Tema anterior
Archaeologists have uncovered a secret Nazi lair deep in the Argentine jungle — which was built for leaders of the Third Reich in case they needed to flee Germany.
The hideout is located in the Teyu Cuare provincial park near the South American country’s border with Paraguay and was found after researchers used machetes to clear a thick patch of vines and undergrowth, the Argentine newspaper Clarin reported.
All that remains is a series of stone structures adorned with faded swastikas, some German coins from the late 1930s and fragments of porcelain pottery. The lair is believed to have been constructed during World War II in the final days of the Third Reich, according to the Washington Post.
“Apparently, halfway through the Second World War, the Nazis had a secret project of building shelters for top leaders in the event of defeat — inaccessible sites, in the middle of deserts, in the mountains, on a cliff or in the middle of the jungle like this,” Daniel Schavelzon, lead researcher with the University of Buenos Aires, told Clarin.
“This site also has the bonus of allowing inhabitants to be in Paraguay in less than 10 minutes,” he added. “It’s a protected, defendable site where they could live quietly.”
Argentina has become the final resting place of countless Nazi artifacts and memorabilia.
The nation has been gripped by the lifestyles of the Third Reich ever since thousands of war criminals fled to South America with the help of German sympathizers, the Washington Post reports.
Using a system of escape known as “ratlines,” the Nazi runaways established new lives everywhere from Brazil to Argentina. According to some theories, even the Fuhrer himself found refuge in an Argentine idyll, “doddering peacefully in the Andean foothills attended by faithful Nazi servants,” according to archival sources.
But the most notorious German to have called Argentina home would have to be Dr. Joseph Mengele.
Dubbed “the Angel of Death,” the twisted and deranged Nazi doctor became known for his horrid experiments on children, mainly twins and dwarves. Historians have described Mengele as a bloodthirsty maniac who would pluck prisoners out of line and either cruelly experiment on them or send them straight to their deaths in the gas chamber.
Mossad efforts to capture Mengele in the 1960s failed. He was believed to have suffered a stroke while swimming and drowned in 1979.
