Göring makes his escape on the yacht Carin II

In our timeline, Pierre Laval (second in command of Vichy France) took a airplane and successfully escapes to Francoise Spain. After the war ended the French demanded his extradition and Franco complied.

If a pro axis dictatorship complied, why would a neutral democracy refuse to hand over a war criminal?

Because Franco knew the Allies would have had no qualms about taking him out. But for Britain or the U.S. to invade a neutral democracy, well that is on an entirely different level. Most likely they'd threaten sanctions or just send in special forces to extract him.
 
With Goering, the heat is NEVER going to die down.
The second part of my answer was how very unlikely that was going to happen.
Goring would have been nabbed as soon as his yacht cleared whatever port it was in.
It was that Goring was so delusional as many posters have said that maybe he thought it was a viable plan.
All in all any top Nazi was going to get captured very quickly, the idea that anyone of them would have gotten away is the stuff of bad fiction.
As a side note the first time my father saw Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory he gave a big laugh when there was a photo of a reclusive South American businessman shown on TV and it took me a long time to understand that it was Martin Bormann.
 
Because Franco knew the Allies would have had no qualms about taking him out. But for Britain or the U.S. to invade a neutral democracy, well that is on an entirely different level. Most likely they'd threaten sanctions or just send in special forces to extract him.

There is zero upside for them doing so. I have little doubt they would simply hand him over.
 
Because Franco knew the Allies would have had no qualms about taking him out. But for Britain or the U.S. to invade a neutral democracy, well that is on an entirely different level. Most likely they'd threaten sanctions or just send in special forces to extract him.

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The Swedish had nothing to gain from keeping Goering there, nothing, zero, nada. If they arrest Goering he is such a big fish (the highest ranking Nazi alive at the time) that they have a lot to gain to arrest him and give him to the allies, they would be applauded.

If they keep him, they can expect at the minimum, at the very, very bottom least the allies and the Soviets to embargo them and send successive commando operations to capture Goering.
 
Just so that my post doesn’t get quoted a third time: I’m not saying the Swedes would ever do this. I was only saying why comparing Franco’s willingness to give up collaborators and former Axis leaders to a country like Sweden isn’t appropriate, Franco’s willingness to do so was based on Spain’s international isolation and it’s pariah status as a quasi fascist state meaning that the Allies could demand that Spain give up any war criminals.

Sweden would never knowlingly allow any axis aligned persons to remain within her borders especially if the allies come knocking.
 
Absolutely no one will be crazy enough to knowingly give refuge to Hermann Goering. He was Hitler's deputy and the leader of the Luftwaffe.

Also, the Carin II was meant as a pleasure yacht. There is no way in hell he will be able to escape from Europe in that thing. If he's made his way to Kiel, he'll have better luck in a U-Boat, but even if he gets to South America, he'd have to lose some weight (Seriously, his weight would be one of the things that gave him away) and change his name and live anonymously as Hermann Lopez or something like that.
 
Obviously he goes to either the North Pole to enter the portal to the secret Nazi bases inside the hollow earth, or he goes to the hidden Nazi bases in Antarctica ;)
 
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The Swedish had nothing to gain from keeping Goering there, nothing, zero, nada. If they arrest Goering he is such a big fish (the highest ranking Nazi alive at the time) that they have a lot to gain to arrest him and give him to the allies, they would be applauded.

If they keep him, they can expect at the minimum, at the very, very bottom least the allies and the Soviets to embargo them and send successive commando operations to capture Goering.
What if they tried him for war crimes ? Perhaps they could find some evidence of Swedish citizens who were victimized by his policies ?
 
Perhaps he tries to reach Sweeden ?
1945, they would turn over his fat ass to the Allies immediately. His best bet would be Spain. Franco was still greatly for the Condor Legion in the Spanish Civil War. That would only work if no one knew Goring was there. There's a pretty good chance Franco would turn Herman going over the allies.
 
What if they tried him for war crimes ? Perhaps they could find some evidence of Swedish citizens who were victimized by his policies ?

They cannot for two main reasons, the first is that the only official trial is happening at Nuremberg, so if the Swedes want him tried for crimes against Sweden they need to hand him over for the allies and then use the nuremberg trial to judge him for his crimes against Sweden; second because Sweden is a neutral nation, he didn't attacked Sweden, so they cannot judge him for war crimes AFAIK.
 
Another issue is that Goering offers nothing to the neutral country hiding him. People like von Braun offers technical knowledge. What can Goering offer? How to unsuccessfully run an air force?
 
They cannot for two main reasons, the first is that the only official trial is happening at Nuremberg, so if the Swedes want him tried for crimes against Sweden they need to hand him over for the allies and then use the nuremberg trial to judge him for his crimes against Sweden; second because Sweden is a neutral nation, he didn't attacked Sweden, so they cannot judge him for war crimes AFAIK.

They may hold a deportation hearing before handing him over, that is the most he can hope for. That may delay his death a few weeks, maybe.
 
They may hold a deportation hearing before handing him over, that is the most he can hope for. That may delay his death a few weeks, maybe.
If Goring could have been connected to crimes committed against Sweedish citizens I suspect the Sweedish Govt could have come up with some form of legal justification to charge him and put him on trial.

That being said it might also have been simpler to hand him over to the Allies. (Presumably this was possible under Sweedish law ?)
 
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Another issue is that Goering offers nothing to the neutral country hiding him. People like von Braun offers technical knowledge. What can Goering offer? How to unsuccessfully run an air force?
He might have had access to considerable sums of money in Switzerland or perhaps other countries ? I could see him trying to at least bribe the Swedish authorities into putting him on trial in Sweden and not executing him. I doubt this plan would have worked in his favour.

If is also unclear to me if Sweden could have legally (as per their own laws) executed him, so Goering might have figured getting to Sweden might have saved his neck ? It doesn't seem entirely implausible for his yacht to make it from Kiel to Sweden in the closing weeks of world war 2.
 
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From Sweden couldn’t Goering find an aircraft or submarine?
Maybe.. Perhaps Plan A could have been to try and secretly leave Sweden via other means. Plan B if caught by the Swedish authorities might have been to manipulate and or bribe the Swedish legal system into some how not extraditing him.

I doubt either of these plans would have worked out in his favour.
 
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MatthewB

Banned
Sweden, not Sweeden. As best I know, there is no word in the English language that includes “sweed”
 
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