Existing nazi government and party documents do not reveal the full intentions and crimes of Nazi officials. Some incriminating matters were never put in writing, while others were camouflaged with euphemisms or vague allusions. Some highly sensitive documents were lost or intentionally destroyed as Germany's military fortunes deteriorated.

A number of Nazi secrets, however, leaked out at the end of the war when Nazi officials talked. In other cases, Allied intercepting and decoding operations picked up German radio messages. This chapter contains one case study using each type of intelligence. These two new cases, the result of material declassified under the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act, help to reveal how far the Nazis went to commit murder and to conceal their crimes.

The “Selection” of Elite Czech Children

Nazi efforts to Germanize Czech territory involved more than bringing German settlers into the Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia or seizing Czech assets. The SS was prepared to destroy the Czech nation. The main lines of Nazi policy were laid out in German documents long since declassified, but one newly declassified Allied interrogation of an SS officer stationed in Prague yields striking and ghastly details of a previously unknown plan to murder talented Czech children.

In September 1940, Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), wrote a memo for the files about the need to conduct a racial census in the Protectorate. Like his boss, Reichsföhrer SS Heinrich Himmler, Heydrich was convinced that a certain percentage of the Czech population was of Germanic stock and therefore valuable–suitable for Germanization, absorption into the German people.