Adolf Hitler was revered by Bishop Alois Hudal as a "Siegfried of German greatness"; the ideal of the Graz-born theologian was a "Christian National Socialism" combined with the "annihilation of the Communist and Bolshevik world danger". As rector of the German priests' college Santa Maria dell'Anima and head of the Vatican's passport and refugee office, the busy bishop advanced after 1945 to become an escape agent for numerous Nazi war criminals, among them Alois Brunner and Franz Stangl. In his comprehensively researched biography, Johannes Sachslehner draws a critical portrait of the life and work of this influential churchman, who remained true to his National Socialist principles to the end.