The Ratline
Philippe Sands

From the author of the internationally acclaimed, award-winning East West Street comes a tale of Nazi lives, mass murder, love, Cold War espionage, a mysterious death in the Vatican, and the Ratline--the Nazi escape route to Pern's Argentina. Baron Otto von Wchter was a Viennese lawyer, husband, and father. He was also a senior SS officer, a colleague of Heinrich Himmler, and the creator and overseer of the Krakw ghetto. For the murder of more than a hundred thousand Poles and Jews, he was indicted as a war criminal, and spent four years on the run, only to reach a mysterious end. With fascinating detail, Philippe Sands pieces together Wchter's extraordinary, shocking story. Given a new identity and life via "the Ratline" to Pern's Argentina, the escape route taken by Eichmann, Mengele, and thousands of other Nazis, Wchter and his escape plan were cut short by his mysterious, shocking death in Rome. In the midst of the burgeoning Cold War, was he being recruited by the Americans or by the Soviets--or perhaps both? Or was he poisoned by one side or the other, as his son believes--or by both? An extraordinary and riveting work of history, told up close through access to a unique trove of family correspondence between Wchter and his wife, The Ratline is part historical detective story, part love story, part family memoir, and part Cold War espionage thriller.