228 “seeking a secret U-boat”: Declassified FBI report, Buenos Aires, August 1943.
228 “Argentine navy carried out antisubmarine operations”: Salinas and De Napoli, Ultramar Sur.
228 “in a rubber boat”: Joseph Newman, “Two Mystery Figures Landed by U-boat,” New York Herald-Tribune, Buenos Aires, July 14, 1945.
229 Stanley Ross report: Overseas News Agency, “U-Boats Base Spy Surge in Latin America,” Christian Science Monitor, January 24, 1945.
229 “Koehn was already back”: The Associated Press, Montevideo, Uruguay, August 18, 1945.
229 Colonel Bustos’s recollections: Ernesto G. Castrillon and Luis Casabal, “Historia Viva Busquedas and Yo Fui Testigo,” La Nación, Buenos Aires, March 23, 2008.
230–31 U-234: Wolfgang Hirschfield, The Secret Diary of a U-Boat, trans. Geoffrey Brooks (London: Cassell, 2000).
231 “Call off all coastal patrols”: Salinas and De Napoli, Ultramar Sur.
231 “Along the coast of Patagonia”: Drew Pearson, Bell Syndicate, July 24, 1945.
232 Raúl Damonte Taborda: United Press, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, October 20, 1945.
232 “Not long after the German army was defeated”: Ernesto Guevara Lynch, Young Che: Memories of Che Guevara by His Father, trans. Lucía Álvarez de Toledo (London: Vintage/Random House, 2008.
Chapter 19: TO PATAGONIA
234 Descriptions: Authors’ travels to San Carlos de Bariloche, 2007–8.
234 Prince Stephan zu Schaumburg-Lippe: McGaha, “Politics of Espionage.” Prince Stephan is not to be confused with his brother, Prince Friederich Christian, also a committed Nazi, who was an aide to Joseph Goebbels and held rank in the SA.
235 “Abwehr agents in Turkey”: Gerald Reitlinger, The SS: Alibi of a Nation (London: William Heinemann, 1956).
235 “Adm. Canaris was hanged”: Geoff Sullivan and Frode Weierud, “Breaking German Army Ciphers,” Cryptologia 29, July 2005. The article mentions a four-part message called No. 69, sent at 4:33 p.m. on April 9, 1945, from Walter Huppenkothen. The message was marked Geheim (Secret) and was addressed to SS-Gruppenführer Glücks. The article notes: “Glücks [was] kindly requested to immediately inform the chief of Gestapo, SS-Gruppenführer Müller, by telephone, telex or through messenger that his mission has been completed as ordered. The mission he had accomplished was the summary execution of the last prominent members of the German resistance movement connected with the assassination attempt on Hitler on 20 July 1944.” SS-Standartenführer Walter Huppenkothen was chief of Gruppe E–Spionageabwehr (Group E–counterespionage) in the RSHA department IV, Gestapo. Otto Thorbeck was a legal officer.
236 “thorough investigation as to Hitler’s whereabouts”: Drew Pearson, Bell Syndicate, July 24, 1945.
236 Carmen Torrentuigi: Television news magazine La Cornisa, Channel 7 Argentina, reporter Martin Jáuregui, 2005. In the television piece the crew members are filming a building on the estancia when Angela Soriani, Carmen’s niece, arrives and asks them what they are doing. When they reply that they are filming the house where Hitler was said to have lived, Angela shakes her head and then points to another spot on the estate and says, “He lived there.” The house where the Hitlers had lived was pulled down in the 1980s.
236 “liver dumplings and squab”: Ryan Berry, Hitler: Neither Vegetarian Nor Animal Lover (New York: Pythagorean, 2004).
237 “Hitler and Eva Braun stayed in the main house”: Carmen Torrentuigi via her niece, who said that the staff at the Estancia San Ramón were told that the Hitlers had died in a car crash in March 1946.
237 “dark-haired, buxom Eva Braun”: Time magazine, “Italy: Spring in the Axis,” May 15, 1939, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,761275,00.html.
237 “born in San Remo”: Reuters, Bad Godesburg, Rhineland, January 19, 1946; published in Baltimore Sun, January 20, 1946. A German journalist, Bernard Lescrinier, quoted this date and place to a press conference for the launch of his book Behind the Scenes in the Third Reich (apparently never actually published). “Fatty” Lescrinier was a notoriously shady character, who fed material mainly to the London Daily Telegraph and United Press; according to Michael Tracy, biographer of Sir Hugh Carleton-Greene, Fatty’s value lay in his close contacts with Göring’s circle and the Reich Chancellery. When his story is followed backward, it does not stand up in detail. However, a young man who had followed Eva in the job of studio assistant to Hitler’s “court photographer” Heinrich Hoffman did say that she had a child. This claim was allegedly backed up by Eva Braun’s father, who was quoted as saying, “The important thing is that Hitler will not die now without a successor.”
237 “three-day trip to Bavaria”: United Press, Stockholm, June 11, 1945. A former member of the Swedish Legation in Berlin, Erik Wesslen—who said he had been in close contact with Hitler’s headquarters during the siege of the city—believed that the reported marriage of Hitler and Eva in the bunker was to legitimize both a boy and a girl born to Eva during their long relationship. Wesslen said that prominent Germans believed the children to be living in Bavaria with distant relatives of Eva Braun’s mother and that the Hitlers left for a three-day trip to Bavaria on April 8 or 9. Hitler and Eva moved into the Führerbunker on April 12 or 15 (historians differ). There is no historical record to prove or disprove that they were in Berlin between April 8 and 12.
237 “many happy hours”: In late fall of 1945, The Associated Press reported that U.S. intelligence officers had found Eva Braun’s “treasure chest,” including “beneath its hoard of jewelry and money, dozens of photographs showing family pictures of her and Adolf Hitler and a mysterious baby girl called Uschi [the diminutive of Ursula],” which were displayed “as normally as they would be in any family album.” See “Americans Find Treasure Chest of Eva Braun,” Frankfurt, published in St. Petersburg Times on November 16, 1945, http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=gBIwAAAAIBAJ&sjid=pE4DAAAAIBAJ&pg=4925,2133570&dq=eva+braun%27s+treasure-chest&hl=en.
On many of the snapshots, which show the little girl from infancy to about three years of age (the last was dated 1944), Eva had handwritten the words, “and here is Uschi again.” Eva’s personal home-movie library was found in 1945. The library is archived at NARA, Record Group 242.2, Motion Pictures Branch, Archives II, and was eventually released commercially on DVD to the public in 2004. The movies feature Uschi on dozens of occasions, with many scenes showing the great affection in which Hitler and Eva held her. After the war there were many theories about who Uschi was, the prevailing view being that she was the daughter of Eva’s best friend Herta Ostermeyer, née Schneider. However, in the newspaper archives there is no mention of the child after this time, and the story seems to have been closed off. Intriguingly, this little girl who features so prominently in Eva’s personal life, photographs, and home movies is not even mentioned by Eva’s biographer Angela Lambert.
238 “Eva Braun was again pregnant”: London Sunday Chronicle, June 17, 1945.
238 “a stillborn child in 1943”: Interview with Eva Braun’s mother, North American Newspaper Alliance, February 18, 1946.
238 “car crash close to the property”: La Cornisa, Channel 7 Argentina, reporter Martin Jáuregui, 2005.
239 “none of them were submariners”: Contemporary newspaper reports describe the extra prisoners aboard the Highland Monarch as former Nazi diplomats, spies, and other “undesirables” being thrown out of the country under the instructions of Foreign Minister Juan Cooke. Details of the “passengers” on the Highland Monarch are contained in Admiralty files ADM 116/ 5474 and 116/ 5475 at The National Archives, Kew, London.
239 “neuralgic pain”: North American Newspaper Alliance, New York, March 3, 1947.
239 “Hitler needed surgery”: Dr. Otto Lehmann, Hitler’s personal physician, quoted in Jeff Kristenssen (Manuel Monasterio), Hitler murió en la Argentina. See note “Petty Officer Heinrich Bethe and Capt. Manuel Monasterio” on page 316.
239 Gran Hotel Viena: Authors’ visit to
hotel, 2007. While visiting Córdoba and staying at one of the city’s hotels, the author’s interpreter asked for directions to Mar Chiquita. The young receptionist behind the front desk obliged, recommending the saltwater fish available from the inland sea. She then blithely suggested that if we had nothing better to do we should visit the Gran Hotel, where “Hitler and his wife used to stay after the war.”
239 Max Pahlke: James Stewart Martin, All Honorable Men (Boston: Little and Brown, 1950). Pahlke’s ostensible reason for building the complex at a cost of US$25 million was personal: the eldest of his two children, Máximo Junior, was said to suffer severely from psoriasis, and Pahlke’s wife Melita suffered from asthma. The “cure” was apparently found in the saline waters and therapeutic mud of the Mar Chiquita. The story that the motive for building the facility was a relieved father’s gratitude was contradicted after the war by a family member, who said that young Max had never had the disfiguring skin disease.
240 “he then left”: Fernando Jorge Soto Roland, “Hotel Viena,” research paper, January 2010, http://letras-uruguay.espaciolatino.com/aaa/soto_fernando/gran_hotel_viena_y_el_hotel_baln.htm. Roland is a professor of history at the University of Mar del Plata. It has been suggested that the hotel was a money-laundering operation for part of the huge amount of Nazi loot that had arrived in Argentina, but this seems illogical. “Laundering” is a process by which “dirty” money becomes “clean” and available again for use. It would make little sense to pour millions into a huge hotel complex in the middle of nowhere and then just leave it to stagnate.
240 “the Hitlers’ stay at the medical facility”: Conversations between authors’ researcher (anonymous) and Mrs. M., Argentina, 2008. Mrs. M. was a visitor to the hotel who said she met the Hitlers numerous times after the war. Mrs. M. agreed to ask friends if they had kept photographs of the Führer from after the war. After making some enquiries, she received a telephone call from an unknown man. He said that “the Gestapo were still active,” threatened her life, and told her that curiosity was dangerous since “she” was still alive—the “she” being Eva Hitler. Mrs. M. has refused to speak to us since. We must presume that during this visit the Hitlers left both Ursula and her infant sister in the care of others at San Carlos de Bariloche.
240 “lost in thought”: Ibid.
241 “wonderful sunsets”: Researcher’s conversations with Claudio Correa, Argentina, 2008.
241 “would return to plague him”: Dr. Otto Lehmann, quoted by Kristenssen (Manuel Monasterio), Hitler murió en la Argentina.
241 “huge tracts of land”: Researcher’s conversations with Mrs. M., Argentina, 2008.
241 “saw him there in October 1945”: Meskil, Hitler’s Heirs.
241 “saw his old boss in a car”: The Associated Press, Nuremberg, July 29, 1946.
242 “Frenchman claimed”: Letter to Director Hoover, FBI, from Los Angeles bureau, June 5, 1947; see page 293.
242 “more detail”: Letter, EX 39, from Director Hoover, FBI, to Legal Attaché, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, dated July 9, 1947.
246 “even more positive”: Report marked “Secret—Air Courier from Legal Attaché, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to Director Hoover,” dated August 6, 1947. Released FBI files are available from http://vault.fbi.gov/adolf-hitler.
Chapter 20: ADOLF HITLER’S VALLEY
247 “Donitz had declared”: Bar-Zohar, The Avengers.
247 “The following year Dönitz told”: Tim Swartz, Evil Agenda of the Secret Government (New Brunswick, NJ: Global Communications, 1999).
247 “The region extends”: Authors’ travels through Chilean and Argentine Patagonia, 2007–8.
247–48 “barren, wind-swept … other-planetary”: Philip Hamburger, “Winds across the Pampas,” New Yorker, December 1948.
249 Schmidt’s” account: Quoted from “Hitler’s Valley in Argentina,” in the Polish weekly news magazine Przekrój, March 1995.
249 “described by Heinrich Bethe”: Kristenssen (Manuel Monasterio), Hitler murió en la Argentina.
249 “Martin Bormann’s hideout in Patagonia”: Manning, Martin Bormann: Nazi in Exile.
249 “Adolf Hitler’s Valley”: “Hitler’s Valley,” Przekrój magazine.
250 “described his more modest dwelling”: Kristenssen (Manuel Monasterio), Hitler murió en la Argentina.
250 “sent to the German school”: “Hitler’s Valley,” Przekrój magazine.
251 “a large black truck”: Hamburger, “Winds across the Pampas.”
251 “He fled with his family”: BBC Television documentary “Children of the Master Race,” part of the series The Last Nazis, Minnow Films, London, broadcast 2010. Various halfhearted attempts were made by the West German government to extradite Alvensleben on charges of murdering 4,247 people in the autumn of 1939. These approaches were spurned by the Argentine government, and the SS general lived undisturbed in Argentina until his death in 1970.
252 “Inalco, their new mansion”: Abel Basti, Bariloche Nazi: Sitios históricos relacianados al Nationalsocialismo (San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina, privately published, 2005); Burnside, El escape de Hitler.
252 “boathouse next to the jetty”: Authors’ research trips to Inalco, Bariloche, and Villa La Angostura, 2007–8, including Argentine Civil Aviation records.
253 “along unmade roads and tracks”: “Hitler’s Valley,” Przekrój magazine; Kristenssen (Manuel Monasterio), Hitler murió en la Argentina.
253 “now covered with trees”: Authors’ multiple visits to Inalco, 2007–8.
253 “underground steel-lined chambers”: Authors’ conversations with “Jeff Kristenssen” (Manuel Monasterio), Buenos Aires, 2007–8.
253 “caretaker on the property”: “Hitler’s Valley,” Przekrój magazine.
253 “Bustillo also designed”: for Alejandro Bustillo, see biography in Revista arquitectura Andina 4, http://www.arquitecturaandina.com.ar/anterior.php. The “Saracen tower”: Researcher conversation with Río Negro province minister of tourism Omar Contreras, Buenos Aires, 2008.
253 Friedrich Lantschner: Joachim Lilla, Statisten in Uniform: Die Mitglieder des Reichstages 1933–1945 (Düsseldorf: Droste Verlag, 2004); Andreas Schulz and Günter Wegmann, Die Generale der Waffen-SS und der Polizei, Band 1 (Bissendorf: Biblio-Verlag, 2003); Ruth Bettina Birn, Die Höheren SS- und Polizeiführer: Himmlers Vertreter im Reich und in den besetzten Gebieten (Düsseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1986). Lantschner, implicated for his involvement in the 1938 Kristallnacht pogroms against the Jews, was a senior Nazi Party official in the Tyrol. In 1945 he fled with his brother Gustav (“Guzzi”—a silver medalist at the 1936 Winter Olympics) along the Vatican ratline run by Cardinal Alois Hudal. Installed in San Carlos de Bariloche, Lantschner set up a thriving building business to which the Perón regime awarded many government contracts.
254 “Hitler’s main residence”: Kristenssen (Manuel Monasterior), Hitler murió en la Argentina. As part of our research in 2008, Capt. Monasterio asked the widow of an old friend, Oswaldo R., if she had kept any of her husband’s papers. Oswaldo, a key figure in the ratline operation based in Genoa, had once shown Monasterio a postwar letter from Martin Bormann thanking him for his help. Monasterio’s and Oswaldo’s wives had been friends and neighbors for years, living next to each other in a small town in the province of Chubut in Patagonia. Mrs. R. agreed to look for the papers. That night the eighty-three-year-old Monasterio received a telephone call from an unknown man, who threatened to kill him and his family and burn down his home unless he dropped this line of enquiry. When Monasterio tried to contact Mrs. R. the next day, he was told that she had gone overseas, to Germany. Capt. Monasterio’s book exposed him to a number of death threats over the years; he has also been interviewed by the FBI.
254 Club Andino Bariloche: Authors’ visits to San Carlos de Bariloche, 2007–8. See Seamus Mirodan, “Nazis’ Argentine Village Hide-Out Pulls in Tourists,” London Daily Telegraph, February 14, 2004, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southameri
ca/argentina/1454352/Nazis-Argentine-village-hide-out-pulls-in-tourists.html.
254–55 Josef Schwammberger: The Associated Press, Berlin, December 3, 2004; see also www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ghettos/przemysl.html.
255 “President Juan Perón explained”: Authors’ visits to San Carlos de Bariloche. See Mirodan, “Nazis’ Argentine Village Hide-Out.”
Chapter 21: GREEDY ALLIES, LOYAL FRIENDS
256 “Evita was accompanied by”: “Wiesenthal Says Evita Likely Stashed Nazi Loot,” Reuters, June 26, 1997, published in Página 12 newspaper, Buenos Aires; U.S. News & World Report, “Cry for Them, Argentina, Nazi Loot from Holocaust Victims Enriched Eva Perón,” November 15, 1999; Chesnoff, Pack of Thieves. See also Nicholas Fraser and Marysa Navarro, Evita: The Real Life of Eva Perón (London: Andre Deutsch, 2003; New York: W. W. Norton, 1996).
256 Alberto Dodero: Time magazine, “Abdication of a Tycoon,” May 16, 1949, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,853719,00.html. See also Jane Shuter, Aftermath of the Holocaust (Chicago: Heinemann Library, 2003); Holger M. Meding, Ruta de los Nazis en los Tiempos de Perón (Buenos Aires: Emecé Editores, 1999). See also references to Eichmann and Meding’s status in “The Long Road to Eichmann’s Arrest,” Spiegel Online, April 1, 2011, http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,754486,00.html, and Nicolás Cassese, “La rama nazi de Perón,” La Nación, Buenos Aires, February 16, 1997, http://www.lanacion.com.ar/202464.
257 “French war criminals”: Uki Goñi, The Real Odessa: How Perón Brought the Nazi War Criminals to Argentina (London: Granta Books, 2002).
257 Benítez in Rome: Alicia Dujovne Ortiz, Eva Perón: A Biography (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1997).
257 Papal Commission of Assistance: Karlheinz Deschner, Ein Jahrhundert Heilsgeschichte, vol. 2 (Cologne: Leck, 1983); Peter Godman, Hitler and the Vatican (New York: Free Press/Simon & Schuster, 2004).
257 Franz Stangl: Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness (London: Andre Deutsch, 1974; New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974).
Grey Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler Page 39