This is a fascinating article about the surviving Nazi big-shots as they waited for the Nuremberg trials to begin. Incarcerated at the Palace Hotel in Fromburg, Luxembourg (code named "Ashcan") this COLLIER'S MAGAZINE article explains how the camp worked and who was there (Goering, Jodl, Keitel, von Ribbentrop, Streicher, Kesserling and Grand Admiral Doenitz):
"There was no coddling or recognition of rank at Ashcan. The only entertainment was atrocity films. Recently the internees were treated to the spectacle of Buchenwald... Ribbentrop bowed his head and walked straight out to the dining room. Kesserling was white as a sheet..."
While the hunt for Nazis and hidden weapons cachés was taking place in allied-occupied Germany, a small number of U.S. Army detectives happened upon the entire archives of the Nazi Party.
Not too long after the close of the war, exiled German author Thomas Mann (1875 – 1955) was invited to return to Germany. Walter von Molo, a German writer, who during the Nazi regime remained and worked in Germany, sent the invitation to Mann as an "Open Letter" in the name of German intellectuals. Attached an excerpt of the writer's response. By clicking the title link posted above you will see a photo of what appears to be the Fascist's answer to the von Trapp Family Singers - but hold, good reader - it was something far more sinister.
Read about American censorship in Occupied-Japan...
The pages of People Today, a short-lived gossip rag and probable ancestor of today's People, seldom reserved any column space to report on the whereabouts of all the various celebrity Nazis who had missed their date's with the hangman - but for this scoop they made an exception.
"Spotted in Argentina during the summer of 1951 was Mussolini's daughter, Edda Ciano (1910 – 1995), Otto Skorzeny (1908 – 1975) and Croatian fascist Ante Pavelić (1889 – 1959). The murderous Pavelić was in the employ of the Argentine dictator, Juan Peron; the other two resided in Europe (Countess Ciano had recently served a two year stint in an Italian prison and Skorzeny, as an ODESSA flunky, was probably no stranger to South America).
Click here to read a related article from NEWSWEEK concerning the post-war presence of Nazis in Argentina.
Click here to read another article about the post-war whereabouts of another Nazi.
Written seven months after VE-Day, this article reported on life in the American zone of occupation:
"Today, with every facet of his life policed by foreign conquerors, the German civilian faces the worst winter his country has known in centuries. And it is likely to be but the first of several such winters. He is hungry now, and he will be cold. Shelter is inadequate. His property is looted by his neighbor. Lawlessness and juvenile delinquency disturb him. Public health teeters in precarious balance which might tip the disaster."
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