John McCloy

A very cloying guy...

John McCloy was an unrepentant right-winger of the most reprehensible kind. Here are just some of his life's highlights:

1. Friend of world-class A-of-H Adolf Hitler, with whom he attended the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.
   
2. Fought hard—and succeeded—to get early-release for convicted Nazi mass-murderers he had befriended at Nuremberg trials.
   
• Especially loved Einsatzgruppe commanders who shot hundreds of thousands of Jews and led mobile killing squads.
  
3. Fought hard—and succeeded—to prevent U.S. from bombing the railroad tracks leading to Auschwitz during WWII. Why? Here's some simple math to think about:
   
• Auschwitz was a huge purchaser of Zyklon B, the poison gas used to slaughter people in its gas chambers.
  
• Zyklon B was manufactured by I.G. Farben.
  
• I.G. Farben retained the superlative legal counsel of guess who? You got it—Jack McCloy!
  
4. Pals with Nazi-loving millionaire Henry Ford (AOH).
   

Benjamin Ferencz, Chief Prosecutor for the Einsatzgruppen Trial, wrote a letter to McCloy on December 17, 1951 after McCloy, the U.S. High Commissioner in Germany, freed a bunch of Nazi murderers after only 6 years in prison (McCloy later lied and said he was not responsible for this):

I notice in this morning's paper that a group of our Landsberg friends have been given their freedom as a Christmas present. These include... 3 Einsatzgruppen boys, Schubert, Jost and Nosske.

... You may recall that the deadline for cleaning up Simferopol was Christmas 1941 and that Schubert managed to kill all the Jews by then. So for Christmas 10 years later he goes Scot free. Who says there is no Santa Klaus?

Nosske was the one whom the other defendants called "the biggest bloodhound of all"... Now Nosske is free to join former General Jost whose command ordered a 4th gas van when the 3 in operation executing women and children were insufficient to do the job properly.

Noel, Noel, what the hell.*

General Telford Taylor, who had been Chief Counsel for the Prosecution at the Nuremberg, wrote that the commutation of the sentences were "a blow to the principles of international law and concepts of humanity for which we fought the war."*

*Bloxham, Donald. Genocide on Trial: War Crimes Trials and the Formation of Holocaust History and Memory. Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, 2001 (162).