CIA documents expose secret study for Hitler in 1950s
(MENAFN) Recently analyzed declassified documents reveal that the CIA secretly searched for Adolf Hitler in South America for nearly a decade after his presumed death in 1945. Despite possessing an autopsy report confirming his suicide, US intelligence agents pursued leads suggesting he may have escaped under a false identity.
According to records examined by The Washington Post, CIA files from 1945 to 1955 show that some agents suspected Hitler had fled to South America, particularly Argentina or Colombia. This belief persisted despite reports from MI5 that Hitler and his wife, Eva Braun, took their own lives in his Berlin bunker on April 30, 1945. Their remains, partially burned, were reportedly found by Soviet troops.
One 1945 document claimed US War Department agents believed a hotel in La Falda, Argentina, was prepared as a safe haven for Hitler. The hotel’s owners, who had supported Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels, were believed to be close to Hitler and had made preparations to shelter him after the war.
In 1955, CIA agents received a photograph of a man believed to be Hitler, going by the name Adolf Schrittelmayor, sitting with an associate in Colombia. The man reportedly left for Argentina in early 1955. While the CIA briefly investigated Schrittelmayor, they eventually abandoned the lead, stating that a significant amount of effort would likely yield no concrete results.
No public records indicate that the CIA continued pursuing the search after 1955.
These revelations coincide with Argentina’s plans to release classified files on Nazi fugitives who fled there after World War II. An estimated 10,000 war criminals used secret escape routes—known as “ratlines”—to flee Europe, with nearly half settling in Argentina, a country known for resisting extradition requests.
Notorious figures such as Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele were among those who hid in South America. Eichmann was eventually captured in Argentina by Israeli agents in 1960 and taken to Israel for trial. Mengele eluded capture and died in Brazil in 1979 after drowning due to a heart attack while swimming.
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