ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the cases of certain individual Nazi fugitives that amplify the way in which whole groups of people managed to evade prosecution or to help others escape the judicial process. In Nazi Germany and Austria and in the formerly occupied territories of Eastern Europe, hundreds of thousands of Nazi war criminals, collaborators, Nazi sympathizers, and persecutors began preparations for post-war life and for their escape from accountability as the twelve-year span of the so-called Thousand-Year German Reich were nearing utter defeat. There are a number of reasons for how and why so many Nazi war criminals have remained fugitives from justice. Some of Germany's finest scientists were pressed into service in the escalating cold war with the Soviet Communists, what with the latter's attempt to capture technology and material from former Nazi lands under their control. By 1948, almost 500 scientists had applied for visas to the United States, backed by relatively secret but official sponsorship.
