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Ex Nazis of the Third Reich
For indepth list of ex-nazis see Nazis files
Eichmann out of uniform
Adolf Eichmann prominant ex nazi and war criminal

The title of ex-Nazi refers either to those few who were once Nazis and resigned from the party, or more often to those who belonged to the party at the time when the Nazi party was declared illegal and was disbanded upon the victory of the Allies. Many of the latter group had to go through a process of denazification and some were subjected to the Nuremberg process, while others managed to escape trial, in particular through the ODESSA organization. In the mid-1950s, most condemned during these trials were amnestied and subsequently released.

Famous Nazi hunters such as Simon Wiesenthal have tried to bring all accused of crimes to justice. However, only a few of them, famous figures such as Adolf Eichmann (judged and hanged in Jerusalem in 1962), have been found. Many others (Josef Mengele, Aribert Heim, etc.) escaped justice, finding refuge in Franquist Spain (e.g. Otto Skorzeny), South America (especially Juan Peron's Argentina, Augusto Pinochet's Chile, Alfredo Stroessner's Paraguay, Brazil, etc.) and also in some Arab states. Some former Nazis even managed to obtain very important positions in West Germany after the war (e.g. Kurt Georg Kiesinger, Chancellor of West Germany from 1966 to 1969, Hans Globke, who was Konrad Adenauer's national security adviser in 1960, etc.). Furthermore, a number of former Nazis were recruited by the CIA after the war (e.g. Otto Albrecht von Bolsching, assistant of Eichmann ), as part of the Gehlen Organization predecessor of the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND). Many Nazis scientists were also recruited by the US under the code-named Operation Paperclip.

Nazis judged during the Doctors' Trial (1946-47)

This list includes only, for obvious reasons, those who were not executed after the trial.

  • Hermann Becker-Freyseng. Stabsarzt in the Luftwaffe (Captain, Medical Service of the Air Force); and Chief of the Department for Aviation Medicine of the Chief of the Medical Service of the Luftwaffe. 20 years imprisonment commuted to ten years.
  • Wilhelm Beiglböck (1905-1963). NSDAP and SA member, Nazi medical researcher responsible for seawater experiments in Dachau concentration camp. 15 years imprisonment commuted to ten years. Became the chief physician of the Hospital of Buxtehude from 1952 to his death in 1963.
  • Kurt Blome. Charged of euthanasia and human experimentation. Acquitted and exfiltrated through Operation Paperclip (see below), and subsequently hired in 1951 by the US Army Chemical Corps to work on chemical warfare.
  • Fritz Fischer (1912-). Condemned to life imprisonment on charges of human experimentation, was subsequently released in 1954 and then worked, until retiring, for Boehringer-Ingelheim pharmaceutical company.
  • Karl Genzken (1885-1957). Chief of the medical office of the SS, charged of human experimentation, condemned in 1947 to life imprisonment, released in 1954.
  • Siegfried Handloser (1895-1954) . Chief of the German Armed Forces Medical Service, condemned to life sentence in 1947, released in 1954, and died shortly afterwards of a cancer.
  • Herta Oberheuser (1911-1978). Doctor at Ravensbrück concentration camp, sentenced to 20 years emprisonment for human experimentation. Released in 1952, became a family doctor before being recognized by a Ravensbrück survivor in 1956, and subsequently losing her medical licence two years afterwards.
  • Helmut Poppendick (1902-1994). Chief of the Personal Staff of the Reich Physician SS and Police, sentenced to 10 years emprisonment for human experiments carried on in Ravensbrück. Released in 1951.
  • Gerhard Rose. Generalarzt of the Luftwaffe (Brigadier General, Medical Service of the Air Force); Vice President, Chief of the Department for Tropical Medicine, and Professor of the Robert Koch Institute; and Hygienic Adviser for Tropical Medicine to the Chief of the Medical Service of the Luftwaffe. Judged guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, sentenced to life emprisonment, later commuted to 20 years.
  • Paul Rostock (1892-1956). Chief of the Office for Medical Science and Research (Amtschef der Dienststelle Medizinische Wissenschaft und Forschung) under Third Reich Commissioner Karl Brandt and a Full Professor, Medical Doctorate, Medical Superintendent of the University of Berlin Surgical Clinic. Charged of human experimentation during the Doctors' Trial, acquitted. Then worked as medical supervisor of Versorgungs Hospital in Bayreuth, from 1953 to his death at age 64 in Bad Tölz.

Subsequent Nuremberg Trials of Ex Nazis

  • Erhard Milch (1892-1972). Generalfeldmarschall, worked under Albert Speer. Life sentence during the Milch Trial, released in 1954 and then lived until his death in Düsseldorf.
  • Franz Schlegelberger (1876-1970). State Secretary in the German Reich Ministry of Justice (RMJ) and served awhile as Justice Minister during the Third Reich. He was the highest-ranking defendant at the Judges' Trial. Received life sentence for conspiracy to perpetrate war crimes and crimes against humanity. Released in 1950 owing to incapacity. For years afterward, he drew a monthly pension of DM 2,894 (for comparison, the average monthly income in Germany at that time was DM 535) and lived in Flensburg. Ernst Lauz and Curt Rothenberg also received pensions after their release in the mid-1950s. 16 German jurists and lawyers were then judged, all convicted, and most released in the mid-1950s.
  • Friedrich Flick (1883-1972). Judged in the Flick trial, sentenced to 7 years. Pardoned and released by John J. McCloy.
  • Otto Steinbrinck (1888-1949). Sentenced to six years emprisonment during the Flick Trial, died in custody before the wave of general amnesty in the mid-1950s.
  • Wilhelm List (1891-1971). Field marshall. Sentenced to life imprisonment for war crimes and crimes against humanity during the Hostages Trial. Released in 1952 because of poor health.
  • Maximilian von Weichs (1881-1954). General Field Marshall. Accused of war crimes, he escaped judgment at the Hostages Trial because of his health. He died at Burg Rötsberg near Bonn.
  • Lothar Rendulic (1887-1971). Austrian Colonel General of the Wehrmacht. Sentenced to 20 years emprisonment during the Hostages Trial, released in 1951 and subsequently started writing.
  • Werner Lorenz (1891-1974). Sentenced to 20 years imprisonment at the RuSHA Trial, released in 1955.
  • Otto Hofmann (1896-1982). Sentenced to 25 years imprisonment on charges of war crimes at the RuSHA trial, released in 1954.
  • Franz Six (1909-1965). Sentenced to 20 years imprisonment at the Einsatzgruppen Trial, released in 1952.
  • Alfried Krupp (1907-1967). Sentenced to 12 years plus forfeiture of property at the Krupp Trial, his sentence was finally overturned by John J. McCloy, High Commissioner of the American Zone of Occupation; released in January 1951 and all his property restored to him.
  • Ernst von Weizsäcker (1882-1951). Ambassador to the Vatican. Sentenced to 7 years imprisonment at the Ministries Trial, released in October 1950, taking advantage of one of the first amnesty.
  • Ernst Wilhelm Bohle (1903-1960). Leader of the Foreign Organisation of the NSDAP. Sentenced to 5 years imprisonment at the Ministries Trial, pardoned in 1949 by John J. McCloy. Merchant after the war, he gave impulse to the refoundation of an organisation for the development of German South-African interstate commerce. Through some stages, to whom belonged so called Südafrikanische Studiengesellschaften (English: South-African Study Societies) in Hamburg, Stuttgart, Munich and Düsseldorf since the beginning of 1950 (the Düsseldorf Circle was led by Third Reich's Press Chief Otto Dietrich) the Deutsch-Südafrikanischen Gesellschaft (DSAG) arose again in 1965.
  • Otto Dietrich (1897-1952). Press Chief of the Third Reich. 7 years imprisonment, released in 1951.
  • Hans Lammers (1879-1962). Head of the Reich Chancellery. Sentenced to 20 years during the Ministries Trial, released in 1952.
  • Wilhelm Stuckart (1902-1953). Secretary of State in the Interior Minister. Freed after the Ministries Trial after being sentenced three years, which he had already served. Died in 1953 of a car crash. Some have speculated that he was assassinated by Nazi hunters.
  • R. Walther Darré (1895-1953). Minister for Food and Agriculture (1933-42). Sentenced to 7 years during the Ministries Trial, released in 1950, died three years later of cancer of the liver.
  • Otto Meissner (1880-1953). Head of the Presidential Chancellery. Acquitted during the Ministries' Trial.
  • Gottlob Berger (1896-1975). Chief of Staff of the SS. Co-author of Heinrich Himmler's pamphlet, Der Untermensch. Sentenced to 25 years during the Ministries' Trial, released in 1951.
  • Walter Schellenberg (1910-1952). Head of Foreign Intelligence. Sentenced to 7 years during the Ministries' Trial. Released in 1951, lived hereafter in Verbania (Italy).
  • Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk (1887-1977). Finance Minister. Sentenced to 10 years at the Ministries' Trial. Released in 1951. Then wrote his memoirs and books on economic policy, before quietly dying in Essen, aged 89.
  • Paul Pleiger (1889-1985). Head of the Hermann-Göring-Werke (confiscated steel plants employing slave laborers). Sentenced to 15 years at the Ministries' Trial. Released in 1951.

Prominent ex-NSDAP Members

Austria

  • Kurt Waldheim, (1918-2007), Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1972 to 1981, President of Austria from 1986 to 1992.
  • Heinrich Harrer, Austrian mountaineer, sportsman, geographer and author; nominal member of the SS before the war. In India on a mountaineering expedition at the start of the war and interned by the British.

East Germany

The National Democratic Party of Germany acted as an organisation for former members of the NSDAP and the Wehrmacht. It was part of the ruling National Front of Democratic Germany, but in practice it was subject to the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED).

  • Wilhelm Adam (1893-1978), fell prisoner in 1943 in Stalingrad. In 1948 returned to East Germany and co-founded the NDPG. He worked as a military police officer and a politician in Saxony.
  • Heinz Barth (1920-2007), lived under a false identity in East Germany. Finally judged in 1983 for his involvement in the Oradour-sur-Glane massacre. Released in 1997, died in August 2007.

West Germany

  • Gunter d'Alquen (1910-1998). Chief editor of the SS weekly Das Schwarze Korps and commander of the SS-Standarte Kurt Eggers. Fined DM 60.000 in 1955 by a Denazification court, deprived of civil rights for three years, and debarred from drawing an allowance or pension from public funds. After further investigations, fined again DM 28.000 in 1958.
  • Max Amann (1891-1957). Obergruppenführer and publisher of the Franz Eher Nachfolger, the central publishing house of the NSDAP. Sentenced to 10 years in labour camp in 1948, released in 1953.
  • Benno von Arent (1898-1956). Oberführer, died in Bonn in 1956.
  • Artur Axmann (1913-1996). Official in the Hitler Youth. Worked post-war as a sales representative.
  • Richard Baer (1911-1963). Sturmbannführer, commander of the Auschwitz I concentration camp. Lived under the pseudonym of Karl Neumann after the war, before being discovered in 1960 and arrested.
  • Alfred Baeumler (1887-1968). Nazi philosopher, one of the proponent of a biological and racist interpretation of Nietzsche (which the later had recused in advance, by cutting away with his editor when he turned anti-Semitic, etc.).
  • Werner Best (1903-1989).
  • Martin Fellenz, former member of the SS, member of the FDP liberal party after the war, arrested in June 1960.
  • Reinhard von Brysonstofen former member of the state secret police Gestapo, change his name to Bryson and left Germany after the war, for the USA.
  • Eugen Fischer (1874-1967), appointed by Hitler rector of the University of Berlin, and one of the leading theorists of scientific racism
  • Friedrich Flick (1883-1972), industrial leader and billionaire.
  • Hans Globke (1898-1973), who worked with Adolf Eichmann in the Jewish Affairs Department drafting the Nuremberg laws, became director of the German Chancellery from 1953 to 1963 and then Konrad Adenauer's national security adviser
  • Martin Heidegger, philosopher.
  • Herbert von Karajan, conductor, joined the NSDAP in 1933 in Salzburg, Austria, five years before the Anschluss.
  • Kurt Georg Kiesinger, NSDAP later CDU and Chancellor of Germany.
  • Klaus Konrad (1914-2006), took part in the 1943 San Polo massacre in Italy, in which Eugenio Calò, a Partisan, died. Became a SPD deputy in the Bundestag from 1967 to 1972 (see de:Klaus Konrad).
  • Walter Kopp, Wehrmacht Lieutenant Colonel, chief of one stay-behind networks code-named Kibitz-15 after the war. He was described by his own North-American handlers as an "unreconstructed Nazi," in CIA documents released in June 2006 .
  • Alfred Krupp, {1907-1967}. NSDAP and SS sponsorship, industrialist involved in weapons; steel; and slave labor-sentenced to 12 years and loss of all his property; pardoned by North American High Commissioner John J. McCloy in 1953 and all of Krupp's property restored to him.
  • Gustav Krupp (1870-1950) ran the German Friedrich Krupp AG heavy industry conglomerate from 1909 until 1941. Indicted for prosecution at the 1945 Nuremberg trials, the charges were dropped because of his failing health.
  • Heinz Lammerding, commander of the 2nd SS Division Das Reich involved in the Oradour-sur-Glane massacre.
  • Fritz Lenz (1887-1976), founder of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics and one of the leading theorists of eugenics and of scientific racism.
  • Theodor Maunz, specialist of public law, then minister of Education and Culture in Bavaria.
  • Theodor Oberländer, NSDAP member, later became Refugee Minister under Konrad Adenauer.
  • Franz Schönhuber (1923-2005). Waffen-SS, later chairman of the right-wing Die Republikaner party which he co-founded in 1983.
  • Carl Schmitt (1888-1985), Nazi jurist and philosopher.
  • Hanns-Martin Schleyer,{1915-1977} SS, later employer representative, kidnapped and murdered by Red Army Faction.
  • Albert Speer (1905-1981), Hitler's chief architect, sentenced to 20 years in prison at Nuremberg, became a noted author on Third Reich history.
  • Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, NSDAP member, soprano singer.
  • Fritz Thyssen, NSDAP member since 1931, steel industrialist.
  • Hannes Trautloft, Oberst in Luftwaffe, becoming involved in various postwar veteran groups and Inspector General of the Bundesluftwaffe rising to the rank of Generalleutnant.
  • Erich von dem Bach (1899-1972). Obergruppenführer, commander of troops fighting the Warsaw Uprising. Did some prison after the war, but never judged for his role in the Eastern Front.
  • Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer (1896-1969), director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics, he carried out experiments on human beings in concentration camps. Awarded in 1951 the prestigious professorship of human genetics at the University of Münster, where he established one of the largest centers of genetics research in West Germany.

Middle East

  • Alois Brunner. {b.1912}. Head of Drancy internment camp near Paris, worked for the Gehlen Org before escaping to Syria through a ratline organised by Catholic bishop Alois Hudal. Thought to be living in Syria, he has been condemned in 2001 by a French court, in absentia, to a life sentence for crimes against humanity

South America

  • Ludolf von Alvensleben (1901-1970). SS-Gruppenführer and Major General of the Police (1943). Fled to Argentina after the war.
  • Adolf Eichmann (1906-1962). Obersturmbannführer in charge of deportation of the Jews in Nazi Europe. Kidnapped in 1960 by the Israeli MOSSAD in Buenos Aires and moved to Israel, he was judged and hanged in Jerusalem.
  • Josef Mengele (1911-1979). SS officer in Auschwitz, nicknamed Angel of Death. Escaped to Argentina under Juan Peron's rule in 1949, then to Altos, Paraguay in 1959. Chased by Nazi hunters, he flew away to Brazilian town Embu, near São Paulo. He died of a stroke in Bertioga.
  • Walter Rauff (1906-1984). SS-Standartenführer and member of the RSHA. Worked for Chilean intelligence. Arrested in 1962, but freed by the Chilean Supreme Court five months later. Died in Chile in 1984 of a heart attack. His funerals were the occasion of a Nazi celebration.
  • Paul Schäfer (founder of Colonia Dignidad in Chile - see below.)
  • Walter Schreiber (1893-?) (See below)
  • Franz Stangl (1908-1971). Head of Treblinka extermination camp. Escaped to Italy with Gustav Wagner, then Syria through a ratline organised by Catholic bishop Alois Hudal. Moved to Brazil in 1951. Tracked down by Simon Wiesenthal in 1967, he was finally extradited to Germany where he died in prison.
  • Carl Vaernet (1893-1965). Danish SS, member of the DNSAP, the Danish Nazi party, and doctor at Buchenwald Campbell. Fled to Brazil and then Argentina after the war.
  • Gustav Wagner (1911-1980). Deputy commandant of Sobibór extermination camp in Poland. Escaped with Franz Stangl to Italy, where he transited through a ratline organised by Catholic bishop Alois Hudal. Flew to Brazil, where the Brazilian Supreme Court rejected an extradition request in 1979. According to his lawyer, he committed suicide the next year.

United States of America

Over 1,500 German and other foreign scientists, technicians, and engineers were brought to the United States under Project Paperclip and similar programs. A non-exhaustive list includes:

  • Kurt Blome. Judged during the Doctors' Trial, hired in 1951 by the US Army Chemical Corps to work on chemical warfare. Eventually, Blome was arrested by French authorities, convicted of war crimes, and sentenced to 20 years in prison.(See above).
  • Wernher von Braun, {1912-1977} SS Major; NSDAP membership; NSFK; Rocket scientist of both the Nazi rocket Vergeltungswaffen or "revenge weapons" program and later NASA.
  • Arthur Rudolph, {1906-1996} NSDAP member, Rocket scientist of the Nazi rocket Vergeltungswaffen (V2) and later NASA. According to the US government, he left the US in 1984 following the Department of Justice's discovery of his role in the persecution of prisoners at the Nordhausen factory
  • Bernhard Tessmann (1912-1998)
  • Georg Rickhey, a former official at the Nordhausen underground V-2 rocket factory who arrived in 1946 but who left the United States in 1947 when he was tried (and acquitted) for war crimes by a U.S. military tribunal
  • Walter Schreiber (1893-1952?), who had been instrumental in medical experiments on concentration camp inmates and who fled the United States to Argentina in 1952 after the appearance of a newspaper column about his activities
  • Alexander Lippisch (1894-1976)
  • Hans von Ohain (1911-1998) One of the inventor of jet propulsion he became director of the US Air Force Aeronautical Research Laboratory and by 1975 he was the Chief Scientist of the Aero Propulsion Laboratory there.
  • Kurt Lehovec (one of the physicists responsible for the invention of the integrated circuit)
  • Hubertus Strughold (1898-1987) (father of US space medicine)
  • Felix Jeager (1903-1977)

Nazis or/and Nazis collaborators who worked for the US secret services after the war

  • Klaus Barbie (1913-1991), the "Butcher of Lyon", Hauptsturmführer and Gestapo official. Recruited by the US Counter Intelligence Corps in 1947, he also worked for British intelligence. Participated in Luis García Meza Tejada's 1980 "Cocaine Coup" in Bolivia. Sentenced in France to life imprisonment in 1987 for crimes against humanity.
  • Otto Albrecht von Bolschwing (CIA agent in West Germany, recruited by the Gehlen Org, former assistant of Adolf Eichmann)
  • Alois Brunner - Believed by some to live in Brazil or Syria under alias Dr. Georg Fischer. Responsible for the deaths of 140,000 Jews, head of Drancy internment camp near Paris. Worked for the Gehlen Org after the war and then fled to Syria.
  • Reinhard Gehlen (1902-1979)(See above)
  • Walter Kopp (ibid)

Nazis or/and Nazis collaborators who worked for the British secret services after the war

  • Horst Kopkow-{1910-1996} SS Major who after World War II worked for MI6

Spain

  • Otto Skorzeny (1908-1975). Obersturmbannführer during the war, he then fled to Franquist Spain, where he organized the ODESSA group. Skorzeny also founded the Paladin mercenary group in 1970, and worked as a consultant for Egyptian president Nasser and for Argentine president Juan Peron. His staff are believed to have helped Aribert Heim (found to be living in Spain in October 2005) escape trial. .
  • Aribert Heim (See Ex-Nazis believed to be alive, below).
  • Léon Degrelle{1906-1994}

Ex Nazi Members Who Resigned

  • Hermann Rauschning, conservative and reactionary who resigned from the NSDAP and fled Germany and became a bitter opponent of Nazism.
  • Otto Strasser, politician and left-wing NSDAP member who rejected some of Adolf Hitler's ideas and more moderate economical tendencies. He subsequently attempted to form his own faction within the Nazi Party and ended up living in exile during Hitler's regime.

Living Nazis

This is a list of NSDAP members that are still alive and presumed/considered war criminals. Due to the fact that there have been many Nazis living as fugitives since that time, the fate of many remains unknown, see below:

Known to be alive

  • Paul Schäfer, (born 1921) founder of the Colonia Dignidad cult in Chile after the war, charged of child-abuse and of the 1976 disappearance of Juan Maino and possible involvement in Boris Weisfeiler's disappearance.
  • Herta Bothe, (born 1921) Aufseherin who served at both Stutthof and Bergen Belsen during the war.
  • Luise Danz, (born 1917) Aufseherin at various camps, including Plaszów, Majdanek, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Malchow. Was brought to trial in 1996 but was dismissed due to her age.
  • Erich Priebke, (born 1913) Hauptsturmführer of the SS, he participated in the Ardeatine massacre in Rome, on March 24, 1944, where he had a hand in the deaths of 335 Italian civilians.
  • Søren Kam, (born 1921) Member of the DNSAP, the Danish Nazi Party, who fled from Denmark to Germany after the war, and is now a German citizen. On September 21, 2006, Kam was detained in the German town of Kempten im Allgäu. He is wanted in Denmark for the assassination of Danish newspaper editor Carl Henrik Clemmensen in Copenhagen in August 1943.
  • Karl Frenzel, (born 1911) Oberscharführer who served at Sobibór extermination camp. Frenzel aided in the implementation of the Final Solution, taking part in the industrial-scale extermination of thousands of inmates as part of Operation Reinhard. Sentenced to life imprisonment in 1966 but released in 1982 due to ill health.

Nazis believed to be alive

These people have not been confirmed to be alive, but believed by some to be.

  • Martin Hellinger - born 1904, and
  • Hermann Hackmann - born 1913
  • Ronald von Brysonstofen - born 1917, believed by some to be living in the USA with the last name shortened to Bryson.
  • Alois Brunner - born 1912, Believed by some to be living in Brazil or Syria under alias Dr. Georg Fischer. Responsible for the deaths of 140,000 Jews, head of Drancy internment camp near Paris. Worked for the Gehlen Org after the war and then fled to Syria.
  • Lorenz Hackenholt. NCO in charge of gassing at KZ Belzec ( and ).
  • Aribert Heim a.k.a. 'Dr. Death' - born 1913, Believed to have lived in Spain until October 2005, at which time he possibly relocated to Denmark. As of May 2006, he was believed to be in Chile.

Bibliography

  • Blowback: America's Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effects on the Cold War, Christopher Simpson
  • The Encyclopedia of World War II Spies, Peter Kross, Barricade Books, 2001.
  • "CIA's Worst-Kept Secret" Consortiumnews.com, May 16, 2001.
  • Spy Book: The Encyclopedia of Espionage, Norman Polmar & Thomas Allen, Random House, 1997.
  • Encyclopedia of the Central Intelligence Agency, W. Thomas Smith, Facts on File, Inc., 2003

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