Allen Dulles, the OSS, and Nazi War Criminals
The Dynamics of Selective Prosecution

This book examines the circumstances surrounding SS-Obergruppenführer Karl Wolff's escape from prosecution for war crimes in 1945.

Kerstin von Lingen (Author)

9781107025936, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 30 September 2013

339 pages, 9 b/w illus.
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.3 cm, 0.62 kg

'[This Book] does not fit into a single category of historical analysis. It is in part a militar history of the final stages of World War II; it is intelligence history of the early Cold War with strong focus on the United States' Office of Strategic Services; and finally, it is a part political, part social history of Germany's ambiguous postwar attempt to come to terms with its recent past … Above all, however, it is a case study that seeks to analyse and bring into context the story of SS General Karl Wolff … The reader is left with the important lesson that not only had the alliance between the East and West crumbled before the war even ended, but that the United States went so far as to negotiate a separate, secret surrender agreement with the enemy, … which in turn resulted in the complicated conundrum for the United States of protecting, instead of bringing due punishment to, a high-ranking SS general.' Sebastian Huebel, H-War

This book examines the circumstances surrounding SS-Obergruppenführer Karl Wolff's escape from prosecution for war crimes in 1945. Wolff avoided prosecution because of his role in 'Operation Sunrise', negotiations conducted by high-ranking American, Swiss and British officials - in violation of the Casablanca agreements with the Soviet Union - for the surrender of German forces in Italy that enabled the Anglo-American forces to take Trieste. After 1945, Allied officials, amongst them Allen Dulles, in a move that later helped him ascend to the head of the CIA, shielded Wolff from prosecution to maintain secrecy about the negotiations. 'Operation Sunrise' thus relates to the early origins of the Cold War in Europe and had wide-ranging implications, even in the field of justice: new evidence suggests that the Western Allies not only failed to ensure cooperation between their respective national war crimes prosecution organizations, but in certain cases even obstructed justice by withholding evidence from the prosecution.

1. The protagonists: Karl Wolff and Allen Dulles
2. Surrender in northern Italy: Operation Sunrise
3. War crimes policy
4. Protection from prosecution, 1945–1949
5. Wolff's public image: hero or vernichtungsburokrat, 1950–1984
6. Immunity and its origins: geopolitical interests
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Law [L], Political corruption [JPZ], Military history [HBW], Postwar 20th century history, from c 1945 to c 2000 [HBLW3]