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

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  Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
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  Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know?
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  Speaker 1: Runhouse Stuff Works dot Com? I welcome to the podcast.
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  Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark. I'm a staff writer here at how
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  Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot Com. With me as always is my
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  Speaker 1: very attractive and trust the editor Chris Palette. Chris, how's
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  Speaker 1: your go kie? Oh? It's great? Thanks. So we wrote
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  Speaker 1: this article about whether or not Nazi war criminals are
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  Speaker 1: still a large and UM the Simon Weisenthal Center. UH.
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  Speaker 1: This this group that's dedicated to finding rooting out the
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  Speaker 1: last of the Nazi war criminals who may or may
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  Speaker 1: not be still alive. UM has launched Operation Last Day,
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  Speaker 1: Last Chance UH in a in a in a last
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  Speaker 1: ditch effort. But UM, while I was researching this, Chris,
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  Speaker 1: I found a lot of stuff that that just I
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  Speaker 1: couldn't fit into the article. UM. One of the things
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  Speaker 1: that that stuck out to me the most was the Massad.
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  Speaker 1: You know what the Massada is. That's the Israeli secret
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  Speaker 1: service right it is now. They have been chasing Nazis
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  Speaker 1: for decades and have been fairly successful at it. They
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  Speaker 1: found Klaus Barbie. UH. They also found Adolf Eichmann, who
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  Speaker 1: was pretty much the engineer of the nazis final solution
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  Speaker 1: of exterminating all these um supposedly unwanted races. UM. But
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  Speaker 1: I also found something very um interesting. The Massad actually
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  Speaker 1: engaged in UH employing and hiding some wanted Nazi war criminals,
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  Speaker 1: which I found startling. You know, this this group that's
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  Speaker 1: dedicated to rooting out for conviction UM or at the
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  Speaker 1: very least for trial Nazi war criminals UM having employed
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  Speaker 1: one the guy they employed UM was this doctor who
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  Speaker 1: actually came up with the idea of mobile gas vans, right,
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  Speaker 1: so that the the Nazis wouldn't have to shoot the
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  Speaker 1: Jews any longer to kill them. They could just load
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  Speaker 1: them up in these vans and carbon monoxide was put
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  Speaker 1: into the end of the vans and and whoever was
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  Speaker 1: inside was killed. And the worst part was these vans
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  Speaker 1: were they looked like Red Cross ambulances, which is just
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  Speaker 1: just about as bad as it gets time to think. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: I think it's also a violation of the Geneva Convention.
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  Speaker 1: I'm quite sure, but I think pretty much percent of
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  Speaker 1: what the Nazis did was in violation of the Geneva Conventions.
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  Speaker 1: That was much out the window from day one, you know,
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  Speaker 1: not about following the rules. Well you said too in
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  Speaker 1: the article that they weren't the only ones who had
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  Speaker 1: employed some of the former Nazis certainly not. Yeah, who else, um,
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  Speaker 1: you know, even the American government. Um, I think you
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  Speaker 1: said the British too. You know. Basically, if they had something,
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  Speaker 1: uh that that they could use, the governments could use that,
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  Speaker 1: they were willing to take them on. I know a
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  Speaker 1: lot of that. The nuclear and rocket scientists too, were
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  Speaker 1: were very important for them to uh to grab before
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  Speaker 1: they could be tried. I guess definitely Project paper Clip.
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  Speaker 1: It was an actual secret project undertaken by the United
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  Speaker 1: States government to poach as many Nazi scientists as possible.
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  Speaker 1: Some of them were war criminals, some of them were
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  Speaker 1: lesser known, lesser involved people. But you know, a lot
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  Speaker 1: of people argue that we wouldn't have made it to
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  Speaker 1: space first had it not been for former Nazi scientists
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  Speaker 1: like Verna von Brown and some of the other guys
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  Speaker 1: like him who really helped on the American rocket team.
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  Speaker 1: That's amazing to think about that they would be exonerated,
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  Speaker 1: you know, simply because of you know, some of the
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  Speaker 1: other things that they could bring. But at least maybe
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  Speaker 1: they could uh make some positive contributions. And I think also, um,
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  Speaker 1: from my understanding, Americans did undertake a process of determining
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  Speaker 1: just how involved you know, a certain person was, at
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  Speaker 1: least the the U. S. Government. I think with the
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  Speaker 1: c i A. It was a a different matter. I
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  Speaker 1: think they used whoever they felt could help them. I
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  Speaker 1: wouldn't no matter what involvement they had. Do you know
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  Speaker 1: anything about that? Honestly, I don't. I haven't done done
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  Speaker 1: nearly as much research as year. Well, let me Adolf Eichmann, who,
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  Speaker 1: like I said, was finally captured. He was actually kidnapped
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  Speaker 1: in Argentina by the massade. Uh. He was used by
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  Speaker 1: the CIA as a West German agent um and they
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  Speaker 1: knew who he was, they knew what he'd done, and
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  Speaker 1: they were still using him as a secret agent in
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  Speaker 1: West Germany. It's amazing. Well that's it for for Are
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  Speaker 1: there still Nazi more criminals at large? You can find
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  Speaker 1: out more about it on how stuff works dot com.
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  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening for more on this and thousands of
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  Speaker 1: other topics. Because it how stuff works dot Com brought
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