A lot of the later subs escaping from Germany towards the end of the war had treasures on them. They were taking to the a secret hide out so the 3rd Reicht could rebuild & it’s leaders could live out their lives in leisure.
South America.
“They were taking to the a secret hide out so the 3rd Reicht could rebuild & it’s leaders could live out their lives in leisure.”
I know for a fact that is true. The 4th Reich is alive and doing very well.
I think that was mostly freelancer activity. The top Nazis were either killed in the Bunker, or captured while trying to escape and were killed, arrested, or (in the case of Himmler) killed themselves. Some of the mid-level Nazis managed to flee in vehicles (e.g., Mengele just got in his car and drove home from the death camp, then made his way I think to Switzerland, and left for S. America), others on foot, and still others turned themselves in to western forces (e.g. rocket genius Von Braun and most of his staff; about 150 of the rocket people wound up working for the Soviets).
Those who were POWs were interrogated, most cooperated with that, and some were placed under house arrest, others in internment camps, some both; others (e.g. “Sepp” Dietrich) were jailed, then tried and given prison terms (I think his was for the pre-war ‘execution’ of Ernst Rohm, for which he did ten years) or hanged, and in a few cases were acquitted.
British intelligence spent a few years after the war assassinating some who weren’t considered worthwhile to try, but had done something that stuck in the British craw. The Soviets indoctrinated the surviving German armed forces stranded in the east, or executed or gulag’ed them if they wouldn’t play ball.
Stalin also had every Red Army soldier photographed sharing cigarettes and the moment with the western allies at the end of the war, and those who could be identified and were still alive were sent to the gulag.
German officers (particularly SS and Gestapo) who fled Germany after the war typically wound up in S. America, but they got there under assumed names (or sometimes not even) via the ocean liners and such which were commonplace at the time. Hundreds fled with the help of “ratlines” which were nearly entirely run by ex-Nazis and wartime collaborators. A great many of the fugitives (and there were many, many who did this) returned to Germany from time to time, to visit relatives or in some cases to stay if everything was cool.
Some, like Klaus Barbie, really couldn’t take that chance. He wound up working for one of the Bolivian gov’ts I think, doing what he did best. Sez here that when the gov’t fell, he was extradited to France. One of his old Nazi proteges during that last gig in Bolivia would up getting in a fight over a woman, and the young rival killed him. So, scratch those two.
Is this the one that took the moon-colonizing Nazis to Antarctica?