When Lyon was occupied by German troops during the Second World War, Klaus Barbie was appointed head of the Gestapo secret police in the city. He would become feared for his brutality, responsible for the murder of hundreds of people in France – torturing many himself, and sending countless others to concentration camps. After the war Barbie returned to Germany and lived under an assumed name. Three years later – amidst growing tensions between the western Allies and the Soviet Union – he was recruited by the USA’s Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC). When France demanded his extradition, however, the Americans could no longer afford to retain Barbie’s services as an agent. But instead of handing him over, they gave him a new identity and allowed him to move to South America, where he could start a new life in anonymity. Barbie went to Bolivia, and subsequently built up a network of contacts to influential politicians and military leaders. He provided assistance for a series of bloody coups, and was also involved in numerous violent suppressions of trade unions and left-wing groups. West German intelligence then recruited him as an informant and an organizer of illegal arms exports. It was not until the early 1970s that Klaus Barbie was exposed as a war criminal by Nazi hunters Beate and Serge Klarsfeld. Even then it would take over another decade for the "Butcher of Lyon" to be extradited to France and put on trial.