Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- PREFACE
- Map 1
- Map 2
- U.S. INTELLIGENCE AND THE NAZIS
- INTRODUCTION
- SECTION ONE ESPIONAGE AND GENOCIDE
- 1 OSS Knowledge of the Holocaust
- 2 Other Responses to the Holocaust
- 3 Case Studies of Genocide
- 4 Nazi Espionage: The Abwehr and SD Foreign Intelligence
- 5 Follow the Money
- 6 The Gestapo
- SECTION TWO COLLABORATION AND COLLABORATORS
- SECTION THREE POSTWAR INTELLIGENCE USE OF WAR CRIMINALS
- CONCLUSION
- APPENDIX: Western Communications Intelligence Systems and the Holocaust
- TERMS AND ACRONYMS
- SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
- RECORD GROUPS CITED
- CONTRIBUTORS
- INDEX
5 - Follow the Money
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 February 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- PREFACE
- Map 1
- Map 2
- U.S. INTELLIGENCE AND THE NAZIS
- INTRODUCTION
- SECTION ONE ESPIONAGE AND GENOCIDE
- 1 OSS Knowledge of the Holocaust
- 2 Other Responses to the Holocaust
- 3 Case Studies of Genocide
- 4 Nazi Espionage: The Abwehr and SD Foreign Intelligence
- 5 Follow the Money
- 6 The Gestapo
- SECTION TWO COLLABORATION AND COLLABORATORS
- SECTION THREE POSTWAR INTELLIGENCE USE OF WAR CRIMINALS
- CONCLUSION
- APPENDIX: Western Communications Intelligence Systems and the Holocaust
- TERMS AND ACRONYMS
- SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
- RECORD GROUPS CITED
- CONTRIBUTORS
- INDEX
Summary
In their search to uncover key relationships in the Watergate affair, journalists Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward were advised to “follow the money.” Recently declassified interrogations of individuals who took part in SD financial manipulations offer some new evidence about how SD Foreign Intelligence acquired and spent funds. These interrogations reveal interesting intelligence contacts, including some through which particular individuals found ways to exploit the Holocaust. In this case we need not only to follow the money, but also to inspect it.
Operation Bernhard
In postwar interrogations, Walter Schellenberg distanced himself from a substantial RSHA operation to counterfeit and distribute British pounds and, to a lesser extent, American dollars. It was RSHA chief Ernst Kaltenbrunner's work, not his own, he claimed, and he had little recollection of the personnel involved. Code named “Operation Bernhard,” the counterfeiting operation included a group of Jewish inmates at Sachsenhausen concentration camp coerced into forgery. Journalistic accounts in the last half-century, written partly on the basis of interviews or recollections and partly from declassified documents, have since revealed many details of this program. Recently declassified documents make it possible to fill in gaps, eliminate some errors or distortions, and trace the activities of some key Nazi personnel.
According to one new account, the German counterfeiting machinery was set into motion in 1940, when Dr. Alfred Langer of the RSHA forgery shop learned that his unit was assigned to produce counterfeit British currency. He was told his shop would have no trouble getting needed raw materials, allegedly because the order for the scheme came from Hitler himself.
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- U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis , pp. 121 - 136Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005