Yes, Virginia, Nazis were warmly received by the United States
I was already aware of some of the details, or rationales, for Operation Paperclip before the vitriolic hate circus that is the 2016 Donald Trump campaign for the presidency of the United States. As recently as 2013, the America's post-WWII mission to recruit Nazis was even a central plot point of the blockbuster film, Captain America, The Winter Soldier...a product of the Disney Company no less. Allegedly to protect the secrets of Nazi scientists from Russia, the United States pivoted, with the help of the Vatican, to steer thousands of high ranking members of Hitler's party into America, while newly “liberated” surviving Jews continued to languish for months, sometimes years, in the slave labor concentration camps that were the final destination for millions.
Prior to WWII the American city of Long Island, New York was the center of the German American Bund (Bond) societies that hosted German Nazi parades, speeches and and a youth brigade styled after the Hitler youth. One had to be of German heritage to live in Yaphank, the Long Island neighborhood that to this day still prohibits non-Germans from living there.
John Loftus' book”America's Nazi Secret, published by Trineday LLC, 2010, goes into detail about how several US agencies, the Department of Justice in particular, obstructed the US Congress by blocking congressional investigations into famous American families who funded Hitler, Stalin, and Arab “terrorists” (quotes mine). The book also accuses the Justice Department of lying to the General Accounting Office (GAO) and the CIA about the post war immigration of Eastern European Nazi War Criminals to the United States, and goes into further detail about such Nazi luminaries as Warner Von Braun, creator of Germany's lethal V2 rockets that reigned hellfire on Europe, who eventually became the father of NASA.
Eric Lichtblau's 2014 book, “The Nazis Next Door: How America Became A Safe Haven for Hitler's Men”, First Mariner Books, is exactly what the title suggests, and opens with a sequence in which a long time naturalized Eastern European “gentleman” from New Jersey begins a desperate scramble to protect his Nazi past from an inquisitive journalist at a local community newspaper who fell onto his secret. A secret apparently shared by thousands of immigrants, falsely naturalized for their alleged value as anti-communists.
In “Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America, (Little, Brown & Company, 2014) Author Anne Jacobsen outlines says in the prologue: “This is a book about Nazi scientists and American government secrets. It is about how dark truths can be hidden from the public by US officials in the name of national security, and it is about the unpredictable, often fortuitous circumstances through which truth gets revealed” Two paragraphs later she states: “Under Operation Paperclip, which began in May of 1945, the scientists who helped the Third Reich wage war continued their weapons-related work for the US government, developing rockets, chemical and biological weapons, aviation and space medicine (for enhancing military pilot and astronaut performance), and many other armaments at a feverish and paranoid pace that came to define the Cold War. The age of weapons of mass destruction had begun, and with it came the treacherous concept of brinksmanship – the art of pursuing dangerous policy to the limits of safety before stopping. Hiring dedicated Nazis was without precedent, entirely unprincipled, and inherently dangerous not just because, as Undersecretary of War Robert Patterson stated when debating if he should approve Paperclip, “These men are enemies,” but because it was counter to democratic ideals. The men profiled in this book were not normal Nazis. Eight of the twenty-one – Otto Ambros, Theodor Benzinger, Kurt Blome, Walter Dorenberger, Sigfried Knemeyer, Walter Schreiber, Walter Schieber, and Werner Von Braun – each at some point worked side by side with Adolph Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, or Herman Goring during the war. Fifteen of the twenty-one were dedicated members of the Nazi Party; ten of them also joined the ultra-violent, ultra-nationalistic Nazi Party paramilitary squads the SA (Sturmabteilung, or Storm Troopers) and the SS (Schutzstaffel, or protection squadron; two wore the Golden Party Badge, indicating favor bestowed by the Fuhrer; one was given an award of one million reichsmarks for scientific achievement.”
In 1988 Christopher Simpon published “Blowback: America's Recruitment of Nazis, and its Destructive Impact on Our Domestic and Foreign Policy,” (Open Road Press) the author follows along much of the same vibe as the aforementioned writings. In his introduction Simpson makes it clear that he is concerned with shedding light on the hidden history of the United States, particularly as that history relates to “forbidden” and out-of-print books. Before delving into his Nazi hunt Simpson informs us: “The purpose of this series is to bring such vanished books to life....These books...were made to disappear, or were hastily forgotten, not because they were too lewd, heretical or unpatriotic for some touchy group of citizens. These books sank without a trace, or faded fast, because they tell the sort of truths that Madison and Jefferson believed our Constitution should protect – truths that the people have a right to know, and needs to know, about our government and other powers that keep us in the dark.”
He continues: “Thus the works on our Forbidden Bookshelf shed new light – for most of us, it's still new light – on troubling trends and episodes in US history, especially since WWII: America's broad use of former Nazis and ex-Fascists in the Cold War; the Kennedy assassinations; and the murders of Martin Luther King Jr., Orlando Letelier, George Polk and Paul Wellstone; Ronald Reagan's Mafia connections; Richard Nixon's close relationship with Jimmy Hoffa, and the mob's grip on the NFL; America's terroristic Phoenix Program in Vietnam, US support for South America's most brutal tyrannies, and CIA involvement in the Middle East; the secret histories of DuPont, ITT, andother giant US corporations; and the long war waged by Wall Street and its allies in real estate on New York City's poor and middle class.”
There are innumerable more atrocities I would add to Mr. Simpson's list: the racist and murderous COINTELPRO operation against Blacks in the civil rights movement, the continue exploitation of the African continent, the deaths of Medgar Evers and Malcolm X, the Iran-Contra and related Savings and Loan Scandals, all the way up to the recent past and present day, with the falsely justified invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan, and the current destabilization of Syria. To paraphrase the late Kurt Vonnegut, “and on it goes.”
Thanks to the work of these authors, and several more languishing forgotten on Simpson's “Forbidden Bookshelf, we have a new, yet old paradigm through which to review and reassess the myriad disparities between race and class in the United States in almost all social and economic indicators, one that counters the naive notion many of our past civil rights leaders held that they could “Shame the devil,” when in fact, devils are incapable of feeling shame.
As of this writing, Pi Day, March 14, 2016, the divisions between those with democratic ideals and those with a desire to forsake those ideals have never been more stark. And yet many in the country are seemingly caught off-guard, as if to say, how could this be? How could Billionaire candidate Donald Trump, whose demagoguery has found a receptive audience in the alleged land of the free, be a step away from the presidency?
Because the seeds have been recruited, brought to bud, and nurtured to maturity here for close to 71 years now.
Rashard Zanders is a freelance writer and artist stuck somewhere in MN. He can be reached at rashard.zanders or on facebook.