Richard Dargie - The Nazis Flight from Justice: How Hitlers Followers Attempted to Vanish Without Trace

The name Adolf Hitler is synonymous with one of the deadliest and most destructive conflicts in history, which claimed the lives of more than 50 million people, including an estimated six million Jews murdered through systematic genocide. Little is known with certainty about how a son born to Klara and Alois Hitler on 20 April 1889, on a dull, grey Easter Saturday, would turn into one of the worlds most tyrannical and murderous dictators, but there is no doubt that World War II was Hitlers war.

Hitlers plans to establish a thousand-year Aryan Third Reich were put into action soon after his appointment as chancellor of Germany by President Hindenburg on 30 January 1933. Swiftly consolidating power, he appointed himself Fhrer (supreme leader) in 1934, and the path to war became clear. Rearmament began in the mid-1930s in advance of his sending troops into Austria in 1938 and Czechoslovakia the following year. In August 1939, Hitler and Joseph Stalin signed the GermanSoviet Non-aggression Pact, and on 1 September Germany invaded Poland from the west with Soviet help from the east. Two days later, Britain and France declared war on Germany.

Of course, Hitler did not act alone. He had taken power by diplomatic means, and his views generated enormous and genuine support among not only the powerful German officer class but also among millions of everyday citizens who voted for the Nazi Party. By pulling together strands of right-wing thinking already present in Germany, Hitler increased his popularity irresistibly. For many historians, the key to his success was his charisma, best illustrated through the inspirational power of his speeches, which often left his audience spellbound. According to eyewitness Konrad Heiden, His speeches are daydreams of this mass soul The speeches always begin with deep pessimism and end in overjoyed redemption, a triumphant happy ending; often they can be refuted by reason, but they follow the far mightier logic of the subconscious, which no refutation can touch Hitler has given speech to the speechless terror of the modern mass

This is a view confirmed by Sir Nevile Henderson, British ambassador to Berlin in the 1930s, who said, Hitler owed his success in the struggle for power to the fact that he was the reflection of their [his supporters] subconscious mind, and his ability to express in words what that subconscious mind felt that it wanted.

Through these speeches, Hitler sold a simple message to the German public, offering national redemption and the promise of a new Germany with him as its supreme leader. In return, he demanded that all citizens would serve the state. Democracy and individual rights would be sacrificed for the good of the nation. Dissent would not be tolerated. Following the Great Depression the world economic crisis that followed the Wall Street Crash in 1929 the German economy dipped into recession, further undermining the government. The peoples faith in capitalism and democracy was evaporating. Hitlers dream of a New Order putting Germany first, with strong leadership and an end to economic ills quickly became the peoples dream. They flocked to join the Nazi Party, the Hitler Youth, the League of German Girls and other organizations that made up the new Volksgemeinschaft (national community). In this way, the Nazi message sent deep roots down through every level of society.

Of course, propaganda played a major part in this. For historian Karl Bracher, the success of Nazi ideology can only really be understood through its use of the media and culture. He points to the use of modern techniques of opinion-formation to create a truly religio-psychological phenomenon that made it so powerful.

When the fighting stopped, in early May 1945, it was as though the lights had gone out, as though National Socialism a political movement that had attracted broader support than any other in Germany, and had inspired six years of war across the globe had disappeared. As if waking from a nightmare, the German population, exhausted by the violence and relieved that war was finally over, reacted as if Hitler and the Nazis already belonged to a distant past. Uniforms were discarded, portraits of Hitler were taken down and destroyed. As historian Richard Bessel put it in his book Germany 1945: From War to Peace, Coming on top of the shock of the extreme violence during the previous months, the grotesque, bloody end of the Third Reich completely undermined its legitimacy and popular support for Nazism.

In the aftermath of any war, there are more questions than answers. The Nazis Flight from Justice examines those questions that arose in 1945. How did the son of an Austrian customs officer from Braunau am Inn became the self-proclaimed saviour of Germany, give birth to a political party that, at its height, boasted at least eight million members and led an 18 million-strong army into a war for world domination? How did this man, described as an empty vessel by historian Ian Kershaw, have such an immense historical impact? How did he persuade ordinary citizens to perpetrate systematic war crimes, massacres, mass rapes, looting, the extermination of forced labour and POWs and the genocidal killing of European Jews, many of whom died in the 44,000 Nazi camps? The book also examines what happened to those Nazis who survived the war, particularly the many thousands implicated in war crimes. Who was to be held responsible? Where was justice to be found? How were the punishments made to fit the crimes? Where did all the Nazis go?

With the end of World War II now over 75 years ago, any Nazis remaining on the wanted lists will be in their 90s. The book ends by examining the most significant trials of the post-war era as Germany fast approaches the moment where there will be no individuals left to prosecute for the crimes of the Holocaust.

Found guilty of high treason for his part in planning to topple the Weimar Republic by revolution in November 1923, Adolf Hitler, leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party Nazi for short was sent to prison for five years. On the night of 8 November, Nazi stormtroopers attempted to take over several government buildings while Hitler gave a table-top speech in Munichs Brgerbrukeller to a crowd of some 3,000 people announcing a national revolution and the formation of a new government. Despite his rowdy and generally supportive audience, the plan broke down because of a lack of organization and the evening ended in chaos.

The following day, determined to save face, the putschists marched through the centre of the city towards the war ministry building. En route they were stopped by a police cordon. A fierce gun battle ensued leaving 18 dead and others, including Hermann Gring, injured. Hitler was arrested and charged with treason. Although the Beer Hall Putsch, as it was known, was a failure in that there was no widespread uprising, the attendant publicity meant that the party took a great leap forward. The trial that followed created sensational headlines and garnered much support for the new party. Hitler even impressed the trial judges, who handed down a very lenient sentence for such a serious crime.

In the event, Hitler served only 13 months in the relative luxury of Landsberg prison near Munich. He was allowed to stroll in its grounds, receive regular visitors and make use of its extensive library. He later described his time there as free education at the states expense. As well as reading, his business manager suggested that he used the time to produce an autobiography. Lacking confidence in his writing, Hitler only agreed when offered the services of a ghost-writer, a job taken up by his friend and fellow party member Rudolf Hess, who was also in prison for taking part in the putsch. The resulting book,