The Splendid Blond Beast

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Citing newly uncovered archival sources, Simpson ( Blowback: America's Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effects on the Cold War ) first argues that Hitler emulated the Turkish government's 1915-1918 policy regarding the massacre of Armenians by offering economic incentives and other rewards to citizens willing to participate in the extermination of the Jews. He then examines the U.S. government's response to both genocidal campaigns. Of utmost interest here is the evidence he presents that President Eisenhower's secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, and Dulles's brother Allen, director of the CIA, deliberately stymied efforts to bring to justice many German bankers and industrialists involved in the Nazis' extermination-through-labor programs. The study leaves little doubt that many members of Germany's corporate elite not only were aware of the genocidal programs during the war but sponsored innumerable supplementary negelganger , or ``side camps,'' staffed by company employees. Simpson argues that while genocide is still widely practiced today, it is usually tolerated by those who benefit from it through the theft of land and natural resources. The cycle of genocide can be broken, he maintains, through relatively straightforward (though politically difficult) reforms of the international legal system. (Jan.)

Library Journal

In this intriguing combination of revisionist history and conspiracy theory that should interest many students of the Cold War, Simpson ( Blowback , Grove, 1988) asserts that genocide has been a common factor in the development of many Western nations, including the United States. He argues that genocide has recurred due to the willingness of monied classes to support amoral governments that work to further their commercial interests. By way of example, he cites both the Turkish slaughter of the Armenians during World War I and the Jewish Holocaust. He faults U.S. diplomats for their role in both tragedies, especially those who aided the escape of Nazi war criminals after World War II. Though well written, Simpson's work suffers from a lack of objectivity and a constant tone of accusation. Some conclusions regarding the origins of the Cold War are highly speculative and are likely to come under serious criticism by many historians. Recommended for libraries with large European history collections. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/1/92.-- Joseph W. Constance Jr., St. Anselm Coll. Lib., Manchester, N.H.

Booknews

Examines how the social mechanisms of genocide encourage tacit international cooperation in the escape from justice of those who perpetrated the crime. Looks at the social underpinnings and day-to- day dynamics of two mass crimes: the Armenian Genocide of 1915-18 and Hitler's Holocaust of the Jews, as well as the US government's response to those tragedies. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Joe Collins

When recent claims of "ethnic cleansing" in Bosnia-Herzegovina were brought to light, many world leaders compared this horror to the Holocaust during World War II. Simpson, author of a study on the origins of the cold war, here traces the history of twentieth-century mass killing. He begins by discussing the lingering effects of the World War I Turkish purge of the Armenian people, and how U.S., British, and French treatment of the kaiser and his lieutenants as war criminals impacted on subsequent policy toward the Nazis during and after the Holocaust. The book discusses how the Nazi government victimized the Jews first by stealing their businesses, and then systematically forced them into work camps and, ultimately, death camps. Despite the efforts of FDR staffers such as Herbert Pell to focus more attention on the tragedies of Auschwitz and Treblinka during the war, the U.S. government was forced to tread lightly, at least initially. Simpson even suggests that officials like former CIA chief Allen Dulles may have helped some possible war criminals to escape the Nuremburg trials, perhaps in the effort to prevent the collapse of the European economy and thus the laying open of the continent to Soviet attack. "The Splendid Blond Beast" is an eye-opening look at the tightrope that is international diplomacy, where one false move can cost millions of lives and leave many guilty parties unpunished.

Kirkus Reviews

A disturbing report on how US bankers, lawyers, and diplomats responded to the Armenian massacres of WW I and the Holocaust. Simpson (Blowback, 1988) has double expertise for this comparative study, since he's a member of the national advisory board of the Armenian Genocide Archive and also served as research director for Marcel Ophuls's documentary of Klaus Barbie, Hotel Terminus. During WW I, Simpson tells us, America and its European allies saw the recently drafted Hague and Geneva Conventions fail when the Turkish government killed one million Armenians—and when, at the Versailles peace conference, the victors allowed Turkey to escape punishment in hope of obtaining Middle Eastern oil. Hitler cited the Armenian genocide as the prototype of his own larger, more systematically organized crimes—although Simpson, by using newly released documents, suggests that the Nazis could not have conducted their hideous slaughter without Western bungling: in one case, through American concerns such as Ford Motor Co. and John Foster Dulles's Sullivan and Cromwell law firm, whose European trading partners looted Jewish businesses in the Nazi "Aryanization" program; and, in another case, through State Department bureaucrats who buried intelligence reports on the Final Solution. Further, Simpson shows how prominent Nazis, such as oil chief Karl Blessing and SS general Karl Wolff, escaped judgment at Nuremberg with the assistance of these State Department functionaries and of John Foster Dulles's brother Allen (then an OSS agent who helped clear German businessmen). The motive: to aid Nazi industrialists who had spied for the US during the war, or who might help rebuild Germany as ananti-Communist bulwark in Europe. Except for its simplistic conclusion (that the lax US war- crimes posture contributed to the souring of American-Soviet relations): revelatory and shocking investigative scholarship of a high order.