Hunting Hitler

[Olle]

Originally Posted by Douglas Jr.

Well I live here and never met a SS down here.
I met a German Night Fighter Ace and Holder of the Knight's Cross with Oakleaves in a public event in a book store in 2011 and I know of a couple of former Wehrmacht soldiers still alive, but that's all. I live near the spot where the remains of the infamous Auschwitz doctor Josef Mengele were found back in 1985.

South of Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Paraguay all had German colonies settled since the 19th Century, some of them still speaking dialects long forgotten even in Germany. It was a natural place to hide, but I think that the size of such nazi emmigration is enormously exaggerated.

It's probably exaggerated due to the sinister and thought provoking nature of the issue, but there must have been quite a few Germans moving to South America after the war (whatever their reasons might have been). I spent several weeks in Buenos Aires in 1982 (IIRC), and I remember seeing a lot of old nazi paraphernalia in the flea markets and antique stores. I visited with a guy who was very involved with the local industry and business, and he said that he knew several wealthy families that were still devoted nazis. Still, I don't know the numbers, it's just something that really stood out due to the nature of it.

Regardless, I have to agree that a lot in that TV show seems to be staged, like those guns in Denmark. It takes years for the sand to cover a bunker, and to think that anything would remain in them is rather far fetched. They're sitting on beaches where locals and tourists swarm in the summer, so I would assume that they were picked clean just a few months after the war. And to think that those guns could survive salt, humidity and sand for 70+ years in that condition is proposterous. I grew up on the Swedish west coast (very similar conditions), and I can tell you that nothing survives without corrosion. I mean, that's how I learned to weld and do bodywork...