"Communazis"

About this book

"This book, based on secret FBI files released for the first time to Alexander Stephan under the provisions of the Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, reveals the disturbing details and the surprising extent of government surveillance operations conducted against German exiles during World War II and the McCarthy era.". "Not only the FBI but also the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the House Un-American Activities Committee, and other agencies spied on the German emigres. Wiretaps were installed, mail was routinely opened and read, records of visitors were maintained. Searches - not always with legal warrants - were conducted, informants hired, and connections to exile writers established (Thomas Mann's daughter, Erika, volunteered her insights). Stephan sets these activities in historical contest and discusses the widespread xenophobia and paranoia that surrounded Nazism and Communism, which were frequently conflated in the public imagination. The author illuminates not only the relationship between German anti-Nazis and U.S. politics of the period but also between intellectuals and the modern surveillance state."--BOOK JACKET.