It’s a testament to Sands — his fiercely inquiring mind, his excellent researchers, the wealth of documents and his ability to make them come to life — that the book is so suspenseful ... In the end, The Ratline is about the Nazis who didn’t escape and their descendants ... It’s a reminder that Europe to this day is populated by survivors and perpetrators of World War II — a place of tangled family histories and selective denial, but also intermittent lucidity. This important book makes clear that the more difficult work of history may not be in tracking down the ones who tried to escape, but in confronting the ones who didn’t.
... damning and meticulously researched ... There is, in Horst, a fascinating psychology to explore: what has prompted this man, who claims to acknowledge the atrocities of Nazism, to spend his life denying his father’s involvement? But Sands is a lawyer, not a novelist, and his book is a carefully researched prosecution, not an exploration of motive ... Sands has once again written a riveting and insightful historical page-turner that proves to be part History Channel, part W. G. Sebald.
This is a taut and finely crafted factual thriller, reminiscent in density and pace of John le Carré ... the mesmerising story, both of an extraordinary love that bound Charlotte and Otto and that endured even as their world was brought to ruin and a forensic investigation ... Sands is unflinching, though, where Horst cannot be. He pursues the details and we are left with the unsettling, discordant portrait of a man who is conceivably a passionate husband and devoted father, but irrefutably a war criminal with blood, including that of Sands’s own family members, on his hands. It’s treacherous terrain, but in Sands we have an incomparable guide who finds a kind of redemption on every road of the human experience, though never at the expense of responsibility or truth. The outcome is a feat of exhilarating storytelling—gripping, gratifying and morally robust.
Sands’s untangling of the mysteries surrounding Otto von Wächter is masterfully done ... On the face of it, the second half of the book, with its cast of war criminals, secret agents and Nazi bishops, sounds almost impossibly thrilling. Yet, as Sands’s search for the underwhelming truth about Otto’s death leads him down one rabbit hole after another, much of it reads like high-class padding. There is also far too much literary-London name-dropping ... Where the book really shines, though, is in its portrait of Otto’s son, Horst ... Is Horst a fool, a liar, or simply a dutiful son? Should we condemn him for denying his father’s guilt, or admire him for his devotion to his parents? It is to Sands’s credit that he avoids glib judgments.
... a fascinating follow-up to East West Street ... Sands...makes a compelling case for Wächter’s guilt as a Nazi war criminal ... Sands’ book is superbly researched and brilliantly told ... The book is full of fascinating characters and at times reads like Graham Greene’s The Third Man ... The Ratline—part history, part thriller—is a superb companion piece [to East West Street], shedding light on the astonishing cynicism of the early years of the Cold War, when Nazis, Americans and Catholic clergy made strange bedfellows. Both should be read together. They are a fascinating account of the war between law and barbarism.
Out of Sands’ exhaustive research comes an intimate love story—despite Otto’s infidelities, he and Charlotte remained devoted to one another, and she defended his wartime actions long after his death—and a tale of deception, as Otto strived to cover up his crimes and hide from those who would bring him to justice ... The parallel narratives of Sands’ meetings with Horst and the story of his Nazi father unfold like a thriller and make for tense and often remarkable reading.
With the skills of a gifted historian and a highly regarded international criminal lawyer, Sands tells the story of Horst Wächter struggling to come to terms with his father’s past as a Nazi war criminal ... Sands’s ability to tease out Horst’s emotional, and often contradictory, views of his father as an indicted war criminal is fascinating. It’s abundantly clear that Sands and Horst created a bond of trust over their years of friendship. No doubt this relationship was a catalyzing factor in Sands’s desire to explore deeper the entangled pathways of the Wächter family ... But the story line of a son trying to reconcile love for his father with the difficult facts of history is not sufficiently compelling to sustain the entire book. Neither is it new nor surprising...This may be why Sands includes other story lines in his book. However, they read as divergent threads that do not always work. For example, Sands spends considerable time pursuing a theory, advanced by Horst, that Otto did not succumb to a severe illness but was assassinated. Sands’s detective work on this point, which includes extensive interviews, travel, and research, is impressive but ultimately unsatisfactory. Early on, it’s apparent that the assassination theory has little merit. More importantly, I was never convinced that it was a central theme of the story ... The author also touches on the reference in the book’s title — The Ratline — but here too, the tangent is superficial ... opens a window into the complex narrative of collective responsibility, including how to come to terms with those who move in the protracted shadow of evil. In today’s toxic political environment, it is a concept worth reexamining.
Sands lays out a riveting, deeply researched case that builds chronologically to show who and what Otto was ... It’s the intimacy of Charlotte’s letters and daily diary entries that give this project its unique shape ... realized Sands was building a narrative of spycraft and power shifts so breathtaking in its twists that it requires each tiny block to resonate fully ... That the author has now spent so many years dedicated to the story of Otto — hoping to convince his son of the truth — is remarkable. Carefully, gently, meticulously, he’s engaged every protest, every excuse, every question Horst has raised to show exactly who Otto was and what he did. If he cannot break him out of his prison of belief, what hope is there for us now, in America, where we have to fight Nazis all over again?
In fast-paced, John le Carré-like pages (spies, Nazi-hunters, dark Vatican forces), Sands charts his own changing relationship with the deluded Horst von Wächter ... With enough twists and turns to keep the reader grimly absorbed, Ratline is an electrifying true crime for the contagion lockdown.
The forensic stamina and precision that garnered such praise for Sands’ 2016 work East West Street are equally in evidence here ... What makes The Ratline both so riveting and unsettling, however, is not just what it reveals, but how. Sands proceeds from one person to the next, with a keen yet compassionate eye for the complex messiness of people’s lives and relationships ... A formidable piece of historical sleuthing written with all the pace and suspense of a thriller, it is a timely reminder that crimes against humanity don’t occur only at the level of states and governments. They take place also in the more secret and less fathomable depths of people’s hearts and minds.
... the outcome of Sands’s meticulous and startling research, revealing a truly labyrinthine investigation ... intriguing ... Sands’s astute deductions, drawn from extensive documentary resources in state archives and private letters, tie together the multiple strands of this narrative with considerable aplomb. The Ratline is a very fine work of what could be termed investigative history. While the sheer deluge of detail and nuanced interconnections can at times be oversaturating, somewhat slowing the pace of the narrative, the investment of effort required of the reader is fully justified by the reward. Legal eagles, lovers of spy novels, sleuths of unsolved mysteries, and aficionados of Nazi lore will all draw much from this thoroughly immersive and edifying read. A marathon more than a sprint, but the slog is well worth it.
... a real-life thriller that is stranger than fiction ... Full of twists and turns, cover-ups and complicity, this gripping historical thrill ride will appeal to fans of John le Carré.
There’s no question that Sands is a superlative historical researcher and excellent writer, but, ultimately, Wächter’s career as a Nazi was unremarkable, and his postwar life and death of interest mostly to detail-obsessive academic historians specializing in Nazism.
... [a] solemn, graceful, and powerful account ... it would be a mistake to think of this rich, compulsively readable book as simply a treatise on the virulent scars etched deep by the Third Reich and its all-too-eager cohorts. Its rewards are many, and many-faceted ... Throughout, Sands is a reliable narrator—gracious, wise, and intrepid.
... [a] fascinating, disturbing story ... Adding Horst’s archives to extensive interviews allows Sands to deliver a gripping account of Otto’s experience ... A detailed, well-constructed biography of a Nazi mass murderer and his escape from justice.
