ENDING EVIL

75 years on, we examine fate of leading Nazis

ADOLF HITLER: As the Soviet army besieged Berlin in 1945, the 56-year-old dictator hid in his “Fuhrerbunker”.

Eventually realising that defeat was inevitable, he shot himself in the head on April 30 beside wife Eva Braun, who died after taking a cyanide capsule.

Their corpses were taken outside, doused in petrol, burned and buried.

JOSEPH GOEBBELS: The ranting Minister of Propaganda became Chancellor for a single day after Hitler’s death.

The 47-year-old then shot his wife Magda and himself outside the Berlin bunker. The couple had also arranged the death by cyanide of their six children.

HEINRICH HIMMLER: Leader of the SS, he masterminded the murder of millions of Jews in concentration camps.

In 1945 he failed to negotiate a surrender to the Allies. Captured by

British forces in northern Germany, the 44-year-old took cyanide on May 23 and was buried in an unmarked grave.

HERMANN GOERING: The head of Germany’s Luftwaffe briefly tried to become Nazi leader at the end of the war but was branded a traitor by Hitler.

Captured by US forces, he was sentenced to hang at Nuremberg but committed suicide by cyanide pill the night before his execution.

THIS week marks the 75th anniversary of the start of the Nuremberg Trials, where some of Nazi Germany’s most notorious Nazis faced justice.

The tribunal put 21 Third Reich top brass in the dock, with 12 sentenced to death. But just what did happen to World War Two’s most infamous fascists?

Here, JAMES MOORE investigates their fate…

RUDOLF HESS: Deputy leader of the Nazi party, he was captured in 1941 after parachuting from a plane over Scotland on a botched peace mission.

Sentenced to life in jail he later became the only inmate at Berlin’s Spandau Prison, where he committed suicide in 1987 aged 93. ALBERT SPEER: Hitler’s architect and Minister of Armaments was sentenced to 20 years at Nuremberg and was released from Spandau in 1966.

He wrote an autobiography, moved to London and died of a stroke in 1981 aged 76. Later evidence suggested he lied when he denied any knowledge of the Holocaust. JOSEF MENGELE: Dubbed the “Angel of Death”, the doctor experimented on prisoners at Auschwitz concentration camp. He fled to South America, eluding capture by using aliases. He died from a stroke while swimming in

Brazil in 1979.

KARL DöNITZ: The naval commander and U-boat strategist briefly became Germany’s President after Hitler’s death. Sentenced to 10 years in jail, he was unrepentant until he died from a heart attack in Germany in 1980 aged 89.

MARTIN BORMANN: Hitler’s private secretary was sentenced to death for war crimes in his absence but his remains were found in Berlin in 1972. He had apparently committed suicide to avoid capture.

JOACHIM VON RIBBENTROP: The Nazi foreign minister was arrested in June 1945 and sentenced to death at Nuremberg for enabling the Holocaust. He was hanged on October 16, 1946.

ADOLF EICHMANN: Oversaw deportation of Jews to concentration camps before fleeing to Argentina. He was hunted down by Israeli agents and hanged in 1962.