My Enemy's Enemy

Klaus Barbie was a war criminal. His hands were stained with the blood of thousands of people during the period when he was Gestapo leader in Lyon. He entered the history books largely thanks to his arrest and torture of the French Resistance leader Jean Moulin. After World War II came to an end he was not convicted but instead, with the help of the American secret services, started a new life. He was saved by his knowledge and expertise, which proved useful in an atmosphere of growing fear of world communism. This excellent documentary by the director Kevin Macdonald captures the life of Klaus Barbie, Nazi torturer, American spy, master of cruelty and life–long Nazi, from his time in the Gestapo through the years he spent in Latin America to his death. The film's makers have interspersed archive footage from more than four decades with the personal testimony of people whose lives were changed forever by meeting Barbie. The picture does more than just judge the chilling figure of Barbie – it touches with agonising eloquence the consciences of several western states, victors over Nazism, by revealing the principles which many of them accepted after the war.