What Actually Happened to Nazi Leaders After World War 2?

"Are there any Nazi war criminals still alive out there Even the youngest soldiers would be in their 90s now, but if any have gotten away with escaping justice until now, the odds are someone is still looking for them."

- The Infographics Show

What Actually Happened to Nazi Leaders After World War 2? is a video on the Infographics Show.

Synopsis
What happened to the Nazis after World War 2? During and after WWII, Allies hunted down Nazi war criminals. But what was life like for them in captivity? And what did they do with them once they caught them?

Transcript
World War Two had come to an end, and the mad reign of Adolf Hitler ended with a bang in a Berlin bunker. With allied forces closing in, he and his wife Eva Braun took their own lives rather than be captured. As the allies investigated the remains of the Nazi empire, they were horrified by what they found - a vast network of forced labor and extermination camps designed to murder millions of Jews, Roma, Catholics, political dissidents, and disabled residents of Germany and the many territories Hitler had conquered. In total, over eleven million people had been murdered in what would come to be known as the Holocaust.

The world was shocked by the scope of the Nazi regime’s evil - and they knew this couldn’t be like other wars where peace meant forgiveness for the architects of the losing side. There would be justice - and the Nazi leadership was in its crosshairs. Nazi leadership immediately began to go into hiding, seeking refuge anywhere they could to avoid arrest. But one prominent Nazi had a head start. Heinrich Himmler was one of the most prominent members of the Nazi Party and the commander of the Waffen-SS. One of the key directors of the Holocaust, he eventually fell out of favor with Hitler in the last days of the war and tried to open peace talks with the Allies.

When Hitler discovered this, Himmler was fired and his arrest was ordered. He attempted to go into hiding under a false name, and as the Nazi regime collapsed, he was detained at a checkpoint. British soldiers noticed his fake documents had a stamp associated with SS members, and Himmler was forced to admit who he was. He was arrested, but when he was examined by a doctor, he bit into a cyanide capsule and quickly died. Heinrich Himmler had managed to escape justice just the same as his boss. But there were many more targets out there. The Nuremberg Trials were among the biggest post-war tribunals ever held in history, and the Allies moved fast. They were convened only months after the end of the war and ran for almost a year between November 1945 and October 1946. In all, twenty-four of the biggest political and military leaders of Nazi Germany were put on trial, including Reichmarschall Hermann Goring, the original head of the Gestapo.

While Hitler and his brief successor, famous propaganda master Joseph Goebbels, were both dead by suicide, many of these men were among the architects of the military and genocide machine he had built. In total, thirteen of these men were hanged for war crimes, while the other were convicted of lesser charges, acquitted, or released due to ill health. Some verdicts, however, caused more controversy than others. Albert Speer was one of Hitler’s most trusted allies and the Minister of Armaments and War Production. While he wasn’t in charge of the death camps personally, he was involved in the department that evicted Jewish residents from their home and in the use of slave labor to build the German war machines.

That led to him being charged for war crimes and crimes against humanity, and he was expected to get the death penalty just like many of his comrades. However, he narrowly avoided death and was sentenced to twenty years in prison. From there, he took a different tact - portraying himself as a humble bureaucrat who had been ignorant of the worst of Hitler’s actions. His interviews and two books were seen as a unique look inside Nazi Germany, but many historians say his claims of not being directly involved in the Holocaust fall flat - a question that will remain unanswered after his 1981 death from a stroke. While most of the names at Nuremberg were military and government officials, there was one big exception.

While the name Joseph Goebbels is most associated with the propaganda of Nazi Germany, there was one man who led the way before him. Julius Streicher, a regional leader and legislature, became famous as the publisher of the propaganda newspaper Der Sturmer, which was notorious for its antisemitic propaganda. Even before Hitler took power, Streicher’s paper was inciting violence against specific Jewish residents of Germany. While Streicher did gain political office under the Nazi regime, he was never a member of Hitler’s inner circle and was accused of spreading false accusations against Hermann Goring. He was stripped of party offices in 1940 - but that didn’t protect him in 1945. He was arrested by Allied soldiers. Despite not being a member of the military, he was charged with inciting genocide for his role in disseminating Nazi propaganda, and on October 16th, 1946, he met the gallows.

The Nuremberg tribunals were over - but the hunt for justice was only beginning. US military courts conducted twelve more military tribunals against accused criminals from Nazi Germany, mostly high-level German industrialists who had used slave labor and looted occupied territories, as well as remaining German military officers. They were led by American judges, with the most famous being the Doctors’ Trial, which tried Nazi physicians for their role in mass murder by involuntary euthanasia. In total, almost two hundred Nazis were executed at these follow-up tribunals - but many of the most high-profile members of the Nazi regime were still at large.In fact, some would never see justice at all. In the aftermath of World War 2, the focus shifted to the next great conflict - the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. Both countries were seeking any edge in the fast-moving race for military and technology - and they would get it from anyone, even if they had been fighting them on the battlefield only years earlier.

That led to the creation of Operation Paperclip, a secret US program that brought over 1,600 scientists from the Nazi regime and German military to the United States to share all they knew on the Nazi’s military technology. The Nazis had gotten very close to the nuclear bomb, being beaten by the US in 1945, and one of the most prominent names in their program was aerospace engineer Wernher von Braun. While he used slave labor for many of his projects and was accused of brutal treatment, he had fallen out of favor with Hitler in the later days of the regime - a common fate when working for the paranoid dictator.

But his fortunes were about to change in a big way. Himmler had falsely accused von Braun of being a communist sympathizer trying to sabotage Germany, and he tried to escape to Britain, but high-ranking Nazi officials managed to obtain von Braun’s release by arguing he was indispensable to the war effort. When the Nazis’ defeat was imminent, he and his staff surrendered to the Americans, and after a brief detention, he was recruited by the US Government. His eventual fate was very different from most Nazi military commanders - he spent decades working for NASA and helped the US develop a ballistic missile program. He received the National Medal of Science in 1975, and died a free man in America much more known for his science accomplishments rather than his Nazi career.

Most of the Nazi architects had their fates determined - but some were still in the wild. In the aftermath of the war, countless Nazis fled Germany and prosecution via what became known as “Ratlines”. The Nazis would flee to either Italy or Spain, both of which were considered friendly locations where the Allies weren’t looking, and then on to their final destination - usually South America. Countries like Brazil, Argentina, and the rest of the continent became notorious havens for high-level Nazi war criminals, most notoriously the mad doctor Josef Mengele. Wanted for crimes against humanity for his twisted experiments on concentration camp residents and prisoners of war, he was able to change his name and flee to Argentina. He was able to avoid capture and extradition, and was only positively identified under a false name after his 1979 death from a stroke while swimming. It was getting harder to track down the remaining Nazis. But new hunters were emerging.

Simon Wiesenthal was a Jewish man born in Austria-Hungary in 1908, and he and his wife barely survived the Nazi concentration camps. After the war, he collected a list of Nazi war criminals and presented them to American officers. This led him to a position with the American Office of Strategic Services, but it soon became clear that the momentum for pursuing Nazi criminals was flagging. Wiesenthal struck out on his own, collecting information on Nazi war criminals and trying to locate them abroad. He became one of the most dogged pursuers of justice for the victims of the Holocaust, founding the Simon Wiesenthal Center to track Nazi war criminals and fight against antisemitism - but he was a civilian, and he would need support from governments to root the surviving Nazis out of their hiding places.

Fortunately for him, 1948 would bring a major change in the world. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, the desire of the surviving Jewish people for a safe haven grew. That turned into a flashpoint in what was then the British Mandate of Palestine, as the Jewish residents in what had been their historical home fought for independence. In 1948, the newly-formed United Nations voted to partition the land with the western half becoming the state of Israel. A brutal war formed, with most of the surrounding nations invading - but the newborn state of Israel shocked the world and fended off the invading armies, winning its independence. And its newly formed spy agency, the Mossad, had another mission in mind besides protecting the homeland - hunting down the remaining Nazi war criminals. And they had one name in particular at the top of their list.

Adolf Eichmann had more in common with his boss than just his first name. He had been as much of a true believer in Hitler’s extermination of the Jewish people, and as an SS commander, he managed the mass deportation and extermination of the majority of Europe’s Jews. While he was captured by the United States shortly after Germany’s defeat, he managed to escape from his first detention camp and hide in France for several years. There, he escaped to Argentina in 1950 with false documents provided by a Bishop with Nazi sympathies. Working as a government contractor, he maintained a low profile, but by 1956 he was looking to publish a biography with the help of Nazi journalist Willem Sassen. That arrogance would set his undoing into motion. Simon Wiesenthal had been pursuing Eichmann since the last days of the war, and he received a report in 1953 that the fugitive had been seen in Buenos Aires.

But he didn’t get a big break in the case until 1960, when Eichmann’s father died. Wiesenthal sent private detectives to photograph the funeral, and provided the pictures to members of the Mossad. An informant in Argentina, Lothar Hermann, had also reported that his daughter dated a man who claimed to be Eichmann’s son and identified his father. They had enough evidence to arrest Eichmann and bring him over for trial - but Argentina almost never granted extradition arrests. Israel’s Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, made the decision that they should take matters into their own hands. And so began one of the greatest missions in the Mossad’s history. An eight-man team led by Mossad agent Rafi Eitan was sent to Buenos Aires, where they carefully tailed Eichmann and observed his routine. They found an abandoned location where he would walk by every day on his way from the bus, and chose that location to nab him.

Although the plan was almost abandoned when Eichmann wasn’t on his usual bus, the agents stood by - and he got off the next bus. The team grabbed Eichmann, dragged him to a car, and hid him under a blanket. From there, they moved him from one safe house to another over nine days, making sure they had the right man. There was only one more step to the operation - getting Eichmann back to Israel. He was sedated, dressed as a flight attendant, and taken on one of Israel’s planes that had recently brought a diplomatic delegation to Argentina. While the plane was delayed as the flight plan had to be reviewed, the Mossad’s ruse was not discovered. Eichmann was flown back to Israel and his capture was announced to a nation full of Holocaust survivors. While Argentina was enraged by the stealth capture, Israel refused to back off their plan to put Eichmann on trial.

He was interrogated for nine months where he showed little remorse and didn’t seem to acknowledge how deeply involved he had been in the Nazi genocide. This led journalist Hannah Arendt to coin the term “the banality of evil”. He was eventually charged with fifteen crimes against humanity, war crimes, and crimes against the Jewish people and convicted of all fifteen. And on Israeli soil, Adolf Eichmann became one of only two people to ever face the death penalty and the first since the war of independence, hanging on May 31st, 1962. Time went on, and the hunt for Nazis became less prominent - but they didn’t stop.

As decades passed and many of the Nazi leadership died - either in custody or in their new homes - the focus shifted to many of their younger collaborators. Concentration camps were often staffed by brutal overseers who may not have been high-ranking Nazis, but committed terrible crimes. Under its new leadership, Germany tried many of them personally, and many were deported from other countries in Europe or from the United States. But as the 21st century dawned, the hunt for Nazis slowed to a trickle. But it didn’t stop - as one old man living in New York discovered. Justice didn’t have an age limit.

Jakiw Palij was a Polish Ukrainian soldier who guarded forced laborers at the Trawniki labor camp. While serving in the Striebel Battalion, he oversaw the mass murder of six thousand Jews in a single day. After the war, he was designated a displaced person after lying about his wartime service and was allowed to immigrate to the United States. There, he lived quietly until 1993, when the Justice department uncovered his name in Nazi records.

He was tracked down and admitted to lying. His US citizenship was revoked and the government initiated deportation proceedings. There was just one problem. No country would take him. Germany, Poland, and the Ukraine all declined extradition requests, claiming that there was insufficient evidence. Palij was allowed to continue living in his New York apartment - albeit surrounded by constant protesters. The battle to hold him accountable continued until 2018, when Germany agreed to take responsibility for his case, and the 95-year-old war criminal became one of the oldest people ever deported from the United States. Due to his age, he was never put on trial, and he died less than six months after his deportation to Germany. Are there any Nazi war criminals still alive out there? Even the youngest soldiers would be in their 90s now, but if any have gotten away with escaping justice until now, the odds are someone is still looking for them.