U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis [Paperback]

Richard Breitman (Author), Norman J.W. Goda (Author), Timothy Naftali (Author), Robert Wolfe (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1880875268 | ISBN-13: 978-1880875261 | Publication Date: May 2004

U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis discusses hundreds of the 8 million-plus documents released under the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act by the CIA, FBI, NSA, Army, State Department, and other U.S. agencies. This book contains a great deal of new information about the world of intelligence, especially concerning the postwar use of war criminals by U.S. intelligence organizations. It also sheds new light on Holocaust issues, showing, for example, that the Allies had knowledge of the genocide earlier than historians previously believed. By using these newly released documents to refine what was previously understood about World War II, the Holocaust, and intelligence activities during and after the war, the authors demonstrate the historical, cultural, and moral importance of the declassified information.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Reveals startling new secrets about the U.S. government's wholesale use of Nazi war criminals after WWII." -- Elizabeth Holtzman, former congresswoman from New York and IWG Public Member

"The historians involved...are all to be congratulated for meticulous scholarship and judicious assessments." -- Wesley K. Wark, Professor, Department of History, University of Toronto, and Fellow, Munk Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto

"These studies make important contributions to our knowledge of the Holocaust and other ghastly Axis crimes." -- Eli Rosenbaum, Director, Department of Justice, Office of Special Investigations

Book Description

This book is a direct result of the 1998 Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act. Drawing upon many documents declassified under this law, the authors demonstrate what US intelligence agencies learned about Nazi crimes during World War II and about the nature of Nazi intelligence agencies' role in the Holocaust. At a time when intelligence successes and failures are at the center of public discussion, U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis also provides an unprecedented inside look at how intelligence agencies function during war and peacetime. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 488 pages
• Publisher: National Archives Trust Fund (May 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1880875268
• ISBN-13: 978-1880875261
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,043,063 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Painful truth about an unholy collaboration, January 31, 2005

By 

Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis (Paperback)

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.

14 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cross checking newly released documents, November 26, 2004

By 

Etienne M. Lorenceau (Washington Paris Dusseldorf) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis (Paperback)

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.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great at detail; Poor at putting in context, September 8, 2007

By 

Arthur Cohn "Flying Boat Fan" (Portola Valley, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis (Paperback)

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.