The Ratline

How could so many Nazi perpetrators escape to South America? Most relied on the help of a bishop of the Catholic Church in the Vatican, Alois Hudal.

Sands describes the structure of this support system (the so-called ratline) through the story of former SS-Obergruppenführer Otto Gustav Wächter, the governor of Galicia (1942–1944), who was responsible for the deportation of nearly 500,000 Jews to the Nazi death camps.

Wächter's post-war escape to Argentina actually ended in Rome, where he died of an infection in July 1949. Sands offers a riveting analysis of how this man found his way into the… show more.

Sands traces the life of Baron Otto von Wächter, an Austrian SS official, who created and oversaw the Kraków ghetto and was indicted for the murder of more than 100,000 Jews and Poles.

Accompanying Sands on his interviews and research is Wächter’s son, Horst, who knows his father only through what he has heard from his mother and read in her diaries and letters. Horst is horrified by Nazi atrocities but believes his father was a “good man.”

With the pace of a gripping spy thriller, Sands brings Horst deeper and deeper into the lives of his parents, including Otto’s… show more.

Phiippe Sands is a professor of international law at University College London, who has worked to shed light on human rights violations in Chile, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay, among other places. He is also a brilliant storyteller.

In The Ratline he examines the life and mysterious death of Otto von Wächter, a high-ranking member of the SS who held governorships in Nazi-occupied Poland during the Second World War. Wanted by the Allies after the war, Von Wächter escapes to the Austrian Alps where he lives as a fugitive for three years before heading to Rome, aided by Vatican bishop Alois… show more.

The Ratline tells the story of Nazi war criminal Otto von Wachter. The information about Wachter is gleaned from Wachter’s wife’s detailed diary and Sands’s meticulous gathering of information about him. After the war, Wachter attempts to escape prosecution through the Ratline, the route that numerous Nazi criminals took by escaping to South America. This part of the book is absolutely fascinating and reads like a spy thriller. The intrigue of who helps who, who seems to help whom, secret agents, secret double agents, and the maneuverings of the United States, Britain, and Russia leaves the mind reeling.

This history reeled me in slowly but relentlessly. At one level it’s the story of a fairly high level but mostly forgotten Nazi official named Otto von Wachter, his constantly deepening entanglement in the German war machine and its horrors, and his post-war flight to Rome, with hopes of joining the “ratline” — Nazis resettled in South America with the help of a well-placed Vatican bishop. The author’s own Jewish family members were among those Wachter sent to their deaths, and his principal living source for the history is Wachter’s son, a fascinating pairing. But at a deeper, even more… show more.