# The Boys from Brazil

**The Boys from Brazil** is a 1976 thriller novel by [Ira Levin](https://www.edgepedia.org/ira-levin) in which the Nazi doctor [Josef Mengele](https://www.edgepedia.org/josef-mengele), living in hiding in South America, clones 94 boys from [Adolf Hitler](https://www.edgepedia.org/adolf-hitler)'s genetic material and places them with families chosen to reproduce Hitler's upbringing, and the aging Nazi hunter Yakov Liebermann uncovers the plot. The novel was adapted into a 1978 feature film directed by Franklin J. Schaffner, and a five-part Netflix limited series created by Peter Morgan is in production for release in 2027.

| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Novel | Published by Random House in 1976, 312 pages<sup>[1](https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Boys_from_Brazil.html?id=tYwEAQAAIAAJ)</sup> |
| Premise | Mengele clones 94 babies from Hitler's genes and places them with parents similar in age and occupation to Hitler's own parents<sup>[2](https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/culture-magazines/levin-ira-1929)</sup> |
| 1978 film | Directed by Franklin J. Schaffner; Gregory Peck as Mengele, Laurence Olivier as Lieberman; released by 20th Century-Fox<sup>[3](https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/boys-brazil-1978)</sup> |
| Film recognition | Three Academy Award nominations: best actor (Olivier), film editing, and original music score<sup>[4](https://pure.mpg.de/pubman/item/item_2274286_1/component/file_2274284/P347.PDF)</sup> |
| Netflix series | Five-part limited series created and written by Peter Morgan, directed by Alex Gabassi, starring Jeremy Strong as Yakov Liebermann<sup>[5](https://www.thewrap.com/the-boys-from-brazil-adaptation-series-order-netflix/)</sup><sup> • </sup><sup>[6](https://www.world-productions.com/productions/the-boys-from-brazil)</sup> |
| Series release | Listed by producer World Productions as a 2027 miniseries of five 60-minute episodes<sup>[6](https://www.world-productions.com/productions/the-boys-from-brazil)</sup> |

## Spoilers

### Plot

#### Season 1

In Levin's novel and the 1978 film, the story opens in 1970s South America, where an old man named Yakov Lieberman, a [Nazi hunter](https://www.edgepedia.org/nazi-hunter) who runs a small center for documenting Nazi war crimes, receives a phone call from a young man named Barry Koehler. Barry has been lurking at a gathering of former SS men in a São Paulo restaurant and has hidden a tape recorder there. He plays Lieberman what he caught: Dr. Josef Mengele (August Diehl), the Auschwitz doctor who escaped justice after the war, giving orders to a room of loyal old killers. Ninety-four civil servants, all around sixty-five years old, all fathers by adoption of thirteen-year-old boys, are to be assassinated across [Northern Europe](https://www.edgepedia.org/northern-europe) and North America, their deaths timed and staged to look like accidents. Barry is terrified, and with good reason: within hours of the call, two men sent by Mengele kill him in his apartment, though not before he has mailed the tape to Lieberman.

Lieberman listens to the tape and cannot make sense of it. Why would anyone want ninety-four middle-aged fathers dead? He flies to Germany to interview the widows and relatives of the first men to die. The pattern emerges piece by piece, and it is grotesque. The murdered men were all older fathers who adopted sons born on the same date to young, pretty, unmarried mothers. The adoptive mothers were chosen to resemble a particular woman, the adoptive fathers to resemble a particular domineering man. One widow mentions that her husband's death came at exactly the age and in roughly the circumstances of the death of [Alois Hitler](https://www.edgepedia.org/alois-hitler), father of Adolf, when Adolf was thirteen.<sup>[15](https://www.whatsafterthemovie.com/summary/the-boys-from-brazil)</sup> The boys themselves, bright, cold, angry, all share the same face. Mengele has cloned the Führer ninety-four times from a single DNA sample, and now he is deleting the fathers on schedule so that each boy grows up fatherless and humiliated, exactly as Adolf did.

Lieberman tries to sell the story to anyone who will listen: Jewish organizations, government agencies, newspapers. Everyone humors the old man and no one acts. Then, at the Wheelock farm in Pennsylvania, he first meets Mengele face to face, after Mengele has already killed the father there. He explains the clones, the timing, the psychology, and why the deaths must happen now, while the boys are thirteen. When Lieberman refuses to simply die, the meeting turns violent, and the old hunter survives only by luck and by the intervention of others who have, at last, started to believe him.

**The story ends at the Wheelock farm in Pennsylvania, where Mengele's theory gets its live test.** Bobby Wheelock, one of the ninety-four boys, lives there with his adoptive parents, the closest thing in the series to proof of the design. Mengele, furious that his plan is unraveling, goes to the house himself to kill the father out of order and show the plan still works. Lieberman arrives on the same errand, to warn the family. In the final act, Mengele shoots Lieberman, but the thirteen-year-old he came to mold turns on him instead, ordering the family's Doberman Pinschers to tear him apart, a boy bred for exactly this kind of cold command giving his first one. Wounded, Lieberman burns the list of the ninety-four clones, refusing to let vigilantes hunt down children for the sins written in their genes, and the story closes on the question he leaves behind: is a monster made, or born, and can ninety-four boys raised in ordinary American and European homes become anything other than what their cells say?

### Characters

- **Yakov Lieberman** ([Jeremy Strong](https://www.edgepedia.org/jeremy-strong)): an aging Nazi hunter, modeled on the real [Simon Wiesenthal](https://www.edgepedia.org/simon-wiesenthal)-style figures of the postwar decades, exhausted, doubting, and the only person alive who takes the tape seriously. Strong, an Emmy winner for *Succession*, plays the obsessive at the center of the series.
- **Dr. Josef Mengele** (August Diehl): the Auschwitz doctor living under an alias in South America, architect of the cloning plot, vain enough to explain it and ruthless enough to kill anyone who hears it.
- **Frieda Steiner** ([Gillian Anderson](https://www.edgepedia.org/gillian-anderson)): a figure in Mengele's network, part of the apparatus that recruited the birth mothers and placed the boys.
- **Von Harteneck** (Daniel Brühl) and **Johann-Friedrich Meinhardt** (August Diehl): old comrades in the São Paulo cell who receive Mengele's orders.
- **Anna Koehler** (Shira Haas) and **Ezra Rack** (Lizzy Caplan): connected to the Koehler family whose young member, Barry, makes the fateful recording.

### Interpretations and controversies

The story's ending has been debated since Levin's novel and the 1978 film: Lieberman's choice to destroy the list rather than let the boys be killed is read either as mercy or as an unforgivable gamble. The Netflix series, written by [Peter Morgan](https://www.edgepedia.org/peter-morgan), whose Jewish father fled [Nazi Germany](https://www.edgepedia.org/nazi-germany) in 1933, is expected to lean into that moral question, described by Netflix as a tale of "obsession, vengeance, and the terrifying persistence of hatred."<sup>[13](https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/the-boys-from-brazil-cast-release-date-news)</sup> A strange real-world footnote gives the project its eerie charge: a copy of Levin's novel was allegedly found in the São Paulo home where the real Mengele lived when he drowned in 1979.<sup>[16](https://www.kveller.com/jeremy-strong-shira-haas-lizzy-caplan-to-star-in-new-netflix-nazi-hunters-show/)</sup>

### Sequels, spin-offs, and adaptations

The series adapts Ira Levin's 1976 novel, which was previously filmed in 1978 with [Gregory Peck](https://www.edgepedia.org/gregory-peck) as Mengele and [Laurence Olivier](https://www.edgepedia.org/laurence-olivier) as Lieberman. Levin, also the author of *Rosemary's Baby* and *The Stepford Wives*, wrote no sequel, and *The Boys from Brazil* has none.

## The novel

Ira Levin (1929–2007), whose novels *Rosemary's Baby*, *The Stepford Wives*, and *A Kiss Before Dying* also became films, published *The Boys from Brazil* in 1976.<sup>[1](https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Boys_from_Brazil.html?id=tYwEAQAAIAAJ)</sup><sup> • </sup><sup>[7](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2007-nov-14-me-levin14-story.html)</sup> The idea came from a newspaper article on cloning, in which Hitler and Mozart were given as the range of possibilities the process offered.<sup>[7](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2007-nov-14-me-levin14-story.html)</sup>

The plot opens with six men instructed by a white-suited figure to kill 94 civil servants around the age of 65 across the world on certain dates.<sup>[8](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/aug/07/boys-from-brazil-levin-review)</sup> The operation's guiding hand is Dr. Josef Mengele, the SS officer and physician who earned the epithet "Angel of Death" from his medical experiments at Auschwitz.<sup>[8](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/aug/07/boys-from-brazil-levin-review)</sup> In Levin's telling, Mengele's experiments lead him to try to clone Adolf Hitler and with it the entire Nazi movement: he creates 94 babies from Hitler's genes and places the children, through adoption, with parents similar in age and occupation to Hitler's own parents, hoping at least one will grow up with Hitler's ambition for political power.<sup>[7](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2007-nov-14-me-levin14-story.html)</sup><sup> • </sup><sup>[2](https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/culture-magazines/levin-ira-1929)</sup> The Nazi hunter Yakov Liebermann hears of the plot at an early stage and works out the reason for the murders.<sup>[8](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/aug/07/boys-from-brazil-levin-review)</sup>

**Real-life models.** Liebermann was based on Simon Wiesenthal, who hunted Mengele in real life.<sup>[7](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2007-nov-14-me-levin14-story.html)</sup> A Guardian review describes the character as a conflation of Nazi hunters such as Wiesenthal and Serge Klarsfeld, who attempted to capture Mengele in South America, and notes that the inclusion of real or near-real characters added a chilling dimension at publication.<sup>[8](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/aug/07/boys-from-brazil-levin-review)</sup> Many of the book's other characters have real-life counterparts or are based on them.<sup>[7](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2007-nov-14-me-levin14-story.html)</sup>

Most critics judged the novel entertaining, though a Time reviewer objected that exploiting a monster such as Mengele for entertainment and profit was troubling.<sup>[2](https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/culture-magazines/levin-ira-1929)</sup><sup> • </sup><sup>[7](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2007-nov-14-me-levin14-story.html)</sup> The book's premise has aged differently from its reception at publication: in the 1970s human cloning belonged firmly in the realm of fiction, and a later review observes that it is now not nearly so far-fetched.<sup>[8](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/aug/07/boys-from-brazil-levin-review)</sup>

## The 1978 film

The novel was adapted into a film released in 1978 by 20th Century-Fox, directed by [Franklin J. Schaffner](https://www.edgepedia.org/franklin-j-schaffner) and running 125 minutes, starring Gregory Peck as Mengele, Laurence Olivier as the Nazi hunter (named Ezra Lieberman in the film), and Jeremy Black.<sup>[3](https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/boys-brazil-1978)</sup> According to the science communications scholar David Kirby, it was one of the first science fiction films to consult scientists for the scientific aspects of the story, and one of the first films to depict cloning and discuss the ethical implications of genetic engineering, cloning, and eugenics.<sup>[3](https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/boys-brazil-1978)</sup>

The film follows the novel's structure: Mengele has created 94 clones from preserved samples of Hitler's blood and bone and placed them through adoption in family environments as close to Hitler's own as he can find, an older domineering father and a much younger indulgent mother.<sup>[9](https://campuspubs.library.caltech.edu/1156/1/1978_11_10_80_08.pdf)</sup> The narrative culminates when Mengele and Lieberman face each other directly inside a farmhouse in Pennsylvania, and a boy of fourteen holds the power to decide what happens to both of them.<sup>[9](https://campuspubs.library.caltech.edu/1156/1/1978_11_10_80_08.pdf)</sup> The film received three Academy Award nominations: best acting, for Laurence Olivier in the leading role, best film editing, and best original music score.<sup>[4](https://pure.mpg.de/pubman/item/item_2274286_1/component/file_2274284/P347.PDF)</sup>

A scholarly assessment credits the film with making the connection between unethical medicine and genetics and the Nazi era, a link generally missing from the cinematic experience, and notes that Levin had kept up with enough scientific information to make his story plausible.<sup>[4](https://pure.mpg.de/pubman/item/item_2274286_1/component/file_2274284/P347.PDF)</sup> The Washington Post's 1978 review praised Schaffner's direction as an impressive feat of carefully designed and modulated filmmaking, and noted that the screenwriters removed the kicker ending Levin had permitted himself in the novel, ending instead on what the reviewer called a transcendent note of decency.<sup>[10](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1978/10/05/the-crafty-chill-of-boys-from-brazil/0f5fcb88-3527-4507-8210-22b8a60da376/)</sup>

## The Netflix limited series

In February 2025, Jeremy Strong was reported to be starring in a Netflix adaptation of the novel from Peter Morgan, creator of *The Crown*; Strong's role as Liebermann marks his first leading television role since *Succession*, for which he won the 2020 Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series.<sup>[11](https://www.thewrap.com/jeremy-strong-boys-from-brazil-tv-series-netflix-peter-morgan/)</sup> Netflix formally ordered the five-part limited series on November 18, 2025, nine months after initial reports of its development.<sup>[5](https://www.thewrap.com/the-boys-from-brazil-adaptation-series-order-netflix/)</sup>

The series is set across three decades, from the immediate aftermath of World War II through the political turbulence of the 1970s, and follows the Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter Yakov Liebermann in his lifelong crusade to bring Nazi fugitives to justice. When one of his young protégées working undercover in Brazil learns of a shocking Nazi plan, Liebermann races to expose that Doctor Johann-Friedrich Meinhardt, a Nazi scientist believed to be long dead, is alive and orchestrating a project to spark the rise of a [Fourth Reich](https://www.edgepedia.org/fourth-reich).<sup>[6](https://www.world-productions.com/productions/the-boys-from-brazil)</sup> The Mengele figure is renamed Meinhardt, and other character names are changed from the book.<sup>[6](https://www.world-productions.com/productions/the-boys-from-brazil)</sup><sup> • </sup><sup>[12](https://www.whats-on-netflix.com/news/the-boys-from-brazil-series-netflix-series-cast-plot-release-date/)</sup>

**Cast and production.** Jeremy Strong plays Yakov Liebermann and August Diehl plays Johann-Friedrich Meinhardt; Daniel Brühl stars as Von Harteneck, Gillian Anderson as Frieda Steiner, Shira Haas as Anna Koehler, and Lizzy Caplan as Hannah Liebermann.<sup>[6](https://www.world-productions.com/productions/the-boys-from-brazil)</sup> Alex Gabassi (*Black Doves*, *The Crown*) directs the series solely and also executive produces alongside Suzanne Mackie for Orchid Pictures and Simon Heath for World Productions, with Oona O'Beirn and Andy Stebbing as producers.<sup>[13](https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/the-boys-from-brazil-cast-release-date-news)</sup> Filming ran from December 14, 2025 to July 11, 2026 in Bulgaria, North Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom, with German production by Raccoon Features and funding of 15,643,923 euros from the German Motion Picture Fund.<sup>[14](https://www.crew-united.com/en/The-Boys-from-Brazil-aka-Castle__363055.html)</sup> World Productions lists the miniseries for 2027 on Netflix.<sup>[6](https://www.world-productions.com/productions/the-boys-from-brazil)</sup>

## References

1. [The Boys from Brazil: A Novel, Ira Levin, Random House 1976, Google Books](https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Boys_from_Brazil.html?id=tYwEAQAAIAAJ)
2. [Levin, Ira 1929–, Encyclopedia.com](https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/culture-magazines/levin-ira-1929)
3. [The Boys from Brazil (1978), Embryo Project Encyclopedia, Arizona State University](https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/boys-brazil-1978)
4. [The Genetically Engineered Body, Max Planck Institute preprint](https://pure.mpg.de/pubman/item/item_2274286_1/component/file_2274284/P347.PDF)
5. ['The Boys From Brazil' Adaptation Ordered to Series at Netflix, TheWrap](https://www.thewrap.com/the-boys-from-brazil-adaptation-series-order-netflix/)
6. [The Boys from Brazil, World Productions](https://www.world-productions.com/productions/the-boys-from-brazil)
7. [Ira Levin, 78; his novels include 'Rosemary's Baby,' 'Stepford Wives', Los Angeles Times](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2007-nov-14-me-levin14-story.html)
8. [The Boys from Brazil by Ira Levin – review, The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/aug/07/boys-from-brazil-levin-review)
9. [Film review, The California Tech, November 10, 1978, Caltech](https://campuspubs.library.caltech.edu/1156/1/1978_11_10_80_08.pdf)
10. [The Crafty Chill of 'Boys From Brazil', The Washington Post](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1978/10/05/the-crafty-chill-of-boys-from-brazil/0f5fcb88-3527-4507-8210-22b8a60da376/)
11. [Jeremy Strong to Star in 'The Boys From Brazil' TV Series at Netflix, TheWrap](https://www.thewrap.com/jeremy-strong-boys-from-brazil-tv-series-netflix-peter-morgan/)
12. ['The Boys from Brazil' Netflix Limited Series Starring Jeremy Strong, What's on Netflix](https://www.whats-on-netflix.com/news/the-boys-from-brazil-series-netflix-series-cast-plot-release-date/)
13. [The Boys from Brazil: Peter Morgan Adaptation Plot, Cast and More, Netflix Tudum](https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/the-boys-from-brazil-cast-release-date-news)
14. [The Boys from Brazil (aka Castle), Crew United](https://www.crew-united.com/en/The-Boys-from-Brazil-aka-Castle__363055.html)
15. [What's After the Movie: The Boys from Brazil (1978) Summary](https://www.whatsafterthemovie.com/summary/the-boys-from-brazil)
16. [Kveller: Jeremy Strong, Shira Haas, Lizzy Caplan To Star in New Netflix Nazi Hunters Show](https://www.kveller.com/jeremy-strong-shira-haas-lizzy-caplan-to-star-in-new-netflix-nazi-hunters-show/)

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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Scripted television and comedy series › Adapted and franchise screen series › Literary and classic serial adaptations › Thriller and crime adaptations*

*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*

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License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license