cord cancer and prostate cancer.
Executioners from Sobibor
Not only the top leaders, but also the direct executors on the ground were persecuted for the extermination of people in Nazi concentration camps. One of the most difficult stories of this kind was the fate of the administration of the Sobibor camp, which operated in Poland from May 1942 to October 1943. During this time, at least 250 thousand representatives of this people died within its walls as part of the so-called “Operation Reinhard” to exterminate Polish Jews.
Franz Stangl
The first commandant of Sobibor was Franz Stangl, a native of Austria who began his career in the police. At 32, he changed the police bureau to work in a new Reich project, the “T-4 Killing Program.” This initiative was aimed at clearing society of physically and mentally disabled people through their “forced euthanasia.”
A poster promoting the removal of sick members of society. The top shows that in 1925 there were four disabled parasites for every 50 workers. It is predicted that in 1955 there will be seven of them, and in 2000 - 12.
Another similar poster. The inscription reads: “60,000 marks. Society spends so much on the lifelong maintenance of this person with a hereditary defect. This is your money too, citizen.”
It was with this program that the mechanism began to work, soon used as an instrument of the Holocaust.
Having received an appointment to Sobibor, during the three months of his leadership, Stangl put about one hundred thousand Jews through the death conveyor. After which he received a new assignment - to lead a similar death camp in Treblinka, which was opened a little later and suffered from “poor organization.” There, the new commandant also set up the process in an exemplary manner. Because of the color of his uniform, he received the nickname “White Death” from the prisoners, although he himself distanced himself from the cruelty of the staff and carried out his work dispassionately. Stanglt later stated that he did not feel any hatred towards Jews and was indifferent to ideology, but was simply realizing his professional ambitions. He perceived the victims not as people, but as a “cargo” to be eliminated.
Gustav Wagner
His assistant in Sobibor was another Austrian, Gustav Wagner, nicknamed “The Beast” and “Wolf” for his cruelty, as well as the German Karl Frenzel, who replaced Wagner in case of his absence. According to another former camp worker, Erich Bauer, this trio was worried about the “performance” of the institution entrusted to them, sadly stating that in terms of the number of Jews killed, Sobibor was inferior to Belzec and Treblinka.
Wagner (center)
Post-war the fate of three comrades developed in a similar way. Stangl and Wagner, like many other Nazis, were also able to escape to South America- however, not to Argentina or Bolivia, but to Brazil. But in the “land of wild monkeys” their paths diverged.
Stangl, who got a job at the Volkswagen plant, did not even bother to change his name and was eventually arrested and extradited to Germany. This happened when “White Death” turned 59 years old. The court sentenced him to life imprisonment, and in June 1971 he died in prison of a heart attack.
Stangl gives an interview in prison
But Wagner, who changed his name to “Gunther Mendel,” happily avoided extradition: the Brazilian authorities successively refused to extradite him to Israel, Austria, Poland and Germany. Already in 1979, he freely gave an interview to the BBC, in which he said: “I didn’t experience any feelings... It was just another job. In the evenings we never talked about her, we just drank and played cards.”
Karl Frenzel (left) and Erich Bauer
True, another year later, Mendel-Wagner’s life ended. He was found in Sao Paulo with a knife in his chest at the age of 69. According to his lawyer, he committed suicide.
Magazine with interview and photograph of Wagner
As for Karl Frenzel, he did not run away from Germany, but worked as a lighting technician in Frankfurt until 1962, when he was accidentally identified on the street during his lunch break. At the trial, he said that he regretted what happened in the concentration camps, but during the war he believed that it was legal and even necessary.
Karl Frenzel
The court sentenced Frenzel to life imprisonment, but after 16 years he was released for health reasons. He died in 1996 at the age of 85. In an interview, he said: “When my children and friends ask me if all this really happened, I tell them that yes, it really did. Then they say that this is impossible, to which I once again answer them that all this is true.”
Many famous Nazi criminals managed to escape retribution.
There are several versions of what happened to the man who destroyed the “enemies of the Reich” with such zeal and mercilessness.
So, according to one of them, he died in May 1945 in Berlin. In the same year, the corpse of a man with an identity card in the name of Müller was discovered in Berlin. He was buried, but in 1963 an examination determined that the remains did not belong to Müller.
There is also a version that Mueller managed to escape to Latin America. Among the countries where he could hide were Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay.
At the same time, Walter Schellenberg, in his memoirs, expressed the version that Müller was recruited by the NKVD and died in Moscow in 1948.
Bruner's Lifelong Escape
One of the highest-ranking Nazi criminals who managed to escape was one of the leaders of the SS, Eichmann’s ally in the implementation of the “Jewish Question,” Alois Brunner.
It was Brunner, as head of special SS units from 1939 to 1945, who was responsible for the deportation of 100 thousand Jews from Vienna, Berlin, Greece, France and Slovakia to death camps.
After World War II, Brunner fled to Munich, where he worked as a truck driver and miner. In 1954, he fled to Syria, where he lived under the name of Dr. Georg Fischer and collaborated with the Syrian intelligence services.
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He was unofficially called the “father of the Syrian intelligence services.” French military courts sentenced him to death in absentia in 1954, and in 2001 to life imprisonment. Israeli intelligence services repeatedly organized assassination attempts on him. But official Syria has always denied the fact that Bruner lives in the country. In December 1999, information appeared that Brunner had died. But it was refuted by German journalists who claimed to have seen him alive. Whether Brunner is still alive remains a mystery.
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IN modern society The terms "Nazism", "nationalism" and "fascism" may often be perceived as synonymous, but this is not the case. Two terms, namely Nazism and fascism, were identified during the Great Patriotic War, since Italy and Germany acted on the same side in this war. It was then that the phrase “Nazi Germany” appeared, which the captured Germans really did not like. Nationalism and Nazism are practically indistinguishable for ordinary person. But if these concepts have the same meaning, how can they differentiate between them and Nazism?
Fascism and Francoism
Fascism in Italian means “union” or “bundle”. This term refers to a generalization of far-right political movements, as well as their ideology. It also denotes dictatorial-type political regimes that are led by these movements. If we take a narrower concept, then fascism means a mass political movement that existed in Italy in the 20-40s of the twentieth century under the leadership of Mussolini.
In addition to Italy, fascism also existed in Spain during the reign of General Franco, which is why it received a slightly different name - Francoism. Fascism existed in Portugal, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and also in many If you believe the works of Soviet scientists, then National Socialism, which existed in Germany, should also be classified as fascism, but to understand this, you need to understand what Nazism is?
Signs of a fascist state
How can one distinguish a fascist state from others? Undoubtedly, it has its own characteristics that make it possible to separate it from other countries where a dictator rules. The main features of the ideology of fascism are:
- Leaderism.
- Corporatism.
- Militarism.
- Extremism.
- Nationalism.
- Anti-communism.
- Populism.
Fascist parties, in turn, arise when the country is in a state of economic crisis, moreover, if it affects the state of the political and social sphere.
After the end of World War II, the concept of “fascist” acquired a very negative connotation, so it became extremely unpopular for any political group to identify itself with this movement. In the Soviet media, all anti-communist military dictatorships were traditionally called fascism. Examples include Pinochet's military junta in Chile, as well as the Stroessner regimes in Paraguay.
Fascism is not synonymous with the word nationalism, so the two concepts should not be confused. You just need to figure it out, and Nazism.
Nationalism
The next term that you should learn to understand what Nazism is is nationalism. It is one of the areas of policy, the fundamental principle of which is the thesis of the supremacy of the nation in the state. This political movement seeks to defend the interests of a particular nationality. But this doesn't always happen. Sometimes nationalism can shape a people not only according to the principle of one blood, but also according to the principle of territorial affiliation.
How to distinguish nationalism from Nazism?
The main differences between Nazism and nationalism are that representatives of the latter are more tolerant of other ethnic groups, but do not seek to get closer to them. In addition, they, as mentioned above, can be formed along territorial or religious grounds. It is also less likely to contradict economics, free thought and freedom of speech. It knows how to qualitatively wedge itself into the legal field of the state and is able to cope with. Anyone who understands what Nazism is should know that under it the state follows totalitarian foundations, and there is no place for free thinking in it.
Nazism
What is Nazism? The definition of this concept became widely known throughout the world after the end of World War II. It is the Third Reich that is the main example through which one can understand what Nazism is. This concept refers to that form of social structure of the state in which socialism is combined with an extreme degree of racism and nationalism.
The goal of Nazism was to unite over a vast area a community of racially pure, Aryan people who could lead the country to prosperity for centuries.
According to Hitler, socialism was an ancient Aryan tradition. According to high-ranking officials of the Third Reich, it was their ancestors who first began to use the lands together, diligently developing the idea of the common good. Communism, they said, was not socialism, but only Marxism in disguise.
The main ideas of National Socialism were:
- Anti-Marxism, anti-Bolshevism.
- Racism.
- Militarism.
Thus, one can understand what fascism and Nazism, as well as nationalism, are. These are three completely different concepts, which, despite some similarities, are not synonymous. But despite the facts, many people to this day consider them one and the same.
The Holocaust, the murder of millions of innocent people and the thorough ethnic cleansing of Eastern Europe were just some of the policies of Nazi Germany before and during World War II.
The leader of the Nazi Party, Adolf Hitler, considered his main goal to maximize the territory of the German Empire, as well as to remove all Jews and representatives of other “undesirable” nationalities from the territory of Europe. The names of most Nazi criminals, such as Hitler, Josef Mengele, Heinrich Himmler, Adolf Eichmann, Joseph Goebbels and Hermann Goering became known throughout the world, but a significant part of the equally, and sometimes more bloodthirsty followers of national fascist ideology remained in the shadows.
10. FRIEDRICH JECKELN – DEVELOPER OF THE “JECKELN SYSTEM” FOR THE LIQUIDATION OF “UNDESPENDABLES”
SS-Obergruppenführer (the second rank in the SS after Heinrich Himmler), Friedrich led one of the largest "Einsatzgruppen" - a "tactical group" or "deployment group", the main task of which was massacres in the territory of the occupied Soviet Union. By personal order of Jeckeln, more than 100 thousand Jews, Slavs, Gypsies and representatives of other “undesirable” nationalities were brutally killed in the territories captured during the Second World War.
Having joined the Nazi Party in October 1929, within a year Jeckeln became a member of the SS, and three years later he was elected to the Reichstag, the German parliament. Remembered for his ruthlessness and cruelty, Jeckeln took a personal part in the liquidation of members of the left and other opposition parties.
Using his own method of mass murder, known as the “Jeckeln System”, in which people still alive were forced to undress and lie in freshly dug mass graves, Jeckeln carried out three of the most terrible Nazi executions of the Second World War: in Rumbala (November-December 1941, 25 thousand were executed . people), at Babi Yar (September 1941, more than 180 thousand people were executed) and in Kamenets-Podolsky (June 1941, about 24 thousand Jews were executed).
For the mass execution in Rumbula, Jeckeln was awarded the Iron Cross. In April 1945 he was captured by Russian troops and in early 1946 he appeared before a Riga military court. At the trial, the killer was calm and admitted his guilt: “I must bear responsibility for everything that the SS, SD and Gestapo did in the eastern lands. My fate is in the hands of the court and I only ask that mitigating circumstances be taken into account. I will consider my sentence fair and accept it in complete repentance."
Found guilty of war crimes, Jeckeln was hanged on Victory Square in Riga on February 3, 1946.
9. ELSA KOCH – “BUCHENWALD BITCH” 
Elsa Koch, wife of the commandant of the Buchenwald and Majdanek concentration camps, Karl-Otto Koch, is recognized as one of the most cruel women of the entire Nazi regime. Her bloody deeds earned her the nicknames "Bitch of Buchenwald", "Red Witch of Buchenwald", "Beast of Buchenwald", "Queen of Buchenwald", and "Butcher's Widow", but even these cannot convey her inhuman cruelty.
A member of the Nazi Party since the early 1930s, Koch met her husband through mutual friends and began her career as a guard at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin. She came to Buchenwald after her husband was appointed camp commandant in 1937.
Koch treated prisoners in both camps horribly and is said to have enjoyed killing “undesirables” without the slightest remorse. She did not even hesitate to rip off areas of tattooed skin from prisoners, using them as lamp shades, book covers and pillowcases. On Elsa's orders, the camp guards raped, tortured and killed prisoners right in front of her eyes, which gave her undisguised pleasure and joy.
In August 1943, Elsa and Karl Koch were arrested by the Nazis themselves on charges of embezzlement and embezzlement, but just a year later Elsa was released. A year later, in June 1945, she was arrested by the US Army.
One of the first Nazis tried by the US military, Koch was tried in 1947 in Dachau and, despite being pregnant, was sentenced to life imprisonment "for violating the laws and customs of war." In 1948, General Latsis Clay commuted the sentence to 4 years, citing insufficient evidence, but Elsa was again arrested and retried. This time she was found guilty of multiple murders and sentenced to life imprisonment with deprivation of all civil rights.
Elsa Koch hanged herself in the women's prison in Aichach in September 1967 and was buried in the city cemetery in an unmarked grave.
8. HERTHA BOTHE – “SADIST OF STUTTHOF” 
Another equally brutal Nazi was Herta Bothe, a concentration camp guard who was nicknamed the “Sadist of Stutthof” because of her disgusting actions.
A member of the League of German Girls (the women's wing of the Nazi Party) since 1939, Bothe was called up to serve as a guard at the Ravensbrück concentration camp in September 1942 and was soon transferred to the Stutthof camp near Danzig. It didn't take long before Hertha became famous for her brutal beatings of prisoners and her undisguised pleasure in watching the suffering of prisoners who were tortured and raped.
But her crimes were not limited to Stutthof. While escorting a group of female prisoners from central Poland to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, Hertha beat a Jewish girl, Eva, to death with a wooden block and shot two other prisoners, although she never admitted to it.
Arrested in April 1945 by Allied forces during the liberation of Bergen-Belsen, Borte was brought before a military court, where she was found to be a "ruthless follower of the Nazi regime." Sentenced to ten years in prison, on December 22, 1951, she was pardoned by the British government, having served only 6 years. Hertha Bothe is still alive.
7. EUGENE FISCHER - CREATOR OF NAZI EUGENICS, GERMAN CONCENTRATION CAMPS AND “BIOLOGY OF THE ARYAN RACE” 
Some Nazi doctors, such as Joseph Mengele, were more famous than Eugen Fischer, but his work was the basis for many of Hitler's revolutionary ideas and policies.
Occupying the position of director of the Institute of Anthropology, Heredity and Eugenics named after. Kaiser Wilhelm from 1927 to 1942, Fischer created the theory of “racial biology”, justifying the superiority of the Aryan race over other races of “subhumans”.
And although he joined the Nazi Party only in 1940, before that Fischer carried out the illegal examination and sterilization of 600 children - descendants of French-African soldiers, and also wrote 2 scientific works early National Socialism: “Fundamentals of heredity and racial hygiene” and “Theory of human heredity and racial hygiene.” Fischer's work became the scientific basis for the adoption of the anti-Jewish Nuremberg Laws, as well as the scale for determining racial purity.
His numerous experiments with gypsies, Jews and Germans of African descent, aimed at finding evidence of racist theories, made Fischer so famous among the Nazis that even Hitler himself mentioned his works in Mein Kampf. Another invention of this pseudo-doctor's feverish brain was the concentration camps, the first of which was built in 1904 in South Africa to isolate the "inferior" races.
Incredibly, after retiring in 1942, E. Fisher was not put on trial for war crimes and lived in peace until his death in 1967.
6. JOSEPH KRAMER AND IRMA GRESE – “THE BEAST OF BELZEN” AND “THE HYENA OF AUSCHWITZ” 
The commandant of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, Joseph Kramer, did not feel any pity for his prisoners at all, nor did his “comrade-in-arms” Irma Grese.
Nicknamed the "Beast of Belsen", Kramer worked at the Natzweiler-Struthof, Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz camps, killing tens of thousands of prisoners with brutal and uncompromising methods. Kramer began his “working” career in the Natzweiler-Struthof camp, the only one in modern France, where he personally gassed 80 Jewish men and women, and then preserved their skeletons for the Institute of Anatomy at the Imperial University of Strasbourg.
From May to December 1944, Kramer was in charge of the operation of the gas chambers at Auschwitz, happily killing thousands upon thousands of prisoners on an industrial scale previously unknown to mankind. After this, he was transferred to Bergen-Belsen, where he continued his brutal dictatorial rule until the liberation of the camp by the British, for whom he even gave something of a tour.
Irma Grese first worked in the Ravensbrück camp, then in Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz, and everywhere she was equally cruel. Known as the "Hyena of Auschwitz", she took pleasure in observing the suffering of the sick and weak. Possessing extraordinary external characteristics, Irma had many lovers among SS workers, including Josef Mengele.
At trial, both sadists were found guilty of war crimes and hanged in December 1945 at Hamlin Prison. Moreover, at the time of her execution, Irma was only 22 years old, which made her the youngest criminal of the 20th century sentenced to death under English law.
5. REINHARD HEIDRICH - THE INSPIRER OF THE HOLOCAUST AND THE “FINAL SOLUTION”, CALLED “THE MAN WITH THE IRON HEART” BY HITLER 
Despite his position as one of the most important Nazi leaders during World War II, Reinhard Heydrich's atrocities often remain in the shadows. If Adolf Hitler himself calls someone “a man with an iron heart,” then this is probably one of the most bloodthirsty Nazis.
An SS general and head of the Reich Security Main Directorate (which included the Gestapo, criminal police and SD), Heydrich also oversaw the Czech regions of Bohemia and Moravia. One of the founders of the SD, Heydrich neutralized opponents of Nazism even before they came to power, and also participated in the preparation and conduct of Kristallnacht (mass pogroms of Jewish families in Germany and Austria in 1938).
During World War II, he was involved in the suppression of Czech cultural identity and the elimination of pockets of resistance in Bohemia and Moravia, and also had a hand in the creation of the Einsatzgruppen - units that systematically eliminated the local population and Jews. In addition, Heydrich personally presided over the 1942 conference in Wanza, where the “final decision” was made to deport and exterminate all Jews in German-occupied territories, which became his main crime and led to the Holocaust.
In May 1942, Heydrich’s atrocities were put an end to by a group of Czech soldiers trained by the British and sent to eliminate him as part of special operation codenamed "anthropoid". Hitler long lamented the loss of one of his most devoted generals, who unquestioningly carried out all his extravagant wishes.
4. MARIA MANDEL – “THE BEAST” DIRECTLY INVOLVED IN THE MURDER OF MORE THAN HALF A MILLION WOMEN IN AUSCHEWZIT 
Maria Mandel is considered directly involved in the murder of more than 500 thousand women prisoners in the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. It is not surprising that for her boundless cruelty she received the nickname “beast”.
Born in Austria-Hungary, Mandel became an employee of the Lichtenburg camp immediately after the Anschluss of Austria in 1938, after which, in May 1939, she was transferred to the Ravensbrück camp. Impressing her superiors, Maria quickly moved up the ranks and was soon put in charge of conducting roll calls and punishing offenders - beating and flogging prisoners gave her sadistic pleasure.
Mandel gained her notoriety after her transfer to the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp in October 1942. The female commandant could not surpass the men, but she had absolute control over the female part of the camp prisoners, thanks to which she became the manager of all female units of the Auschwitz camp, including Hindenburg, Rajsko and Lichteverden.
Mandel became famous for ordering the immediate death of any prisoner passing by if she dared to glance at her. Approving the lists of camp prisoners to be exterminated, she sent more than 500 thousand women and children to the gas chambers of Auschwitz.
Maria also chose so-called “pets” from among the Jews, forcing them to walk around the camp and carry out various tasks, after which she became tired of them and had to be destroyed. In an attempt to increase the efficiency of the extermination process, Mandel created the "Auschwitz Women's Orchestra" to play for the prisoners dancing on their way to the gas chambers.
In August 1945, M. Mandel was captured by the US Army and, despite requests for clemency, was hanged in January 1948 after her trial in Auschwitz.
3. FRIEDRICH WEGENER - A SCIENTIST WHO CONDUCTED EXPERIMENTS ON PRISONERS BUT WAS NEVER CONVICTED FOR HIS CRIMES 
The pathologist who discovered the disease originally known as Wegener's granulomatosis, Friedrich Wegener was involved in horrific experiments on prisoners in concentration camps and Jewish ghettos, although he was never convicted of any crimes.
An ardent supporter of Nazism, engaged in propaganda with a party card in hand, and joining the National Socialists even earlier than Adolf Hitler, Wegener played an important role in shaping the views of the future leader of Germany.
Occupying a high position in the German military medicine system, Friedrich Wegener served in a medical institution near the Lodz ghetto in Poland, where he conducted his experiments on Jews. Wegener is accused of testing new drugs, injecting various substances into the bodies of victims, and performing autopsies on living people to study organs that were still functioning.
Wegener managed to maintain his Nazi past until his death in 1990 and even received an award from the American Lung Institute for the discovery of a new disease. However, less than a year after Wegener's death, information about connections with the Nazis and sadistic experiments was made public. The scientific community deprived him of all awards and titles, renamed the open disease and consigned Wegener to complete oblivion.
2. ODILO GLOBOCCHNIK - A MAN CALLED BY ONE HISTORIAN "THE MOST VILE GUY IN THE MOST VILEEST ORGANIZATION EVER KNOWN" 
Described by historian Michael Allen as "the nastiest guy in the nastiest organization ever known," SS warlord and Austrian Nazi Globocnik committed a litany of war crimes during World War II.
One of the main organizers of Operation Reinhard, Globocnik took part in the murder of more than a million Polish Jews during the Holocaust, ensuring their identification and delivery to the Majdanek, Treblinka, Sobibor and Belzek concentration camps. He also took a direct part in the extermination of 500 thousand Jews in the largest Warsaw ghetto in Europe, and subsequently in the extermination of the inhabitants of the Bialystok ghetto who resisted the Nazi occupation.
An ardent supporter of the Nazi theory of racial superiority and ethnic cleansing in Eastern Europe, he created and oversaw the Lublin reservation, in whose labor camps about 95 thousand Jews worked. According to Globocnik, Jews in labor camps had to provide themselves with everything they needed or, otherwise, die of hunger.
It is also believed that it was Globocnik who convinced Heinrich Himmler of the need to use scientifically based methods of exterminating people in concentration camps and received permission to test gas chambers in the Belzek camp, after which they began to be used in all “death camps.”
After fleeing to Austria in May 1945, Globocnik was captured by British soldiers, but in prison he bit through a cyanide capsule and avoided trial. The priest of the local church refused to desecrate the sacred ground of the church cemetery with the body of a Nazi criminal, and Globocnik was buried away from the cemetery.
1. OSCAR DIRLEWANGER – CHILD MOLESTER AND NECROPHILIAN, THE MOST “EVILIOUS AND BLOODTHIRST” OF THE NAZIS 
Oskar Dirlewanger is closely associated with the most terrible and inhumane crimes of the Second World War, most of which were committed by his subordinates - soldiers of the SS penal unit "Dirlewanger".
For raping two 13-year-old girls in the 1930s, Dirlewanger was sentenced to prison, but was later released after believing that the brave fighter in the Spanish Civil War could be useful to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in their military campaigns.
Participation in the First World War and Civil War in Spain they not only made Dirlewanger a first-class soldier, but also contributed to the formation of his sadistic inclinations, which were fully realized during the Second World War.
It was thanks to his military experience that Oscar quickly made a career in the SS and received command of his own penal unit, known for its brutal methods.
This SS commander recruited most of his soldiers from convicted criminals, concentration camp prisoners, and even from asylums for the mentally ill, whose bestial cruelty was experienced in the occupied territories of the USSR. They killed, tortured and raped adults and children, while their commander watched with pleasure. Dirlewanger even thought of feeding the prisoners rat poison to entertain his soldiers, allowing them to rape the agonizing women.
Timothy Synder, Chris Bishop, Richard Rhodes and other historians in their writings confirmed the inhuman anger and bestial cruelty of this Nazi, calling Dirlewanger the most cruel sadist of the SS and the entire Second World War, with whom no one can compete.
Captured by French troops in June 1945, Dirlewanger died in the Altshausen prison camp due to mistreatment and constant beatings. The death certificate of the sadist says that he died of natural causes, but many are sure that the SS man was simply beaten to death by Polish soldiers.
