Bill O'Reilly chases Nazi hunters in 'Killing the SS,' latest in the popular series

Bill O’Reilly is “Killing” again – back with the eighth installment of his hugely successful history series – this time telling the story of the global postwar hunt for Nazi war criminals and how they were finally brought to justice or escaped altogether.

For the O’Reilly faithful, "Killing the SS: The Hunt for the Worst War Criminals in History" (Henry Holt & Co., 304 pp., ★★½ out of four), will, no doubt, be a welcome addition to the best-selling series ("Killing Kennedy," "Killing Lincoln," et al).

For others, there’s a decidedly cut-and-paste quality to this non-fiction thriller, co-written by the former Fox News anchor with Martin Dugard.

There’s nothing particularly new here about the search for Adolf Hitler’s most notorious henchmen and women – among them Adolf Eichmann, Josef Mengele, Martin Bormann, Klaus Barbie and Elfriede Huth. Nor is there new ground broken on their capture, escape or the Nazi hunters who pursued them – from the best known like Simon Wiesenthal to the less often celebrated Isser Harel (director of the Mossad) and war crimes investigator and prosecutor Benjamin Ferencz. This is a book made for TV minds. 

That’s not to say that given the high profile of white supremacists and neo-Nazis in this country and around the world and the ascendance of “alternative facts,” there aren’t some important reminders.

Here are at least five things worth remembering that you’ll find in “Killing the SS”:

1. If there was a worst of the worst, it was probably …

Eichmann, the SS officer who insisted “I never killed a Jew” and was unrepentant to the end. It was Eichmann who was particularly responsible for the cold-blooded efficiency of the Final Solution, characterized by mass deportation and extermination of hundreds of thousands of Jewish and non-Jewish men, women and children. Eichmann eventually was  captured in Argentina and smuggled to Israel in 1960. He was convicted and hanged for his crimes in 1962.

2. The U.S. helped top Nazis escape.

With the Cold War already brewing, it turns out the United States Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the predecessor to the CIA, was “not aggressively pursuing war crimes prosecutions” because it chose instead to recruit members of the Nazi Party to spy on the Soviet Union.

Most famously, the U.S. recruited Barbie, also known as the Butcher of Lyon, who was personally responsible for the torture and death of thousands of French citizens and ordered the deportation of children to the Auschwitz death camp. Barbie was “employed – and protected – by the U.S. government” before finally being extradited from Bolivia to France in 1983, convicted in 1987 and sentenced to life. He died in prison in 1991.

3. The Catholic Church looked the other way, too.

Pope Pius XII “said nothing when German troops rounded up Jewish citizens of Rome in October 1943,” we’re reminded, and “Hitler reciprocated by allowing the Vatican to function throughout the war without German occupation.”

And the “ratlines” that allowed hundreds of Nazi criminals to evade capture were facilitated with the help of “a variety of unlikely organizations” including the Vatican.

4. One of the most famous Nazis becomes a killer for Israel.

Otto Skorzeny, an SS favorite of Hitler’s after he rescued Italian dictator Benito Mussolini when Mussolini was being held hostage by members of his own government, became an agent for the Mossad. And, on Sept. 11, 1962, as repeated in “Killing the SS,” he assassinated Nazi rocket scientist Heinz Krug, who was working for Egypt. On the Mossad team with Skorzeny, according to this account, is Yitzhak Shamir, the future prime minister of Israel.

5. The Holocaust happened.

Because conspiracy theories still abound about many of the people, players and events covered in O’Reilly’s book, the authors take a “We report. You decide” stance on “speculative issues.” But for those who inexplicably still have any doubt about Hitler's Final Solution, they thankfully do add: “What is known for certain is that millions were murdered in the Holocaust.”