Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- PREFACE
- Map 1
- Map 2
- U.S. INTELLIGENCE AND THE NAZIS
- INTRODUCTION
- SECTION ONE ESPIONAGE AND GENOCIDE
- SECTION TWO COLLABORATION AND COLLABORATORS
- SECTION THREE POSTWAR INTELLIGENCE USE OF WAR CRIMINALS
- 10 The Nazi Peddler: Wilhelm Höttl and Allied Intelligence
- 11 Tracking the Red Orchestra: Allied Intelligence, Soviet Spies, Nazi Criminals
- 12 Coddling a Nazi Turncoat
- 13 The CIA and Eichmann's Associates
- 14 Reinhard Gehlen and the United States
- 15 Manhunts: The Official Search for Notorious Nazis
- CONCLUSION
- APPENDIX: Western Communications Intelligence Systems and the Holocaust
- TERMS AND ACRONYMS
- SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
- RECORD GROUPS CITED
- CONTRIBUTORS
- INDEX
15 - Manhunts: The Official Search for Notorious Nazis
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 February 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- PREFACE
- Map 1
- Map 2
- U.S. INTELLIGENCE AND THE NAZIS
- INTRODUCTION
- SECTION ONE ESPIONAGE AND GENOCIDE
- SECTION TWO COLLABORATION AND COLLABORATORS
- SECTION THREE POSTWAR INTELLIGENCE USE OF WAR CRIMINALS
- 10 The Nazi Peddler: Wilhelm Höttl and Allied Intelligence
- 11 Tracking the Red Orchestra: Allied Intelligence, Soviet Spies, Nazi Criminals
- 12 Coddling a Nazi Turncoat
- 13 The CIA and Eichmann's Associates
- 14 Reinhard Gehlen and the United States
- 15 Manhunts: The Official Search for Notorious Nazis
- CONCLUSION
- APPENDIX: Western Communications Intelligence Systems and the Holocaust
- TERMS AND ACRONYMS
- SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
- RECORD GROUPS CITED
- CONTRIBUTORS
- INDEX
Summary
The shadow of the nazi period is a long one, particularly in terms of the search for notorious Nazi criminals. The 1960 Israeli capture of Adolf Eichmann still fires the public imagination, due to the daring nature of the kidnapping and to the historic importance of Eichmann's trial. Also fervent in the public imagination are those Nazi figures of singular evil who disappeared after the war and who, unlike Eichmann, managed to escape justice entirely—or at least for a far longer time. Popular books and films—historical and fictional—based on figures like Josef Mengele (the infamous Auschwitz doctor) have helped to keep the Nazi past in the public imagination.
Behind public fascination lie untold, less glamorous, and often frustrating episodes in the international hunt for such figures. Newly declassified State Department, FBI, and CIA records provide glimpses into the search by U.S. agencies for vanished figures of the Third Reich. The cases of prominent Gestapo figures Heinrich Müller, Walter Rauff, and Alois Brunner are discussed in chapter six. The cases of Martin Bormann, Klaus Barbie, and Josef Mengele follow.
A scholarly analysis of such manhunts is worthwhile. Aside from the historical meaning that war criminals carry in the context of their wartime careers, such individuals assume meaning beyond their crimes as the years pass. Like mirrors of morality, manhunts cast a poor light on nations that shelter criminals and a more benevolent glow on those that work for their capture. While satisfying an intrinsic need for judicial reckoning, manhunts also have a broader cultural meaning, which reflects their own time as well as a more painful past.
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- U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis , pp. 419 - 442Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005
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