Motley Moose – Archive

Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

Justice Department

Godwin Sunday: a Nazi Open Thread

Today, the New York Times reports: Nazis Were Given ‘Safe Haven’ in U.S.

A secret history of the United States government’s Nazi-hunting operation concludes that American intelligence officials created a “safe haven” in the United States for Nazis and their collaborators after World War II, and it details decades of clashes, often hidden, with other nations over war criminals here and abroad.

The 600-page report, which the Justice Department has tried to keep secret for four years, provides new evidence about more than two dozen of the most notorious Nazi cases of the last three decades.

This report, uh, reportedly details the triumphs and travails of Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations, which was created in 1979 to deport Nazis.  People have long acknowledged the Central Intelligence Agency’s involvement with Nazi scientists with regard to postwar intelligence, but per the NY Times, “this report goes further in documenting the level of American complicity and deception in such operations.”

For decades, stuff like this has made great fodder for conspiracy theorists, who like to suggest that US collaboration with Nazi technokrauts after WWII marked the beginning of fascist domination of the upper echelons of the US establishment and the military-industrial complex.