Description
Book SynopsisThis thorough account of the postwar search for 150 suspected Nazi collaborators in the United States explains how they immigrated into the United States, why it took so long to locate and apprehend them, and the eventual founding in the 1970s of the investigative body that sought to bring them to justice.
Trade ReviewThis 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 Schiessl’s 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 Using a variety of published and unpublished primary sources, Schiessl convincingly explains why they were initially able to enter the country undetected and why the hunt for these former auxiliary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 1970s—a watershed decade in the United States and elsewhere when it came to open discussions of and efforts to understand the Holocaust. Schiessl’s 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
Table of ContentsChapter 1: Policemen and Camp Guards: The Crimes of Eastern European Nazi Collaborators during the Holocaust Chapter 2: The Allied and American War Crimes Trials after World War II: Nuremberg and Beyond Chapter 3: Nazi Collaborators from Eastern Europe as Immigrants: The Displaced Persons Acts and Beyond Chapter 4: The Search for Nazi Collaborators from the 1950s to the 1970s: From Eichmann to the Ford Administration Chapter 5: Changes to Immigration Law and the Founding of the OSI: From the 1970s to the 1980s Afterword: The Effort of the OSI in Comparison and the Meaning of the Nazi Hunt Appendix 1: Complete List of Suspects by Name, Ethnicity, Alleged Crimes, and Result of Investigation Appendix 2: Cases’ Outcomes
