War Criminals in Canada

Graeme S. Mount is a professor of history at Laurentian University, the
author of

Canada’s Enemies: Spies and Spying in the Peaceable Kingdom, and the
co-author of The Border at Sault Ste. Marie.

Professor James McKenzie of the University of Regina and some of his
students have assembled in this book a series of eye-opening anecdotes
about Nazis and Nazi collaborators who migrated to Canada. For Canadian
authorities, including the RCMP and politicians, their Nazi-era
activities were mitigated by the fact that they were anti-Communist.
Quebec politicians and employers were willing to admit and to hire Nazis
and Nazi collaborators. Powerful Canadians befriended them. Ralph Allen
of Maclean’s thought that SS officer Kurt Meyer—originally sentenced
to death for the murder of 41 Canadian soldiers, but sent to prison in
New Brunswick—had received a flawed trial. Ukrainian Canadians argued
that anyone opposed to Stalin could not have been totally evil.
Entrepreneur Stephen Roman allied himself with Slovak collaborator
Joseph Kirschbaum, who shared his advocacy of Slovakia’s secession
from Czechoslovakia; journalists who wanted to examine Kirschbaum’s
past were intimidated with threats of libel suits.

The book has flaws. Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s infamous Minister of
Propaganda, is identified as “Hitler’s industrial chief.” While
extensive footnotes or endnotes would have been helpful, each chapter
includes only a few lines about sources. The message of the book is
clear, but there are no conclusions.

Nevertheless, McKenzie and his students have provided a valuable primer
on this sensitive subject.