Hunting Evil

Starred review from July 5, 2010
Walters, a former Times of London journalist, flaunts his WWII expertise in a stunning account that trails some of the most elusive Nazi war criminals of the twentieth century. Following the war, many Nazis evaded capture and went into hiding, seemingly "without a trace." Walters debunks this myth through interviews, meticulous research, and a vast historical knowledge that exposes an array of people who aided these criminals in their flight from justice. In many cases, such as that of Franz Stangl, the former head of Treblinka extermination camp, war criminals, and the families waiting to join them in exile, hardly bothered to hide their whereabouts. Walters recreates the getaway techniques of their helpers and unearths some of the best-kept secrets of our time: it wasn't merely Nazi intelligence that aided the escape of these infamous criminals, he suggests, but a range of people, from Catholic hierarchy to U.S. and British intelligence operatives. Walters argues that greed, laziness, and the sheer number of war criminals may have overwhelmed the already-overworked intelligence services, allowing many former high-ranking Nazis to live in comfort all over the world, sometimes for decades. This well-researched and exquisitely executed volume is also an exhilarating read. Photos.

September 15, 2010

Most books, scholarly or popular, that deal with Nazi war criminals and the quest for justice focus specifically on one criminal, e.g., Adolf Eichmann, Josef Mengele, or Klaus Barbie. Here, Walters (former reporter, Times of London; The Voice of War) presents an almost categorical exploration of hunting Nazis, or, in many cases, not hunting Nazis. He explains his methodology in the preface before throwing the reader into 1945, shortly before the end of World War II. Using sources from the unpublished to the electronic, he gives readers a book that's one small part thriller, as the reader waits for justice, and one large dose of scholarly research. Only Michael Salter's Nazi War Crimes, U.S. Intelligence and Selective Prosecution at Nuremberg, which deals solely with U.S. pursuits, comes close to the comprehensiveness of Walters's book. Walters shows us that even more startling than the lack of hunting Nazis at the end of the war is the continued belief among many war criminals that they did what was right. VERDICT A fascinating and impeccably researched book, for both scholars and the interested public.--Suzan Alteri, Wayne State Univ. Lib., Detroit

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