Was Kaufman OSS?

[Stubble]

I was doing some research and I found an anonymous comment tucked away in a place back behind some stuff and out of the way that I will reproduce here;

Spoiler

removed by Stubble for reasons

—Anon

Now, I'm wondering about veracity. I will look in to this later but didn't want it to slip my mind so I park it here to share it with everyone and to get impressions from members.

[Archie]

According to his Wikipedia page he was one of the "Ritchie Boys."

He enlisted in the US Army in New Mexico on April 24, 1942.[17] During this time he was also placed at Camp Ritchie because of his linguistic abilities, thus making him one of many Ritchie Boys. His three brothers also served.

It's possible he could have been in the OSS as well. And then there's the question of when he would have joined.

If he was OSS, I don't think he was a very effective propagandist. Like with the Morgenthau plan how people remarked that it was like psychological warfare in reverse. That is to say that usually the goal of psychological warfare is to undermine the enemy's will to fight. But stuff like Kaufman and Morgenthau had the opposite effect, bolstering German resolve. Which is exactly why Goebbels featured both of these guys extensively in his own propaganda.

[Stubble]

Archie, this may have been intentional, so that the Germans would fight to the bitter end, so that their murder wholesale could carry on.

Strengthen enemy resolve and there by protract the killing.

How many peace offers did the allies shit on exactly?

[Wetzelrad]

Since a person named "Kaufman, Theodore N." is listed under "Records of the Office of Strategic Services 1919 – 2002" and "Personnel Files of the Office of Strategic Services 1942 – ca. 1962", it seems quite certain.
https://catalog.archives.gov/id/203221389

EDIT: He also appears in this 522-page spreadsheet of OSS personnel, which Denierbud has sometimes used in his videos.
https://www.archives.gov/files/iwg/decl ... tabase.pdf

Kaufman being ineffective as a propagandist as of 1941 may well be true, but it wasn't for a lack of trying, and we don't know what else he worked on during the war. If nothing else, it tells us that the OSS recruited someone who had genocidal ambitions.

[Stubble]

Is this information 'new', or 'old hat'? I had never heard this before. I'm still processing it.

[pilgrimofdark]

It might not be verified enough yet to be old or new information.

Someone has to get a copy of the record and compare it to other information known about the author of the book.

Same birth date? Same birth location? Same middle name? Same address/city? What role did this Theodore N. Kaufman play in the OSS?

Otherwise, it's just a name that partially overlaps with another name. It could be the same person, or different.

National Archives - How to Obtain Copies of Records

Even if it's not the same person, that info is also useful. If it's confirmed to be the same person, it should be written up more.

Michael Salter wrote a couple books about OSS involvement in the Nuremberg investigations/trials and Holocaust-related topics.

[Archie]

Since a person named "Kaufman, Theodore N." is listed under "Records of the Office of Strategic Services 1919 – 2002" and "Personnel Files of the Office of Strategic Services 1942 – ca. 1962", it seems quite certain.
https://catalog.archives.gov/id/203221389

EDIT: He also appears in this 522-page spreadsheet of OSS personnel, which Denierbud has sometimes used in his videos.
https://www.archives.gov/files/iwg/decl ... tabase.pdf

Kaufman being ineffective as a propagandist as of 1941 may well be true, but it wasn't for a lack of trying, and we don't know what else he worked on during the war. If nothing else, it tells us that the OSS recruited someone who had genocidal ambitions.

I would guess it was a language thing. Theodore was born in the US but his parents were immigrants from Germany. German speakers were in very high demand for roles in postwar Germany. A disproportionate number of German speakers the US had available were Jews who had left Germany. And then on top of that you have Jews being very eager to be involved with the war-crimes, denazification, etc.

[Archie]

It might not be verified enough yet to be old or new information.

Someone has to get a copy of the record and compare it to other information known about the author of the book.

Same birth date? Same birth location? Same middle name? Same address/city? What role did this Theodore N. Kaufman play in the OSS?

Otherwise, it's just a name that partially overlaps with another name. It could be the same person, or different.

National Archives - How to Obtain Copies of Records

Even if it's not the same person, that info is also useful. If it's confirmed to be the same person, it should be written up more.

Michael Salter wrote a couple books about OSS involvement in the Nuremberg investigations/trials and Holocaust-related topics.

Richard Breitman (Jewish historian) has also written on the OSS and related entities, especially during the war itself.

A prior comment of mine on the OSS.

Regarding the OSS in general, there is a mainstream book by Richard Breitman and others U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis. What I find interesting is that during the war they didn't seem to care much at all about "the Holocaust." That is almost more interesting to me than the postwar propaganda. You would expect the OSS to have known about the Holocaust and to have made a big deal about it while it was happening, but they didn't. This is even more surprising when you consider that they had a lot of informants within the German government. They knew about the 20 July assassination plot against Hitler, for example. The pattern here of there being inattention during the war following by laughable propaganda right after the war is consistent with a hoax.

The only part of OSS that seems to have been concerned with "the Holocaust" was the "Jewish desk" at the OSS headed by two Jews, Charles Irving Dwork and Abraham Duker. This was sort of like a small Jewish org operating within the government. It seems they mostly collected material in preparation for the war crimes trials.

https://academic.oup.com/hgs/article-ab ... 257/618727

The OSS Jewish desk was set up in 1943, btw. So relatively late.