Blind Eye to Murder Britain, America and the Purging of Nazi Germany--a Pledge Betrayed

In 1942, when news of the Nazi genocide reached the West, the leaders of the anti-Hitler coalition pledged to punish all those responsible for war crimes. Their resoluteness was confirmed by the Moscow declaration of December 1942 and a number of other pronouncements. Despite this decision, the compilation of a list of Nazi criminals, and the arrests of some leading personalities after the war, neither the U.S. nor Britain succeeded in punishing those guilty of the Holocaust and carrying out the denazification of Germany. Although the Nuremberg Trials, and some lesser ones, were conducted in the British and American occupation zones, many criminals not only went unpunished but were even reinstated in decision-making positions in West Germany, and many others were allowed into Britain and the U.S. Guided by political and economic considerations rather than by justice, Britain, the USA, and other Western nations renounced their pledge and granted shelter to Nazi criminals and their accomplices. Britain and other countries began to revise their policy toward former Nazi criminals only in the late 1980s-90s.