WLudolf Hermann Emmanuel Georg Kurt Werner von Alvensleben was an SS functionary of Nazi Germany. He held positions of SS and Police Leader in occupied Poland and the Soviet Union, and was indicted for war crimes including the killing of at least 4,247 Poles by units under his command.
WRoberto Alvim is a Brazilian theatre director. He was the founder and director of the Club Noir theatre in São Paulo from 2006 to 2019. Since June 18, 2019, he has served as head director of Ceacen, Center of Performing Arts, in the National Foundation of the Arts (Funarte). On November 7, 2019 he was nominated Special Secretary for Culture under the auspices of the Ministry of Tourism, only to be fired on January 17, 2020 after appearing to quote a speech by German Nazi politician Joseph Goebbels in a government-sanctioned video.
WNikolaus "Klaus" Barbie was a German Nazi, known as the "Butcher of Lyon" for having personally tortured prisoners of the Gestapo—primarily Jews and members of the French Resistance—while stationed in Lyon under the collaborationist Vichy regime. After the war, United States intelligence services, which employed him for his anti-Marxist efforts, aided his escape to Bolivia, where he advised the regime on how to repress opposition through torture.
WOperation Bolívar was the codename for the German espionage in Latin America during World War II. It was under the operational control of Department VID 4 of Germany's Security Service, and was primarily concerned with the collection and transmission of clandestine information from Latin America to Europe. Overall, the Germans were successful in establishing a secret radio communications network from their control station in Argentina, as well as a courier system involving the use of Spanish merchant vessels for the shipment of paper-form intelligence.
WColonia Dignidad was an isolated colony of Germans and Chileans established in post-World War II Chile by emigrant Nazi Germans which became notorious for the internment, torture, and murder of dissidents during the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet in the 1970s while under the leadership of German fugitive Paul Schäfer. Schäfer was a follower and promoter of the teachings of William Branham.
WConspiracy theories about Adolf Hitler's death contradict the accepted fact that he committed suicide in the Führerbunker on 30 April 1945. Most of these theories hold that Hitler and his wife, Eva Braun, survived and escaped from Berlin. While these theories have received some exposure in popular culture, these viewpoints are regarded by historians and scientific experts as disproven fringe theories.
WHerberts Cukurs was a Latvian aviator. He was a member of the Arajs Kommando, which was involved in the mass murder of Latvian Jews as part of the Holocaust. Cukurs never stood trial, though there are multiple eyewitness accounts linking him to war crimes. He was assassinated by operatives of the Israeli intelligence service (Mossad) in 1965. The Mossad agent "Künzle", who killed Cukurs, and the journalist Gad Shimron wrote a book, The Execution of the Hangman of Riga in which they called Cukurs the "Butcher of Riga", and the term was later picked up by several sources.
WPierre Daye was a Belgian journalist and Nazi collaborator. As supporter of the Rexist Party, Daye exiled himself to Juan Peron's Argentina after World War II.
WOtto Adolf Eichmann was a German-Austrian SS-Obersturmbannführer and one of the major organisers of the Holocaust – the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" in Nazi terminology. He was tasked by SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich with facilitating and managing the logistics involved in the mass deportation of Jews to ghettos and extermination camps in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe during World War II. Eichmann was captured by the Mossad in Argentina on 11 May 1960 and subsequently found guilty of war crimes in a widely publicised trial in Jerusalem, where he was executed by hanging in 1962.
WAlbert Ganzenmüller was a German Nazi and, as the Under-secretary of State at the Reich Transport Ministry (Reichsverkehrsministerium), was involved in the deportation of German Jews.
WSophus Magdalon Buck Kahrs was a Norwegian commander in the German SS during the Nazi era. Following the war, he was convicted for treason.
WWalter Kutschmann was a German SS-Untersturmführer and Gestapo officer, a member of an Einsatzkommando, based first in Lwów, Poland, and later in Drohobycz. He was responsible for the massacre of 1,500 Polish Jews in Lwów, Poland in the years 1941–42.
WThe history of Latin America during World War II is important because of the significant economic, political, and military changes that occurred throughout much of the region as a result of the war. The war caused significant panic in Latin America over economics as a large portions of economy of the region depended on the European investment capital, which was shut down. Latin America tried to stay neutral but the warring countries were endangering their neutrality. Most countries used propaganda to turn the neutral countries to their side, while Berlin wanted Latin America neutral. In order to better protect the Panama Canal, combat Axis influence, and optimize the production of goods for the war effort, the United States through Lend-Lease and similar programs greatly expanded its interests in Latin America, resulting in large-scale modernization and a major economic boost for the countries that participated.
WOmar Amin was an Alter Kämpfer and an honorary Sturmbannführer in the Waffen-SS in Nazi Germany, where he was also a professor known for his anti-Jewish polemics. He was one of the most important ideologues of the Third Reich, serving as a high-ranking propaganda ministry official. He later served in the Egyptian Information Department, as well as an advisor to Gamal Abdel Nasser. He published for Goebbels, in Peron's Argentina and for Nasser's Egypt. He converted to Islam, and changed his name to Omar Amin.
WJosef Mengele, also known as the Angel of Death, was a German Schutzstaffel (SS) officer and physician during World War II. He is mainly remembered for his actions at the Auschwitz concentration camp, where he performed deadly experiments on prisoners, and was a member of the team of doctors who selected victims to be killed in the gas chambers and was one of the doctors who administered the gas. With Red Army troops sweeping through German-occupied Poland, Mengele was transferred 280 kilometres (170 mi) from Auschwitz to the Gross-Rosen concentration camp on 17 January 1945, ten days before the arrival of the Soviet forces at Auschwitz.
WOperation Pelikan, also known as Projekt 14, was a German plan for crippling the Panama Canal during World War II. In mid-late 1943 the Wehrmacht had completed preparations to haul two Ju 87 Stukas with folding wings on two U-boats to an unnamed Colombian island near the coast of Panama, reassemble the planes, arm them with "special bombs", and then send them to attack the Gatun Dam. After completing the mission, the pilots would fly to a neutral country and seek internment. However, Germany called off the plan, for unknown reasons, at the last minute. Rumors among the Germans who planned the sabotage were that it had been called off due to betrayal.
WErich Priebke was a German mid-level SS commander in the SS police force (SiPo) of Nazi Germany. In 1996, he was convicted of war crimes in Italy, for commanding the unit which was responsible for the Ardeatine massacre in Rome on 24 March 1944 in which 335 Italian civilians were killed in retaliation for a partisan attack that killed 33 men of the German SS Police Regiment Bozen. Priebke was one of the men held responsible for this mass execution. After the defeat of Nazi Germany, he fled to Argentina where he lived for almost 50 years.
W"Ratlines" were a system of escape routes for Nazis and other fascists fleeing Europe in the aftermath of World War II. These escape routes mainly led toward havens in Latin America, particularly Argentina though also in Paraguay, Colombia, Brazil, Uruguay, Mexico, Chile, Peru, Guatemala, Ecuador and Bolivia, as well as the United States, Spain and Switzerland.
WWalter (Walther) Rauff was a mid-ranking SS commander in Nazi Germany. From January 1938, he was an aide of Reinhard Heydrich firstly in the Security Service, later in the Reich Security Main Office. He worked for the Federal Intelligence Service of West Germany (Bundesnachrichtendienst) between 1958 and 1962, and was subsequently employed by the Mossad, the Israeli secret service. His funeral in Santiago, Chile, was attended by a crowd of old Nazis.
WThe Battle of the River Plate was fought in the South Atlantic on 13 December 1939 as the first naval battle of the Second World War. The Kriegsmarine heavy cruiser Admiral Graf Spee, commanded by Captain Hans Langsdorff, engaged a Royal Navy squadron, commanded by Commodore Henry Harwood, comprising the cruisers HMS Ajax, HMS Achilles and HMS Exeter.
WErnst Julius Günther Röhm was a German military officer and an early member of the Nazi Party. As one of the members of its predecessor, the German Workers' Party, he was a close friend and early ally of Adolf Hitler and a co-founder of the Sturmabteilung, the Nazi Party's militia, and later was its commander. By 1934, the German Army feared the SA's influence and Hitler had come to see Röhm as a potential rival, so he was executed during the Night of the Long Knives.
WEduard Roschmann was an Austrian Nazi SS-Obersturmführer and commandant of the Riga ghetto during 1943. He was responsible for numerous murders and other atrocities. As a result of a fictionalized portrayal in the novel The Odessa File by Frederick Forsyth and its subsequent film adaptation, Roschmann came to be known as the "Butcher of Riga".
WHans-Ulrich Rudel was a German ground-attack pilot during World War II, in which he was the most decorated German serviceman and the only recipient of the Knight's Cross with Golden Oak Leaves, Swords, and Diamonds.
WThe Seguro Obrero massacre occurred on September 5, 1938, and was the Chilean government's response to an attempted coup d'état by the National Socialist Movement of Chile (MNSCh), whose members were known at the time as Nacistas ("Nazis"), with some differences that justified their option for a different name. After a failed coup involving a stand-off and a shootout, about 60 Nacistas who had surrendered after being given assurances, were summarily shot. About twenty others were killed during the fighting.
WOtto Johann Anton Skorzeny was an Austrian-born German SS-Obersturmbannführer in the Waffen-SS during World War II. During the war, he was involved in several operations, including the removal from power of Hungarian Regent Miklós Horthy and the Gran Sasso raid which rescued Benito Mussolini from captivity. Skorzeny led Operation Greif in which German soldiers infiltrated Allied lines by using their opponents' uniforms, equipment, language and customs. He was charged for that at the Dachau Military Tribunal with breaching the 1907 Hague Convention, but was acquitted after a former British SOE agent F. F. E. Yeo-Thomas testified that he and his operatives had worn German uniforms behind enemy lines.
WDie Spinne was a post-World War II organization thought to have helped certain Nazi war criminals escape justice. Its existence is still debated today. It is believed by some historians to be a different name of the Nazi German ODESSA organization established during the collapse of the Third Reich, similar to Kameradenwerk, and der Bruderschaft, devoted to helping German war criminals flee Europe. It was led in part by Otto Skorzeny, Hitler's commando chief, as well as Nazi intelligence officer Reinhard Gehlen. Die Spinne helped as many as 600 former SS men escape from Germany to Francoist Spain, Juan Peron's Argentina, Paraguay, Chile, Bolivia, the Middle East, and other countries.
WFranz Paul Stangl was an Austrian-born police officer and commandant of the Nazi extermination camps Sobibor and Treblinka. Stangl, an employee of the T-4 Euthanasia Program and an SS commander in Nazi Germany, became commandant of the camps during the Operation Reinhard phase of the Holocaust. He worked for Volkswagen do Brasil and was arrested in Brazil in 1967, extradited to West Germany and tried for the mass murder of 1 million people. In 1970, he was found guilty and sentenced to the maximum penalty, life imprisonment. He died of heart failure six months later.
WThorvald Thronsen was a Norwegian paramilitary officer.
WGustav Franz Wagner was an Austrian member of the SS with the rank of Staff sergeant (Oberscharführer). Wagner was a deputy commander of Sobibor extermination camp in German-occupied Poland, where 200,000-250,000 Jews were gassed during Operation Reinhard. Due to his brutality, he was known as "The Beast" and "Wolf".