The Hunt for Adolf Eichmann: Case Closed

History's Greatest Mysteries

This episode of 'History's Greatest Mysteries' recounts the global manhunt for Adolf Eichmann, one of the key architects of the Holocaust, who evaded capture for

Key takeaways

• Eichmann was never captured during initial Allied sweeps after WWII due to disorganization and his use of aliases.
• He narrowly avoided detection in a U.S. POW camp by altering his identity and attempting to hide his SS tattoo.

Main topics

• Adolf Eichmann's role in the Holocaust
• Post-WWII manhunt for Nazi war criminals

Notable quotes

I am resigned to my fate.

Conclusion

After fifteen years on the run, Adolf Eichmann was captured in Argentina by Israeli Mossad agents

Transcript preview

Speaker 8 (0:00) And now, a History Channel original podcast presented by Rewind. Today, the global manhunt for a Nazi war criminal who vanished after the Holocaust and the stunning operation that finally brought him to justice. Speaker 5 (0:21) Adolf Eichmann was the architect of the Nazi Holocaust. He Speaker 2 (0:25) murdered millions of Jews, yet the Allies never even knew his name. Speaker 7 (0:31) He takes this idea of the final solution and turns it into almost an assembly line process. At the end of World War II, Eichmann Speaker 8 (0:40) hides in plain sight. Speaker 4 (0:42) There's so much chaos that the Allies don't even realize that they have Eichmann in custody. And by the time they realize it, he's Speaker 2 (0:49) vanished. Nazi hunters are convinced that Eichmann is still alive, but a decade passes and no one knows where he could possibly be. Speaker 8 (0:58) Now we explore the top theories surrounding Adolf Eichmann's whereabouts leading up to his dramatic capture. Speaker 7 (1:05) These Nazis in Germany end up with a really surprising ally, the Catholic Church. An Speaker 3 (1:11) Israeli investigator receives a tip-off that Adolf Eichmann has been recently spotted in Kuwait. Speaker 5 (1:17) There was only one existing photograph of Eichmann. It's really like hunting a ghost. Speaker 8 (1:23) What really happened to Adolf Eichmann? Speaker 8 (1:30) Welcome to History's Greatest Mysteries, a History Channel original podcast presented by Rewind Studios. Each episode, we take a deep dive into some of the greatest unanswered questions from history, backed by some of the foremost experts on the subject. This week is a special case-closed investigation, where our hunt for answers ends with a solution. And today, we're diving into the hunt for Adolf Eichmann. Speaker 8 (2:05) It's January 1942, and in a lakeside mansion near Berlin, 15 senior Nazi officials are meeting. The topic? The systematic annihilation of Europe's Jews, what the Nazis refer to as the final solution. Speaker 4 (2:21) Along with these high officials, there's one lieutenant colonel, very quiet, very unassuming, taking notes. But he's also providing information like the amount of Jews in different countries. This is Adolf Eichmann. Speaker 6 (2:36) Eichmann is not really well known as a front man of the Nazis. He's more of a behind-the-scenes bureaucrat, and he really views the killing of millions of Jews as sort of this logistical problem that he is in charge of solving. Speaker 8 (2:50) Eichmann grows up in Austria, the son of an accountant. He joins the Nazi party in 1932 at age 26. Speaker 1 (2:59) Eichmann had joined the SD, the SS's intelligence agency, in 1934. In 1936, he's recruited by a member of the SD to join the so-called Jewish Affairs Division. And eventually he comes to take over this division. He makes a name for himself after the annexation of Austria, where he works out a system for basically speeding up the emigration of Jewish populations outside of Germany. Speaker 2 (3:25) figures out how to conduct these mass deportations as fast as possible. He devises a system to give deportation papers to Jewish people on the spot while also stripping them of their possessions, stripping them of their wealth, and getting them essentially out of the country within less than an hour's time. Speaker 6 (3:43) Once World War II starts, Adolf Eichmann becomes more and more fanatical. And once the final solution is decided upon, he becomes the central operational figure. behind the Holocaust. Hitler is the one who's ordering these atrocities, but Eichmann is the bureaucrat in charge of actually carrying them out. Speaker 3 (4:03) There are a lot of pieces of information that come out of Nazi Germany during World War II, and it's just so hard for Westerners to comprehend this scale of tragedy that it's not until we start to overrun some of the outlying murder camps that we can't deny what's going on anymore. Speaker 6 (4:24) In January of 1945, Hitler retreats to his bunker. By April of that year, he's dead. And then on May 7th of 1945, the Germans surrender. Speaker 2 (4:36) Despite the fact that many high-ranking Nazis have been captured, Eichmann is never found. And on top of that, most of the world has never even heard his name. Speaker 8 (4:48) Six months go by before the public finally learns about Adolf Eichmann and his role in the Holocaust. Speaker 4 (4:54) In November of 1945, all eyes are on Nuremberg, Germany, where 24 Nazi officials are put on trial for their atrocities during World War II. And it's here that Adolf Eichmann's name first comes up. Speaker 6 (5:09) Prosecutors quote this Hungarian Jewish leader who tells the story of a mass deportation of Hungarian Jews from Budapest. So there's a special unit that is running operations there, and Eichmann is in charge of that unit. He is the one who's going to decide who's going to the gas chambers and who will live. Speaker 8 (5:30) A few weeks later, on January 3, 1946, an SS captain with ties to Eichmann is called to testify. Speaker 1 (5:38) He had joined the Nazis' intelligence service and ended up becoming one of Eichmann's men in the so-called Jewish Affairs Division of the Gestapo. He claims that he pushed back against this Speaker 4 (5:50) plan to kill millions of Jews, but Eichmann simply told him, you're being too sentimental about it. Speaker 8 (5:55) The Nuremberg testimony gives Eichmann worldwide notoriety, but his whereabouts are still unknown. Finding Eichmann won't be easy, but after the revelations at Nuremberg, it's a priority. The question is, where could he be? Speaker 4 (6:12) There are millions of Germans packed into POW camps all over Europe. The Americans alone have two million in captivity. But these camps are cramped. They're not well organized. They don't have the names of everybody in them. But the obvious place to look for Eichmann is in POW camps around Europe. Speaker 8 (6:30) Which brings us to theory number one. He was hiding in a POW camp under a false name. Speaker 2 (6:37) Despite the fact that most of the world has never heard the name Adolf Eichmann, the U.S. Counterintelligence Corps has actually been compiling a dossier on him for months. Speaker 3 (6:48) Investigators go and track down Eichmann's wife, Vera. They find her in Austria. She claims that she hasn't seen her husband in months, and she doesn't even have a photograph of him. Speaker 6 (6:59) It's clear that he was really planning ahead here. He was making sure that there were no pictures of him left over. SS officers tell Allied officials that Eichmann was still alive at the end of the war, and he probably still is. They don't think that Eichmann would have taken his own life the way that other Nazi officials did at this time. Speaker 2 (7:18) With all of the chaos and the disorganization and the disarray of these POW camps, it becomes very, very likely that Eichmann is using these POW camps to hide out. The Allies also assume that he's using an alias. The CIC distributes notices to their regional offices, and they call Eichmann, quote, of the highest importance among war criminals. Speaker 8 (7:39) As it turns out, the Americans already have Eichmann in custody. They just don't know it. Speaker 4 (7:45) At the end of the war, Eichmann actually goes down into Austria to hide out, and there are tons of Nazis all over the place hiding from the Allies. He meets with his wife and gives her instructions on how to deal with Allied investigators, which he knows are coming. His plan is to head northwest through Germany with his assistant, staying in homes of people who Speaker 2 (8:07) are sympathetic to former Nazis. A little later in May, however, Eichmann and his assistant are picked up by a U.S. Army patrol. And they're taken to a US POW camp in Weiden. Eichmann gives a false name, a false identity, by the name of Adolf Barth. Speaker 8 (8:24) In the camp, Eichmann plots how to keep from being discovered and how to escape. Speaker 3 (8:29) Eichmann is going to be identified sooner or later because every SS officer like Eichmann has a unique identifier that's not common in the rest of the German Wehrmacht. Every SS soldier has his blood type tattooed inside his armpit, and that means... If you make all of the captives take off their shirts and hold their hands up in the air, you can quickly pick out the fanatical Nazis. He Speaker 1 (8:53) tries to burn that tattoo with cigarettes, but it doesn't work. So he's not going to be able to claim he's not a member of the SS, but there are plenty of SS men who are POWs at the end of the war. So what he tells the Allied Speaker 4 (9:05) officials is that his name is actually Otto Eckmann and that he's a lieutenant colonel in the SS. Speaker 8 (9:11) Eichmann makes the switch, thinking Ekman is close enough to his real surname. If an old acquaintance were to suddenly blurt out his real name, Eichmann, in the camp, it would be less likely to rouse suspicion. Speaker 6 (9:24) Eichmann knows that he can't play this game forever. He's gotten through a couple of interrogations undetected, but he knows it's only a matter of time before he's found out to be who he really is. Speaker 2 (9:35) He finds some SS officers in the camp who help him in his escape. He's able to forge papers that pass him off as a hunter in the area, and the SS officers in the camp also get him some civilian clothes. And one night... Eichmann is able to climb over a section of barbed wire fence that isn't viewed by any camp guards,