Hans-Ulrich Rudel (2 July 1916 – 18 December 1982) was a German ground-attack pilot during World War II and a post-war neo-Nazi activist.

The most decorated German pilot of the war and the only recipient of the Knight's Cross with Golden Oak Leaves, Swords, and Diamonds, Rudel was credited with the destruction of 519 tanks, one battleship, one cruiser, 70 landing craft and 150 artillery emplacements.

He flew 2,530 ground-attack missions exclusively on the Eastern Front, usually flying the Junkers Ju 87 "Stuka" dive bomber.

An unrepentant Nazi, he helped fugitives escape to Latin America and the Middle East, and sheltered Josef Mengele, the former SS doctor at Auschwitz.

After the 1955 military coup d'etat that deposed constitutional president Juan Perón, Rudel moved to Paraguay, where he acted as a foreign representative for several German companies.

[3] Following the labour service, Rudel joined the Luftwaffe in the same year and began his military career as an air reconnaissance pilot.

[7] He was posted to 1 Staffel Sturzkampfgeschwader 2 (StG 2), which was moved to occupied Poland in preparation for Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union, in June 1941.

The fighting was intense and Rudel was fortunate to survive, as the slow moving stukas were vulnerable and suffered a high casualty rate.

[26] On 8 February 1945, Rudel was badly wounded in the right foot, and landed inside German lines as his radio operator shouted flight instructions.

[16] While Rudel was interned, his family fled from the advancing Red Army and found refuge with Gadermann's parents in Wuppertal.

[33][34] Rudel authored books on the war, supporting the regime and attacking the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht for "failing Hitler".

[36] In Argentina, Rudel became acquainted with notorious Nazi concentration camp doctor and war criminal Josef Mengele.

[41] In Argentina, Rudel lived in Villa Carlos Paz, roughly 36 kilometers (22 mi) from the populous Córdoba City, where he rented a house and operated a brickworks.

Together with Eberhard Fritsch, a former Hitler Youth leader, Sassen began interviewing Eichmann in 1956 with the intent of publishing his views.

This book was later re-edited and published in the United States, as the Cold War intensified, under the title, Stuka Pilot, which supported the German invasion of the Soviet Union.

[46] In the 1950s, Rudel befriended Savitri Devi, a writer and proponent of Hinduism and Nazism, and introduced her to a number of Nazi fugitives in Spain and the Middle East.

[48] He was in contact with Werner Naumann, formerly a State Secretary in Goebbels' Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda in Nazi Germany.

Following the Revolución Libertadora in 1955, a military and civilian uprising that ended the second presidential term of Perón, Rudel was forced to leave Argentina and move to Paraguay.

In 1966, Merex, represented by Walter Drück, a former Generalmajor in the Wehrmacht and BND agent, helped by the contacts established by Rudel and Sassen, sold discarded equipment of the Bundeswehr (German Federal armed forces) to various dictators in Latin America.

According to Hammerschmidt, Rudel assisted in establishing contact between Merex and Friedrich Schwend, a former member of the Reich Security Main Office and involved in Operation Bernhard.

In the early sixties, Rudel, Schwend and Klaus Barbie, founded a company called "La Estrella", the star, which employed a number of former SS officers who had fled to Latin America.

News of this decision reached Generalleutnant Walter Krupinski, at the time commanding general of NATO's Second Allied Tactical Air Force, and a former World War II fighter pilot.

[57] During a routine press event, journalists who had been briefed by Schmidt questioned Krupinski and his deputy Karl Heinz Franke about Rudel's presence.

In this interview, the generals compared Rudel's past as a Nazi and Neo-Nazi supporter to the career of prominent Social Democrat leader Herbert Wehner, who had been a member of the German Communist Party in the 1930s, and who had lived in Moscow during World War II, where he was allegedly involved in NKVD operations.

When these remarks became public, the Federal Minister of Defense Georg Leber, complying with §50 of the Soldatengesetz [de] (Military law), ordered the generals into early retirement as of 1 November 1976.

The Rudel Scandal subsequently triggered a military-tradition discussion, which the Federal Minister of Defense Hans Apel ended with the introduction of "Guidelines for Understanding and Cultivating Tradition" on 20 September 1982.

[58] During the 1978 World Cup, held in Argentina, Rudel visited the Germany national team in its training camp in Ascochinga.

According to the news magazine Der Spiegel, one reason for the divorce was that his wife had sold some of his decorations, including the Oak Leaves with Diamonds, to an American collector, but she also refused to move to Argentina.

Rudel also claimed to have destroyed more than 800 vehicles of all types, over 150 artillery, anti-tank or anti-aircraft positions, 4 armored trains, as well as numerous bridges and supply lines.

[26] In 1976, Rudel attended a conference in the United States with various members of the United States military and defense industry as part of the continuous development of the A-10 Thunderbolt II; Rudel's status as a highly decorated attack aircraft pilot and particularly his experience at destroying Soviet tanks from the air was considered relevant to a potential conflict between NATO and the Warsaw Pact.