Vintage video shows clever journalist tricking Nazi in disguise to reveal true identity

In 1972, French journalist Ladislas de Hoyos was sent to Bolivia to interview a man named Klaus Altmann, who was working with U.S. intelligence. The Bolivian government tightly controlled the interview, providing de Hoyos with pre-approved questions in Spanish, according to Express UK. But when de Hoyos stepped into the room, he went off-script in a moment that would become iconic among World War II historians. His goal? To prove that Klaus Altmann was, in fact, Klaus Barbie—the infamous Nazi officer hiding under a false identity. Recently, a clip of this chilling interview resurfaced on Reddit, sparking widespread interest.

The clip was created and posted by Reddit user u/citaszion with the caption, “Nazi officer Klaus Barbie falling into the trap of a French journalist interviewing him in the hope to reveal his real identity, as Klaus is hiding in Bolivia under a fake one.” u/citaszion created this video by combining footages from INA Histoire and Mamytwink and adding English subtitles.

Barbie was a secret Nazi officer who was later charged with over 177 crimes against humanity, per HISTORY. During WWII, Barbie was the head of the Gestapo in the French city of Lyon. He was a ruthless sadist who took immense pleasure in torturing people, especially the members of the Jewish or French Resistance. He also sent 7,500 French Jews and French Resistance members to concentration camps and executed some 4,000 others. Barbie fled away to Germany where he joined the American counter-espionage service (CIC), and was protected by them for years and years, until this courageous journalist tracked down his identity, and planned to unmask the torturer.

According to the report by Express UK, de Hoyos was accompanied that day by cameraman Christian van Ryswyck. Together, they flew to the Bolivian capital of La Paz to interview "Klaus Altmann", to rip out his real identity. To conduct the interview, de Hoyos employed an intelligence tactic: the language test. He was aware that Klaus Barbie was perfectly fluent in French. So the journalist deliberately asked him to repeat some sentences in French. The sentences were almost confessional, given the backstory of Barbie. At first, Altmann hesitated and said, “I don’t know French.” He was asked to repeat certain sentences including “I am not a murderer,” “I have never tortured,” and “I’ve never been to Lyon’s Gestapo” in French and he did, but with an expression of discomfort on his face. Then, de Hoyos spoke some sentences in French, and to his surprise, Altmann replied, which meant that he understood French. So, his disguise was ultimately cracked.

The journalist then knocked the man in disguise hard, asking him to repeat the sentence, “I don’t know Jean Moulin.” Jean Moulin was the leader of the French Resistance who was tortured to death by Barbie. In the interview, Barbie-disguised-as-Altmann denied knowing Moulin. But the journalist was not the one to give up that easily. He handed some photographs of Moulin to Barbie, asking him whether he could recognize the man in the picture. Although Barbie denied that too, sneering within, the journalist carefully tucked the photograph in his jacket pocket, thinking how he would test Barbie’s fingerprints from the photograph.

After the interview, Barbie realized that he had been busted. However, the Bolivian government refused to extradite him to France. It was finally in 1983 when Barbie was handcuffed and arrested as the officials came to know that he owed the Bolivian government $10,000. He was handed to the French government and in 1987, was sentenced to life. At the age of 77, in 1991, the “Butcher of Lyon” died in a Lyon prison hospital, suffering from cancer.