Nuremberg is not for everyone: Why the most notorious Nazi criminals were able to escape punishment

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Justice is not always triumphant, and the monsters who committed fanaticism and are guilty of the death of millions sometimes die happy, in extreme old age, without a single drop of repentance. The Nuremberg Tribunal, which tried Nazi criminals, could not bring everyone to justice. Why did this happen, and how the life of odious fascists developed, in our selection.

Adolf Eichmann's Argentine Asylum and Mossad Retaliation

During the war, Officer Eichmann was in a special position in the Gestapo, personally carrying out the orders of SS Reichsfuehrer Himmler. In 1944, he organized the dispatch of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz, after which he reported to the leadership on the destruction of 4 million people. After the war, Adolf managed to hide in South America.

In 1952, he returned under a different name to Europe, remarried his own wife and took the family to Argentina. But after 6 years, Israeli intelligence has figured out Eichmann's whereabouts in Buenos Aires. The operation was personally led by the head of the Mossad, Isser Harel. Undercover agents grabbed Eichmann right on the street and took him to Israel under tranquilizers. The indictment consisted of 15 points, which, in addition to the extermination of Jews, included the deportation of Roma and Poles to the camps, the extermination of hundreds of Czech children. Eichmann was hanged on the night of June 1, 1962. This case was the last death penalty in Israel by a court decision.

Unrepentant 90-year-old Holocaust activist Alois Brunner

Brunner is credited with the idea of creating gas chambers in which tens of thousands of Jews were killed. The former head of the SS special forces fled after the war to Munich, where he worked as a driver under an assumed name. In 1954 he moved to Syria, starting cooperation with the Syrian special services.

According to the testimony of the Turkish authorities, Brunner led the training of the armed groups of Kurds. The fact that the Nazi was in Syria was proven, but the Syrian government denied everything. At the same time, Mossad agents did not stop trying to destroy Alois Brunner on foreign territory. He repeatedly received mined parcels that deprived him of an eye and four fingers.

By the end of his life, Brunner did not even think about repentance. In 1987, he gave a telephone interview to the Chicago Sun Times, stating that he did not regret his active participation in the Holocaust and would do so again. According to some reports, the war criminal lived to be almost 90 years old, dying at a ripe old age.

Auschwitz experimenter Josef Mengele dies of heart attack

Josef Mengele is rightfully considered the personification of the most brutal experiments on people in the death camps. The work in the concentration camp was a scientific mission for the senior doctor, and he performed experiments on prisoners in the name of science. Mengele was especially interested in the twins. The Third Reich called on scientists to develop ways to increase the birth rate. So multiple artificial pregnancies became the focus of his research. The experimental children and women were subjected to all kinds of experiments, after which they were simply killed.

After the war, Mengele was recognized as a war criminal. Until 1949, he was hiding in his homeland, and then he left for South America. In 1979, the heart of one of the most terrible Nazis stopped, unable to withstand constant fears and apprehensions. And it was not in vain that Mengele was afraid: the Mossad relentlessly hunted him.

Heinrich Müller's life after death

The last time the chief of the Gestapo, Heinrich Müller, was seen in a Nazi bunker in April 1945. The Nuremberg Tribunal was provided with documentary evidence of his death. However, to this day, the circumstances of Mueller's disappearance are controversial.

In the post-war years, witnesses continually surfaced, claiming that Mueller was alive. So, the famous Hitlerite intelligence officer Walter Schellenberg wrote in his memoirs that Mueller was recruited by the secret services of the USSR, which helped him to stage the death and escape to Moscow. Eichmann, captured by the Mossad, also testified that the Gestapo man was alive. The Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal did not rule out the version of staging the death of Mueller. And the ex-head of the Czechoslovak intelligence Rudolf Barak said that since 1955 he had been in charge of the operation to capture Muller in Argentina. And he even claimed that one of the main Nazis was taken by the Soviet special services, becoming an informant for the Russians.

Not so long ago, American journalists released documents showing Mueller's escape from besieged Berlin on the eve of the fall of the Reich. Allegedly, the Gruppenfuehrer landed in Switzerland, from where he later went to the United States. According to this version, American intelligence provided Mueller with the position of a secret consultant. There he married a high-ranking American woman and lived quietly for 83 years.

Interest in the true fate of Heinrich Müller does not diminish, however, the folder with his case is still under lock and key.

The head of military intelligence Walter Schellenberg received only 6 years

The figure of the head of military intelligence Walter Schellenberg, who received a record short term for high-profile war crimes, is also very mysterious. After the fall of Germany, he lived in Sweden for a while. But by the middle of 1945, the Allied countries managed to achieve the extradition of the war criminal.

Schellenberg was liable to court in a case against major leaders, officials and ministers of Germany. In the course of the proceedings, he was accused of only one point - membership in the criminal organizations of the SS and SD, as well as involvement in the execution of prisoners of war. Schellenberg was sentenced to only 6 years in prison, and was released a year later for health reasons. The last year the terminally ill Walter lived in Italy, where he died at 42.

The recalcitrant ballerina Franziska Mann could also testify against Nazi criminals. deadly striptease at the door of the gas chamber of Auschwitz.