Editing Schutzstaffel (section)

===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}}