Central Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects

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Part of Günter Grass ' prisoner of war file with the note of the review with the CROWCASS list in the left margin

The Central Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects ( CROWCASS ) was a registry of fugitives suspected of having committed war crimes, kept by the Western Allies in the early post-war years of World War II . CROWCASS was used to match names of known suspects with the names of the approximately eight million prisoners of war held by the Allies at the end of the war.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower , who at the time was supreme command of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) and thus the Court of Inquiry for international cooperation in the prosecution of war criminals in Europe, initiated the admission in May 1945 this program.

CROWCASS, also based at SHAEF, was initially based in Paris . Up to 380 civilian employees, who were subordinate to around 40 Allied officers, were busy collecting, sorting and passing on data that arose as part of the War Crimes Program . Due to the large amount of data to be recorded, from the end of 1945 the focus of CROWCASS was placed on the preparation of lists relating to the search and arrest of war criminals. After SHAEF was dissolved in mid-July 1945, the CROWCASS was subordinated to the four-power administration, and with it the seat in Berlin . German citizens now acted as civil employees of the CROWCASS. The Soviet Union did not in fact take part in CROWCASS.

CROWCASS made it possible to arrest and convict several thousand people, including people who had committed crimes in Buchenwald , Mauthausen and Dachau . In addition to the prosecution of potential war criminals, the extensive directory was also used to recruit former Nazis as agents for the American secret service or as informants. Leon G. Turrou , the head of the program, acted as a contact person for the American secret service. Entries from people who you wanted to let work for you, such as the experts in political warfare Hans-Heinrich Herwarth von Bittenfeld or Reinhard Gehlen , should not appear in the directory and were therefore deleted without further ado.

The CROWCASS program had produced about 130,000 detention reports of investigators from at least twelve countries by the time it ended in mid-1948. Finally, 40 volumes with lists of names of wanted or arrested war criminals were published.

A facsimile of the consolidated list was published in 2005 by Naval & Military Press.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Robert Sigel: In the interests of justice. The Dachau war crimes trials 1945-48. , Frankfurt am Main 1992, pp. 20f.
  2. ^ The Central Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects - Consolidated Wanted List (1947) , Uckfield 2005

literature

  • Christopher Simpson: Blowback - The first full account of America's recruitment of nazis, and its disastrous effect on our domestic and foreign policy . Collier Books, New York 1989, ISBN 0-02-044995-X , pp. 66-79
  • Robert Sigel: In the interests of justice. The Dachau war crimes trials 1945-48. Campus-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1992, ISBN 3-593-34641-9 .
  • The Central Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects - Consolidated Wanted List (1947) , The Naval & Military Press, Uckfield 2005