Mengele: the Complete Story by Gerald L. Posner & John Ware

 Mengele: the Complete Story by Gerald L. Posner & John Ware

London: Queen Anne Press, 1986                    ISBN 0356125785

I had forgotten just how much of a sensation the final resolution of the fate of Josef Mengele caused when his remains were dug up from a grave in Brazil in 1985. This book, released the year after the find, brings it all back, as well as the speculation in the decades before, while telling the full story of the life of Mengele, from his early years, through his time in Auschwitz, and retelling in full his nearly 40 years of being on the run from the justice he deserved.

I won't in this review go over the grisly facts of Mengele's time at Auschwitz, a time which earned him the moniker "Angel of Death", but Posner and Ware write succinctly and well about his gruesome experimental pseudo-science. In fact reading through this section turned my stomach.

The real fascination in this book is the author's description of how Mengele escaped not only captivity after the War, but Europe in the 50s, Argentina and Paraguay in the 60s, and ended up drowning on a beach in Brazil at the end of the 70s. It is a tale of loyalty, lies, grandstanding, and of the networks of Nazis and fellow-travellers which enabled Mengele (and others) to not only get out of Germany, but to stay hidden for so long.

Mengele used the confusion of the end of the War to his advantage, divesting himself of his SS identity, and emerging as a mere medical orderly. He was actually detained by the US on two occasions in 1945, but slipped through the screening, which was very haphazard. He spent several years working as a farmhand in Germany, all the while hoping that he could eventually be re-united with his wife and son. It was the "Doctor's trial" and its follow-on that convinced Mengele that he needed to leave Europe for the safe haven of Argentina. Through close family friends, he managed to get some forged papers, and when he arrived in South America, he was helped by several committed Nazis.

After a few years he felt so comfortable that he in fact began to not only use his real name, but re-applied for identification documents. Helped by infusions of money from his family (he was the son of a wealthy industrialist) he also - after his first wife divorced him - re-married and began living a relatively normal life.

That all changed on the day Mossad abducted Eichmann. He realised that he could never be safe out in the open, and he quickly moved to Paraguay, where he lived on a farm in a remote area. Thanks to his friendship with Hans-Urich Rudel, and Rudel's friendship with many in the Paraguayan Government, Mengele managed to get citizenship of that country, which importantly didn't have an extradition treaty with Germany.

Meanwhile, Mossad had decided to discontinue its hunt for Mengele, with other priorities closer to home becoming more important. West Germany was hopelessly compromised in its search for Mengele. Any action was sabotaged by the fact that many of the officials who should have pushed the case along were ex-Nazis, and so were not interested in bringing Mengele to justice. The unwillingness of the German government in particular to follow Mengele is impossible to justify, and painful to read about. It is in fact chilling to read the responses of the officials who didn't follow the evidence when they state that they were only following orders....sounds disturbingly familiar....

Meanwhile, Mengele himself had moved to Brazil, again living outside the big cities, and sharing a house with the Stammers family. This "partnership" became over time very strained - Mengele's second wife had long before moved back to Germany, and Mengele became increasingly embittered by his situation. In the end he lived by himself in a bungalow in Sao Paulo, a sad and lonely man. One of the last things he did was to host a visit by his son Rolf. This visit ended up being depressing for both men: Rolf could not come to terms with Josef's lack of remorse for what he'd done, and Josef felt that Rolf had been brainwashed by his schooling and that he was not the true son of a Mengele.

It was not long after Rolf's visit that Mengele drowned. While he didn't face the trial and justice that he should have, his life after the War was full of loneliness and fear, with his last years in particular full of disappointment. He deserved it.

Posner and Ware, as well as taking aim at the lack of governmental action to track down Mengele have very little good to say about the "Nazi hunters" such as Weisenthal and the Klarsfelds, who are mostly portrayed as out to promote themselves, and invariably they were two or three steps behind Mengele. Their tales of a wealthy man surrounded by bodyguards were far from the truth. The one thing their regular "scoops" did do though was to keep Mengele scared and on the run.

Mengele: the Complete Story is a well-told tale of the life of a hideous man - a man who's one dream was to be an academician, who sold his soul to the devil when he used his position to test his theories - theories that were based on flawed thinking, and that have since been shown to be completely baseless.

For myself, I finished this book with mixed feelings - I felt angry that Mengele wasn't brought to trial for his crimes, but I felt glad that his life, although longer than many of those he sent to death, was a life filled with fear and sadness.

Posner and Ware have produced a well-researched and well-written book - worth reading if the subject matter is of interest.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell