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Achtung, Achtung. Welcome to We Have Ways and Making You Talk. Once again, we're joined by author Philippe Sans.

Last week, we discussed his family history, Nicholas Frank, and the extraordinary story of Nicholas Frank's life and attitude to his father,

and the issues that come out of that. And today, we're going to talk about his latest book, Ampodcast, The Rat Line, which came out of meeting horse vector in the course of writing East West Street.

Many of you will have listened to Philippe's brilliant podcast of the same name a little while ago. Believe me, though, the book is an absolute treat and goes into colossal forensic detail.

It's exactly what Otto Vector got up to, and leaves you in no doubt. I mean, to the extent of his sons, I think, his delusion, the right word I don't know, because horse vector is the son of Otto vector.

If someone that Nicholas Frank told you you should meet, that's what you told us last week, Philippe. So how did you meet horse vector? And he must be a terribly nice man, because he carries some baggage.

He is a nice man, and I'm very, very fond of him. He's a troubled person, though. He is a son of Otto and Shalota. Otto was an SS group in Fuhrer. He was the governor of Krakow. He built the Krakow ghetto. He was then the governor of the District of Galicia, based in Lemberg, which territory, including half a million poles and Jews who perished whilst he was governor.

And he was the deputy or family, including my grandfather's family, absolutely. And he was the deputy of Hans Frank, who we were talking about last week. And the families were very closely connected. And those of you who've read the book, well, they became even more closely connected, almost, we can talk about that, in due course, because one of the things we didn't have a chance to talk about last week was sex and the third right. Well, we talked about it a bit.

But people were having affairs all over the place. Anyway, one day, Nicholas Frank says to me, you must meet my friend, Horst, because he was the governor of Lemberg, where your family was. And I'm sure he'd been interested in meeting you. So one thing leads to another.

Nicholas and I travel together for the first time, early in 2012, to visit Horst at his Schloss in a tiny village called Haggenberg. He's completely impacunious, but he does live in a remarkable hundred-room castle that dates back to the 14th or 15th century, in the night's templars of which he is very partial to these folk.

And he's lovely. He wears a pink t-shirt and Birkenstocks and he's warm and makes cups of tea and likes a snaps and a vodka. And he loves telling stories and he loves people who are interested in him.

And even if it's about his father, he will talk till the cows come home. One thing led to another. I wrote a portrait of him, a profile, for the Financial Times magazine. That's back in 2013.

He wasn't too pleased with it. He took to the comment pages of the Financial Times to complain about the inaccuracies of my article that had been inadequately complimentary of Otto Vettor, but our relationship was repaired.

Then we made a film together, which was catalyzed by the profile, the director of Downton Abbey. My dear friend David Evans made a documentary called My Nazi Legacy.

He didn't like that either. The title of the film in full is My Nazi Legacy. What our father's did. He wrote to me a few days later saying it's the wrong title. It should be what our father's did and didn't do.

And he does have a sense of humor, which is one of the things I like about him. But again, after a dip in our relationship, things picked up again. And the next project was the podcast. This was made possible by the fact that in the filming of the documentary,

at a certain moment, Nicholas expressed the view that Horst might be a new Nazi, which I disagree with, actually. He's not. He really isn't. He accepts that his father was deeply involved in the most terrible things. He just doesn't want him characterized as a criminal.

Nicholas has retracted that characterization, actually, but that led Horst to ask me, how can I prove that I'm not a Nazi, which is actually a deeply existential question. I mean, how do you prove that you are not a Nazi?

So I had to think on my feet, which is of course what we're trying to do in court. And I said, I've got a terrific idea. You've got all these archives, all your mother's papers letters, diaries, tape recordings. Why don't you give them to a museum? Because Nazis don't give such papers to the Holocaust Museum in Washington. He said that is a terrific idea.

And a few weeks later, the archivists of the Holocaust Museum in Washington descended on Schloss Hagenberg, digitized everything. And bless Horst, he says to me, would you like a USB with all the material on it?

I say, well, yes, that would be interesting. So a few days later, a used sticky taped envelope drops through my letterbox with a 24 gig USB containing his mums and dad's entire archive.

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