In Conquest and Redemption, Gregg J. Rickman explains how the Nazis stole the possessions of their Jewish victims and obtained the cooperation of institutions across Europe in these crimes of convenience. He also describes how those institutions are being brought to justice, sixty years later, for their retention of their ill-gotten gains.Rickman not only explains how the robbery was accomplished, tracked, stalled, and then finally reversed, but also clearly shows the ways in which robbery was inextricably connected to the murder of the Jews. The Nazis took everything from Jews--their families, their possessions, and even their names. As with the murder of Jews, the Nazis' robbery was an organized, institutionalized effort. Jews were isolated, robbed, and left homeless, regarded as parasites in the Nazis' eyes, and thus fair game. In short, the organized robbery of the Jews facilitated their slaughter.How did the German people come to believe that it was permissible to isolate, outlaw, rob, and murder Jews? A partial explanation can be found in the Nazis' creation of a virtual religion of German nationalism and homogeneity that delegitimized Jews as a people and as individuals. This belief system was expressed through a complex structure of religious rules, practices, and institutions. While Nazi ideology was the guiding principle, how that ideology was formed and how it was applied is important to understand if one is to fully grasp the Holocaust.Rickman painstakingly describes the structural composition and motivation for the plundering of Jewish assets. The Holocaust will always remain a memory of unequalled pain and suffering, but, as Rickman shows, the return of stolen goods to their survivors is a partial victory for the long aggrieved. Conquest and Redemption will be of interest to students and scholars in the history of the Holocaust and its aftermath.

In the waning days and immediate aftermath of World War II, Nazi diplomats and spies based in Spain decided to stay rather than return to a defeated Germany. The decidedly pro-German dictatorship of General Francisco Franco gave them refuge and welcomed other officials and agents from the Third Reich who had escaped and made their way to Iberia. Amid fears of a revival of the Third Reich, Allied intelligence and diplomatic officers developed a repatriation program across Europe to return these individuals to Germany, where occupation authorities could further investigate them. Yet due to Spain's longstanding ideological alliance with Hitler, German infiltration of the Spanish economy and society was extensive, and the Allies could count on minimal Spanish cooperation in this effort. In Hunting Nazis in Franco's Spain, David Messenger deftly traces the development and execution of the Allied repatriation scheme, providing an analysis of Allied, Spanish, and German expatriate responses. Messenger shows that by April 1946, British and American embassy staff in Madrid had compiled a census of the roughly 10,000 Germans then residing in Spain and had drawn up three lists of 1,677 men and women targeted for repatriation to occupied Germany. While the Spanish government did round up and turn over some Germans to the Allies, many of them were intentionally overlooked in the process. By mid-1947, Franco's regime had forced only 265 people to leave Spain; most Germans managed to evade repatriation by moving from Spain to Argentina or by solidifying their ties to the Franco regime and Span-ish life. By 1948, the program was effectively over. Drawing on records in American, British, and Spanish archives, this first book-length study in English of the repatriation program tells the story of this dramatic chapter in the history of post--World War II Europe.