A tale of Nazi lives, mass murder, love, Cold War espionage, a mysterious death in the Vatican, and the Nazi escape route to Perón's Argentina,"the Ratline"—from the author of the internationally acclaimed, award-winning East West Street. "Hypnotic, shocking, and unputdownable." —John le Carré, internationally renowned bestselling author Baron Otto von Wächter, a lawyer, husband, and father, was also a senior SS officer and war criminal, indicted for the murder of more than a hundred thousand Poles and Jews. Although he was given a new identity and life via “the Ratline” to Argentina, the escape route taken by thousands of other Nazis, Wächter and his 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? With the cooperation of Wächter’s son Horst, who believes his father to have been “a good man,” award-winning author Philippe Sands draws on a trove of family correspondence to piece together Wächter’s extraordinary life before and during the war, his years evading justice, and his sudden, puzzling death. A riveting work of history, The Ratline is part historical detective story, part love story, part family memoir, and part Cold War espionage thriller.

Ratline is the documented history about the mechanisms by which thousands of other Nazi war criminals fled to the remotest parts of the globe--including quite possibly Adolf Hitler. It is a story involving Soviet spies, Nazi priests, and a network of Catholic monasteries and safe houses known as the rat line. The name of one priest in particular, Monsignor Draganovic, was discovered by the author in a diary found in Indonesia. Why would this name turn up in a document written in a spidery German hand in a remote island in Indonesia? As famed author Peter Levenda began his research, more information came to light: In December of 2009, it was revealed that the skull the Russians claimed was Hitler's--salvaged from the bunker in 1945--was not that of Hitler! In 2010, files from the Office of Special Investigations of the Justice Department were declassified, revealing a history of American intelligence providing cover for Nazi war criminals. The mystery deepened, and the author returned to his own roots hunting Nazis in North America, South America and Europe. He revisited old contacts, made some new ones, and gradually the explosive story was revealed: there is no forensic evidence to prove that Adolf Hitler died in the bunker in April 1945!

Vatican Ratline is the true story of recovered memories of one survivor of the post World War II ratline interwoven with the history of the players. It exposes why we are seeing a return to the Middles Ages, the crusades, the inquisition, the slave trade, constant war and the conquering of nations. It looks at the Jesuits, the soldiers of the Pope, who are leading the brigade, with the Nazi run CIA as Grand Inquisitor. The twentieth century 'grey' Nazi collaborator is investigated with his disk shaped flying machine. This is the story of the best holocaust money can buy as science turns an evil eye toward the destruction of the planet, by the military, and its inhabitants by stealing their souls using torture and mind control.

This is the 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.

Ireland 1963. As the Irish people prepare to welcome President John F. Kennedy to the land of his ancestors, a German national is murdered in a seaside guesthouse. Lieutenant Albert Ryan, Directorate of Intelligence, is ordered to investigate. The German is the third foreigner to die within a few days, and Minister for Justice Charles Haughey wants the killing to end lest a shameful secret be exposed: the dead men were all Nazis granted asylum by the Irish government in the years following World War II. A note from the killers is found on the dead German's corpse, addressed to Colonel Otto Skorzeny, Hitler's favorite commando, once called the most dangerous man in Europe. The note simply says: "We are coming for you." As Albert Ryan digs deeper into the case he discovers a network of former Nazis and collaborators, all presided over by Skorzeny from his country estate outside Dublin. When Ryan closes in on the killers, his loyalty is torn between country and conscience. Why must he protect the very people he fought against twenty years before? Ryan learns that Skorzeny might be a dangerous ally, but he is a deadly enemy.

After Germany's surrender in World War II, Jim Milano, a young U.S. army intelligence officer, led a small, independent group of soldiers charged with carrying out some of the first intelligence efforts of the postwar era. Inventing the techniques of Cold War espionage for themselves and improvising unorthodox methods, the major and his creative cohorts confounded Soviet forces and created escape routes for defectors. In the pages of Milano's fascinating memoir you'll find the shadowy world populated by spies, prostitutes, refugees, scoundrels, and heroes comes alive.