Nazis after Hitler: How Perpetrators of the Holocaust Cheated Justice and Truth

This deeply researched and informative book traces the biographies of thirty "typical" perpetrators of the Holocaust―some well known, some obscure―who survived World War II. Donald M. McKale reveals the shocking reality that the perpetrators were only rarely, if ever, tried or punished for their crimes, and nearly all alleged their innocence in Germany's extermination of nearly six million European Jews during the war. He highlights the bitter contrasts between the comfortable postwar lives of many war criminals and the enduring suffering of their victims.

The author shows how immediately after the war's end in 1945, Hitler's minions, whether the few placed on trial or the many living in freedom, carried on what amounted to a massive postwar ideological campaign against Jews. To be sure, the perpetrators didn't challenge the fact that the Holocaust happened. But in the face of exhaustive evidence showing their culpability, nearly all declared they had done nothing wrong, they had not known about the Jewish persecution until the war's end, and they had little or no responsibility or guilt for what had happened. In making these and other claims denying their involvement in the Holocaust, they defended the Nazi atrocities and anti-Semitism. Nearly every fabrication of these war criminals found its way into the mythology of postwar Holocaust deniers, who have used them, in one form or another, to buttress the deniers' biggest lie―that the Holocaust did not happen. The perpetrators, therefore, helped advance Holocaust denial without having denied the Holocaust happened.

Written in a compelling narrative style, Nazis after Hitler is the first to provide an overview of the lives of Nazis who survived the war, the vast majority of whom escaped justice. McKale provides a unique and accessible synthesis of the extensive research on the Holocaust and Nazi war criminals that will be invaluable for all readers interested in World War II.

Donald M. McKale is Class of 1941 Memorial Professor and Professor Emeritus of History at Clemson University, where he taught from 1979 until his retirement in 2008. He received his Ph.D. from Kent State University in 1970 and taught during the 1970s at what is now Georgia College & State University. He spent 1975–1976 teaching at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. While at GC&SU and Clemson University, he earned both institutions’ highest faculty awards for his teaching, research, and service to school and profession. In 1988 he received a titled professorship, named in honor of the fifty-seven members of Clemson University’s Class of 1941 who died in World War II.

McKale’s research has ranged widely, exploring the history of subjects such as World War I, the Nazi party and German diplomacy, the Holocaust and World War II, and the postwar myth that Adolf Hitler survived the war and defeat of his Nazi regime. The most recent of his seven books, Hitler’s Shadow War: The Holocaust and World War II, was a 2003 main selection of the History Book Club. His War by Revolution: Germany and Great Britain in the Middle East in the Era of World War I (1998) received the Charles Smith Book Award from the European section of the Southern Historical Association. During his career, McKale received research grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and German Academic Exchange Service. Several film and television companies in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Europe have employed him as a consultant. He lives in Clemson, South Carolina, with his wife, Janna.