When CHALLENGE identifies U.S. rulers as mass murderers in imperialist genocidal wars from Vietnam to the Middle East and South Asia as well as executioners on the streets of U.S. cities, they have a direct link to Hitler’s Nazis as revealed in a just-published book by Eric Lichtblau, The Nazis Next Door: How America Became a Safe Haven for Hitler’s Men. It reveals that U.S. government officials employed “approximately 10,000 Nazis, some of whom had played pivotal roles in the [World War II Nazi] genocide” (New York Times book review, 11/2) against Jews, communists, trade unionists and anti-Nazi resistance fighters. After World War II, the CIA and FBI worked hand-in-glove with top Nazis who were guilty of mass murder. This included “more than 1,600 scientists….[who] had developed the chemicals for the gas chambers, or conducted experiments on concentration camp prisoners” (NYT review).
“U.S. agencies…hired numerous ex-Nazi police officials and East European collaborators who were manifestly guilty of war crimes” (NYT, 10/27).
CIA director Allen Dulles and FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover “aggressively recruited…Nazis” from the highest levels “as secret, anti-Soviet ‘assets’” (NYT, 11/2). They hired over 1,000 Nazis as anti-communist spies and informants, beginning even during World War II. “In March 1945,…American spy chief…Dulles conducted a friendly fireside chat…with Nazi general Karl Wolff, the closest associate of SS leader Heinrich Himmler...[and] a leader of the Waffen SS [Gestapo]….When prosecutors sought to try Wolff at Nuremberg” as a war criminal, Dulles intervened and “worked to have his name removed from the list of defendants” (NYT).
Dulles’s CIA hired SS officer Otto von Bolschwing as a spy in Europe, knowing that he “was a mentor and top aide to Adolf Eichmann, architect of the ‘Final Solution’” and who “wrote policy papers on how to terrorize Jews.” The CIA then relocated him in New York City as “a reward for his loyal post-war service” (NYT, 10/27).
“In Maryland, Army officials trained several Nazi officers in paramilitary warfare for a possible invasion of Russia….In Virginia, a top advisor to Hitler gave classified briefings on Soviet affairs. And in Germany, SS officers infiltrated Russian-controlled zones, laying surveillance cables and monitoring trains” (NYT, 10/27).
CIA files linked senior Nazi collaborator Aleksandras Lieikis “to the machine-gun massacres of 60,000 Jews in Lithuania. He worked ‘under the control of the Gestapo during the war’…. Even so, the agency hired him in 1952 as a spy in East Germany…and cleared the way for him to immigrate to America….[where] he lived quietly for nearly 40 years” (NYT).
FBI director Hoover “personally approved…ex-Nazis as informants and dismissed…their wartime atrocities as Soviet propaganda.” In 1980, “FBI officials…knew about 16…Nazis living in the United States…. [and] memos show…the 16 men had all worked as FBI informants, providing leads on Communist ‘sympathizers.’ Five of the men were still active informants.”
According to Florida University historian Norman Goda, “The full tally of Nazis-turned-spies is probably much higher…but many records remain classified even today, making a complete count impossible” (NYT, 10/27).
All this U.S. government use of Nazis in the name of anti-communism occurred for 50 years since the 1940s under every U.S. president, whether Democrat or Republican. Voting for any one of them meant voting for rulers who collaborated with racist mass murderers. This should leave no doubt among workers in the U.S. and worldwide that the U.S. ruling class will be ready and willing to employ full-blown fascism to maintain its profit system. It was the communist leadership of the working class in the Soviet Union and China that defeated Hitler’s Nazis and the Japanese fascists in World War II. Only a communist revolution can smash these barbarians now.