On VE Day, America Must Reckon With Its Post-War Embrace of Nazis

President Donald Trump proclaimed Thursday “Victory Day” to honor the 80th anniversary of the Allies’ World War II victory over Germany’s Nazis and Italy’s fascists, bringing more attention at home to the commemoration known as VE Day in Europe. Recently, he posted on social media that the U.S. deserves more recognition for prevailing over the forces of evil in the Second World War.

Celebrating the Greatest Generation’s victory hearkens back to a simpler, black-and-white era in which the good guys went home to parades while the bad guys rotted in prison or slunk away to wherever it is that washed-up villains go.

Unfortunately, that’s a myth. Almost as soon as World War II ended, the U.S. and Canada all-too-eagerly embraced former Nazis who were useful to our scientific, military or security apparatus, or who had supposedly been rehabilitated. Businessmen, butchers and scientists – we welcomed them all.

In other words, the penalty for those who were complicit in killing more than over 407,000 American GIs – not to mention the Holocaust of 6 million Jews and the slaughter of millions of others across Europe, including Soviet prisoners of war, non-Jewish Poles, Roma people, Serbs, the disabled and political opponents – turned out to be a slap on the wrist and a job offer.

Americans and Canadians today may be shocked to hear it, but in the aftermath of the Second World War, one’s work for Hitler was in some cases a marketable asset that transformed ex-Nazis from pariahs into partners. Such was the case with aerospace engineer Wernher von Braun, a seminal figure in NASA; engineer and industrial titan Alfried von Krupp; and Nazi torturer Klaus Barbie, known as The Butcher of Lyon.