By: Fern Sidman

Argentina is preparing to lift the veil on one of the most controversial and secretive chapters of its 20th-century history: the harboring of thousands of Nazi fugitives after World War II. According to a report on Fox News, the South American nation has announced it will declassify all government-held documents related to Nazi war criminals who fled Europe and resettled in Argentina, a move that could unlock long-buried secrets about postwar escape networks, hidden bank accounts, and possibly even long-standing conspiracy theories.

The decision was announced last week by Argentina’s Interior Minister Guillermo Alberto Francos and reported by the Buenos Aires Times, citing DNEWS. It marks a major milestone in historical transparency, decades after researchers, intelligence agencies, and human rights organizations began pressing for full access to Argentina’s postwar records.

As Fox News reported, it is estimated that as many as 10,000 Nazis and fascist collaborators evaded justice by escaping to Argentina and other Latin American countries in the aftermath of World War II. These individuals used covert escape routes known as “ratlines” — informal, secret pathways supported by sympathetic clergy, fascist sympathizers, and occasionally intelligence services — to avoid Allied war crime tribunals.

The documents Argentina plans to release are expected to include archival records, immigration files, financial statements, and potentially Nazi-linked bank accounts, particularly those tied to Swiss banking institutions such as Credit Suisse. According to the Fox News report, some of these files may illuminate the structure of the ratlines themselves — their financing, logistics, and coordination — shedding light on how organized and sophisticated the postwar Nazi escape effort truly was.

The push to declassify these documents intensified in recent weeks after Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) issued a formal request to Argentinian President Javier Milei. Grassley, who is conducting a wider investigation into Credit Suisse’s historic involvement with Nazi accounts and ratline financing, argued in his letter that releasing the records would significantly aid the U.S. Senate’s efforts to trace the full scope of Nazi escape infrastructure.

The Iowa senator, Fox News noted, recently chaired a Senate hearing focused on combating modern antisemitism and emphasized the need to expose the roots of historic injustice to prevent its recurrence.

President Javier Milei, Argentina’s libertarian-leaning head of state and the country’s first Jewish-friendly leader in decades, has pledged full cooperation. According to The Fox News report, he made this commitment during discussions with officials from the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the globally respected human rights organization named after the famed Nazi hunter.

The Center has been at the forefront of efforts to track down Nazi war criminals and bring them to justice. In 2020, as Fox News reported, the Wiesenthal Center discovered a cache of more than 12,000 Nazi-linked documents in a storeroom at a former Nazi headquarters in Buenos Aires. The files reportedly identified numerous Nazi affiliates who lived in Argentina as early as the 1930s and had one or more bank accounts at what is now known as Credit Suisse.

Among the Nazis who successfully fled to Argentina were some of the regime’s most notorious figures.

Adolf Eichmann, one of the chief architects of the Holocaust’s “Final Solution,” was living under an alias in Argentina when he was kidnapped by Israeli Mossad agents in 1960. He was flown to Israel, where he stood trial and was executed in 1962.

Josef Mengele, the infamous “Angel of Death” who performed horrific experiments on prisoners at Auschwitz, escaped to Argentina in 1949. The Fox News report indicated that he remained there for ten years before fleeing to Paraguay and eventually Brazil, where he died in 1979. Despite international efforts, Mengele was never captured.

Rumors surrounding Adolf Hitler’s possible escape to South America have long fascinated conspiracy theorists. While mainstream historians maintain that Hitler died by suicide in Berlin in 1945, a 2017 CIA declassified document revealed that U.S. intelligence investigated claims that Hitler was seen in Colombia and possibly resettled in Argentina, as per the information provided in The Fox News report.  One informant, a former SS soldier, claimed to have met with Hitler multiple times and even provided a photograph of a man he insisted was the Führer in the mid-1950s. The CIA document, now publicly accessible on its website, stops short of confirming the theory, and there is no indication yet whether Argentina’s declassified files will provide clarity on the matter.

The decision to open the archives comes as part of a broader reckoning with Argentina’s complex and often uncomfortable history. The country was seen during and after the war as a haven for fascist sympathizers, partly due to then-President Juan Perón’s authoritarian inclinations and admiration for European fascist regimes, the Fox News report explained.  It became one of the principal destinations for fleeing Nazis after the fall of the Third Reich.

The Fox News report highlighted that Nazi escapees did not exclusively find refuge in Argentina — others slipped into Brazil, Paraguay, Chile, Mexico, Canada, and even the United States — but Argentina stood out for the sheer number of high-profile war criminals who settled there and the relative safety they enjoyed for years.

The Argentine government’s move to declassify these sensitive records offers a unique opportunity for scholars, descendants of Holocaust victims, and human rights institutions to deepen our understanding of how a global network facilitated impunity on such a massive scale.

While it remains to be seen how much new information the declassified files will reveal — particularly in relation to controversial theories about Hitler’s escape or the scope of Swiss bank involvement — the Fox News report emphasized that the gesture itself is historic. It signals a shift away from decades of silence and secrecy toward openness and accountability.

The world will now watch closely as Argentina begins the process of unsealing its wartime shadows — and, perhaps, bringing long-overdue closure to one of history’s darkest chapters.