Stuff You Should Know - Are Nazi War Criminals Still At Large?

Episode Date: April 30, 2008

After the close of World War II, Nazi war criminals fled Europe and attempted to hide under assumed identities. Some may still be at large. Learn more about Nazi war criminals in this HowStuffWorks podcast. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to The War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, from HowStuffWorks.com. Hi, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. I'm a staff writer here at HowStuffWorks.com. With me, as always, is my very attractive and trusty editor, Chris Palette. Chris, how's your goatee? Oh, it's great. Fantastic. So we wrote this article about whether or not Nazi war criminals

are still at large and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, this group that's dedicated to finding, rooting out the last of the Nazi war criminals who may or may not be still alive, has launched Operation Last Chance in a last-ditch effort. But while I was researching this, Chris, I found a lot of stuff that just I couldn't fit into the article. One of the things that stuck out to me the most was the Mossad. You know what the Mossad is? That's the Israeli Secret Service. Right, it is. Now, they have been chasing Nazis for decades and have been fairly successful at it. They found Klaus Barbie. They also found Adolf Eichmann, who was pretty much the engineer of the Nazi's final solution of exterminating all these supposedly unwanted

races. But I also found something very interesting. The Mossad actually engaged in employing and hiding some wanted Nazi war criminals, which I found startling. You know, this group that's dedicated to rooting out for conviction, or at the very least for trial, Nazi war criminals, having employed one, the guy they employed was this doctor who actually came up with the idea of mobile gas vans, right? So that the Nazis wouldn't have to shoot the Jews any longer to kill them. They could just load them up in these vans and carbon monoxide was put into the vans and whoever was inside was killed. The worst part was these vans were, they looked like Red Cross ambulances, which is just about as bad as it gets. Don't you think?

Yeah, I think it's also a violation of the Geneva Convention. Well, I'm quite sure. But I think pretty much 97% of what the Nazis did was in violation of the Geneva Convention. I think that was pretty much out the window from day one. Yeah. Not about following the rules. Well, you said, too, in the article that they weren't the only ones who had employed some of the former Nazis. Certainly not. Yeah. Who else? You know, even the American government. I think you said the British, too. Basically, if they had something that they could use, the governments could use, that they were willing to take them on. I know a lot of the nuclear and rocket scientists, too, were very important for

them to grab before they could be tried, I guess. Definitely. Project Paperclip. It was an actual secret project undertaken by the United States government to poach as many Nazi scientists as possible. Some of them were war criminals. Some of them were lesser known, lesser involved people. But, you know, a lot of people argue that we wouldn't have made it to space first had it not been for former Nazi scientists like Werner von Braun and some of the other guys like him who really helped on the American rocket team. That's amazing to think about that they would be exonerated simply because of some of the other things that they could bring. Certainly. Maybe they could make some positive contributions. I think, also, from my understanding, the Americans

did undertake a process of determining just how involved a certain person was. At least the U.S. government, I think with the CIA, it was a different matter. I think they used whoever they felt could help them no matter what involvement they had. Do you know anything about that? Honestly, I don't. I haven't done nearly as much research as you. Well, let me tell you, Adolf Eichmann, who, like I said, was finally captured, he was actually kidnapped in Argentina by the Mossad. He was used by the CIA as a West German agent and they knew who he was. They knew what he'd done and they were still using him as a secret agent in West Germany. That's amazing. Well, that's it for, are there still Nazi war

criminals at large? You can find out more about it on howstuffworks.com. Thanks for listening. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff, stuff that'll piss you off the cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Attention, bachelor nation. He's back.

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