Battle of France - World War II: A History from Beginning to End (World War 2 Battles), by Hourly History.

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Battle of France - World War II: 

A History from Beginning to End 

(World War 2 Battles), 

by Hourly History. 

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A good introduction to the subject of not only battle of France but of WWII as well, written succinctly, perhaps with a US high school readership in mind, but not dumbed down. 

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Table of Contents 

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Introduction 

The Maginot Line 

The Phoney War 

Shattered Scandinavian Neutrality 

Dunkirk and the Surrender of the Low Countries 

The Invasion of France 

Surrender at Compiegne 

Vichy France: The British Attack the French Navy 

Aftermath: French Resistance 

Bibliography 

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Introduction 

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Succinct introduction. 

"The enmity between France and Germany did not spring up fresh from the blood-soaked battlefields of World War I. Roman General Julius Caesar wrote of it in his Commentaries on the Gallic War more than 2,000 years ago. By the time of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, when the German states defeated France and claimed Alsace-Lorraine as German territory, accord seemed impossible. 

"Europe itself teemed with unresolved resentments against one another; borders were hostile, and monarchies shared bloodlines and tangled alliances that would complicate the realms when, in 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was assassinated by a Serb. Austria-Hungary and Germany were allies; Serbia and the Russian Empire were allies; France and Great Britain were allies, and off to war they went. Along the way, borders shifted and monarchies toppled, and the social order would never be the same."

"As Adolf Hitler rose to power and proceeded to launch a reign of terror against his political enemies—Jews, Slavs, Communists, homosexuals, and anyone who did not accept his strident rhetoric and brutal tactics—he began to take over neighboring regions: the Anschluss in Austria and the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. European governments and diplomats timidly protested but did not interfere. When Hitler went on to invade Poland in 1939, France and Great Britain declared war on Germany but did not go to Poland’s aid."

"Then, in the spring of 1940, the German blitzkrieg struck, overpowering the Scandinavian nations of Denmark and Norway in April and in May, the Low Countries of the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Belgium. This time, the Allies had to respond by sending troops. Hitler’s battle plan was divided into two operations: The Fall Gelb or Case Yellow stage was intended to push the French out of their stronghold. Fall Rot or Case Red, two months later, was designed to reinforce the superiority of the Germans in the area. 

"Undeterred by Germany’s military modernization and technological advantage, France felt that it had provided its nation and its army with more than adequate protection. The French were confident that the impregnable Maginot Line would hold off the German invasion until troops could reinforce the area. The Germans, however, were well aware of the French battle plan. They bypassed the Maginot Line and, because they had already invaded and conquered the Low Countries by swiftly crossing the Ardennes region, they were able to encircle the Allied forces at Dunkirk. The French troops in the south lacked the means to hold off the swift advance of the Germans, who reached Paris on June 14."

"The year 1940 was a bleak one for the Allies. With the United States maintaining its neutral stance, only Great Britain was left to stand against the seemingly indestructible menace of the Nazi war machine.

"Meanwhile, the French Resistance emerged to covertly work with the Allies by helping Allied soldiers who were trapped and at risk of discovery by the Germans. They provided the Allies with intelligence information on the movements of the German forces and also conducted acts of sabotage designed to impede German movements. Although the army had been defeated and the nation was occupied, the members of the French Resistance took enormous risks as they fought back against the Nazis. 

"The day after France surrendered, a junior officer named Charles de Gaulle, who was stationed in London, delivered a forceful message defying the notion that France had given up. In his “Appeal of 18 June,” he urged his countrymen to continue the fight against the Germans. Based in London, the Free French Forces would go on to join with the Allies on the battlefield as the Free French maintained a government in exile to counter the puppet Vichy Regime. 

"The fall of France alerted the world that the fight for freedom and democracy would not be a spectator sport. The Second World War would earn the grim title of the most devasting conflict in the history of human civilization, causing the deaths of more than 75 million people, or three percent of the global population recorded in the year 1940. No one could have guessed on that June day in 1940 when France surrendered to Germany, that the nations of the world were about to be engulfed in a conflagration that would forever alter the nature of war."

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The Maginot Line 

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Author quotes appropriately at beginning. 

"“The trouble with the Maginot Line was that it was in the wrong places. The classical invasion route to France which the Germans had taken since the earliest tribal days—for nearly two millennia—lay through Belgium. This was the shortest way and the easiest, for it lay through level land with few rivers of any consequence to cross.” 

"—William Shirer"

He remains succinct. 

"Following the surrender of Germany on November 11, 1918, in a railroad car in Compiegne Forest north of Paris, Marshal Ferdinand Foch said, “This is not a peace. It is an armistice for twenty years.” Foch, who felt that the punitive terms leveled against Germany were still too lenient, was prescient in his remarks. The First World War ended in 1918; the Second World War began on September 1, 1939; Foch was only off by a year in his dim forecast. 

"The French had suffered enormously during the four years of World War I, particularly in eastern France. More than one million French citizens had been killed in the war; more than four million had been wounded. The land itself was scarred by the fighting. Foch’s remarks were not dismissed by the French, who knew they had to devise a means to prevent the Germans from inflicting such an assault against their country another time.

"Marshal Joseph Joffre was the first to propose such a defense, and Marshal Petain agreed with him. But the support was not unanimous; Charles de Gaulle, who would go on to lead the Free French Forces in World War II, felt that the military would be better served if the government invested in modern aircraft and armor. His instincts told him that the next war would require equipment that was engineered for speed and mobility, with substantial air support to provide assistance. Yet the Old Guard felt that such a direction would be too aggressive, and younger voices such as those espousing de Gaulle’s theories were ignored."

"Named for France’s Minister of War Andre Maginot, the Maginot Line was 280 miles (450 kilometers) long and approximately 12 to 16 miles (20-25 kilometers) in depth, running along the eastern French border. The line, constructed out of concrete, iron, and steel, was to serve a multitude of purposes to protect the French. The contested Alsace-Lorraine regions, which had been returned to France as part of the German terms of surrender after World War I, possessed industrial value for its iron ore deposits and its iron-making and steel-making plants. Germany had claimed the region as a prize after defeating France in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and would covet their possession again."

"There was no need, said General Philippe Petain, to extend the line past the Ardennes region to the north. The forest was its own barrier, and he was confident that it was impenetrable. The caveat was to ensure that if an invading force came through the Ardennes, it would be destroyed by a pincer attack."

"In addition to the Maginot Line, the Meuse River, whose route ran from France through Belgium and the Netherlands before emptying into the North Sea, was a natural barrier against the threat of an invasion from the Germans. Together, the French authorities assured themselves, the Maginot Line and the Meuse River would hold off the Germans long enough for French forces to arrive on the scene in time to keep the enemy from entering France. 

"The French held war games in 1938 to test their hypothesis that an armored attack by Germany through the Ardennes would be impossible. The Ardennes was, they were assured, impenetrable. The Maginot Line would keep the Germans out. France was safe from invasion, they believed."

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The Phoney War 

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"The starting date for the Second World War is generally agreed to have been September 1, 1939, when the German forces under the authority of Adolf Hitler invaded Poland. The month before, Germany and the Soviet Union had signed a Non-Aggression Pact, agreeing that they would not engage in conflict with one another for ten years. The pact was sweetened for the Soviet Union by Germany’s agreement that Joseph Stalin would be allowed to invade Poland from the east and claim the territory for the Russians, while Germany conquered western Poland. Neither Germany nor the Soviet Union actually believed that it would be ten years before they faced one another in combat, but the Soviets needed time to ready their military, and the Germans did not want Russian interference in their plans for Europe."

"Germany was bound by severe reparations and restrictions on its military, but after the start of the Great Depression, the nations of the world were struggling to manage their own economies and had little thought or time for what was happening beyond their borders. So it was that the militaries of Germany, as well as Japan and Italy, began to build up their strength, manufacturing weapons and devising plans of conquest. 

"Germany had lost 13 percent of its land and all of its overseas colonies after the armistice, and disillusioned Germans looked to the Nazi Party to restore the nation’s glory. Ignoring the terms of the original peace treaty, Hitler militarized Germany without retaliatory consequences from the Allied nations, eventually occupying the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia in 1938."

" ... Spain was split by a violent civil war. Japan, intent on becoming the dominant power in the Pacific, invaded Manchuria in 1931. By 1937, Germany, Japan, and Italy had come together to sign the Anti-Comintern Pact."

" ... Hoping that giving Hitler the Sudetenland would sate his hunger for more land, the European powers sought to avoid war. But the green light of the Munich Agreement did exactly the opposite, as it assured Adolf Hitler that he could achieve Germany’s need for more land and no one would stand in his way. The Sudetenland wasn’t enough; the annexation of Austria wasn’t enough. Hitler began to build up the German Navy in order to be able to compete with British control of the Atlantic. He continued through 1939 to grab the lands belonging to other nations, including the rest of Czechoslovakia and a section of Lithuania, the Memelland."

Most of his subsequent actions were not only planned well ahead, and announced to his generals well ahead of being put in action, with dates thereof declared, but were  not really a surprise if one read his published book and took it seriously. 

That no one of political importance did so was chiefly due to wishful thinking and hoping that a bone might keep the fog occupied while world sought to recover from aftereffects of the Great War, as WWI was until then referred to, including depression. 

"Finally, alarmed by German demands on Danzig and Italy’s conquering of Albania, Great Britain and France vowed to provide protection to Poland. Germany accused the British and Poles of conspiring to encircle the German nation. On August 23, 1939, while German troops were already beginning to mobilize along the border of Poland, Germany’s Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop signed a Non-Aggression Pact with Soviet Russia, which outlined the respective countries’ spheres of influence: Germany would claim western Poland and Lithuania; the Soviet Union would invade eastern Poland and claim Estonia, Latvia, Finland, and Bessarabia."

" ... on September 1, 1939, Germany incited border incidents as a pretext for invading Poland. The British command to stop the fighting was ignored. On September 3, France and the United Kingdom declared war on Germany."

"Six months of uneasy peace, named the Phoney War, ensued. During this time, while German U-boats were sinking Allied merchant vessels, the Germans sought to find out whether there was any interest on the part of the Allies in finding a diplomatic solution to the threat of war, one that would allow Germany to maintain its conquered lands. The Germans, of course, had no intention of limiting their conquests to the nations they had seized thus far."

"On April 9, 1940, the Nazis, determined to safeguard the vital shipments of iron ore which they received from Sweden and which the Allies were seeking to block, proceeded with their plans to invade Norway and Denmark. One month later, on May 10, 1940, the German offensive against the Low Countries began. But the Germans were not going to stop there. Their ultimate destination was France."

"The Germans were well aware that the Maginot Line would prove a formidable barrier to their invading forces, but they decided to go by another route, through the Ardennes region, a forested area which, the Allies were confident, was virtually impregnable to the German forces. The German tanks would prove them wrong."

The author overlooks the other two prongs in that paragraph summing up how Germans overcame the formidable Maginot Line and its fortifications. German forces did go around via low countries, and most vital, used extensive air power coupled with paratroopers, not only disabling the forces defending fortifications along the Maginot Line, but destroying them. 

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April 05, 2022 - April 05, 2022. 

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Shattered Scandinavian Neutrality 

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"In 1939, after the German invasion of Poland, Winston Churchill, a new member of the British war cabinet, suggested that placing mines in Norwegian waters would require the ships carrying ore from Sweden to Germany to use the North Sea instead, where they could be intercepted by the British Navy. But Prime Minister Chamberlain was reluctant, fearing that such a bold move by the British would be unpopular in the United States, which was still a neutral country."

"In April 1940, Germany’s ambassador to Denmark informed the Danish foreign minister that German troops were on their way to protect Denmark from attack by the French and British. If Denmark resisted, Copenhagen would be bombed. Regardless of the fact that the year before, Denmark and Germany had signed a nonaggression pact, Hitler’s overarching campaign plans required the use of Denmark’s bases for Germany’s military. He knew that the Danish forces could not possibly challenge Germany’s might. The Danes knew it as well. 

"Two days after the German ships set forth to invade Denmark, the Royal Navy left Scapa Flow and headed for Scandinavia. By April 8, the British minefields were in place in the Vestfjorden in Norway. These would slow down but ultimately fail to stop the German invasion."

"Danish capitulation did provide the country with some advantages. The Danes were allowed to maintain their independence in Danish political matters. The occupation would be more lenient than what other occupied countries would be subjected to. Because of this, most of Denmark’s Jews were safely removed to Sweden, out of harm from the German Final Solution for the extermination of the Jews."

" ... Norwegians presented a stiff defense of their capital as they sank the German cruiser Blücher. By the end of the day, however, after the Germans parachuted into Oslo, the city fell to the Nazis. Fighting continued in other parts of Norway, but within two days, the Germans had taken the main cities of the country."

"Alerted to the presence of German ships in Norwegian waters, Norway was able to evacuate its government and royal family before the invasion. Norway never actually surrendered to the Germans, and the Norwegians maintained a government-in-exile based in London during the war. At the same time, the Quisling government, supportive of the Nazi regime, ruled in Norway."

" ... As Chamberlain tried to rally his tottering government, Adolf Hitler, encouraged by the lackluster Allied efforts in Norway, was sending tanks, aircraft, and troops into the Low Countries. 

"As a result, Chamberlain resigned. Winston Churchill became prime minister on the day when Europe faced a military threat from an enemy seeking revenge for its defeat in the First World War."

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April 05, 2022 - April 05, 2022. 

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Dunkirk and the Surrender of the Low Countries 

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" ... Dutch neutrality had kept the Netherlands out of the First World War and had avoided actions which might have caused friction against Germany. ... In order to dodge the barrier posed by the Maginot Line, the Germans planned to avoid the eastern border of France and instead advance through the Netherlands and Belgium. The plan had an added advantage which would enable the Germans to prevent the Allies from setting up an operations base on the European mainland."

" ... The British Expeditionary Force, better trained and better armed, was positioned south of the border between Belgium and France. The British and French forces combined had 750,000 troops ready to reinforce the armies of Belgium and the Netherlands, along with an Allied air force, although the latter did not match the numbers of the German Luftwaffe."

" ... while the Dutch citizens perceived increased military activity, they didn’t realize that invasion was imminent. On the morning of May 10, 1940, when they spotted German bombers flying toward the North Sea, they assumed the planes were heading to Britain. But once they were over the North Sea, the German planes, after a 180-degree turn, circled back toward the Netherlands. 

"Hitler had an alibi for his attack. Britain and France, he accused, planned to attack the Ruhr Area via the Netherlands and Belgium. Germany had to protect its borders. Hitler was proficient in manufacturing excuses as a pretext for German aggression and had accomplished it with success before."

The alibi was only for US media and people; his own nation was happy Invading and colonising any of rest of Europe or world. But the fraudulent propaganda also served to divide people of France and UK, by giving those willing to believe it, an excuse to go on clamouring for a treaty. 

" ... Netherlands surrendered on May 15, submitting to occupied rule under the German Reich. For the Jews living in the Netherlands, many of whom—like the family of Anne Frank—had fled to the Netherlands to escape persecution in their native Germany, the developments were especially ominous. Some people, knowing the capacity of the Nazis for violence and menace, chose suicide rather than the prospect of Nazi brutality. 

"The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, like the Netherlands, was a neutral country. Concrete block defenses had been constructed along its border with Germany and France, but there was little hope that they would withstand a German invasion. On May 10, the Germans invaded, and by night, most of the nation was occupied, although the government and the royal family evacuated to Canada."

" ... On May 28, King Leopold surrendered the army without first consulting his government or his Allies and leaving the British Expeditionary Force dangerously exposed at the port of Dunkirk, near the French/Belgian border. 

"The Germans advanced to the English Channel, trapping the Allied forces. At the last moment, the British forces were rescued by a civilian armada of “little ships,” numbering approximately 850, that sailed to Dunkirk from May 26 to June 4, 1940, to rescue more than 336,000 French and British soldiers. Much of the Allied equipment was left behind, but the rescue at Dunkirk was a burst of morale for the British. They would sorely need good news, for the war was about to become much bleaker for the Allied cause. As Prime Minister Winston Churchill succinctly put it, “Wars are not won by evacuations!”"

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April 05, 2022 - April 05, 2022. 

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The Invasion of France 

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"Despite all the information that was accumulating, French General Maurice Gamelin did not react with the speed that the circumstances seemed to require. Gamelin was a 68-year-old military veteran, reflective of a bygone time, with ideas more suited to the past. He doubted that airplanes would play a prominent role in warfare and was dismissive of the importance of radio communication, believing that if he even had a radio in his headquarters, the enemy might discern its location. ... "

"During the Battle of Hannut, French and German tanks met on May 12 in what was, at that time, the largest tank battle ever fought. After knocking out 160 German tanks, the French staged a planned withdrawal, leaving the Germans in control of the battlefield. The French were successful in delaying the German Panzer divisions long enough for the French First Army to arrive and get into position. Defying orders from his superiors and indeed, from Hitler as well, the German Panzer commander General Erich Hoepner attacked once again at Gembloux, ultimately losing 42 tanks in the effort. At this point, matters seemed hopeful for the French, but that perspective was an illusion."

" ... French lacked anti-tank and anti-aircraft weaponry. They had failed to heed the intelligence reports they were receiving on German movements. Reserve units had been ordered to reinforce the Meuse area on May 11, but this operation was conducted at night due to the threat of Luftwaffe planes in daylight. The French believed that the Germans would also be hampered by slow movement, not yet realizing that the Germans were in a hurry."

"On May 13, three Panzer Divisions, reinforced by an elite infantry regiment, crossed near Sedan. Because the Germans lacked artillery, the German air attack used dive bombing and carpet bombing against a narrow sector of the French lines, flying 3,940 sorties to smash a hole in the defensive line. By midnight, the Germans were able to penetrate five miles into the French defenses as the gunners fled."

"The situation had reached a dangerous level, and the French commander decided that the bridges across the Meuse had to be destroyed. In doing so, the Allies lost 44 percent of their strength in the attempt to destroy the three bridges."

" ... French Ninth Army was surrounded; the Second Army suffered serious losses. Erwin Rommel’s tanks had broken through the French lines, advancing by day and by night, traveling 30 miles (48 kilometers) in 24 hours and, by May 17, claiming to have taken 10,000 prisoners while suffering only 36 losses among his own forces. ... "

" ... Germans could call upon 142 divisions and, except for the skies over the English Channel, air supremacy and were in excellent shape as they began their second offensive on the Somme and the Aisne on June 5. Here, however, the French Army proved more challenging to the Germans. More than 110,000 French soldiers had been returned from Dunkirk and had not been demoralized by the German advance."

"Army Group B, moving over Luxembourg and Belgium and then advancing through the Ardennes, was bringing more than one million German troops and 1,500 tanks through the forest. The French units in position had minimal air support and could not stop the German bombers. By this time, the French Army was unable to present opposition to the German forces. 

"June would see the Germans cutting the Maginot Line off from the rest of France. Some of the troops within the Maginot Line forts continued to fight, but they were easily captured. On June 10, as the German 18th Army was deployed against Paris and Weygand acknowledged that the French Army would not be able to muster a significant defense, the government of France declared Paris an open city. In order to keep the Germans from destroying Paris, all defensive efforts were abandoned; the city of Paris, the jewel of France, was Germany’s for the taking."

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April 05, 2022 - April 05, 2022. 

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Surrender at Compiegne 

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"On May 16, when Churchill flew to Paris, he saw for himself how desperate matters were. The French government was burning its papers and preparing for the evacuation of Paris. He learned from General Gamelin that the French Army had no reserve soldiers. Churchill would later recount this exchange as the most shocking moment of his life. When he asked Gamelin where and when the French would counterattack the Germans, Gamelin replied, “inferiority of numbers, inferiority of equipment, inferiority of methods.” 

"The French population suddenly realized that they were in danger and that the hated, dreaded Germans, having overwhelmed the French Army, were going to occupy France as they were now occupying other countries in Europe. In response, the citizens prepared to flee to the south, where the Germans had not yet made inroads.

"The French government had failed to prepare for such a disaster and had no contingency plans to accommodate the new refugees, between six million to ten million, who were leaving in droves, despite government encouragement to stay where they were. Cities in the south of France saw their populations suddenly increase while cities such as Chartres decreased in numbers from 23,000 residents to 800."

"Churchill, still hoping to rally the French, attended a meeting of the Anglo-French Supreme War Council on June 13 to suggest a Franco-British Union, but the suggestion was rebuffed. He had insisted that the French ought to continue the fight because eventually the United States would enter the war on the side of the Allies. 

"However, when Prime Minister Reynaud sent a telegram to U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt asking him to declare war or offer help, Roosevelt’s secretary of state was averse to the publication of such an announcement. Publicly offering aid would signal to Hitler that the U.S. intended to join the war on the Allied side, putting American neutrality in jeopardy. The U.S. would provide help and materiel but could not make a public announcement. Roosevelt did, however, order that the American assets of Germany and Italy were to be frozen."

"On June 22, 1940, the signing was concluded. The French Army was to disband. France was responsible for bearing the costs of the invasion by Germany. France was to be divided into zones occupied by Italy and Germany. The remaining third, which was not occupied by the Germans, became known as the Vichy government, with Marshal Petain as its chief of state. The Vichy government was officially neutral, but Petain would be a figurehead leader, obedient to the Nazi rule, and the Vichy government collaborated with the Germans. 

"After the signing of the surrender, Adolf Hitler toured Paris with Albert Speer, the architect of the Third Reich. After praising the beauty of Paris, Hitler ordered Speer to draw up a decree for the resumption of renovations to the buildings in Berlin. “In the past,” he told Speer, “I often considered whether we would not have to destroy Paris. But when we are finished in Berlin, Paris will only be a shadow. So why should we destroy it?”"

Author misses on significance of visit to the tomb of Napoleon by someone aspiring to be considered his heir, on exactly the anniversary of his significant victory, a century later. 

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Vichy France: The British Attack the French Navy 

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"According to the terms of the armistice, the French were allowed to retain their navy. Churchill asked the admiral of the French fleet, Francois Darlan, to take his navy to Britain rather than risk letting the Germans control the fleet. Darlan vowed that he would destroy the French ships before he would allow Hitler to take control of them. Yet Winston Churchill knew that Hitler was eager to attack Great Britain, and with only the English Channel separating the two countries, the prime minister faced a dreadful dilemma. It seemed unlikely that the occupying Germans would permit France to maintain control of its vessels. Churchill felt that he had no choice: he had to order the destruction of the French fleet in order to save Great Britain. 

"The British war cabinet was not in favor of Churchill’s views on destroying the French fleet; France was an ally, even if about to surrender to Germany. But on July 1, his arguments prevailed. On July 3, the British Navy surrounded the French fleet at Mers-el-Kebir outside Oran, Algeria. The British relayed Churchill’s message that the French vessels had six hours to decide whether they were going to sail to a British port, the United States, a French port in the West Indies, or scuttle the ships. The French showed the British the order they had received from Darlan; if the Germans broke the terms of the armistice and demanded the ships, the French were to sail to the U.S. When Admiral Darlan learned of the exchange, he ordered reinforcements to the ships, but the message was intercepted by the British. The British meanwhile sent planes to mine the entrance to the port. 

"That evening, the British launched their attack, killing approximately 1,300 French sailors in what some French would later describe as their Pearl Harbor. The French ordered an airstrike against Gibraltar, but the effect was minimal in comparison. On July 8, France cut diplomatic ties with the British. 

"Two years later, when Germany decided that the remaining French fleet was to do its bidding and sent authorities to Toulon, where the ships were based, the French commanders scuttled their 70 ships. Darlan sent Churchill a letter which told the British prime minister that, as he had said in 1940, he was a man of his word."

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Aftermath: French Resistance 

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"Charles de Gaulle was a junior brigadier general who served in a minor capacity in the pre-Vichy French government. The day after Marshal Petain announced that France was going to surrender to Germany, de Gaulle delivered an address in a London studio. “This war has not been decided by the Battle of France. This war is a world war,” de Gaulle said. The Appeal of June 18 was the start of the French Resistance, but at the time it was made, there seemed little chance that France would rally to de Gaulle, who was not widely known. Not many French people even heard the broadcast, as they were occupied by Germany. 

"Existing resistance movements that had arisen did not view de Gaulle, who was not in France, as a legitimate representative of their country or their plight. But de Gaulle would not be restrained as he overcame the obstacles in his way. On September 24, 1941, the French National Committee was formed. It would eventually become the foundation of the provisional government led by de Gaulle when the Allies liberated France in 1944. The Free French Army also formed to fight with the Allies. It numbered almost 500,000 soldiers by June 1944, 1 million by December, and 1.3 million by the end of the war. By the war’s end, this army occupied south-west Germany and a part of Austria. 

"The ignominy and hardship of living under German occupation inspired the French to resist the Nazi regime, and the French Resistance proved to be of great value to the Allies as ordinary citizens relayed information about German movements, rescued Allied pilots and managed to get them back to Great Britain, and engaged in acts of sabotage against the Germans. As many as 400,000 French are estimated to have been part of the French Resistance."

" ... By the time the Allies were ready to invade Normandy, the Resistance was engaged in major acts of sabotage against the Germans, blowing up ammunition depots and derailing trains and enraging the Germans. When a German Panzer division was attacked while traveling to Normandy, the Germans retaliated against the town of Oradour-sur-Glane, where Resistance members were suspected of hiding. The Germans massacred 642 of the town’s residents. Still, the French Resistance continued."

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April 01, 2022 - April , 2022. 

Purchased January 17, 2022. 

ASIN:- ‎B099S12QM9

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Battle of France - World War II: 

A History from Beginning to End 

(World War 2 Battles) Kindle Edition

by Hourly History

Language ‏ : ‎ English

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4642965562

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The Last Nazi, by Andrew Turpin.

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The Last Nazi 

by Andrew Turpin. 

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If one is a fan of Frederick Forsyth, or enjoys his worjs, one may safely bet one may like this, even though it's a much simpler, paler version of the original's deep and wide research and complexity of plots one is used to, from ODESSA File and Day of the Jackal onwards. Not that earlier works, if any, were less - just that, these two were the first one recalls having come across. 

What with the nazi chase, in fact, one is reminded more than once of The ODESSA File, and there's the parent angle too for good measure- except that, here there's more than one survivor, and a very questionable angle too, of Jews vs church, via forgiveness on one side (claiming virtue, for most people, and then insisting on justice for all victims), while other side is painted with tar, consorting with the devil that's the nazis.

Another difference is that, in The ODESSA File, the back story comes much sooner, securing the reader's sympathy for holocaust victims and more, while here that's taken care of via a prologue, and a substantial diary appears much later, although in early stages there's another memoir, both private. 

And a major difference between the two, The ODESSA File on one hand and this on the other, is how Frederick Forsyth has his protagonist casually explain that his pursuit had nothing to do with holocaust but was personal, on one hand, while here Andrew Turpin repeatedly paints the Jewish victims with tar brushes, including the early murdered troubled informer who's painted in questionable hues towards end. Forsyth's witness victim remains a sympathetic, pristine figure to the end, in contrast. 

................................................................................................

The story begins with an incident in midst of holocaust involving a tunnel collapse where camp inmates were being used in Southern Poland to carry and stash heavy boxes, before a pair often brothers manage to escape from a train and hear others being shot. This is prologue, before the story opens in Washington DC to a fundraiser attended by a nephew and son of the escaped twins, his brother being the candidate. He's found stabbed to death in his hotel room, but nit before he's talked to an investigator and a journalist about the nazi connection of funds. 

So far so good. But suddenly the author's antisemitism comes through, talking about the dead mother of the investigator who had been in the same camp as the twins.

"Helena had been eventually released when the Red Army arrived in April 1945, just after her twentieth birthday. Although originally a Jew, she later became a Christian ... "

"Although"??? Sounds like he's describing a blind person achieving dressing oneself! Reminds one obe Donelly in his work on Atlantis describing Chinese as having acquired racial characteristic faults of shapes of nose and eyes during migration! 

Perhaps it's to assure that the protagonist is kosher, despite the story being about Jews persecution and murders by nazis, including in US in the new millennium? That it's not about opposite persecution by Jews for avenging the holocaust, beyond justice? Or even just reassuring an average reader in US that the author is one of them? 

Reality is that most survivors managed to live only by never mentioning what they had suffered, although the family would know bare facts thereof, until they were old, with grown children and grandchildren, before some of them wrote their memoirs. 

"Johnson had been shocked when he read it for the first time. He had never known it had existed until then, and although his mother used to talk a bit about the camps and tell the occasional story about how the Nazis treated the Jews back then, she never did so in graphic detail. He hadn’t read the manuscript since probably 2002."

And most, at that, are probably not published, but kept private by family, if found. Few have consented to publications, or other measures of going public such as organisations bringing people together, and that, reluctantly. 

It's really not different from women being able to speak about domestic violence suffered by most. 

................................................................................................

" ... You had another lecture, right? What was this one about?” 

"“It was about the controversy when the CIA employed a lot of ex-Nazis after World War II to spy for them,” Johnson said. “Many of the Nazis knew a lot about Russia, which were the new enemy then. Lots of them were given entry into the U.S. as a payback. They were given a safe haven here, no questions asked, a few thousand of them—mass murderers, torturers, sadists, you name it. My talk was partly about how the OSI was set up in 1979 inside the Department of Justice in Washington to track down those Nazis, who were scattered across the country.”"

................................................................................................

"The cruelty of the SS camp commanders was indescribable, unfathomable. I could not work out how such depths of cold hatred and savagery could exist in a person. Any excuse to beat one of us, any reason conjured out of nowhere, any minor fabricated indiscretion—they would grab it, a horrible thin smile on their lips. Inflicting pain, agony, humiliation, and then eventually death, was their daily reason for living. 

"For them it was the only way to be. To follow orders and to cause pain. 

"Did they have a choice? Of course they did. And they chose the way of darkness always."

................................................................................................

" ... Brenner stopped in front of me, about half a meter away. 

"He squared his shoulders, his feet apart, and put his hands behind his back, holding his black leather riding crop whip, which he used to lash us with. His words to me were “You—you never look me in the eye, do you?” Then he repeated them, shouting at the top of his voice, screaming. He said it was disrespectful to avoid eye contact and that he was going to teach me some manners. Then he turned to one of the Jewish kapos, the Jews who had either volunteered or had been told to do certain jobs to help the guards, and told him to fetch the ox whip. 

"I was shaking with fear because I had previously seen the first lieutenant whipping prisoners with it while they were held motionless on a whipping block. 

"Now it was my turn. The guards called this torture the fünfundzwanzig, German for “twenty-five,” because it involved that number of strokes with the whip across the buttocks. I’ve never felt such pain, and even now, I can’t put into words how it felt. 

"Then and now, I’ve no idea how I avoided fainting, but I think this was the only thing that kept me alive, because if I had lost consciousness while the first lieutenant was beating me, I’m certain I would have been shot. That’s what happened to others. 

"Afterward the guards were instructed to leave me standing in the Appell yard, where the daily roll call of prisoners was taken, for a whole day in the sun without food or water, and that no one must speak to me, and I mustn’t sit or lie down. 

"And that’s what happened. It was summer, and the sun shone from a cloudless sky for the whole day. I must have been very close to death. I had blood running down my legs from the whip, and I was horribly sunburned on my head and hands and feet, in utter agony. 

"I was unconscious for quite some time toward the end. I must finally have passed out; I don’t know how long for. 

"Afterward I developed some sort of infection from the whip wounds and even today bear those scars. The camp doctor came to look at me. He could do nothing, or wanted to do nothing."

And again, there's a thorn, a foreign seeming insertion. 

"But I prayed to the Almighty while I was out in that Appell yard, and he spoke back to me and told me I would live. And I did, somehow. He also told me I was loved and had to forgive those SS commanders for what they had done, or I would go mad. 

"And that was true. I had a sudden realization that inside me, I couldn’t choose my circumstances, but I could choose my response. 

"That is how I survived the whipping and how I survived Wüstegiersdorf. 

"Yet those who perpetrated these crimes, even if forgiven, must face justice."

This double twist is unnatural, typical of church in its protection of criminals from victims, on one hand, and of persecution of subjugated races in name of justice on the other. 

Most memoirs speak of nightmares, inability to forget, and need yo get back to life. Having read well over a dozen, one can't recall a single one that speaks of forgiveness, much less of a double twist as author has the victim here for. 

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"He turned around to his computer. There were two new e-mails sitting in his inbox: one from the assistant school principal’s wife, which he ignored, and one from the Simon Wiesenthal Foundation, set up by the famous Nazi hunter of the same name. It was announcing the organization’s 2011 Annual Status Report on the Worldwide Investigation and Prosecution of Nazi War Criminals, the latest update of a document first published in 2001. 

"The report included a list of the most wanted former Nazis. The numbers on the list had dwindled sharply over recent years, due mainly to death from old age, with the odd successful prosecution to celebrate. 

"Johnson scanned through it, tapping the desk with his fingers. Yes, the names were still there. 

"Those bastards from Wüstegiersdorf had never been caught."

True of most of them! 

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The descriptions of incidents in career of Johnson, the protagonist, in his past as a CIA operative stationed in Pakistan and developing contacts in Afghanistan in 1988, seems to evoke Zero Dark Thirty as well as parts of Homeland. Perhaps that's because they're all based on real events and characters. 

Interestingly, author goes into use of nazis by CIA, and possibly protection given to them, even from OSI. 

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Author mentions "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy", the film. It's unusual respect paid to a fellow author,  so one wonders if they're related. 

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There's an uncanny feeling, beginning soon past the prologue, somewhere around when Johnson and Fiona meet Nathaniel first, of being in The Neverending Story, of the terrifying wolf woken and being on the chase. 

Perhaps it merely testifies to the eternal quality of The Neverending Story, rather than an unconscious effect on the author.

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Not relevant to the plot, but brings much to mind - 

" ... “The U.S. President Barack Obama flew into London’s Stansted Airport last night to be greeted by Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall. 

"President Obama, who is traveling with his wife, Michelle, will hold an initial meeting with Prime Minister David Cameron at 10 Downing Street this evening. 

"It is only the third state visit to the U.K. by a U.S. President in the past 100 years. 

"Obama, followed by a large U.S. press entourage . . . ”"

This was, of course, a few years before the last wedding in the family, with the substitute in tears as he escorted the bride to be given in marriage to his youngest. 

................................................................................................

It's almost halfway before story returns to events leading to opening of prologue. 

"All the commanders were terrified of Lutkemeyer’s boss, the top man, Captain Karl Beblo, who was a fearsome character with the brightest blue eyes I had ever seen. Beblo was the local commandant of the Third Reich’s civil and military engineering group, the Organisation Todt. 

"The Todt, together with the Minister of Armaments and War Production Albert Speer, had decided that Książ Castle in Walbrzych (or Waldenburg, as the Germans called it) should be turned into a headquarters for Hitler. 

"I and other Poles hated the way the Germans had many decades earlier taken over the whole Lower Silesia region, originally part of the Kingdom of Poland. By the time Hitler invaded Poland in September 1939, they saw it as their own. 

"Speer and his team planned to build a complex of tunnels under the beautiful old castle: a bolt-hole where the Führer could flee if the war went against Germany. A place beyond the range of British and American bombers. 

"They also planned to build more tunnels under the hills on which the castle stood, as well as under the Owl Mountains, which ran for twenty-six kilometres southeast from Walbrzych. 

"The idea was to use them as underground factories to produce sensitive and highly secret new weapons and other military technology. 

"The code name for this scheme was Project Riese—German for “giant.” 

"To build the tunnels, the Nazis brought in a small army of mining engineers. 

"But the actual digging, the dangerous bit, was carried out by concentration camp prisoners like Daniel and me. 

"Most of us were Jews, but there were also a few Slavs and other minorities. We were all kept at Gross-Rosen, the network of camps that included Wüstegiersdorf. 

"The SS cut corners and had no regard for safety. Thousands of the prisoners died, both in the camps and while digging the tunnels. Concrete supports weren’t put in place, and tunnel roofs were often unstable. We all knew there were many fatal accidents, all involving Jews. Even the SS guards and commanders were worried, because they had to supervise us.

"Lutkemeyer said it was important the work that was to be done that day at the Sokolec tunnels be completed quickly, otherwise the Führer would be angry. This made me take notice.

"I heard Lutkemeyer say there was a special delivery of boxes coming, which had to be stowed in Sub-Tunnel A, running off Tunnel Three. That was bad news because although there was a narrow-gauge railway that ran up to the entrance to Tunnel Three, if anything needed to be transported farther, we had to carry it by hand. Tunnel Three was a disaster waiting to happen. They had built it into soft sandstone, and it wasn’t as stable as some of the other tunnels across the mountain range. The SS were so concerned, they had a couple of small escape tunnels built, one of which I worked on. 

"There were six guards that day, which surprised me. Normally, there were just two or three. They loaded twenty-two of us onto a truck, then drove us to the railway station, herded us into two cattle trucks pulled by an old shunting engine, and then took us the thirteen kilometres down the valley to the village of Ludwikowice Klodzkie. 

"Brenner, to his obvious distaste, had been forced to travel with us. 

"From there, a smaller train took us on the narrow-gauge railway a couple of kilometres up to the tunnel complex in the hills near the village of Sokolec.

"A little later, at just before ten o’clock, another Nazi train, pulling five trucks loaded with wooden boxes, chugged up to the Sokolec tunnel entrance, accompanied by heavily armed SS guards. 

"Our job was to unload the train and carry the heavy boxes far into the tunnels complex, where we had to stack them on pallets."

...............................................................................................

"His thesis, which he still had at home in Portland, included details of how, for most of the war, Hitler’s regime had bolstered its thin foreign-exchange reserves, vital to purchasing equipment, machinery, and engineering products, by plundering the gold reserves of the various countries it had marched into. In all, an estimated $600 million of gold at 1945 prices had been looted from the central banks in Belgium, the Netherlands, Czechoslovakia, Austria, and others. Most of it was melted down and reformed by the Reichsbank into new one-kilogram gold bars. 

"Johnson turned on his phone calculator app and punched in a few numbers. That was something like $30 billion at 2011 prices, he thought. 

"He had also done research into how, in late 1944 and early 1945, when the Russians were advancing rapidly west and the Americans and British moving east, the crumbling Third Reich scrambled to hide the treasure it had plundered. 

"Much of it was stored in disused mines. Some was dropped to the bottom of lakes. 

"But now it seemed that from what Jacob had written, some of it was also hidden in the tunnels of the Riese complex."

And that's before mentioning France, looted majorly, or Jews, ditto.

................................................................................................

" ... But when they heard nineteen shots, they knew Brenner had killed them all—something that was confirmed much later. After that, there was only one line left in the narrative, a couple of pages from the end of the notebook. 

""I knew then he would have to pay the price, that there would have to be justice. "

"Johnson put the notebook down and rested in his chair, staring at the ceiling. 

"A Nazi gold train."

................................................................................................

"“That man saved our life and must have put his own at risk. After a while, we went over the Czech border and came to another few houses on the other side of the hills. We went to one of them, where a man took us into his attic. By that stage, we just couldn’t go any farther—Daniel especially. He was totally done in. 

"“We were shocked to find two British guys there in the attic as well, both of them airmen. They were escaped prisoners of war, dressed in German clothing and with proper German ID documents. They told us they’d escaped from Stalag 344, a prisoner of war camp about a hundred kilometers northeast, and that they were planning to head south through Czechoslovakia and Germany to Switzerland. We waited a few days until we felt a little stronger, and the Poles found us some better clothing, money for the trains, and fake documents stating we were Belgian laborers. Then we just went with the two British. We followed them at a distance so if we got caught, they wouldn’t be pulled in as well.

"“We got to Singen, near the German-Swiss border, and then just walked about thirty kilometers, following the railway line to Schaffhausen, ducking through the woods and getting over the border near Ramsen.” 

"From Switzerland, the twins had passed into southern France, where the French Resistance helped them pass through Toulouse and Perpignan, then over the Pyrenees and into Spain, where they parted company with the two British airmen. 

"From there, Spain, which in practice remained neutral during the war, allowed them to cross into Portugal, another neutral country. They eventually got onto a ship from Lisbon to London in February 1945.

One would find it unbelievable, if one hadn't read accounts by so many survivors. 

................................................................................................

Another ODESSA moment with a difference -

"“I guess my mother is one reason I’m here,” Johnson said. “For a long time I was a Nazi hunter in the U.S., as you said. That was partly because of my mother’s experience in Wüstegiersdorf, which you both seem to have shared. 

"“But there’s something else. In 1996, I was searching for an SS captain, Jan Van Stalheim, whom I tracked to Buenos Aires, where the trail went cold. He’d vanished. But I had a tip that he visited a jeweler in Buenos Aires a few times, someone I meant to go and check out but never did—a man called José Guzmann.” 

"Johnson studied the brothers’ faces. “Does that name mean anything to you?”"

"Daniel gazed steadily at Johnson. “His real name wasn’t José Guzmann at all. It was actually a man called Erich Brenner—the former commander at Wüstegiersdorf.”"

................................................................................................

"A life spent exiled under a false name with a false passport, in a country he hated, a wife who had left him at the same time as his only son, a business that was going down the tubes, no real friends, and the constant fear of discovery. Overhanging it all was the sense, not of guilt—there was none of that—but of failure that had spread through him like a vicious cancer, seemingly untreatable."

Fiction, there. Most escaped nazis fared as well as possible, considering their inhuman acts in holocaust and dehumanizing effect thereof on perpetrators, that is, if they'd had any humanity in the first place, ever. 

"Still, he was lucky to have gotten out of Nazi Germany, he thought. The narrow window of opportunity to escape to Spain, the help he’d received from Otto Skorzeny’s organization Die Spinne—The Spider—the new passport, the crash course in Spanish, the flight to Argentina. 

"It could have been worse back then, and the biggest mercy of all was that he’d been able to work with the CIA, trading his knowledge of Russia and his wide range of contacts in the German army intelligence organizations—the Fremde Heere Ost, the Foreign Armies East, and the Abwehr, the German military intelligence organization—for his freedom."

................................................................................................

"“You do know, Mr. Johnson, why we have been doing what we’ve been doing with Brenner and the gold?” Leopold said. 

"Johnson nodded. “I get it completely.” 

"“We could have had him killed, you know. But it’s not our belief as Jews, to take an eye for an eye, even if he does deserve it. It’s true that if you go and read Exodus chapter twenty-one, it does say how the Lord told Moses that anyone who kills another should be put to death, a life for a life, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. However, we Jews don’t believe that should be taken literally, and our Talmud, our Jewish law, doesn’t interpret it that way. Nevertheless, we do believe damages should be paid in full. That’s what we have been doing: extracting compensation. Jacob calls it redemption. Reverse redemption.”"

................................................................................................

" ... it looks like Brenner was on our payroll for a long time in the ’50s and ’60s, even running into the ’70s. He provided contacts among the SS’s old spy network in Russia, where he seems to have been well connected, and passed on information from these contacts about Russia’s military capabilities: details about the so-called missile gap between Russia and the U.S. It went on for a long time and must have been enough to build a lot of credit with the CIA. ... "

................................................................................................

"Dated the sixth of October 1942, the memo was congratulatory in tone and came from the SS Personalhauptamt, which Johnson knew was the SS Personnel Main Office. It informed Brenner that he was being promoted to the rank of Obersturmführer. It stated this was for Brenner’s role with the 3rd SS Panzer Division Totenkopf, the Death’s Head Division, during the invasion of the Soviet Union. It referenced the part played by the Totenkopf, a tank unit, during the advance on Leningrad during 1942. There were several official stamps on the memo, one of which showed the SS eagle above a swastika—the official SS symbol. 

"The second letter, also typewritten and dated the second of November 1943, was again from the Personalhauptamt, detailing Brenner’s appointment as deputy commander of the Auschwitz concentration camp following an injury sustained at Kharkhov in March 1943. It didn’t specify the injury, but Daniel had mentioned Brenner having a limp."

"The fourth letter had two joint signatories: first the Personalhauptamt, and second Hauptsturmführer Karl Beblo. But this letter, dated December 21, 1944, had a very different tone. 

"It was clearly a severe reprimand issued to Brenner and outlined details of an escape three days earlier, the eighteenth of December, by two Jews from a railway car en route from Ludwikowice Klodzkie to Gluszyca. It also accused Brenner of shooting dead—without authorization—nineteen Jewish prisoners who were fit for work. The memo noted the two escaped Jews had not been found."

"Thank God for Hans Huber, Johnson thought, for the umpteenth time in his career. Huber was the manager of the Wirth paper mill at Freimann, near Munich, where in April 1945, the Nazi leadership sent the entire collection of ten million membership card files for the worldwide Nazi Party to be pulped, just as the Second World War came toward a close. 

"But Huber defied the Nazi leadership and managed to hide the documents under waste paper until U.S. Army archival experts were able to secure them in October of that year. They were subsequently transferred by the Americans to a Berlin document center, and microfilmed copies were made for use at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. These documents had been the bedrock on which many interviews and prosecutions of Nazi war criminals were founded, including at the Nuremberg trials, and had been a goldmine of evidence for the OSI in its work."

................................................................................................

"“The whole objective here is to get the guy to court. If you start running stories before he’s been arrested he’ll go underground like a rat down a sewer pipe. He’ll get a new passport, a change of identity and just disappear. That’s what these guys have always done. They’re survivors. There are still networks in place to protect his sort, you know, even now, almost seventy years later. They’ll just whisk him away.”"

...............................................................................................

"The Sokolec tunnels complex is inside the Gontowa Mountain and comprises four tunnels built by slave labor, mainly Jews who were imprisoned in the nearby Gross-Rosen concentration camp. 

"Tunnels One and Two are built into soft sandstone and have collapsed in several places. Tunnel Three is half a kilometer away from the others but has been inaccessible since the end of World War II because of a collapsed tunnel roof. The Sokolec complex is not accessible to tourists, who are advised to visit the nearby Underground City of Osówka to experience the Riese tunnels in safety."

" ... Owl Mountains now, running west of Walbryzch, and Johnson noted the occasional brown tourist sign flashing up in his headlights, pointing to some of the Nazi tunnel complexes open to the public. Podziemne Miasto Osówka, read one. Underground City of Osówka. 

"Tours of the old tunnels. The locals were still trying to capitalize on the Nazi occupation seven decades earlier. Who could blame them? It was probably the closest they would get to compensation from the Third Reich for the virtual destruction of their country during the war and then the grim, gray repression of the Soviet era that followed, Johnson mused."

................................................................................................

"Inside the large compound formed by the wooden fence were several long wooden huts. Between them were areas of concrete on which stood steel tables. 

"Working at the tables were dozens of emaciated women, all dark-skinned Latinas. They were dressed in ragged old T-shirts and jeans that were frayed and covered in stains. 

"Piles of wristwatch cases, straps, mechanisms, and other components were spread on the tables, which some of the women were assembling under the gaze of men standing nearby. 

"Other women at the end of the tables were sliding the finished products into plastic sleeves and small branded boxes. 

"All the men carried wooden truncheons that hung from loops tied to their belts. Johnson noticed that frequently, if one of the women stopped working, one of the supervisors would step forward and speak angrily to them. Sometimes they would take out their truncheon and threaten the women. 

"In the center of the compound was a water tap on a stand, with a couple of metal cups chained to it that clinked together as they moved in the breeze. Occasionally one of the women would walk to the stand, fill a cup with water, and drink. 

"Johnson took a couple more steps. He could see the watches and the boxes carried the names of famous brands: Rolex, Girard-Perregaux, Omega, Jaeger-LeCoultre, and others. 

"Ignacio spoke from behind him. “All fakes, mostly for sale to tourists in this country and elsewhere. And these people are all trafficked in from other countries around here: Paraguay, Bolivia, Chile. They are all slaves, basically. They are kept in this compound, they live and work in these huts, and they’re not allowed out. They don’t get much food, and what they do get is rubbish.” 

"Ignacio walked around in front of Johnson, still pointing the gun at him. “And this is how my father has been making his money for decades. Trying to make up for the losses on his gold purchases from our friends,” he hissed the words out, “the Kudrow brothers.” 

"What really struck Johnson was how thin, filthy, and haunted the women looked. None of them spoke to the others. Some of the girls were very young, in their mid-to-late teens, and none of them looked much older than thirty. And all this in South America’s second largest economy? He swore under his breath. 

"“It’s outrageous,” Johnson said, turning to Ignacio. “This is a concentration camp. He’s re-created one right here.” 

"Ignacio continued, “You’re right. It is outrageous. My father’s legacy. I only found out about this place a few months ago. Oh yes, Argentina signed up for the United Nations protocols on human trafficking and all that political crap—sounds good, doesn’t it? But in reality, you find bastards like him running businesses like this all over the country.” 

"Ignacio spat on the ground. “The police do nothing in return for a few bribes here, a roll of pesos there, sometimes a little favor or two. It’s the same all over South America, for that matter. Here. Look at it.” 

"He gestured with his hand at the compound, then indicated to one of the women. “Just a girl, isn’t she? Fifteen years old.” 

"She had come from Bolivia, Ignacio went on, and it had probably cost his father only eighty dollars or so to buy her. The manager would keep her here for maybe five years, ruin her life, then let her go, Ignacio said."

"“You might think I’m a hypocrite,” Ignacio said. “Well, fair enough. Everyone’s a hypocrite in this country. But this was how he treated me as a kid, more or less.” Ignacio said. “He locked me in cupboards if I misbehaved, beat me, verbally abused me, told me I was never going to do anything with my life.” 

"Ignacio took a breath, then continued his rant. “That’s why I left home and joined the army to fight against the arrogant British in the Malvinas. But now it’s time for justice to be done. A little late, some may think. You do realize I was lucky to catch him, don’t you? He was on the point of disappearing again. When I arrived at his house, there was a new Chilean passport on his table, a new identity, and he had a bag packed and was ready to go.”"

................................................................................................

"Daniel had been stunned into silence by news of the concentration camp set up by Brenner in Puerto Iguazú and Ignacio’s line that Brenner had done it to try and make up for the financial hit taken from the Kudrows’ long-running blackmail. But he had ended the conversation with a comment that Johnson found hard to disagree with. “The man is pure evil; he would have done it anyway.”"

................................................................................................

Author mentions some references.

" ... great insight into the OSI’s operations and into some of the high-profile Nazi cases it pursued during the period after it was established in 1979. Since then, the OSI has won cases against 107 individuals living in the U.S. who took part in Nazi crimes of persecution. The document also illustrates how the United States provided a safe haven for hundreds, possibly thousands, of Nazis who fled after World War II, some of them assisted by the CIA in exchange for intelligence about the Soviet Union as the Cold War escalated."

"Lichtblau’s book, The Nazis Next Door, about the war criminals who took refuge in the United States after World War II and the efforts of the Office of Special Investigations and others to track them down, is a fascinating read. In particular, the chapter detailing OSI historian Mike MacQueen’s hunt in the Vilnius archives for evidence of crimes committed by Aleksandras Lileikis, a Lithuanian security police chief who collaborated with the Nazis and subsequently lived in Massachusetts for thirty-five years, makes compelling reading."

"From 2015 to 2016 there were extensive efforts to locate and excavate a train rumored to contain gold and jewelry that was supposedly abandoned and buried by the Nazis in a secret railway tunnel just outside Walbrzych at the end of the war. Attempts to locate this train have so far proved unsuccessful. There was a fascinating BBC documentary about this in October 2016, Hunting the Nazi Gold Train, by historian and broadcaster Dan Snow, which provided much rich detail on Project Riese. ... "

"The flight by hundreds, or more likely, thousands of Nazis to South America after World War II is well documented, although there is disagreement among some historians about the numbers and methods used to engineer their escape routes. In particular, Uki Goñi’s book, The Real Odessa: How Perón Brought the Nazi War Criminals to Argentina, gives a well-researched insight into how the relationship between Hitler’s Germany and Juan Perón’s Argentina facilitated this. 

"Another similarly well-researched book is Guy Walters’ Hunting Evil."

And he acknowledges debt to Frederick Forsyth. 

" ... Of these, one of the best-known is Frederick Forsyth’s The Odessa File, which detailed the Odessa escape network established by some SS officers at the end of World War II. Some historians, such as Guy Walters, have downplayed or even denied the existence of a network by that name."

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April 02, 2022 -  April 05, 2022. 

Purchased 

Kindle Edition, 506 pages

Published August 15th 2017 

by The Write Direction Publishing

Edition language English 

Original title The Last Nazi

ASIN:- B074V5XNPF 

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The Last Nazi: 

a WW2 spy conspiracy thriller 

(A Joe Johnson Thriller, Book 1) 

Kindle Edition

by Andrew Turpin  

(Author) 

Format: Kindle Edition

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4644269401

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