Conspiracy theories about the death of Adolf Hitler, dictator of Germany from 1933 to 1945, contradict the accepted fact that he committed suicide in the Führerbunker on 30 April 1945. Stemming from Soviet disinformation, most of these theories hold that Hitler and his wife, Eva Braun, survived and escaped from Berlin, with some asserting that he went to South America. In the post-war years, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) investigated some of the reports, without lending them credence. The revelation in 2009 that a skull in the Soviet archives long (dubiously) claimed to be Hitler's belonged to a woman has helped fuel conspiracy theories.
While the claims have received some exposure in popular culture, they are regarded by historians and scientific experts as disproven fringe theories. Eyewitnesses, blood samples, and Hitler's dental remains demonstrate that he died in his Berlin bunker in 1945.
Origins
The narrative that Hitler did not commit suicide, but instead escaped Berlin, was first presented to the general public by Marshal Georgy Zhukov at a press conference on 9 June 1945, on orders from Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. That month, 68% of Americans polled thought Hitler was still alive. When asked at the Potsdam Conference in July 1945 how Hitler had died, Stalin said he was either living "in Spain or Argentina." In July 1945, British newspapers repeated comments from a Soviet officer that a charred body discovered by the Soviets was "a very poor double." American newspapers also repeated dubious quotes, such as that of the Russian garrison commandant of Berlin, who claimed that Hitler had "gone into hiding somewhere in Europe." This disinformation, propagated by Stalin's government, has been a springboard for various conspiracy theories, despite the official conclusion by Western powers and the consensus of historians that Hitler killed himself on 30 April 1945. It even caused a minor resurgence in Nazism during the Allied occupation of Germany.
In October 1945, France-Soir quoted Otto Abetz, Nazi ambassador to Vichy France during World War II, as saying that Hitler was not dead. The first detailed investigation by Western powers began that November after Dick White, then head of counter-intelligence in the British sector of Berlin, had their agent Hugh Trevor-Roper investigate the matter to counter the Soviet claims. His findings that Hitler and Braun had died by suicide in Berlin were written in a report in 1946, and published in a book the next year. Regarding the case, Trevor-Roper reflected, "the desire to invent legends and fairy tales ... is (greater) than the love of truth". In April 1947, 45% of Americans polled thought Hitler was still alive.
In 1946, an American miner and Baptist preacher began sending out a series of letters under the pen name "Furrier No. 1", claiming to be the living Hitler and to have escaped with Braun to Kentucky. He alleged that tunnels were being dug to Washington, D.C., and that he would engage armies, nuclear bombs and invisible spaceships to take over the universe. The writer was able to raise up to $15,000 (over $140,000 in 2020 currency), promising lofty incentives to his supporters, before being arrested on charges of mail fraud in mid-1956.
In March 1948, newspapers around the world reported the account of former German lieutenant Arthur F. Mackensen, who claimed that on 5 May 1945 (during the Soviet bombardment of Berlin), he, Hitler, Braun and Martin Bormann had escaped the Führerbunker in tanks. The group allegedly flew from Tempelhof Airport to Tondern, Denmark, where Hitler gave a speech and took a flight with Braun to the coast. In a May 1948 issue of the Italian magazine Tempo, author Emil Ludwig wrote that a double could have been cremated in Hitler's place, allowing him to flee by submarine to Argentina. Presiding judge at the Einsatzgruppen trial at Nuremberg Michael Musmanno wrote in his 1950 book that such theories were "about as rational as to say that Hitler was carried away by angels," citing a lack of evidence, the confirmation of Hitler's dental remains, and the fact that Ludwig had expressly ignored the presence of witnesses in the bunker. In his refutation of Mackensen's account, Musmanno cites a subsequent story of his, in which the lieutenant allegedly flew on 9 May to Málaga, Spain, when he was attacked by 30 Lightning fighters over Marseilles (despite the war having ended in Europe), purportedly killing all 33 passengers besides himself.
From 1951 to 1972, the National Police Gazette, an American tabloid-style magazine, ran a series of stories alleging Hitler's survival.
Evidence
At the end of 1945, Stalin ordered a second commission to investigate Hitler's death, in part to investigate rumours of Hitler's survival. On 30 May 1946, part of a skull was found, ostensibly in the crater where Hitler's remains had been exhumed. Additionally, blood samples from the sofa and wall of Hitler's study were taken to confirm that it matched his blood type (type A). The skull remnant consists of part of the occipital bone and part of both parietal bones. The nearly complete left parietal bone has a bullet hole, apparently an exit wound. In 2009, on an episode of History's MysteryQuest, University of Connecticut archaeologist and bone specialist Nick Bellantoni examined the skull fragment, which Soviet officials had believed to be Hitler's. According to Bellantoni, "The bone seemed very thin" for a male, and "the sutures where the skull plates come together seemed to correspond to someone under 40". A small piece detached from the skull was DNA-tested, as was blood from Hitler's sofa. The skull was determined to be that of a woman—providing fodder for conspiracy theorists—while the blood was confirmed to belong to a male.
Neither former Soviet nor Russian officials have claimed the skull was the main piece of evidence, instead citing jawbone fragments and two dental bridges found in May 1945. The items were shown to two associates of Hitler's personal dentist, Hugo Blaschke: his assistant Käthe Heusermann and longtime dental technician Fritz Echtmann. They confirmed that the dental remains were Hitler's and Braun's, as did Blaschke in later statements. According to Ada Petrova and Peter Watson, Hugh Thomas disputed these dental remains in his 1995 book, but also speculated that Hitler probably died in the bunker after being strangled by his valet Heinz Linge. They noted that "even Dr Thomas admits that there is no evidence to support" this theory. Ian Kershaw wrote, "[t]he 'theories' of Hugh Thomas that Hitler was strangled by Linge, and that the female body burned was not that of Eva Braun, who escaped from the bunker, belong in fairyland." In 2017, French forensic pathologist Philippe Charlier confirmed that teeth on one of the jawbone fragments were in "perfect agreement" with an X-ray taken of Hitler in 1944. This investigation of the teeth by the French team, the results of which were reported in the European Journal of Internal Medicine in May 2018, found that the dental remains were definitively Hitler's teeth. According to Charlier, "There is no possible doubt. Our study proves that Hitler died in 1945 [in Berlin]."
FBI documents declassified by the 1998 Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act, which began to be released online by the early 2010s, contain a number of alleged sightings of Hitler in Europe, South America, and the United States, some of which assert that he changed his appearance via plastic surgery or shaving off his moustache. The documents state that the alleged sightings of Hitler could not be verified. As historian Richard J. Evans notes, the FBI was obliged to document such claims no matter how "erroneous or deranged" they were.
Alleged escape to Argentina
Some works claim that Hitler and Braun did not commit suicide, but actually escaped to Argentina.
Phillip Citroen's claims
A declassified CIA document dated 3 October 1955 reported claims made by a self-proclaimed former German SS trooper named Phillip Citroen that Hitler was still alive, and that he "left Colombia for Argentina around January 1955." Enclosed with the document was an alleged photograph of Citroen and a person he claimed to be Hitler; on the back of the photo was written "Adolf Schüttelmayor" and the year 1954. The report also states that neither the contact who reported his conversations with Citroen, nor the CIA station was "in a position to give an intelligent evaluation of the information". The station chief's superiors told him that "enormous efforts could be expended on this matter with remote possibilities of establishing anything concrete", and the investigation was dropped.
Grey Wolf
The 2011 book Grey Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler by British authors Simon Dunstan and Gerrard Williams, and the 2014 docudrama film by Williams based on it, suggest that a number of U-boats took certain Nazis and Nazi loot to Argentina, where the Nazis were supported by future president Juan Perón, who, with his wife "Evita", had been receiving money from the Nazis for some time. As claims received by the FBI stated, Hitler allegedly arrived in Argentina, first staying at Hacienda San Ramón (east of San Carlos de Bariloche), then moved to a Bavarian-style mansion at Inalco, a remote and barely accessible spot at the northwest end of Nahuel Huapi Lake, close to the Chilean border. Supposedly, Eva Braun left Hitler around 1954 and moved to Neuquén with their daughter, Ursula ('Uschi'), and Hitler died in February 1962.
This theory of Hitler's flight to Argentina has been dismissed by historians, including Guy Walters. He has described Dunstan and Williams' theory as "rubbish", adding: "There's no substance to it at all. It appeals to the deluded fantasies of conspiracy theorists and has no place whatsoever in historical research." Walters contended that "it is simply impossible to believe that so many people could keep such a grand scale deception so quiet," and says that no serious historian would give the story any credibility. Historian Richard Evans has many misgiving about the book and subsequent film. For example, he notes that the story about Ursula or 'Uschi' is merely "second-hand hearsay evidence without identification or corroboration." Evans also notes that Dunstan and Williams made extensive use of a book "Hitler murió en la Argentina" by Manuel Monasterio, which the author later admitted included made up 'strange ramblings', and speculation. Evans contends that Monasterio's book is not to be regarded as a reliable source. In the end, Evans dismisses the survival stories of Hitler as "fantasies".
Hunting Hitler
Investigators of the History Channel series Hunting Hitler (2015–2018) claim to have found declassified documents and to have interviewed witnesses indicating that Hitler escaped from Germany and travelled to South America by U-boat. He and other Nazis then allegedly plotted a "Fourth Reich". Such conspiracy theories of survival and escape have been widely dismissed.Contradictorily, in 2017 the series was praised by the tabloid-style National Police Gazette, which historically was a supporter of the fringe theory, while calling on Russia to allow Hitler's jawbone remains to be DNA-tested. After being featured as an expert WWII historian on the series, author James Holland explained that "[I] was very careful never to mention on film that I thought either Hitler or Bormann escaped. Because they didn’t.”
Alleged doubles of Adolf Hitler
Nazi leader Adolf Hitler may have used look-alikes as political decoys, though there is no evidence that he did so during his life. The Soviet Union variously claimed that bodies resembling Hitler were found in the aftermath of the Battle of Berlin, during which Hitler committed suicide. The most prominent evidence is Soviet footage of a body identified as Gustav Weler, found in the garden of the Reich Chancellery. Weler was said to have worked in the Reich Chancellery, perhaps as a cook. Conspiracy theorists have cited this body double as an example of alleged evidence that Hitler escaped Germany.
Supporting claims
The 1939 book The Strange Death of Adolf Hitler alleges that the Nazi Party used four people as doubles for Hitler, including the author, who claims that Hitler died in 1938 and that he subsequently took his place. However, the book was considered farcical in the year of its release and cannot be considered a reliable source. In 1939, the Newspaper Enterprise Association (NEA), while admitting that the book has "practically no direct evidence of authenticity", defended it by citing the purported 1938 death of Julius Schreck (d. 1936) as support for Hitler's use of doubles. The NEA claimed that Schreck was Hitler's chauffeur until 1934, and was riding in the back of a car being driven by Hitler, and took a bullet from a would-be Hitler assassin who did not expect Hitler to be driving. In fact, Schreck died in May 1936 after developing meningitis.
In late April 1945, Stockholm's "Free German Press Service" circulated a rumor that a Hitler double named August Wilhelm Bartholdy, supposedly a former grocer from Plauen, was called to Berlin to be filmed dying on the battlefield in Hitler's stead. The Germans émigrés stated, "He will act as Hitler's trump card, creating a hero legend around the Führer's death, while Hitler himself goes underground." Hitler died in Berlin on 30 April, with his dental remains subsequently being positively identified.
On 9 May 1945, The New York Times reported that a body was claimed by the Soviets to belong to Hitler. This was disputed by an anonymous servant, who stated that the body was that of a cook who was killed because of his resemblance to Hitler, and that the latter had escaped. On 6 June 1945, the United Press reported that four bodies had been found in Berlin resembling Hitler, purportedly burnt by the Red Army's flame throwers. One body was considered most likely to be that of Hitler. From 1951 to 1972, the National Police Gazette ran stories asserting that SS physician Ludwig Stumpfegger had switched out a double for Hitler to help the dictator fake his death.
In 1963, author Cornelius Ryan interviewed General B. S. Telpuchovski, a Soviet historian who was allegedly present during the aftermath of the Battle of Berlin. Telpuchovski claimed that on 2 May 1945, a burnt body he thought belonged to Hitler was found wrapped in a blanket. This supposed individual had been killed by a gunshot through the mouth, with an exit wound through the back of the head. Several dental bridges were purportedly found next to the body, because, Telpuchovski stated, "the force of the bullet had dislodged them from the mouth". In his 1966 book, The Last Battle, Ryan describes this body as that of Hitler, saying it had been buried "under a thin layer of earth". Telpuchovski had said there were a total of three Hitler candidates which had been burnt, apparently including a body double wearing mended socks, which he described as being in "remnants". Ryan quotes him as saying, "There was also the body of a man who was freshly killed but not burned."
Soviet journalist Lev Bezymenski details the darned-sock-wearing double in his 1968 book, The Death of Adolf Hitler. He quotes Ivan Klimenko, the commander of the Red Army's SMERSH unit, as stating that on the night of 3 May 1945, he witnessed Vizeadmiral Hans-Erich Voss seem to recognize a corpse as Hitler's in a dry water tank filled with other bodies in the garden of the Reich Chancellery. Although Klimenko had some doubts because the corpse was wearing mended socks, he briefly speculated that it belonged to Hitler. On 4 May, Soviet officers ordered that the body double be filmed. The footage shows the double with an apparent gunshot wound to the forehead. According to Klimenko, later on 4 May, Hitler and Eva Braun's true remains were discovered buried in a crater outside the Chancellery, wrapped in blankets and reburied, then re-exhumed the next day after the double was debunked as being Hitler. In 1992, journalist Ada Petrova found the footage in the Russian state archives; the body double had been identified as Gustav Weler. In their 1995 book, Petrova and Peter Watson assert that 'Weler' may have worked in the Reich Chancellery and occasionally stood in for Hitler as a political decoy.
Arguments against
Presiding judge at the Einsatzgruppen trial at Nuremberg Michael Musmanno wrote in 1948, "There is not a shred of evidence to show that Hitler ever had a double." Musmanno further states that "the several score immediate associates of Hitler whom I questioned expressly stated that Hitler never had a double." In his 1950 book about Hitler's death, Musmanno wrote:
To suggest as some sophomorically reasoning theorists have, including the noted author Emil Ludwig, that possibly it was a double of Hitler who died and was cremated is, without any evidence to support it, about as rational as to say that Hitler was carried away by angels. ... it is inconceivable that Hitler, with his self-assurance of superiority over any other human being, would concede the existence of anyone even superficially an artificial duplicate of himself.
Soviet war interpreter Elena Rzhevskaya (who safeguarded Hitler's dental remains until they could be identified by his dental staff) attributed the rumours of doubles to Soviet Colonel General Nikolai Berzarin's pledge to nominate the discoverer of Hitler's corpse for the Hero of the Soviet Union award, causing multiple potential bodies to be presented.[16] Historian Peter Hoffmann, a specialist on Hitler's security detail, similarly doubts that he ever used doubles.
Legacy
Footage of the body double identified as Gustav Weler was presented as Hitler's corpse in a post-war documentary. This was corrected in a 1966 documentary. In September 1992, Ada Petrova edited a still of the footage into a Russian television broadcast, which was criticized for implying the body was Hitler's. A few days later, Bezymenski claimed that the double was separate from Hitler's body, which he reaffirmed that the Soviets had found elsewhere "in the garden of the Chancellery".
In his 1995 book on Hitler's death, historian Anton Joachimsthaler disputes the purported Soviet autopsy report of Hitler's body, which was published by Bezymenski in 1968. Joachimsthaler argues that the Soviets never found Hitler's body, which must have been burnt to ashes. Joachimsthaler quotes esteemed German pathologist Otto Prokop [de] as saying the alleged autopsy report "describes anything but Hitler". Similarly, historian Luke Daly-Groves states that "the Soviet soldiers picked up whatever mush they could find in front of Hitler's bunker exit, put it in a box and claimed it was the corpses of Adolf and Eva Hitler". Also in 1995, Bezymenski disclosed that his work had contained "deliberate lies", possibly including the manner of Hitler's death. In his book, he had claimed that if the dictator died from a gunshot wound, it was a coup de grâce to ensure his quick death after he took cyanide, not a suicide by gunshot.
In 1998, British author Ian Sayer received from an anonymous source what alleged to be a photocopy of a 427-page report from the U.S. Army's Counterintelligence Corps (CIC), apparently containing a 1948 interview of Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller, who was presumed missing in action in 1945, but claimed to have been retained by the CIC as an intelligence adviser and to have joined the CIA. According to Müller's purported account: a Hitler double was discovered in Breslau in 1941 and was seldom seen after July 1944, being sedated and kept hidden until April 1945; on April 22, Hitler, Braun and three of Hitler's associates departed by air for Hörsching Airport and were then flown to Barcelona; the double was later killed by a coup de grâce, dressed in Hitler's clothes, and buried. Joachimsthaler notes that the plane claimed to have been flown out of Berlin was considered a "total loss" by the Luftwaffe in May 1944, and the Junkers Ju 290 supposedly flown to Barcelona had been grounded in that city since the beginning of April 1945. Thereby, the claims of the dossier are considered by historians such as Joachimsthaler and Daly-Groves as an example of created "myths".
In a 2009 episode of History's MysteryQuest, a bone-specializing archaeologist collected samples from a skull fragment in the Soviet archives believed to be Hitler's. DNA and forensic examination indicated that the fragment, which had an exit wound from a gunshot through the back of the head, belonged to a woman less than 40 years old. On the same program, fringe author H. D. Baumann asserts that Hitler increased his use of doubles after a 1944 assassination attempt. Baumann claims that the darned-sock-wearing double, whose ears he points out are different than Hitler's and allegedly was two inches shorter, was killed by the Germans on 30 April 1945. Citing these details, as well as the notion that the bodies of Hitler and Braun were never found and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's claim that Hitler escaped to Spain or Argentina, Baumann concludes that Hitler faked his death. In 2017, the National Police Gazette revived its decades-old potboiler defending such a possibility and called on the Russian government to allow the jawbone fragment to be DNA-tested to settle the matter.
The Inalco House
Some works, such as the National Police Gazette (circa 1950–1970), an American tabloid-style magazine, as well as a 2004 book by Abel Basti and the 2011 book Grey Wolf claim that Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun did not commit suicide but escaped to Argentina along with other Nazis and lived in the surroundings of Bariloche for many years after World War II, choosing the lake's Inalco House as their hideout.
According to the fringe theory, a number of U-boats took certain Nazis and Nazi loot to Argentina, where the Nazis were supported by future president Juan Perón, who, with his wife "Evita", had been receiving money from the Nazis for some time. Hitler allegedly arrived in Argentina, first staying at Hacienda San Ramón, east of San Carlos de Bariloche. Hitler then moved to a Bavarian-style mansion at Inalco, a remote and barely accessible spot at the northwest end of the lake. Purportedly, Eva Braun left Hitler around 1954 and moved to Neuquén with their daughter, Ursula ('Uschi'), and Hitler died in February 1962.
Citing a former Nazi presence in Bariloche, the investigative series Hunting Hitler (2015–2018) reveals a guard tower—reportedly built by the same architect as the Inalco House—looking over the lake (situated closer to Bariloche than the house), as well as a destroyed bunker on the other side of the lake; together the two sites (in addition to other possible lookouts such as a wooden building resembling a guard shack) may have provided a panoramic view used to safeguard the mansion, accessible from only the lake due to heavy forestation and long rumoured to have housed Hitler. Additionally, the Hunting Hitler team cited the proximity of German scientist Ronald Richter's Perón-backed nuclear fusion project on Huemul Island.
In a 2018 episode of Expedition Unknown, Abel Basti secured a rare excursion into the Inalco House, revealing little except for some old kitchen utensils in the basement. Using a metal detector on the grounds, host Josh Gates located a Nazi coin, leading him to conclude that Nazis (but not necessarily Hitler) could have used the house.
Likely places hitler went Post war.
Argentina Juan peron
Juan Domingo Perón was an Argentine Army general and politician. After serving in several government positions, including Minister of Labour and Vice President of a military dictatorship, he was elected President of Argentina three times, serving from June 1946 to September 1955, when he was overthrown by the Revolución Libertadora, and then from October 1973 until his death in July 1974.
Protection of Nazi war criminals
After World War II, Argentina became a haven for Nazi war criminals, with explicit protection from Perón, who even shortly before his death commented on the Nuremberg Trials:
In Nuremberg at that time something was taking place that I personally considered a disgrace and an unfortunate lesson for the future of humanity. I became certain that the Argentine people also considered the Nuremberg process a disgrace, unworthy of the victors, who behaved as if they hadn't been victorious. Now we realize that they [the Allies] deserved to lose the war.
Author Uki Goñi alleges that Axis Power collaborators, including Pierre Daye, met with Perón at Casa Rosada, the President's official executive mansion. In this meeting, a network would have been created with support by the Argentine Immigration Service and the Foreign Office. The Swiss Chief of Police Heinrich Rothmund and the Croatian priest Krunoslav Draganović also helped organize the ratline.
An investigation of 22,000 documents by the DAIA in 1997 discovered that the network was managed by Rodolfo Freude who had an office in the Casa Rosada and was close to Eva Perón's brother, Juan Duarte. According to Ronald Newton, Ludwig Freude, Rodolfo's father, was probably the local representative of the Office Three secret service headed by Joachim von Ribbentrop, with probably more influence than the German ambassador Edmund von Thermann. He had met Perón in the 1930s, and had contacts with Generals Juan Pistarini, Domingo Martínez, and José Molina. Ludwig Freude's house became the meeting place for Nazis and Argentine military officers supporting the Axis. In 1943, he traveled with Perón to Europe to attempt an arms deal with Germany.
After the war, Ludwig Freude was investigated over his connection to possible looted Nazi art, cash and precious metals on deposit at two Argentine banks, Banco Germanico and Banco Tornquist. But on 6 September 1946, the Freude investigation was terminated by presidential decree.
Examples of Nazis and collaborators who relocated to Argentina include Emile Dewoitine, who arrived in May 1946 and worked on the Pulqui jet; Erich Priebke, who arrived in 1947; Josef Mengele in 1949; Adolf Eichmann in 1950; Austrian representative of the Škoda arms manufacturer in Spain Reinhard Spitzy; Charles Lescat, editor of Je Suis Partout in Vichy France; SS functionary Ludwig Lienhardt; and SS-Hauptsturmführer Klaus Barbie.
Many members of the notorious Croatian Ustaše (including their leader, Ante Pavelić) took refuge in Argentina, as did Milan Stojadinović, the former Serbian Prime Minister of monarchist Yugoslavia. In 1946 Stojadinović went to Rio de Janeiro, and then to Buenos Aires, where he was reunited with his family. Stojadinović spent the rest of his life as presidential advisor on economic and financial affairs to governments in Argentina and founded the financial newspaper El Economista in 1951, which still carries his name on its masthead.
A Croatian priest, Krunoslav Draganović, organizer of the San Girolamo ratline, was authorized by Perón to assist Nazi operatives to come to Argentina and evade prosecution in Europe after World War II,[61] in particular the Ustaše. Ante Pavelić became a security advisor of Perón. After Peron was overthrown in 1955, Pavelić, fearing extradition to Yugoslavia, left for Francoist Spain in 1957.
As in the United States (Operation Paperclip), Argentina also welcomed displaced German scientists such as Kurt Tank and Ronald Richter. Some of these refugees took important roles in Perón's Argentina, such as French collaborationist Jacques de Mahieu, who became an ideologue of the Peronist movement, before becoming mentor to a Roman Catholic nationalist youth group in the 1960s. Belgian collaborationist Pierre Daye became editor of a Peronist magazine. Rodolfo Freude, Ludwig's son, became Perón's chief of presidential intelligence in his first term.
Recently, Goñi's research, drawing on investigations in Argentine, Swiss, American, British and Belgian government archives, as well as numerous interviews and other sources, was detailed in The Real ODESSA: Smuggling the Nazis to Perón's Argentina (2002), showing how escape routes known as ratlines were used by former NSDAP members and like-minded people to escape trial and judgment.[64] Goñi places particular emphasis on the part played by Perón's government in organizing the ratlines, as well as documenting the aid of Swiss and Vatican authorities in their flight. The Argentine consulate in Barcelona gave false passports to fleeing Nazi war criminals and collaborationists.
Tomás Eloy Martínez, writer and professor of Latin American studies at Rutgers University, wrote that Juan Perón allowed Nazis into the country in hopes of acquiring advanced German technology developed during the war. Martínez also noted that Eva Perón played no part in allowing Nazis into the country. However, one of Eva's bodyguards was in fact an ex-Nazi commando named Otto Skorzeny, who had met Juan on occasion.
Facing only token UCR and Socialist Party opposition and despite being unable to field his popular wife, Eva, as a running mate, Perón was re-elected in 1951 by a margin of over 30%. This election was the first to have extended suffrage to Argentine women and the first in Argentina to be televised: Perón was inaugurated on Channel 7 public television that October. He began his second term in June 1952 with serious economic problems, however, compounded by a severe drought that helped lead to a US$500 million trade deficit (depleting reserves).
Perón called employers and unions to a Productivity Congress to regulate social conflict through dialogue, but the conference failed without reaching an agreement. Divisions among Peronists intensified, and the President's worsening mistrust led to the forced resignation of numerous valuable allies, notably Buenos Aires Province Governor Domingo Mercante. Again on the defensive, Perón accelerated generals' promotions and extended them pay hikes and other benefits. He also accelerated landmark construction projects slated for the CGT or government agencies; among these was the 41-story and 141 m (463 ft) high Alas Building (transferred to the Air Force by a later regime).
Opposition to Perón grew bolder following Eva Perón's death on 26 July 1952. On 15 April 1953, a terrorist group (never identified) detonated two bombs in a public rally at Plaza de Mayo, killing 7 and injuring 95. Amid the chaos, Perón exhorted the crowd to take reprisals; they made their way to their adversaries' gathering places, the Socialist Party headquarters and the aristocratic Jockey Club (both housed in magnificent turn-of-the-century Beaux-Arts buildings), and burned them to the ground.
A stalemate of sorts ensued between Perón and his opposition and, despite austerity measures taken late in 1952 to remedy the country's unsustainable trade deficit, the president remained generally popular. In March 1954, Perón called a vice-presidential election to replace the late Hortensio Quijano, which his candidate won by a nearly two-to-one margin. Given what he felt was as solid a mandate as ever and with inflation in single digits and the economy on a more secure footing, Perón ventured into a new policy: the creation of incentives designed to attract foreign investment.
Drawn to an economy with the highest standard of living in Latin America and a new steel mill in San Nicolás de los Arroyos, automakers FIAT and Kaiser Motors responded to the initiave by breaking ground on new facilities in the city of Córdoba, as did the freight truck division of Daimler-Benz, the first such investments since General Motors' Argentine assembly line opened in 1926. Perón also signed an important exploration contract with Standard Oil of California, in May 1955, consolidating his new policy of substituting the two largest sources of that era's chronic trade deficits (imported petroleum and motor vehicles) with local production brought in through foreign investment. Arturo Frondizi, who had been the centrist Radical Civic Union's 1951 vice-presidential nominee, publicly condemned what he considered to be an anti-patriotic decision; as president three years later, however, he himself signed exploration contracts with foreign oil companies.
As 1954 drew to a close, Perón unveiled reforms far more controversial to the normally conservative Argentine public, the legalization of divorce and of prostitution. The Roman Catholic Church's Argentine leaders, whose support of Perón's government had been steadily waning since the advent of the Eva Perón Foundation, were now open antagonists of the man they called "the tyrant." Though much of Argentina's media had, since 1950, been either controlled or monitored by the administration, lurid pieces on his ongoing relationship with an underage girl named Nélida Rivas (known as Nelly),something Perón never denied, filled the gossip pages. Pressed by reporters on whether his supposed new paramour was, as the magazines claimed, thirteen years of age, the fifty-nine-year-old Perón responded that he was "not superstitious."
Before long, however, the president's humor on the subject ran out and, following the expulsion of two Catholic priests he believed to be behind his recent image problems, a 15 June 1955 declaration of the Sacred Consistorial Congregation (not of Pope Pius XII himself, who alone had authority to excommunicate a head of state) was interpreted as declaring Perón excommunicated. The following day, Perón called for a rally of support on the Plaza de Mayo, a time-honored custom among Argentine presidents during a challenge. However, as he spoke before a crowd of thousands, Navy fighter jets flew overhead and dropped bombs into the crowded square below before seeking refuge in Uruguay.
The incident, part of a coup attempt against Perón, killed 364 people and was, from a historical perspective, the only air assault ever on Argentine soil, as well as a portent of the mayhem that Argentine society would suffer in the 1970s. It moreover touched off a wave of reprisals on the part of Peronists. Reminiscent of the incidents in 1953, Peronist crowds ransacked eleven Buenos Aires churches, including the Metropolitan Cathedral. On 16 September 1955, a nationalist Catholic group from both the Army and Navy, led by General Eduardo Lonardi, General Pedro E. Aramburu, and Admiral Isaac Rojas, led a revolt from Córdoba. They took power in a coup three days later, which they named Revolución Libertadora (the "Liberating Revolution"). Perón barely escaped with his life, leaving Nelly Rivas behind, and fleeing on the gunboat ARP Paraguay provided by Paraguayan leader Alfredo Stroessner, up the Paraná River.
The new military regime went to great lengths to destroy both Juan and Eva Perón's reputation, putting up public exhibits of what they maintained was the Peróns' scandalously sumptuous taste for antiques, jewelry, roadsters, yachts and other luxuries. In addition, they highlighted the association between Peronism and Nazism and accused Peron of having committed genocide. They also accused other Peronist leaders of corruption; but, ultimately, though many were prosecuted, none was convicted. The junta's first leader, Eduardo Lonardi, appointed a Civilian Advisory Board. However, its preference for a gradual approach to de-Perónization helped lead to Lonardi's ousting, though most of the board's recommendations withstood the new president's scrutiny.
Lonardi's replacement, Lieutenant-General Pedro Aramburu, outlawed the mere mention of Juan or Eva Perón's names under Decree Law 4161/56. Throughout Argentina, Peronism and the very display of Peronist mementos was banned. Partly in response to these and other excesses, Peronists and moderates in the army organized a counter-coup against Aramburu, in June 1956. Possessing an efficient intelligence network, however, Aramburu foiled the plan, having the plot's leader, General Juan José Valle, and 26 others executed. Aramburu turned to similarly drastic means in trying to rid the country of the spectre of the Peróns, themselves. Eva Perón's corpse was removed from its display at CGT headquarters and ordered hidden under another name in a modest grave in Milan, Italy. Perón himself, for the time residing in Caracas, Venezuela at the kindness of ill-fated President Marcos Pérez Jiménez, suffered a number of attempted kidnappings and assassinations ordered by Aramburu.
General franco and Spain
rancisco Franco Bahamonde (Spanish: [fɾanˈθisko ˈfɾaŋko βa.aˈmonde]; 4 December 1892 – 20 November 1975) was a Spanish general who led the Nationalist forces in overthrowing the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War and thereafter ruled over Spain from 1939 to 1975 as a dictator, assuming the title Caudillo. This period in Spanish history, from the Nationalist victory to Franco's death, is commonly known as Francoist Spain or as the Francoist dictatorship.
During World War II he maintained Spanish neutrality but supported the Axis whose members Italy and Germany had supported him during the Civil War damaging the country's international reputation in various ways.
Spanish civil war
The Spanish Civil War began in July 1936 and officially ended with Franco's victory in April 1939. Although it is impossible to calculate precise statistics concerning the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath, Payne writes that if civilian fatalities above the norm are added to the total number of deaths for victims of violence, the number of deaths attributable to the civil war would reach approximately 344,000.
Despite the Non-Intervention Agreement of August 1936, the war was marked by foreign intervention on behalf of both sides, leading to international repercussions. The Nationalist side was supported by Fascist Italy, which sent the Corpo Truppe Volontarie; later Nazi Germany assisted them with support from the Condor Legion. Italian aircraft stationed on Majorca bombed Barcelona 13 times, dropping 44 tons of bombs aimed at civilians. These attacks were requested by General Franco as retribution against the Catalan population. The Nationalists were opposed by the Soviet Union and communists, socialists, and anarchists within Spain. The United Kingdom and France strictly adhered to the arms embargo, provoking dissensions within the French Popular Front coalition, which was led by Léon Blum, but the Republican side was nonetheless supported by the Soviet Union and volunteers who fought in the International Brigades, with the Soviets taking the lead in recruiting them.
Some historians, such as Ernst Nolte, have proposed that Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin used the Spanish Civil war as a testing ground for modern warfare, while others such as François Furet reject this contention. Willard C. Frank, Jr says that Hitler was much more concerned throughout the years of the war with testing British mettle than with testing his submarines, tanks, and submarines.
Relationship with hitler
in September 1939 World War II began. On 23 October 1940, Hitler and Franco met in Hendaye in France to discuss the possibility of Spain's entry on the side of the Axis. Franco's demands, including supplies of food and fuel, as well as Spanish control of Gibraltar and French North Africa, proved too much for Hitler. At the time Hitler did not want to risk damaging his relations with the new Vichy French government. (An oft-cited remark attributed to Hitler is that the German leader said that he would rather have some of his own teeth pulled than to have to personally deal further with Franco). Franco had received important support from Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini during the Spanish Civil War, and he had signed the Anti-Comintern Pact. He made pro-Axis speeches, while offering various kinds of support to Italy and Germany. His spokesman Antonio Tovar commented at a Paris conference entitled 'Bolshevism versus Europe' that "Spain aligned itself definitively on the side of...National Socialist Germany and Fascist Italy.” Franco allowed Spanish soldiers to volunteer to fight in the German Army against the Soviet Union (the Blue Division), but forbade Spaniards to fight in the West against the democracies. Franco's common ground with Hitler was particularly weakened by Hitler's propagation of Nazi mysticism and his attempts to manipulate Christianity, which went against Franco's fervent commitment to defending Catholicism. Contributing to the disagreement was an ongoing dispute over German mining rights in Spain. Some historians argue that Franco made demands he knew Hitler would not accede to, in order to stay out of the war. Other historians argue that Franco, as the leader of a destroyed and bankrupt country in chaos following a brutal three-year civil war, simply had little to offer the Axis and that the Spanish armed forces were not ready for a major war. It has also been suggested that Franco decided not to join the war after the resources he requested from Hitler in October 1940 were not forthcoming.
Did Hitler escape to Spain?
New evidence has come to light that throws further doubt over the well documented facts surrounding the death of Hitler in his bunker at the end of WW2
According to Senor Stefan Aceituna, who was one of General Franco’s drivers during 1945 and beyond, he was sent to meet a plane arriving at the Madrid airport on the night of April 30, 1945.
He described the plane as “of German origin” and remembered that it arrived very late, “probably after midnight.” Following Franco’s instructions, the passenger, who had no luggage, was transported “directly to the Palace.”
Hitlers escape
In May of 1945 the East wing of General Franco’s residence in Madrid was sealed off from the rest of the palace and surrounded by a fourteen foot high wall. No explanation of this construction work has ever been forthcoming. The staff assigned to this wing were all fluent in the German tongue.
In May 1945 Franco’s medical staff ordered from Spain’s largest pharmaceutical company a carton of 144 bottles of “Doctor Koster’s Anti-Gas pills.” This order was repeated on a monthly basis until October 1947.
Theo Morell, Hitler’s personal physician had introduced Hitler to the anti-flatulence medication and Hitler had become so addicted to the strychnine base of these pills that he was known to swallow them by the handful.
Suddenly, in May of 1945, General Franco has a need of the identical medication and the need continues unabated until October 1947.
Secret hideout
About thirteen miles from the Presidential Palace in Madrid is a medical establishment known as “The Clinico San Carlos.”
At the end of 1947 the director of this clinic, one Dr Victor Vega Diaz, also held the title of “President of the International Association of Cardiologists”. In other words, he was recognized as the world’s foremost heart specialist.
According to Vega Diaz’s personal diary, he received a telephone call from the Presidential Palace in the early afternoon of Wednesday, November 1, 1947 to examine a ‘member of Franco’s gardening staff’. From the way in which the doctor has boldly underlined “From Generalisimmo Franco” it appears obvious that this call was not made by a member of the Palace staff but emanated directly from the Spanish President himself.
Strange Mystery
Why would the Spanish dictator contact the ‘Hospital Clinico San Carlos’ when the larger, more modern, and much better equipped ‘Hospital Francisco Franco’, named in his honour, was almost twelve miles nearer? Could it be because all previous medical needs of the General himself and the members of his entourage had always, until this day, been catered to by the hospital bearing his name, and that the General did not want any record of Senor Adi Lupus added to his personal file?
Dr Diaz’ diary describes the patient as “between fifty and sixty years of age … in an emaciated condition” His personal files record that he examined a patient ‘in his late fifties or early sixties’ (at that time Hitler would have been fifty-eight years and six months of age) and records that at 3:32 pm he certified the patient’s death from “Cardio Myopathy”, a fairly basic heart attack and it appears that no autopsy was performed. .
At the top of the page, beside the words “Patient Identification” the doctor had written: “Senor Adi Lupus”.
Hitlers Doctor
Unfortunately the doctors personal notes do not elaborate further and the Clinico San Carlos has relocated since 1947 and if any official hospital records ever existed they are now lost for ever.
Doesn’t it seem illogical to summon the best cardiologist in the world to treat a lowly gardener?
Despite lengthy searches of all cemeteries within reasonable proximity to Madrid, no record can be discovered which documents the burial or cremation of Senor Adi Lupus.
The unexplained person, never traced!
No amount of searching has been able to uncover a document anywhere in Spain which relates to Senor Adi Lupus.
No birth certificate, no marriage record, no tax file or employment history, no registration on an electoral roll. Until November 1 1947 he appears not to have existed. The only mention of his name is in the notebook of Dr Vega Dias.
Is it no more than coincidence that Lupus is Latin for wolf, the nom-de-plume which Hitler favoured, the title he appended to his yacht (The Sea Wolf), his plane (The Flying Wolf) and two of his Führer headquarters (The Wolf’s Lair and The Wolf’s Den).
Mr Wolf, AKA Adolf Hitler
He used the pseudonym Mr Wolf when he first met Eva. If it is purely coincidental, then we must apply the same assumption to the Christian name ‘Adi’. This happens to be the form of address used in private by Eva Braun.
So did hitler escape or did her really die in his bunker in Berlin Germany in 1945? Sadly we may never know the answer.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theories_about_Adolf_Hitler%27s_death
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alleged_doubles_of_Adolf_Hitler
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_Franco#From_the_Spanish_Civil_War_to_World_War_II
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Per%C3%B3n
https://coolinterestingstuff.com/did-hitler-escape-to-spain
In his 1995 book on Hitler's death, historian Anton Joachimsthaler disputes the purported Soviet autopsy report of Hitler's body, which was published by Bezymenski in 1968. Joachimsthaler argues that the Soviets never found Hitler's body, which must have been burnt to ashes. Joachimsthaler quotes esteemed German pathologist Otto Prokop [de] as saying the alleged autopsy report "describes anything but Hitler". Similarly, historian Luke Daly-Groves states that "the Soviet soldiers picked up whatever mush they could find in front of Hitler's bunker exit, put it in a box and claimed it was the corpses of Adolf and Eva Hitler". Also in 1995, Bezymenski disclosed that his work had contained "deliberate lies", possibly including the manner of Hitler's death. In his book, he had claimed that if the dictator died from a gunshot wound, it was a coup de grâce to ensure his quick death after he took cyanide, not a suicide by gunshot.
In 1998, British author Ian Sayer received from an anonymous source what alleged to be a photocopy of a 427-page report from the U.S. Army's Counterintelligence Corps (CIC), apparently containing a 1948 interview of Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller, who was presumed missing in action in 1945, but claimed to have been retained by the CIC as an intelligence adviser and to have joined the CIA. According to Müller's purported account: a Hitler double was discovered in Breslau in 1941 and was seldom seen after July 1944, being sedated and kept hidden until April 1945; on April 22, Hitler, Braun and three of Hitler's associates departed by air for Hörsching Airport and were then flown to Barcelona; the double was later killed by a coup de grâce, dressed in Hitler's clothes, and buried. Joachimsthaler notes that the plane claimed to have been flown out of Berlin was considered a "total loss" by the Luftwaffe in May 1944, and the Junkers Ju 290 supposedly flown to Barcelona had been grounded in that city since the beginning of April 1945. Thereby, the claims of the dossier are considered by historians such as Joachimsthaler and Daly-Groves as an example of created "myths".
In a 2009 episode of History's MysteryQuest, a bone-specializing archaeologist collected samples from a skull fragment in the Soviet archives believed to be Hitler's. DNA and forensic examination indicated that the fragment, which had an exit wound from a gunshot through the back of the head, belonged to a woman less than 40 years old. On the same program, fringe author H. D. Baumann asserts that Hitler increased his use of doubles after a 1944 assassination attempt. Baumann claims that the darned-sock-wearing double, whose ears he points out are different than Hitler's and allegedly was two inches shorter, was killed by the Germans on 30 April 1945. Citing these details, as well as the notion that the bodies of Hitler and Braun were never found and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's claim that Hitler escaped to Spain or Argentina, Baumann concludes that Hitler faked his death. In 2017, the National Police Gazette revived its decades-old potboiler defending such a possibility and called on the Russian government to allow the jawbone fragment to be DNA-tested to settle the matter.
The Inalco House
Some works, such as the National Police Gazette (circa 1950–1970), an American tabloid-style magazine, as well as a 2004 book by Abel Basti and the 2011 book Grey Wolf claim that Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun did not commit suicide but escaped to Argentina along with other Nazis and lived in the surroundings of Bariloche for many years after World War II, choosing the lake's Inalco House as their hideout.
According to the fringe theory, a number of U-boats took certain Nazis and Nazi loot to Argentina, where the Nazis were supported by future president Juan Perón, who, with his wife "Evita", had been receiving money from the Nazis for some time. Hitler allegedly arrived in Argentina, first staying at Hacienda San Ramón, east of San Carlos de Bariloche. Hitler then moved to a Bavarian-style mansion at Inalco, a remote and barely accessible spot at the northwest end of the lake. Purportedly, Eva Braun left Hitler around 1954 and moved to Neuquén with their daughter, Ursula ('Uschi'), and Hitler died in February 1962.
Citing a former Nazi presence in Bariloche, the investigative series Hunting Hitler (2015–2018) reveals a guard tower—reportedly built by the same architect as the Inalco House—looking over the lake (situated closer to Bariloche than the house), as well as a destroyed bunker on the other side of the lake; together the two sites (in addition to other possible lookouts such as a wooden building resembling a guard shack) may have provided a panoramic view used to safeguard the mansion, accessible from only the lake due to heavy forestation and long rumoured to have housed Hitler. Additionally, the Hunting Hitler team cited the proximity of German scientist Ronald Richter's Perón-backed nuclear fusion project on Huemul Island.
In a 2018 episode of Expedition Unknown, Abel Basti secured a rare excursion into the Inalco House, revealing little except for some old kitchen utensils in the basement. Using a metal detector on the grounds, host Josh Gates located a Nazi coin, leading him to conclude that Nazis (but not necessarily Hitler) could have used the house.
Likely places hitler went Post war.
Argentina Juan peron
Juan Domingo Perón was an Argentine Army general and politician. After serving in several government positions, including Minister of Labour and Vice President of a military dictatorship, he was elected President of Argentina three times, serving from June 1946 to September 1955, when he was overthrown by the Revolución Libertadora, and then from October 1973 until his death in July 1974.
Protection of Nazi war criminals
After World War II, Argentina became a haven for Nazi war criminals, with explicit protection from Perón, who even shortly before his death commented on the Nuremberg Trials:
In Nuremberg at that time something was taking place that I personally considered a disgrace and an unfortunate lesson for the future of humanity. I became certain that the Argentine people also considered the Nuremberg process a disgrace, unworthy of the victors, who behaved as if they hadn't been victorious. Now we realize that they [the Allies] deserved to lose the war.
Author Uki Goñi alleges that Axis Power collaborators, including Pierre Daye, met with Perón at Casa Rosada, the President's official executive mansion. In this meeting, a network would have been created with support by the Argentine Immigration Service and the Foreign Office. The Swiss Chief of Police Heinrich Rothmund and the Croatian priest Krunoslav Draganović also helped organize the ratline.
An investigation of 22,000 documents by the DAIA in 1997 discovered that the network was managed by Rodolfo Freude who had an office in the Casa Rosada and was close to Eva Perón's brother, Juan Duarte. According to Ronald Newton, Ludwig Freude, Rodolfo's father, was probably the local representative of the Office Three secret service headed by Joachim von Ribbentrop, with probably more influence than the German ambassador Edmund von Thermann. He had met Perón in the 1930s, and had contacts with Generals Juan Pistarini, Domingo Martínez, and José Molina. Ludwig Freude's house became the meeting place for Nazis and Argentine military officers supporting the Axis. In 1943, he traveled with Perón to Europe to attempt an arms deal with Germany.
After the war, Ludwig Freude was investigated over his connection to possible looted Nazi art, cash and precious metals on deposit at two Argentine banks, Banco Germanico and Banco Tornquist. But on 6 September 1946, the Freude investigation was terminated by presidential decree.
Examples of Nazis and collaborators who relocated to Argentina include Emile Dewoitine, who arrived in May 1946 and worked on the Pulqui jet; Erich Priebke, who arrived in 1947; Josef Mengele in 1949; Adolf Eichmann in 1950; Austrian representative of the Škoda arms manufacturer in Spain Reinhard Spitzy; Charles Lescat, editor of Je Suis Partout in Vichy France; SS functionary Ludwig Lienhardt; and SS-Hauptsturmführer Klaus Barbie.
Many members of the notorious Croatian Ustaše (including their leader, Ante Pavelić) took refuge in Argentina, as did Milan Stojadinović, the former Serbian Prime Minister of monarchist Yugoslavia. In 1946 Stojadinović went to Rio de Janeiro, and then to Buenos Aires, where he was reunited with his family. Stojadinović spent the rest of his life as presidential advisor on economic and financial affairs to governments in Argentina and founded the financial newspaper El Economista in 1951, which still carries his name on its masthead.
A Croatian priest, Krunoslav Draganović, organizer of the San Girolamo ratline, was authorized by Perón to assist Nazi operatives to come to Argentina and evade prosecution in Europe after World War II,[61] in particular the Ustaše. Ante Pavelić became a security advisor of Perón. After Peron was overthrown in 1955, Pavelić, fearing extradition to Yugoslavia, left for Francoist Spain in 1957.
As in the United States (Operation Paperclip), Argentina also welcomed displaced German scientists such as Kurt Tank and Ronald Richter. Some of these refugees took important roles in Perón's Argentina, such as French collaborationist Jacques de Mahieu, who became an ideologue of the Peronist movement, before becoming mentor to a Roman Catholic nationalist youth group in the 1960s. Belgian collaborationist Pierre Daye became editor of a Peronist magazine. Rodolfo Freude, Ludwig's son, became Perón's chief of presidential intelligence in his first term.
Recently, Goñi's research, drawing on investigations in Argentine, Swiss, American, British and Belgian government archives, as well as numerous interviews and other sources, was detailed in The Real ODESSA: Smuggling the Nazis to Perón's Argentina (2002), showing how escape routes known as ratlines were used by former NSDAP members and like-minded people to escape trial and judgment.[64] Goñi places particular emphasis on the part played by Perón's government in organizing the ratlines, as well as documenting the aid of Swiss and Vatican authorities in their flight. The Argentine consulate in Barcelona gave false passports to fleeing Nazi war criminals and collaborationists.
Tomás Eloy Martínez, writer and professor of Latin American studies at Rutgers University, wrote that Juan Perón allowed Nazis into the country in hopes of acquiring advanced German technology developed during the war. Martínez also noted that Eva Perón played no part in allowing Nazis into the country. However, one of Eva's bodyguards was in fact an ex-Nazi commando named Otto Skorzeny, who had met Juan on occasion.
Facing only token UCR and Socialist Party opposition and despite being unable to field his popular wife, Eva, as a running mate, Perón was re-elected in 1951 by a margin of over 30%. This election was the first to have extended suffrage to Argentine women and the first in Argentina to be televised: Perón was inaugurated on Channel 7 public television that October. He began his second term in June 1952 with serious economic problems, however, compounded by a severe drought that helped lead to a US$500 million trade deficit (depleting reserves).
Perón called employers and unions to a Productivity Congress to regulate social conflict through dialogue, but the conference failed without reaching an agreement. Divisions among Peronists intensified, and the President's worsening mistrust led to the forced resignation of numerous valuable allies, notably Buenos Aires Province Governor Domingo Mercante. Again on the defensive, Perón accelerated generals' promotions and extended them pay hikes and other benefits. He also accelerated landmark construction projects slated for the CGT or government agencies; among these was the 41-story and 141 m (463 ft) high Alas Building (transferred to the Air Force by a later regime).
Opposition to Perón grew bolder following Eva Perón's death on 26 July 1952. On 15 April 1953, a terrorist group (never identified) detonated two bombs in a public rally at Plaza de Mayo, killing 7 and injuring 95. Amid the chaos, Perón exhorted the crowd to take reprisals; they made their way to their adversaries' gathering places, the Socialist Party headquarters and the aristocratic Jockey Club (both housed in magnificent turn-of-the-century Beaux-Arts buildings), and burned them to the ground.
A stalemate of sorts ensued between Perón and his opposition and, despite austerity measures taken late in 1952 to remedy the country's unsustainable trade deficit, the president remained generally popular. In March 1954, Perón called a vice-presidential election to replace the late Hortensio Quijano, which his candidate won by a nearly two-to-one margin. Given what he felt was as solid a mandate as ever and with inflation in single digits and the economy on a more secure footing, Perón ventured into a new policy: the creation of incentives designed to attract foreign investment.
Drawn to an economy with the highest standard of living in Latin America and a new steel mill in San Nicolás de los Arroyos, automakers FIAT and Kaiser Motors responded to the initiave by breaking ground on new facilities in the city of Córdoba, as did the freight truck division of Daimler-Benz, the first such investments since General Motors' Argentine assembly line opened in 1926. Perón also signed an important exploration contract with Standard Oil of California, in May 1955, consolidating his new policy of substituting the two largest sources of that era's chronic trade deficits (imported petroleum and motor vehicles) with local production brought in through foreign investment. Arturo Frondizi, who had been the centrist Radical Civic Union's 1951 vice-presidential nominee, publicly condemned what he considered to be an anti-patriotic decision; as president three years later, however, he himself signed exploration contracts with foreign oil companies.
As 1954 drew to a close, Perón unveiled reforms far more controversial to the normally conservative Argentine public, the legalization of divorce and of prostitution. The Roman Catholic Church's Argentine leaders, whose support of Perón's government had been steadily waning since the advent of the Eva Perón Foundation, were now open antagonists of the man they called "the tyrant." Though much of Argentina's media had, since 1950, been either controlled or monitored by the administration, lurid pieces on his ongoing relationship with an underage girl named Nélida Rivas (known as Nelly),something Perón never denied, filled the gossip pages. Pressed by reporters on whether his supposed new paramour was, as the magazines claimed, thirteen years of age, the fifty-nine-year-old Perón responded that he was "not superstitious."
Before long, however, the president's humor on the subject ran out and, following the expulsion of two Catholic priests he believed to be behind his recent image problems, a 15 June 1955 declaration of the Sacred Consistorial Congregation (not of Pope Pius XII himself, who alone had authority to excommunicate a head of state) was interpreted as declaring Perón excommunicated. The following day, Perón called for a rally of support on the Plaza de Mayo, a time-honored custom among Argentine presidents during a challenge. However, as he spoke before a crowd of thousands, Navy fighter jets flew overhead and dropped bombs into the crowded square below before seeking refuge in Uruguay.
The incident, part of a coup attempt against Perón, killed 364 people and was, from a historical perspective, the only air assault ever on Argentine soil, as well as a portent of the mayhem that Argentine society would suffer in the 1970s. It moreover touched off a wave of reprisals on the part of Peronists. Reminiscent of the incidents in 1953, Peronist crowds ransacked eleven Buenos Aires churches, including the Metropolitan Cathedral. On 16 September 1955, a nationalist Catholic group from both the Army and Navy, led by General Eduardo Lonardi, General Pedro E. Aramburu, and Admiral Isaac Rojas, led a revolt from Córdoba. They took power in a coup three days later, which they named Revolución Libertadora (the "Liberating Revolution"). Perón barely escaped with his life, leaving Nelly Rivas behind, and fleeing on the gunboat ARP Paraguay provided by Paraguayan leader Alfredo Stroessner, up the Paraná River.
The new military regime went to great lengths to destroy both Juan and Eva Perón's reputation, putting up public exhibits of what they maintained was the Peróns' scandalously sumptuous taste for antiques, jewelry, roadsters, yachts and other luxuries. In addition, they highlighted the association between Peronism and Nazism and accused Peron of having committed genocide. They also accused other Peronist leaders of corruption; but, ultimately, though many were prosecuted, none was convicted. The junta's first leader, Eduardo Lonardi, appointed a Civilian Advisory Board. However, its preference for a gradual approach to de-Perónization helped lead to Lonardi's ousting, though most of the board's recommendations withstood the new president's scrutiny.
Lonardi's replacement, Lieutenant-General Pedro Aramburu, outlawed the mere mention of Juan or Eva Perón's names under Decree Law 4161/56. Throughout Argentina, Peronism and the very display of Peronist mementos was banned. Partly in response to these and other excesses, Peronists and moderates in the army organized a counter-coup against Aramburu, in June 1956. Possessing an efficient intelligence network, however, Aramburu foiled the plan, having the plot's leader, General Juan José Valle, and 26 others executed. Aramburu turned to similarly drastic means in trying to rid the country of the spectre of the Peróns, themselves. Eva Perón's corpse was removed from its display at CGT headquarters and ordered hidden under another name in a modest grave in Milan, Italy. Perón himself, for the time residing in Caracas, Venezuela at the kindness of ill-fated President Marcos Pérez Jiménez, suffered a number of attempted kidnappings and assassinations ordered by Aramburu.
General franco and Spain
rancisco Franco Bahamonde (Spanish: [fɾanˈθisko ˈfɾaŋko βa.aˈmonde]; 4 December 1892 – 20 November 1975) was a Spanish general who led the Nationalist forces in overthrowing the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War and thereafter ruled over Spain from 1939 to 1975 as a dictator, assuming the title Caudillo. This period in Spanish history, from the Nationalist victory to Franco's death, is commonly known as Francoist Spain or as the Francoist dictatorship.
During World War II he maintained Spanish neutrality but supported the Axis whose members Italy and Germany had supported him during the Civil War damaging the country's international reputation in various ways.
Spanish civil war
The Spanish Civil War began in July 1936 and officially ended with Franco's victory in April 1939. Although it is impossible to calculate precise statistics concerning the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath, Payne writes that if civilian fatalities above the norm are added to the total number of deaths for victims of violence, the number of deaths attributable to the civil war would reach approximately 344,000.
Despite the Non-Intervention Agreement of August 1936, the war was marked by foreign intervention on behalf of both sides, leading to international repercussions. The Nationalist side was supported by Fascist Italy, which sent the Corpo Truppe Volontarie; later Nazi Germany assisted them with support from the Condor Legion. Italian aircraft stationed on Majorca bombed Barcelona 13 times, dropping 44 tons of bombs aimed at civilians. These attacks were requested by General Franco as retribution against the Catalan population. The Nationalists were opposed by the Soviet Union and communists, socialists, and anarchists within Spain. The United Kingdom and France strictly adhered to the arms embargo, provoking dissensions within the French Popular Front coalition, which was led by Léon Blum, but the Republican side was nonetheless supported by the Soviet Union and volunteers who fought in the International Brigades, with the Soviets taking the lead in recruiting them.
Some historians, such as Ernst Nolte, have proposed that Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin used the Spanish Civil war as a testing ground for modern warfare, while others such as François Furet reject this contention. Willard C. Frank, Jr says that Hitler was much more concerned throughout the years of the war with testing British mettle than with testing his submarines, tanks, and submarines.
Relationship with hitler
in September 1939 World War II began. On 23 October 1940, Hitler and Franco met in Hendaye in France to discuss the possibility of Spain's entry on the side of the Axis. Franco's demands, including supplies of food and fuel, as well as Spanish control of Gibraltar and French North Africa, proved too much for Hitler. At the time Hitler did not want to risk damaging his relations with the new Vichy French government. (An oft-cited remark attributed to Hitler is that the German leader said that he would rather have some of his own teeth pulled than to have to personally deal further with Franco). Franco had received important support from Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini during the Spanish Civil War, and he had signed the Anti-Comintern Pact. He made pro-Axis speeches, while offering various kinds of support to Italy and Germany. His spokesman Antonio Tovar commented at a Paris conference entitled 'Bolshevism versus Europe' that "Spain aligned itself definitively on the side of...National Socialist Germany and Fascist Italy.” Franco allowed Spanish soldiers to volunteer to fight in the German Army against the Soviet Union (the Blue Division), but forbade Spaniards to fight in the West against the democracies. Franco's common ground with Hitler was particularly weakened by Hitler's propagation of Nazi mysticism and his attempts to manipulate Christianity, which went against Franco's fervent commitment to defending Catholicism. Contributing to the disagreement was an ongoing dispute over German mining rights in Spain. Some historians argue that Franco made demands he knew Hitler would not accede to, in order to stay out of the war. Other historians argue that Franco, as the leader of a destroyed and bankrupt country in chaos following a brutal three-year civil war, simply had little to offer the Axis and that the Spanish armed forces were not ready for a major war. It has also been suggested that Franco decided not to join the war after the resources he requested from Hitler in October 1940 were not forthcoming.
Did Hitler escape to Spain?
New evidence has come to light that throws further doubt over the well documented facts surrounding the death of Hitler in his bunker at the end of WW2
According to Senor Stefan Aceituna, who was one of General Franco’s drivers during 1945 and beyond, he was sent to meet a plane arriving at the Madrid airport on the night of April 30, 1945.
He described the plane as “of German origin” and remembered that it arrived very late, “probably after midnight.” Following Franco’s instructions, the passenger, who had no luggage, was transported “directly to the Palace.”
Hitlers escape
In May of 1945 the East wing of General Franco’s residence in Madrid was sealed off from the rest of the palace and surrounded by a fourteen foot high wall. No explanation of this construction work has ever been forthcoming. The staff assigned to this wing were all fluent in the German tongue.
In May 1945 Franco’s medical staff ordered from Spain’s largest pharmaceutical company a carton of 144 bottles of “Doctor Koster’s Anti-Gas pills.” This order was repeated on a monthly basis until October 1947.
Theo Morell, Hitler’s personal physician had introduced Hitler to the anti-flatulence medication and Hitler had become so addicted to the strychnine base of these pills that he was known to swallow them by the handful.
Suddenly, in May of 1945, General Franco has a need of the identical medication and the need continues unabated until October 1947.
Secret hideout
About thirteen miles from the Presidential Palace in Madrid is a medical establishment known as “The Clinico San Carlos.”
At the end of 1947 the director of this clinic, one Dr Victor Vega Diaz, also held the title of “President of the International Association of Cardiologists”. In other words, he was recognized as the world’s foremost heart specialist.
According to Vega Diaz’s personal diary, he received a telephone call from the Presidential Palace in the early afternoon of Wednesday, November 1, 1947 to examine a ‘member of Franco’s gardening staff’. From the way in which the doctor has boldly underlined “From Generalisimmo Franco” it appears obvious that this call was not made by a member of the Palace staff but emanated directly from the Spanish President himself.
Strange Mystery
Why would the Spanish dictator contact the ‘Hospital Clinico San Carlos’ when the larger, more modern, and much better equipped ‘Hospital Francisco Franco’, named in his honour, was almost twelve miles nearer? Could it be because all previous medical needs of the General himself and the members of his entourage had always, until this day, been catered to by the hospital bearing his name, and that the General did not want any record of Senor Adi Lupus added to his personal file?
Dr Diaz’ diary describes the patient as “between fifty and sixty years of age … in an emaciated condition” His personal files record that he examined a patient ‘in his late fifties or early sixties’ (at that time Hitler would have been fifty-eight years and six months of age) and records that at 3:32 pm he certified the patient’s death from “Cardio Myopathy”, a fairly basic heart attack and it appears that no autopsy was performed. .
At the top of the page, beside the words “Patient Identification” the doctor had written: “Senor Adi Lupus”.
Hitlers Doctor
Unfortunately the doctors personal notes do not elaborate further and the Clinico San Carlos has relocated since 1947 and if any official hospital records ever existed they are now lost for ever.
Doesn’t it seem illogical to summon the best cardiologist in the world to treat a lowly gardener?
Despite lengthy searches of all cemeteries within reasonable proximity to Madrid, no record can be discovered which documents the burial or cremation of Senor Adi Lupus.
The unexplained person, never traced!
No amount of searching has been able to uncover a document anywhere in Spain which relates to Senor Adi Lupus.
No birth certificate, no marriage record, no tax file or employment history, no registration on an electoral roll. Until November 1 1947 he appears not to have existed. The only mention of his name is in the notebook of Dr Vega Dias.
Is it no more than coincidence that Lupus is Latin for wolf, the nom-de-plume which Hitler favoured, the title he appended to his yacht (The Sea Wolf), his plane (The Flying Wolf) and two of his Führer headquarters (The Wolf’s Lair and The Wolf’s Den).
Mr Wolf, AKA Adolf Hitler
He used the pseudonym Mr Wolf when he first met Eva. If it is purely coincidental, then we must apply the same assumption to the Christian name ‘Adi’. This happens to be the form of address used in private by Eva Braun.
So did hitler escape or did her really die in his bunker in Berlin Germany in 1945? Sadly we may never know the answer.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theories_about_Adolf_Hitler%27s_death
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alleged_doubles_of_Adolf_Hitler
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_Franco#From_the_Spanish_Civil_War_to_World_War_II
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Per%C3%B3n
https://coolinterestingstuff.com/did-hitler-escape-to-spain
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