The Devil's Agent
Peter McFarren, Fadrique IglesiasDuring 1942-1944, Klaus Barbie was a mid-level Nazi officer in charge of the Gestapo HQ in Lyon, France. His treatment of prisoners ranged from banal indifference to pleasure as he sadistically tortured and murdered his victims. After the war, what set him apart was the public role he played as an unscrupulous businessman and adviser to military rulers, and Western intelligence agencies, in close alliance with other escaped Nazis, while living in Bolivia. The unrepentant war criminal was the most important Nazi to continue operating as a public figure after World War II.
The Devil’s Agent describes co-author Peter McFarren’s personal encounters with Klaus Barbie in 1981, when McFarren and his colleague Maribel Schumacher were arrested in front of the Nazi’s Bolivian home after trying to interview him for a story for The New York Times. McFarren obtained hundreds of Barbie’s personal photographs and letters from prison that have never been made public before. Beyond their historical significance, these shine a light into Barbie’s compartmentalized inner life: devoted husband, torturer, loving father, spy, adaptive businessman, anti-Semite, opportunist. Combined with extensive use of the wealth of historical materials released in the decades since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the authors connect the inner Barbie with his times to provide insight into how collective evil occurs. From crimes against humanity to Holocausts, it happens step by banal step.
McFarren also worked on the documentaries Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie and My Enemy’s Enemy and wrote numerous articles about Barbie.…