The Ratline: The Exalted Life and Mysterious Death of a Nazi Fugitive, Sands - C/Inc.

                   An excellent previous book by the author, 'East West Street', was about the intersection of lives in Lvov, where his grandparents died during the Holocaust. Here, he tells the story of Otto von Wachter, Hans Franks' deputy in Lvov during the war.  Born into an elite Austrian family in 1901, Otto grew up to be a lawyer and early member of the Nazi party. He married Charlotte Bleckmann, the daughter of a wealthy family, in 1932, the same year he joined the SS. He became a state secretary in the office of the Austrian chancellor after the Anschluss. When war broke out, he was assigned as governor of the Cracow district of the General Government of Poland, reporting to Hans Frank. He was instrumental in the German degradation of the Jews and their imprisonment in ghettos prior to their transportation to the camps. In early 1942, Otto was moved to Lvov and made governor of Galicia. A year later, 434,329 Jews had been evacuated; Galicia was Judenfrei. In the summer of 1944, Otto, now a Gruppenfuhrer, returned to Berlin as the Soviets moved west. With his family in Austria, Otto was assigned to northern Italy. At war's end, Charlotte and the six children wound up in the American sector of Austria and Otto, a war criminal under a murder indictment, disappeared.

                        Charlotte was able to stabilize life for herself and her children in Salzburg. As for Otto, no one knew where he was. He was actually hiding in the woods and mountains not far from Salzburg and in regular contact with Charlotte. He stayed in the mountains for three years. He spent some time with his family, was recognized and fled to Italy. His hope was obtain support for an escape to South America. Within a month of his arrival, he caught a fever that proved fatal. Otto Wachter died at the age of 48.

                     Interspersed throughout are the thoughts of Wachter's son Horst, born in 1939 and a believer in his father's innocence. Sands contrasts Horst's beliefs with those of Hans Frank's son, Niklas, who acknowledged without hesitation the evil that his father did. The two sons actually collaborated on a documentary called 'A Nazi Legacy, What Our Fathers Did'.

                    This book has proved to be a disappointment and I stopped with almost half of it remaining. I can't imagine what else could be said about a second tier Nazi's afterlife.