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Rating:  - Great at detail; Poor at putting in context
The American interaction with the Nazi personel at the end of WW II was very uneven. Some Americans did their job. While others treated these most horrible Nazi's with undeserved deference. This book contains individual articles by one or more ofthe co-authors. The information in each article is very important, drawing on the latest declassified (at the time of publication)documents. However, the book is weak at putting the info in context and in drawing conclusions.
Rating:  - Better than no book at all
This book is a direct result of the 1998 Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act. Why it took legislation in 1998 to uncover "secret" documents of collusion between the United States and Nazi war criminals is outrageous on its face. Still, that a book like this finally exists is better than no book at all.
It's badly written, and full of long, run-on sentences that practically require decoding to get to the point. That in itself is frustrating. There is a lot of U.S.-apologist logic in attempting to explain why thoughtless, careless, and short-sighted decisions were made to hire Nazi war criminals in the United States that not only defied justice, but put American citizens at ongoing risk -- a point this book never gets around to making. Did Nazis stop being Nazis because they were working for the U.S.? Did their belief system suddenly change because their paychecks did?
The book makes the point that Nazi criminals were deluded by their own self-importance, that the U.S. bought into it, and that their incompetence was purchased with tax-payer dollars and were a waste of time and money.
And what else? What else can the book say (other than what is documented) but that the documents are pretty much useless. Probably why they were released at all. What else don't we know?
What was not reported (besides the fact that, for example, the Gehlen organization refused to report the names of the SS criminals they hired or what they were doing)? Look at all the insidious (and networked) crimes that were taking place in the 1950s and 1960s, and it makes one wonder what the connections were. But there will be no documentation of that; largely because the U.S. does not want to be "embarrassed" in front of other countries it must have credibility with, particularly now. In the interest of National Security, don't you know. For the same reason, other countries with documented information keep that information secret. For shame.
Never again! is the rallying cry whenever the holocaust is mentioned. Perhaps in 1945 not enough was known of the depths of depravity that comprised the holocaust. There certainly wasn't the scholarship that there is today. Still, that is no excuse. Those who refuse to learn from the past, as it is said, are condemned to repeat it. And we cannot, and will not, learn from the past while there is any support for keeping any of it secret.
The holocaust continues, as its supporters and defenders continue to exist, influenced to a great extent by Nazi criminals that were never brought to trial, and who continue to peddle their ideology in this country and others. Now more powerful (and high-tech) than ever, the danger of keeping war crimes a secret should not escape the authors of this book, the people who read it, and the scholars who are impressed enough to go on from there.
Rating:  - Painful truth about an unholy collaboration
This is a Congressional press release that accompanied the publication of this book. I put this here before adding my own remarks because it tells what the book is about in a clear and comprehensive way.
"Historians' Book Reveals Insights on the Holocaust and Significant New Information about the Relationship of War Criminals with Allied Intelligence Services
: The Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group (IWG) will hold a briefing on the release of U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis, a 15-chapter book that discusses hundreds of the millions of documents located, declassified, and released by the CIA, FBI, Army, State Department, and other U.S. agencies under the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act. The IWG also will announce the availability of additional records declassified under the Act and open to the public at the National Archives, College Park, Maryland.
U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis demonstrates how the newly declassified documents alter and enhance our understanding of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War. The book reveals new information about Holocaust perpetrators and collaborators and about the role of intelligence services, especially the use of war criminals by U.S. intelligence organizations after the war.
The newly released records include materials from the FBI, CIA, and U.S. Army:
-- Approximately 240,000 pages from the FBI on espionage, foreign counterintelligence, domestic security, and treason. Highlights include files on the FBI's interaction with Nazis who immigrated to the U.S. and files on U.S. corporations that profited from dealings with the Nazis.
-- 419 additional CIA Name and Subject files, bringing the total number opened by the IWG to nearly 800.
-- More than 3,000 pages documenting the U.S. Army's involvement with German spymaster Reinhard Gehlen, whose post-war intelligence organization received U.S. funding to spy on the Soviet Union.
There are other disclosures int he book. The CIA employed and shielded five close aides of Eichmann. J. Edgar Hoover was responsible for direct orders protecting Nazi War Criminals and enabling them to live untouched in America.
More painful and damaging is the revelation in this book that the US authorities knew about the Holocaust earlier than has been previously indicated. And did their best to do nothing about it.
The book as a whole will for many readers raise questions about the way the US is working now, and has worked in the past in many different places with criminals and evildoers of various kinds.
For me the book connects in mind with John Loftus ' book the 'Secret War Against the Jews' which reveals how the State Dept. helped with the spread of Nazi propaganda into Saudi Arabia. And how the anti- American Saudi school system that brought into being Al Quaeda is in part a legacy of that cooperation.
This book brings proofs of US cooperation with those who not only oppose its ideal and fundamental principles but have taken place in great and horrendous crimes.
As a person born and raised in America I feel a deep anger and shame at these revelations. If the best country in the world, the one who has done the most to preserve freedom and protect democracy in two great world wars, if this country engages in such evil practices then what can be expected of the rest of humanity?
Reading this work will not I am afraid bring those who love and take pride in America much joy.
Rating: - Cross checking newly released documents
Inevitably some reviewers will see this book as repeating things they think they know and most of the time do. We are aware of former nazis working for the CIA, We are aware of the nazis having forged Sterling Pounds. We are aware of the sightings of Bormann in Argentina, we are aware of the searches for Gestapo Mueller: so what's the difference.
The difference is double.
First it's in the proving value of the details.
There are things that we do know by inference about the nazis but the authors of this book have found their proofs in the documents. Readers should realize the unbelieveable amount of work it takes to get through thousand of fragile documents so that one can match a little point in a huge field of knowledge. Naturally these document do not come nicely and timely in the right order for a specific study. The researchers need to have an enormous and thorough knowledge of several subjects to notice the proper value of one document. Having been through this on Walter Schellenberg, this reviewer can only be very respectful on the work reported here ad on its result.
The second difference lays in the honest capacity of writers to reconsider pre-existing writings (sometimes including their own).
Reporting on documents which reconsider what we thought had been well established: that's another feat which this book achieves namely on the Red Orchestra, on the cooperation of some Americans with the nazis, or on the looting.
Admittedly the reader would appreciate less of an American slant for these studies (which succeeds here not to become a bias). History is neither American nor European it aims at remaining factual and global.
Anybody interested in documented important facts about the war of intelligence services will be fascinated. The book covers documents recently declassified on a lot of names which are known but rarely documented.
Furthermore the authors have not been satisfied in just making a name index, they have rebuilt the context for the readers.
A superb work for specialists on a subject where nothing is black nor white, where most agents work for two or three powers, where interrogations are twisted both by the captive and the victor.
This is not a book for beginners looking for true spectacular spy stories, it is a no BS book on the spies war: a war which saved (and sometimes costed) thousands of lives.
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