Austrian Professor Gerald Steinacher not only reveals how Nazi war criminals escaped from justice at the end of the Second World War, fleeing through the Tyrolean Alps to Italian seaports, but he also highlights the key roles played by the Red Cross, the Vatican, and the Secret Services of the major powers. Based on secret Vatican records, Steinacher exposes that many figures in the Catholic Church--sometimes knowingly, other times unwittingly--were involved in large-scale Nazi smuggling.

Gerald J. Steinacher is currently the James A. Rawley Professor of History at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He has held many distinguished research fellowships, including at the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem, the Center for European Studies at Harvard University, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. He has published four monographs, eleven edited volumes, and over 100 articles and book chapters on the Nazi regime and Italian Fascism.