Guy WaltersRecensioni

At the end of the Second World War some of the highest ranking members of the Nazi party escaped from justice. Guy Walters has travelled the world in pursuit of the real account of how the Nazis escaped at the end of the war, the attempts, sometimes successful, to bring them to justice, and what really happened to those that got away.

Reality is sometimes more incredible and implausible than fiction. Some of history’s biggest absurdities and most unlikely events are undeniably actual things that have happened.
The Traitor: A Novel by Guy Walters presents one such incredible story: too hard to really believe, yet based on an actual situation in WW II.
In WW II, the Nazi's assembled a unit of soldiers and others to be used as a force against the allies. This unit consisted not of Germans, but of British citizens who favored the Nazi cause or who were easily co-oped due to their low intellectual capabilities. At it height, this unit actually consisted of 50 such men.
Their role was to serve in undercover activities such as sabotage where their native English speaking skills could facilitate their undercover functions.
Walters' novel imagines the creation of this unit, creates characters to populate the fictional unit, and involves the unit in a fictional, suspenseful tale of intrigue and double dealings.
The work of actual undercover agents and spies often goes entirely undetected and such agents often die with no credit, recognition, or even acknowledgement of who they were, even when their accomplishments were important and memorable events. They leave reputations as being "traitors" in their wakes.
Within the story of this particular special force comes the story of one of its members' daughters seeking to find out about his work and to clear his name. This part of the story intrudes into the primary text only in short and infrequent passages and seems more of an interruption to the main story than a necessary part of telling it. Moreover, this intrusive text detracts from the ending of the greater tale of the last maneuver Walters imagines for this group of agents, giving the novel a predictable rather than a realistic conclusion.
The story tells of recruiting a leader for this group who has been captured in a failed undercover assignment for the British army. John Lockhart becomes the British agent recruited to be the commander, under his Nazi overseer, Major Carl Strasser of the SS, agreeing to the position because he is convinced he will save the life of his wife who has been arrested in the German invasion of the Netherlands. Besides working to free his wife, he believes he can double cross his captors and be a valuable service to the nation to which he truly loyal, the UK.
Is Lockhart naive or is he just as simple minded as were the real-life members of this unit? The reader will have to come to his own conclusions about this. In either case, it is difficult to believe that anyone who had seen what the Nazis had done could imagine that they could be trusted.
The story casts Lockhart as coming across plans for an intensely powerful chemical agent, sarin--the very real and highly lethal nerve gas, and figuring out how to destroy the stockpile of it the Germans have created and planned to send to London on their new, secret rockets.
Walters makes the story both exciting and almost-plausible, making The Traitor a worthwhile novel.

Excellent source de la traque des SS dans le monde après la guerre 1940-45½

This is an impeccably researched and written history of the so-called "Great Escape" made famous by the 1960s film of the same name. Not being British I saw the movie once a long time ago but it holds a certain mythological reverence in England where it is patriotically broadcast on TV each Christmas season. Over time the facts of what happened have been distorted by the film and other books. Thus Walters sets out to carefully dissect the primary sources and bring an objective view of what actually occurred. His argument, convincing in my opinion, is that the escape was a reckless, needless waste of life and unjustified. He blames one man, the leader, whose personality played a big part in the disaster. I was surprised to learn that German Luftwaffe officer camps were controlled as much by the prisoners as the guards, since the prisoners had so much material wealth from the Red Cross packages compared to the poor and underfed German guards. It was also fascinating to watch the German SS bureaucracy in action as the orders moved down the ranks and officials had to choose what to do. This is an extremely detailed account so be prepared for some long stretches of repetitive material as Walters go through exactly what happened to each of the 70+ escapees, few of which end well. For what this book is - an historical revisionism of a mythological event - it does a great job, and I think portrays the people and times with a clear eye. I don't know if it's the best first book on the topic since it strips away the adventure, but in light of 50 some dead guys, less adventure and more sober reflection is the right thing, what can be learned from their mistake so it was not in vain.

Intriguing history of the Nazi Olympics. It is interesting (to me anyway) that the
Olympics and the people involved with them were as corrupt and venal in 1936
as they are today. It was fascinating to learn that the much lauded Olympic
Flame and the ceremonies associated with it were in fact the brainchild of
Hitler and his fellow genocides. The Olympics is a seriously flawed institution
and this book, even though concerned with a 70 year old event makes this plain.

If they wanted to save their skins, Nazi war criminals were faced with two choices at the end of WWII: either vamoose to distant lands (usually in South America) or sell your services to the allies who were just itching to jump into the cold war. The paradigmatic cases of the former were Klaus Barbie and Adolf Eichman, and for the latter there was Wilhelm Höttl. On the whole, the latter were more successful in the long term, since there was always a good market for "intelligence." The Nazi war crimes (and don't forget the Ustaše in Croatia), were of such enormity that their stain of culpability spread to nearly everyone associated with them: not just the enablers, like the Catholic Church and various governments around the world, but even, perhaps paradoxically, the very people sworn to bring the perpetrators to "justice." These Nazi hunters were, according to Walters, either corrupt, incompetent, indifferent or all three. Particular opprobrium is assigned to Simon Wiesenthal, whose mendacity and megalomania are depicted as equaling a Mengele or a Franz Stangl. It isn't until Walters gets to Serge & Beta Klarsfeld that he finds people upon whom he can bestow his favor, even if Serge comes off a little feckless in relation to his formidable spouse.½

Not bad but not my type of book. Well written and hangs together well.

I bought this book for two reasons. First a review made it sound interesting. Second I had several months earlier read "The Quiet Flame", a book by Philip Kerr set partly in Argentina and partly in pre-war Brazil. The Kerr book is fiction but characters include refugee Nazis such as Eichmann and Mengele. I went on to read other fictional works by Kerr set in post-war Europe and again Nazi war criminals play a role. I had read next to nothing about these war crimes since being a teenager in the late 1950s when I read books such as Russell's "Scourge of the Swastika". I expect my interest was then merely prurient since I do remember that the cheap paperback had pictures of naked women being herded to their deaths. Contrarily "Hunting Evil" as I learnt in mid-read from a second review is unsensationalist, well-researched, well-documented. I think that is all likely to be true. I found the book very heavy going at first but it became better as I read on. The main problem is that I am not the person the book is written for. The intended reader seems to be someone who already is quite knowledgeable about the subject. For example the name "Barbie" crops up quite early but I had no idea what he had done although his crimes were clearly committed in occupied France as it was the French who most wanted him brought to justice. He appears again near the end of the book as the "butcher of Lyons" but again there is little specific. The Second World War against Germany is sometimes dated as 1939–1945. I lived through that period but because I was a small child have few memories of the time. But there is a tendency to think that in 1946 that Europe got back to normal. Both as "Hunting Evil" and the Kerr books make clear this was not the case and chaos and confusion reigned. In Austria and Germany the victorious powers had their zones. Many of the war criminals were still in Europe for several years. "Hunting Evil" demolishes — successfully in my mind — a number of preconceptions. First it challenges the existence of "ODESSA". It suggests that the public's belief in ODESSA is largely due to a work of fiction by Frederick Forsyth which had "ODESSA" as its title. Walters does not believe that there was a large, rich, powerful, organization which helped Nazi refugees escape to South America. Which is not to imply that there were not people willing to aid these people. He also looks at the role of Simon Wiesanthal. In the final chapter he gives Wiesanthal credit for his positive achievements. Nevertheless he claims that Wiesanthal's role in hunting ex-Nazis was often less than Wiesanthal claimed and points out many discrepancies between Wiesanthal's own accounts at different time or compared with other writers. Wiesanthal was claiming sightings of Mengele many years after Mengele was dead. On the lives of Nazis in South America Walters makes clear that many were not living in luxury. In Buenos Aires or São Paulo many lived in very modest households. In regard to Eichmann the book has quite a long account of the events leading to his abduction. Far from a story of Mossad super-efficiency it seems to be a tale of monumental cock-ups by many. And to what extent did the allied powers seek to hunt down and bring to justice Nazi war criminals? The early chapters explain the very confused post-war conditions with divided jurisdictions. The western allies were more concerned about the USSR than war criminals. The result was that many escaped through confusion or lack of will. Others because they were co-opted to work for the occupying powers. This theme appears again near the book's close when the UK government brought in legislation against war criminals in the 1990s. Others who seem to have escaped real justice are discussed. I repeat that this is not really a book for somebody coming new to the subject matter. And I would have liked at least a brief account of conditions in post-war Germany, Austria, Italy to put the early chapters into context. Even if only half a dozen pages.

Fascinating history of the 1936 Olympics staged in Berlin. Guy Walters outlines how the Nazis came to host the Games, the people who helped them, and the ways they used the Olympics to further the cause of National Socialism. Intriguing, comprehensive and sad.

An enjoyable, easy read in the Dennis Wheatley high-adventure tradition, this alternate history is not particuarly convincing, but it never intends to be. The story is littered with the names of real people, and historical figures like Oswald Mosley, William Joyce, Edward viii [later Duke of Windsor] and even Winston Churchill make regular appearances.
When Edward viii won't abdicate but still marries Mrs Simpson, political leaders refuse to form a government as a means of protest: leaving the way clear for Sir Oswald Mosley, who slips into power, with his British Union of Fascists, and Parliament is effectively disbanded. Former government whip and war hero Captain Armstrong is determined to do something about it, and sets plans for a revolution in place, using trusted army friends. He is arrested and intered on the Isle of Man - with Winston Churchill and others who are regarded as politically suspect. The Jews are being herded into concentration camps...
A Soviet agent contacts his own highly placed sources, instructing them to assist Armstrong where possible, but to be ready to take over after the revolution, turning England into a Soviet vassal. There are spies everywhere and on every level and after Armstrong escapes from the Isle of Man he is soon arrested again, and again escapes, but he realises someone is using him to further their own agenda because everything is just too easy.
But all's well: Edward viii is stopped just before his coronation is due to begin, and instructed to abdicate; Mosley is caught and arrested when the armed forces overwhelm the Blackshirts, and the Communist plot and the spies are foiled. A pacey page-turner, all ends well and events are set in place for England to go ahead with the Nazi appeasement that led to their involvement in the Second World War.½

Good fundaes. Fast read. Too biased. No shades of grey. Author's already decided the heroes and the villians and ensures that you think the same as well. Could have had more photogrpahs.