Argentina Is Naziland

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Not all stories involving Those Wacky Nazis are set in World War II. Sometimes they are set in the aftermath, or even the present. Some Nazis have escaped from defeat and/or trial, and they are either at a hidden base laying plans to restore the Reich and Take Over the World (as if a few guys in a hidden lab had better chances than a whole country), or just trying to evade justice. Perhaps the hero, or a Nazi Hunter, is chasing such fugitives; perhaps they have treasures, a Lost Technology or a MacGuffin, or perhaps they are simply seen around. Many times, said Nazis are hidden in Argentina or elsewhere in South America.

Having actual WWII fugitives hanging around in the present is becoming a Dead Horse Trope for obvious reasons - any survivors nowadays are going to be pretty ancient without some Nazi Superscience to spruce them up. However, they could still be used as Backstory, to give a run-of-the-mill Evil Scheme that unmistakeable Nazi flavour.

There is some Truth in Television to this: yes, some Nazis escaped to Argentina, and there were some notable cases that came to light, such as Adolf Eichmann. However, things were not so simple in real life. Several countries sought to receive the German scientists that worked for Hitler and improve their national development, Argentina was one of those countries, but not the only one. The Argentine neutrality in World War II was not caused by popular support to Nazism, but by mere localism: most people considered it a distant war between foreign countries, with no Argentine business at stake.

Examples of Argentina Is Naziland include:

Comic Books

• In G.I. Joe: Special Missions #2, the Joes are sent to South America to extract an aging Nazi, who is the only one who knows the details of a planeload of nerve gas frozen in a glacier, from a heavily fortified compund in the jungle.
• The map of the world in DC Comics' Flashpoint alternate timeline unusually used Brazil but the map appeared to indicate all of South America, more or less: "Brazil (Nazi-Occupied)"
• In the non-canon Hellboy/Batman/Starman crossover, the neo-Nazi Knights of October have an outpost in the Amazon jungle from which they attempt to summon an elder god.

Film

• In X Men First Class Magneto chases a Nazi to Villa Gesell, a city in Argentina. Even though what appears in the movie is an area of mountains and lakes - while the Real Villa Gessel is a beach city, former hippie paradise.
  • And the barman used Mexican slang.
• The Boys from Brazil, about a secret plot to raise clones of Hitler in, well, three guesses where.
• In Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory, the golden ticket holder from Paraguay is revealed to be a fraud - a news photo shows him to be Martin Bormann.
• Referenced in Yellow Submarine. When the Chief Blue Meanie is defeated and asks where the Meanies should flee to, his flunky suggests, "Argentina?"
  • That "flunky's" name is Max.
• The nazis in They Saved Hitlers Brain are hiding in the fictional South American country Mandoras.

Literature

• In Robert Heinlein's Rocket Ship Galileo the protagonists discover a hidden Nazi base on the Moon.
• The viewpoint character in H. Beam Piper's Uller Uprising mentions that one of his distant ancestors, five centuries ago, was a Nazi war criminal who fled to Argentina. His love interest admits cheerfully that her ancestry includes French Les Collaborateurs who did likewise.

Live-Action TV

• The Night Gallery pilot had a segment about a hunted fugitive death-camp officer in an unnamed Latin American country seeking escape in a museum painting.
• A Get Smart episode centered around a quasi-Nazi KAOS prison camp in the wilds of New Jersey. Commandant Siegfried announces the imminent arrival of a noted officer "from our glorious fatherland...South America", known as "ze Beast of Buenos Aires!"
• Mission Impossible: In "The Legend", Briggs and Cinammon impersonate a former Nazi and his daughter who are invited to attend a reunion of aged Nazi leaders at the South American home of Nazi fugitive Martin Bormann, who is planning the creation of the Fourth Reich.
• White Collar at one point had a U-boat filled to the brim with Nazi treasure with an intended destination of somewhere in Argentina, but it sank before it could arrive.

Video Games

• Almost a third part of BloodRayne takes place in a hidden Nazi base in Argentina. Then again, another third takes place in Germany proper.
• In the I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream adventure game, Nimdok fled to Brazil to continue his experiments.

Web Original

• AlternateHistory.com acknowledges this as one of the many tired clichés Alternate History authors often resort to (especially novice ones)... It had been mocked in at least one of their series, specifically Englishman.

Western Animation

• When Bart Simpson is making a bunch of international prank calls in "Bart vs. Australia", he calls Chile and we see a man who looks suspiciously like Adolf Hitler (although looking good for his age) running to his phone, and just missing the call. A man in lederhosen cycles by and makes the Nazi salute to him.

"Buenas noches, mein Führer!"

• In Archer, Dr Krieger grew up in Brazil and has accidentally let slip that his parents were Nazis. This has led other characters to speculate that he's one of the "Boys from Brazil" (see above).