CIA files reveal search for Hitler in South America 10 years after his suicide as Argentina prepares to release classified docs on Nazi fugitives

CIA documents show agents were on the hunt for Adolf Hitler in South America for 10 years after the world believed he was dead as Argentina prepares to declassify government files on Nazi fugitives who fled to the country at the end of World War II.As Soviet troops battled their way into the heart of Berlin on April 30, 1945, Hitler and longtime girlfriend Eva Braun, who he had married the day prior, killed themselves in his underground führerbunker to avoid capture.Their bodies were partially burned and buried in a shallow bomb crater.Soviet soldiers later exhumed the remains, which the USSR identified through dental records, and held them in East Germany until KGB agents destroyed Hitler’s body in April 1970, preserving only a jawbone and skull that was taken to Moscow, according to Mi5.However, immediately after reports of Hitler’s death, conspiracy theories that he survived the war and fled Germany through Nazi “ratlines” began.While the CIA has an autopsy report confirming Hitler’s death, other documents show field agents suspected Hitler may have taken refuge in South America under an alias and obtained a photo of a man with a striking resemblance to the Nazi leader.A declassified file from October 1945 shows that agents with the US War Department told the FBI of a possible secret hideout at a spa hotel in La Falda, Argentina, that Hitler may have used if he survived.The document states that the owner of the hotel and her family were “enthusiastic supporters of Adolf Hitler” and had made financial contributions to the Nazi party in its early days in the 1920s through propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels.“This voluntary support of the Nazi party was never forgotten by Hitler,” the docs claim.

“During the years after he came to power, her friendship with Hitler became so close that she and members of her family lived with Hitler in the same hotel on the occasion of their annual visit to Germany.”The report claims that the hotel had “alr...