Hi Ed, Not sure if you are still kicking around? I am very much of the view that the story Hitler escaped to South America was a myth created by Ladislas Farago laying a false trail. The quest for Hitler's fate is the ultimate Alice in Wonderland and for Hitler to have escaped would have required at least one of the victorious Allies to look the other way.
I am sorry to put it so bluntly but the single nation which benefited most from the acquisition of German patents, scientist & engineers was the United States and given that Hitler issued orders for the execution of rocket engineers & Nazi nuclear scientists to prevent them falling into Soviet hands, perhaps the converse applies that Hitler's freedom was bought & paid for with the safe handover of many brilliant minds?
The most compelling claim that I have come across is that Hitler was flown first to Prague from Berlin on the night of 26/27 April and from there to Barcelona. General Franco's personal driver Stefan Aceituna, claims Hitler arrived at Madrid off a multi-engine German plane from Barcelona on 30 April 1945 and lived in the President's Palace with a German entourage under the alias Adi Lupi until his death in the small hours of 2 November 1947 from a massive coronary.
http://coolinterestingstuff.com/did-...scape-to-spain
I am of the view from other information too that his escape relied upon the nodding complicity of Western Allies. Perhaps also that his escape had been the subject of secret negotiations with the United States via Lisbon since August 1944.