The notorious claim that Hitler escaped his Berlin bunker to live incognito in Argentina first gained popular currency in 1945, when Stalin spoke of it. Since then the idea has resurfaced occasionally, with alleged photographic and documentary evidence pored over by conspiracy theorists. Now the theory that the German dictator followed his fellow Nazis Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele to South America is at the center of a fresh row.
The authors of the 2011 book "Grey Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler," which was made into a documentary film earlier this year, have been accused of plagiarism by a journalist in Argentina. Abel Basti claims his research has been unfairly used to substantiate claims made in the book. "Grey Wolf," published by Sterling Publishing, based in New York, challenged the accepted view that the Fuhrer shot himself in his Berlin bunker on April 30, 1945, and that Eva Braun also committed suicide by taking cyanide. Arguing that American intelligence officials turned a blind eye to Hitler's escape in return for access to Nazi war technology, Gerrard Williams and Simon Dunstan set out the case that the Fuhrer and Braun made a home in the foothills of the Andes and had two daughters.
Hitler, they claim, escaped punishment and lived out his life in tranquillity in Patagonia until his death in 1962 at the age of 73.