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Nazis on the Run: How Hitler's Henchmen Fled Justice
Author(s): Gerald Steinacher (Author)
- Publisher: OUP Oxford
- Publication Date: 2 Jun. 2011
- Language: English
- Print length: 416 pages
- ISBN-10: 9780199576869
- ISBN-13: 0199576866
Book Description
This is the fascinating story of how Nazi war criminals escaped from justice at the end of the Second World War by fleeing through the Tyrolean Alps to Italian seaports, and the role played by the Red Cross, the Vatican, and the Secret Services of the major powers in smuggling them away from prosecution in Europe to a new life in South America.
The Nazi sympathies held by groups and individuals within these organizations evolved into a successful assistance network for fugitive criminals, providing them not only with secret escape routes but hiding places for their loot. Gerald Steinacher skillfully traces the complex escape stories of some of the most prominent Nazi war criminals, including Adolf Eichmann, showing how they mingled and blended with thousands of technically stateless or displaced persons, all flooding across the Alps to Italy and from there, to destinations abroad.
The story of their escape shows clearly just how difficult the apprehending of war criminals can be. As Steinacher shows, all the major countries in the post-war world had ‘mixed motives’ for their actions, ranging from the shortage of trained intelligence personnel in the immediate aftermath of the war to the emerging East-West confrontation after 1947, which led to many former Nazis being recruited as agents turned in the Cold War.
Editorial Reviews
Review
Coming now and in the next few weeks are at least two important new works of nonfiction about the Nazis besides Larson’s, from Austrian historian Gerald Steinacher and British historian Frederick Taylor. (
Philipp Kerr, Washington Post)Steinacher uses an array of records including recently declassified US intelligence files, various official Italian and German archives, the archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Geneva, Catholic Church records from the National Catholic Welfare Conference and from the Instituto Santa Maria dell’Anima (the Germaustrian Church in Rome), and a host of local records from South Tyrolean towns. The result is a fine study and a great read. (
Norman W. Goda, The International History Review)Gerald Steinacher describes exactly how they managed this in “Nazis on the Run”-only the second authoritative book on the subject, after Uki Goni’s “The Real Odessa” (2002). (
Philip Kerr, Wall Street Journal)Steinacher offers much new information (
Robert Knight, Times Literary Supplement)a well-written book that is packed with startling information and grubby stories about the moral cost of political exigency. (
David Cesarnani New Statesman)In this murky world of hidden identities, deception and secrets, it is good to have a book as level-headed as this one, based on thorough research. (
Richard J. Evans, The Guardian)This book will be the standard for generations of historians who wish to study the fate of Hitler’s followers who evaded justice for decades or escaped it altogether. Recommended. (
Library Journal)About the Author
Gerald Steinacher is currently a Joseph A. Schumpeter Research Fellow at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University and Lecturer on Contemporary History at the University of Innsbruck, Austria.
