Are Nazi War Criminals Still At Large?

After the close of World War II, Nazi war criminals fled Europe and attempted to hide under assumed identities. Some may still be at large. Learn more about Nazi war criminals in this HowStuffWorks podcast.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know?
Runhouse Stuff Works dot Com? I welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark. I'm a staff writer here at how
Stuff Works dot Com. With me as always is my

(00:22):
very attractive and trust the editor Chris Palette. Chris, how's
your go kie? Oh? It's great? Thanks. So we wrote
this article about whether or not Nazi war criminals are
still a large and UM the Simon Weisenthal Center. UH.
This this group that's dedicated to finding rooting out the
last of the Nazi war criminals who may or may

(00:42):
not be still alive. UM has launched Operation Last Day,
Last Chance UH in a in a in a last
ditch effort. But UM, while I was researching this, Chris,
I found a lot of stuff that that just I
couldn't fit into the article. UM. One of the things
that that stuck out to me the most was the Massad.

(01:03):
You know what the Massada is. That's the Israeli secret
service right it is now. They have been chasing Nazis
for decades and have been fairly successful at it. They
found Klaus Barbie. UH. They also found Adolf Eichmann, who
was pretty much the engineer of the nazis final solution
of exterminating all these um supposedly unwanted races. UM. But

(01:28):
I also found something very um interesting. The Massad actually
engaged in UH employing and hiding some wanted Nazi war criminals,
which I found startling. You know, this this group that's
dedicated to rooting out for conviction UM or at the
very least for trial Nazi war criminals UM having employed

(01:51):
one the guy they employed UM was this doctor who
actually came up with the idea of mobile gas vans, right,
so that the the Nazis wouldn't have to shoot the
Jews any longer to kill them. They could just load
them up in these vans and carbon monoxide was put
into the end of the vans and and whoever was

(02:12):
inside was killed. And the worst part was these vans
were they looked like Red Cross ambulances, which is just
just about as bad as it gets time to think. Yeah,
I think it's also a violation of the Geneva Convention.
I'm quite sure, but I think pretty much percent of
what the Nazis did was in violation of the Geneva Conventions.
That was much out the window from day one, you know,

(02:33):
not about following the rules. Well you said too in
the article that they weren't the only ones who had
employed some of the former Nazis certainly not. Yeah, who else, um,
you know, even the American government. Um, I think you
said the British too. You know. Basically, if they had something,
uh that that they could use, the governments could use that,

(02:54):
they were willing to take them on. I know a
lot of that. The nuclear and rocket scientists too, were
were very important for them to uh to grab before
they could be tried. I guess definitely Project paper Clip.
It was an actual secret project undertaken by the United
States government to poach as many Nazi scientists as possible.

(03:15):
Some of them were war criminals, some of them were
lesser known, lesser involved people. But you know, a lot
of people argue that we wouldn't have made it to
space first had it not been for former Nazi scientists
like Verna von Brown and some of the other guys
like him who really helped on the American rocket team.

(03:36):
That's amazing to think about that they would be exonerated,
you know, simply because of you know, some of the
other things that they could bring. But at least maybe
they could uh make some positive contributions. And I think also, um,
from my understanding, Americans did undertake a process of determining
just how involved you know, a certain person was, at
least the the U. S. Government. I think with the

(03:57):
c i A. It was a a different matter. I
think they used whoever they felt could help them. I
wouldn't no matter what involvement they had. Do you know
anything about that? Honestly, I don't. I haven't done done
nearly as much research as year. Well, let me Adolf Eichmann, who,
like I said, was finally captured. He was actually kidnapped
in Argentina by the massade. Uh. He was used by

(04:20):
the CIA as a West German agent um and they
knew who he was, they knew what he'd done, and
they were still using him as a secret agent in
West Germany. It's amazing. Well that's it for for Are
there still Nazi more criminals at large? You can find
out more about it on how stuff works dot com.
Thanks for listening for more on this and thousands of

(04:45):
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