but I did anyway to retain some kind of chronology, if there was one.
I got a few sheets of paper and started to create lists from the documents. A list of names, code names, places, countries and then dates. Once all the information was on paper in a simpler form it was easier to see if names and places repeated to try to visualise which were the stronger most often mentioned items. I then thought how all this could be verified from another source. Some names and places repeated, Bariloche, Argentina seemed to have several references and the names that were at those locations seemed to occur more than once too. I called Karen into my room.
“Want to go again Andy?” she asked cheekily.
“No, the moment has passed, but thank you for asking, another time soon I hope. I want you to check on the company database or any files, to see if we have anything on Bariloche, Argentina please,”
“Of course,” and Karen returned to her desk and started to type on her computer. I knew she was way more efficient at looking for the data than me, sometimes I’d watch her work to try to learn something from her, computers were still very new to me.
My thoughts now went to the files again. If what I was seeing was true this was going to be incredible stuff. I had four lines of thought on this.
1. Who compiled this folder and how did it get here?
2. Is Hitler still alive? How did he escaped Berlin if indeed this was all true?
3. Who was complicit in allowing Hitler and other Nazis to live and continue to operate, and, did they have any great influence?
4. I think the biggest question, why, was Hitler permitted to escape and continue to live, as these documents in front of me seemed to infer his survival was known by various agencies including the British.
I continued to look at the lists to try to find a chronology of events. Just from these few documents, the results were shocking but there was nothing solid of Hitler.
Here is a list of just a few of the Nazis and war criminals who escaped, according to these documents. They are in the chronological order I created from the files:
● Sándor Képíró, fled to Argentina date not stated.
● Dinko Sakic, fled to Argentina in 1947.
● Ante Pavelić, escaped to Argentina in 1948, died in Spain, in December 1959, of wounds sustained two years earlier in an assassination attempt.
● Eduard Roschmann, escaped to Argentina in 1948
● Hans-Ulrich Rudel, fled to Argentina in 1948, started the "Kameradenwerk", a relief organization for Nazi criminals that helped fugitives escape.
● Josef Mengele, fled to Argentina in 1949.
● Erich Priebke, fled to Argentina in 1949.
● Adolf Eichmann, fled to Argentina in 1950, captured in 1960 by Mossad, executed in Israel on the 1st June 1962.
● Joachim Peiper, also known as Jochen Peiper, did not flee to Argentina. Rather, he was apprehended on 22nd May 1945 by American troops, sent to trial and convicted of war crimes.
Note: I have included Jochen Peiper in this list for a very special reason which will become apparent further into this story. More on him in a bit.
Here was massive evidence of Nazis fleeing to Argentina. This was shocking to learn.
I kept Hitler out of this list, I made a separate one for him because I felt his escape if he had escaped, was the only one in the list whose documentation appeared to be possibly fake. Therefore, I needed to verify by some other means the reports on him as true before I included him in this list.
I left for home a few hours later for my evening out with my friends, leaving Karen still working after kissing her goodbye and apologising again that I could not invite her to be with me. She understood and I always loved her for that.
A few days later Karen received the personal file on Jenny from the human resources department and called me back to London to look at it. It would have been so much easier if everything was computerised as things are today, it would have save me so much travel. I read it briefly as there wasn’t much I could do alone. I took it to a specialist department that could do an even more thorough job at checking her out. I requested under the strongest terms that their investigations came to me and only me first, which they agreed, with little explanation from me as to why I was asking. There could be multiple reasons for this and it wasn’t their job to ask, only to do the work I requested and give me the completed work. I didn’t know why but I had a hunch, a huge hunch, that Jenny wasn’t all that she appeared, lovely as she was.
I went with Karen to the in-house library. This was more of a depository of knowledge and data rather than a reading library. Two people working together could find far more information than one and Karen knew her way around this place far better than me. I wanted all kinds of stuff, Argentinian census results, maps, anything demographic to try to figure if new villages or towns had sprung up in the period from 1943 to more recent times. I wanted anything on the Argentinian scientific development, I knew some Germans had gone to live there by invitation to work on rocket development.
Picture 2. A typical document I had to read and collate information from to form a coherent database.
We found documentation on Operation Paperclip and Operation Overcast. There was a Project Safehaven which seemed to be tied into what we looking for. All in all, it became apparent there was plenty of reading for me to do and learn. None of this stuff was likely ever taught in Rickmansworth Grammar School lessons that I attended. After a few hours, we had a trolley loaded with documents, reports, papers, and books. All this would take a while to sift through and Karen kindly volunteered to help day and night.
I have to stress that I treated this project as a side-line and worked on this in whatever spare time I could find. I continued to work on my normal activities and I did not allow this to interfere with the work I was doing at that time. But for the purposes of this book, my normal work is not of any relevance to this story so I do not include it here.
Very soon it was clear to me many Nazis were running and hiding all over the world, I suppose that is a natural thing to do to escape trial or whatever they thought may happen if they stayed in Germany. Their escape was via what has been called “Ratlines”.
"Ratlines" were a system of escape routes for Nazis and other fascists fleeing Europe in the aftermath of World War II. These escape routes mainly led toward havens in Southern America, particularly Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Colombia, Brazil, Uruguay, Mexico, Guatemala, Ecuador, and Bolivia, as well as the United States and Switzerland.
There were two primary routes: the first went from Germany to Spain, then Argentina; the second from Germany to Rome to Genoa, then South America. The two routes developed independently but eventually came together. The ratlines were supported by clergy of the Catholic Church, and there are claims this was supported by the Vatican. Indeed evidence would soon arrive to confirm this.
The important realisation to me was that we could find so many records regarding this topic in MI6 archives. To me, this meant whatever happened after the war British Intelligence knew full well of it. If there were any clues, I became more determined to find them and cross-check by other means, to confirm the truth rather than rely on what may be false news or information. At this point, I had no idea how I would make the cross-checks, but I was hoping to come across actual witnesses that may be in a position to talk, if not to me but through an agent I would set up if necessary.
Soon, I decided as we were finding so much information, we had to narrow the spectrum and refine the search to just Hitler, or our work would become endless because there was just too many escaped Nazis.
So, before I get too deep into my work to find Hitler, in case you are not aware of the official story I’ll give you a short history lesson as we know it.
The Alleged End