The most appalling crime in human affairs is certainly genocide. But perhaps even more shocking is the fact that those who organize and even those who commit mass murder are rarely punished for what they have done. Most, in fact, profit from their crimes. The Splendid Blond Beast is the latest investigation into this seamiest side of the twentieth century from the author of the award-winning Blowback, the groundbreaking study of the U.S. government's recruitment of former Nazis. Christopher Simpson's new research reveals that CIA chief Allen Dulles organized the escape of the highest-ranking SS killer to survive World War II, along with several of the officer's senior aides. Each of these Nazis had been personally responsible for the deportation of Jews to death camps and for mass executions of resistance fighters. Dulles also used U.S. government lists to help install former slave-labor specialists in key positions in postwar Germany. In addition to presenting this revelatory expose of government malfeasance, Simpson traces the roots of mass murder as an instrument of state power, from the Armenian genocide of World War I through Hitler's Holocaust. He shows how the existing structures of international law and commerce have at critical points, actually encouraged mass murder and the escape of war criminals. Corporate looting and profiteering at the expense of innocents are often built into genocide, Simpson contends, and influence which killers are most likely to escape justice and who is predisposed to help them. The Splendid Blond Beast is a disturbing and often profound book about the roots of evil in our time.
How did General Karl Wolff, one of the highest-ranking members of the Nazi Party’s Waffen-SS, who personally oversaw the deportation of three hundred thousand Jews to the Treblinka extermination camps, escape prosecution at the Nuremberg trials? As revealed in this groundbreaking investigation—culled from recently uncovered archival documents—the answer lies within the US government, which buried reports on the Final Solution and was complicit in the recruitment of Nazi war criminals, all to protect the world economy. Among the key players was CIA director Allen Dulles, who was instrumental in Wolff’s exoneration and responsible for installing former slave-labor specialists into positions of power in postwar Germany.
In this damning exposé of American government malfeasance, author Christopher Simpson traces the roots of mass murder as an instrument of financial gain and state power, from the Armenian genocide during World War I to Hitler’s Holocaust through the practice of genocide today. Detailing how the existing structures of international law and commerce have encouraged mass killings, corporate looting, and profiteering at the expense of innocent victims, The Splendid Blond Beast is a disturbing and profound book about the success of evil in our time.
The award-winning author of Blowback and Science of Coercion, Simpson also served as research director for Marcel Ophüls’s Oscar-winning documentary, Hôtel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie.
