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The Ratline: The Exalted Life and Mysterious Death of a Nazi Fugitive
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About This Book
As Governor of Galicia, SS Brigadeführer Otto Freiherr von Wächter presided over an authority on whose territory hundreds of thousands of Jews and Poles were killed, including the family of the author's grandfather. By the time the war ended in May 1945, he was indicted for 'mass murder'. Hunted by the Soviets, the Americans, the Poles and the British, as well as groups of Jews, Wächter went on the run. He spent three years hiding in the Austrian Alps, assisted by his wife Charlotte, before making his way to Rome where he was helped by a Vatican bishop. He remained there for three months. While preparing to travel to Argentina on the 'ratline' he died unexpectedly, in July 1949, a few days after spending a weekend with an 'old comrade'. In The Ratline Philippe Sands offers a unique account of the daily life of a senior Nazi and fugitive, and of his wife. Drawing on a remarkable archive of family letters and diaries, he unveils a fascinating insight into life before and during the war, on the run, in Rome, and into the Cold War. Eventually the door is unlocked to a mystery that haunts Wächter's youngest son, who continues to believe his father was a good man - what happened to Otto Wächter, and how did he die?
Reviews
"It's a reminder that Europe to this day is populated by survivors and perpetrators of World War II — a place of tangled family histories and selective denial, but also intermittent lucidity."
"A detailed, well-constructed biography of a Nazi mass murderer and his escape from justice."
"What makes The Ratline both so riveting and unsettling, however, is not just what it reveals, but how."
"In fast-paced, John le Carré-like pages (spies, Nazi-hunters, dark Vatican forces), Sands charts his own changing relationship with the deluded Horst von Wächter ..."
"With the skills of a gifted historian and a highly regarded international criminal lawyer, Sands tells the story of Horst Wächter struggling to come to terms with his father's past as a Nazi war criminal ..."
"damning and meticulously researched ..."
"There's no question that Sands is a superlative historical researcher and excellent writer, but, ultimately, Wächter's career as a Nazi was unremarkable, and his postwar life and death of interest mostly to detail-obsessive academic historians specializing in Nazism."
"a real-life thriller that is stranger than fiction ..."
"There is also far too much literary-London name-dropping ..."
"He pursues the details and we are left with the unsettling, discordant portrait of a man who is conceivably a passionate husband and devoted father, but irrefutably a war criminal with blood, including that of Sands's own family members, on his hands."
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