Preparations for the Nuremberg trial: The O.S.S., Charles Dwork, and the Holocaust

Holocaust and Genocide Studies

Volumn 12, Issue 2, 1998, Pages 257-281

  Aronson, Shlomo ^a  

^a HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM   (Israel)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33645408253     PISSN: 87566583     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/hgs/12.2.257     Document Type: Article

References (28)

1. The only published information that I could find on Dr. Dwork was an article by Murray Frank entitled, "Preparing the Jewish Case Against Germany," Criterion (Pittsburgh, August 17, 1945)
2. Frank described Dwork as "a quite amiable, scholarly young Jew . . . the nearest to a 'Government Expert on Jewish Affairs' Washington has, although he may not like to be termed as such." The author continued: "Dwork is in charge of research in assembling evidence of the crimes against Jews in connection with the forthcoming war crimes trials in Europe." According to Shirley Dwork, when drafted to the U.S. Army her husband was first assigned to a weather station, got bored, and finally was transferred to OSS. For recent scholarly discussion of the IMT, see the following by Michael R. Marrus: "The Holocaust at Nuremberg," Yad Vashem Studies, forthcoming
3. "The Prelude to the Nuremberg Trial," Dimensions, Vol. 10, #1, pp. 23-28
4. "The Nuremberg Trials Fifty Years After," The American Scholar 66 (Autumn 1997), pp. 563-70
5. The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial, 1945-46: A Documentary History (Boston, 1997)
6. Morris D. Forkosch, "Law, Due Process," Dictionary of the History of Ideas, Studies in Selected Pivotal Ideas, Vol. III (New York, 1973)
7. For the British and American views of the trials since 1943, see Bradley F. Smith, The American Road to Nuremberg: The Documentary Record, 1944-1945 (Stanford, 1982)
8. Also see the sketchy but balanced discussion of British and early American views of the war crimes trials in, Telford Taylor, The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials: A Personal Memoir (New York, 1992)
9. Smith, The American Road to Nuremberg, Document 48: The Argument for Summary Process against Hitler and Co., pp. 155-58
10. Regarding this matter, see Stalin's proposal at the Teheran Conference to shoot some "fifty thousand" German "officers and technicians," upon whom depended "all the power of Hitler's vast armies," in Winston Churchill, The Second World War, Vol. 5, Hebrew translation, (Tel Aviv, 1960) p. 308, as well as Churchill's angry reaction
11. Smith, The American Road to Nuremberg, Document 45: Memorandum to Judge Rosenman from Lord Simon (Lord Chancellor), April 6, 1945, pp. 149-52
12. Simon to Rosenman, in Smith, The American Road to Nuremberg, p. 150
13. On the Allied declaration on the Holocaust made on December 17, 1942, see Martin Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies [Hebrew translation] (Tel Aviv, 1981), pp. 95-99
14. For U.S. vacillations on this matter, see David S. Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews (New York, 1984), pp. 72-5
15. Bernard Wasserstein, Britain and the Jews of Europe, 1939-1945 (London, 1979)
16. Ronald W. Zweig, Britain and Palestine During the Second World War (Woodbridge, 1986)
17. Tony Kushner, The Persistence of Prejudice, and The Holocaust and the Liberal Imagination: A Social and Cultural History (Oxford, 1994)
18. Brian Cheyette, Constructions of 'the Jew' in English Literature and Society, 1875-1945 (Cambridge, 1993). After the publication of Auschwitz and the Allies, the BBC in 1987 broadcast a documentary of the same title, in which the former War Cabinet secretary (later minister without portfolio) Lord Hankey claimed that "were it not for the Middle East [and British sensitivity to Arab pressure], it could be that we would have lost the war." Kushner's book incorporates contemporary quotations even more blunt than these; see n. 14.'
19. Regarding influential British personalities' prewar fears that they were being dragged into a "Jewish war," see Kushner, The Persistence of Prejudice, p. 12
20. Bernays in fact attached to his "conspiracy" plan the American Jewish Conference Statement of August 25, 1944, as well as a message by War Refugee Board Director John Pehle to Acting Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius, Jr. (August 28, 1944), among other items. See, Smith, notes to Document 16, p. 225
21. Constitution of the United States, Article 1, Paragraphs 9, 2, and Section 10, 1. Quoted in, Gerhard L. Weinberg, A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II (New York, 1994), pp. 835
22. Whitney R. Harris, Tyranny on Trial: The Evidence at Nuremberg (Dallas, 1954), p. 8ff. Harris was Jackson's aid at the IMT
23. Dr. Abraham Duker, in charge of the Polish Desk at OSS FNB during the war years, to the author (February 2, 1990): "When Neumann passed me, I who looked like a 'little Jew' even in my U.S. Army uniform, and someone known to be strongly connected to the Jewish cause, h would whisper loudly: "'And how about your Jews today?' as he trilled his S like the hiss of a snake." See Robinson's discussion of Arendt's views thereof in And the Crooked Shall Be Made Straight [Hebrew translation], (Jerusalem, 1965), pp. 60-85
24. On the development of Neumann's own "Spearhead Theory" as a leading member of OSS R&A, see, Barry M. Katz, "The Criticism of Arms: The Frankfurt School Goes to War," Journal of Modern History 59, No. 3 (September 1987), pp. 439-78
25. "Amerikanische Geheimdienstanalysen des Nationalsozialistischen Deutschlands," Tel-Aviver Jahrbuch für Deutsche Geschichte (1994), pp. 325-44
26. Walter Laqueur and Richard Breitman, Breaking the Silence (New York, 1986). This is the first disclosure of Schulte as the individual behind this information. It also examines his background and motivations
27. For Brand's mission, see Richard Breitman and Shlomo Aronson, "The End of the 'Final Solution'? Nazi Plans to Ransom Jews in 1944," Central European History 25:2 (1993), pp. 177-203
28. Harris, Tyranny on Trial, chapter 24: "The Final Solution," under the general heading: "Crimes Against Humanity," pp. 281-315. These amount to thirty-four out of 568 pages of text