Mengele: The Complete Story

This book kept me rapt with the twists and turns of this mans life after the war. What I was most amazed with was how many people knew about Dr Mengeles identity. Where he lived and supported him through the years. No one ever giving him up. He died unremarkably in a drowning. Even after his death they kept his secret. Rolfe, his son finally revealing the mystery some years later. Rolfe puzzled me? I would liked to have had a follow up on all the people who helped him through the years. Some time may have given them a fresh perspective and that would be telling. For those who do not know much about Dr Mengele, a couple more chapters about his life during the war could be helpful to them on how incredibly evil he was. I read many books on the Holocaust, trying to understand how? and why? This book was a very good addition to my education. Especially unusual loyalties and family ties.

I read this book for background research before interviewing a woman who Mengele had experimented on when she was a child at Auschwitz. Mengele was a truly monstrous figure. Still, after all these years, it is disturbing to think about his crimes against innocent people, many of them children.

Posner and Ware did an excellent job putting this work together. It's filled with solid information while still reading like anything but a dry piece of historical writing. Any reader would find it interesting.

--Guy P. Harrison, author of

Race and Reality: What Everyone Should Know About Our Biological Diversity

and

50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God

Although the author put a great deal of effort into researching the life and history of Joseph Mengele, the author appears to have omitted pertinent details about reports - from numerous victims - of human experiments that Mengele perpetrated against children and others in Canada and the U.S. after WWII. Mengele was brilliant, and I believe this is one reason why he was never prosecuted, and why his death was repeatedly faked...including in 1979. (Google "Mengele twin" survivor Eva Kor's conversation with former SS Dr. Munch to learn more.) Because Mengele was sadistic, brutal, conscienceless, and dangerously grandiose and narcissistic, our government made a serious error in moral judgement by encouraging him to continue assaulting and torturing innocent human "guinea pigs"...supposedly in the name of science and U.S. national security. To learn more about Mengele's post-war criminal activities in the U.S. and Canada, read "A Nation Betrayed" by Carol Rutz.

Why did he do what he did? It seems like everything in his strict, upperclass upbringing predisposed him to complete obedience to his superiors, believing himself to be elite and above any set of ethics. There was also his desire from a young age to make a mark completely seperate from that of his wealthy industrialist father, by any means necessary. Add in the brutality of war which he saw first-hand as a field medic, the indoctrination into the Nazi Party & SS ideology, plus power over the fate of millions and there you have all the ingredients for a dehumanizing, narcissistic person. In short, he was following orders. It wasn't that he didn't have the courage to resist these orders, but that he was an arrogant person so indoctrinated by Nazi 'racial science' that he didn't even view what he was doing as wrong. That's why he never showed remorse.

As for the book, I felt it was better than previous works on this subject. Read it for the insights into Mengele's post-war personality from the excerpts from his private writings, anecdotes and accounts from those who knew him. The topic of Nazi medical experimentation has been dealt with more comprehensively in other books, and getting into those details isn't really the aim of this book.

This is suprisingly unassuming and objective book.
Being that majority of this mans' history will forever remain a mystery, book still gives sharp insight on the life of one of the most infamous and perhaps misunderstood individuals of our time.