Abstract
Everyone remembers Josef Mengele, the infamous “Angel of Death,” who as chief SS physician presided over the murder of hundreds of thousands of inmates at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. But did you ever wonder what happened to Karl Clauberg, another Auschwitz doctor who coordinated the sterilization of Jewish, Roma and Sinti, and other female prisoners? Or Josef Kramer, the “Beast of Belsen,” who as the last commandant of Bergen-Belsen oversaw the incarceration of the family of Anne Frank and allowed the camp to deteriorate to the point that cannibalism occurred? Or Franz Stangl, a “euthanasia specialist” who managed Sobibor, built the gas chambers at Treblinka, and then oversaw the latter camp? Nazis After Hitler answers these questions and poses new ones. The questions Donald McKale answers are the biographical ones; the questions he poses are institutional, legal, and policy-related. Why weren’t more of these men prosecuted? What political hurdles kept the Allies from pursuing lower level Nazis? Why was Israel at first disinterested in capturing Adolf Eichmann and bringing him to justice? What role did the onset of the Cold War play as opposed to other factors? Such questions still linger and will provide fodder for further research.