In its broadest definition, computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) is any learning that involves two or more learners as well as one or more computers. CSCL research studies how collaboration contributes to learning and how computer technology can facilitate collaborative learning. This chapter discusses CSCL in terms of four conceptions: (1) collaborative knowledge building; (2) dialogic interaction; (3) intersubjective meaning making; (4) group cognition. CSCL research demonstrates that collaboration among students – when well-designed to scaffold student interactions – is more effective than teachers delivering information to students through a recorded lecture or a synchronous video meeting. This chapter reviews major themes in CSCL, including: empirical studies of cooperative learning in groups; theoretical explanations of learning as an emergent, collective phenomenon; conceptions of knowledge as interactions between learners, rather than as mental representations in student’s heads; and the use of interaction analysis to study moment-to-moment collaborations.

A pamphlet published in 1956 in communist East Germany included a remarkable section about the West German Justice Minister Joachim von Merkatz, who had been the general secretary of the Ibero-American Institute during the Second World War. The author wrote that as an employee of what was ostensibly only a cultural institution but in fact ‘a spying centre for Ribbentrop's Foreign Ministry’, Merkatz had been involved in the planning of an assassination of the British diplomat Arthur Yenken in 1944. After the assassination had proved successful, the director of the institute, General Wilhelm Faupel, allegedly reported: ‘We’ve finally laid low that accursed Yenken. He's dead, literally brought down to the ground by Dr Panhorst and Commandant Moreno and sent directly to hell.’

The pamphlet was part of an East German attempt to discredit the Federal Republic, beginning in the 1950s, by trying to find incriminating evidence of fascism in the pasts of West German government members and high-ranking officials. But before long, East German researchers discovered that Faupel's letter could not possibly be genuine. In fact, Faupel's quote, written in the sort of purple prose one might find in a crime novel, came from one of the letters Heinrich Jürges had forged and sent to Silvano Santander. Later editions of the pamphlet omitted any mention of Merkatz. Those in charge of East German propaganda didn't need forgeries to excoriate the Nazi pasts of the West German elite – the personnel continuities with the Third Reich were too manifest to require that. In May 1957, East Germany began a campaign focused on judges, many of whom had helped to enforce Nazi law and legally legitimize the Nazi regime. In the months that followed, East German authorities published a series of pamphlets containing information about the activities of more than a thousand West German judges and lawyers during the Third Reich. It wasn't long before the West German embassy in London reported back to Bonn that both British media and the British parliament were taking a keen interest in this topic. Gradually, the West German government and legal system decided that it could no longer afford to ignore the accusations.

At the same time, the so-called Ulm Einsatzgruppen Trial led a small group of judges and lawyers to believe that investigations into Nazi crimes should be centralized.

Even while the Nazi regime was still committing its serial crimes in Europe, the Argentinian government felt compelled to take a position on war criminals fleeing to their country. Since August 1944, with the end of hostilities in Europe becoming ever more foreseeable, there had been increasing reports about Nazi elites absconding in the American and British media. Argentina and Spain were considered the refugees’ most likely destinations. The Argentinian ambassador in Washington may have insisted that these reports were baseless, and his colleague in London may have given verbal assurances that Argentina wouldn't open its doors to war criminals, but the reports remained widespread, and the American government found them credible. The Americans were concerned about Nazi criminals possibly escaping legal punishment for their crimes. But they were even more worried that the fugitives might be able to take Nazi assets and use them to help National Socialism survive, perhaps eventually to establish a Fourth Reich.

The United States and Britain weren't the only countries concerned about fugitive war criminals. After 1945 the Argentinian opposition also repeatedly drew attention to the problem, and their contention that the fugitives were keeping Nazism alive with the help of the Argentinian government seemed to be confirmed by the conspicuous activity and connections with the neo-Nazi scene in Germany of Nazis who had emigrated to Argentina. Even after the Allies had transferred responsibility for criminal prosecutions to the Federal Republic of Germany in the mid-1950s and the trials of former Nazis had ground to a halt, to the approval of a majority of Germans, the debate about immigrant war criminals continued in Argentina.

Why were people discussing the flight of war criminals to South America even before the Second World War ended? Why did people view Argentina among all the countries of South America with particular suspicion? Why did this topic continue to resonate there until the mid-1950s? And what were the consequences of Argentina's special role for how the country dealt with fugitive criminals and how investigative authorities sought to bring them to justice.

On 26 January 1983, Bolivian Interior Minister Mario Roncal contacted the German embassy on an urgent matter: Klaus Barbie, the former director of Security Policy and Security Service in Nazi-occupied Lyon, had been arrested for not paying some debts. Six months previous, the Federal Republic of Germany had requested his extradition. Barbie could now be turned over to German authorities the following day.

But if Roncal expected that he would make West German diplomats happy with this announcement, he was sorely mistaken. The week before, West Germany's Bolivian embassy had received clear instructions from Bonn that ‘appropriate’ steps should be taken to ensure that Barbie was extradited not to the Federal Republic, but to France, where he had been sentenced to death in absentia after the Second World War. West German judicial officials were worried that their own country's laws and jurisprudence would not guarantee a conviction, and they were concerned about international criticism should Barbie be acquitted. So instead of discussing how Barbie could be transferred to West German custody the following day, the deputy director of the West German embassy declared that he didn't have the necessary personnel at his disposal and asked whether the fugitive could not be extradited to France. Roncal responded that according to Bolivian law people could only be extradited to their country's neighbours or to their home countries. The West German embassy was given until the end of the month to state whether Barbie could be transferred to them. If not, Bolivia would try Barbie for ‘suspected drug offences and organizing paramilitary units’.

In the preceding months, various newspapers had reported that Barbie, who had fought the French Résistance during the Second World War, had supported the 1980 putsch of General Luis García Meza with a paramilitary unit of his own. In addition, Barbie had allegedly been involved in drug dealing under the subsequent military dictatorship, which had lasted until 1982. But it had taken a long time for Bolivia to pursue the crimes that had been committed under the Meza regime. Moreover, Bolivian prosecutors lacked hard evidence to prove the accusations against Barbie. All they had were newspaper reports.

The hunt for Nazis was a truly transnational undertaking. It involved actors from Eastern and Western Europe, from North and South America, and not the least from Israel. Therefore, following the publication of the German original in 2013, I started to think about ways to make this story accessible to readers in as many countries as possible. I was encouraged by the reactions to my book. Newspapers and journals in Germany and abroad kept showing a keen interest in my findings. In 2013, the book also received the Opus Primum Award of the VolkswagenStiftung.

But as plausible as these reasons may seem, this translation never would have materialized without the generous support of Dr Nicolaus-Jürgen Weickart. When we spoke about my book during a conference dinner, he encou raged me with great emphasis to tackle the project of a translation. I am very grateful to him and his wife Dr Christiane Weickart for enabling the Jena Center of 20th-Century History to hire Jefferson Chase to translate the book. He turned out to be an extremely fortunate choice. As a highly accomplished translator of history books – he recently translated a much lauded biography of Adolf Hitler –, his version of The Hunt for Nazis is much more than ‘just’ a translation. I almost think that the English version turned out to be a more readable book than the German original. I am also thankful that Christoph Renner relieved me from the task to change the citations to Chicago style.

When I talked to Professor Dr Peter Romijn about the possibility to publish this book with a Dutch press, he immediately offered his support. Only a few months later, the Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies (Amsterdam) decided to include The Hunt for Nazis in its book series. I would like to thank Peter Romijn, Ingrid de Zwarte, and the editorial board for their support. I also thank Inge van der Bijl and Jaap Wagenaar from AUP for working with me on the book.

Since The Hunt for Nazis was published in German, historians have made significant progress in several relevant fields: in Germany's coping with the Nazi past, the globalization of Holocaust memory, Latin American dictatorships and processes of democratization, and human rights history.

In July 1989, Carlos Menem became the first Peronist president of Argentina since the 1976 putsch. His election caused concern among those who wanted to see Nazi criminals prosecuted. For eighteen months, extradition proceedings had been going on against Josef Schwammberger, the former commandant of the ghetto of Przemyśl, but in his campaign Menem had repeatedly invoked Perón, whose role in the flights of Nazi criminals had been widely reported by the international press amidst the efforts to apprehend Rauff and Mengele. If he continued what seemed to be the policies of the man after whom his party was named, what would that mean for how Argentina dealt with Nazi criminals? It was also unclear whether Jewish organizations, which had stridently advocated the extradition of Nazi criminals, would be able to get themselves heard by Menem, who came from a Syrian, Muslim family. In addition, people were also worried about Menem's stance toward the crimes committed by the Argentinian military junta between 1976 and 1983. Although as a member of the opposition he had criticized the amnesty laws of his predecessor Alfonsín, his first speech upon taking office made it clear that he wanted to draw a line under the recent past – a measure intended to win the loyalty of the military.1 But if crimes committed only ten to fifteen years ago were to be laid to rest, what would that mean for extradition proceedings concerning crimes that had been committed more than 40 years ago?

The memory of how numerous Nazi criminals and collaborators had succeeded in entering Argentina under Perón's presidency and the question of where the Peronist party stood vis-à-vis the past would dog Menem his entire time in office. Argentinian discussions about the Peronist past and global interest in the Holocaust, which reached its temporary zenith with the looted gold debate of the mid 1990s, would constantly influence one another. The coming to terms with Argentina's role as a place of refuge for European fugitives was constantly fuelled by new impulses. The Menem government sought to meet the 1990s demands that past injustices be redressed by taking a number of measures that went far beyond just support for the extradition of Nazi criminals.