Tag Archives: Hitler

Hitler’s American Bunker?

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During the 1930s, a strange group of Nazi sympathizers known as the Silver Legion of America built a gigantic, heavily-guarded bunker in Los Angeles. What was the purpose of this bunker? Did they hope to build a Nazi America?

Nazi America – Hitler’s American Bunker?

The members of the Silver Legion of America were known as Silver Shirts. And yes, their bunker was intended to help bring about a Nazi America. Specifically, they planned to ride out World War II within its confines as they waited for Hitler to arrive on American shores.

“This was supposed to be the seat of American fascism from where Hitler would one day run the United States.” ~ Randy Young, Historian

The compound was built by Jessie Murphy, who’d inherited a fortune from family-owned mines. It consisted of a diesel power plant, a concrete water tank, a meat locker, a vegetable garden, 22 bedrooms, and a bomb shelter. It still exists today, although it’s scheduled to be bulldozed in the near future. Here’s more on this strange bunker and its role in the Silver Shirts trying to create a Nazi America from The Daily Mail:

It sounds like the bizzare script of a Hollywood B-movie. In a parallel universe the Nazis have won the war, Adolf Hitler moves to LA where he mingles with the stars of the silver screen while running his evil empire from a luxurious ranch deep in the LA hills.

But during the 1930s, American sympathisers were so confident this exact scenario was actually going happen they spent millions building a deluxe compound ready for their fuhrer’s imminent arrival.

(See The Daily Mail for more on the Nazi America bunker)

Lake Vostok: Hitler’s Secret Antarctica Base?

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For over twenty years, Russian scientists have attempted to break through some two miles of ice and breach the surface of Lake Vostok. Recently, the Russian expedition seemingly vanished. Now, it has reappeared and reports of success are running rampant. What did the expedition find? Nothing at all? New lifeforms? A Nazi submarine complete with Hitler’s corpse?

The Lost World of Lake Vostok?

Lake Vostok has been sealed off from the outside world for somewhere between 400,000 to 20 million years. It remains liquid due to heavy pressure from the ice as well as geothermal heat. Lake Vostok constitutes an extreme environment, not too dissimilar from what one might expect to find underneath the ice on Mars or Jupiter’s moon, Europa. Researchers are hopeful they will find new lifeforms (probably microbial in nature) within its waters.

Lake Vostok = Secret Nazi Base?

However, at least one source is suggesting a different possibility. RIA Novosti is the state-owned Russian news agency that broke the story of the expedition’s success. In its report, RIA Novosti discussed a theory that the Nazis built a secret base in the region. It also mentioned other Antarctica-based rumors: Nazi relics…secret files…and even the corpses of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun which were apparently being set aside for…you guessed it…cloning purposes.

The odds of the Russian expedition discovering Nazi artifacts in the vicinity of Lake Vostok are beyond low. Still, it’s not completely out of the question. The Nazis explored Antarctica in 1939 and were interested in building a naval base in the region. Also, several Nazi submarines, notably the U-977, escaped immediate capture after the war. The activities of these subs remain shrouded in mystery. Here’s more on the Nazi speculation at Lake Novosti from RIA Novosti:

It is thought that towards the end of the Second World War, the Nazis moved to the South Pole and started constructing a base at Lake Vostok. In 1943, Grand Admiral Karl Dontiz was quoted saying “Germany’s submarine fleet is proud that it created an unassailable fortress for the Fuehrer on the other end of the world,” in Antarctica.

According to German naval archives, months after Germany surrendered to the Allies in April, 1945, the German submarine U-530 arrived at the South Pole from the Port of Kiel. Crewmembers constructed an ice cave and supposedly stored several boxes of relics from the Third Reich, including Hitler’s secret files.

It is also rumored that later the submarine U-977 delivered the remains of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun to Antarctica for DNA cloning purposes…

(See the rest on Nazi speculation at Lake Novosti from RIA Novosti)

Does History Control the Future?

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History, we are often told, controls the future. One common refrain is that “those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” But which history? Do “actions speak louder than words?” Or is “the pen mightier than the sword?” What are the lessons of history? Do such lessons even exist?

Control the Past, Control the Future

Many modern historians yearn to do more than just chronicle the past. They wish to be prophets of a sort, using the past to tell us how we should live. This involves compiling historical facts and then using those facts to generate “lessons of history.” And since history is viewed as an overwhelming force with predetermined outcomes, politicians are encouraged to use the giant size of government to combat those outcomes. All in all, since politicians often make decisions based lessons of history, historians are able to wield tremendous power by, in effect, “controlling the past.”

One example of this scenario is historian Michael Bellesiles. Bellesiles’s incredible downfall is recorded by Lew Rockwell in his piece, “Bellesiles: the Larger Context.”

“That is why Michael Bellesiles’s book Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture seemed so notable. The thesis…was that gun ownership was not widespread before Lincoln’s war. Individual gun ownership is really a modern obsession; indeed it is an invention. The thesis seemed counterintuitive, but what scholars call the apparatus was there: immense footnotes and citations suggesting massive research. What really mattered was the subtext. It implied that the gun control advocates had history of their side, that personal ownership of firearms is no more necessary now than in frontier times…Once the original sources were checked out, it turned out that at all crucial junctures, the book was a hoax. His research…didn’t check out. His quotations of first-hand accounts were altered. He trimmed and cut the evidence to match his thesis.”

In other words, Bellesiles constructed false lessons of history in order to influence the present gun control debate. So, how are we supposed to learn from the past? How do we weed through the competing idioms and falsified research to come up with the true lessons of history?

Do Lessons of History Exist?

I would argue that the question is moot since history has absolutely no predictive power. In other words, there are no lessons of history.

“The notion of a law of historical change is self-contradictory. History is a sequence of phenomena that are characterized by their singularity. Those features which an event has in common with other events are not historical.” ~ Ludwig von Mises, Theory and History

Events in history are dependent on an exact sequence of very specific events involving very specific people with very specific emotions and ideas. Thus, Neville Chamberlain’s 1938 appeasement, which failed to stop Hitler’s advance, tells us nothing about how such a strategy would work elsewhere in time. Heck, we can’t even be sure that appeasement was the worst possible strategy.

“The favorite “alternate history” of the interventionists involves World War II and what “would” have happened had Chamberlain not “appeased” Hitler at Munich. “History teaches us,” so the common refrain runs, “that appeasing tyrants only leads to more killing and suffering later. If Hitler had been stopped in 1938, millions of deaths would have been averted.” History teaches us nothing of the sort. It teaches us that an agreement was reached with Hitler in 1938, which Chamberlain famously boasted would guarantee “peace in our time.” The next year, Germany attacked Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany, and a long and bloody conflict ensued. History says nothing about what would have occurred had Britain and France gone to war in 1938. Nor does it teach us what might have happened had they not gone to war over Poland.” ~Gene Callahan

Guerrilla Explorer’s Analysis

History is not a natural science. It doesn’t allow for the creation of lessons and rules that serve to govern the future. Thus, the only time history can truly control our lives if when we let it do so. However, just because the past can’t inform the future doesn’t make it useless. Gene Callahan says it best:

The Great Holocaust Mystery?

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Broadly defined, the Holocaust is a catchall term used to describe the deliberate murder of as many as 17 million Jews, disabled people, homosexuals, Freemasons, political prisoners, POWs, and other so-called undesirables by Nazi Germany. How could ordinary Germans let this happen? Were they unaware of it? Or did they turn a blind eye to it?

The Mysterious Diary of Friedrich Kellner?

On September 13, 1939, a rather extraordinary man sat down to write. It was his first entry in a secret journal that would eventually encompass six years of his life, ten volumes, 861 pages, and over 500 newspaper clippings. That man was Friedrich Kellner. And his diary has ignited a controversy about the role of ordinary Germans in the Holocaust.

Prior to World War II, Kellner campaigned against Adolf Hitler and the Nazis while working for the Social Democratic Party of Germany. After Hitler came to power, Kellner refused to join the Nazi Party. Instead, he took a position as a mid-level justice inspector in and started his now-famous diary which he entitled Mein Widerstand, or My Opposition.

“I could not fight the Nazis in the present, as they had the power to still my voice, so I decided to fight them in the future. I would give the coming generations a weapon against any resurgence of such evil. My eyewitness account would record the barbarous acts, and also show the way to stop them.” ~ Friedrich Kellner, 1968

Kellner’s diary is particularly interesting to Social Historians. It provides incredible insight into the information that was available to ordinary Germans about the Holocaust and other atrocities.

“The decisive thing is that he is not an intellectual, he is an ordinary employee sitting in the provinces who reads the newspapers. He is full of anger about what is happening.” ~ Sascha Feuchert, Head of the Research Unit for Holocaust Literature at Giessen University

What did Ordinary Germans know about the Holocaust?

Through “personal conversations, news reports and keen observation,” Kellner educated himself on the horrifying crimes committed by the Nazis. His diary is chilling to read. Check out these two entries…

“In the last few days Jews from our district have been removed. From here it was the families Strauss and Heinemann. I heard from a reliable source that all Jews were taken to Poland and would be murdered by SS brigades.” ~ September 16, 1942

“Ten years in the penitentiary for a ‘radio crime.’ According to the newspaper that was too little for the chief justice. He sent back the verdict to the original court and demanded the death penalty. Just think: the death sentence for listening to a foreign broadcast on the radio.” ~ April 14, 1943

Of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the most infamous entry. It’s dated October 28, 1941 and is at the heart of much of the recent controversy.

“A soldier on vacation here said he witnessed a terrible atrocity in the occupied parts of Poland. He watched as naked Jewish men and women were placed in front of a long deep ditch and upon the order of the SS were shot by Ukrainians in the back of their heads and they fell into the ditch. Then the ditch was filled with dirt even as he could still hear screams coming from people still alive in the ditch.”

Why didn’t Ordinary Germans try to Stop the Holocaust?

That entry in particular has been cited by Holocaust experts as proof that ordinary Germans were privy to the horrors being conducted by the Nazi regime at concentration camps throughout Occupied Europe.

“These diaries … represent a towering refutation of the well-worn refrain of so many Germans after the war — ‘We knew nothing of the Nazi horrors’.” Elan Steinberg, The American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants

Kellner’s silent opposition did not go unnoticed. He came quite close to being sent off to a concentration camp himself. According to a Nazi official from 1940, “If we want to apprehend people like Kellner we will have to lure them out of their corners and let them incriminate themselves. The time is not ripe for an approach like the one used with the Jews. This can only take place after the war.”

Kellner’s diary has reopened a longstanding debate among historians about the role of ordinary Germans in the Holocaust. After World War II ended, these people separated themselves from the Nazis by claiming they had no knowledge of the atrocities. Of course, Kellner’s diary doesn’t necessarily prove anything. Still, it shows that information about war crimes was accessible to his countrymen. They read the same newspapers he did and it’s reasonable to assume they heard similar first-hand accounts of the horrors. And yet, they did nothing.

But why? Why didn’t more people speak up?

Guerrilla Explorer’s Analysis

The answer to that mystery may lie in a book written by Milton Mayer in 1955. It analyzed the lives of ten ordinary German Christians during the War and their peculiar relationship with the Nazi government. After World War I and the stupendously wrongheaded Treaty of Versailles, Germany was ruined. As such, the ten men eagerly joined the Nazi party, which seemed to offer economic improvement, a sense of community, and national pride.

The Nazi regime encouraged them to, in essence, become one with the state. Love for their country was carefully manipulated into love for their government. This became an issue of absolute importance. Opposing the state meant one was a traitor to his country and thus, to its people. It led to societal exclusion, which was unthinkable to many civilians. Unfortunately, the alternative was to essentially accept the government’s activities as good and righteous. And that meant turning a blind eye to Nazi atrocities or even participating in them.

Mayer’s work gives us valuable insights into the nature of fascism and the role it played in causing ordinary people to embrace hatred, violence, and murder. Incidentally, Mayer conducted his interviews eight years after Nazi Germany had fallen. He discovered that the ten men continued to idolize Hitler as a sort of Savior of Germany. They missed the sense of community, security, and national pride. When he asked them what it was like to live under tyranny, they provided a universal response, which informed the title of his book. And what was that title you ask?

They Thought They Were Free

Did Hitler Fake His Death?

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According to history books, Adolf Hitler shot and killed himself on April 30, 1945 while residing in an underground bunker in Berlin. His remains were subsequently burnt. But this story has long been questioned. Did Hitler truly die in the bunker? Or did he escape to somewhere else, unidentified and unpunished? Was there a Hitler Death Conspiracy?

The Hitler Death Conspiracy?

While most people believe the official version of Hitler’s suicide, others are unconvinced. Perhaps the most diligent and respected researcher in this area is Argentina-based journalist and historian Abel Basti. In 2010, Basti published El exilio de Hitler / Hitler’s Exile: Las pruebas de la fuga del fuhre a a la Argentina, in which he claimed that the official story was a fabrication. In fact, he believes in a Hitler Death Conspiracy.

According to an interview with Deadline-Live, Basti believes that Hitler escaped the Allies and fled across the ocean, ultimately taking up residence in Argentina.

“Hitler escaped via air from Austria to Barcelona. The last stage of his escape was in a submarine, from Vigo, heading straight to the coast of Patagonia. Finally, Hitler and Eva Braun, in a car with a chauffeur and bodyguard—a motorcade of at least three cars—drove to Bariloche (Argentina). He took refuge in a place called San Ramon, about 15 miles east of that town. It is a property of about 250,000 acres with a lake-front view of Lake Nahuel Huapi, which had been German property since the early twentieth century, when it belonged to a German firm by the name of Schamburg-Lippe.”

Evidence Supporting the Hitler Death Conspiracy?

Here is some of the evidence Basti uses to back up his various claims of a Hitler Death Conspiracy.

  • Hitler escaped to Spain?: Several eyewitnesses, including a still-living Jesuit priest “whose family members were friends of the Nazi leader,” spotted him in Spain after his supposed death. FBI documents indicate they were looking for Hitler in Spain after the end of World War II. And an “authenticated secret German document…lists Hitler as one of the passengers evacuated by plane from Austria to Barcelona on April 26, 1945.”
  • The Secret Submarine?: A British secret services document indicates that a Nazi submarine convoy left Spain around that time. It stopped in the Canary Islands before finally reaching Argentina.
  • Life in Argentina?: Hitler’s post-war life appears to be a bit of a mystery. Basti has met numerous South American eyewitnesses who say they had known Hitler. They state that the former Nazi leader shaved his head and mustache and had several meetings with other Nazi officials. Also, FBI documents show that there were claims of Hitler living in Argentina after the war.

All in all, the evidence supporting a Hitler Death Conspiracy is pretty flimsy. And yet, so is the evidence that Hitler died in the bunker. It rests on testimony provided by fellow Nazis who were fanatical devotees of Hitler. As such, its not hard to imagine they might’ve lied to help their former leader. It’s also hard to ignore the fact that major intelligence agencies believed that Hitler might’ve survived the war. The FBI conducted “an extensive 11-year probe into the possibility that Hitler faked his own death with a bogus suicide in 1945.” Soviet officials gave conflicting reports on whether or not they had found Hitler’s remains. Meanwhile, Joseph Stain, Premier of the Soviet Union, maintained a strong belief that Hitler escaped Germany, a fact which he relayed to President Truman in 1945.

As for physical evidence, the Soviet Union has long been in possession of skull fragments taken from the bunker. These have always been considered definitive proof that Hitler committed suicide via gunshot. In 2009, forensic investigators examined these fragments and determined that they came from a woman instead. And just like that, all physical evidence pointing to suicide vaporized into smoke. If there is other physical evidence pointing to suicide (or to his escape), its either lost to time or locked away somewhere (the U.S. government continues to keep many of its Hitler-related files classified, supposedly for National Security purposes – this same obsession with secrecy led to the nearly century long classification of World War I documents showing how to create invisible ink).

Guerrilla Explorer’s Analysis

So, did Hitler fake his death and escape to Argentina? Was there truly a Hitler Death Conspiracy? While it’s impossible to say for sure, it certainly seems reasonable. Lesser Nazi officials successfully fled Germany and took up residence in South America. And the testimony supporting the suicide theory seems questionable at best.

Basti is presently searching for Hitler’s grave in Argentina, hoping to prove his case once and for all. We here at Guerrilla Explorer wish him the best of luck. If Hitler escaped, the world deserves to know the truth about how he got away…and why his escape remained a secret for so long.