Walter Rauff (Köthen, Germany June 19, 1906 – Santiago, Chile, May 14, 1984), was an SS officer in Nazi Germany, attaining the grade of Colonel (Standartenführer) in June 1944. From January 1938 he was an aide of Reinhard Heydrich firstly in the Sicherheitsdienst or SD, the SS security service, later in the Reichssicherheitshauptamt or RSHA, the Reich Security Main Office, a department created by Himmler in 1939 grouping the Gestapo, SD and Kripo, the criminal police. Between 1958 and 1962 he worked for the Bundesnachrichtendienst, West Germany's intelligence service.

Rauff is thought to have been responsible for nearly 100,000 deaths during the Second World War^{[citation needed]}. In the late 1970s and early '80s, he was arguably the most wanted Nazi fugitive still alive^{[citation needed]}.

According to the MI5 file on Walter Rauff released in 2005:

During his thirteen years in the Navy, Rauff became acquainted with Reinhard Heydrich, and saw service in South America and Spain, as a young officer in 1924.

Otto Skorzeny (12 June 1908 – 5 July 1975) was an SS-Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant Colonel) in the German Waffen-SS during World War II. After fighting on the Eastern Front, he was chosen as the field commander to carry out the rescue mission that freed the deposed Italian dictator Benito Mussolini from captivity. Skorzeny was also the leader of Operation Greif, in which German soldiers were to infiltrate through enemy lines, using their opponents' uniforms and customs. At the end of the war, Skorzeny was involved with the Werwolf guerrilla movement and the ODESSA network where he would serve as Spanish coordinator.

Although he was charged with breaching the 1907 Hague Convention in relation with Operation Greif, the Dachau Military Tribunal acquitted Skorzeny after the war. Skorzeny fled from his holding prison in 1948, first to France, and then to Spain.

Otto Skorzeny was born in Vienna into a middle-class Austrian family which had a long history of military service. In addition to his native German, he spoke excellent French.

Erich Priebke (born July 29, 1913) is a former Hauptsturmführer (Captain) in the Waffen SS. In 1996 he was convicted of war crimes in Italy, for participating in the massacre at the Ardeatine caves in Rome, on March 24, 1944. 335 Italian civilians were killed there in retaliation after a partisan attack had claimed the lives of 33 German soldiers (an SS military police battalion from South Tyrol). Priebke was one of those who was held responsible for this mass execution. After the defeat of Nazi Germany, he got help to flee to Argentina where he lived for over 50 years.

In 1991, Priebke's participation in the Rome massacre was denounced in Esteban Buch's book. In 1994, 50 years after the massacre, Priebke felt he could now talk about the incident and was interviewed by an American ABC News reporter Sam Donaldson. This caused outrage among people who had not forgotten the incident, and led to his extradition to Italy and a trial which would last more than four years.

The massacre of Fosse Ardeatine took place in Italy during World War II. On 23 March 1944, 33 German soldiers (members of an SS military police battalion from South Tyrol) were killed when members of the Italian Resistance set off a bomb close to their column, and attacked the soldiers with firearms and grenades while they were marching along Via Rasella, in Rome. This attack was led by the GAP Gruppi di Azione Partigiana.