Report: Gov't Allowed Nazi Criminals into U.S.

A report chronicling the history of the Justice Department's Nazi-hunting unit criticizes the government for knowingly allowing some Nazis to settle in the United States after World War II.

"America, which prided itself on being a safe haven for the persecuted, became in some small measure a safe haven for persecutors as well," says the 600-page document.

The New York Times obtained a copy of the report, which the National Security Archive, a private group, posted on its website. Earlier, the Justice Department had declared dozens of pages from the document off-limits to the public after the archive sued to get it.

Report Released on Nazi Immigration to U.S.
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The long-secret report provided new details of many of the major cases handled by Justice's Office of Special Investigations. The report reflects the ways in which American officials, who were assigned to recruit foreign scientists after World War II, circumvented President Harry S. Truman's order that they not bring in Nazi Party members or people who had actively supported Nazi militarism.

Arthur Rudolph, one of hundreds of scientists brought to the United States after the war, told investigators in 1947 of attending a hanging during the war of inmates accused of sabotage at a plant near Nordhausen, Germany, where Rudolph was operations director. The plant he ran manufactured V-2 rockets using slave labor. U.S. immigration officials knew Rudolph had been a Nazi party member, but he was admitted to the U.S. anyway. Rudolph went on to become honored in the U.S. as the father of the Saturn V rocket, enabling the United States to make its first manned moon landing. Rudolph went to Germany in 1984 and forfeited his U.S. citizenship.

The report also details a discussion at the CIA over whether former Nazi party member Otto Von Bolschwing should acknowledge his Nazi past if confronted about it when applying for U.S. citizenship. Reversing earlier CIA advice, the agency concluded that Bolschwing should tell the truth. The agency hired Bolschwing during the Cold War for his contacts among ethnic Germans and Romanians. The Justice Department sought to deport Von Bolschwing when it found out about his past. Von Bolschwing, it turned out, had worked with Adolf Eichmann, helping devise programs in the 1930s to persecute and terrorize Germany's Jews. Eichmann was one of the architects of the Holocaust.

"Some may view the government's collaboration with persecutors as a Faustian bargain," the report states. "Others will see it as a reasonable moral compromise borne of necessity."

In court filings in the lawsuit brought by the National Security Archive, the Justice Department said that the report was never finalized, contains numerous factual errors and omissions and does not represent the official position of the Justice Department.

On Sunday, a Justice Department spokeswoman, Laura Sweeney, said: "The department is committed to transparency and providing information in accordance with relevant laws. Attorneys with expertise in the Freedom of Information Act make determinations about certain redactions based on privacy and other considerations under the law."

According to portions of the report that were deleted by the Justice Department:

-The department established in 1997 that Switzerland had bought gold from the Nazis that had been taken from Jewish victims of the Holocaust.

-Meetings in 2000 in which U.S. officials pressured Latvian officials to pursue Nazis were "a hideous failure."

-In hopes of establishing whether Dr. Joseph Mengele, known as the Angel of Death at Auschwitz, was dead, a director of the Office of Special Investigations kept in his desk a piece of scalp thought to belong to Mengele. OSI was the Justice Department entity created in 1979 to deport Nazis.

Also deleted was a portion of a 1993 ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit that raised ethics accusations against Justice Department officials.

[joelcva]

I wouldn't believe everything I read. Rudolph was nothing more than a civilian manager who had no control whatsoever over the forced labor prisoners. He did have authority over the other German engineers working under him. The SS controlled the prisoners and were responsible for their care, feeding, and punishment. He was certainly not in charge of the Mittelwerk facility. He was a middle manager in charge of the V2 production line. They talk about Rudolph as if he were a major war criminal but this could be nothing further from the truth. He was never charged with a single crime in the US or Germany. The only thing that made him a major catch for the OSI was his fame and stature in the US space program. The OSI tricked him into signing away his US citizenship out of fear he would lose his NASA pension and the citizenship of his family at a time when he was recovering from a major heart attack. There were many other Germans who had much more intimate contact with the prisoners than Rudolph who were never charged with anything. But let their lawyers do the talking for them and didn't allow the OSI to intimidate them.

Whatever involvement he may have had with the Nazis he more than made up for by what he did for us. He was never accused of harming anyone and was a model citizen who was a major factor in the success of the moon landings. He was also responsible for the success of the Pershing missile program as well. When it comes right down to it we did everything we could to recruit him when we needed him, knowing full well who he was and what he was involved in, then when he was old we thanked him by giving him the boot and ruining his reputation with lies.

Demjanjuk is another similar story. In his case he was a German prisoner of war who was given the choice of being a guard or starving to death as a POW. If you want to know the full extent of what was done to him I suggest reading the book "Defending Ivan the Terrible" by Yoram Sheftel, which is available in both English and Hebrew.

[jackp32]

You are dead wrong about Demjanjuk. Although he is not Ivan the Terrible, the indictment accuses him of participating in the extermination of 29,000 Jews while he was a guard at a concentration camp. What was supposedly done to him is irrelevant. He is on trial not the people whom you say forced him into doing what he is accused of.

[documemts]

So, this is where the tea party came from.

[YrWrongAgain]

I wonder if these Nazis were helpful to the 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the Handschar SS.

An effective collaboration with a philosophy that still has influence.

[YrWrongAgain]

And I understand it was the Nazis who tried to infiltrate the Hollywood labor unions, the writers, directors, actors et al...

[berlinfoto-2009]

If one were to disguise Nazism, say for instance take away the swastikas, the red armbands, and the Nazi salute, packaged it with carefully chosen rhetoric, Who would recognize it? Nazism is about world domination, beherrschen, herrschen, Herrschaft. These German words have a much wider meaning than what one would get from a German, English Dictionary, Particular to a person of German heritage. {Government By Deception} Are you a slave to your government and not realize it, Hitler said something similar to this.
Just what makes the world civilized Wars, or Peace?

[berlinfoto-2009]

In the early 1990's I worked in a retail outlet that employed off duty police, also some rather spooky individuals who were connected to a particular U. S. Government agency. The off duty police were mainly of German Stock. These individuals, all talked of crashing the U. S. economy and establishing a more authoritarian form of government, and doing away with the constitutional protections. Has this not come to pass? Have not our constitutional protections been done away with by way of contracts to protect us from terrorists? has the economy not all but collapsed?
What will happen when the Chinese the Oil Rich Middle East Nations, quit loaning us money?
The Nazi Philosophy is attractive and contagious, it has, truly spread throughout our Government.

[Overruled1]

The Israelis' have refused to extradite Solomon Morel who committed unspeakable number of brutal crimes against his victims, then killed them.
As I see it, if Israel can't see past their own. The hunt for NAZI's is over.

[tsigili]

Just because someone was in uniform during that era, doesn't mean they believed in all of Hitler's teachings. This whole concept, that if they were in Hitler's military, they were necessarily bad people, is nonsense.

[documemts]

In our jeep club we had a "former sargeant" of the Wehrmacht. I researched his name. From what I found he was a German landowner-noblemen. Mostly he was lying to us about his part in the war. People with his connections were officers in the German Army. That's how he emigrated to the US.

[darwufche]

At least half the US population are nazis. MId-term elections proved it.

[YrWrongAgain]

Time to flee to the safety of Cuba.

[documemts]

..true, Damn Right!

[nasadawg]

When did this become news? If you didn't know about this until now, you must be living under a rock.

[tiredofeverything]

Nazism didn't die at the end of the war, it just got transplanted to America.
Just look at the Tea Party and the far right evangelical christian nuts in the Republican party.

[abbe91]

It was already in America before the war ... Think about Prescott Bush, for example.

[YrWrongAgain]

What a ridiculous group of Fidel's stooges post here.