Platt, a professor emeritus at California State University, Sacramento, was on sabbatical with his partner and co-author Cecelia O’Leary doing research at the Huntington Library in 1999.
His curiosity was aroused by the controversy stirred by the Huntington’s announcement that it was loaning an original copy of the Nuremberg Laws to the new Skirball Cultural Center. Received by the library from Gen. George S. Patton, Jr., in June 1945, the documents had been out of sight in the Huntington’s vault 54 years.
The Nuremberg Laws were enacted by the Reichstag and signed by Adolf Hitler in September 1935. They made the swastika the national symbol of Germany. They made Jews non-citizens in their own country. They prohibited marriage and sexuality between Germans and Jews and prohibited Jews from employing Germans younger than 45.
The Nuremberg Laws made anti-Semitism legal. It laid the foundations for the vast bureaucracy that carried 6 million Jews to the crematoria.
Patton said in a statement dictated at the Huntington in 1945 that the documents were captured in battle in March 1945. He claimed he was given the documents by Gen. Van Fleet, commander of the 90th Division in a public presentation honoring Patton in May 1945.
Platt found no evidence of such a presentation. What he did discover was Martin Dannenberg. Dannenberg had photographs of himself and another soldier in a bank vault holding the documents. He also had direct knowledge of how the documents moved from German hands to U.S. hands.
In 1945, Dannenberg was a special agent in charge with the 203d Counter-Intelligence Corps. He, Military Intelligence Interpreter Frank Perls and Agent Maxwell Pickens were led to the documents by an informant. They turned them over to Patton’s intelligence chief believing they would be forwarded to the Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force document unit in Paris. There, documents were being prepared to put war criminals on trial.
Patton was a known anti-Semite. Taking the Nuremberg Laws violated Allied policies about found enemy documents and other materials.
That may be why Patton’s depositing of the documents at the Huntington was done without fanfare.
He did not donate the documents to the Huntington. His death from a car accident six months later left the documents in limbo. Despite several requests by the Patton family that all papers related to Patton be given to the Library of Congress, the Huntington did not do so.
Platt and O’Reilly’s book is highly readable. It is a well-told, suspenseful story. The book leaves readers pondering the elitist views in our own country, how a document can shape our understanding of the past and the responsibilities of libraries and museums.
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About the Author: Anthony Platt
Tony Platt, professor emeritus at San Jose State University, wrote Bloodlines with Cecilia O'Leary, as well as Grave Matters: Excavating California's Buried Past, Beyond These Walls: Rethinking Crime and Punishment in the United States and nine other books.
His 150 essays and articles deal with issues of criminal justice, race, inequality and social justice in American history. His work has appeared in Monthly Review, Z magazine, Los Angeles Times, Souls, and Social Justice as well as popular sites such as National Public Radio, History News Network, Huntington Post, The Guardian and the San Francisco Chronicle.
He taught at the University of Chicago, the University of California at Berkeley, and California state universities. He is a Distinguished Affiliated Scholar at the Center for the Study of Law & Society in Berkeley's Law School.
He is a founding member of the editorial board of Social Justice and blogs on history and memory at GoodToGo.
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