"Smashing the Nazis" may be an overstatement, as far as US roles in WW2 and post-war reconstruction of ex-axis powers were concerned:
***** The fascist roots of Germany's post-war Criminal Police Office
By Jörg Victor 8 December 2001
The book Blind in the right eye-The fascist roots of the BKA * examines the post-war establishment of Germany's Bundeskriminalamt (BKA, Federal Criminal Police Office) and its roots within the fascist Third Reich. (The BKA is the equivalent of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation). The author, Dieter Schenk, who himself worked for nine years in the BKA, refutes the view that the organisation is basically non-political and free from any sort of responsibility for crimes committed during the Nazi regime: "In 1959 the leadership of the BKA consisted of 47 officials-only two of whom were not involved in the activities of the fascists"....
Schenk proves that those officials responsible for creating the BKA after the war had willingly served the Nazis' regime of terror. Meticulously researching their biographies, he shows how these police officers were involved in war crimes. The book is full of such biographies, unmasking officials who were previously regarded to have been merely "fellow travellers".
The facts presented not only prove this continuity in regard to personnel. The "founders" of the BKA, Paul Dickopf and Rolf Holl, were intimately involved in the machinery of the Third Reich as a result of their deeply held convictions. After the war, they also brought with them their views regarding organisational issues and who should be treated as potential enemies. With the support of political and legal institutions riddled with former Nazis, and together with the assistance of the American secret service, they managed to realise most of their concepts regarding the organisation of the police force, under the cover of the post-war German constitution. The BKA rapidly became a melting pot for those who had participated in Nazi crimes. With the protection of the newly created domestic police authority, they passed on their anti-democratic convictions to the next generation....
<http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/dec2001/bka-d08.shtml> *****
***** The Cultural Cold War The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters By FRANCES STONOR SAUNDERS The New Press
...Screening the entire German population for even the faintest trace of `Nazism and militarism' was a deadly, bureaucratic task - and often frustrating. Whilst a janitor could be blacklisted for having swept the corridors of the Reichs Chancellery, many of Hitler's industrialists, scientists, administrators, and even high-ranking officers, were being quietly reinstated by the allied powers in a desperate effort to keep Germany from collapsing....
<http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/saunders-cold.html> ***** -- Yoshie
* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Anti-War Activist Resources: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osu.edu/students/CJP/>