July 2014, Volume 42, Number 3
questions (is this really Adolf Hitler’s skull?) that may not be very representative of the way that most historians will want to use—or critique—DNA testing. Williams explains some technical concepts, but no more than one might find in a quality newspaper article. Scientifically literate critical thinking has to go well beyond inviting students to look on as the experts are consulted (an experience only marginally superior to watching popular TV shows such as Bones). The problem is that the subject matter is so technical that learning to tell a valid interpretation from a specious one requires teaching a certain amount of actual science. That, in turn, would require a more specialized focus: There probably isn’t room to explain blunt-force trauma and how to spot a forged Vermeer in the same book. These are pedagogical dilemmas that The Forensic Historian does not solve. ISAAC LAND Indiana State University Copyright © 2014 Taylor & Francis
Steinacher, Gerald Nazis on the Run: How Hitler’s Henchmen Fled Justice Whiteside, Shaun, trans. Oxford: Oxford University Press 409 pp., $19.95, ISBN 978–0–19–964245–8 Publication Date: October 2012 Nazis on the Run: How Hitler’s Henchmen Fled Justice is a study of how Nazi war criminals, both Germans and other Europeans, evaded the courts of postwar Europe and established new lives. This is the type of historical topic that attracts popular attention; stories of escaped Nazis can be found in the Cold War thriller novels of Helen McGinnis and movies such as The Boys from Brazil, The Odessa File, and Marathon Man. One might expect this topic to be well-trod ground for professional historians. Not so. Only a small group of scholars, including Uki Go˜ni, Ernst Klee, Holger Mendig, Matteo Sanfilippo, and Guy Walters, have tackled the subject, and all but Walters have published in German or Italian. Gerald Steinacher joins this group with Nazis on the Run, translated from the German by Shaun Whiteside. Steinacher is currently an assistant professor at the Uni-
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versity of Nebraska-Lincoln and has held prestigious fellowships at Harvard and the United States Holocaust Museum. He has published extensively on subjects related to Italy and Germany during and after the Nazi period and is eminently qualified to write on this topic. This book is clearly organized, with obvious topics separated into chapters. The first chapter details the escape route through Italy by which war criminals, with the help of ethnic Germans in the South Tyrol, fled Europe. The second chapter shows how the International Committee Red Cross (ICRC) inadvertently helped war criminals acquire travel documents and new identities, apparently based on the flimsiest documentation. The third chapter focuses on the involvement of the Vatican, particularly on the role of European clergymen such as Alois Hudal and Krunoslav Draganovi´c, in providing aid to known members of the SS, the Croatian Ustaˇse, and other fascist organizations. The fourth chapter examines the ways that war criminals were recruited by Western, particularly American, intelligence services to serve the cause of anti-Communism. The final chapter discusses the ways that war criminals established new identities and lives in Argentina. This structure promises the reader a very interesting story—both because it covers a subject neglected by academic historians writing in English and as a shocking, if entertaining, tale of unsavory characters and criminal behavior. Indeed, the author’s research in American, German, Austrian, Italian, and other archives is exhaustive, and Nazis on the Run is a valuable contribution to existing scholarship on the Nazi period and beyond. Unfortunately, the book suffers from its origins as a dissertation. The clear-cut and very sensible chapter divisions described above do not reflect its true organization, which is rambling and somewhat muddled. For example, much of the information in the chapter about intelligence services and war criminals is, in fact, about the role of the Catholic Church. Several of the war criminals described in the final chapter, on Argentina, do not actually end up in Argentina. The author is enamored of his research, an experience many professional historians will remember from their own dissertations. He seems to try to include every story he uncovered, whether or not it adds to his ar-
gument. Undoubtedly, he has left an enormous amount out of the book, but what is left is cluttered. The book is also quite repetitive, with characters appearing over and over, and in some cases introduced several times, as if the chapters were originally separate articles that have been cobbled together. Some of this may be unavoidable given the complex threads of the escape line, but it is surprising that Oxford did not insist on a more careful edit. In spite of these quibbles, the book is truly valuable for professional historians, who will overlook its organizational and stylistic flaws and focus on its admirable research. It should be noted that the book won a National Jewish Book Award in 2011. The subject attracts a nonacademic audience that is likely to be disappointed by the dissertation-like flavor of this book. Readers of popular history are more likely to enjoy Peter Levenda’s sensationalistic treatment in Ratline: Soviet Spies, Nazi Priests, and the Disappearance of Adolf Hitler (Ibis Press, 2012). Academic historians and history buffs alike may find Guy Walters’s Hunting Evil: How the Nazi War Criminals Escaped and the Hunt to Bring Them to Justice (Bantam, 2009) to be the most satisfying scholarly study of this fascinating topic. ANNI BAKER Wheaton College Copyright © 2014 Taylor & Francis
Irwin, Ryan M. Gordian Knot: Apartheid and the Unmaking of the Liberal World Order New York: Oxford University Press 256 pp., $45.00, ISBN 978-0-199-85561-2 Publication Date: September 2012 Gordian Knot: Apartheid and the Unmaking of the Liberal World Order highlights a previously ignored chapter in the antiapartheid struggle: the diplomatic battles waged during the 1960s by representatives of newly independent African states at the United Nations to delegitimize the apartheid regime. In fighting these battles, argues author Ryan Irwin, these states sought to establish themselves as a legitimate political force in the international political system. Irwin explores the response of Kennedy and Johnson administration
