Fugitives – A History of Nazi Mercenaries During the Cold War
Danny Orbach, Hurst, £14.99

BEFORE the second world war was over, the US and its Western allies were preparing for the next war against the Soviet Union. For this project, collaboration with former Nazis became an essential building block; old enemies became friends.
 
As the author writes, “Although the victorious allies had vowed to hunt the Nazis down ‘to the ends of the earth’, in practice no more than a handful of Nazi leaders were tried before the international tribunal at Nuremburg. Plans for a thorough denazification 
of West German society died with a whimper.”

In this highly informative book, Danny Orbach, a Professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, gives us an enormous amount of detailed background about the way thousands of top Nazis escaped justice and exposes the hypocrisy of the West. 

Orbach is no left-wing commentator and is avowedly anti-communist. He views this period of history from an Israeli perspective, but this hardly detracts from the factual information he provides. He was given extensive access to the secret service files held by the USA, Germany and Mossad, but makes no reference to any East German or Soviet sources. This is a serious omission, as the GDR, in particular, waged a lengthy campaign exposing the reintegration of Nazis into West Germany society, and amassed a large data base of former Nazis and their crimes.

The USA saw former Nazis as uniquely reliable agents in the struggle against communism. As the war drew to a close, Hitler’s former chief intelligence officer on the eastern front, Richard Gehlen, immediately offered his services and his huge stash of data to the new masters. He was made head of a new counter-intelligence service, the Gehlen Organisation, which morphed into the modern West German intelligence service, BND. Logically, Gehlen recruited his former Nazi compatriots to join his organisation. 

In the wake of this new constellation of forces, the Soviet Union also began recruiting numbers of ex-Nazis as informants in order to better help penetrate West German secret services, and did so very successfully. 

Old Nazis in post-war West Germany very soon reoccupied their old positions in society and the country became a firm Western ally in the new Cold War against the Soviet Union. Many Nazis, particularly the most notorious, fled to other countries, notably in the Middle East and Latin America. There, they began new lives as government advisers, gun-runners and businessmen, and continued to play active roles promoting anti-communism while enriching themselves. They were not averse to working for various paymasters, including MI6, the French Surete and even Mossad. They played key roles in advising Arab governments, helping train their secret services in torture methods, an influence that had an impact on political developments in the Middle East for years to come.

Another key role the Gehlen Organisation played on behalf of the CIA was in co-ordinating and establishing “stay-behind” guerilla networks in Eastern Europe. It also collaborated with Mossad to smuggle agents into Eastern Europe and assisted Jewish refugees wishing to flee Eastern Europe and reach Israel. It was also mired in corruption.

In his afterword, Orbach draws conclusions that contradict his own argument. After detailing the opportunistic, cynical collaboration with former Nazis by Western “democratic” nations, including Israel, he turns to the contemporary scene. Highlighting the Hamas attack on Israel and reiterating the now de-bunked tales of atrocities, he goes on to say, “As citizens of democracies, it’s imperative that we neither succumb to paralysing fear, nor descend into panic... it is vital for democracies of the world to face these turbulent times... ready to counter the spread of autocracy, fundamentalism and aggression. Unity of the free peoples of the globe is paramount.”

One has to wonder what he means by “free peoples” and “democracies” after spending the entire book giving historical proof of the way former Nazis were incorporated into the intelligence services of the very countries he is talking about.