Random Famous Nazi War Criminals Who Escaped Punishment (13 items)

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  (#10) Friedrich Buchardt

   

  Friedrich Buchardt was an intellectual of astounding proportions. In another lifetime, he could have helped the world achieve something truly great, but instead, he was a Nazi who developed a scale for determining the "German-ness" of Polish and Russian Jews. But he didn't just work behind a desk, Buchardt also led a notorious squad that came in behind the front line of German military conquests in the Soviet Union to round up and slaughter tens of thousands of Jews and communists.

  After WWII, rather than facing prosecution for the slaughter of thousands of innocent people, he was hired by Britain's MI6 as a spy. After a couple of years, he was traded off to the Americans, who used him for their own shady purposes. He perished never having faced punishment for his misdeeds.

   

   
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  (#7) Otto Skorzeny

  • Dec. at 67 (1908-1975)

  Otto Skorzeny was kind of the James Bond of the SS. He saved Mussolini from a castle during WWII. He escaped to Argentina where he became Eva Peron's personal bodyguard (the two were rumored to have had an affair), and Hitler had a big ol' man-crush on Skorzeny. So in 1959, when the six-foot-plus German showed up in Ireland and bought a farm, everyone knew who he was. So why didn't Ireland chop him up and bury him in a potato field? In 1947, Skorzeny actually went on trial at Dachau, but the case fell apart and he was acquitted. Before he could be put on trial by another country, he fled.

  For a while, it seemed like Skorzeny was going to become a wee Irish lad. He was granted temporary residency as long as he never entered England, and people genuinely liked him - but then the Irish parliament finally came to their senses and canceled Skorzeny's Irish visa. Afterward, he moved to Spain, where he set up an import/export business and perished of cancer in 1975.
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  (#11) Heinrich Müller

  • Dec. at 45 (1900-1945)

  Heinrich Müller rose to prominence as the chief of the Gestapo (the German secret police) at the height of WWII, and was present in Hitler's bunker when the German dictator took his own life - but that's the last time anyone saw him. Hans Baur, Hitler's pilot, later quoted Müller as saying, "We know the Russian methods exactly. I haven't the faintest intention of being taken prisoner by the Russians."

  And then he vanished. There are a few theories surrounding Müller's post-WWII life (or lack thereof). The most obvious possibility is that he either took his own life or perished in the post-WWII chaos and his passing went unrecorded. But it's also just as possible that he used one of the many ratlines to flee to South America and live out the rest of his life in secrecy. Mengele and plenty of other high-profile officials proved that this was completely possible. However, his remains were uncovered in 2013, and it was determined that he perished in 1945.
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  (#1) Nazi Labor Camp Guard Jakiw Palij Lived In New York Until He Was 95

  95 year-old Jakiw Palij - the last Nazi collaborator living in the US - was deported overnight to Germany from his Jackson Heights home. @ABC has exclusive video as he was removed. @ABC7NY pic.twitter.com/BevJiMQA1Z

  — Candace McCowan (@CandaceMcCowan7) August 21, 2018

   

  Jakiw Palij lived in the United States for decades after WWII. He immigrated to the US in 1949 and became a citizen eight years later. When asked what he did for a living in Europe during WWII, Palij told officials he worked in a factory and on a farm. 

  But Palij didn't work on a farm or a factory - he was a guard at the Trawniki Labor Camp, where over 6,000 Jewish inmates were slain in "one of the single largest massacres of the Holocaust," according to a White House press release. Palij repeatedly denied any responsibility, saying he and other Polish citizens were forced to work for the Third Reich. 

  Palij's US citizenship was revoked back in 2003, but no European country would have him. For years after the confession, Palij existed quietly in a duplex in Jackson Heights, a neighborhood in Queens. On August 21, 2018, he was finally deported to Germany. Even though Palij was technically caught, he lived a relatively normal life up until the age of 95. Immigration authorities sent him to Düsseldorf. Officials then took him to a nursing home near Münster to live out the rest of his days. 
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  (#13) Franz Stangl

  • Dec. at 63 (1908-1971)

  Stangl was an Austrian-born Nazi officer who was one of the SS commanders in charge of the Sobibór and Treblinka extermination camps during Operation Reinhard - the code name for the extermination of Polish Jews. In 1948, Stangl was able to escape to Italy and then to Syria thanks to a ratline run by Roman Catholic Bishop Alois Hudal. Afterward, he moved to Brazil in 1951 and took a job at a Volkswagen plant near Sao Paulo.

  Because he never changed his name, Stangl was tracked down by Nazi hunters in Brazil and extradited to West Germany, where he was tried for the demise of around 900,000 people. Stangl argued that he was just doing his job.
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  (#9) Martin Bormann

  • Dec. at 45 (1900-1945)

  Martin Bormann worked as Hitler's personal secretary and used his power in the Third Reich to control the flow of information to the Führer and include himself in every decision made by the German dictator. At the end of WWII, a Hitler Youth member claims to have seen Bormann's remains outside of the Führerbunker, but he admits that he didn't actually check the bodies, so it could have been a different officer. Adding to the confusion, Bormann was tried in absentia at Nuremberg.

  In 1972, a construction crew discovered the skeletal remains of Bormann and one of his buddies, lending credence to the Hitler Youth's story. 

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