THE RATLINE

A biography of a little-known but major 20th-century war criminal.

Lawyer and historian Sands tells the fascinating, disturbing story of Otto Wächter (1901-1949), a high-ranking official in the SS. In 2012, while researching the Holocaust in Ukraine, the author learned that Wächter’s son, Horst (b. 1939), was still alive. Since his father served as Nazi governor of Ukraine from 1942 to 1944, where he supervised the murders of Jews and other Soviet civilians, Sands sought a meeting. Although convinced that his father was a “good Nazi,” Horst maintained a close friendship with the author for years, meeting many times and allowing access to a massive trove of family correspondence, journals, and photographs. Born in Austria, Wächter entered the University of Vienna in 1919. He became a member of the fiercely anti-Semitic, pan-German Deutsche Klub and participated in violent anti-Semitic demonstrations. An “early supporter of Adolf Hitler,” he joined the Austrian National Socialist Party in 1923. A prominent Austrian Nazi by the 1930s, he fled to Germany in 1934 after an unsuccessful coup. Welcomed into the SS, he returned to Vienna after the 1938 Anschluss. During the war, he served in several top-level positions but made his mark in Ukraine. After Germany’s surrender in 1945, he disappeared. This event doesn’t occur until 130 pages into the narrative, but readers will not complain. Adding Horst’s archives to extensive interviews allows Sands to deliver a gripping account of Otto’s experience. For three years, he lived in an Alpine cabin supplied by his wife and friendly locals. Then, to escape discovery, he joined the “Ratline,” a route used by Nazis to flee to South America. When he arrived in Rome, sympathetic monks provided him with a small room. After less than three months, before he could acquire money and documents for immigration, he fell ill and died. The list of principal characters is helpful.

A detailed, well-constructed biography of a Nazi mass murderer and his escape from justice.