A number of his more important sources are fellow journalists with similar limitations.Ĭo-author, Dunstan, previously had a solid, though hardly high-powered, publishing record in the completely unrelated subject of armoured fighting vehicles. There is a reason why newspapers are dumped in tomorrow’s recycling, but books, especially non-fiction, tend to find themselves preserved on shelves. However, sadly, the standards of evidence required of journalism, the “first draft of history” are much lower than those demanded of historians, who write later, more considered drafts of history. It should be – it is largely composed by a journalist - Williams. There is a clear divide between the standards of evidence of some of the books the authors plunder for intellectual cover and their own standards of evidence in their own “researches”, which are abysmally low, on occasion almost to the point of culpable dishonesty.
Why? Because the first half plunders many respectable books on WWII to provide itself with cover for a central premise in the second half – that Adolf Hitler escaped - that turns out to have absolutely no substance. This is such a book meriting not a star rating, but a black hole rating. Sometimes a book does not simply add very little to the sum of historical knowledge, but rather it has a negative impact. Sometimes the 5-star rating system isn’t adequate. Whatever conclusion readers come to at the end of the book it is a very compelling read. It is quite possible that Eva Braun and Adolf Hitler were spirited away to such a location where they remained largely undetected because everyone believed they had committed suicide in the ruins of the Fuhrerbunker in May 1945. Large estates were created in remote areas, essentially German enclaves where life carried on as it had in Germany. It seems highly possible, perhaps even likely, from what is essentially circumstantial evidence that large amounts of money and gold looted by the Nazis found it's was to South America in the latter stages of the war and just after, together with numbers of wanted Nazi war criminals and their families.
However, the authors have done a creditable job in gathering together what is known from written record about various aspects of the last years of the conflict, the known networks of support for escaping Nazis and the well-known German populations in various South American countries. Their style is very readable.Īt the distance is time it is unlikely we will know the exact truth about the fate of Eva Braun and Adolf Hitler as there are no surviving eye witnesses and no forensic evidence. It's two Authors are both renowned for their work in a range of relevant fields. Once I started reading I could barely put the book down. However when I discounted the eighty-odd pages of Foreword, Preface, Introduction, References, Bibliography and the index, the meaty bit came down to a still 293 pages. I felt a bit daunted when I first opened the book.over 350 pages of close type in a small font.