Germany’s so-called elite, the Furer’s Guard, a Black Order.

The end result is a crime the likes of which the world has never seen.

Summer 1945.

The war is over.

The Allies have put an end to the murders of the SS.

Now they set out to find the perpetrators.

[Music] They recognized the SS men by the tattooed blood group on their left upper arm.

[Music] But many have had them surgically removed or have gone into hiding.

One of these men is Klaus Barbie, the butcher of Leyon, an SS Halum Furer.

Actually a minor figure in the SS.

But in Leon, as head of the Gustapo there, he becomes a sadistic murderer.

I have come to kill.

Barbie is supposed to have said when he took up his post.

Gestapo headquarters in Leyon is the hotel terminus.

Barbie tortures his victims during interrogation with red hot pokers, electric shocks, boiling water, and a whole collection of tools that lie on the desk in front of him.

The torture often goes on for days.

many of his victims, women and men, die.

Well, everybody knew who some of these people were that were wanted.

I mean, you know, including Claus Barbie.

I mean, his name was up the head of the list everywhere.

James Milano works in Liberated Europe for the CIC, the US Military Intelligence Service.

[Music] We knew that the French were after him.

You know, this was common knowledge that everybody was looking for these types of guys, not only Barbie, but top four or five people on that list.

Klouse Barbie makes contact with former SS comrades in the underground.

He commits a robbery with them.

Immediately after 1945, all SS members had to cover up the traces they left behind during the war on the one hand, and on the other hand, of course, they were faced with the challenge of building up a new existence.

So, it was obvious for many of them that they had to secure mutual help from their own networks.

[Music] What remains of the SS after the German defeat? Does the Black Order live on in secret? [Music] Thousands of perpetrators in Nazi functionaries leave for the south, crossing the Alps in the direction of Italy.

In Rome, the Vatican acquires dubious importance for former SS men who want to build a new existence for themselves.

Influential clerics help SS criminals.

One of the most difficult things in the world is to know anything about Vatican intelligence.

Now, you can talk all you want to, but I don’t think anybody’s ever cracked that one.

Rome is a kind of transit hub for fugitive SS veterans.

The International Red Cross issues travel documents actually for Nazi victims who have lost everything.

The applicant’s details are hardly ever verified.

With new travel documents, it’s off from Rome to Genua [Music] and from there by ship to Latin America.

Argentina, Bolivia, and Paraguay are happy to accept immigrants with know how engineers, entrepreneurs, and Nazis.

The US Secret Service also uses this escape route.

In the emerging East West conflict, spies are recruited and smuggled out of Europe.

The Americans call the escape routes the rat lions.

We were collecting information about the Russians and in order to do that we dealt with Russian deserters.

We mounted operations into the Russian zone of Austria and so forth.

And then we found that we had a number of these people on our hands and we didn’t know what to do with them.

SS murderers like Klouse Barbie are also on the payroll of the US Secret Service.

At times he collects information from Axburg about potential communist agents.

My enemy, my enemy’s enemy is my friend.

And so in the end, even a heavily incriminated offender like Barbie finds his way onto American payroll.

[Music] In 1951, this collaboration ends in Germany.

Barbie travels via a rat line to South America to Bolivia.

Bobby doesn’t flee of his own accord.

It’s suggested to him by the Americans who make it clear that the investigative efforts by the French are so far advanced that they’re no longer in a position to protect it.

And there was also the danger that American intelligence would be extremely discredited, not least by the East, and gain a reputation for having heavily incriminated war criminals on its payroll.

[Music] The allies had in fact committed themselves to bringing Nazi perpetrators to justice.

At the end of 1945, an international military tribunal in Nuremberg begins its first trial against the main perpetrators who are still alive.

Murderers.

They surely were murderers in spades.

Mass murderers on a scale never before seen in human history that I knew.

Otherwise, they wouldn’t have been there as defendants.

[Music] US lawyer Benjamin Fence had collected evidence in the concentration camps.

I had been a u liberator of many concentration camps as a soldier in the American armies.

I had seen the product of mass murder in Bhanwald, in a in Mudhousen.

Uh I certainly was shocked by that experience.

I was traumatized by that experience which has not left me to this day.

Anst Carlton Bruner is also in the dock.

The former head of the SS Reich security main office is the highest SS functionary still alive.

Cton Bruner denies having even heard of the Holocaust.

The biggest disappointment for me as a an American, as a soldier, as a prosecutor was the complete absence of remorse among mass murderers.

They never said they were sorry because they were not sorry.

They were sorry they lost the war.

They were sorry they were sitting as defendants and that I was still alive.

But they were not sorry about anything that they did.

[Music] Ants Carton Bruner is sentenced to death and the SS is officially disbanded and banned.

The problem from the point of view of German society is that there was the catch word victor’s justice.

Many Germans had distanced themselves and didn’t really want to accept what was now being put on trial and disclosed.

Instead, they protected themselves from this knowledge, which threatened their own identity by saying, “This is victor’s justice.

” And as is often the case in war, the victors are always right in the end, and it doesn’t have to be the whole truth.

[Music] In Nuremberg, more than a dozen SSmen are sentenced in further trials, but the vast majority remain unmolested.

SS veterans form an organization called Hiak.

It is about financial help, legal assistance, and public rehabilitation.

[Music] Loyalty actually takes pride of place above everything else.

And in the SS it was especially important.

[Music] Otto Kum, a general in the Vafan SS.

His division committed serious war crimes.

It is the most important thing of all to me.

You have belonged to this unit.

[Music] They try to create the myth that they are soldiers just like any other and thus to facilitate their reintegration.

The Hiag campaigns for SS veterans to be treated in the same way as soldiers of the Vermacht when it comes to pensions.

As early as the 1950s, this lobbying for perpetrators provoked outrage.

Journalists remain hard on the heels of Nazi criminals.

One of them is the former senior Reich prosecutor at the people’s court, Anst Loutz.

He was responsible for an estimated 400 applications for the death penalty.

After the war, he is sentenced to 10 years in prison, but is released early.

Afterwards, he receives the pension of an attorney general for many years.

For former members of the SS, Hinrich Himmler’s daughter becomes a popular contact point.

Goodun Bervitz, as she is called after her marriage, never renounces Nazi ideology.

There are, after all, quite a large number of wives, daughters, and sons of former SS leaders.

were trying to protect the historical image of the deeds of their fathers.

Even as a child, Gurun Himmler is proud to be the daughter of a famous man.

The Nazi princess also accompanies her father on his work, for example, when he visits a prison collection center.

[Music] In July 1941, she travels with Papy, as she affectionately calls him, to Dhau concentration camp.

She records this in her diary.

Today, we visited the concentration camp in Dhau.

We looked at as much as we could.

We saw the gardeners.

We saw the pear trees.

We saw all the pictures that prisoners painted.

Wonderful.

Afterwards, we had a very good lunch.

Immler’s daughter is a star of the right-wing scene and supports former Nazis with petitions for clemency, money or help in finding accommodation.

She was almost a kind of mythical figure as as Hemler’s daughter certainly among former SS men and she was largely responsible for an organization called Hilfa which basically helped them if they were in financial difficulties but behind the scenes she was quite significant for them at least.

Until her death in 2018, Goodun Bervitz received former SSmen as if for an audience and questioned them strictly about where they had served.

[Music] In the 1950s, the Federal Judiciary has a hard time solving SS crimes.

Former Nazis work at many courts as judges or public prosecutors.

There’s no central coordination for tracking down criminals or preserving evidence.

[Music] In 1958, this changes with the central office in Ludvixburg, Barton Vertenberg.

It is tasked with investigating Nazi crimes and collecting evidence for preliminary investigations.

[Music] When the central office was founded, it wasn’t seen as a good thing for the city of Ludvik.

In fact, the people there were actually branded traitors to the fatherland and nest fowlers.

I learned from the files that people also had problems finding rental accommodation if they said they worked at the central office.

Even taxi drivers are said to have refused to drive visitors here.

[Music] In the mid 1950s, the Hessian attorney, General Fritz Bower, receives a tip off from Argentina.

Adolf Iman is said to be living there.

The former SS Orbushdom Banfura is one of the main perpetrators of the Holocaust.

He organized the deportation of millions of European Jews.

The logistician of the crime against humanity.

Fritz Bower fears Aishikman might be warned by old comrades in the West German ministries and judicial authorities.

He turns to Israel.

Secret agents from Mosad set off for Buenazirus.

Iman now calls himself Ricardo Clement and works as an electrician in a Daimler Benz factory.

He lives with his family in modest circumstances on the outskirts of Bernazir.

In his free time, he breeds rabbits, a lower middle-class existence.

From time to time, Aishman meets old comrades and boasts of his deeds.

[Music] [Applause] The Mossad agents are soon certain Ricardo Clement is Adolf I Aishman.

They plan to strike on May 11th, 1960.

[Music] Aishman is kidnapped on his way home in the evening.

Mossad men drag him into a car.

Argentina’s police are kept in the dark.

The prisoners smuggled past the airport checks disguised as a crew member.

An LL plane flies Akan directly from Buenazarus to Israel.

[Music] Aishman is tried in Jerusalem.

In the process, the mass murderer presents himself as someone insignificant who is only following orders.

[Music] is aligned.

The judges find Adolf Aman guilty.

He’s executed on June 1st, 1962.

In the Federal Republic of Germany at the end of 1963 in Frankfurt and mine, Attorney General Fritz Bower causes a sensation.

with the first so-called Awitz trial [Music] that I think was very important in bringing the consciousness and realization of the crimes they’d committed just as ordinary SS soldiers guards in the camps uh in the 1940s was now outside the German Reich and no one was insisting on the trial going ahead.

Fritz Bower was different.

He wanted it to and so he tried to bring the trial to Frankfurt.

[Music] The young public prosecutor Gearad Visa is part of Fritz Bau’s team that collected incriminating material for years.

The accused are 23 former SSmen from the Awitz concentration camp.

Many of them now lead wellto-do lives as dentists, merchants, pharmacists, or restorators.

Some police officers salute as the defendants walk past them.

[Music] During the trial, the men display strong self-confidence, showing no signs of remorse.

Ghad visa works on the indictment.

In the beginning, it was really intense.

It was murder and manslaughter from morning till night.

You also build up your own kind of inner resistance so as not to let it get too close to you.

to lesson.

One of the accused is Hunt Stark.

He apparently had the slogan pity is weakness hanging above his desk in Awitz.

Inmate Kazmir Smalland testifies against him at the trial.

He beat the prisoners especially often.

We often saw him at the punishment company.

They’re in block 11 where the prisoners were shot.

brutal.

He was more brutal than the other SS men.

I even had the impression that precisely because he was so young, he wanted to show that he was a fullyfledged SS man.

H Stark is 19 when he begins his service in Awitz.

The high school student takes part in shootings and gassings.

Stark never showed pity.

On the contrary, he used to imitate the people pleading for mercy at the ramp.

He acted as if it was all some kind of school prank.

How could an educated man be so brutal? [Music] Hark is sentenced under juvenile law, 10 years in prison, five of which he serves.

In total, the court imposes six life sentences.

In addition, there are 11 prison sentences ranging from three and a half to 14 years and three acquitt.

The message sent by the Awitz trial is more important than the sentences.

For the first time since 1945, Jewish victims in Germany are being heard by the general public.

[Music] The biggest post-war trial in West Germany was over.

It was legally binding and unsatisfactory as far as the sentences were concerned.

But that had to be accepted.

And now nobody could actually claim that Avitz didn’t exist, that there were no gas chambers and so on.

Foolish views that are unfortunately still being propagated today.

The Awitz trial certainly had an enormous significance for the victims who felt they were finally getting some justice.

They were being heard.

They realized they could testify as witnesses and that what they said had relevance.

[Music] For the first time since Nuremberg trials, postwar Germans were once again reminded of the Nazis crimes.

uncomfortable for many people and a disruption of the mixed repression and relativization that marked the general mood.

Trials against Holocaust perpetrators were unpopular.

In 1985, Carl Frenzil, SS commander at the Soibar extermination camp, is indicted before the Häen Regional Court.

About 250,000 people were murdered at the camp.

He didn’t matter.

As early as 1940, Carl Frenzil was involved in Axion Tia, the murder of disabled people.

In Soibbor, he is noticeably ruthless and brutal.

He personally beats and murders people with his bare hands.

[Music] His neighbors have little understanding for the trial.

Yes, I know him.

Who do you mean? I have done for quite a while now.

I don’t want to comment on that.

He’s a very nice neighbor.

I know the story, but do you think a conviction would be in anyone’s interest? What should I say? Well, what do you think of him? I don’t know.

I’m staying out of it.

Mr.

Out of what? No idea really.

You don’t know anything? No, that’s the best option.

Everyone makes mistakes.

Some make big ones and some small ones.

Yeah, I think old men should be left alone.

I mean, there has to be an end to all this.

It has to be forgotten at some point.

Carl Fril is sentenced to life imprisonment.

He is allowed to spend his last years in an old people’s home because of poor health.

[Music] [Applause] [Music] In the GDR, anti-fascism is a matter of state policy.

If Nazi crimes are talked about there, then it is about those of others.

The fascists are the West Germans.

[Music] We’re talking about almost a million people who belong to the Vafness S alone.

And of course, a certain percentage of them stayed and settled in the GDR and they had to be reintegrated because quite simply they were needed for building up the new society including the economy.

It was inconceivable to exclude them completely.

[Music] In the east, investigations against Nazi criminals lie with the Ministry for State Security, which has assidiously collected files and documents from the Nazi era.

No public prosecutor and no scientist has access to them.

They were so secret that until 1991, nobody knew the files even existed.

11 km of files that nobody knew about and that nobody outside the MFS had access to.

Even within the MFS, I don’t think many people knew that they had this treasure trove of files at their disposal.

Whoever had the files had power over the information and could thus act unobserved by the public.

In the GDR, the prosecution of SS perpetrators has to do with the tense balance between secrecy and propaganda in the East West conflict.

Whether charges are brought depends above all on whether it seems politically opportune to do so.

In 1983, at a trial in East Berlin, that seems to be the case.

It involves the murder of 650 civilians.

In 1944, men from the SS division Das round up the inhabitants of the French village of Ordor in the market square.

Women and children are locked inside the village church.

Afterwards, SSmen set fire to the church.

The men are herded into barns and shot.

[Music] The worst thing is the disappearance of one’s family.

Under such circumstances, you have lunch with your family and in the evening the family is dead.

There’s no one left.

There’s no house anymore.

There’s nothing.

him.

Roberto Ibraas is one of the few survivors.

[Music] It is simply a massacre that was unimaginable in France until then.

It very quickly assumes a special significance because the French government, the interim government, decide to make Orador a village martr that is a symbol of France’s suffering under the German occupation.

By chance, the Stazzaryi come across the file of a suspicious GDR citizen Hines Bart SS Orbush Fur as a platoon leader responsible for the murders at Uridor.

He was indicted in 1983.

The Germans also want to show the French that they’re punishing these perpetrators even after all these years and they’re on the side of the victims.

They simply want to present themselves well to France.

They want to strengthen connections, political connections to France and also emerge as winners in their relationship with France in this German German French triangular relationship.

The trial against Bart attracts international media interest.

[Music] MP Robert Ibraas testifies as a witness against Bart.

At Bart’s trial in East Berlin in 1983, it became clear to me that he had no regrets.

He regretted only one thing that he couldn’t see his grandchildren because he was in prison, but he didn’t find a single word for the little children who died in the church in Orat.

Hinesbart is sentenced to life imprisonment.

The GDR declares that the trial shows how exemplary it is in its prosecution of Nazis, but the is not telling the whole truth.

Two of Hinesbart’s subordinates also turn up in the secret investigation files.

They too were perpetrators at Orador, but neither has to go to court.

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