A thoroughly researched and fascinating book that really gives you an insight into how so many could help these war criminals escape. I truly feel for the son of Otto. What son wants to believe his father could commit such atrocities. Mr. Sands is obviously a wonderful researcher.

A slow-burning real-life thriller, but this is pure nonfiction excavated and reconstructed by a sharp legal mind. Sands is an international human rights lawyer based in London, whose maternal relatives were Jews from Lemberg/Lvov/Lviv who lost their lives in the Holocaust when Galicia was under Nazi occupation (their story is told in Sands' equally thrilling and moving East West Street).

Here, Sands is investigating the life, exile, and death of Otto von Wächter, the Austrian SS officer and early Nazi party member who governed Galicia under the General Government, and was reponsible for the genocide of hundreds of thousands of Jews, including some Sands' ancestors.
After the German surrender, Otto fled into the Austrian Alps, and ultimately to Rome, where a Vatican-sponsored "Ratline" sprited high-ranking Nazis off to South America, where they evaded international justice. Sands reshapes and resequences the documentary record of Wächter's life, punctuated by his conversations (and awkward friendship) with Horst, Otto's son, who refuses to believe that his father was responsible for these atrocities.

This is the story of Nazi Otto von Wachter, and his life on the run after the war. The Ratline refers to the escape route between Rome and Argentina, where Nazis lived out their days in peace. Aided by the Vatican and others, many flee to this sanctuary. Wachter wanted to join them, but he gets sick and doesn't make it there.

The story is also about his son Horst's efforts to clear his father's name of the Nazi label. He believes his father was murdered while in Rome, probably by poison. He refuses to believe that his father was anything but a great husband and an even greater father. Evidence points to his father as a man responsible for the deaths of thousands of Jews. He was indicted for mass murder but never captured.

From letters in Horst's possession, you read about the great love story between his parents, and their deep devotion to the Nazi cause. Horst's search for evidence that his father was a loving family man and could have not committed the crimes he is accused of does not end well for Horst.