Inside eerie Nazi cemetery in AMAZON with swastika tombs all that remain of secret Hitler plot for fascist jungle colony

AN eerie Nazi graveyard in the Amazon 5,000 miles away from Hitler’s party headquarters reveals a chilling plot for a fascist jungle colony.

Beside a river in a remote part of the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest rests the grave of Hitler’s pal Josef Greiner, complete with a 9ft wooden cross emblazoned with the hateful Nazi symbol.

The chilling grave commemorating the Nazi figure reads “Josef Greiner died here of fever on Jan. 2, 1936, in the service of German research” and points to secret plans to colonise the region.

While it’s common knowledge that Nazi war criminals fled to South America following World War II, less is known about the warped plot to takeover South America before and during the war.

The Nazis wanted to set up a German bridgehead in the region by conquering a sizeable strip of the Amazon River basin and establish a “great South American Third Reich Empire”.

The plan, known as the Guyana Project, read: “The two largest scantly populated, but rich in resources, areas on earth are in Siberia and South America.

“They alone offer spacious immigration and settlement possibilities for the Nordic peoples…

“For the more advanced white race, it offers outstanding possibilities for exploitation.”

The plan was developed after SS member and keen geographer Otto Schulz-Kampfhenkel journeyed to the Amazon between 1935 and 1937 with Austrian writer Josef Greiner.

Over a 17 month period, they led a team of Nazi explorers through Brazil‘s border with French Guiana.

The researchers collected animal skulls and indigenous jewellery before studying the topography along the Jari River – a 491-mile tributary in the Amazon.

Jens Glüsing, a Brazil-based correspondent for German magazine Der Spiegel who has written about the Guyana Project told the : “The expedition started out with the usual scientific pretensions.

“But back in Germany, as the war started, Schulz-Kampfhenkel seized on this idea for Nazi colonial expansion.”

Following the expedition, Otto presented the Guyana Project to Heinrich Himmler – the SS and Gestapo chief – back in 1940.

In the plan, he detailed how taking over parts of South America – namely French Guiana and modern day Suriname and Guyana – could dampen the influence of the US.

But the reality was that the twisted plan was doomed from the offset – French Guiana was already controlled by the collaborationist Vichy regime.

Other signs pointing to why the plan failed include logistical failures with Otto’s expedition.

The jet they used – the Nazi-backed Heinkel He 72 Seekadett seaplane – capsized just a few weeks into the journey.

Desperate, the stranded explorers were forced to rely on indigenous Amazonian tribes in the jungle to help them survive the harsh, unfamiliar conditions.

But the Nazis ended up catching diseases including malaria and Otto experienced a serious bout of diphtheria.

In the end, it was a brutal fever which killed Josef Greiner – one of the key men behind the cunning plan.

Today the grave serves to remind locals and tourists that it was once at risk of being under attack by the Nazis.

Last month we reported on a chilling map that reveals how Britain would have looked if Adolf Hitler had won World War Two – with a new capital far from London and a holiday home for the dictator.

Bombshell dossiers for Operation Sea Lion – Nazi Germany’s ambitious plan for a full-scale invasion of Britain – detail how the Third Reich planned an attack on the English coast in a bid to take over Europe.

Nazi planners identified five sectors of the English coast to attack – from Ramsgate in Kent to Selsey Bill in West Sussex.

They planned to land some 100,000 troops, 650 tanks and 4,500 horses in the first wave of the attack on September 21, 1940 on the southeast coast from the French ports of Le Havre, Cherbourg, Boulogne and Ostend.

Once a bridgehead had been established, a further 500,000 soldiers would have landed.

They would have begun mass territorial attacks between Ramsgate and Deal, Folkestone and Dungeness, Dungeness and Rye, Bexhill-on-Sea and Beachy Head and Brighton to Selsey Bill.