AP

Two German officers, left, and a group of Allied officers who were prisoners of war look over a partly emptied mass grave in the Katyn Forest in May 1943.

WARSAW, Poland -- President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill hushed up evidence that the Soviet secret police had killed thousands of Polish men in the Katyn forest in 1940 for fear of alienating World War II ally Josef Stalin, newly declassified documents show.

An estimated 22,000 Polish military officers and intellectuals were killed in the massacre at Katyn, in western Russia, many of them trucked in from prison camps, shot in the head from behind and shoved into mass graves.

The aim of the Soviets was to eliminate a military and intellectual elite that would have put up stiff resistance to Soviet control. The men were among Poland's most accomplished -- officers and reserve officers who in their civilian lives worked as doctors, lawyers, teachers, or as other professionals. Their loss has proven an enduring wound to the Polish nation.

The killings continue to cast a shadow over relations between Russia and Poland, but the new documents shift the focus elsewhere: to how Washington and London put fears of upsetting the Kremlin before exposing the truth.

Instead, for years they backed the Soviet Union's version of events that Nazi Germany was behind the massacre at Katyn despite dozens of intelligence reports and witness accounts pointing to Soviet involvement.

A telegram from U.S. military intelligence dated May 28, 1943, responding to an offer of information about Katyn, put the allied position bluntly: "If you mean Katyn affair am interested only if report shows German complicity."

That telegram was among 1,000 pages of newly declassified documents and photographs that were released late Monday by the U.S. National Archives in College Park, Md.

The documents -- many of them marked secret or confidential -- included a series of exchanges between Roosevelt, Churchill and Soviet leader Stalin about reports emerging in April 1943 about the massacre.

'Common sense'
Their concerns focused on a demand from the Polish government, in exile in London, for a Red Cross investigation into Soviet involvement in the killings, and a threat from Stalin to break off ties with the Polish government as a result.

Washington and London feared a dispute would harm the effort to defeat Nazi Germany and a letter from Roosevelt to Stalin said that Polish leader Gen. Wladyslaw Sikorski "has erred" in pressing for an investigation.

J. Scott Applewhite / AP

Col. Andrzej Kopacki, right, an assistant military attache with the Polish Embassy in Washington, attends an event on Capitol Hill to announce the release of information about the 1940 Katyn Forest massacre. At left is W.J. Milan-Kamski of Easton, Md., who is a native of Poland and World War II veteran with the Polish Army, 2nd Armored Division.

"I am inclined to think that Prime Minister Churchill will find a way of prevailing upon the Polish government in London in the future to act with more common sense," Roosevelt wrote.

Churchill made a similar point to Stalin, saying in a note he would "oppose vigorously" any Red Cross investigation.

The documents showed that London and Washington had strong evidence of Soviet involvement as early as mid-1943, soon after German forces over-ran the Katyn area and found the mass graves.

This evidence included detailed accounts from officials in the Polish exiled government and reports from U.S. diplomats stating the Polish accounts were reliable.

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Testimony also came from an American prisoner of war, Lt. Col. John H. Van Vliet, who was taken to the massacre site by his German captors and sent coded messages back home about what he saw.

One document showed that people at the heart of the British government knew the Western allies were involved in a cover-up.

Congress honors black World War II Marines

"We have been obliged to ... restrain the Poles from putting their case clearly before the public, to discourage any attempts by the public and the press to probe the ugly story to the bottom," wrote Owen O'Malley, Britain's ambassador to the Polish government in exile, in a May 1943 letter.

"We have in fact perforce used the good name of England like the murderers used the conifers to cover up a massacre."

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Churchill passed the diplomat's candid comments on to Roosevelt in a letter, and recommended that he read them.

But in keeping with the desire at the time to keep the Katyn affair quiet, the British leader asked that Roosevelt return the document afterwards for safekeeping, saying "we are not circulating it officially in any way."

'The truth was inconvenient'
Izabella Sariusz-Skapska, president of the Katyn Families Federation, said the new documents contained new details about how much was known at the time.

"The Western allies new the exact truth about Katyn, but under war-time conditions, the truth was inconvenient."

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She said she hoped the decision to declassify the U.S. documents would put pressure on the Russian government to open up its own archives about Katyn. "If there is something that we are waiting for, it is there," she said.

White House maintained silence
In the early years after the war, outrage by some American officials over the concealment inspired the creation of a special U.S. Congressional committee to investigate Katyn.

In a final report released in 1952, the committee declared there was no doubt of Soviet guilt, and called the massacre "one of the most barbarous international crimes in world history." It found that Roosevelt's administration suppressed public knowledge of the crime, but said it was out of military necessity. It also recommended the government bring charges against the Soviets at an international tribunal -- something never acted upon.

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Despite the committee's strong conclusions, the White House maintained its silence on Katyn for decades, showing an unwillingness to focus on an issue that would have added to political tensions with the Soviets during the Cold War.

The declassified documents also show the United States maintaining that it could not conclusively determine guilt until a Russian admission in 1990 -- a statement that looks improbable given the huge body of evidence of Soviet guilt that had already emerged decades earlier. Historians say the new material helps to flesh out the story of what the United States knew and when.

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It was not until the waning days of Soviet hegemony over Eastern Europe that reformist leader Mikhail Gorbachev publicly admitted to Soviet guilt at Katyn, a key step in Polish-Russian reconciliation.

The silence by the U.S. government has been a source of deep frustration for many Polish-Americans. One is Franciszek Herzog, 81, a Connecticut man whose father and uncle died in the massacre. After Gorbachev's 1990 admission, he was hoping for more openness from the U.S. as well and made three attempts to obtain an apology from President George H.W. Bush.

"It will not resurrect the men," he wrote to Bush. "But will give moral satisfaction to the widows and orphans of the victims."

Read more about the records relating to the Katyn massacre at the U.S. National Archives

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Nestor Bachmann / EPA

A smoke column rises over the roofs of Oranienburg, Germany, on Aug. 30, 2012, following a controlled blasting of a World War II bomb near the Oranienburg train station.

MAINZ, Germany -- Another bomb scare hit Germany Thursday with the discovery of two unexploded devices dropped by U.S. forces during World War II.

Bomb-disposal experts have begun to disarm a 550-pound bomb in the city of Oranienburg, near Berlin, formerly part of East Germany. Later in the day, a controlled explosion of a second bomb was carried out near the city’s main train station.

Thursday’s bombs will be number 137 and 138 in a long list of unexploded ordinances that have been found since officials started searching for them in 1990, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. According to local media reports, more than 22,000 bombs were dropped on Oranienburg by allied forces at the end of the war.

Such incidents are routine for the bomb experts in Brandenburg state.

But, after a large controlled explosion of a bomb in the city center of Munich on Tuesday caused a bright fireball, smashed shop windows and set nearby buildings alight, media attention and public interest are higher than usual.

PhotoBlog: Controlled explosion of WWII bomb ignites Munich fires

Two days after they were evacuated from their homes, many residents in the southern German city still cannot return as at least 16 buildings are at risk to collapse and need to be inspected by local engineers.

'Difficult situation'
Meanwhile, a debate about compensation for the damages has started.

In the aftermath of the supposedly controlled explosion in Munich, the situation was tense in Oranienburg.

“This is an exceptional and difficult situation,” city spokesman Bjoern Luettmann told NBC News.

“The many undetonated bombs are a burden for the city and its residents, especially on days like this,” Luettmann added.

Nearly 6,000 residents were due to be evacuated Thursday. Public transportation has come to a near standstill and the majority of train connections in and out of Oranienburg have been cancelled.

“The explosive devices in Oranienburg are a ticking time bomb because many were equipped with so called long-period delay detonators,” Luettmann said.

“These are detonators that do not trigger an explosion upon impact to the ground and those that did not explode at all can go off at any time now,” he added.

Designed to 'create chaos'
The delayed-action bombs were designed to explode between 2 and 150 hours after impact.

“They were designed to create chaos on enemy territory,” Luettmann said.

Oranienburg is the only city in Germany that has been systematically searching for unexploded World War II bombs, mostly with the help of old aerial photos that were released by Britain and the United States in the 1990s.

Unexploded WWII bomb disrupts Amsterdam Schiphol airport

During World War II, Allied forces suspected there was a nuclear bomb research site in Oranienburg. The city also hosted an aircraft factory and had other strategically important manufacturing facilities.

Several years ago, the local state had a professional assessment done that offered short- and long-term plans on handling the threat. Officials stated in their report that an unusually high number -- more than 4,000 -- of the delay-action bombs were dropped on Oranienburg.

While the detonators are decaying underground, the explosives within – mostly TNT -- are not. Several construction workers in Germany have been injured or killed in the past when their heavy maintenance vehicles accidentally ran over such bombs.

"We wish that we could get more financial support from the German government, the search and subsequent measures are costly," Luettmann said.

City officials say that on average nearly 3 million euros -- the equivalent of $5 million -- are spent on the search for explosive devices.

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Updated at 6:56 p.m. ET: MAINZ, Germany -- Nearly 3,000 residents were evacuated from the heart of Munich after construction workers found an undetonated, 550-pound World War II bomb.

The evacuation, which affected several blocks in the busy party district of Schwabing, was ordered by local officials as a routine security measure.

Citing the dapd news agency, The Associated Press reported that explosives experts detonated the remains of the bomb on Tuesday night. Burning debris from the controlled explosion reportedly caused fires in several nearby buildings that had been evacuated.

On Monday night, experts from the Munich bomb disposal squad determined that the explosives were not equipped with a “normal mechanism,” but a chemical, delayed-action detonator.

"It is an extremely dangerous device," Roman Leitow, a Munich fire department spokesman told NBC News.

“A specialist is presently trying to defuse the bomb with his team,” he added.

Leave immediately
Fire department officials went from door-to-door to enforce the evacuation, after fire trucks had passed through the streets, instructing residents with loudspeaker announcements to leave their homes immediately.

Marc Mueller / EPA

Diethard Posorski, of the bomb disposal team, stands next to an unexploded WW II bomb which was found at a construction site in Munich, Germany, Monday.

Experts from Munich fire department spent most of Monday night shielding the bomb with sand, bales of straw and other insulating material, which would catch shrapnel and muffle the shock wave in case of an uncontrolled explosion.

Most of the evacuated residents spent the night with friends and family, but about 600 were brought to one of the three temporary shelters set up by in nearby schools by rescue teams. Red Cross workers handed out blankets and drinks.

Massive WWII bomb successfully defused

During World War II, Allied forces dropped nearly 2 million tons of bombs on Germany and experts estimate that between 5 to 15 percent of the bombs did not explode.

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Kimimasa Mayama / EPA

Doves fly over Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park on Monday during a memorial ceremony to commemorate those killed by the world's first atomic bombing in 1945.

Updated at 12:42 p.m. ET: TOKYO - As dignitaries from 71 countries joined a crowd of 50,000 on Monday to mark the 67th anniversary of the Hiroshima atomic bomb attack, Japanese officials vowed to revamp energy policies in the wake of the devastating Fukushima nuclear accident.

"The government must learn from the lessons of Fukushima's nuclear accident and establish without delay an energy policy that guards the safety and the livelihood of the Japanese public," Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui told the crowd that had gathered in the scorching heat near the blast's epicenter to observe a minute of silence. 

On Aug. 6, 1945, about 140,000 people were killed by an American atomic bomb that hastened the end of World War II.  Another blast in Nagasaki three days later killed 70,000 more. 

In March 2011, meltdowns at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima nuclear plant following an earthquake and tsunami caused radiation to spew over large areas of Fukushima, forcing more than 160,0000 people to flee. In the months following the world's worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl in 1986, all of Japan's nuclear plants were shuttered.

While two reactors resumed operations in July, the Fukushima disaster has fueled widespread unease about the country's dependence on nuclear power. 

Now, 17 months since the multiple explosions at Fukushima, efforts by the government of Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda government to establish this new energy policy have finally started to gather momentum.

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Over the weekend, two days of deliberative polling -- which extracts informed and in-depth opinions through discussions and debate -- strove to determine the public's opinions on what the country's dependence on nuclear energy should be by 2030.

While in the past energy policies relied on opinions of industry experts, bureaucrats and politicians, a combination that a recent parliamentary investigation concluded had bred collusion and blindness when it came to ensuring nuclear reactors' safety, this time close to 300 citizens participated in the discussion. 

Citizen participants judged three options, the first being zero dependence, which would be the most popular given the nuclear disasters the country has lived through. However, it would also mean higher energy bills and a stronger reliance on fossil fuel given that before the Fukushima disaster, 26 percent of Japan's energy was derived from nuclear power.

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The second of option of 15 percent dependence would be attained if all of the current reactors were decommissioned after 40 years as is required by law now.

The third option -- 20 to 25 percent dependence on nuclear energy -- would require renewing current nuclear power plants. 

But all of these options would desperately need new advances in the field of renewable energy, which currently provides a mere three percent of Japan's total energy, especially if the country continues to seek, clean affordable and safe energy.

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Next, the government will sift through the opinions gathered at the citizen debates, make them public, and compile a draft of its new energy policy by the end of August.

Surrounded by testaments to atomic energy's devastating power in the Hiroshima Memorial Park, Prime Minister Noda promised that his government would follow through and make the difficult choices the country required.

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"Under our fundamental policy to abandon the nation's dependence on nuclear power, we will strive to establish a mid-to-long-term energy structure, one (with) which the public will feel safe," he said.

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Scanpix Sweden / Reuters

People attend the centennial commemoration of the birth of Raoul Wallenberg in Sigtuna, Sweden, on Saturday.

The 100^th anniversary of Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg’s birthday was celebrated Saturday with a call for a day on the Swedish calendar to honor the man who saved thousands of Jews during World War II but whose own fate remains a mystery.

“Wallenberg is an excellent symbol for a Sweden and Europe with solidarity, openness and tolerance,”  Democracy Minister Birgitta Ohlsson wrote in an opinion piece in Dagens Nyheter.

Wallenberg, born Aug. 4, 1912, has been remembered throughout the year thanks to efforts of a Swedish national committee established to draw attention to his life and deeds, Ohlsson wrote. However, she argued, his work “deserves an annual Swedish remembrance.”

Attila Kisbenedek / AFP - Getty Images file

A Hungarian woman touches the memorial stone of late Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg in St. Istvan park of Budapest, Hungary, on Wednesday.

 Several memorial celebrations were planned in Stockholm on Saturday, with guests including Crown Princess Victoria attending a memorial for Wallenberg.

In May, Sweden issued a postage stamp honoring Wallenberg.

But Ohlsson wrote that she is worried the memory of Wallenberg could fade.

“In a country where anti-immigrant parties are gaining ground, right-wing movements are formed and populist groups become more visible, it is increasingly important that each nation talks about the individuals who make a difference for humanity,” she wrote.

International memorials
Wallenberg was remembered internationally.

President Barack Obama on July 27 signed the Raoul Wallenberg Centennial Celebration Act, passed by Congress to honor the diplomat with the Congressional Gold Medal. The U.S. mint is now authorized to design and print the medal, which will be presented in the Congress, according to a White House statement.

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On Friday in Moscow, about 50 people -- including members of the Jewish community, historians, and rights workers -- gathered for a somber commemorative ceremony in Moscow's Memorial Synagogue at the Holocaust and Jewish Heritage Museum, according to Radio Free Europe. Diplomats from Sweden, Hungary, the Netherlands, Germany and Israel were among those who spoke. A new documentary film on the secret services was shown.

Other events were held in Israel and Hungary.

Fate unclear
As Sweden's envoy to Hungary during the war, Wallenberg, then age 32, prevented the deportation of 20,000 to as many as 100,000 Jews to Nazi concentration camps by issuing them protective Swedish government passports.

Wallenberg also talked occupying German officers out of a plan to obliterate Budapest's Jewish ghetto.

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Wallenberg was last seen on Jan. 17, 1945, in Budapest, when he drove off to meet Soviet authorities to discuss protection for Jews once the Red Army drove out the Nazis. Soviet intelligence agents abducted the Swedish diplomat.

Reports of his death are inconsistent.

The Soviet Union claimed that Wallenberg, incarcerated at Moscow's Lefortovo prison, died on July 17, 1947, of a heart attack, the New York Times wrote in 2000. However, he reportedly was interrogated six days after the date Russia claims Wallenberg died, according to others studying his case. A special commission investigating victims of Russian leader Joseph Stalin's political terror said he was executed at Lubyanka prison at KGB headquarters.

"The family wants now to get the truth," says Cecilia Ahlberg, Wallenberg's great-niece, said Friday in a BBC interview in which Wallenberg's half-sister, Nin Lagergren, 91, agreed.

"We want all the facts about his whereabouts in the Soviet Union, what happened and when it happened," Ahlberg said.

This article includes reporting by NBC News' Jim Gold.

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In 1941, six Poles allegedly beat 20 Jewish women to death with metal-tipped clubs outside the hamlet of Bzury, in northeastern Poland.

Now, government prosecutor Radoslaw Ignatiew hopes to charge the killers, if they are still alive. He also aims to discover the identities of the women and the location of their graves.  

Ignatiew represents the Institute of National Remembrance, which was established in Poland 1998 to prosecute crimes committed during Nazi and Communist rule. 

“There is no doubt that the murderers were Poles,” Ignatiew told Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland’s largest newspaper.   

The case comes as Poland grapples with its World War II and Holocaust-era history. While Poles usually see themselves as victims of their Nazi and Soviet occupations, there are lingering questions about involvement in Holocaust-era atrocities.

Cold case re-opened
In the Bzury case, the women were allegedly taken from the ghetto in Szczuczyn, six miles from Bzury, on the false pretense that they were needed to tend a vegetable field. After they were raped and beaten to death, their bodies were reportedly dumped into pits in a forest.

Courtesy Agenja Gazeta

Prosecutor Radoslaw Ignatiew examines his case files at Poland's Institute of National Remembrance.

These allegations were brought to light with the recent discovery of trial documents related to the killings.

The woman who uncovered the documents, Barbara Engelking, head of the Center for Holocaust Research at the Polish Academy of Sciences, learned that at least six men were allegedly involved in the rape and murder of the women. But in 1950, just one man was convicted and sentenced to death for the murders and the case was closed. (According to court records, the defendant was never executed and died in prison).

Engelking’s discovery sparked the re-opening of the inquiry. “We want to find the truth about what happened,” she said in a telephone interview.

Victims or perpetrators?
The investigation triggered by the court records comes at an especially delicate point in Poland’s post-Soviet era effort to understand its own history. This sensitivity was reflected in the reaction to President Obama’s reference to a “Polish Death camp” during a Medal of Freedom ceremony in Washington, D.C., on May 29. 

The White House quickly apologized to an offended Polish government. By “Polish death camps” Obama really meant “Nazi death camps in German-occupied Poland,” a White House spokesman said.

What many Poles find hard to accept is that while the Holocaust, in which more than 3 million Polish Jews perished, took place mostly in German death camps located in Poland, Poles also engaged in the killing of Jews during the same years.

Poles tend to see themselves as either victims or heroes, but not as perpetrators, University of Warsaw sociology professor Antoni Sulek told me during an interview in Warsaw last fall.

According to Professor Jan Grabowski of the University of Ottawa, this new inquiry was also inspired by recent scholarship revealing the killing of Jews by Poles during the Nazi occupation.

Grabowski, author of “Hunt for the Jews 1942-1945,” said he and other members of the Center for Holocaust Research were able to identify thousands of Jews who perished directly or indirectly due to the actions of their Polish neighbors.

Before this latest research, it was assumed that the Jedwabne pogrom of July 1941, when Polish villagers herded 300 Jews into a barn and set it on fire, was an isolated event. (The Polish-American professor Jan Gross first documented this pogrom in his book “Neighbors,” published in 2000).

In fact, according to Grabowski, this was not an isolated incident, but part of a pattern of Polish anti-Jewish violence throughout the German occupation.

Committed to the prosecution of Nazi crimes 
Ignatiew, prosecutor of the newly opened case, also was in charge of the Jedwabne case, which outraged him, according to Konstanty Gebert, a Gazeta Wyborcza columnist. Ignatiew “believes anti-Semitism is a moral and legal outrage and won’t stop fighting it,” according to Gebert.

When asked whether there is an expiration date for murder investigations, Ignatiew told me, through an interpreter, “Poland is committed to the indefinite prosecution of Nazi crimes of murder or genocide.”

“We want to find out whether any of the perpetrators are still around. Also, we might find witnesses to tell us where the women are buried.”

Ignatiew’s commitment reflects a newly emergent awareness among today’s young Poles of this darker side of Polish history. At the same time, it does not change the longstanding reality of Polish heroism on behalf of Jews during the same period. 

Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, recognizes 6,135 Poles as “Righteous Among the Nations,” a designation for gentiles who risked death to save Jews during the war years, the largest national group to earn that distinction.  

Still, it was a complicated era, with atrocities committed on all sides.

“People must know that history is not black or white,” said Andrzej Folwarczny, president of the Forum for Dialogue Among Nations, a group that promotes relations between Poles and Jews.  

Don Snyder, a veteran NBC News producer for more than 25 years, is a special correspondent for NBCNews.com. A version of this article originally appeared in the Jewish Daily Forward. 

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jewish-voice-from-germany.de

The Jewish Voice From Germany website displays the story about the discovery of a letter saying Adolf Hitler wanted to protect Ernst Hess, a Jew who briefly was Hitler's commander during World War I.

Adolf Hitler personally intervened to protect a Jewish man who had been his commanding officer during World War I, according to a letter unearthed by the Jewish Voice from Germany newspaper.

The letter, written in Aug. 27, 1940, by Heinrich Himmler, head of the Nazis' feared paramilitary SS, said Ernst Hess, a judge, should be spared persecution or deportation and receive “relief and protection as per the Fuhrer's wishes.”

Historian Susanne Mauss discovered the letter.

"It was a wonderful chance find," she told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Friday. "There had always been rumors, but this was the first written reference to a protection by Hitler."

The letter was found in official archives containing files that the Nazi secret police, or Gestapo, kept on Jewish lawyers and judges. Mauss said its authenticity is corroborated by other documents, including one owned by Hess' surviving daughter, Ursula Hess, 86.

Hess, a decorated World War I hero who briefly commanded Hitler's company in Flanders, worked as a judge until Nazi racial laws forced him to resign in 1936. The same year he was beaten up by Nazi thugs outside his house, the paper said.

Hitler had ordered the genocide of all Europe’s Jews. His orders led to the deaths of 6 million Jews.

In a petition to Hitler at that time, Hess wrote: "For us it is a kind of spiritual death to now be branded as Jews and exposed to general contempt."

Hess and his family moved for a time to a German-speaking area of northern Italy but were then forced to return to Germany, where he discovered Hitler's protection order had been revoked.

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He spent the rest of World War II doing slave labor but he escaped death partly thanks to the fact that his wife was a gentile. Hess' sister died in the Auschwitz death camp, but his mother managed to escape to Switzerland.

Hess remained in Germany after the war, becoming head of the Federal Railway Authority based in Frankfurt. He died in 1983.

Ursula Hess, still living in Germany, told the paper in an interview that her father had benefited from a chance encounter with another World War I comrade, Fritz Wiedemann. He became Hitler's adjutant and used his influence to win concessions for Hess, she was quoted as saying.

Ursula Hess also recalled her father saying that as a young corporal in World War I, Hitler had no friends in their regiment and had kept himself very much to himself.

The paper's publisher, Rafael Seligmann, said that whether Hitler had helped protect Hess or not didn't change the Nazi leader's genocidal record.

"History won't need to be rewritten because of this," he said.

This article includes reporting by Reuters, The Associated Press and msnbc.com's Jim Gold. Follow him on Facebook here.

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Jakub Perka

The discovery of the Curtiss P-40 Kittyhawk in the Sahara Desert was described by one military historian as "the aviation equivalent of Tutankhamun's Tomb."

A remarkably well-preserved fighter plane that crashed in the Sahara Desert during World War II has been found 70 years later, shedding new light on the pilot's struggle to survive.

The American-made Curtiss P-40 Kittyhawk was discovered by a Polish oil worker, Jakub Perka, who was exploring the desert in Egypt, The Telegraph newspaper reported. It was about 200 miles from the nearest town.

It is believed that the pilot, Dennis Copping, 24, ran into trouble while flying in 1942 but still managed to land the plane on the sands, the paper said.

Military historian Andy Saunders said that the British flight sergeant "must have survived the crash" because a photograph of the plane showed a parachute had been put up on the side of the plane, apparently as a form of shelter, The Telegraph reported.

"The radio and batteries were out of the plane, and it looks like he tried to get it working. If he died at the side of the plane, his remains would have been found," Saunders added. "Once he had crashed there, nobody was going to come and get him. It is more likely he tried to walk out of the desert but ended up walking to his death. It is too hideous to contemplate."

He said the discovery was "the aviation equivalent of Tutankhamun's tomb."

Air enthusiasts excited
The Vintage Wings of Canada website speculated that the plane had a mechanical problem, ran out of fuel or that the pilot simply got lost.

The website said there seemed to be a growing consensus that the plane's serial number was ET 574, based on what could be made out from photographs. If this is confirmed, the website said it was possible that Canadian flying ace James "Stocky" Edwards had previously flown the fighter.

Jakub Perka

The plane's cockpit is in remarkable though dusty condition.

Journalist sacked for defying censors to report German WWII surrender gets apology

"To say we, at Vintage Wings, are excited by this find is an understatement," the website said.

It expressed concern the plane had been "seriously vandalized -- a travesty the whole aviation world seems unable to stop."

Parades commemorate Soviet victory in World War II

Michael Creane of the Royal Air Force Museum in London, U.K., told NBC News that it was "incredible" the plane had not been submerged by the shifting sands of the desert.

He said the museum was "hell-bent" on bringing the aircraft to the facility, although he said there were "lots of hoops to jump through."

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BMPM via Reuters

An explosives expert works on a World War II bomb discovered on a building site in Marseille's harbor.

French officials evacuated 1,500 residents from their homes in Marseille, in the south of France, on Sunday after discovering a live bomb that was placed there by Germans during World War II, LaProvence.com reported.  

The bomb was discovered by builders working on a retirement home construction site, The Riviera Times reported. The bomb, wrapped with a cable and pillows to absorb any potential shock, was gently lifted for fear that it might explode.

Neutralizing the bomb took 40 minutes. Deactivating the bomb was a delicate process, one that LaProvence.com detailed in a minute-by-minute account.

The massive bomb, which took up the better part of a moving truck, was transported Sunday afternoon to Canjuers military camp, where it will be destroyed, LaProvence.com reported.

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Gero Breloer / AP

Efraim Zuroff, chief-Nazi hunter of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and director of the Center's Jerusalem Office, announces on Wednesday the launching of "Operation Last Chance II" during a news conference in Berlin, Germany.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center on Wednesday launched a new race against time to prosecute Nazi war criminals still alive 66 years after the end of World War II.

Efraim Zuroff, the center's top Nazi-hunter, told reporters in Berlin that "Operation Last Chance II" would provide up to 25,000 euros ($32,900) in reward money for information that leads to the investigation and prosecution of war criminals.

"Whatever can be done has to be done very promptly and as quickly as possible because time is running out," Zuroff said, claiming the passage of time does not diminish the guilt of the killers.

The effort comes after German prosecutors said in October that the successful conviction of former Ohio autoworker John Demjanjuk had set a precedent that allowed them to reopen hundreds of dormant investigations.

Demjanjuk, 91, was convicted in May of thousands of counts of accessory to murder after a Munich court found he served as a death camp guard — the first time a suspect had been found guilty without evidence of a specific crime. The court ruled that any guard at a Nazi camp whose sole purpose was to kill people could be convicted of accessory to murder.

John Demjanjuk emerges from a Munich, Germany, court on May 12, 2011, after a judge sentenced him to 5 years in prison for charges related to 28,060 counts of accessory to murder.

Demjanjuk denies having ever served as a guard and is appealing the verdict.

"What this conviction does is set a legal precedent that should pave the way for the prosecution of many people who were on a daily basis over a prolonged period of time involved in mass murder but who had been ignored," Zuroff said.

About 4,000 people were either guards at the four Nazi camps used only for killings — Belzec, Sobibor, Chelmno and Treblinka — or members of the Einsatzgruppen death squads responsible for mass killings, particularly early in the war before the death camps were established.

Zuroff said that he did not know how many were still alive — the youngest would now be in their 80s — but that he guessed conservatively there could be 80 or more.

"I think it's not a gross exaggeration to assume that 2 percent are still probably alive," he said.

Zuroff said a high-ranking living Nazi is in sights but he cannot reveal his name because of an ongoing criminal investigation, the Jerusalem Post reported.

"I am not saying who because he’s a flight risk," Zuroff said. "This person was a commander and involved in very serious actions against Jews."

Zuroff also said Klaas Farber, an alleged SS hitman in Holland, was the most senior Nazi known to be alive today. Faber lives in the Bavarian city of Ingolstadt, Germany. He was sentenced in a Dutch court in 1947 was convicted of murdering 22 Jews in the occupied Netherlands during WWII, but he escaped prison in 1952.

Prosecutors in Dortmund also are currently investigating six former members of an SS armored division that was responsible for the largest massacre in Nazi-occupied France under the same theory that led to Demjanjuk’s prosecution.

The Wiesenthal Center is asking for tips to a new hotline in Germany. Though the focus of the investigation is Germany, Zuroff said suspects could live anywhere in the world.

A reward of 5,000 euros will be paid for the information upon the indictment of a suspect, another 5,000 euros upon conviction, and a further 100 euros per day spent in prison — up to 150 days — for a total of 25,000 euros, Zuroff said.

The center's original "Operation Last Chance" was launched in 2002 and targeted primarily eastern European countries. It ended up with 102 suspects' names being turned over to prosecutors. Of those, only a handful were ever indicted or tried, Zuroff said.

Zuroff said that at this late stage, with few witnesses left and suspects' health often preventing them from being brought to trial, he measures success in six stages: exposure; official investigation; indictment; trial; conviction; and punishment.

"It's very hard today to get to stage six," he said.

"The answer is very simple," Zuroff said. "One, the passage in time does not diminish guilt of killers. Two, old age does not afford protection to murderers. Three, all the victims deserve efforts to find their killers. Four, it sends an important message to those today that they are being brought to justice."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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