AFTERMATH - MARTIN BORMANN and the FOURTH REICH by Ladislas Farago, writes:

"Martin Bormann, former Reichsleiter, head of the Nazi Party chancery and secretary to the Fuhrer, survived WWII and managed to escape to Argentina in 1948, with the help of the Peron regime.

"When I was in contact with him in February 1973, he had just moved from Chile to southern Bolivia. A very sick man, he was cared for by four German nursing sisters of the Redemptorist Order in their convent near Tupiza, a remote region of Potosi Province in the Andes.

"Until recently, Bormann was in Argentina, again enjoying the hospitality and protection of the man he called the "great benefactor," the late President Juan Domingo Peron.

"He was living on a secluded estate of friends just north of the General Paz Speedway, overlooking the Rio de la Plata. He was as well and comfortable as a man of his age could be - he celebrated his 74th birthday on June 17, 1974."

"Aftermath reveals the story of Ladislas Farago's hunt for Martin Bormann - and of the documents, discoveries, adventures, and revelations that finally led to his personal confrontation with Bormann himself. Here at last is the astonishing story of the escape, the life in exile, and the current wherabouts of the former Reichsleiter.

"The distinguished British historian of the Third Reich, Hugh Trevor-Roper, wrote in The New York Times when Farago first announced his discovery, 'I have a great respect for the courage and resourcefulness of Mr. Farago. I have my own reasons for thinking that Bormann may well have passed to Italy and thence to South America.' Though the controversy about Bormann has captured the attention of the world's press (and is likely to do so again with the long-awaited revelation of his hiding place, the actual travel documents with which he traveled to South America and changed his identity, the record of his medical treatments, and his private diaries and writings).

"Aftermath in fact reveals a bigger and more astonishing story - for Ladislas Farago, with the daring flair for research and historical investigation that made his previous book, The Game of the Foxes, a number-one best seller, has unearthed the complex and dangerous conspiracy that led the Nazi fugitives to South America and still protects them there, and the incredible details of their life in the New World they tranformed into a 'Fourth Reich.'

"His cast of characters include such men as General Heinrich Muller, the sinister and mysterious Gestapo chief, Dr. Josef Mengele of Auschwitz, Klaus Barbie, the Gestapo butcher of Lyons, Friedrich Schwend, the master Nazi forger, Herbert Cukurs, and Franz Stangl, thugs of the Final Solution (The Holocost), and a host of lesser-known Nazis-in-exile, police spies, businessmen, informers, and conspirators.

"Here is the story of how Hitler's vast fortune found its way to South America, of Peron's complicity in aiding the Nazi war criminals, of the FBI's search for Bormann in 1948, of Eichmann's capture, and its effect on his fellow Nazis, of the Nazi business enterprises that have made some of the exiles rich and powerful men in their reluctantly adopted countries, of the birth of a second generation of Nazis who have never even seen their homeland.

"Here at last is the record of the Vatican's crucial role in supplying the Nazis with passports and travel documents, of the machinations, murder, and plots that surrounded the transfer of a vast fortune from Germany to South America, of the strange, closed world of these hunted men who still live in fear of capture and judgement.

"Based upon interviews (some of which will make headlines throughout the world), documents, and secret files, Aftermath is the first real record of a remarkable and successful worldwide conspiracy, one which began in the flaming ruins of a defeated Nazi Germany and ended on another continent in a new Nazi hierarchy - with the elusive Martin Bormann at its head."

LADISLAS FARAGO (1906-1980) was a screenwriter and part-time journalist who published a number of popular books on history and espionage, especially concerning the World War II era.

He was the author of an acclaimed biography of George Patton and received a screen writing credit for the movie Tora! Tora! Tora! together with Gordon W. Prange.

He was born in Hungary in 1906 and came to the United States in 1937. During the 1930s, he was on the payroll of several European intelligence agencies and during World War II, he worked for U.S. Naval Intelligence. There he wrote, among other things, statements that were broadcast to the crews of German U-boats in an attempt to induce them to surrender. These scripts were often aired under the name of Commander Norden.

Farago died in 1980. His son, John M. Farago, is a Professor of Law at the City University of New York.

Selected bibliography

Abyssinia On the Eve (1935)
Abyssinian Stop Press (ed.) (1936)
Burn After Reading (1961)
Strictly from Hungary (1962, 2004)
The Tenth Fleet (1962)
War of Wits (1962)
Patton: Ordeal and Triumph (1963)
The Broken Seal: "Operation Magic" and the Secret Road to Pearl Harbor (1967)
The Game Of The Foxes (1971)
Spymaster (1972)
Aftermath: Martin Bormann and the Fourth Reich (1974)
The Last Days Of Patton (1981)

His book "Abyssinia On The Eve" based on his trip to Ethiopia in 1935, is widely used by historians and is one of the most important sources about Ethiopia in this era.