In September 2024, a rancher clearing land in northern Argentina cut through a section of forest that hadn’t been touched in decades.
His chainsaw hit concrete.
He stopped, looked closer, and saw something that made him call the provincial police.
A wall underground, covered by eight decades of vegetation and soil.
When investigators cleared the area, they found a reinforced structure the size of a large house built into a hillside completely hidden from aerial view.
Inside the first chamber were German naval charts dated April 1945, a radio transmitter, coded log books, and a name stencled on a metal locker.
Corvette and Captain Wernner Hadlitch, U977.
Hadlitch was a yubot commander who’d left Keel in March 1945 with orders to harass Allied shipping in the Atlantic.
His boat surrendered in Argentina on August 17th, 1945, 3 months after Germany surrender.
British and American intelligence interrogated him for weeks, suspicious about the timing and the route.
Hadl claimed he’d been running submerged, unaware the war had ended.
They didn’t believe him, but they had no proof.
He was released.
According to Argentine records, he died in 1982.
But the compound tells a different story.
That rancher had just discovered a fully equipped command post built in the 1940s, stocked with enough supplies for long-term occupation, and clearly designed for someone who didn’t want to be found.
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Now, back to April 1945 when a Yubot commander received orders that were never written down.
To understand why Hadlich ended up in Argentina, you need to understand what was happening in the final weeks of the Reich.
Wernner Hadlitch was 34 years old when the war ended.
A career naval officer who joined the Marine in 1929.
He’d commanded you 977, a type vicot since October 1944.
His record was unremarkable.
Two confirmed merchant ship sinkings, several convoy attacks with no confirmed kills, mostly patrol duty in the Norwegian Sea.
He wasn’t an ace.
He wasn’t political.
His personnel file described him as technically competent.
follows orders precisely.
Good under pressure.
The kind of officer you wanted running a boat in dangerous waters, but not someone who’d make headlines.
U 977 was commissioned in March 1943 and assigned to the 13th Yubo Flotillaa in Tronheim, Norway.
By early 1945, the boat had completed seven patrols, mostly uneventful.
The crew was experienced 42 men, average age 27, most of them veterans of the Atlantic campaign.
They knew how to stay quiet, how to evade destroyers, and how to survive on limited rations for months at sea.
The boat itself was reliable, not one of the newer models with advanced technology.
Just a solid workhorse that had avoided serious damage through six patrols.
On March 24th, 1945, Hadlich received orders to depart KE for a standard anti-shipping patrol in the North Atlantic.
The orders came through normal channels signed by the operations officer at BDU command.
But several crew members would later tell interrogators that Hadlitch received a second set of orders delivered by hand by an officer they didn’t recognize.
These orders were never logged.
After the war, Hadlich insisted no such orders existed.
The evidence suggests otherwise.
The strategic situation was collapsing.
The Soviets were 40 mi from Berlin.
The western allies had crossed the Rine.
The marine was down to fewer than 60 operational hubot, most of them bottled up in Norwegian fjords or Balta ports.
Grand Admiral Donuts was preparing for the inevitable surrender.
But certain elements within the Nazi hierarchy were planning for something else.
Continuation, escape routes, hidden assets, ways to survive the coming Allied occupation.
E977 departed KE on March 24th with full fuel provisions for 12 weeks and a crew that had been told they were hunting convoys off Newfoundland.
The boat headed north through the Katagat, then west into the North Sea.
Standard route, standard procedures.
On April 2nd, they received a radio message about Hitler’s death.
On May 8th, they received notification of Germany’s unconditional surrender.
Doitz ordered all Ubot to surface, signal their positions, and proceed to Allied ports.
Most debate, United 777 did not.
None of Hadlitch’s crew knew that their commander had already decided their boat would never surrender to the British or Americans, or that their destination had been chosen months earlier by men who were planning for a very long war.
But what Hadlitch was carrying in his forward torpedo room, sealed in watertight containers and never mentioned in any log, would explain why British intelligence spent the next 40 years trying to find him.
On May 10th, 1945, 2 days after Germany’s surrender, U977 was running submerged 200 m west of Ireland, Hadlitch assembled his crew and told them they had a choice.
They could surface, signal the Royal Navy, and spend the next several years in a P camp where they could continue south, stay submerged as much as possible, and reach Argentina.
He gave them an hour to decide.
16 men wanted to surrender.
Hadlitch put them ashore in a rubber boat on the Irish coast that night.
The remaining 26 crew members voted to continue.
What happened next was one of the longest submerged transits in Yubot history.
Hadlich took the boat south through the Atlantic, running deep during the day, surfacing only at night to recharge batteries and ventilate.
They avoided all shipping lanes.
They maintained radio silence.
They ran without lights.
The plan was to hug the African coast, stay far from established patrol routes, and cross the South Atlantic during the southern hemisphere winter when Allied air patrols were less frequent.
The journey took 66 days.
They covered over 7,500 nautical miles.
Most of it submerged or snorkeling.
Food ran low by July.
They were eating one meal a day, mostly canned rations and dried fish.
Fresh water was rationed to half a liter per man per day.
The air inside the boat was foul, thick with diesel fumes and body odor.
Several crew members developed skin infections from the humidity.
The chief engineer reported bearing problems with the poor diesel, but they couldn’t risk surfacing long enough for repairs.
On July 12th, they crossed the equator.
By late July, they were running submerged during the day off the Brazilian coast, moving only at night.
Hadlitch navigated by dead reckoning in brief periscope observations of coastal landmarks.
They had no updated charts, no weather reports, no intelligence on Allied patrol patterns.
They were running blind, hoping to reach Argentine waters before fuel or provisions ran out completely.
The boat’s log examined by British intelligence after Hadllet’s surrender showed careful navigation and fuel management.
Every course change was recorded, every battery charge calculated, but the log had gaps.
Three entries were torn out.
Several pages showed signs of having been written after the fact.
The ink slightly different.
The handwriting too neat.
Something had been removed from the official record.
Hadlitch would never explain what.
On August 17th, 1945, 9ine77 surfaced in the Mardell Plata Harbor and signaled Argentine authorities.
The crew was exhausted, emaciated, and suffering from various illnesses.
The boat was filthy, low on fuel, and mechanically degraded, but it was intact.
Hadlitch radioed that he’d been running submerged since May 10th, unaware of a surrender, and was now offering to turn over his boat to the Argentine government.
It was a calculated lie.
The boat’s log clearly showed they’d received the surrender order.
On May 8th, Argentine authorities interned the crew and impounded the boat.
Within 48 hours, British and American intelligence officers arrived in Buenus Aries demanding access.
They suspected 977 had transported high-ranking Nazis to South America.
They questioned Hadlitch for 6 weeks trying to break his story.
He never changed it.
He insisted he’d carried no passengers, no gold, no documents, just a crew trying to avoid capture.
The Allies searched every compartment, x-rayed the hall, and found nothing.
They released him in October 1945.
What they didn’t know was that Hadlitch had already made contact with an Argentine officer who had helped him disappear into the interior and that the cargo he’d carried safely hidden before the surrender was already moving inland.
The answer to where that cargo went would remain hidden until 2024 when a forensic accountant in Buenesus Aries noticed something peculiar in declassified Argentine banking records from 1946.
The official investigation into 977 closed in November 1945.
The Allied conclusion.
Hadlitch was telling the truth about being a rogue commander who decided to flee rather than surrender, but he’d carried no passengers and no contraband.
The boat was scuttled off Mardell Plata in January 1946.
Hadlitch was given Argentine residency and disappeared from intelligence files.
The British remained suspicious but had no evidence to pursue charges.
Hadlitch’s story became a footnote in books about Nazi escape routes.
He himself contributed to the myth by publishing a memoir in 1952 titled Ubot 977 66 days underwater.
In it, he claimed to be an apolitical officer who’d simply refused to surrender to the British because he feared they’d execute him as a war criminal.
The book sold modestly and reinforced his cover story.
He described the journey in detail, but said nothing about cargo, passengers, or secret orders.
Several investigators weren’t convinced.
In 1947, a British MI6 officer named David Thornton compiled a report on suspicious Ubot arrivals in Argentina.
He noted that U977 had arrived with ballast that didn’t match its fuel consumption records.
The boat should have been riding higher in the water, but photographs showed it sitting low, suggesting heavy cargo in the forward compartments.
Thornton recommended continued surveillance of Hadlich.
His report was filed and forgotten.
Hadlitch lived quietly in Buenus, Aries for three decades.
He worked as a technical adviser for an Argentine shipping company, married a local woman in 1954, and had two children.
He gave occasional interviews to naval historians, but avoided detailed questions about his journey.
When pressed about the torn pages in his log, he claimed they’d been damaged by seawater.
When asked about the 66-day transit, he said he’d survived on determination and luck.
He never wavered from a story.
In 1978, a German journalist named Klaus Fischer traveled to Argentina to interview aging Nazi fugitives.
He met Hadlitch, then 67 years old, and asked about rumors that you 977 had transported documents from the Reich Chancellery.
Hadlitch laughed and said, “If I brought Hitler’s secrets to Argentina, do you think I’d be living in a two-bedroom apartment?” Fischer believed him.
He published the interview in Derpiegel and moved on to other subjects.
Hadlitch died in May 1982 officially of heart failure.
His obituary in the Buenus Aries Herald described him as the last yubot commander to surrender.
His family held a small funeral.
No German officials attended.
His estate consisted of a modest pension, some furniture, and a metal trunk that his widow donated to a local maritime museum.
The museum cataloged its contents, naval uniforms, metals, photographs, and stored it in a basement.
No one examined it closely.
For decades, Argentina’s interior kept its secrets until the forest gave oneup.
The property where the compound was discovered changed hands four times between 1945 and 2024.
In 1946, it was purchased by a holding company registered in Monte Vido, Uruguay.
The company had no listed shareholders and dissolved in 1952.
In 1953, the land was sold to an Argentine agricultural cooperative that used it for cattle grazing.
In 1978, it was purchased by a forestry company that planted pine trees across most of the acreage.
In 2019, it was sold to the current owner, a rancher named Sebastian Morales.
The location was remote, 320 km northwest of Buenos Aries in Rolling Hill Country near the town of Pergamino.
The nearest paved road was 8 km away.
The property was 450 hectares, mostly forest and pasture.
No structures were visible from the air.
No utilities ran to the site on paper.
It was worthless except for timber and grazing.
The perfect place to hide something.
In 1998, a historian named Dr.
Eduardo Sans published a book about Nazi assets in Argentina.
He’d spent 5 years combing through declassified Argentine intelligence files and interviewing elderly witnesses.
One chapter discussed rumors of safe houses built in the 1940s for fugitive German officers.
Sans identified 12 possible locations based on property records showing suspicious purchases by foreign nationals.
The Pugamino property wasn’t on his list.
The holding company’s registration had hidden its German connections.
Technology improved.
Satellite imagery became publicly available.
Researchers could examine remote areas from their computers.
In 2015, a team from the University of Buenus Aries used archival aerial photographs to search for hidden structures in areas known to have housed Nazi fugitives.
They found several abandoned buildings and bunkers, all previously known.
The Pergamino site looked like empty forest.
The compound’s reinforced concrete roof covered with soil and vegetation was invisible from above.
Meanwhile, British intelligence files on 977 remained classified.
In 2003, the British National Archives released some documents under the 50-year rule, but the most sensitive files on South American Nazi networks stayed sealed.
Researchers could see references to ongoing investigations and subjects of interest in Argentina, but the names and locations were redacted.
Hadlitch appeared in several documents, always with a note.
No current intelligence.
Subject: deceased 1982.
What no one outside a very small circle knew was that Hadlitch had visited the Peramino property at least twice a year from 1946 until his death.
He’d made the 8-hour drive from Buenus Aries, stayed for several days, and returned.
His family thought he was consulting for shipping companies in the interior.
The truth was different and it was waiting in a hillside sealed behind concrete and steel for someone to accidentally cut through it with a chainsaw.
When investigators finally entered the compound in September 2024, what they found in the main chamber would connect directly to three other Nazi facilities discovered across Argentina and reveal a network no one knew existed.
Sebastian Morales called the Peramino police on September 14th, 2024 and told them he’d found what looked like a German bunker.
The police called the provincial government.
The government called the federal police.
By September 16th, a team from the National Institute of Anthropology and Historical Thought was on site with ground penetrating radar and excavation equipment.
Dr.
Lasia Vargas, the lead archaeologist, brought a Geo Radar Pro 16 system capable of imaging structures up to 10 m deep.
The initial scans revealed a complex measuring roughly 35 m by 18 m built into the hillside with reinforced concrete walls.
The structure had at least six separate chambers, all interconnected by corridors.
The roof was 1.
2 m of concrete covered by 2 m of soil.
The entrance the section Morales had accidentally exposed was sealed with a steel door that had been welded shut from inside.
The team used a plasma cutter to breach the door.
On September 19th, Dr.
Vargas and two colleagues entered wearing respirators and carrying portable lighting.
The air inside was stale but breathable.
The ventilation system had been welldesigned.
The first chamber was a common room furnished with tables, chairs, a wood stove, and shelving.
Everything was covered in dust but intact.
On the wall were three framed photographs of German naval vessels.
On the table was a half-finish chess game.
The second chamber was a communications room.
A tail funkin radio transmitter sat on a workbench connected to an antenna mast that had been cleverly disguised as a dead tree above ground.
Next to the radio were coded log books dating from August 1945 to March 1946.
The codes were standards marine, but the message content was encrypted beyond the standard naval cipher.
Dr.
Vargas photographed everything and called for cryptography experts.
The third chamber was storage crates of canned food, medical supplies, fuel drums, ammunition boxes.
The supplies were German military issue marked with werem and marine stamps.
One crate contained documents, personnel files, technical manuals, navigation charts.
Another contained currency, Argentine pesos, US dollars, and Swiss franks, totaling approximately $180,000 in 1945 currency value.
A third contained something unexpected.
Geological survey maps of Patagonia marked with mineral deposits.
The fourth chamber was a dormatory with eight bunks.
Personal items remained on foot lockers, clothing, toiletries, books.
One foot locker had a name stencled on it.
KKKPW Hadlitch.
Inside were naval dress uniforms, iron cross metal, and a leather journal written in German.
The journal covered the period from August 1945 to February 1946.
Dr.
Vargas handled it with gloves and placed it in an archival bag.
The fifth chamber was what Dr.
Vargas would later describe as a planning room.
The walls were covered with maps of South America, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay.
Pins marked specific locations.
Lines connected them suggesting routes or networks.
On a desk were blueprints, construction plans for similar facilities.
At least 11 other locations were marked on the maps.
Some matched known Nazi sites.
Others were new.
The sixth chamber was locked.
a steel door with a mechanical combination lock, the kind used in bank vaults.
The team brought in a locksmith on September 23rd.
It took 6 hours to crack the mechanism.
What they found inside changed the entire investigation.
The vault chamber contained 23 sealed metal containers, each marked with a serial number and a Nazi eagle stamp.
And when forensic specialists opened the first container, they found something that explained why the British had never stopped looking for Hadlitch.
The federal police secured the site and called in specialists from the National Intelligence Secretariat, Argentina’s Civilian Intelligence Agency.
What had started as an archaeological curiosity was now a matter of national security.
The metal containers were carefully removed and transported to a secure facility in Buenus Aries for analysis.
Dr.
Vargas was joined by a team that included cryptographers, forensic accountants, naval historians, and intelligence analysts.
The first container was opened on September 27th.
Inside were documents, over 400 pages of typed reports, handwritten notes, and operational orders, all in German.
All classified Gaha Reich, secret Reich matter.
The earliest documents were dated March 1945.
The latest were from April 30th, 1945, the day Hitler died.
A preliminary review revealed they dealt with financial transfers, asset movements, and relocation plans for key personnel.
Several bore signatures of high-ranking SS officers.
Dr.
Hermman Wolf, a German historian specializing in Nazi documentation, was brought in as a consultant.
He examined the papers for 3 weeks and determined they were genuine.
The paper stock, ink chemistry, typewriter fonts, and signature analysis all match known Reich Chancellory and SS documentation from 1945.
What made them significant was their content.
These weren’t random documents.
They were part of a systematic plan to establish what Wolf called continuity structures, hidden networks to support fugitive Nazi officials.
Hadlitch’s journal was translated by Dr.
Sophia Ramos, a linguist at the University of Bueneseries.
The journal described his arrival in Mardell Plata, his interrogation by Allied intelligence and his subsequent release, but it also described meetings with German expatriots in Buenus Aries who helped him establish the Peramino compound.
The journal mentioned cargo delivered as ordered and materials secured per protocol.
On February 14th, 1946, Hadlitch wrote, “Final transfer complete.
Documentation archived.
My obligation fulfilled.
The cryptography team led by Dr.
Carlos Menddees worked on the radio log books.
The base level encryption was standards marine, but the messages themselves used a secondary cipher.
Mendes recognized it as a modified Enigma variant using a code book that changed daily.
Without the code book, decryption would take years.
But one of the metal containers held a surprise.
and tacked Enigma machine complete with rotor settings and code book sheets for 1945 to 46.
Using a code book, Mendes’s team decrypted 87 messages sent from the Peramino compound between August 1945 and March 1946.
The messages went to addresses in Paraguay, Chile, and Argentina.
All locations that match pins on the wall maps.
The content was operational.
Subjects relocated successfully.
Funds transferred as arranged, documentation secured.
The system was a communication network connecting multiple safe houses and fugitive cells across South America.
The forensic accounting team examining the financial documents traced wire transfers from Swiss banks to Argentine accounts between 1945 to48.
The amounts totaled over $12 million in 1945.
The recipient accounts belong to shell companies that had purchased properties across Argentina and neighboring countries, including the Pergeamino site.
Several of these properties had been identified in previous investigations as Nazi refues.
Others were new discoveries.
One document stood out, a typed list of 47 names with corresponding locations and dates.
The list was titled Relocation Schedule Phase 2.
Dr.
Wolf cross referenced the names with known Nazi fugitives.
12 matched individuals who’d been confirmed in South America after the war.
Eight matched suspected fugitives who were never found.
The remaining 27 names were unknown.
Further research revealed several were mid-level SS officers, Gustapo agents, and Wormock intelligence personnel.
Exactly the kind of operatives who could manage a clandesta network.
The geological survey maps in the storage chamber revealed another dimension.
The marked mineral deposits corresponded to tungsten, titanium, and uranium or sites in Patagonia.
Several documents discussed resource development and industrial capacity.
The implication was clear.
This wasn’t just an escape network.
It was an attempt to establish an economic base for a potential forthright.
Whether this was delusional planning or a serious effort remained unclear, but the preparation was extensive.
Physical evidence corroborated the documentary findings.
The ammunition in the storage chamber included rounds for MP40 submachine guns and Luger pistols, standard weremocked weapons.
Ballistic analysis showed several rounds have been fired.
There were impact marks on the concrete walls of the firing range in the hillside.
Someone had been training here.
The food supplies had German packaging, but purchase receipts found in a filing cabinet showed they’d been acquired in Buenus Aries in 1945 to 46.
Someone had been supplying the compound for months.
DNA analysis was attempted on personal items from the dormatory.
Hair samples from a comb in Hadlitch’s foot locker yielded a partial genetic profile.
Comparison with his descendants, his grandson still lived in Bueneseries, confirmed the match.
Hadlitch had definitely used this facility, but the other foot lockers contained items from at least seven other individuals, none of whom could be identified from available reference samples.
But the final container number 23 marked Nerf Commandanton held the document that tied everything together and confirmed what British intelligence had suspected for 79 years.
Container 23 was opened on October 18th, 2024 in the presence of Dr.
Vargas, Dr.
Wolf and two representatives from Argentina’s Foreign Ministry.
Inside was a single document, a 16-page operational order typed on Reich Chancellory Stationary dated March 20th, 1945, signed by Martin Borman.
The order was addressed to Yubot Command special operations and outlined a plan code named actionbrook operation bridge.
The document was explicit.
Selected Yubot commanders were to be given sealed orders to transport essential materials and selected personnel to designated locations in South America.
The materials included classified documents, financial instruments, and technical specifications.
The personnel included intelligence operatives and administrative specialists, people who could establish and maintain covert networks.
The Ubot were to depart in March and April 1945 before Allied forces could interdict them in port.
Hadlitch was one of six commanders selected.
His specific orders were to transport documentation related to SS financial operations and the identities of intelligence assets in South America.
He was to establish a secure communications facility and serve as a relay point for other fugitives arriving by different routes.
The Pugamino compound was designated station echo.
one node in a larger network spanning Argentina, Chile, and Paraguay.
The evidence matched perfectly.
977 had departed KE on March 24th for days after Borman’s order.
The boats ballast discrepancies noted by British intelligence in 1947 were explained by the metal containers.
Each weighed approximately 40 kg, totaling nearly a ton of cargo in the forward torpedo room.
The torn pages in the boat’s log corresponded to entries covering the unloading of cargo after arrival in Mardell Plata.
Hadlitch had removed evidence of what he’d carried and where it had gone.
The geological surveys and industrial planning documents represented a secondary objective, establishing economic self-sufficiency for the network.
Several fugitives with mining and industrial expertise had been relocated to areas near the mineral deposits.
The plan was ambitious but ultimately failed.
Most of the fugitives were captured or died before any serious development could begin.
The few who survived like Hadlitch maintained the network for a few years before collapsed from lack of resources and internal conflicts.
Dr.
Wolf’s analysis concluded that Action Brookke had been a sophisticated contingency plan but had achieved limited success.
Of the six Ubot selected, only two reached South America.
U 977 and U 530, which surrendered in July 1945.
The other four were either sunk, captured, or scuttled before departing Germany.
The network managed to support perhaps two dozen fugitives for 3 to 5 years.
But by 1950, most sites have been abandoned.
The Pugamino compound was sealed in March 1946, suggesting Hadlitch had fulfilled his mission and moved on.
The British suspicions had been correct.
977 had carried contraband cargo and had established a refuge network, but they’d never found proof because Hadlitch had been careful.
The Argentine authorities had been either complicit or negligent, and the technology of the 1940s couldn’t detect a buried concrete structure in remote forest.
It took 79 years and a rancher’s chainsaw to crack the case.
The revelation forced reassessment of other Yubot surreners in South America.
U 530s commander Otto Wormouth had also been interrogated and released.
His boat had also shown ballast discrepancies.
Argentine investigators are now searching for a second compound, possibly in Patagonia, based on coordinates found in the Peramino documents.
As of January 2025, the search continues.
Hadlitch’s grandson, Klaus Hadlitch, was interviewed in November 2024.
He said, “My grandfather never spoke about the war except to repeat the story in his book.
After he died, my grandmother told me he’d had nightmares for years.
I always thought it was combat trauma.
Now I understand he’d been carrying a much heavier burden.
The Pugamino compound is now a protected historical site under the jurisdiction of Argentina’s National Parks Administration.
The entrance has been reinforced and secured.
Public access is prohibited, but researchers can apply for permits.
The documents recovered from the site have been digitized and are being analyzed by an international team.
Publication is expected in 2026.
The metal containers, the Enigma machine, and selected artifacts are now displayed at the Argentine Naval Museum in Bueneseries.
The exhibit is titled The Last Mission 977 and the Hidden Network.
Includes photographs from the compound, translations of key documents, and Hadlitch’s uniform from his foot locker.
The exhibit text notes.
This facility represents the final chapter of Nazi Germany’s attempt to survive beyond defeat.
It failed, but its existence reminds us that totalitarian regime’s plan for contingencies, even their own destruction.
Hadlich lived 37 years after sealing the compound.
He married, raised children, and worked an ordinary job.
To his neighbors, he was just another German immigrant.
But twice a year he drove eight hours to check on a secret that could never be revealed.
When he died in 1982, the secret died with him.
Or it would have if a rancher hadn’t needed to clear forest in 2024.
The truth traveled 7,500 nautical miles in a Ubot, was buried in Argentine soil for 79 years, and finally surfaced because someone wanted to plant grass for cattle.
Sometimes history waits that long.
