Hunting Eichmann by Neal Bascomb Book Review

This book is the first complete narrative of the fifteen-year pursuit and eventual capture of Adolf Eichmann, a senior Nazi SS official who played a central role in organising the deportation of Jews to ghettos and extermination camps during the Holocaust.

For anyone unfamiliar with Eichmann, he was captured and detained by the Allies at the end of the Second World War but, like a surprising number of Nazis, he managed to escape and settle abroad.

His destination was Argentina, though my own research has shown that, although common, Argentina was not the only destination, so far I have read of Nazis escaping to Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Egypt, Spain, Switzerland, Syria and Venezuela.

Neal Bascomb's Hunting Eichmann is thoroughly researched, drawing on newly declassified documents and interviews with surviving participants on all sides of the story, and it is the closest thing I have read that marries history with what would make for a brilliant movie.

Breakdown

The book is broadly divided into two halves. The first covers Eichmann's wartime role and his escape from Europe, and the second covers the Mossad operation that eventually captured him in Buenos Aires in May 1960. However, to call it simply a two-part story does it a disservice, because the book is full of sub-plots and stories that run in parallel and intersect in ways that, in hindsight, make you question whether the operation would have succeeded at all had any number of small details played out differently.

Bascomb begins by establishing who Eichmann was and what he did. He was not a soldier in the conventional sense but a bureaucrat — the man who organised the logistics of genocide. He coordinated the transportation of millions of Jews to the concentration and extermination camps across occupied Europe. This is important because it explains why, after the war, Eichmann was not immediately recognisable in the way that more prominent figures like Goering or Himmler were. He was, in many respects, a faceless administrator, and that anonymity served him well in the years that followed.

After the war, Eichmann was captured by American forces and held in a POW camp. He managed to escape — not once but twice — from Allied detention. What is remarkable about the early chapters is the picture Bascomb paints of the post-war chaos in which men like Eichmann could simply disappear. With little money, no safe house and no forged papers, Eichmann hid in the mountains of northern Germany for several years under various aliases before making his way to Italy.

The escape networks, or "ratlines" as they became known, are amongst the most fascinating aspects of the book. These were routes that at different points were facilitated by various countries and institutions, and at other times those same countries knew about them and simply allowed them to continue. Bascomb details how Eichmann made his way to Italy, where he found refuge in a Franciscan monastery near Genoa.

Through the assistance of pro-Nazi sympathisers and, it must be said, the complicity of certain elements within the Catholic Church, Eichmann obtained an Argentine visa under the alias Ricardo Klement. Amongst other things, the role of figures such as Bishop Alois Hudal, who actively assisted fleeing Nazis, is covered in detail. By 1950, Eichmann had arrived in Juan Peron's Argentina, where a sizeable community of former Nazis had already established themselves. It is estimated that as many as 5,000 Nazi war criminals escaped to Argentina alone.

What I found particularly interesting, and what I think makes this book so gripping, is that as you read it, you realise more and more that Eichmann actually could have gotten away with it. He lived quietly in Buenos Aires for years. He worked in a water company. He moved his family to Argentina. He kept his head down. The pursuit of him was not some relentless, well-funded intelligence operation from the outset. In fact, for long stretches, it barely existed at all.

The book introduces us to the various individuals who, over the course of fifteen years, kept the hunt alive. Simon Wiesenthal, the famous Nazi hunter, and Tuviah Friedman, another Holocaust survivor turned investigator, both worked to piece together information about Eichmann's whereabouts.

Fritz Bauer, the Jewish attorney general of the West German state of Hesse, was another critical figure. Bauer operated outside his formal role because he feared — with good reason — that elements within the West German government and intelligence services would tip off Eichmann if they learned of the investigation. The fact that a senior German prosecutor felt he could not trust his own government tells you everything about the political landscape of the 1950s.

One of the most remarkable sub-plots involves Lothar Hermann, a blind Jewish man living in Buenos Aires, and his daughter Sylvia. In 1956, Sylvia became acquainted with a young man named Klaus Eichmann, Adolf Eichmann's son, at a social gathering. Klaus, in the company of other Germans, made derogatory statements about Jews and boasted about what should have been done.

Sylvia mentioned this to her father, who began to suspect that Klaus's father might be the fugitive war criminal. Lothar Hermann contacted the authorities and, through a chain of communication that eventually reached Fritz Bauer and then the Mossad, this information became one of the key leads in locating Eichmann.

In fact, had Eichmann's son not been rude to his girlfriend's father or rather, had he not revealed his antisemitic views in front of the daughter of a Holocaust survivor the thread that led to his father's discovery might never have been pulled. Furthermore, Eichmann's sons continued to use his real surname, which was an extraordinary lapse in operational security for a fugitive of his stature.

The second half of the book focuses on the Mossad operation itself, and this is where Bascomb's narrative becomes hour-by-hour in its detail. Isser Harel, the Mossad chief, personally oversaw the mission after Fritz Bauer provided the critical intelligence. The operation team included figures such as Rafi Eitan and Peter Malkin, and Bascomb takes the reader through every stage of the planning, surveillance and eventual capture.

The level of historical detail in this section is minute. We are taken through the surveillance of Eichmann's home on Garibaldi Street in a suburb of Buenos Aires, the selection and preparation of safe houses, the logistics of getting a team into and out of Argentina without detection, and the numerous points at which the entire operation could have unravelled.

Bascomb records events day by day and, in the final stages, hour by hour. You feel the tension. You understand the risks. And you understand, critically, how close the operation came to failure on multiple occasions.

Eichmann was captured on 11 May 1960, seized as he walked from a bus stop to his home. What followed was a nine-day covert detention in Buenos Aires during which the Mossad agents had to keep him hidden while they arranged his extraction.

The solution was audacious, Eichmann was sedated, dressed in an El Al crew uniform and smuggled onto an Israeli aircraft. The crew of that aircraft, from the pilots to the stewards and mechanics, all played their part, and Bascomb gives credit to the many individuals, including Argentinean Jews in Buenos Aires, who provided support to the operation.

What makes this story particularly fascinating is the sheer number of moments where the whole enterprise could have collapsed. Had the Mossad operation leaked before it had even gotten underway, it would have been over. Had Eichmann's sons not continued to use his second name, he might never have been identified. Had Lothar Hermann's initial report been taken seriously sooner, Bascomb notes that it took the Mossad more than two years to believe the blind man's story, the capture might have happened years earlier, or the delay might have allowed Eichmann to relocate. These contingencies are what make the narrative so compelling to read, because the outcome was never inevitable.

The book concludes with a brief overview of Eichmann's trial in Jerusalem, which began in April 1961 and resulted in his conviction and execution by hanging in June 1962. Bascomb does not dwell at length on the trial itself, this is, after all, a book about the hunt but he provides enough context to understand its significance. It was the first televised trial of its kind and brought the reality of the Holocaust into living rooms around the world. For many survivors, it was the first time their stories were heard on a global stage.

Conclusion & Rating

I would give this book 5 out of 5 stars. The historical detail is minute, the narrative is lucid and gripping, and the overall story is fascinating and redemptive. Bascomb has drawn on newly declassified documents, interviews, and meticulous research to produce what is, to my knowledge, the first complete telling of this story from Eichmann's wartime crimes through his escape, the long years of pursuit, and the Mossad operation that brought him to justice.

What I particularly appreciate is that Bascomb gives due credit to all of the individuals involved not just the Mossad agents, but the survivors like Wiesenthal and Friedman who refused to let Eichmann be forgotten, the blind man and his daughter in Buenos Aires who provided the crucial lead, the German prosecutor who risked his career, and the El Al crew who made the extraction possible. This is not a story with a single hero. It is a story about persistence, about a collective refusal to allow a man responsible for the deaths of millions to live out his days in peace.

I would also add, on a personal note, that this book has deepened my interest in the broader subject of the Nazi ratlines and escape networks. I have still got more books to read on this, as I want to do a YouTube video series mapping the ratline and tracing the stories of as many Nazis as I can from their escape to their eventual justice, or in some cases, the lack of it. This book is an excellent starting point for anyone interested in that wider subject.

Get your copy here.