The Belarus Secret [Hardcover]

John J. Loftus (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 12, 1982

This is the first book to reveal how after World War II the United States government illegally permitted the entry into America of Nazis from Eastern Europe, especially from Byelorussia, a region of the Soviet Union occupied by the Germans. Unknown to Congress and the public, a secret section of the State Department began in 1948 to hire members of the puppet wartime government of Byelorussia. Some of them had brutally massacred Jews and later served with the German army defending the Reich against American troops. The State Department section recruited them for guerrilla warfare inside the Soviet bloc, but when those operations collapsed, the collaborationists were brought into the United States and allowed to settle here.... In addition, The Belarus Secret reveals how, as recently as 1978, government departments were lying to Congress about the existence of incriminating files; how intelligence agencies refused to share vital information about the Byelorussian Nazis; how the RBI recruited them to keep informed of operations at the CIA and State Department; the names of the American government officials who approved the programs; how and why the cover-up continues even now. Loftus also discloses that similar smuggling networks exist today which permit war criminals from other parts of the world to find sanctuary in America.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 196 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1st edition (October 12, 1982)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394522923
• ISBN-13: 978-0394522920
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #274,816 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #35 in Books > Law > Specialties > War

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Belarus Secret, July 27, 2004

By 

I. Raspin (NJ, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Belarus Secret (Hardcover)

Amazing book. Everything what I read 25 years ago in the Soviet Union papers about former Nazis working on Radio Liberty, Radio Freedom etc.,turned out to be true... One cannot suspect J.Loftus in pro-Soviet feelings - he just writes about what he found.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars History Unfolds, April 20, 2010

By 

Five Angels (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Belarus Secret (Hardcover)

As the participants of the WWII era expire at an alarming rate, we have the ability to revisit history with a new perspective, as many of the material that previously contained secrets surface without the concern of penalty. The Belarus Secret, although aged in release (1981), provides a great companion piece to many of the books detailing Operation Paperclip and the like and the failings of 20th century espionage.

To the critics assailing the lack of proper references and quality of sources, you should properly heed the author's preface where he discloses that his conclusions were based on the availability of public documents and subject to the discretion and review of certain "intelligence agencies" that forced the redaction of certain material. Certainly, critics of the author's work would not suggest that the book was based on conjecture if subject to that kind of scrutiny and sanitization, would they?

Controversies aside, Loftus, the author, does a more than adequate job describing the atmosphere from which an extremely flawed, fledgling US intelligence service (along with that of other Allied intelligence) created the schemes that would promote folly and failure of former Nazi colloborators as intelligence assets. Further, the picture becomes clear as the anti-communist ambitions of one man, with little oversight, creates the self-perpetuating mistake of allowing holocaust monsters, US citizenship, while evolving agencies cover up their atrocious lack of good judgment.

While this is a short book, it provides ample context of a region caught in a struggle for a national survival and what some men might do in the name of survival and ego. What is clear is that our own government is manned by merely, men, in all of the meanings that can allude to. We ought never forget that winning at all costs can leave an aftertaste that is very bitter. The Belarus Secret reminds us.

If you can get this cheaply, read it!

12 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars "Little Truth and No Understanding", October 10, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Belarus Secret (Hardcover)

The best review I have seen of this book is the following by Professor James Dingley, whose review title I include here, and which originally appeared in 1984.

This book review appears on the Web by permission of both the author and the periodical in which it appeared:

[...]

Source citations are included in the article, as well as contact information for "The Journal of Byelorussian Studies" (which was published between 1965 and 1988; thus the older spelling of "Belarusian").

The last paragraph of the review is a telling summary of the book:

"No-one can seriously maintain that Byelorussians could not possibly be implicated in Nazi war crimes. On the other hand, accusations, particularly when levelled against a whole nation, must be supported by evidence. It is clear that Loftus has not yet learned how to collect that evidence, and has insufficient linguistic and historical knowledge to deal with source material."