Files Detail Recruitment of Nazi Spies

As World War II ended, the United States and Soviet Union raced to sign up Nazi intelligence officers as spies in the unfolding Cold War, without worrying much about their reliability or involvement in war crimes, newly declassified CIA files show.

The insights into the postwar spy competition are contained in 10,000 pages of documents from the CIA’s files on 20 Nazis, ranging from Adolf Hitler to former U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim. According to officials of a U.S. government commission on World War II records, the CIA has never before made public so many of its “name” files on specific individuals.

Much of the information in the documents has been known from other sources. But the newly released files show the extent to which intelligence agencies in the United States and elsewhere were willing to overlook flaws and corruption among their new recruits.

The disclosures did include this nugget from the Hitler file: a quotation from Dr. Ferdinand Sauerbruch, once Hitler’s personal physician, as saying in 1937 that the German dictator was showing signs of growing megalomania and “was a border case between genius and insanity . . . [potentially] the craziest criminal the world ever saw.”

When Sauerbruch reportedly made the observation, it was of course prophetic. But it did not reach the U.S. government until Dec. 7, 1944, when an informant related the incident to an official of the Office of Strategic Services, or OSS, the forerunner to the CIA. By then, those aspects of Hitler’s character were widely known.

Although the files cover such infamous Nazis as Hitler, Adolf Eichmann, Josef Mengele, Klaus Barbie and Heinrich Mueller, some of the most interesting information is found in files on less well-known individuals, many of whom later worked for U.S., Soviet, West German, British and French intelligence--in some cases simultaneously.

For Nazis who otherwise could have been charged with war crimes, signing on with the intelligence agencies of the war’s victors usually amounted to a pass from jail.

“The real winners of the Cold War were Nazi war criminals,” Eli M. Rosenbaum, the Justice Department’s top Nazi hunter, said at a news conference.

According to historians for the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group, the files should put to rest some intriguing questions, such as why the CIA did not reveal Waldheim’s Nazi past when the Austrian politician was nominated in 1971 for the U.N.’s top post. The answer, apparently, is that no one asked the CIA to do a background check and the agency knew nothing about the matter. The Waldheim file was not started until December 1981, when an informant, whose name was censored from the document, reported Waldheim’s wartime history.

Although Waldheim’s term at the U.N. had another year to run, the CIA said nothing in public about the report. The Waldheim story broke in 1986, after he had returned to Austria.

The files show that the CIA conducted an investigation to determine if the Soviets knew enough about Waldheim’s past to blackmail him with it. Ultimately, the agency determined that Moscow knew nothing about Waldheim’s wartime activities until the story broke publicly. The documents also show that the CIA concluded that Waldheim was never an intelligence asset for either the United States or the Soviet Union.

Of the most infamous Nazis on the list, only Barbie, known as the Butcher of Lyon, ever worked for U.S. intelligence. Because of his association with Army intelligence, U.S. agents helped him escape to South America. But the files show the CIA was skeptical about him and did nothing to block his extradition to France, where he stood trial for crimes against humanity in 1987. Barbie’s intelligence connections came out during his trial.

Also revealed by testimony during the Barbie trial was the U.S. intelligence link to Wilhelm Hoettl, once the deputy to the Nazi occupation chief in Hungary. But commission historians say the CIA files show much previously undisclosed detail about Hoettl, documenting just how much the OSS was willing to overlook in order to obtain an expert on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

In April 1945, about a month before the war ended in Europe, Hoettl approached the OSS to offer his services. A memo written by an OSS interviewer said Hoettl “is, of course, dangerous. . . . But I see no reason why we should not use him.” The memo added, “To avoid any accusation that we are working with a Nazi reactionary and fanatical anti-Russian, I believe that we should keep our contact with him as indirect as possible.”

After Hoettl signed on, the OSS--and, later, the CIA--realized just how corrupt he was. The CIA file has more than 600 pages documenting Hoettl’s “postwar career as a peddler of intelligence, good and bad, to anyone who would pay him,” the commission analysis said.

“Reports link Hoettl to 12 different intelligence services, including the U.S., Yugoslav, Austrian, Israeli, Romanian, Vatican, Swiss, French, West German, Russian, Hungarian and British,” the analysis added.

The files shed some light on the fate of Mueller--chief of the Gestapo and probably the highest-ranking war criminal--who disappeared at the end of the war. After an exhaustive search, the CIA concluded that he either died during the final battle for Berlin or was captured by the Soviets. The file said the most likely scenario is that he died.

Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, said his organization has been trying since 1987 to find out what happened to Mueller. He said information had come out “by dribs and drabs, year after year,” without providing anything definitive.

Several years ago, Hier said, a report showed that Mueller had been imprisoned in 1945 at the Allies’ Altenstadt civilian internment camp in Upper Bavaria.

But, according to the commission analysis, it was almost certainly a different Heinrich Mueller, a comparatively common German name. At least one other person with that name was a general in the SS, the same rank the Gestapo chief held.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

From the CIA’s Files

Dr. Ferdinand Sauerbruch made these remarks about Hitler in 1937. But it did not reach the U.S. government until December 1944, when an informant related the incident to an official of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner to the CIA.

Source: CIA

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