"I'll let the dogs go!" shouts a woman who leaves the house when the barking of three ferocious dogs alerts her that there is a stranger taking photos. With no time to introduce himself, the journalist imagines the three beasts devouring him and starts running while the lady approaches the gate to fulfill her promise. We are in the Belgrano neighborhood of Bariloche and the unfriendly neighbor is the daughter-in-law of Erich Priebke, a Nazi criminal who is serving a life sentence in Rome -under house arrest- for his responsibility in the massacre of the Ardeatine Trenches.
Priebke, who is now 98 years old, was discovered in Bariloche in 1994 by a team from the US network ABC and later extradited to Italy. The Nazi had spent almost half a century in this bucolic Argentine tourist city, located at the foot of the Andes and surrounded by lakes reminiscent of an alpine landscape. These airs attracted a good number of Central European settlers, whose flow increased after World War II, serving as a refuge for many Nazi officers, such as Priebke. Or like Hitler himself...
The legend that the Führer managed to escape from Berlin and live peacefully in South America until the end of his days has been fueled by the tenacious insistence of Abel Basti, a local journalist who has become the main investigator of this hypothesis and who believes in it. on foot together
Published last year, in The Exile of Hitler, Basti details the escape route of the German dictator and his wife, Eva Braun, who would have left Berlin on April 22, 1945 in a helicopter that would have taken them to the Austrian city of Linz, where they would have stayed for four days. From there, they would have flown by plane to Barcelona, to embark on an undetermined date in a German submarine from a Spanish port bound for Argentine Patagonia, with a stopover in the Canary Islands.
According to Basti, in the Berlin bunker "one of Hitler's most perfect doubles would have remained." The journalist discredits the historically accepted theory of suicide and burning of the couple's bodies because he says that it is based on a few testimonies assumed to be true by the allies. However, Basti claims to base his theory "on about twenty direct testimonies that saw Hitler after the war," such as Carmen Torrontegui, cook at the San Ramón ranch, supposedly the dictator's first residence in Bariloche. The investigator also claims to have found clues in FBI documents and ensures that "85% of the public information issued during 1945 speaks of Hitler escaping."
"Hitler's residence was transferred several times for security reasons and he also traveled outside Argentina under a false name, possibly to Paraguay and Colombia," Basti explained to La Vanguardia. Inalco, located in the bay of the same name on the shores of Lake Nahuel Huapi, is one of the houses where legend has it that Hitler and Braun spent the most time. The house is in Villa La Angostura, 80 kilometers from Bariloche, on the beautiful route of the Seven Lakes, and would have been expressly built to be the Führer's Patagonian Berghof.
The residence is for sale today and is one of the main attractions for many mythomaniacs who visit the area following Nazi traces with the Nazi Bariloche tourist guide in hand, written by Basti. Many Barilochenses also believe that Hitler was there, like Nahuel Alonso, an experienced mountain guide who alludes to the fact that "in the forties the region was an inhospitable and inaccessible place where it was easy to hide", to justify that a secret of such magnitude did not come out. .
Basti has just published The Secrets of Hitler, where he maintains a conspiracy theory, which would consist of an improbable pact between Nazism and Zionism, on the one hand, and with the United States, on the other, in which the escape would be framed. of the German dictator. That Hitler was part of that supposed pact is hardly credible, and less so with Zionism, but it is documented that the US helped many Nazis to flee, especially scientists, to take advantage of their intellectual capital and prevent them from falling into Soviet hands. This would also be the reason why, supposedly, General Perón would have also provided cover for many Nazis, including some scientists who worked on the Argentine atomic program, whose main research center was installed during his government precisely in Bariloche. Many Nazis, such as Klaus Barbie, Adolf Eichmann or Josef Mengele would have reached South America through Odessa, an international secret plot to help hundreds of war criminals escape.
Basti's challenge is now to locate Hitler's grave. The journalist believes that the Führer, who would have arrived in Argentina at the age of 56, would have died during the 1970s. "I have a witness who knows details of his death and where he was buried, although I have not yet been able to confirm the information," Basti admits, adding mysteriously that he "would not necessarily" be buried in Argentina. "For now, what I can say for sure is that Hitler survived the war together with Eva Braun," concludes Basti.
