The Why Files: Operation Podcast
576: Operation Eagle Flight: The Escape from Berlin to Bariloche
Fri, 20 Dec 2024
For decades, a piece of his skull sat in a Russian archive - our most decisive proof that the most evil man of the 20th century died in 1945. When scientists finally tested the bone in 2009, they discovered it belonged to a woman under 40. The evidence we trusted for over 60 years was fake. Stalin insisted the dictator escaped to Argentina. The FBI conducted their longest manhunt ever looking for him. Recently, researchers found a military submarine deliberately hidden off Argentina's coast. When asked to investigate, authorities said no. They're still saying no. The truth remains buried in sealed files across three continents. But the bigger question isn't whether he escaped - it's who helped him. Because if history's greatest monster survived, he didn't do it alone. He was protected by a network that reached from Berlin to the Vatican to Argentina -- to Washington D.C.
Chapter 1: What evidence suggests Hitler escaped?
Adolf Eichmann lived nearby before moving to Buenos Aires. Mossad captured him in 1960. Josef Mengele, the infamous angel of death, lived in the town for a while. He was never caught. Catalina Gomera was a maid for wealthy Nazi sympathizers. She said that Hitler stayed at their estate. She was told to never repeat what she saw.
Hitler was there, yes. He was there for three days. I was there. That was because of the drivers and all. Father and Monica too. But we had to shut up. Either we lost the job or... And then I grabbed Luis and said, Luis, shut up, don't say anything. And there was a picture of him. And even though I didn't have a video,
A hotel owner reported serving an elderly gentleman with a distinctive mustache in 1953. A local boy saw the same man walking in Inalco's grounds at night. A housekeeper cleaned a study filled with maps and German military photos. For years, Hitler lived quietly at Inalco with Eva and their daughter, but his marriage was failing and his health declining. Then in 1955, everything changed.
Argentina's government was overthrown. Juan Peron fled the country. Without his protection, Hitler had to run again. but his past was about to catch up with him. Without Perón's protection, Hitler moved deeper into hiding at La Clara Estate. But even here, witnesses kept seeing him. A farmer described an elderly man with a trembling left arm being helped along a mountain path.
A shopkeeper recalled a German customer who used a cane and spoke with a slurred Austrian accent. This was all a conspiracy theory. Then in 2017, everything changed. Remember those JFK files that went public?
Yeah, I remember. They still held back the good stuff.
They did. But buried in those files was something that wasn't supposed to be there. A CIA memo from 1955.
C.I. Melody III was contacted on 29 September 1955 by a trusted friend who served under his command in Europe and who is presently residing in Maracaibo. C.I. Melody III preferred not to reveal the identity of his friend. C.I.
Melody III's friend stated that during the latter part of September 1955, Philip Citron, former German SS trooper, stated to him confidentially that Adolf Hitler is still alive.
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Chapter 2: Why did the FBI investigate Hitler's whereabouts?
They invited me to sit at the table. Mrs. Pavelic invited me to a coffee. Hitler was drinking coffee with some other drink, with Pavelic. And I told him there. So Pavelich tells Hitler, it's the carpenter who tells me to do the carpentry in the building. So Hitler looked at me and made a reverence to me like this, in this way. A greeting, right? Closer to him. I was even drinking coffee.
Are you convinced that he was here? Yes, yes, yes.
Local records track shipments of Hitler's medications. Then morphine delivery started. His health was failing fast. Security tightened. No visitors were allowed past the main gate. Deliveries stopped half a mile from the house. Eva Brown took their daughter and left. By 1961, he rarely left his room. His mind was unraveling. Staff heard him talking to himself for hours.
The next day at 3 p.m., Hitler died. He was 72 years old. Dr. Lehman's final diary entry read, I fear I've outlived my usefulness. It was the last anyone ever saw of Otto Lehman. After Hitler's death, the Nazi paradise in Argentina began to crumble. But that's not the real story. The truth is far worse. Argentina wasn't the country who protected the most Nazis. That was us.
The United States didn't just defeat the Nazis, we absorbed them.
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Chapter 3: How did Hitler manage to escape Berlin?
20,000 innocent people were worked to death to build those rockets. Anyone who complained was hung in the factory. The factory was run by those nine men and others. They said they didn't know. Arthur Rudolph received the American Distinguished Service Medal while the military buried his past. When investigators finally caught up with him, he fled to Germany.
Oberthes Strughold is known as the father of space medicine. He helped astronauts prepare for space flight. In Germany, he conducted experiments on children. He put them in vacuum chambers to simulate the effects of high altitude sickness, such as hypoxia.
So you see him here on the right. with a flight simulator that he set up in Texas. He also had a flight simulator not unlike this in Dachau during the war at the concentration camp. That was where they would put children and subject them to far greater levels of pressure and gravitational pull to the point that many of them died.
He was on the U.S. military's list of war criminals since 1945, but his background was hidden until after his death. Siegfried Rook worked with him. After he was acquitted at Nuremberg, the U.S. Army hired him. Eric Straub ran the Nazi bioweapons program and reported directly to Himmler. The U.S. Army recruited him to research bioweapons.
I have an episode that might prove Lyme disease is actually a U.S. bioweapons accident.
Killer insects linked down in a stash can.
Walter Streber, Kurt Blum, Theodor Benziger, Otto Ambrose, and Friedrich Hoffmann were chemists and scientists, all connected with slave labor and experimenting on prisoners. All were recruited and protected by the CIA. And the list goes on and on, but I won't make you suffer while I try to pronounce German names.
America recruited over 1,600 Nazi scientists after the war, but they didn't just help scientists escape, they helped everyone escape. War criminals, SS officers, concentration camp guards. They created new identities. They destroyed records. They buried evidence. At least 10,000 Nazis found refuge in America through CIA and FBI protection. And these were just the ones we know about.
In 1998, the CIA admitted destroying thousands of files related to Nazi recruitment. They claimed it was routine file maintenance. Investigators found shredding orders dated just days after Congress requested the documents. A lot of document requests came back with destroyed and fire. Thousands of Nazi war criminals died peacefully in American suburbs.
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