Could Hitler have lived out his days sunning himself on the beach in Villa Gessel, Argentina? Parapolitical reveals:
Adolf Hitler spoke briefly with one of the SS soldiers standing guard outside the Führerbunker, the last refuge of the inner circle of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. “Germany,” he said, “can hope for the future only if the whole world thinks I am dead.”
It seems impossible to believe that Adolf Hitler could not only have escaped Germany but, in fact, survived in relative comfort in Argentina until his death of natural causes in 1962. Simon Dunstan and Gerrard Williams’ new book Grey Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler, which released earlier this month, presents a remarkable, linear account of a sequence of shadowy events occurring in the final days of World War II that is neatly timelined and meticulously sourced.
The book navigates the various stages of creation and execution of what may have been one of the most daring and enigmatic escapes in history. It examines the early preparations of a secret German base in the Canary Islands as well as mid-level contacts between Germany and the United States, when the latter was presented with an opportunity to turn a blind-eye to Hitler’s escape with the choice of “a carrot or a stick.” (The U.S. could, on the one hand, accept a secret exile for a dozen members of the Nazi hierarchy, in which case Germany would dutifully capitulate and peacefully transfer her gold, art and scientific patents to a victorious, U.S.-led allied coalition. Alternatively, they could refuse such an offer, in which event said treasures would be destroyed and the great, unscathed cities of the U.S. east coast would find themselves under sudden and punishing attack from submarine-launched, nerve gas equipped, V-1 rockets.)
The indicators of an escape are presented in chillingly irrefutable detail. There is the case of Luftwaffe pilot Peter Baumgart who declared, in court testimony, he had personally flown Hitler and his entourage to an intermediate destination in Denmark. Baumgart’s testimony would be corroborated by notes from the U.S. Army interrogation of an SS officer who claimed to have witnessed the escape, though – according to Dunstan and Williams – at least one of the men would mysteriously disappear shortly after levying the charges.
Or consider the series of declassified FBI telegrams from August 1945 reporting of local police activity investigating the presence of Hitler in Villa Gessel, Argentina – a German colony in a country whose political power class had become agents of influence of Berlin.
Or, perhaps, claims of former sailors of the Admiral Graf Spee – a German cruiser scuttled off the Argentine coast whose crew had been stranded in that nation – that they had assisted in securing the scene of Hitler’s coastal landing from a Kriegsmarine U-Boat and had personally interacted with the Führer.
