Grey Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler Part 16

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 murio 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 a.s.sociated 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 Attache, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, dated July 9, 1947.

246 "even more positive": Report marked "Secret-Air Courier from Legal Attache, 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 Donitz 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, 20078.

24748 "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 Przekroj, March 1995.

249 "described by Heinrich Bethe": Kristenssen (Manuel Monasterio), Hitler murio en la Argentina.

249 "Martin Bormann's hideout in Patagonia": Manning, Martin Bormann: n.a.z.i in Exile.

249 "Adolf Hitler's Valley": "Hitler's Valley," Przekroj magazine.

250 "described his more modest dwelling": Kristenssen (Manuel Monasterio), Hitler murio en la Argentina.

250 "sent to the German school": "Hitler's Valley," Przekroj magazine.

251 "a large black truck": Hamburger, "Winds across the Pampas."

251 "He fled with his family": BBC Television doc.u.mentary "Children of the Master Race," part of the series The Last n.a.z.is, 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 n.a.z.i: Sitios historicos 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, 20078, including Argentine Civil Aviation records.

253 "along unmade roads and tracks": "Hitler's Valley," Przekroj magazine; Kristenssen (Manuel Monasterio), Hitler murio en la Argentina.

253 "now covered with trees": Authors' multiple visits to Inalco, 20078.

253 "underground steel-lined chambers": Authors' conversations with "Jeff Kristenssen" (Manuel Monasterio), Buenos Aires, 20078.

253 "caretaker on the property": "Hitler's Valley," Przekroj 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 Rio Negro province minister of tourism Omar Contreras, Buenos Aires, 2008.

253 Friedrich Lantschner: Joachim Lilla, Statisten in Uniform: Die Mitglieder des Reichstages 19331945 (Dusseldorf: Droste Verlag, 2004); Andreas Schulz and Gunter Wegmann, Die Generale der Waffen-SS und der Polizei, Band 1 (Bissendorf: Biblio-Verlag, 2003); Ruth Bettina Birn, Die Hoheren SS- und Polizeifuhrer: Himmlers Vertreter im Reich und in den besetzten Gebieten (Dusseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1986). Lantschner, implicated for his involvement in the 1938 Kristallnacht pogroms against the Jews, was a senior n.a.z.i 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 Peron regime awarded many government contracts.

254 "Hitler's main residence": Kristenssen (Manuel Monasterior), Hitler murio 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, 20078. See Seamus Mirodan, "n.a.z.is' Argentine Village Hide-Out Pulls in Tourists," London Daily Telegraph, February 14, 2004, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/argentina/1454352/n.a.z.is-Argentine-village-hide-out-pulls-in-tourists.html.

25455 Josef Schwammberger: The a.s.sociated Press, Berlin, December 3, 2004; see also www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ghettos/przemysl.html.

255 "President Juan Peron explained": Authors' visits to San Carlos de Bariloche. See Mirodan, "n.a.z.is' Argentine Village Hide-Out."

Chapter 21: GREEDY ALLIES, LOYAL FRIENDS.

256 "Evita was accompanied by": "Wiesenthal Says Evita Likely Stashed n.a.z.i Loot," Reuters, June 26, 1997, published in Pagina 12 newspaper, Buenos Aires; U.S. News & World Report, "Cry for Them, Argentina, n.a.z.i Loot from Holocaust Victims Enriched Eva Peron," November 15, 1999; Chesnoff, Pack of Thieves. See also Nicholas Fraser and Marysa Navarro, Evita: The Real Life of Eva Peron (London: Andre Deutsch, 2003; New York: W. W. Norton, 1996).

256 Alberto Dodero: Time magazine, "Abdication of a Tyc.o.o.n," 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 n.a.z.is en los Tiempos de Peron (Buenos Aires: Emece 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 Nicolas Ca.s.sese, "La rama n.a.z.i de Peron," La Nacion, Buenos Aires, February 16, 1997, http://www.lanacion.com.ar/202464.

257 "French war criminals": Uki Goni, The Real Odessa: How Peron Brought the n.a.z.i War Criminals to Argentina (London: Granta Books, 2002).

257 Benitez in Rome: Alicia Dujovne Ortiz, Eva Peron: A Biography (New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 1997).

257 Papal Commission of a.s.sistance: Karlheinz Deschner, Ein Jahrhundert Heilsgeschichte, vol. 2 (Cologne: Leck, 1983); Peter G.o.dman, 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).

257 "through the n.a.z.i bishop's hands": Michael Phayer, Pius XII, the Holocaust and the Cold War (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007); Goni, Real Odessa. See also Shuter, Aftermath of the Holocaust; Meding, Ruta de los n.a.z.is; also see references to Eichmann and Meding's status in http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,754486,00.html and http://www.lanacion.com.ar/202464.

258 "Hudal wrote to President Peron": Greg Whitlock, "Alois Hudal: Clero-Fascist Nietzsche Critic," in Nietzsche-Studien 32 (2003). Hudal would be the "guardian" of Father Adolf Martin Bormann, the Reichsleiter's eldest son; Adolf Martin later resigned the priesthood, married a former nun, and became a teacher of theology in South America. See also L. Bezymensky, Tracing Martin Bormann (Honolulu: University Press of the Pacific, 2001); Farago, Aftermath; and Stevenson, The Bormann Brotherhood. Hudal was also the bishop under whose patronage Jesuit father Avery Dulles, son of John Foster Dulles and nephew of Allen, trained at a monastery in Villach, Austria. Avery Dulles became a cardinal in 2001. See Bezymensky, Tracing Martin Bormann.

258 "Evita left Spain for Rome": Fraser and Navarro, Evita.

258 "arranged to meet Bormann": Santander, Tecnica de una Traicion.

258 "no honor among thieves": Chesnoff, Pack of Thieves, 243.

259 Ricardo Staudt: Time magazine, "Argentina: The Coddled," December 17, 1945, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,776519,00.html.

259 "had no option but to accept": Farago, Aftermath.

259 "far more intelligent than her husband": Interview with Araceli Mendez, published in La Manana del Sur, part of the Diario Ambito Financiero news group, Buenos Aires, 1996; also researcher conversations with Araceli Mendez, Buenos Aires, 2008.

259 "when Muller based himself in Cordoba": Personal papers of Hans-Ulrich Rudel, auctioned by Signature House, Lot 236, www.signaturehouse.net/.

259 "a string of untimely deaths": Time magazine, "Milestones," May 7, 1956, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,937348,00.html; Gerald L. Posner and John Ware, Mengele: The Complete Story (Lanham, MD: Cooper Square Press, 2000); Bar-Zohar, Avengers.

259 Duarte's suicide: Life magazine, "A Dictator Goes A-Wooing," May 25, 1953.

260 "in the morning gave her a substantial check": Fraser and Navarro, Evita.

260 Jacques-Albert Cuttat and Inst.i.tuto Suizo-Argentino: Grank Garbely, Evitas Geheimnis: Die n.a.z.is, Die Schweiz, und Peron's Argentinien (Zurich: Rotpunktverlag, 2003).

260 "information the FBI took seriously": FBI report, D. M. Ladd to Hoover, May 15, 1948, NA, RA RG 65 65-55639 (1-24) Box 38, cited in Breitman, U.S. Intelligence and the n.a.z.is.

260 "a guide led him and his bodyguards": In August 1961, the West German magazine Revue published an interview with an Austrian Alpine guide who claimed he guided Bormann over a secret route through the Alps to Italy on August 16, 1947.

26063 "Udine in Italy" and Capt. Bell: Ian Bell, No Place to Hide (London: Minerva Press, 1998). Bell was also interviewed about his work, and sighting of Bormann, in "n.a.z.i Hunter," a program in the doc.u.mentary series War Stories on Granada Television (a British television network), 1999.

263 Giovanna C: The Giovanna C was built in j.a.pan as the Eastern Trader for the U.S. Shipping Board in 1919. It was sold in 1922 to the Luckenbach Steamship Company in New York, serving as the Horace Luckenbach until bought by Linea C (part of the Costa Crociere S.p.A. shipping line) in 1947. It plied routes to South and North America until 1953. See http://www.simplonpc.co.uk/CostaPCs.html#anchor559191 and http://www.theshipslist.com/ships/lines/costa.htm.

263 "Bormann was now known": Farago, Aftermath. There have been claims that Farago was duped by being shown fake papers. We are not convinced; there is still a complete disinformation operation in Argentina led by staunch Peronists who want nothing to sully the memory of their fascist First Couple. Farago's doc.u.mentation came from many sources, including the Catholic Information Agency of Argentina (AICA), Argentine senators Silvano Santander and Julio Busaniche, Argentine naval intelligence, and Spruille Braden, former U.S. amba.s.sador to Argentina.

264 n.a.z.i treasure and "major factor in the economic life": Farago, Aftermath. Separately, the respected French daily newspaper Le Figaro published corroborating evidence of the details of the physical treasure and investments in 1970. There are suggestions that, before Peron's return from exile in 1972, he offered the ruling junta a slice of what was left of the n.a.z.i treasure he controlled as part of what Farago calls his "admission fee" back to power in Argentina.

264 "Bormann once again met with his Fuhrer": Kristenssen (Manuel Monasterio), Hitler murio en la Argentina.

265 "the necessary preparations": Letter via U.S. Army Courier Service from Legal Attache, American Emba.s.sy London, to Director Hoover, September 17, 1945. Letter from Director Hoover to the American Emba.s.sy in Buenos Aires, November 13, 1945. FBI Files on Hitler available online at http://vault.fbi.gov/adolf-hitler.

265 Gold Party Badge: Research carried out for authors by www.oocities.com/goldpartypin/index.html.

265 "since joining in 1924": Doc.u.mentary film Hotel Eden by Cuini Amelio Ortiz, Deutschland 1995 / 3sat / MDR. Ms. Ortiz had suggested the story of Hitler possibly being in Argentina to her German commissioning editors, but they decided not to run with it.

265 "when they first met Hitler": Ortiz, Hotel Eden.

268 Hotel Eden: Authors' visit, 2007, and various articles by historian Carlos Panozzo, La Falda. Also Carlos Panozzo, El Hotel Eden de La Falda (La Falda, Argentina: privately published, n.d.). See also Jorge Camarasa, "La Falda tiene tambien su secreto n.a.z.i," La Nacion, Buenos Aires, July 27, 1998, www.lanacion.com.ar/nota.asp?nota_id=104816; Ortiz, Hotel Eden. During this visit, author Gerrard Wiliams spoke to Ida Eichhorn's great-nephew through the iron gate of the Eichhorns' old house near the hotel: "He told me that he had burned all of the material shown in Cuini's film [see note about doc.u.mentary film Hotel Eden by Cuini Amelio Ortiz above] and accused her of betraying his confidence; he also mistakenly accused Catalina Gomero of being paid for her interviews, which both she and her interviewers denied [see note about video interview with Catalina Gomero below]. He denied the stories about Hitler staying with his great-aunt and great-uncle. On turning away to end our conversation, he stopped, looked back at me, and said, 'One day the truth will come out.' He has since refused to talk further."

268 Prince of Wales: Simon Edge, "The n.a.z.i King," London Daily Express, May 23, 2011, http://dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/113232.

268 "German School in La Falda": Various articles by historian Carlos Panozzo, La Falda. n.a.z.i doctrine in schools: Ronald C. Newton, The "n.a.z.i Menace" in Argentina, 19311947 (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992).

269 "commemorative ceremony": Various articles by historian Carlos Panozzo.

269 "police and armed German sailors": Ibid.

269 Accion Argentina: Lynch, Young Che; also authors' conversations with Dr. Floreal Vajlis, Buenos Aires, 2008. Dr. Vajlis, now in his eighties, was Gerrard Williams's landlord in Buenos Aires and is still vehemently antifascist. Dr. Vajlis was present outside the Hotel Eden on this occasion.

269 "Hotel Eden was seized": Various articles by historian Charles Panozzo, La Falda; Panozzo, El Hotel Eden de La Falda; Alfredo Ferrara.s.si, Eden Hotel y Pueblo La Falda (Cordoba, Argentina: privately published, 2006). j.a.panese internment: Ayako Tomii, A j.a.panese Diplomat's Daughter: An Outsider's Childhood in the 1930s and 1940s (iUniverse, 2004).

269 "told her closest circle": Video interview with Catalina Gomero in Secret History: Hitler of the Andes, Barking Mad Productions.

269 Horst Eichmann: Ernes...o...b..hoslavsky, Contra la Patagonia judia: La familia Eichmann y los nacionalistas Argentinos y Chilenos frente al Plan Andinia ... (Santiago de Chile, 2008, PDF online), http://ungs.academia.edu/ebohos/Papers/86439/Contra_la_Patagonia_judia._La_familia_Eichmann_y_los_nacionalistas_argentinos_y_chilenos_frente_al_Plan_Andinia_de_1960_a_nuestros_dias_; Time magazine, "Milestones," September 1, 1961, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,939852,00.html.

270 "they owned a property": Authors' visit to Miromar, Mar Chiquita, Cordoba province, Argentina, 2007. We were shown around the hotel by one of its "guardians" from the local community; she had heard many uncorroborated rumors of the Hitlers' presence at the hotel. See also "Hitler's Ghost," Ghost Hunters International, U.S. television series on the SyFy channel, January 2010, shot at Hotel Viena.

270 "head of security, Col. Krueger": Roland, "Hotel Viena."

27071 Catalina Gomero's account: Authors' conversations with doc.u.mentary-maker Cuini Amelio Ortiz (see note above), Rome, 2008; also video interview courtesy of Diario Ambito Financiero news group, and in the Howard and Roberts doc.u.mentary, Secret History. See third note for Chapter 22, on page 323, for further provenance.

271 John Walsh's account: Howard and Roberts, Secret History.

27173 Jorge Batinic and Mafalda Batinic's account: Video interview with Jorge Batinic, courtesy Ricardo D'Aloia, editorial director, Diario Ambito Financiero news group, Buenos Aires, 2008. See also Hoy en la Noticia, "El Pais: Hitler en Chubut," La Plata, Argentina, July 24, 1997, pdf.diariohoy.net/1997/07/240797CU.PDF.

Chapter 22: DEPARTURES.

274 Ante Paveli: IV/D/4 RSHA Gestapo report to Reichsfuhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler, February 17, 1942. See also Sra Trifkovi, "The Real Genocide in Yugoslavia: Independent Croatia of 1941 Revisited," Center for Peace in the Balkans, April 21, 2000, http://www.balkanpeace.org/index.php?index=article&articleid=13742.

274 "Croats in the years after the war": Yossi Melman, "Tied Up in the Rat Lines," Haaretz, Tel Aviv, January 17, 2006; also U.S. Army file on Ante Paveli, report by Capt. Marion Scot, http://www.jerusalim.org/cd/biblioteka/pavelicpapers/pavelic/ap0015.html.

27476 Ancin's testimony: Video interview, courtesy Ricardo D'Aloia, editorial director, Diario Ambito Financiero news group, Buenos Aires, 2008. The video interviews with Catalina Gomero and Jorge Batinic (see Chapter 21) and with Hernan Ancin have never been broadcast. An unfinished program made by the newspaper group's TV arm in the 1990s was shown by the group's owner to his friend, Argentine president Carlos Menem. Menem requested that nothing further be done with it. See also "Man Says He Saw Hitler After War," Agence France Presse, May 31, 1997; see http://www.indianexpress.com/Storyold/2523/.

276 "Carlos Luecke": Michael D. Miller with Andreas Schulz and Ken McCanliss, Leaders of the SS & German Police, vol. 1 (San Jose, CA: R. James Bender, 2008).

277 Hans-Ulrich Rudel: One of only twenty-seven men to be awarded the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds, Col. Rudel was unique in that a version with Golden Oak Leaves was created specifically for him.

277 Rudel's postwar activities: Meskil, Hitler's Heirs; also United Press, Bonn, August 28, 1953; see also http://www.pilotenbunker.de/Stuka/Rudel/rudel.htm; for Euphorion Books, see Anne de Courcy, "The Dazzling Beauty with a Poison Pen," Daily Mail, UK, January 9, 2009, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/books/article-1109382/The-dazzling-beauty-poison-pen-DIANA-MOSLEY-THE-PURSUIT-OF-LAUGHTER.html.

278 "Eva finally left Inalco": Researcher Nahuel Coca's conversations in Buenos Aires, 2008, with Alicia Oliveira, who claimed to have met one of the Hitlers' daughters in that city. Normally such stories can be discounted easily, but Alicia Oliveira was a senior lawyer in the Ministry of Human Rights and had been the first female ombudsman of Buenos Aires. In 1985, Ms. Oliveira was working at a nongovernmental human rights center, the Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (CELS). She was consulted on several occasions by a woman who was contemplating a divorce, apparently because of domestic violence, and who had problems with her doc.u.ments because both she and her German husband were living under false ident.i.ties. (Ms. Oliveira has refused to break lawyer-client confidentiality by disclosing names.) After several meetings the lawyer gained her client's trust, and the woman-whom Ms. Oliveira judged to be sane and lucid-revealed that she was the daughter of Eva Hitler, who had apparently left Adolf at some time in the 1950s. She did not speak fondly of either parent; she said that her father was dead but her mother was still alive. She had "grown up in the Cordillera, I think in Mendoza [sic], near Neuquen [Neuquen province, not Mendoza]. What she said sounded plausible to me. I asked her to come again, but she never did." The lawyer said that when she saw a photo of Eva Braun she was struck by the resemblance to her client.

278 "financial dealings across the world": Interview with Araceli Mendez, La Manana del Sur, 1996; also researcher conversations with Araceli Mendez, Buenos Aires, 2008.

27879 Bormann, Colotto, and Peron: Authors' conversations with Jorge Colotto, Buenos Aires, 2008.

279 "luxurious Plaza Hotel": Argentine government doc.u.ment, Direccion Coordinacion Federal, Estrictamente Secreto y Confidential, CF "A" No. 9976, October 5, 1960. Report received September 1953.

280 Circulo Militar: Authors' visits to Buenos Aires, 2008; see also http://www.circulomilitar.org/Re.htm and http://www.frommers.com/destinations/buenosaires/A34264.html#ixzz0wx55TjO.

280 "four or five different pa.s.sports": Incidentally, the facial a.n.a.lysis expert Professor Alf Linney, of University College London (see note for Chapter 14, "deceived even those quite close to him," page 308), has proved by scientific comparison that the photograph in one alleged Uruguayan pa.s.sport of Martin Bormann's from Argentina, discovered in the 1990s, cannot be his. A fingerprint on the pa.s.sport has also been examined; it is not Bormann's.