The Splendid Blond Beast: Money, Law, and Genocide in the Twentieth Century

Citing newly uncovered archival sources, Simpson ( Blowback: America's Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effects on the Cold War ) first argues that Hitler emulated the Turkish government's 1915-1918 policy regarding the massacre of Armenians by offering economic incentives and other rewards to citizens willing to participate in the extermination of the Jews. He then examines the U.S. government's response to both genocidal campaigns. Of utmost interest here is the evidence he presents that President Eisenhower's secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, and Dulles's brother Allen, director of the CIA, deliberately stymied efforts to bring to justice many German bankers and industrialists involved in the Nazis' extermination-through-labor programs. The study leaves little doubt that many members of Germany's corporate elite not only were aware of the genocidal programs during the war but sponsored innumerable supplementary negelganger , or ``side camps,'' staffed by company employees. Simpson argues that while genocide is still widely practiced today, it is usually tolerated by those who benefit from it through the theft of land and natural resources. The cycle of genocide can be broken, he maintains, through relatively straightforward (though politically difficult) reforms of the international legal system. (Jan.)