The leadership of the Third Reich answered for their crimes almost immediately after the surrender. Military leaders, ministers and close associates of the Fuhrer were either executed or sent to prison. However, many Nazis managed to evade responsibility. Judicial proceedings against those who were found in different parts of the world continue to this day. Dilettant. media chose five criminals who were searched for longer than others.
Martin Borman
Hitler's closest ally and head of the party chancellery, Martin Bormann, died a few days before the surrender of Germany. Witness at the Nuremberg trials that saw the body of a Nazi at a bus stop in Berlin, from where Bormann tried to escape. From him, according to an eyewitness, there was a bitter smell of almonds - desperate to hide, the Fuhrer's secretary bit through an ampoule with potassium cyanide.
Martin Bormann died a few days before the surrender of Germany
However, problems arose with the evidence in 1946 and no one believed in the version of suicide. Nevertheless, Bormann was sentenced to death in absentia, and his search 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 went into hiding after the war in Latin America. Disputes stopped thanks to DNA expertise. 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 the Hitlerite empire, Adolf Eichmann was responsible for "the final decision Jewish question". After the defeat of Germany, he managed to impersonate an ordinary SS lieutenant who fought on the Eastern Front. Eichmann managed to escape to Italy. Argentine diplomats granted his request for emigration, and the Franciscan friar Eduardo Demoter helped with the documents, issuing a fake Nansen refugee passport in the name of Riccardo Clement.
Adolf Eichmann was responsible for the "final solution of the Jewish question"
Having moved along the "rat paths" from Europe to Argentina, Eichmann began a normal life: he started a family, worked at a Mercedes-Benz dealership. But in the late 1950s, it still managed to be calculated. Interest in his person was shown by the Israeli special services, who in those years announced a real hunt for Nazi criminals.
Mossad agents conducted a special operation in Argentina to capture Eichmann. He was seized near the house, interrogated and secretly taken by plane to Israel. Several years were spent on the investigation and trial of Eichmann. At the end of May 1962, the person 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
Chizhik-Chatari during the Second World War 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 almost 16,000 people were deported from there to Auschwitz in April 1944. Laszlo Chatari was extremely cruel and often took part in the abuse of prisoners. For example, he forced them to dig the 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. When the 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 a 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, was directly involved in the massacre of the inhabitants, driving them into a barn, and then shooting those who managed to escape from the fire. The victims of the tragedy that 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. The Canadian authorities, having received information about the crimes committed by him, deprived him of citizenship, however, ten years later they fully restored 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 brought 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 court of the city of Lüneburg sentenced the elderly Oskar Groening to 4 years in prison. In the press, he is called the "Accountant of Auschwitz". At the age of 20, he volunteered for the service in the SS and got a job in a concentration camp. There he took away from the prisoners their personal belongings and kept a record of valuables. Then he shipped it all to Berlin. He did not take a direct part in the destruction of people, however, the court considered that by his actions Groening provided economic support to the Third Reich. He was found guilty of complicity in the murder of 300,000 people.
Groening managed to be convicted only from the second time
Groening managed to be convicted only the second time. In the 1970s, an investigation was already conducted 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, the German justice changed to the story of Groening: even one proven fact of serving in the administration of Auschwitz was enough to bring the 94-year-old criminal to justice.
Already after allied forces defeated Nazi Germany and hostilities in Europe ended in 1945, it became difficult and dangerous for the Nazis to be in Europe. Thousands of SS civil servants, influential members of the Gestapo and their associates (including a considerable number of war criminals) crossed the Atlantic, finding refuge in South America, especially in Argentina, Chile and Brazil.
Why South America?
Argentina, for its part, was a popular place of refuge for German expatriates, and therefore maintained a close relationship with Germany even during the war. Already after 1945, the Argentine leader Juan Peron, himself not indifferent to fascist ideology, called on his own officers and diplomats to identify and develop "Rat Paths", that is, escape lines for agents of the Reich through third countries and forged documents. In addition, the Nazis were supported by the priests of the Vatican in Rome and Austria. Many of them supported and sheltered the Nazis, unaware of their bloody past, and some were fully aware.
Here is a list of the most famous SS war criminals who moved to South America hoping to evade punishment.
Adolf Eichmann
"The most hunted down fascist on the planet", Eichmann was the main architect of the "Final Solution to the Jewish Problem", or, in other words, Hitler's decree to destroy absolutely all the Jews of Europe. The infamous SS lieutenant colonel secretly ran the SS network of concentration camps, which became the killing point for some 6 million people. Eichmann was the initiator of a complex system of identification, collection and transportation of European Jews to Auschwitz, Treblinka and other camps in German-occupied Poland.
After the second World War ended, Eichmann was hiding in Austria. With the support of a Franciscan friar from Genoa, he obtained an Argentine visa and applied for a forged identity document from the Red Cross. In 1950 he went to Buenos Aires. Eichmann lived with his wife and children in the suburbs of Buenos Aires and worked at the Mercedes car factory.
Israeli Mossad spies took Eichmann during special operation May 11, 1960 and secretly took him to Israel. There, Eichmann was put on trial as a war criminal. He was found guilty in a four-month trial in Jerusalem and received the only death verdict ever handed down by an Israeli court. He was hanged on May 31, 1962.
Josef Mengele
Mengele lost the highest line in the list of the most wanted Nazis only to Eichmann. Received the name of the Angel of Death, the doctor performed terrible experiments on the prisoners of Auschwitz. An SS officer, Mengele was sent to the Eastern Front at the beginning of the war, where he received the Iron Cross for courage.
Wounded and declared unfit for intensive military service, he went to Auschwitz. There, he used prisoners, especially twins, pregnant women, and invalids, as lab rats for his own sinister experiments. He constantly tortured and killed children with his medical experiments.
After World War II, Mengele hid in Germany. In 1949, with the support of the church clergy, the Angel of Death fled to Argentina, then to Uruguay, where he even married under his own name.
West Germany sent an extradition request to Argentina, whose government was deliberately dragging its feet. Mengele ultimately drowned off the Brazilian coast in 1979 due to a heart attack.
Walter Rauff
SS Colonel Rauff is responsible for the development and introduction of mobile gas chambers, which resulted in the killing of approximately hundreds of thousands of people during the war. According to the British intelligence service, Rauff personally supervised the operation of trucks, whose exhaust gases entered sealed chambers placed behind heavy Vehicle. Sixty people were placed in one mobile cell. Rauff became notorious for his excessive ruthlessness and executed both Jews and captured partisans indiscriminately and without remorse.
Allied troops detained the colonel, but he escaped from the camp and hid in the monasteries. In 1949, Rauff sailed to Ecuador before settling in Chile, where he resided under his own name.
He never managed to catch and condemn. In fact, Rauff was a spy for West Germany from 1958 to 1962. His whereabouts became known only after he sent an official request to Germany to send his German naval pension to Chile. The Chilean tyrant Pinochet actively ignored German requests to extradite this war criminal. Rauff died in Chile in 1984.
Franz Stangl
Dubbed the White Death for his passion for the snow-white uniform and the whip, the Austrian Stangl worked on the Aktion T-4 euthanasia plan, according to which the Nazis killed people with mental and physiological disorders. He later worked as the commandant of the Sobibor and Treblinka concentration camps. Over 100,000 Jews were killed during his service in Sobibor before he transferred to Treblinka, where he was directly responsible for the deaths of almost a million people.
At the end of the war, Stangl was taken by the Americans, but fled to Italy in 1947. Austrian Bishop Alois Hudal, who favored the Nazis, assisted Stangl in obtaining a Red Cross passport, on which he sailed to Brazil in 1951.
He was recruited by Volkswagen in São Paulo under his own name. In 1967, Stangl was found by the famous Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, a survivor of the Holocaust. He extradited the criminal to West Germany, where he was found guilty of the massacre of 900,000 people. He died in prison of heart failure in 1971.
Josef Schwammberger
An Austrian fascist, Schwammberger was an SS commander leading three labor camps in Poland during the war. He loved to swing his whip and walked around the camp with a German Shepherd trained to pounce on people. In 1943, he organized the massacre of five hundred Jews. He personally executed 35 people by shooting them in the back of the head, in addition, he sent a huge number of Jews to death in Auschwitz.
Schwammberger was detained in Austria in 1945, but fled to Italy in 1948, and a few months later ended up in Argentina, where he lived freely under his own name and even took citizenship.
Schwammberger was eventually arrested by Argentine civil servants in 1987 after an informant snagged a $300,000 reward from the German government.
He returned to West Germany in 1990 to stand trial. In 1992, Schwammberger was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. Schwammberger died in prison in 2004 at the age of 92.
Erich Priebke
A mid-level SS commander and member of the Gestapo, Priebke was an accomplice in the massacre of Italians in the Ardeatian caves, where the Nazis shot 335 people in retaliation for the murder of 33 German officers by Italian partisans.
Priebke slipped out of an English prison camp on Christmas Eve in 1946. With the support of Bishop Alois Hudal, Priebke fled to Argentina.
From there he was extradited to Italy, where he was convicted of war crimes and sentenced to life imprisonment. Priebke passed away in 2013 at the age of 100.
Gerhard Bonet
A lawyer and SS officer, Bonet spearheaded the Reich's web of sanatoriums and nursing homes and is responsible for the managerial logistics of Hitler's Aktion T-4 euthanasia project. Bonet called himself the Angel of Mercy, and he actively participated in the systemic extermination of the disabled and people with mental disabilities in order to cleanse the Aryan race and evade government spending on assisting the disabled.
Bonet fled to Argentina in 1949. He later confessed that Perón's assistants provided him with funds and false papers.
After a government coup deposed Perón, Bonet returned to Germany and was charged by a tribunal in Frankfurt in 1963. He was released on a deposit and Bonet fled once more to Argentina, but was ultimately extradited to Germany three years later. Bonet was the first SS criminal formally extradited by the Argentine government. Bonet died in 1981 without ever receiving a court verdict.
Niklas' dad was secretly in love with Hitler
78-year-old Niklas Frank, son of lawyer Adolf Hitler, Governor General of Poland, Hans Frank (Hans Frank).
On the conscience of the "executioner from Krakow", as he was also called, was the death of hundreds of thousands of Poles.
His son tells Expressen that his father was bisexual and attracted to Hitler.
"He was really in love with Hitler," says Niklas Frank.
To date, Niklas Frank is the only one from the family who is still alive.
His father Hans Frank was hanged in 1946 for war crimes and crimes against humanity in connection with the death of hundreds of thousands of Poles.
The mother died in 1959, after which the brothers and sisters died one after the other: brother Norman became an alcoholic, sister Birgitta committed suicide when she was 46, with her eight-year-old son lying next to her in bed, and brother Michael died from - for heart problems at the end of a long life under the sign of gluttony.
Niklas Frank used to work as a journalist for the German publication Stern and wrote several books, including "The Father" ("Der Vater"), in which he condemned his father.
In an interview with Expressen, he talks a lot and in detail about how the child of a Nazi lived.
“Our family lived in incredible luxury, paintings by Leonardo da Vinci hung on the walls, we children always received expensive gifts from those who came to visit, but drove the best Mercedes. We thought Poland belonged to the pope.”
But there were also problems in the Nazi house.
“Dad was bisexual, and Hitler was attracted to him, in addition, he had a mistress, and after 1942 he wanted to divorce my mother. But my mother decided to fight, including sending her and children's photos to Adolf Hitler - and Hitler forbade them to divorce.
“Mom also had a sexual relationship with best friend Pope, who was later executed by Heinrich Himmler on Hitler's orders. Dad thought I was her lover's son. He did not accept me as a son and often called me “fremdi” (“stranger”).”
Niklas Frank says that before he published his books, he was well received in Germany, even when he revealed who his father was.
“One poor man once even treated me to his food. I had solid advantages.”
But after the start of the sale of the book, problems arose.
“My brothers and sisters hated me,” he says.
Today, he is worried about right-wing extremist movements in Europe and does not even trust his own people.
“We haven't learned anything in those 12 Nazi years, we're still cowards,” he says, and sighs. “But we are the world champions in football.”
Grandfather is responsible for the death of more than a million people
His grandfather was the terrifying commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss.
The father was raised by a Nazi, and he did not tell his son the truth that his grandfather was responsible for the deaths of 1.1 million people.
Today he completely renounced his father.
“If my grandfather had a grave, I would have spit on it,” says the commandant's grandson Rainer Höss, 52.
Rainer's grandfather Rudolf Höss was the commandant of Auschwitz and was sentenced to death for crimes against humanity.
Now, when Reiner sees a photograph of his grandfather hanging from the gallows, he feels satisfied.
“I feel joy. I know he was hanged and his life ended there."
Until the age of 15, Rainer did not even suspect that his grandfather was that terrible commandant.
One day, his father lied to him when he asked a question, but the nightmarish truth was revealed anyway when Reiner was 15.
When my father, who was then a Volvo salesman in Gothenburg, was on a business trip, my mother gave him the history books that were in the house to read, and waking up was a real shock.
“This feeling cannot be described in words. Nobody wants to be the grandson of a serial killer,” he says.
Rainer Höss left home and subsequently met his father only once - he was then 18.
“He hit me, but I hit back, and for the first time in my life I saw fear in his eyes. I've had enough."
As a child, he also met several times with his grandmother, commandant's wife Hedwig Höss.
“When she entered the room, it immediately became very cold. She seemed to still be the commandant's wife. It was like some kind of dictatorship. She always said that the Hösses never cry.”
But in 1989, my grandmother committed suicide in Washington, DC.
“I'm sure she took the cyanide capsules. I saw these capsules many times in her jewelry box, and she also had Rudolf's hair, which she cut off before he was hanged, and their wedding rings, ”said Rainer Höss.
Now he is a teacher, has written several books and takes schoolchildren on tours of Auschwitz.
“When I enter my grandfather’s house in Auschwitz, I never touch anything. This is how I prefer to deal with the situation,” says Rainer Höss.
Like the son of Governor General Hans Frank, he is concerned about the growth of right-wing extremist forces in Europe.
“In France - Le Pen, in Holland - Wilders, in Sweden, as far as I know, the right-wing Swedish Democrats party. And in Germany we have the NPD. They are slowly growing, and it scares me,” says Höss.
The daughter of the architect of the Third Reich let refugees into her house
Albert Speer was the architect of Adolf Hitler and the author of the monumental building projects of the Third Reich.
After the war, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
His daughter, Hilde Speer, now 80, lives a very different life.
“I opened my home for refugees,” she says.
Albert Speer was the largest architect of the Third Reich.
Together with the Führer, Speer created the plan for the city of Germania, which was to replace Berlin as the capital in Hitler's planned world state. In addition, in the country of the Nazis, he was the Minister of War Industry.
In Nuremberg, Speer was sentenced to 20 years in prison, and he served his sentence in the Spandau prison, where Rudolf Hess, Hitler's second-in-command in the 1930s, was also imprisoned among others.
In 1966 he was released, and after that he hid from public attention.
For several years he wrote a book called "The Third Reich from the inside", thanks to which he became rich.
Speer died in 1981 while on a trip to London.
The architect Hitler had six children, and all of them are still alive, and one, Albert Speer Jr., also became an architect.
One of his daughters, Hilde Schramm, is a retired university lecturer. She is now a widow and provides her home in Berlin to refugees.
“When refugees arrived in Germany and they had nowhere to go, I opened my house for them, because I have a lot of space, I gave them a good place for life. They are friendly and sensitive people, we like each other, so they still live with me,” says Hilde Schramm.
Expressen: Do they pay you?
Hilde Schramm: The state pays me, and the amount is quite sufficient, others should also be helped in this way. There is nothing special about this.
Have you ever suffered because you are the daughter of Albert Speer?
No, but I understand you're going to ask me about my dad. I already said everything about him. I have my own life.
She also founded the organization "Return" ("Zurückgeben"), whose task is to help Jewish women financially so that they can study art or science.
She has previously told the British newspaper The Guardian that she refuses to feel guilty about what her father did when Nazism reigned in the country.
“You know, I was just a kid. How can I feel guilty about what he did or who he was at the time.”
The war and the events that followed it led to the intensification of nationalist movements in a number of European countries. In some cases, nationalism has been used as a means of mobilizing people to achieve military victory. In others, it was necessary to strengthen the foundations of newly emerging independent states. He was also approached by those who were defeated in the war or considered themselves offended and were looking for "guilty people." The general basis of nationalist sentiments were the ideas of exclusivity and superiority of one people over others. Often they grew into a feeling of national enmity and intolerance. During the period under review, these ideas became widespread in the public and political life a number of countries. In some cases, this has led to far-reaching historical consequences.
Rise of the Fascist Movement in Italy
Since March 1919, “Fashi di combattimento” (“fasci di combattimento” (“Fighting alliances”)) began to be created in Italy. Their participants (mostly former front-line soldiers) were united by extremely nationalistic, chauvinistic views, rejection of socialist ideas, and the desire for strong power. The movement was headed by B. Mussolini, who by that time had a certain political fame.
Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) was born into a family of an artisan. In his youth he joined the socialist party. Public activity began as an eloquent speaker and journalist. He published the newspaper "Class Struggle", where he criticized "everyone and everything": the monarchy, militarism, the rich, the social reformists, etc. Ambitious and assertive, Mussolini soon achieved the post of editor-in-chief of the central newspaper of the socialist party "Avanti!" (“Forward!”), From which he was released in 1914 for campaigning in favor of Italy's entry into the war (the socialist party opposed the war at that time). A month later, Mussolini began publishing the newspaper Popolo d'Italia (People of Italy), where he criticized the policies of the Socialist Party. Now he staked on the ideas of Italian national greatness. Having been at the front, Mussolini took on the guise of a hero, a defender of the interests of the offended nation (the judgment that Italy was undeservedly "bypassed" in the division of booty by the countries that won the world war was very popular at that time). Moving to other political positions, Mussolini did not change in the main thing - the desire to break through to the top. This time, the nascent fascist movement was to be the springboard.
The program of the initially small fascist organization was calculated to win the support of the broad masses. It contained the following demands: the abolition of the Senate, the police, privileges and titles; universal suffrage, guarantees of civil liberties; convocation of the Constituent Assembly; the abolition of secret diplomacy and general disarmament; progressive capital tax; establishment of an 8-hour working day and a minimum wages; participation of workers in the technical management of enterprises; transfer of land to peasants; prohibition of labor of children under 16; universal education and free libraries, etc.
Along with agitation, the movement used other methods to strengthen its positions. In the fall of 1919, the Nazis began to create armed detachments, which included front-line officers, nationalist-minded small proprietors, and students. They attacked participants in workers' demonstrations, organized pogroms in the editorial offices of socialist newspapers (the editorial office of the Avanti newspaper was also destroyed). During the upsurge of workers' uprisings, the fascists put forward the task of "fighting against Bolshevism." The nationalist and anti-worker orientation of the movement, calls for strong power attracted the attention of the ruling circles. The movement began to receive financial support. This inspired the Nazis even more.
In the first half of 1921, fascist detachments destroyed and set fire to 119 chambers of labor, 59 people's houses, 107 premises of cooperatives, 83 buildings of peasant leagues, 141 premises of sections and circles of workers' parties, 28 committees of trade unions, editorial offices of many workers' newspapers. Mussolini later justified these actions with "the highest national interest":" We had to pave our way through violence, through sacrifice, through blood, in order to establish the order and discipline so desired by the masses, and it was impossible to achieve this with slobbery propaganda.
The rise of the Nazis to power
In the autumn of 1921, the movement took shape in the National Fascist Party, which began an open struggle for power in the country. Workers and socialist organizations staged protest strikes, and armed clashes between workers and fascists took place in a number of cities. Mussolini demanded that the fascists be given seats in the government. He stated: "We, the fascists, are not going to go to power through the" back door ", now the question of power is becoming a question of strength."
On October 28, 1922, armed columns of fascists dressed in black shirts set off on a "march on Rome." The central government lacked the resolve to fight. With the consent of King Victor Emmanuel, Mussolini assumed the post of Prime Minister of Italy on October 30. On the same day, the Nazis triumphantly marched through the central streets and squares of the Eternal City. Simultaneously, pogroms began in the workers' quarters. The new government did not want to waste time.
In the following years, a system of totalitarian fascist state was created in Italy. Power was concentrated in the hands of the Duce (leader) Mussolini. Parliament turned into only its appendage. All political parties and organizations other than the Fascist were disbanded and outlawed, and many of their leaders brutally murdered. The law "On the Protection of the State" introduced the death penalty for opponents of the regime. The fascist "national security police" became part of the state machine.
Strict control of the state was gradually established in the sphere of the economy. This was achieved by creating a system of production corporations, which included representatives of entrepreneurs and trade unions that had undergone fascisization. Official propaganda claimed that corporations should "do away with class struggle and lead to social cooperation." In fact, they were used to regulate economic and social relations in the interests of the fascist state.
The fascist ideology and the cult of the Duce were established in all spheres of society. In education and culture, the tasks of educating young people in the fascist spirit were set. Mussolini, forgetting about his youthful godlessness, concluded an agreement with the Vatican, which provided the fascist regime with support from the powerful Catholic Church. Pope Pius XI called him a man "sent down to Italy by Providence."
The birth of Nazism in Germany
In the same years, the National Socialist movement arose in Germany. It happened in Bavaria. During the turbulent events of 1919, not only the left forces, which proclaimed the Soviet republic, became more active here. Right-wing organizations also appeared, including the German Workers' Party, which initially consisted of only a few people. In the autumn of 1919, a corporal of the German army A. Hitler came to her. He was sent to the party as an agent of military circles, who sought to extend their influence to various political organizations, but soon decided to seriously connect his career with her.
Adolf Hitler was born in 1889 in the Austrian town of Braunau. Failing to pass the final exams high school, he tried to become a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, but failed. Finding himself without a profession and work, he was interrupted by odd jobs. During World War II, he volunteered for the German army. The defeat of Germany made him bitter and angry at the "national traitors" and "socialist politicians" who, he believed, by their actions in November 1918, led Germany to collapse.
Soon the party was renamed the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP), and Hitler became its chairman. He wanted to make the party mass. The party program of 1920 provided for measures against “wrong capitalism”: the seizure of unearned income and military profits, the transition to the state of large enterprises, the expansion of pensions, the leasing of department stores to small traders, the implementation of land reform and the prohibition of land speculation, etc.
In the struggle for political influence, the Nazis also used forceful methods. Since 1921, paramilitary units of the Nazi Party began to be created - "assault squads" (SA). Dressed in brown uniforms with the sign of a swastika (a cross with curved edges), attack aircraft raided workers' quarters, editorial offices of workers' newspapers, etc. During the period of intensification of the political struggle in Germany in the autumn of 1923, Hitler, with the support of General E. Ludendorff tried to carry out a coup d'état. At a rally in one of the Munich pubs, he declared the government deposed, and himself a dictator. The "beer putsch" was suppressed, and its organizers were sentenced to prison. In prison, Hitler wrote the book Mein Kampf (My Struggle), which later became famous. Despite the fact that the first attempt to break through to power failed, he hoped to wait in the wings.
Concluding the consideration of the events of 1918 - early 1920s in European countries, one cannot fail to note their complexity and inconsistency. The desire for freedom and justice was intertwined with the cruelty of the revolution and counter-revolution. In sharp struggle there was a delimitation of political movements and parties. emerged from social democracy communist movement. In the same years, right-wing radical, fascist and Nazi forces declared themselves. Proclaiming the ideas of a "new order", they rushed to power where revolutions had recently raged.
References:
Aleksashkina L. N. / General history. XX- beginning of XXI century.
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 ruthlessness.
So, according to one of them, he died in May 1945 in Berlin. In the same year, the corpse of a man with a certificate in the name of Müller was discovered in Berlin. He was buried, but in 1963 an examination found that the remains did not belong to Muller.
There is also a version that Muller managed to hide in Latin America. Among the countries where he could hide were called Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay.
At the same time, Walter Schellenberg, in his memoirs, expressed the version that Muller was recruited by the NKVD and died in Moscow in 1948.
Bruner's lifelong escape
One of the most senior Nazi criminals who managed to escape was one of the leaders of the SS, an ally of Eichmann in the implementation of the "Jewish question" Alois Brunner.
It was Brunner, as the head of the special SS detachments from 1939 to 1945, who was responsible for the deportation of 100,000 Jews from Vienna, Berlin, Greece, France and Slovakia to the 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 secret services.
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He was unofficially called "the father of the Syrian secret services." French military courts sentenced him in absentia to death in 1954, and in 2001 to life imprisonment. Israeli intelligence agencies have repeatedly organized assassination attempts on him. But official Syria has always denied the fact of Bruner's residence in the country. In December 1999 it was reported that Brunner had died. But it was refuted by German journalists who claimed to have seen him alive. Whether Brunner is alive now remains a mystery.
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