Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know?
Speaker 1: Runhouse Stuff Works dot Com? I welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark. I'm a staff writer here at how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot Com. With me as always is my
Speaker 1: very attractive and trust the editor Chris Palette. Chris, how's
Speaker 1: your go kie? Oh? It's great? Thanks. So we wrote
Speaker 1: this article about whether or not Nazi war criminals are
Speaker 1: still a large and UM the Simon Weisenthal Center. UH.
Speaker 1: This this group that's dedicated to finding rooting out the
Speaker 1: last of the Nazi war criminals who may or may
Speaker 1: not be still alive. UM has launched Operation Last Day,
Speaker 1: Last Chance UH in a in a in a last
Speaker 1: ditch effort. But UM, while I was researching this, Chris,
Speaker 1: I found a lot of stuff that that just I
Speaker 1: couldn't fit into the article. UM. One of the things
Speaker 1: that that stuck out to me the most was the Massad.
Speaker 1: You know what the Massada is. That's the Israeli secret
Speaker 1: service right it is now. They have been chasing Nazis
Speaker 1: for decades and have been fairly successful at it. They
Speaker 1: found Klaus Barbie. UH. They also found Adolf Eichmann, who
Speaker 1: was pretty much the engineer of the nazis final solution
Speaker 1: of exterminating all these um supposedly unwanted races. UM. But
Speaker 1: I also found something very um interesting. The Massad actually
Speaker 1: engaged in UH employing and hiding some wanted Nazi war criminals,
Speaker 1: which I found startling. You know, this this group that's
Speaker 1: dedicated to rooting out for conviction UM or at the
Speaker 1: very least for trial Nazi war criminals UM having employed
Speaker 1: one the guy they employed UM was this doctor who
Speaker 1: actually came up with the idea of mobile gas vans, right,
Speaker 1: so that the the Nazis wouldn't have to shoot the
Speaker 1: Jews any longer to kill them. They could just load
Speaker 1: them up in these vans and carbon monoxide was put
Speaker 1: into the end of the vans and and whoever was
Speaker 1: inside was killed. And the worst part was these vans
Speaker 1: were they looked like Red Cross ambulances, which is just
Speaker 1: just about as bad as it gets time to think. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's also a violation of the Geneva Convention.
Speaker 1: I'm quite sure, but I think pretty much percent of
Speaker 1: what the Nazis did was in violation of the Geneva Conventions.
Speaker 1: That was much out the window from day one, you know,
Speaker 1: not about following the rules. Well you said too in
Speaker 1: the article that they weren't the only ones who had
Speaker 1: employed some of the former Nazis certainly not. Yeah, who else, um,
Speaker 1: you know, even the American government. Um, I think you
Speaker 1: said the British too. You know. Basically, if they had something,
Speaker 1: uh that that they could use, the governments could use that,
Speaker 1: they were willing to take them on. I know a
Speaker 1: lot of that. The nuclear and rocket scientists too, were
Speaker 1: were very important for them to uh to grab before
Speaker 1: they could be tried. I guess definitely Project paper Clip.
Speaker 1: It was an actual secret project undertaken by the United
Speaker 1: States government to poach as many Nazi scientists as possible.
Speaker 1: Some of them were war criminals, some of them were
Speaker 1: lesser known, lesser involved people. But you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of people argue that we wouldn't have made it to
Speaker 1: space first had it not been for former Nazi scientists
Speaker 1: like Verna von Brown and some of the other guys
Speaker 1: like him who really helped on the American rocket team.
Speaker 1: That's amazing to think about that they would be exonerated,
Speaker 1: you know, simply because of you know, some of the
Speaker 1: other things that they could bring. But at least maybe
Speaker 1: they could uh make some positive contributions. And I think also, um,
Speaker 1: from my understanding, Americans did undertake a process of determining
Speaker 1: just how involved you know, a certain person was, at
Speaker 1: least the the U. S. Government. I think with the
Speaker 1: c i A. It was a a different matter. I
Speaker 1: think they used whoever they felt could help them. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't no matter what involvement they had. Do you know
Speaker 1: anything about that? Honestly, I don't. I haven't done done
Speaker 1: nearly as much research as year. Well, let me Adolf Eichmann, who,
Speaker 1: like I said, was finally captured. He was actually kidnapped
Speaker 1: in Argentina by the massade. Uh. He was used by
Speaker 1: the CIA as a West German agent um and they
Speaker 1: knew who he was, they knew what he'd done, and
Speaker 1: they were still using him as a secret agent in
Speaker 1: West Germany. It's amazing. Well that's it for for Are
Speaker 1: there still Nazi more criminals at large? You can find
Speaker 1: out more about it on how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening for more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics. Because it how stuff works dot Com brought
Speaker 1: to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready,
Speaker 1: are you