Nearly sixty years after World War II, the American public and media continue to investigate parts of its legacy—troubling questions of conscience and history. Who knew what about the Holocaust, and when? Was it possible for the Allies to rescue some Jews from the Holocaust, or was that notion a myth, as one scholar recently put it? Some U.S. businesses collaborated with the Nazi state before and during World War II. What was the extent of these activities, and what was the result? What happened after the war to those who had perpetrated wartime atrocities?

In the 1980s Josef Mengele, whose name has become a symbol of the evil of Auschwitz, became the object of an international manhunt, even though, as it turned out, he had died in Brazil shortly before then. Like the Mengele case, the French trial of Klaus Barbie, the “Butcher of Lyon,” raised questions long after the war about how some Nazi war criminals managed to escape postwar justice. U.S. Army intelligence had used and protected Barbie, a known Nazi war criminal, in return for assistance in the Cold War. Under what circumstances were other Nazi war criminals used directly or indirectly by U.S. intelligence agencies after the war?

All these questions remain pertinent for various reasons—not just for those who are fixated with the past. Genocide and “ethnic cleansing” are still part of human existence. In the current struggle against terrorism, the notion of recruiting intelligence assets from among previous foes remains a powerful urge.