HOLOCAUST mastermind Adolf Eichmann wrote to Germany first postwar chancellor from his hiding place in Argentina asking for permission to return to his homeland as a "witness to history."

Details of his astonishing bid to be rehabilitated surfaced in Germany today MON - 50 years since the start of his trial in Jerusalem that would lead to his execution.  
 
The letter he sent came four years before Israeli agents kidnapped him; the new West German state did nothing to tell them where he was hiding.  
 
Eichmann was the supreme logisitician of the Nazi extermination programme in WW2.  From his office IVB4 of the Gestapo in Berlin he organised the railway transports that took six million Jews to their
deaths.  
 
In the past few weeks declassified intelligence files have shown how Germany was terrified that a trial would embarass the new post-Hitler state.  Chancellor Konrad Adenauer was "on the verge of hysteria,"
according to the CIA, because his administration was riddled with high-ranking Nazis and he feared Eichmann would name them.  
 
Now comes details of Eichmann's amazing gall in 1956 when he wrote from the small town of Joaquín Gorina where he lived under the alias Ricardo Klement running a rabbit farm.  
 
"The time has come for me to step out of the cloak of anonymity and present myself," he wrote.  "Name; Adolf Eichmann.  Occupation; S.S. Obersturmbannfuehrer."  
   
Eichmann, who gave interviews while in exile in Argentina to a pro-Nazi journalist boasting of his satisfaction at murdering so many innocent people, went on; "I do not know how long fate will allow me to live. I do know, however, that someone must be allowed to explain to the coming generation about what happened.  There should be an explanation.  I had to steer and lead large parts of this complex in those years."  
 
This "complex" was the greatest mass murder in history, the uprooting of Jews, gypsies, Slavs and other state enemies and transporting them on trains which ran on time to secret death camps built in occupied
Poland.  
   
Hamburg historian Dr. Bettina Stangneth discovered the secret letter after six years researching in German archives for a new book about the monster.  
 
She said; "His letter shows us that he was not happy in Argentina or with his status.  The mass killer no longer wanted to be the anonymous Ricardo Klement but the important Adolf Eichmann.  He wanted to come back to Germany."  
 
The letter goes on to say that he understood that there would have to be a "hearing" about his wartime work, but he did not think there would be a lengthy jail term awaiting him.  
 
In this, at least, he might have been right.  While Israel ultimately convicted and executed him for his crimes, in Germany the judiciary in Germany was packed with his former comrades.  
 
"Sadly in the 50's there was not a great deal of interest in pursuing Nazi war criminals in Germany," said Dr. Tobias Hermann, keeper of Nazi files at the Federal Archive in Ludwigsburg.  
 
"Many judges and lawyers of the Nazi period worked post-war in the republic too and weren't interested in pursuing their old comrades in the police and S.S." 

germanherald.com