US Intelligence, the Holocaust and the Nuremberg Trials : Seeking Accountability for Genocide and Cultural Plunder

The relationship between evidence of the Holocaust presented at the Nuremberg trials and the wartime and immediate postwar role of Western intelligence agencies has become controversial.

In particular, such agencies stand accused of virtually turning a blind eye to this genocide, preferring to concentrate their efforts on securing military objectives related to the defeat of the Nazis and thwarting Soviet expansion.

On the basis of recently declassified OSS, CIA and other intelligence records, which are extensively quoted, this book demonstrates that such one-sided accusations now require substantial revision.

Whilst it is shown that there remain grounds for criticising the acts and omissions of the Allies' wartime intelligence agencies, their efforts in monitoring the Holocaust as it was being carried out, and making a series of wartime humanitarian interventions were far greater than has previously been realised.

Other positive contributions included supplying incriminating witness testimony, documentation and other trial evidence, and tracking down and interrogating many key individuals responsible for the Nazis' anti-Semitic art looting and other forms of economic plunder. Many US intelligence officials played a positive role in gathering, analysing and - in some cases - actually presenting Nuremberg trial evidence in various formats, and in a manner that helped secure some measure of legal accountability for the Nazis' crimes against humanity.

Hence, contemporary war crimes prosecutors could perhaps learn important lessons from both the successes and failures of this remarkable form of interagency collaboration.