Alleged Nazi Collaborators in the United States after World War II

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This book follows the story of suspected Nazi war criminals in the United States and analyzes their supposed crimes during World War II, their entry into the United States as war refugees in the 1940s and 1950s, and their prosecution in the 1970s and beyond by the U.S. government, specifically by the Office of Special Investigation (OSI). In particular, this book explains why and how such individuals entered the United States, why it took so long to locate and apprehend them, how the OSI was founded, and how the OSI has tried to bring them to justice. This study constitutes a thorough account of 150 suspects and examines how the search for them connects to larger developments in postwar U.S. history. In this latter regard, one major theme includes the role Holocaust memory played in the aforementioned developments. This account adds significantly to the historiographical debate about when and how the Holocaust found its way into American Jewish and also general American consciousness. In general, these suspected Nazi war criminals could come to the United States largely undetected during the early Cold War. In this atmosphere, they morphed from Nazi collaborators to ardent anti-Communists and, outside of some big fish, not even within the Jewish community was their role in the Holocaust much discussed. Only with the Eichmann trial in the early 1960s did interest in other Holocaust perpetrators increase, culminating in the founding of the OSI in the late 1970s. The manuscript makes use, among other documents, of declassified sources from the CIA and FBI, little used trial accounts, and hard to locate OSI records.

Reviews

This book traces the story of suspected East European and other Nazi collaborators from their crimes committed during World War II to their immigration to the United States in the 1940s and 1950s, and ends with the prolonged investigations and prosecutions conducted against them by U.S. government authorities starting in the 1970s. This well-researched study is firmly grounded in newly available archival materials from agencies such as the OSI, CIA, and FBI, as well as court documents which provide great insight into the development of legal arguments behind the denaturalization and deportation of suspected Nazi collaborators from the United States. Christoph Schiessl provides a comprehensive perspective and analysis of the issues surrounding Nazi collaborators in the United States. His valuable work contributes to an understanding the changing landscape of discussions about the Holocaust in the United States and reveals American efforts to bring Nazi collaborators to justice in a new comparative light. -- Donata Blobaum, West Virginia University
Over a period of several decades, a series of political and cultural changes reshaped U.S. policies toward those post-World War II immigrants from formerly German-occupied and German-aligned Eastern European countries who had collaborated in Nazi war crimes and genocide. Once tolerated or even embraced as Cold War allies, these collaborators became targets of ever more determined efforts to settle accounts. Christoph Schiessls well-researched and penetrating work illuminates the influences leading to these changes and their consequences, both for individual perpetrators of mass atrocities and for the efforts of human rights advocates to eradicate long-standing expectations of impunity. -- Brad R. Roth, Wayne State University
In this sober and sobering account of the postwar fate of alleged East European Nazi collaborators, Christoph Schiessl traces their story from the crimes they were accused of committing during the Holocaust to American efforts beginning three decades later to locate and bring them to justice. Using a variety of published and unpublished primary sources, Schiessl convincingly explains why they were initially able to enter the country undetected and why the hunt for these former auxiliary policemen and camp guards only really got underway in the 1970sa watershed decade in the United States and elsewhere when it came to open discussions of and efforts to understand the Holocaust. Schiessls study is significant because it persuasively casts doubt on the culture of impunity argument, which claims that such individuals attracted little attention and that they essentially got off scot-free for their crimes. At the same time, it admirably explicates the difficulties involved in bringing them to justice. -- Andrew I. Port, Wayne State University

Author Bio

Christoph Schiessl is assistant teaching professor at the University of MissouriSt. Louis.