The Hunt for Adolf Eichmann: Case Closed

At the end of World War II, many Nazi officials were captured and tried for their crimes. But oneof the architects of the Holocaust, Adolf Eichmann, slipped through the cracks…repeatedly eluding Nazi hunters from around the globe. How was Adolf Eichmann finally captured after fifteen years on the run? Thank you to our experts who contributed to this episode: Kevin Hymel, Amory Sivertson, Anand Toprani, Sami Jarroush, Paul Springer, Cristina A. Bejan, and Katherine Landdeck. If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow History’s Greatest Mysteries to never miss an episode! History’s Greatest Mysteries is a History Channel Original Podcast, brought to you by Rewind Studios. 🎧 Need More to Binge? Listen to other Rewind Studios Originals, Hidden History and Government That Doesn’t Suck, wherever you get your podcasts! Follow us on Social Instagram: @RewindStudios https://www.instagram.com/rewindstudiosTikTok: @RewindStudios https://www.tiktok.com/@rewindstudios See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  And now a History Channel original podcast presented by Rewind.

• 0:10Speaker 00

  Today, the global manhunt for a Nazi war criminal who vanished after the Holocaust and the stunning operation that finally brought him to justice.

• 0:21Speaker 01

  Adolf Eichmann was the architect of the Nazi Holocaust.

• 0:25Speaker 02

  He murdered millions of Jews, yet the Allies never even knew his name.

• 0:31Speaker 03

  He takes this idea of the final solution and turns it into almost an assembly line process.

• 0:38Speaker 00

  At the end of World War II, Eichmann hides in plain sight.

• 0:42Speaker 04

  There's so much chaos that the Allies don't even realize that they have Eichmann in custody, and by the time they realize it, he's vanished.

• 0:51Speaker 02

  Nazi hunters are convinced that Eichmann is still alive, but a decade passes and no one knows where he could possibly be.

• 0:59Speaker 00

  Now we explore the top theories surrounding Adolf Eichmann's whereabouts leading up to his dramatic capture.

• 1:06Speaker 03

  These Nazis in Germany end up with a really surprising ally, the Catholic Church.

• 1:11Speaker 05

  An Israeli investigator receives a tip-off that Adolf Eichmann has been recently spotted in Kuwait.

• 1:18Speaker 01

  There was only one existing photograph of Eichmann. It's really like hunting a ghost.

• 1:24Speaker 00

  What really happened to Adolf Eichmann?

• 1:31Speaker 00

  Welcome to History's Greatest Mysteries, a History Channel original podcast presented by Rewind Studios. Each episode, we take a deep dive into some of the greatest unanswered questions from history, backed by some of the foremost experts on the subject. This week is a special case-closed investigation where our hunt for answers ends with a solution. And today, we're diving into the hunt for Adolf Eichmann.

• 2:05Speaker 00

  It's January 1942, and in a lakeside mansion near Berlin, 15 senior Nazi officials are meeting. The topic: the systematic annihilation of Europe's Jews, what the Nazis refer to as "the final solution."

• 2:21Speaker 04

  Along with these high officials, there's one lieutenant colonel, very quiet, very unassuming, taking notes, but he's also providing information like the amount of Jews in different countries. This is Adolf Eichmann.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  Eichmann is not really well-known as a front man of the Nazis. He's more of a behind-the-scenes bureaucrat, and he really views the killing of millions of Jews as sort of this logistical problem that he's in charge of solving.

• 2:50Speaker 00

  Eichmann grows up in Austria, the son of an accountant. He joins the Nazi Party in 1932 at age 26.

• 2:59Speaker 06

  Eichmann had joined the SD, the SS's intelligence agency, in 1934. In 1936, he's recruited by a member of the SD to join the so-called Jewish Affairs Division. And eventually, he comes to take over this division. He makes a name for himself after the annexation of Austria, where he works out a system for basically speeding up the immigration of Jewish populations outside of Germany.

• 3:24Speaker 02

  He figures out how to conduct these mass deportations as fast as possible. He devises a system to give deportation papers to Jewish people on the spot while also stripping them of their possessions, stripping them of the wealth, and getting them essentially out of the country within less than an hour's time.

• 3:43Speaker 01

  Once World War II starts, Adolf Eichmann becomes more and more fanatical. And once the final solution is decided upon, he becomes the central operational figure behind the Holocaust. Hitler is the one who's ordering these atrocities, but Eichmann is the bureaucrat in charge of actually carrying them out.

• 4:04Speaker 05

  There are a lot of pieces of information that come out of Nazi Germany during World War II, and it's just so hard for Westerners to comprehend this scale of tragedy that it's not until we start to overrun some of the outlying murder camps that we can't deny what's going on anymore.

• 4:24Speaker 01

  In January of 1945, Hitler retreats to his bunker. By April of that year, he's dead. And then on May 7 of 1945, the Germans surrender.

• 4:36Speaker 02

  Despite the fact that many high-ranking Nazis have been captured, Eichmann is never found. And on top of that, most of the world has never even heard his name.

• 4:49Speaker 00

  Six months go by before the public finally learns about Adolf Eichmann and his role in the Holocaust.

• 4:55Speaker 04

  In November of 1945, all eyes are on Nuremberg, Germany, where 24 Nazi officials are put on trial for their atrocities during World War II. And it's here that Adolf Eichmann's name first comes up.

• 5:09Speaker 01

  Prosecutors quote this Hungarian Jewish leader who tells the story of a mass deportation of Hungarian Jews from Budapest. So there's a special unit that is running operations there, and Eichmann is in charge of that unit. He is the one who's going to decide who's going to the gas chambers and who will live.

• 5:30Speaker 00

  A few weeks later, on January 3, 1946, an SS captain with ties to Eichmann is called to testify.

• 5:39Speaker 06

  He had joined the Nazis' intelligence service and ended up becoming one of Eichmann's men in the so-called Jewish Affairs Division of the Gestapo.

• 5:48Speaker 04

  He claims that he pushed back against this plan to kill millions of Jews, but Eichmann simply told him, "You're being too sentimental about it."

• 5:56Speaker 00

  The Nuremberg testimony gives Eichmann worldwide notoriety, but his whereabouts are still unknown. Finding Eichmann won't be easy, but after the revelations at Nuremberg, it's a priority. The question is, where could he be?

• 6:12Speaker 04

  There are millions of Germans packed into POW camps all over Europe. The Americans alone have 2 million in captivity, but these camps are cramped, they're not well-organized, they don't have the names of everybody in them. But the obvious place to look for Eichmann is in POW camps around Europe.

• 6:30Speaker 00

  Which brings us to theory number one: he was hiding in a POW camp under a false name.

• 6:38Speaker 02

  Despite the fact that most of the world has never heard the name Adolf Eichmann, the US Counterintelligence Corps has actually been compiling a dossier on him for months.

• 6:48Speaker 05

  Investigators go and track down Eichmann's wife, Vera. They find her in Austria. She claims that she hasn't seen her husband in months, and she doesn't even have a photograph of him.

• 6:59Speaker 01

  It's clear that he was really planning ahead here. He was making sure that there were no pictures of him left over. SS officers tell Allied officials that Eichmann was still alive at the end of the war, and he probably still is. They don't think that Eichmann would have taken his own life the way that other Nazi officials did at this time.

• 7:19Speaker 02

  With all of the chaos and the disorganization and the disarray of these POW camps, it becomes very, very likely that Eichmann is using these POW camps to hide out. The Allies also assume that he's using an alias. The CIC distributes notices to their regional offices, and they call Eichmann, quote, "of the highest importance among war criminals."

• 7:40Speaker 00

  As it turns out, the Americans already have Eichmann in custody, they just don't know it.

• 7:46Speaker 04

  At the end of the war, Eichmann actually goes down into Austria to hide out, and there are tons of Nazis all over the place hiding from the Allies. He meets with his wife and gives her instructions on how to deal with Allied investigators, which he knows are coming. His plan is to head northwest through Germany with his assistant, staying in homes of people who are sympathetic to former Nazis.

• 8:10Speaker 02

  A little later in May, however, Eichmann and his assistant are picked up by a US Army patrol, and they're taken to a US POW camp in Wieden. Eichmann gives a false name, a false identity, by the name of Adolf Barth.

• 8:24Speaker 00

  In the camp, Eichmann plots how to keep from being discovered and how to escape.

• 8:30Speaker 05

  Eichmann is going to be identified sooner or later because every SS officer like Eichmann has a unique identifier that's not common in the rest of the German Wehrmacht. Every SS soldier has his blood type tattooed inside his armpit, and that means if you make all of the captives take off their shirts and hold their hands up in the air, you can quickly pick out the fanatical Nazis.

• 8:53Speaker 04

  He tries to burn that tattoo with cigarettes, but it doesn't work, so he's not going to be able to claim he's not a member of the SS. But there are plenty of SS men who are POWs at the end of the war. So what he tells the Allied officials is that his name is actually Otto Eichmann and that he's a lieutenant colonel in the SS.

• 9:12Speaker 00

  Eichmann makes the switch, thinking Eichmann is close enough to his real surname. If an old acquaintance were to suddenly blurt out his real name, Eichmann in the camp, it would be less likely to rouse suspicion.

• 9:24Speaker 01

  Eichmann knows that he can't play this game forever. He's gotten through a couple of interrogations undetected, but he knows it's only a matter of time before. He's found out to be who he really is.

• 9:36Speaker 02

  He finds some SS officers in the camp who help him in his escape. He's able to forge papers that pass him off as a hunter in the area. And the SS officers in the camp also get him some civilian clothes. And one night, Eichmann is able to climb over a section of barbed wire fence that isn't viewed by any camp guards. And he's able to make his escape into the surrounding woods. And there he vanishes.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  Authorities learn that an SS officer named Otto Eichmann has escaped. And so they interrogate all the other former SS officers that are in the camp. And those people confirm that Otto Eichmann actually is Adolf Eichmann.

• 10:19Speaker 05

  It really shows how disorganized the situation in Europe is at the end of 45 and beginning of 46. The Allies wind up realizing that they'd been looking for Eichmann for months, when in reality, he was hiding right underneath their nose inside one of their own compounds. And so it's a little embarrassing, it's a little frustrating, but it also means that they're pretty hot on his tail.

• 10:41Speaker 07

  It's not just Allied officials who are searching for Eichmann. We also have the Hagena, the Jewish intelligence services that ultimately became the IDF once the Israeli state was established.

• 10:54Speaker 01

  The Hagena tried to find Eichmann by assembling this team of five operatives that are going to track his family. They launched this much more elaborate investigation than the Allied forces had.

• 11:05Speaker 00

  The team travels to Austria and after months of searching, locates the current homes of Eichmann's wife and brother Otto.

• 11:13Speaker 05

  As the members of Hagena start tracking Vera and her brother-in-law, what they discover is the two of them regularly take train trips out to the Austrian countryside, basically between Linz and Salzburg. They always travel separately but arrive at the same time. And they then walk into the forest essentially to a two-story house that's kind of camouflaged from casual observation.

• 11:38Speaker 02

  The team investigates the house. And what they find is there's four men living in it and they never come out. But every night, an individual comes to the door and brings them food. The five-man team from a distance sees one of these figures that they think looks like Eichmann, but they really can't tell. They theorize that this is why Vera and his brother are coming and staying and visiting for a while.

• 12:02Speaker 00

  Sensing they may have found their man, the operatives stage a raid on the chalet.

• 12:07Speaker 05

  One night, while the men are having dinner inside this house, five members of Hagena approach. Two of them kick in the door while the other ones pull guns on the men inside this secluded home. They single out the individual that they think might be Adolf Eichmann, and they remove him from the house.

• 12:24Speaker 02

  The operatives are shouting questions at the man that they're convinced is Adolf Eichmann, but the man is telling them, "I'm not Adolf Eichmann. My name is Wolfgang Bauer." But after a bit of time, Bauer reveals that he actually was an SS officer, but he's still not the man that they're looking for.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  He's not Eichmann, but he knows Eichmann. He served with Eichmann. And he was actually part of the Einstein Group that Eichmann oversaw. This was this mobile death squad that came in and exterminated Jews, usually by shooting them. They killed millions of people.

• 13:00Speaker 00

  Still convinced the man is Eichmann himself, the operatives drag him out into a waiting car and drive him deeper into the woods.

• 13:09Speaker 02

  They say, "If you're not Eichmann, why are Eichmann's wife and brother continually visiting you?" And his only answer is that they were friends with the owner of the chalet where they were staying. They continue, peppering him with questions. One of the operatives is pointing a gun directly at his chest, and Bauer basically just laughs at the operatives. And he tells them, "All you can do is kill me." So that's what the operatives do. They pump bullets into his chest, and they bury him in a shallow grave. And then later, the Hagena go back to their superiors and they tell them that they have successfully killed Adolf Eichmann.

• 13:46Speaker 00

  So that's theory number two. He was shot in Austria.

• 13:51Speaker 05

  Nobody's quite sure what to think about the Eichmann situation. There are some that are convinced that Hagena had gotten the wrong man, that in fact, the individual they shot really was Wolfgang Bauer, and he was telling the truth. He wasn't Eichmann.

• 14:04Speaker 02

  Others, on the other hand, are convinced that Adolf Eichmann is killed by the Hagena, and it's officially over. Case closed. As for the Allied forces, they're not as worried anymore about looking for Nazi war criminals, considering that by 1947, the Allied forces are dealing with, in their minds, a much bigger deal, which is the burgeoning Cold War.

• 14:27Speaker 00

  One man still in pursuit is an Austrian Holocaust survivor named Simon Wiesenthal, who's dedicated his life to hunting down Nazi war criminals.

• 14:37Speaker 05

  Wiesenthal becomes convinced that the Hagena victim was not Eichmann, that this individual was someone else who might have been connected to him. In fact, Wiesenthal is fairly frustrated that they shot the individual rather than bringing him in for deeper interrogation, because he might have been able to offer some clues as to Eichmann's actual whereabouts. But he has to work with the materials that are available to him. So he begins at the beginning, and he starts looking at the individuals that were closest to Eichmann.

• 15:06Speaker 00

  Working with other investigators, Wiesenthal is able to source a photo of Eichmann finally putting a face to the notorious Nazi criminal.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  In December of 1947, Wiesenthal is called to Austria, to the USCIC headquarters, for an urgent meeting. He's told there that Eichmann's wife Vera has just put in an application to have her husband legally declared dead. Now, she says she does this in the interest of their children, but if he is in fact declared dead, the warrants that are out on Eichmann will disappear. The search for him will officially be over.

• 15:43Speaker 07

  And the proof of the death is that there is a report coming from a government officer in Czechoslovakia named Lukas, that he witnessed Eichmann being killed by a Soviet firing squad at the end of World War II.

• 15:58Speaker 00

  Leading to theory number three, he was killed by the Soviets.

• 16:03Speaker 02

  Paul Lukas swears in an affidavit that Eichmann, along with other Nazis, were apprehended by the Red Army. They were lined up, shoulder to shoulder, and executed on April 30, 1945, by members of the Soviet Army.

• 16:19Speaker 01

  Wiesenthal is not buying it. He has interviewed people in the POW camps who said that they saw Eichmann after April of 1945. And he starts thinking Vera has probably submitted this application as an attempt to end the hunt for her husband.

• 16:35Speaker 05

  Wiesenthal petitions the court to essentially postpone the decision about whether Eichmann was alive or dead. Wiesenthal thinks that, given a little bit of time, he can actually prove that Eichmann is still alive.

• 16:46Speaker 02

  He sends investigators to Prague to both find out more evidence on Eichmann and also to basically check the background on Lukas. So this investigation is three years after this alleged shooting. So there's really no evidence to be found there. But what Wiesenthal's researchers do find that's rather fascinating is that Lukas is married to Vera's sister.

• 17:11Speaker 05

  When Wiesenthal approaches the judge and points out that the star witness suggesting that Eichmann was dead is actually married to his wife's sister, the judge is mortified because that's something that the witness should have revealed at the very beginning of the discussion. Ultimately, the judge throws the case out. He can't rule Eichmann dead on the basis of individuals testifying who had a vested interest in an outcome.

• 17:36Speaker 02

  So to Wiesenthal, this pretty much confirms his suspicions. Eichmann is still alive and doing whatever he can to elude the long arm of justice. So Eichmann could presumably be anywhere.

• 17:55Speaker 00

  Coming up, the hunt for Eichmann continues far away from Europe.

• 18:06Speaker 00

  By 1950, with the Cold War heating up, the Allied powers are less focused on hunting Nazi war criminals, but it remains risky for Nazi fugitives, even those with fake identities, to pass through border checkpoints and escape Europe. Nazi hunters like Simon Wiesenthal have no idea if Eichmann is still in Germany or could have escaped thousands of miles away.

• 18:32Speaker 05

  In a major surprise to Western powers, some of the former Nazis are actually gaining assistance escaping Europe, thanks to the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church sees the Nazis as one of the great ways to fight against the evils of communism.

• 18:49Speaker 02

  There are still plenty of fascist sympathizers after World War II, and they start creating these secret routes via safe houses that are called rat lines as a way to help Nazis escape to safer areas. And the Catholic Church plays a role in this because some of these rat lines, some of these safe houses, are monasteries that exist in places like Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, and Italy.

• 19:15Speaker 03

  You have a number of cardinals and a number of upper-level Catholic administrators who are sympathetic to the Nazis, not because of their anti-Jewish stance, but because they saw them as an ally in the fight against communism, which they saw as much worse than even Nazism.

• 19:34Speaker 02

  Italy is vital to all this because in Rome, there's a Catholic bishop named Alois Houdal, who was very pro-Nazi, and he's got the ability to make the fake papers to get these former Nazis out of Europe.

• 19:49Speaker 01

  These papers are accepted by the Red Cross, no questions asked. The Red Cross is really overseeing the flow of refugees. And so these former Nazis and SS officers are basically able to just blend in with other refugees in being able to get out of the country.

• 20:06Speaker 00

  By the early 1950s, investigators believe it's possible Eichmann has taken advantage of the rat lines.

• 20:13Speaker 03

  About 90% of these Nazis escaped Europe through Italy or Spain. And they were on their way, most of them, to South America. Argentina is a safe haven for these Germans.

• 20:24Speaker 01

  President Juan Peron was a close ally of Hitler's during the war. So Houdal knew exactly... Who he was helping here. He writes to Peron, actually, in 1948, and asks for 5,000 visas to help Nazis escape. So Argentina seems like a good place to try to start looking for Eichmann.

• 20:44Speaker 00

  Giving us theory number four. He fled to Argentina.

• 20:50Speaker 02

  There are rumors that start to circulate that by the 1950s, Eichmann has fled to Argentina and has started a life there. Now, for the most part, the newly formed West German government largely ignores a lot of these rumors. But there's one prosecutor that just will not let this information go. He's a German Jewish prosecutor by the name of Fritz Bauer.

• 21:16Speaker 05

  He and his family had fled from German persecution early on in the Third Reich. So he escaped some of the worst evils of the Holocaust. But when he returns to Germany in the post-war era, he's determined to set some of the wrongs right. Bauer can't be too open with what he's up to because he doesn't know who in the German hierarchy might be sympathetic to those individuals and might tip them off to the possibility of their discovery.

• 21:44Speaker 00

  In September 1957, Bauer receives a letter from Lothar Hermann, a blind attorney living in Argentina.

• 21:53Speaker 04

  Hermann is one of the German expats living in Argentina. He's Jewish and part of a rather large Jewish population. Even though Peron is really anti-Semitic, there's a population of about 400,000 Jews living in Argentina.

• 22:08Speaker 02

  Hermann is a survivor of one of the most notorious concentration camps of World War II, Dachau. In fact, he endured such vicious beatings during his time at the camp that he actually lost his eyesight.

• 22:23Speaker 01

  He immigrates to Argentina in 1938 with his wife and his daughter. In 1956, he's living in a suburb of Buenos Aires with his family. And his daughter Sylvia is dating this young German expat named Nick.

• 22:41Speaker 04

  So one night, while having dinner over at the Hermann's house, young Nick says that his dad was a high official in the Wehrmacht, the German army. Nick has no idea that he's talking to a Jewish family. The Hermanns do not publicize the fact that they're Jewish. So he just keeps talking and talking and eventually says, "It's a shame that Nazis were never able to complete their mission of extermination."

• 23:06Speaker 03

  The Hermann family just sits quietly. The father doesn't say anything. He's used to hearing anti-Semitic comments. He knows that this is just how it goes sometimes. He's disappointed that his daughter is dating him, I'm sure. But he just lets it go. A few months later, the Hermann family move a couple of hundred miles away to another town, and the boyfriend is forgotten.

• 23:30Speaker 02

  One day, in April of 1957, Sylvia is reading an article in the newspaper for her father about Nazi war criminals. And she mentions the name Adolf Eichmann. And she says, "Her boyfriend, Nick, said that his last name is Eichmann."

• 23:46Speaker 00

  Lothar Hermann instantly remembers the boy's hateful comments at the dinner table.

• 23:52Speaker 04

  Sylvia is still in touch with Nick, but he's never given her his home address. He gives her a different address to write to to get to him. And oddly enough, while Sylvia and Nick were dating, he never invited her over to his house. So Lothar immediately suspects that this might be Adolf Eichmann's son.

• 24:14Speaker 01

  They want to tell the German authorities or the Argentinian authorities, but they really can't because Nazi sympathizers are everywhere at this point. So instead, they write a letter to the prosecutors in Frankfurt, West Germany. And that's the letter that makes its way to Fritz Bauer. So Bauer's intrigued. He knows that Eichmann's son is named Klaus. But in German, Klaus is actually short for Nicholas. So this seems promising, but he needs more information, such as an address.

• 24:45Speaker 02

  Lothar and Sylvia take a 10-hour train ride from their home back to the suburb of Olivos. And they pretty much spend the day just walking around the town until Sylvia runs into a mutual friend of hers and Nick's that tells her where Nick's house is. So he gives her the address.

• 25:08Speaker 01

  Sylvia goes to the house. The door is answered by a woman who reluctantly lets her in. There is a middle-aged man in glasses. And she thinks that he looks like the guy in the picture that Fritz Bauer had sent to her of Adolf Eichmann, but she's not totally sure. So she asks him. She says, "Are you Mr. Eichmann? Are you Nick's father?" And he sort of tersely responds, "No, I'm his uncle." So she sits down and just strikes up a pleasant conversation with him.

• 25:38Speaker 03

  Nick comes home shortly thereafter and sees Sylvia. Says, "What are you doing here?" "Oh, I just stopped to say hi. I have to go. I have to go." The middle-aged man, wearing glasses, who has claimed to be the uncle, stands up to walk her to the door. And Nick says, "No, Father. I can walk her to the door myself."

• 25:58Speaker 02

  So it would seem that the Hermanns have stumbled on something pretty suspicious. The fact that it took all this time to figure out Nick's address, why was he being so cagey about where he lives? And then when Sylvia arrives to the house, the woman that answers the door reluctantly lets her in. The man claims to be Nick's uncle, but then Nick refers to him as father. Something just is not adding up in this situation.

• 26:29Speaker 05

  Although Fritz Bauer is intrigued, he's got a problem. He can't really rely on German or Argentinian authorities to follow up on this information. There's just too many Nazi sympathizers within both of those populations. So instead, he turns to the new Israeli intelligence service, the Mossad.

• 26:47Speaker 03

  The Mossad go to the house that Hermanns had told them about. But when they get there, they don't think it's the right address. It is ramchekel. It's worn out. And they just can't believe that an SS officer of the rank and fortune of Eichmann would be living there. As they watch the house, they just don't see anybody coming and going that matches Eichmann's description. So they're pretty certain this is a case of mistaken identity.

• 27:14Speaker 01

  The Mossad let the tip go. The Hermanns, though, they don't want to let this go. So in April of 1958, they're going through public records. And they find out that the home is owned by a guy named Francisco Schmidt. And they think that this is just the latest alias of Adolf Eichmann. And so they go back to the Mossad and they say, "Look into Francisco Schmidt." And they do. And they say, "There's no way that Francisco Schmidt is actually Adolf Eichmann." So at this point, they pause their contact with the Hermanns because they just think that they're full of unreliable information.

• 27:51Speaker 04

  A year later, in August of 1959, an independent Nazi investigator, Tuvia Friedman, says that he's been in contact with some high government officials in Germany. And they've told him that Eichmann is not in Argentina. He's in Kuwait.

• 28:08Speaker 00

  And that's theory number five. He was living in Kuwait.

• 28:13Speaker 01

  Now Kuwait, at this time, is this sort of obscure British territory. There's only about 300,000 people living there. North Africa and the Middle East are actually very popular destinations for ex-Nazis.

• 28:25Speaker 02

  Friedman immediately contacts the Israeli Defense Ministry. And he says that Eichmann is in Kuwait. You should send some agents over there to go pick him up. But the ministry pretty much ignores Friedman entirely.

• 28:39Speaker 04

  Israel is a brand-new country. It has a long list of security priorities. And Friedman realizes that Eichmann is not really the top of the list or maybe even the middle of it. But he's not going to give up. So Friedman contacts an Israeli newspaperman and says, "Have I got a scoop for you. Adolf Eichmann, the former Nazi, is living in Kuwait."

• 29:01Speaker 05

  Friedman suddenly becomes an international celebrity. And he uses his fame to draw attention to the fact that Eichmann has not been located.

• 29:10Speaker 04

  Other Nazi hunters are not happy. They believe it's going to do nothing but drive Eichmann either underground or out of Kuwait.

• 29:18Speaker 00

  No solid evidence of Eichmann turns up in Kuwait. And the trail, once again, seems to run cold.

• 29:25Speaker 02

  Nevertheless, Friedman is pleased with what he did because now he's put Adolf Eichmann's name in newspapers all over the world. And this becomes a way to potentially inspire not only Nazi hunters, but actual governments to locate this Nazi war criminal and bring him to justice.

• 29:50Speaker 00

  Coming up, the Eichmann trail leads back to Argentina, but investigators are still short on solid intel.

• 30:05Speaker 00

  In late 1959, there's a rash of antisemitic activity throughout West Germany. Reportedly, swastikas are painted on nearly 700 Jewish sites across the country, along with graffiti reading "Jews Out." It's a painful time, but the attacks do help galvanize all the parties that are or should be hunting down Nazi war criminals.

• 30:29Speaker 01

  It is important to acknowledge that there were still Nazi sympathies. Even though they had been defeated in World War II, that didn't mean that pro-Nazi sentiment completely disappeared. This can explain why it took West Germany so long to take the hunt for Eichmann seriously.

• 30:49Speaker 05

  Up to this point, there has been a lot of foot dragging. West German intelligence has been sitting on a lot of evidence that Adolf Eichmann is alive in Argentina and living under an assumed name.

• 31:00Speaker 00

  After years of pursuing Eichmann, West German prosecutor Fritz Bauer receives new intel pointing him to Eichmann's alleged alias.

• 31:10Speaker 01

  Bauer gets a tip from a man named Gerhard Klammer. And Klammer used to work for a construction company in northern Argentina with a guy named Ricardo Clement. He's never forgotten the man's face, and he's seen it in news coverage as the years have gone by. And he is thoroughly convinced that Ricardo Clement is actually Adolf Eichmann.

• 31:31Speaker 03

  Now, he was German, but he wasn't a Nazi. He was anti-Nazi, as so many Germans were. And so he spends the 1950s trying multiple times to notify the German government that Ricardo Clement is there in Argentina and that he is Adolf Eichmann.

• 31:50Speaker 00

  Bringing us back to theory number six: he was living in Buenos Aires with an assumed name.

• 31:58Speaker 05

  In an amazing coincidence, Klammer is in Buenos Aires, and he sees a man get off the bus that he recognizes as his old coworker Ricardo Clement. He follows the man and writes down the address where the man goes home. Finally, in December of 1959, we might have definitive evidence of where Adolf Eichmann is hiding.

• 32:21Speaker 02

  Klammer's findings make their way to Fritz Bauer, and this is when Bauer starts to slowly put together the pieces of this puzzle. He knows the name Ricardo Clement, because that information was provided to him by the Hermans when Sylvia found that name registered on the electric meter of the house that he's living in. On top of that, Klammer also has a photograph of him and Ricardo Clement standing together. And when Bauer takes this photograph and puts it by the photo that they have of Adolf Eichmann, the resemblance is incredibly striking.

• 32:59Speaker 00

  A few months later, Bauer reaches out to the Mossad. He knows where Eichmann is hiding. He just hopes it's not too late.

• 33:07Speaker 05

  The Mossad recognizes that they might have made a mistake about whether or not Eichmann is still alive and well in Argentina. In March of 1960, a new Mossad agent is sent to Argentina, and he starts to investigate.

• 33:20Speaker 03

  The agent who is assigned this case is Zvi Aharoni. He was known as being very methodical, very unflappable. He could do just about any job that needed to be done. While he and his mother had escaped the Holocaust and gotten to Palestine by 1938, the entire rest of his family was killed. So the idea that he could capture Eichmann was personal.

• 33:46Speaker 01

  Zvi goes to the neighborhood and checks out the house in Buenos Aires, only to find that Ricardo Clement has just recently moved out. There's a team of painters painting the house. So Zvi finds an ally in this young Argentinian kid in the neighborhood, who goes up to the painters and is trying to get the address of where Ricardo Clement moved.

• 34:08Speaker 05

  He claims to be determined to deliver a package to the family that had previously inhabited the home. And it turns out, one of the workers is actually friends with one of the Clement family's sons. And after a little more discussion, he's persuaded to provide the new address where the Clement's family resides.

• 34:27Speaker 01

  This new property was purchased by Eichmann's wife using her maiden name, and they've moved to San Fernando, which is just outside of Buenos Aires. The address is 14 Garibaldi Street.

• 34:40Speaker 02

  Using caution, Aharoni surveils the address. And during his surveillance, he notices a middle-aged man that bears a pretty striking resemblance to Adolf Eichmann. And with this information, Aharoni contacts the Mossad and tells them, quote, "The driver is black." This is a code that basically tells the Mossad that Eichmann has been found.

• 35:11Speaker 04

  With this information, the Prime Minister of Israel, Ben Gurion, decides to send an 11-man team of Mossad agents to Buenos Aires to capture Eichmann and bring him back to Israel. It's called Operation Finale.

• 35:26Speaker 02

  The Mossad agents run surveillance on Eichmann for two months, and they track all of his movements. Because the better they know where he goes, where he stops, what he does during the day, it'll be much easier to figure out when's the best time to strike. And they figure out he gets off the same bus every single day and makes this short walk to his house, and that's when they'll strike.

• 35:48Speaker 00

  On the evening of May 11, 1960, the operation unfolds like a scene from a spy novel.

• 35:56Speaker 05

  Adolf Eichmann has become very set in his daily patterns. Every day, he climbs off of a city bus at 7:40 PM, and he follows the same path to his house just 110 yards away.

• 36:10Speaker 00

  But on this night, 7:40 passes, and Eichmann's bus has yet to arrive.

• 36:17Speaker 01

  Mossad operators are waiting for him near the bus stop. They have a limousine full of agents. They even have a couple guys outside of the car who are sort of pretending to work under the hood. There's another guy in a backup car behind them. 7:40 comes and goes. The bus doesn't come, so now they're confused. This is not how they were expecting things to go down. It's getting later and later, and they realize, really, the longer that they sit there, the more likely it is that they're going to get noticed by someone.

• 36:49Speaker 04

  So finally, a bus arrives. The agent's blood pressure rises. They know that this is the moment, but the bus doesn't stop. It just whizzes by.

• 36:59Speaker 02

  The Mossad agents probably starting to get a little bit nervous. What if somebody tipped off Eichmann? So we should abort for tonight. Maybe we'll try again later with the hopes that this operation will work.

• 37:11Speaker 02

  But then, five minutes later, at 8:05 PM, another bus pulls up to the bus stop.

• 37:18Speaker 00

  25 minutes late, their suspect steps off the bus.

• 37:22Speaker 01

  He starts making the walk to his street. They're going to let him get to his street. And it's there that an agent named Peter Malkin goes up to him and says, "Un momentito, señor?" And he must know something's up, because he takes off running. Malkin has to go and really tackle him to the ground. After a struggle, they drag him into the limousine.

• 37:46Speaker 04

  And while they're in the car, he's strangely silent. And then suddenly, in perfect German, he says to them, "I am resigned to my fate." Now, before this, the Mossad agents were 99% sure this was Eichmann. After he says this, they know 100% they've got their man.

• 38:07Speaker 00

  So for this mystery, it's case closed. Ricardo Clement is Adolf Eichmann.

• 38:15Speaker 02

  For nine tense days, the Mossad agents keep Eichmann sequestered in a safe house while trying to figure out the details of his extraction. Because you have to understand, these Mossad agents are in a sovereign nation. They have just apprehended a citizen of that nation. And now they're going to try to extradite this person out of the country without the Argentinian government knowing. So they have to be very, very careful about every step that they take, because if something goes wrong, Eichmann could be allowed to stay in Argentina and not be extradited back to Israel.

• 38:51Speaker 03

  What they end up doing could be a part of a movie. They drug him, put him in a flight crew uniform, and take him to the airport. They drag him along as if he's just some drunk pilot that they're going to put on the plane. They're very nonchalant, laughing about this. Here's this drunk pilot, no big deal. This isn't Adolf Eichmann, the architect of the Holocaust. This isn't a prisoner who we've drugged. This is just some drunk flight crew member who we're going to take home before he gets in trouble. They finally get to Israel. Eichmann is caught. He knows that he is, and he's resigned to his fate.

• 39:30Speaker 00

  Now at long last, one of the primary engineers of the Holocaust will stand trial for his crimes.

• 39:38Speaker 05

  Eichmann's trial commences in 1961, and his defense essentially suggests that he's a low-ranking bureaucrat who was merely following orders and doing his job. However, as the trial develops, the evidence makes it clear that Eichmann was absolutely central to the propagation of the Holocaust.

• 39:57Speaker 02

  Eichmann is ultimately found guilty of war crimes against humanity, is sentenced to death, and is hanged for his crimes on June 1, 1962.

• 40:11Speaker 00

  Government authorities eventually took down Eichmann, but the details of his capture remind us of the role played by ordinary people. The Hermans, a blind lawyer, and his teenage daughter with no training were the first to truly expose Eichmann's new life in Argentina. And they never gave up seeking justice. Thanks so much for listening to "History's Greatest Mysteries," a History Channel original podcast presented by Rewind Studios. Join us next time for a deep dive into another mystery and all the theories behind it.