Exodus of Evil: The Ratlines and the Stolen Wealth of Europe: A Complete History of Nazi Looting and Post-War Impunity

Exodus of Evil The Ratlines and the Stolen Wealth of Europe A Complete History of Nazi Looting and Post-War Impunity

by Michael Green Best-selling author of The Last Exit, Ordinary Men, Extraordinary Evil, and Between the Pines


In Exodus of Evil, historian and investigative author Michael Green delivers a devastating exposé of the greatest unresolved crime of the Second World War: the industrialised theft that accompanied the Holocaust — and the immense fortunes that were never returned.

This is not a story of rumours or lost-treasure myths. It is a documented history of ledgers, laws, vaults, and accounts.

Drawing on archival research, declassified intelligence files, banking records, and post-war investigations, Green shows how Nazi Germany transformed persecution and murder into a functioning economic system. Jewish property was registered, seized, liquidated, and converted into state revenue. Gold taken from victims — including from the dead — was laundered through central banks, neutral states, and religious institutions.

When the Third Reich collapsed, the money did not.

From the Reichsbank and the Melmer gold accounts to Swiss banking secrecy, Vatican intermediaries, and South American escape routes, Exodus of Evil traces the hidden pipelines that moved both wealth and war criminals beyond justice. The ratlines were not improvised — they were financed, protected, and quietly tolerated.


'A forensic dismantling of the financial machinery behind genocide — and the silence that followed.'

Unflinching, meticulously sourced, and impossible to dismiss, Exodus of Evil is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how genocide was made profitable — and why so much of its legacy remains unresolved today.