Reading the Odessa File by Frederick Forsyth and I was wondering if it's based on any fact or is total fiction. I've not read Forsyth before and so far this book is excellent.
A great book and film with Jon Voigt. The book/film is fiction but ODESSA is supposed to have existed. Lee
A great book and film with Jon Voigt. The book/film is fiction but ODESSA is supposed to have existed. Lee I'll have to check out the film.
GAGE you will find all F.F books are first class reading ..at the moment I am reading '' AVENGER '' written by him , and another good read it is ..
GAGE you will find all F.F books are first class reading ..at the moment I am reading '' AVENGER '' written by him , and another good read it is .. Thanks. I hear that 'Day of the Jackal' is also top notch.
Thoroughly recommend all of Forsyth's books. Day of the Jackal, The Dogs of War and The Odessa file are my favourites (in that order). Haven't read Avenger yet, must get it. Also The Shepherd (short story) is good and his couple of collections of short stories are amusing (eg. The Veteran).
Mike is correct. Forsyth is one of the best writers of the 20th century for this genre. And the films are virtually as good as the books. It has been pointed out in a later message that his later books were not as good as the earlier ones. I have to admit that I've only read the three noted above, and can only comment on those titles. They are DAMNED good! Marc
Thanks Marc, glad you agree. I would also recommend to any forum member any of Gerald Seymour's many excellent books.
Mike is correct. Forsyth is one of the best writers of the 20th century for this genre. And the flims are virtually as good as the books. Marc I would make a distinction between his early and later works. the last few books he published were no where near the quality of his ealrly stuff.
The Odessa File is a fantastic book and one of those which I found I could simply not put down. Regarding the Odessa Organisation, I believe it was both real and very active, receiving much help from the Vatican. Another couple of books which I read around the same time and thought them excellent were "The Eagle Has Landed" and "KG200" Super stuff.
Jackyl, Odessa and Dogs are three of his best books and, to my mind, three of the most enjoyable and watchable films
Regarding the Odessa Organisation, I believe it was both real and very active, receiving much help from the Vatican.(ww2ni) It has been understood for some time that the Catholic Church /Vatican facilitated the escape from Europe of such war criminals as Adolf Eichmann and Klaus Barbie to South America and the Middle East.A number high ranking SS members were also helped to find safe havens in places such as Egypt and Syria through false passports and identities.To my knowledge,none of these war criminals who had found a safe haven in the Middle East were ever brought to justice. The fiction,The Odessa File, would appear to have been based on the method to spirit away those who had a case to answer for involvement in war criminal activity.
Regarding the Odessa Organisation, I believe it was both real and very active, receiving much help from the Vatican.(ww2ni) It has been understood for some time that the Catholic Church /Vatican facilitated the escape from Europe of such war criminals as Adolf Eichmann and Klaus Barbie to South America and the Middle East.A number high ranking SS members were also helped to find safe havens in places such as Egypt and Syria through false passports and identities.To my knowledge,none of these war criminals who had found a safe haven in the Middle East were ever brought to justice. The fiction,The Odessa File, would appear to have been based on the method to spirit away those who had a case to answer for involvement in war criminal activity. It seems to me, Harry, an awful lot of SS escaped punishment.
Adolf Galland of Luftwaffe Ace fame disappeared from Germany Post War and surfaced in Latin America, namely Argentina. It was thought that he made use of the ODESSA or similar type organisation to leave Germany. After 8 years he returned, but was never offered a high position in the newly re-formed German Air Force, probably because of his disappearance and not using normal methods of travel. Regards Tom
I was just listening to this. It's an abridgement and comically pulpy in places, but it's pacy and quite listenable as a story.
BBC Radio 4 - Intrigue - Nazis on the Run: The Ratline With... "Nazis on the Run: The Ratline After the Second World War, a number of high-ranking members of the Nazi regime stood trial at Nuremberg. But some of those who should have faced justice escaped. The routes they took to flee are known collectively as the ‘ratline’. Who co-ordinated the flight? The idea of a powerful international conspiracy has captured the imagination of journalists and writers, including Frederick Forsyth in his thriller The Odessa File. But in reality there was no overarching organisation pulling the strings, like SPECTRE in James Bond. For most fleeing Nazis, the experience was a haphazard and perilous one. Where does the term ‘ratline’ come from? The word ‘ratline’ was used by US intelligence officers after the war to describe a network taking Croatian war criminals to South America. It came to wider use after a 1983 US Department of Justice report on the flight of Klaus Barbie, the ‘Butcher of Lyon’. In 1951, Barbie was the subject of a French extradition request, but US intelligence officers used the ‘ratline’ to send him to Bolivia, rather than admit that they’d been employing him. Who escaped? Some of the most famous figures to get away include Josef Mengele, the doctor at Auschwitz who performed fatal experiments on prisoners, and Adolf Eichmann, one of the most important co-ordinators of the Holocaust. Eichmann was tracked down and captured in Argentina by the Israeli secret service – he stood trial for his crimes and was executed in 1962. But Mengele remained at large until his death in 1979. Where were they going? Many countries in South America had developing economies and pro-immigration policies, and were a popular destination for all sorts of refugees, not only those with tainted pasts. In addition, Juan Perón’s government in Argentina was offering clandestine support to fleeing Nazis, as Uki Goñi’s book The Real Odessa revealed in 2003. How does Otto Wächter fit into the picture? Otto Wächter was the Nazi Governor of Galicia, now western Ukraine, a region where almost the entire Jewish population was murdered in the Holocaust. After the war, he spent three years in the Austrian mountains, before crossing into Italy and obtaining forged identity papers. The term “ratline” is now used to describe all the various means by which members of the Nazi regime left Europe after the Second World War. He headed to Rome on the hunt for a passport in his false name. At this time, the Red Cross was issuing travel documents to refugees, many of whom were lacking passports for legitimate reasons. He stayed in a monastery and met Alois Hudal, the Rector of the German Pontifical College, a Nazi sympathiser and supporter of those on the run. What happened? After lunch with a man whom Wächter describes in a letter to his wife Charlotte simply as “a very kind old comrade”, he fell ill and died, perhaps the victim of poisoning. Philippe Sands investigates series Intrigue: The Ratline. Intrigue: The Ratline is available as a podcast. James Everest was the academic researcher."
