Six months after Allied Forces liberated German concentration camps, a military tribunal formed at Nuremberg to prosecute Nazi war criminals. Some of the most dangerous were brought to justice – but not all. Documentary Conspiracy? reveals how over 4,000 former Nazis went to work for the U.S. government, without the public’s knowledge, to help fight the Soviet Union. Reinhard Gehlen, an intelligence officer for Hitler’s General Staff, was tapped to head the U.S. intelligence program in West Germany to spy on the Russians. At the same time, former Nazi scientists and engineers were welcomed onto American soil. But the extent of these operations is only now becoming clear: In 1998, a law was passed mandating declassification of documents concerning recruitment of former Nazis. CIA AND THE NAZIS examines these files to see how far the U.S. went in recruiting its former enemy to fight its new one.
The truth is, thousands of former Nazis, some of whom committed atrocities, went to work for the United States government without the public’s knowledge. During the war, their crimes ranged from overseeing slave labor camps to sending orphans to their deaths. After the war, they were on the US payroll either as scientists in America or as intelligence agents in Europe.