FIRST ON FOX: Multiple documents released last year by Argentine President Javier Milei show how Argentina’s search for Nazi war criminals, who found refuge in the country during and after World War II, were able to avoid arrest and, for the most part, live normal lives.
While Argentina’s Peronist government sympathized with and was often aware of Nazi criminals hiding on its soil—often under their auspices—once the populist regime fell, the South American nation half-heartedly tried to keep tabs on the war criminals hiding there.
While many high-profile cases came to nothing, the case of Hitler’s henchman Martin Bormann is exemplary and shows how inefficient Argentina was in its investigations.
ARGENTINA REVEALS SECRET WWII FILES OF HITLER’S ACCOMPANIES WHO FLEED BEFORE AND AFTER THE WAR
Hitler with Reichsleiter Martin Bormann (right) and Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop in August 1943. (Ullstein Bild/Ullstein Bild via Getty Images)
Bormann was one of the most powerful figures in the Nazi regime, despite his relatively low profile among the public. He used his position as Hitler’s private secretary and head of the Nazi Party Chancellery to control the flow of documents personally received by Hitler that had access to him.
Through enormous administrative influence, he shaped policy and controlled what Hitler saw, who he met and advised on important decisions. Bormann supported extreme anti-Semitic measures and was one of the masterminds of the Aryanization project. Bormann disappeared in May 1945 during the fall of Berlin. For decades there was speculation that he had fled to Argentina along the ‘ratlines’ – escape routes facilitated by Nazi sympathizers. Bormann was sentenced to death in absentia during the Nuremberg trials.
The files show that Bormann was one of the few Nazis whom the Argentinians actively sought to pursue and bring to justice. However, most of the clues came from sensational press articles that were often devoid of factual and useful information, apart from the mere mention that he was hiding in Argentina.
The files painstakingly portray intelligence agencies trying to confirm such reports and claim whether the floating fake aliases match the real man in Argentina. Agencies tracked information from reports in the Argentine, American, British and Brazilian press, along with some translations of German-language media published in Argentina by the émigré community suspected of harboring Nazi sympathizers.
The articles created extensive paper trails between the Justice Department, intelligence agencies, Border and Customs Services, federal police, and local authorities, but were often disconnected or took a long time to be referred to the various sub-agencies for action.
ARGENTINA REVEALS SECRET WWII FILES OF HITLER’S ACCOMPANIES WHO FLEED BEFORE AND AFTER THE WAR
Image on the left shows destroyed Berlin at the end of World War II. The image on the right shows Martin Bormann, leader of the German Nazi Party, one of Hitler’s closest advisors. He disappeared at the end of World War II. (Photo12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images/Haacker/Fox Photos/Getty Images)
As a result, several similar searches were carried out haphazardly at various points and a tangle of bureaucracy led to authorities playing catch-up with press reports rather than conducting independent and rational investigations. The files are evidence that the hunt for Nazis in South America was shaped by rumors, miscommunication, mistaken identity, Cold War politics and intense media speculation.
Partial memo from the Ministry of the Interior on Walter Flegel’s criminal record, requested by authorities investigating the whereabouts of Martin Bormann. (General Archives of the Government of Argentina)
The diplomatic shockwaves that followed Israel’s Mossad capture of Adolf Eichmann in Argentina left local officials acutely vulnerable to international scrutiny. They recast the search for Bormann as an attempt to ensure that the country would not be embarrassed on the world stage for a second time.
A crucial – and ultimately flawed – lead in the Bormann files emerged in 1955, when police, relying on fading testimony about an illegal German worker, along with hearsay, seized correspondence, and elderly witnesses, began pursuing a man named Walter Wilhelm Flegel.
Mugshot by Walter Wilhelm Flegel. (General Archives of the Government of Argentina)
Flegel had arrived via Chile, missing an arm as a result of an accident, and had previously been arrested and brought to trial twice on charges of assault and theft. Suspicions led to his arrest in Mendoza in 1960, despite his complete resemblance, lack of education, long presence in the country, age differences and lack of factual links that could tie him to Martin Bormann. Despite such mismatched profiles – and fingerprints – it still took a week for the Argentines to be convinced that Flegel was not Martin Bormann and release him.
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Ultimately, despite persistent rumors and Argentina’s singular determination to finally arrest one of the many Nazi refugees believed to be in the country, the human remains found in Berlin in 1972 were a match and confirmed Bormann’s death during the fall of the city through dental and cranial data. Later, in the 1990s, further DNA testing confirmed that the remains found in Berlin were indeed Bormann’s, finally ending the misdirected Argentine search.
