Strap on your seatbelts and brace yourself for, quite possibly, my most beguiling conspiracy theory to date. Your history teachers were wrong — nothing we were told as children can be trusted (as I have long suspected).

Before I get started, I feel obligated to explain myself: I have been a history nerd for all my life and my primary period of interest has, and remains to be, World War II. To this day, my heart skips a beat when I come across any book, television series or movie about the second world war.

During the dreaded ice-breaker sessions we all endure during syllabus week, there is always one question I dread more than any other: if you could talk to any person, alive or dead, who would it be?

As someone who values honesty above almost anything, I have a hard time answering this question because I feel it would be hypocritical to lie to my peers in this situation. So, I answer honestly. If I could have a conversation with anyone, alive or dead, I would choose to talk to Adolf Hitler.

Please, don’t take this the wrong way as most people do. I don’t like the guy. I just want to know what his deal is. How does a psychopathic dictator take his coffee? What’s his favorite book? Did his artistic failure really instigate mass genocide?

My burning curiosity about this utter whack-job is what makes this week’s conspiracy so fascinating for me. Now, let me begin.

According to a recently declassified CIA document from the intelligence agency’s base in Caracas, Venezuela, Hitler may have been living under the pseudonym Adolf Schrittlemayor in Latin America long after his alleged suicide in 1945. As reported in an article from the Miami Herald, the document, dated Oct. 7, 1955, former german trooper and co-owner of Venezuela’s Macraibo Times Phillip Citroen said he had met Hitler in Tunja, Colombia in 1954.

“Citroen, who was co-owner of the former Maracaibo Times, told a former member of this (CIA) base that while he was working for a railroad company in Colombia, he had met an individual who strongly resembled and claimed to be Adolf Hitler,” the document said.

Attached to the document is a photograph of Citroen with a man that could very well be Adolf Hitler himself.

While this theory may be just as unrealistic as the theories about Tupac living in a cave in Croatia or something, it should be noted that thousands of Nazi war criminals escaped to Latin America, specifically Argentina, after the war. Two of the most infamous Nazis, Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele, were eventually captured in Latin America before being tried and convicted as war criminals.

So, is this theory likely? Probably not. But, is it possible? Certainly.

If you ask me, Hitler’s suicide-by-cyanide in his Berlin bunker is just too convenient. I find it easy to believe that the most powerful dictator at the time could have gotten some help out of the country. I mean, he did brainwash an entire country.

If you take anything away from my column this semester, let it be this: never trust anything you can’t prove yourself. Always ask questions and, I beg you, stay curious.

That’s all for this week, folks. See you on the other side.