The Butcher of Lyon: The Story of Infamous Nazi Klaus Barbie

In addition to reading this book, try to watch a French film called "The Shame and the Glory" about collaboration with the Nazi invaders by many of the right wing French population. This story of Klaus Barbie is just one small, but ugly, part of the larger picture. But the author gives a good picture of how Barbie, The Butcher of Lyon, who never repented of the unbelievable evil he did, who sheltered in Bolivia for years advising the fascist generals who ran the country, who was finally expelled and returned to Lyon, France for trial, fit in to the treachery of the French right wing. These Petainists, who, urged by Pierre Laval (who got his punishment after the war, although many who were tried got off easy) betrayed their countrymen to the Gestapo for money, power, revenge. They hated the socialists and communists and jews and gypsies and others so much they couldn't wait to turn them to be sent off to extermination camps. They even killed many themselves. The Melice, the French equivalent of the American national guard, considered it their duty to betray their own countrymen, to kill, beat, torture, hunt down other frenchmen and women. It is a story to remember. It could happen here. Everyone with real (ie., military, police, judicial) power in America is right wing also. Don't believe for a moment the American right wing wouldn't aid a Fascist takeover in this country and send as many patriots as possible to extermination camps like the fascists did in WWII France.

"The Butcher of Lyon," is an effective, well-wriiten account of the life of Klaus Barbie, who as a Gestapo Lieutenant ruled the city of Lyon, France, with an iron hand for two years (1942-1944), personally murdering many French citizens and Jews and sending thousands of others to the death camps. After World War II, Barbie became one of the most notorious Nazi fugitives and a fixture in his adoptive home of Bolivia, where he advised the dicatatorial government on security matters. He was finally arrested in 1983 and extradited to France. Convicted of war crimes in 1987, he was sentenced to life in prison and died there in 1991.Unfortunately, author Brendan Murphy's account, while a compelling study of human evil and crime and punishment, was published in 1983, years before Barbie was finally made to pay for his considerable crimes. As such, it is incomplte. Nevertheless, the book is still a compelling account of one of Nazi Germany's more notable criminal leaders.