This book traces the biographies of thirty 'typical' perpetrators of the Holocaust--some well known, some obscure--who survived World War II. Donald M. McKale reveals the shocking reality that the perpetrators were only rarely, if ever, tried or punished for their crimes, and nearly all alleged their innocence in Germany's extermination of nearly six million European Jews during the war. He highlights the bitter contrasts between the comfortable postwar lives of many war criminals and the enduring suffering of their victims.--Dust jacket.

1. World War II and allied promises -- 2. Four faces of genocide : what happened in the war : Franz Stangl : camp commandant -- Dr. Werner Best : the administrator -- Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski : commander of killing units -- Walther Rauff : mass murderer by bullets and gas vans -- 3. Leaving Auschwitz : First postwar reports -- Josef Mengele : healer turned killer -- Irma Grese : beautiful sadist -- Mengele : imprisoned and released by the Americans -- Wilhelm Boger : the interrogator -- 4. A liberation of contrasts : Best and the Danish Jews -- Josef Kramer : "beast of Belsen" -- Best imprisoned in Copenhagen -- 5. Soviet "liberators" : The war and postwar tragedy of Soviet Jewry -- Reports and trials -- Bernhard Bechler : denazification director -- Karl Clauberg : Aushwitz doctor -- 6. In the custody of leniency : Stangl : doubt in Trieste -- Hermann Göring : prize prisoner -- Kurt Daluege : uniformed policeman -- Stangl : escaping an Austrian prison -- Karl Wolff : the allies' favorite -- Heinrich Himmler : suicide -- Stangl : Linz, Rome, and Damascus -- 7. Nuremberg, number two, and the substitute : Best as defense witness -- Otto Ohlendorf's admission of "innocence" -- Göring : a troublesome number two -- Ernst Kaltenbrunner : the stand-in? -- Best : from self-importance to self-pity -- 8. Nuremberg : "King Frank" : Hitler's lawyer -- The "butcher of Poland" -- Capture in Germany -- Trial by diary -- 9. Nuremberg : "Fred" the "endowed seer" and verdicts and sentences : "Innocent" Ideologue? -- "Innocent" Visionary? -- Racist murderer -- "Innocence" on trial -- Verdicts and sentences -- Justice evaded (Göring), justice enacted (Kaltenbrunner, Rosenberg, and Frank) -- 10. Poland : occasional trials amid a continuing Holocaust : Rising tide of hate -- A papal appeal for Arthur Greiser -- The pogrom -- Amon Goeth : a court's rare admission -- Rudolf Höss : trial of the death dealer -- Other trials -- 11. Memory in West Germany : long and short : Nazi hunter in the making -- A "family history" -- Alfred Ebner's real past -- West German "justice" -- Ebner : a typical example -- 12. Pseudo-purges and politics : Denazification -- Karl Löffler : Cologne's Gestapo chief -- Hermann Josef Abs : the "non-Nazi" banker -- Dr. Ernst Buchner : art thief -- 13. Other trials and amnesty : Ohlendorf accuses the victims -- Franz Schlegelberger : daggar beneath his robe -- The Danish verdicts on Best -- The Dutch verdict on Hanns Albin Rauter -- Robert Wagner : a French verdict -- Erich von Manstein : long delayed British "justice" -- Best : freedom amid allied and other pardons -- 14. Eichmann, Jerusalem, and Eichmann's henchmen : Aliases of evil -- Capture -- Trial and execution -- Eichmann's men : Alois Brunner ; Franz Novak -- 15. Hunting the comfortable : The happy Stangle couple -- Mengele : from freedom to an accidental death -- The tightening noose around Stangl -- Klaus Barbie : a U.S. Cold War spy -- Stangl's arrest -- 16. Four faces long after the war : what didn't happen : Stangl : finally the accused -- Best eludes punishment -- Bach-Zelewski : nothing to hide? -- Walther Rauff : no remorse in Chile -- 17. The post-Holocaust world.