PHILIPPE SANDS: OTTO VON WACHTER BIOGRAPHY
THE RATLINE: LOVE, LIES AND JUSTICE OF THE TRAIL OF A NAZI FUGITIVE
Philippe Sands recounts the story of Otto von Wachter, a senior Nazi SS official indicted for mass murder in 1945, who escaped via the Alps to Rome. Arriving in Rome after three years in hiding in the Alps, he came under the protection of a Vatican bishop, Alois Hudal. While waiting for transport to Argentina (a route known as the Ratline, followed by several senior Nazis) von Wachter falls ill under mysterious circumstances and dies.
The Spectator wrote of the book: ‘Sands is a terrier at research . . . The seething world of post-war Rome, with its senior fascists reprieved and returning to prominence, its war criminals lurking in hiding, its spies and secret services brokering deals and its adventurers and profiteers making fortunes, has seldom been more vividly described’. The Literary Review wrote: ‘A book of twists and intrigues as complex as any le Carré thriller . . . like its predecessor, [it] is replete with vivid descriptions and Sands brings to it the same relentless narrative momentum’.
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Philippe Sands (born 1960) is a leading international human rights lawyer who has acted before numerous international courts and tribunals, inlcuding the Euopean Court of Human Rights and the International Criminal Court. He is Professor Law and Director of the Centre on International Courts and Tribunals at University College London and has written seventeen books on internatonal law. He was educated at the University of Cambridge and Harvard University.
