Deception HC

"I suppose you know who I am? I was in charge of the actions in Germany and Poland and Czechoslovakia. I am prepared to sell you one million Jews: Goods for blood . . . Blood for goods." These were the chilling words uttered by one of the most notorious Nazi bureaucrats, SS Colonel Adolf Eichmann, to a young Jewish businessman called Joel Brand in the spring of 1944. Brand embarked on a desperate mission to persuade the Allies to barter with Eichmann—and failed. 400,000 Hungarian Jews were taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau packed in cattle trains, gassed, and then incinerated. For decades after 1945, many blamed the Allies for callously abandoning a million Hungarian Jews to their fate. Christopher Hale presents a new account of the "Brand Mission" based on evidence in the national archives of Germany, Hungary, Britain and the U.S. Hale reveals that Eichmann’s offer formed one part of a monstrous deception designed to outwit the leaders of the last surviving Jewish community in Europe. The deception was more complex and—from the German point of view—more successful than any equivalent operation mounted by the British secret service.