Official secrets

About this book

An important new work based on newly declassified archives. As defeat loomed over the Third Reich in 1945, its officials tried to destroy the physical and documentary evidence about the Nazis' monstrous crimes. Great Britain already had some of the evidence, however, for its intelligence services had for years been intercepting, decoding, and analyzing German police radio messages and SS ones, too. Yet these important papers were sealed away as "Most Secret," "Never to Be Removed from This Office"--And they have only now reappeared. Integrating this new evidence with other sources, historian Richard Breitman reconsiders how Germany's leaders brought about the Holocaust--and when--and reassesses Britain's and America's suppression of information about the Nazi killings. His absorbing account of the consequences of keeping this information secret for so long, including the failure to punish many known war criminals, shows us the danger of continued government secrecy.--From publisher description.