Historians mocked Frederick Forsyth's The Odessa File – but it may have helped catch a Nazi

Telegraph

14-06-2025

The death of the novelist, bon viveur and (by his own admission) long-standing MI6 informant, Frederick Forsyth has brought sorrow to the millions of readers who knew that his books were page-turners par excellence. He never pretended to be a great literary stylist, and readily admitted that his primary motivation for writing was financial rather than artistic, but his journalistic attention to detail, ability to come up with complex yet entirely comprehensible storylines and brisk, exciting plotting meant that a Frederick Forsyth book would grip from the first page to the last.
The novel which he is best known for is his debut, 1971's excellent The Day of the Jackal, and few would minimise the impact that it had upon his career. Yet it is his follow-up, 1972's The Odessa File, which led to its own, more consequential tale. It revolves around the young German freelance journalist Peter Miller who, nearly two decades after the end of WWII, investigates the workings of a mysterious organisation known by the acronym 'ODESSA', which stands for 'Organisation der ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen' – otherwise 'Organisation of Former Members of the SS'. (Forsyth's writing cannot be described as subtle, but it's undeniably effective.)
Over the course of its three hundred-odd pages, Miller finds himself being pursued by hitmen hired by the former SS officers, as he goes in search of its members, and attempts to discover what their nefarious plans are.
Just as The Day of the Jackal blended fact – derived from Forsyth's time as a BBC journalist – and fiction to convincing effect, so the success of The Odessa File lies in Forsyth's ability to take an apparently outlandish conceit and make it seem believable. The initial idea for the book came from a Sunday Times article written in July 1967 by the journalist Antony Terry. The piece published a series of unreliable, at times simply false, rumours and stories about escaped Nazis, largely put about by the Holocaust survivor-turned-Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal.
It was common knowledge that several high-ranking Nazis, most notably Adolf Eichmann, had fled to Argentina after the conclusion of WWII, and that some Germans of dubious loyalty had also remained in their home country; others headed over to the United States in order to work on the then-nascent space programme. Wiesenthal was fed inaccurate information – which he then passed over to Terry – by Wilhelm Höttl, a Nazi turned American counter-intelligence agent.
Höttl claimed that 'Odessa' – in reality an informal codeword used by small, semi-independent groups of former SS men to identify themselves to one another – was in fact a carefully organised conspiracy with worldwide reach, which was responsible for the expatriation of leading Nazis to South America.
Höttl was a highly unreliable witness whose primary interests were saving his own skin and appropriating wealth in the process – he had ensured that he had access to many of the Swiss bank accounts that the desperate Germans were placing their money in towards the end of WWII. But it suited Wiesenthal's agenda as a self-styled Nazi hunter to further a narrative of all-powerful SS men at large, including Eichmann and Hitler's private secretary Martin Bormann.
Eichmann was eventually captured in Argentina, taken to Israel and executed in 1962. Bormann – who, in reality, had committed suicide in Germany in 1945, a fact only discovered in 1973 – was supposed to be at large somewhere in the world, carrying on the Führer's nefarious plans and dreaming of creating a Fourth Reich.
Terry's Sunday Times article suggested, with no credible evidence whatsoever, that Odessa had managed not only to extract Bormann from Germany, but that it was an all-powerful organisation with anti-Israeli intentions, intent on destroying the newly formed state. Terry's article may have been largely fantastical, parlaying small nuggets of truth into a largely imagined story. But it drew Forsyth's attention and led to his using it as the basis for his second novel, which came swiftly after the enormous success of The Day of the Jackal.
It is testament to how quickly publishing moved (and Forsyth wrote) in the early Seventies that the book first appeared in October 1972; a mere 16 months after Jackal's initial appearance in Britain. He had written Jackal in 35 days, and although Odessa was not produced in quite such a rush, demand for a new book meant that it was fast-tracked by the eager publishers.
Forsyth's journalistic instincts and ability to tell a ripping yarn are on full display throughout the novel, from the incorporation of real-life characters (including Wiesenthal, who acted as an informal adviser and is therefore portrayed as a flattering mixture of Sherlock Holmes and Oskar Schindler) to the carefully worked-out German setting. It begins in 1963, shortly after JFK's assassination, which gives it the slightest air of distance from the events depicted but nonetheless keeps it supposedly realistic. And there are brilliantly observed suspenseful moments that have the same air of verisimilitude as many of the events in Jackal. Miller escapes assassination by car bomb, for instance, because the hitman's explosives are defeated by his Jaguar XK150's particularly tight suspension.
Nazis have always made for effective villains, and the antagonists in The Odessa File are no exception. The principal baddie Eduard Roschmann, the 'Butcher of Riga' – so called because he was the commandant of the notorious Riga Ghetto during 1943 – is shown in an appropriately nefarious light.
At the time that the book was written, Roschmann was in hiding in Argentina, having become a naturalised citizen under the pseudonym 'Frederico Wagner' – the surname perhaps a nod to Hitler's favourite composer – and Forsyth's portrayal of him was heavily laden with dramatic licence. Although his current hiding place was not then known, Eichmann's high-profile apprehension the decade before had suggested that Nazis were drawn to the anonymity of South America: accurately, in this case.
Many of the fictitious Roschmann's traits and actions are, of course, pure invention – for instance, he is said to answer to SS general Richard Glücks, who died in 1945, and his passport is supposedly procured by Odessa, who were not capable of such intricate acts of forgery. But it was still an act of relative daring to use a real-life, and presumably very much alive, mass murderer as the antagonist, although a man who was on the run for crimes against humanity was hardly likely to pop up and sue for libel.
Although the novel has been described as inaccurate, others have lauded it for sticking relatively close to known facts. 'We cannot blame Forsyth for being inaccurate,' the historian Matteo San Filippo said. 'He was writing a thriller, not an historical essay. The incidents were based on fact and the overall impression was not inaccurate.'
Certainly, it was marketed as fiction, albeit of the sophisticated variety. The first edition blurb read, 'Many characters in The Odessa File are real people. Others may puzzle the reader as to whether they are true or fictional, and the publishers do not wish to elucidate further because it is in this ability to perplex the reader that much of the grip of the story lies.' It soon proved a big hit when it was published in October, and, like its predecessor, sold in its millions. It has remained consistently in print ever since it was published, and, after Jackal and perhaps the Fourth Protocol, remains Forsyth's best-known novel.
However, it received mixed reviews, with some finding it a let-down after Jackal and others praising it as a fresh masterpiece by the thrilling new talent. The Guardian announced that 'in Forsyth's hands the 'documentary thriller' had assumed its most sophisticated form'. But the New York Times, in a scathing review entitled 'Live bombs and dud people', took issue with the publisher's hints that the novel was based on never-before-revealed sources.
Its critic Richard P Brickner stated that the 'book's absorbing facts, made livelier for a while by their moral urgency, will probably sour in your mouth as the moral urgency becomes discoloured'; it went on to criticise the protagonist Miller as colourless, the novel as more concerned with sensation than accuracy and, most damningly, wrote that Forsyth had created a 'vulgar stew of hideous documented fact and flimsy melodrama'.
Brickner concluded, 'The Odessa File leaves one feeling that Forsyth has borrowed painful, live history in order to spring a few quick thrills.' This may have been unfair, but the book's huge commercial success led to the film rights being purchased swiftly and an adaptation going into production almost immediately after it was published. It was directed by veteran British filmmaker Ronald Neame, who had had a significant success with 1972's The Poseidon Adventure, and starred Jon Voight, recently Oscar-nominated for his breakthrough role in Midnight Cowboy.
It did not enjoy either the same critical or commercial success as the 1973 adaptation of The Day of the Jackal, though – the New York Times continued its vendetta by remarking that it was largely devoid of suspense, and that 'these Nazis don't have as much fun as those in The Night Porter'. But it did have one unexpected and welcome legacy. Roschmann was played in the film by the Oscar-winning Swiss actor Maximilian Schell, one of the country's biggest post-war stars. Flattering casting, perhaps; certainly enough to make a vain man want to see it.
Forsyth told the Daily Telegraph in 2011 that the picture indirectly led to the real-life Roschmann's exposure. 'They made [the novel] into a film, which was screened in a little fleapit cinema south of Buenos Aires, where a man stood up and said, 'I know that man, he lives down the street from me,' and denounced him. [The suspect] decided to make a run for it to Paraguay and died of a heart attack on the river crossing. They buried him in an unmarked gravel pit. I hope they tossed a copy of the book on top of him.'
As often with Forsyth, there is a slight element of letting a good story overwhelm the facts – Roschmann died in Paraguay on August 8 1977, several years after the picture opened, rather than in the midst of a dramatic flight. But nonetheless, the renewed attention directed towards him made him a marked man and ensured that he died a hunted fugitive rather than a complacent Argentine citizen.
The Odessa File remains one of Forsyth's most-loved novels, and continues to captivate readers long after its publication. It was announced late last year that he had written a belated sequel, co-written with the novelist Tony Kent, entitled Revenge of Odessa. While no claims are being made for its torn-from-the-headlines qualities this time round, the publisher's blurb makes the book sound like a suitably gripping yarn. Set in both Germany and the United States, the novel revolves around Miller's grandson Georg (a 'journalist and podcaster', we learn) investigating a series of apparently unconnected atrocities that make him the target for hitmen. This is, naturally, because he discovers that 'his would-be assassins are from an organisation known as the Odessa, a menacing and powerful Nazi group intent on regaining power.' As the cover screams, 'The Nazis were never defeated. They were just biding their time.'
The book is published this October (assuming Forsyth managed to finish it) and, with luck, will prove both a fitting sequel and an appropriate swansong for its legendary author. Yet even if it is a disappointment, it should still retain its own fascination. Forsyth commented when the book was announced that 'While The Odessa File was a product of my imagination over 50 years ago, the political realities it describes are still very much with us.' The Nazis themselves may have largely vanished, but with Putin all-powerful in Russia, North Korea's nuclear capabilities and the still-uncertain agenda of China, the concept of a totalitarian state is still more than timely.
After all, the Nazi antagonists of the Odessa movement may never have existed as such, but Forsyth knew villainy where he saw it. Come October, the great storyteller's final book should demonstrate his legendary talents, one last time.