Argentina’s bungled Martin Bormann hunt exposed in newly released documents

FIRST ON FOX: Scores of documents released by Argentine President Javier Milei last year reveal how Argentina was able to avoid arrest and live mostly ordinary lives while searching for Nazi war criminals who had taken refuge in the country during and after World War II.

While Argentina’s Peronist government sympathized with, and often knew of, Nazi criminals hiding on its territory (often under their auspices) when the populist regime fell, the South American nation reluctantly tried to track down the war criminals hiding there.

While many high-profile cases go nowhere, the case of Hitler henchman Martin Bormann is exemplary in showing how inefficient Argentina has been in its investigations.

ARGENTINA RELEASES SECRET WWII FILES ON HITLER’S DEFENDERS BEFORE AND AFTER THE WAR

Although Bormann had a relatively low public profile, he was one of the most powerful figures in the Nazi regime. He used his position as Hitler’s private secretary and head of the Nazi Party Chancellery to control the flow of documents that Hitler personally received and had access to.

Through enormous administrative influence, he shaped policy and controlled what Hitler saw, who he met, and advised on important decisions. Bormann supported extreme antisemitic measures and was one of the masterminds of the Aryanization project. Bormann disappeared during the fall of Berlin in May 1945. For decades, he was thought to have escaped to Argentina via rat lines, escape routes facilitated by Nazi sympathizers. Bormann sentenced to death in absentia During the Nuremberg Trials.

The files show that Bormann was one of the few Nazis that the Argentines actively sought to track down and bring to justice. However, most of the clues came from sensationalist press articles and often lacked factual and actionable intelligence beyond mere word that he was hiding in Argentina.

The files painstakingly depict intelligence agencies trying to verify such reports and whether fake aliases matched the real man in Argentina. The agencies followed reports in the Argentinian, US, British and Brazilian press, as well as information from some translations from German-language media published in Argentina by the émigré community suspected of harboring Nazi sympathizers.

The articles triggered extensive paperwork among the justice department, intelligence agencies, border and customs agencies, federal police and local authorities, but they were often disjointed or took a long time to be referred to various suboffices for action.

ARGENTINA RELEASES SECRET WWII FILES ON HITLER’S DEFENDERS BEFORE AND AFTER THE WAR

The image on the left shows Berlin devastated at the end of World War II. The image on the right shows German Nazi Party leader Martin Bormann, one of Hitler’s closest advisors. It disappeared at the end of World War II. (Universal Images Group/Haacker/Fox Photos/Getty Images via Photo12/Getty Images)

As a result, numerous similar searches were carried out indiscriminately at various locations, and a tangle of red tape resulted in authorities following press reports rather than conducting independent and rational investigations. The files are evidence that the Nazi hunt in South America was shaped by rumors, miscommunication, mistaken identities, Cold War politics and intense media speculation.

Some information reviewed by Fox News Digital showed authorities believed rumors that Bormann would hunt in the jungles of Peru, Colombia and Brazil. Also included in the files is the case of an elderly German man who was arrested in Colombia in 1972 under the name Bormann (he was later cleared and released), although Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal expressed his suspicions.

Partial note from the Ministry of Internal Affairs regarding the criminal record of Walter Flegel, requested by the authorities investigating the whereabouts of Martin Bormann. (General Archives of the Government of Argentina)

The diplomatic shockwaves following Israel’s Mossad capture of Adolf Eichmann in Argentina made local authorities acutely sensitive to international scrutiny and reframed the search for Bormann as a way to ensure the country would not be embarrassed on the world stage for a second time.

A crucial and ultimately flawed lead in the Bormann files emerged in 1955, when police began tracking a man named Walter Wilhelm Flegel based on fading testimony, rumors, intercepted correspondence and aging witnesses about an illegal German worker.

Passport photo of Walter Wilhelm Flegel. (General Archives of the Government of Argentina)

Flegel had arrived via Chile, lost his arm in an accident, and had been arrested and brought to court twice before on charges of assault and robbery. Even though he was completely different, his lack of education, his long presence in the country, their age difference and the lack of real connections that could link him to Martin Bormann, suspicions led to his arrest in Mendoza in 1960. Despite such mismatched profiles and fingerprints, it still took the Argentines a week to be convinced that Flegel was not Martin Bormann and release him.

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Ultimately, despite persistent rumors and Argentina’s unparalleled determination to finally apprehend one of the many Nazi fugitives thought to be in the country, human remains found in Berlin in 1972 were consistent, and it was confirmed through dental and skull records that Bormann had died during the fall of the city. Later, in the 1990s, further DNA testing confirmed that the remains found in Berlin were indeed Bormann’s, and the misguided search in Argentina finally came to an end.