Declassified Files Renew Controversy Over Hitler's Alleged Escape to Argentina

By Kamaran Aziz

ERBIL (Kurdistan24) – Shocking new claims by a former CIA agent and a wave of newly declassified documents have reignited one of the most persistent historical conspiracy theories: that Adolf Hitler faked his death and fled to Argentina, where efforts were allegedly made to construct a Fourth Reich in South America.

According to a report by the Daily Mail, Bob Baer, a former CIA officer with a 21-year intelligence career, has stated that a soon-to-be-released cache of documents from Argentina may challenge the official account of Hitler’s death in April 1945. The documents, authorized for declassification by Argentine President Javier Milei in February, are expected to shed new light on Nazi escape networks and the alleged protection offered by successive Argentine governments to fugitive Nazi figures.

Baer believes the records could reveal direct connections between the Nazi leadership and the Argentine state, including former President Juan Perón’s support for Nazi scientists, such as funding for a 1950s nuclear fusion research project on Huemul Island near Bariloche. "If you were going to hide Hitler, that's where you'd do it," Baer told the Daily Mail, pointing to a 2015 archaeological discovery of a remote compound in Argentina’s Misiones province, outfitted with modern utilities and containing Nazi-era memorabilia.

The resurfacing of these claims coincides with a report by the Jerusalem Post, which noted that Baer suspects the documents will outline evidence of Nazi plans for a nuclear strike on Manhattan, alongside schemes for money laundering and building a Nazi stronghold in South America.

While historians broadly agree that Hitler and his wife, Eva Braun, died by suicide in Berlin’s Führerbunker on April 30, 1945, and that their remains were later identified through dental records and destroyed by Soviet authorities, Baer and other proponents of the escape theory cite anomalies such as a 2009 DNA analysis showing a supposed Hitler skull fragment held in Moscow actually belonged to a woman.

Baer is not alone in this line of inquiry. Former UN war crimes investigator John Cencich, who worked with Baer on the History Channel’s Hunting Hitler, acknowledged the existence of Nazi fugitives in Argentina but expressed skepticism regarding an organized effort to revive the Reich. “Many of them were still marching to the tune of Hitler, and maybe didn't believe that Hitler was dead,” Cencich told the Daily Mail. “But these were just demoralized former Nazis who were living in the past.”

According to France24’s “Truth or Fake” program, much of the information circulating on social media—including a widely shared image of Hitler with a Colombian man named Philippe Citroen—is derived from CIA reports already declassified in 2017, during the release of the JFK assassination files. The documents describe a 1955 photo submitted by Citroen, allegedly showing Hitler in Colombia. CIA analysts at the time dismissed the report as lacking credibility, concluding that neither the agent who reported it nor the analyst who received it could verify the claims.

Further skepticism is warranted, notes France24, as other CIA documents from 1955 directly recommend the matter be dropped, describing the Hitler survival story as fanciful and unsubstantiated. French researchers in a 2018 dental study also confirmed Hitler’s death in 1945 through forensic analysis of teeth held in Moscow.

Nevertheless, President Javier Milei's decision to declassify Argentina's records on Nazi fugitives remains significant. According to France24, the files could reveal financial transactions and networks that enabled the escape of as many as 10,000 Nazi collaborators through so-called "ratlines" that passed through Spain and Italy before crossing the Atlantic to South America.

Among those known to have escaped were Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann and Auschwitz’s infamous physician Josef Mengele. The Simon Wiesenthal Center has pushed for the release of these documents, seeking answers about how these individuals evaded justice and what role, if any, was played by local governments and international institutions.

As Baer put it, “The CIA is not run by the curiosity of officers in the field.” He argues that if the agency was investigating sightings of Hitler ten years after the war, it suggests that Washington, at some level, considered his survival plausible.

Whether the forthcoming Argentine documents will shift the historical consensus remains to be seen. But for now, they continue to fuel one of the most controversial—and emotionally charged—narratives of the postwar era: that the architect of the Holocaust may have evaded justice and lived out his final years far from the ruins of Berlin.