The Ratline: Love, lies, and justice on the trail of a Nazi fugitive

Published 16 April 2, 432 pages

b y Ph i l i p p e S a n d s

Reviewed by Barry Landy I am sure most people are familiar with the “Ratline”, the organisation set up by the Nazis in collaboration with elements of the Catholic church to smuggle into South America Nazis who were trying to escape from liberated Europe after the second Word War. Perhaps confusingly, this book is not a history of the Ratline. Instead, following the huge success of his previous book (East West Street) which combined the history of the Nazi takeover of Lvov (Lemberg) and the Nuremberg trials with the histories of two of Lemberg's famous sons, including Sir Hersch Lauterpacht who made his home in Cambridge, Sands in this book follows the history of a senior Nazi before, during, and after the war. The Nazi in question is Otto van Waechter who was governor of Krakow in Poland and then of the whole of Galicia. At Nuremberg he was indicted of the crime of mass murder but by that time he was on the run, first in Austria and later Italy. He planned to escape using the ratline but suddenly died in Rome in 1949. The most distinctive feature of this book for me was the second half, in which Sands uncovers the post-war history of Otto in the company of Otto's son, Horst, and other family members. Horst, who is certain that while the Nazis were mass murderers his father was not, still occupies the family castle in upper Austria which was bequeathed to him by his mother (herself a convinced Nazi). Yes, he agrees, there were crimes of mass murder in the Government General (the Nazi name for occupied Poland) but stated that his father was gentle and tried his best to shield the population. To further this end, and perhaps in a genuine attempt to uncover the past, he shares Page 24

with Sands all the information he has; letters, diaries, and photographs, and anything else he finds in the castle. Horst also believes his father was murdered and would like to uncover the facts, which gives him another motive to assist Sands. In any event Horst is a gentle and somewhat naive soul, as he would have to be to believe his father innocent. The story unfolds with Sands having to travel far and wide to gather evidence and the story gradually takes shape. Sands discovers enough evidence to prove the case against Waechter and to show that Waechter was not murdered but died of accidental poisoning, probably from the polluted water in a lake in which he he’d swum. Horst remains convinced to the very end that his father was innocent, but Horst's daughter, Otto Waechter's grand-daughter, reaches the opposite conclusion. The book ends with her simple statement "My grandfather was a mass murderer". For me the first half of the book, with its recital of the history of the Nazi period and Otto's part in it, was a bit tedious, but the second part in which Sands uncovers the history through testimony is gripping and well presented. This is a worthy addition to the large body of literature on the Nazi period.

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