Post Colonization South American History Lecture

Jean-Luc Picard, could you add where the Interbellum lecture is on the Table of the Contents on the first page?

Its included in the introduction post, its under the actual background information.

Its called WHERE TO FIND CERTAIN LECTURES:

All finished with the WWII in South America presentation. Now, you have three choices:
-South American Dictators after WWII
-Cold War in South America
-Nazis in South America and Israeli interventions against them

Also, this presentation should be wrapping up soon, there are just some miscellaneous things I forgot to talk about in my previous presentations including:
-Colombian Civil Wars
-Brazilian Wars of Secession

These are events that happened prior to WWII that I still want to go more in depth about. Expect these after the above three topics.

Also, we won't be talking about stuff like the drug trade, Rio olympics, etc, since they are too modern.

Cold War presentation finished. Another Choice:
-War Criminals in South America and Israeli Interventions
-Dictatorships in South America

Either one is fine, but I think War criminals would be interesting. 

Now, we will be talking about the numerous Nazis in South America and the Israeli reprisals against them.

Left: Herberts Cukurs
Right: His body after his assassination

Herberts Cukurs was a Latvian collaborator with the Nazis, becoming a member of the Arajs Kommando, the collaborationist group in German occupied Latvia that committed many of the atrocities committed there during the Second World War. He was the man solely responsible for the Rumbula Massacre on November 30th, 1941, where 25,000 Latvian Jews were gathered in a forest and executed, and was also responsible for the burning of the synagogue on Stabu Street in Riga during the burning of all synagogues in Riga, the Latvian capital. Cukurs even gathered all the Jews on the street and proceeded to lock them all up in the synagogue before burning it down. 

Following the war, Cukurs fled to São Paulo, Brazil, where he founded an aviation business. Cukurs made no attempt to hide his identity, making it easy for the Israeli Special Operations Unit, Mossad, to locate him. Mossad agent Yaakov Meidad impersonated as a fictional man named Anton Künzle and asked Cukurs if he could come to Montevideo, Uruguay, to help him with his aviation business, saying that he also participated in the Holocaust. Cukurs fell into the trap, and came to Montevideo. Once Cukurs came to the building to meet with the fictional Künzle, Meidad tried to shoot him, but was discovered by Cukurs. A brief confrontation began, until Meidad was able to shoot Cukurs twice in the head with a silencer pistol. He died on February 23rd, 1965, and his body was discovered in a trunk on March 6th, with several documents relating to his atrocities inside the trunk as well. A note was sent to numerous South American nations and Germany stating why he was killed, reading:

"Taking into consideration the gravity of the charge leveled against the accused, namely that he personally supervised the killing of more than 30,000 men, women and children, and considering the extreme display of cruelty which the subject showed when carrying out his tasks, the accused Herberts Cukurs is hereby sentenced to death. Accused was executed by those who can never forget, on the 23rd of February, 1965. His body can be found at Casa Cubertini Calle Colombia, Séptima Sección del Departamento de Canelones, Montevideo, Uruguay."





Top: Adolf Eichmann
Bottom: Adolf Eichmann's trial in Israel

Now onto arguably the greatest achievement of Mossad: The capture, trial and execution of Adolf Eichmann.

Adolf Eichmann was one of the most senior organizers of the Holocaust, initially being responsible for the deportation of Jews into occupied Poland where they would be sent to extermination or concentration camps. His most appalling act was the organization of the deaths of Jews in Hungary. In 1944, the government of Miklós Horthy in Hungary, which had sided with Germany for most of the war, was invaded and occupied by the Germans after Horthy began peace negotiations with the Allies. Horthy was toppled and the fascist Arrow Cross Party was placed in power. The Jews in Hungary were placed under order of Eichmann, who ran the deportations from Hungary to occupied Poland. The deportations began April 16th, 1944. By May 14th, 3,000 Hungarian Jews were being deported to Poland per day, with up to 90% being killed within the first hours of arrival. When the deportations ended on July 6th as a result of approaching Soviet forces, 437,000 of Hungary's 725,000 Jews had been killed in German camps. All in only three months.

After being captured by American forces, he was able to escape by using multiple fake identities before fleeing to Argentina in 1950. He resided in Tucuman Province before moving to Buenos Aires in 1952. Nazi hunters across the world aimed to capture him and put him on trial for his crimes. An eight man team of Mossad agents captured him on May 11th, 1960, and brought him to a Mossad safe house in Argentina where his identity was confirmed. He was then sedated by an Israeli doctor on the team and secretly shipped to Israel on May 20th.

The capture of Eichmann by Mossad without prior Argentine notice resulting in Argentine backlash, with the Argentines requesting for international backing against Israel. The ensuing UN agreement resulted in Israel accepting that they violated Argentine sovereignty but both sides agreeing to end the dispute. 

Eichmann was imprisoned at Yagur prison for nine months from 1960-1961 before being put on trial in West Jerusalem on April 11th, 1961 on charges of crimes against humanity, crimes against the Jewish people and membership in a criminal organization. The case had extensive media coverage, and, despite the case being appealed, Eichmann was ultimately sentenced to death by hanging. He was hung on June 1st, 1962. His body was summarily cremated with his ashes being thrown into the Mediterranean. 





Top: Josef Mengele
Bottom: Mossad Symbol

Finally, a Nazi who was not successfully captured by Mossad: Josef Mengele.

Mengele was a Nazi medic until 1943, when he was transported to Auschwitz and began human experimentation on Auschwitz prisoners. He focused primarily on twin children, amputating their limbs, infecting one of the twins with diseases to see if they other is affected, and transfusing blood between twins. After these sick experiments ended, the twins were often shot and dissected. In order to lure children to be experimented on, he would be nice to them, offering sweets to them, before conducting these terrible and sick experiments. Mengele believed in a superior Aryan race, and hoped to prove the theory through his experiments.

After the war, Mengele fled to Buenos Aires, Argentina. At the time, the Allies thought he was dead, but by the time the Allies realized he was alive in 1960, he had already fled to Paraguay. Mossad repeatedly tried to find and capture him, but were unsuccessful. The West German government actually placed a bounty on his head, and as a result Mengele never returned to Argentina, instead fleeing to Brazil in 1960. In Brazil, he lived under numerous fake aliases and relocated in the country numerous times, before dying on February 7th, 1979, due to a stroke while swimming. Later analysis of his dead body revealed that he was indeed Mengele.