Editing Schutzstaffel (section)

==Post-war activity and aftermath==
Following Nazi Germany's collapse, the SS ceased to exist.{{sfn|Höhne|2001|p=580}} Numerous members of the SS, many of them still committed Nazis, remained at large in Germany and across Europe.{{sfn|Evans|2008|pp=739–741}} On 21 May 1945, the British captured Himmler, who was in disguise and carrying a fraudulent passport. At an internment camp near [[Lüneburg]], he committed suicide by biting down on a cyanide capsule.{{sfn|Longerich|2012|p=736}} Several other leading members of the SS fled, but some were quickly captured. [[Ernst Kaltenbrunner]], chief of the RSHA and the highest-ranking surviving SS main department chief upon Himmler's suicide, was captured and arrested in the [[Bavarian Alps]].{{sfn|Weale|2012|p=410}} He was among the 22 defendants put on trial at the [[Nuremberg trials|International Military Tribunal]] in 1945–46.{{sfn|Burleigh|2000|pp=803–804}}

Some SS members were subject to [[summary execution]], torture, and beatings at the hands of freed prisoners, displaced persons, or Allied soldiers.{{sfn|MacDonogh|2009|p=3}}{{sfn|Murray|Millett|2001|pp=565–568}} American soldiers of the 157th Regiment, who entered the concentration camp at Dachau in April 1945 and viewed the acts committed by the SS, [[Dachau liberation reprisals|shot some of the remaining SS camp guards]].{{sfn|Lowe|2012|pp=83–84}} On 15 April 1945, British troops entered Bergen-Belsen. They placed the SS guards on starvation rations, made them work without breaks, forced them to deal with the remaining corpses, and stabbed them with bayonets or struck them with their rifle butts if they slowed their pace.{{sfn|Lowe|2012|pp=84–87}} Some members of the [[Counterintelligence Corps|US Army Counter Intelligence Corps]] delivered captured SS camp guards to [[Displaced persons camps in post–World War II Europe|displaced person camps]], where they knew they would be subject to summary execution.{{sfn|Brzezinski|2005}}

===International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg===
{{Main|Nuremberg trials}}
[[File:Dead ernstkaltenbrunner.jpg|thumb|upright=1.15|The body of Ernst Kaltenbrunner after his execution on 16 October 1946]]
The Allies commenced legal proceedings against captured Nazis, establishing the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in 1945.{{sfn|Evans|2008|p=741}} The first [[war crimes]] trial of 24 prominent figures such as Göring, [[Albert Speer]], [[Joachim von Ribbentrop]], [[Alfred Rosenberg]], Hans Frank, and Kaltenbrunner took place beginning in November 1945. They were accused of four counts: conspiracy, waging a war of aggression, war crimes, and crimes against humanity in violation of international law.{{sfn|Evans|2008|p=741}} Twelve received the death penalty, including Kaltenbrunner, who was convicted of crimes against humanity and executed on 16 October 1946.{{sfn|Evans|2008|pp=741–742}} The former commandant at Auschwitz, [[Rudolf Höss]], who testified on behalf of Kaltenbrunner and others, was tried and executed in 1947.{{sfn|Evans|2008|p=743}}

Additional SS trials and convictions followed.{{sfn|Burleigh|2000|p=804}} Many defendants attempted to exculpate themselves using the excuse that they were merely following [[superior orders]], which they had to obey unconditionally as part of their [[Oaths to Hitler|sworn oath]] and duty. The courts did not find this to be a legitimate defence.{{sfn|Ingrao|2013|pp=240–241}} A trial of 40 SS officers and guards from Auschwitz took place in Kraków in November 1947. Most were found guilty, and 23 received the death penalty.{{sfn|Evans|2008|pp=743–744}} The twelve [[subsequent Nuremberg trials]] took place in 1946–1949; also, an estimated 37,000 members of the SS were tried and convicted in Soviet courts. Sentences included hangings and long terms of hard labour.{{sfn|Burleigh|2010|p=549}} [[Piotr Cywiński]], director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum, estimates that of the 70,000 members of the SS involved in crimes in concentration camps, only about 1,650 to 1,700 were tried after the war.{{sfn|Bosacki|Uhlig|Wróblewski|2008}} The International Military Tribunal declared the SS a criminal organisation in 1946.{{sfn|Zentner|Bedürftig|1991|p=906}}

===Escapes===
{{See also|Ratlines (World War II aftermath)}}
[[File:WP Eichmann Passport.jpg|thumb|upright=0.8|[[International Committee of the Red Cross|Red Cross]] passport under the name of "Ricardo Klement" that [[Adolf Eichmann]] used to enter Argentina in 1950]]
After the war, many former Nazis fled to South America, especially to Argentina, where they were welcomed by [[Juan Perón]]'s regime.{{sfn|Levy|2006|pp=143–144}} In the 1950s, former Dachau inmate Lothar Hermann discovered that [[Buenos Aires]] resident Ricardo Klement was, in fact, Adolf Eichmann, who had in 1948 obtained false identification and a landing permit for Argentina through an organisation directed by Bishop [[Alois Hudal]], an Austrian cleric with Nazi sympathies, then residing in Italy.{{sfn|Cesarani|2005|p=207}} Eichmann was captured in Buenos Aires on 11 May 1960 by [[Mossad]], the Israeli intelligence agency. At his trial in Jerusalem in 1961, he was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging. Eichmann was quoted as having stated, "I will jump into my grave laughing because the fact that I have the death of five million Jews [or Reich enemies, as he later claimed to have said] on my conscience gives me extraordinary satisfaction."{{sfn|Arendt|2006|p=46}} [[Franz Stangl]], the commandant of Treblinka, also escaped to South America with the assistance of Hudal's network. He was deported to Germany in 1967 and was sentenced to life in prison in 1970. He died in 1971.{{sfn|Evans|2008|pp=746–747}}

Mengele, worried that his capture would mean a death sentence, fled Germany on 17 April 1949.{{sfn|Levy|2006|p=263}} Assisted by a network of former SS members, he travelled to [[Genoa]], where he obtained a passport under the alias "Helmut Gregor" from the [[International Committee of the Red Cross]]. He sailed to Argentina in July.{{sfn|Levy|2006|pp=264–265}} Aware that he was still a wanted man, he moved to Paraguay in 1958 and Brazil in 1960. In both instances he was assisted by former ''[[Luftwaffe]]'' pilot [[Hans-Ulrich Rudel]].{{sfn|Levy|2006|pp=269, 273}} Mengele suffered a stroke while swimming and drowned in 1979.{{sfn|Levy|2006|pp=294–295}}

Thousands of Nazis, including former SS members such as Trawniki guard [[Jakob Reimer]] and Circassian collaborator [[Tscherim Soobzokov]], fled to the United States under the guise of refugees, sometimes using forged documents.{{sfn|Lichtblau|2014|pp=2–3, 10–11}} Other SS men, such as Soobzokov, SD officer [[Wilhelm Höttl]], Eichmann aide [[Otto von Bolschwing]], and accused war criminal [[Theo Saevecke|Theodor Saevecke]], were employed by American intelligence agencies against the Soviets. As [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] officer Harry Rositzke noted, "It was a visceral business of using any bastard so long as he was anti-Communist.&nbsp;... The eagerness or desire to enlist collaborators means that sure, you didn't look at their credentials too closely."{{sfn|Lichtblau|2014|pp=29–30, 32–37, 67–68}} Similarly, the Soviets used SS personnel after the war; Operation Theo, for instance, disseminated "subversive rumours" in Allied-occupied Germany.{{sfn|Biddiscombe|2000|pp=131–143}}

[[Simon Wiesenthal]] and others have speculated about the existence of a Nazi fugitive network code-named [[ODESSA]] (an acronym for ''Organisation der ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen'', Organisation of former SS members) that allegedly helped war criminals find refuge in [[Latin America]].{{sfn|Segev|2010|pp=106–108}} British writer [[Gitta Sereny]], who conducted interviews with SS men, considers the story untrue and attributes the escapes to postwar chaos and Hudal's Vatican-based network. While the existence of ODESSA remains unproven, Sereny notes that "there certainly were various kinds of Nazi aid organisations after the war—it would have been astonishing if there hadn't been."{{sfn|Sereny|1974|p=274}}