Imperfect justice : looted assets, slave labour, and the unfinished business of World War II
In fact, in ways neither Holbrooke nor I nor anyone else could have imagined at the time, his "limited mission" would lead me down a far different, unforeseen path, one that would wind for six more years and end with a final financial accounting for the crimes of World War II. Ahead lay tortuous, tumultuous, tension-filled negotiations involving a Shakespearean cast of colorful characters: with Switzerland over dormant bank accounts of Holocaust victims; with Germany and Austria over slave and forced laborers-Jews and non-Jews alike-and looted personal property; and with France over the financial legacy of its dark Vichy past.Yet this first step was essential, though it lacked the dramatic fireworks of what was to come. It laid the groundwork for what would follow, creating the precedent of the United States government, at the zenith of its power in the world, intervening in a World War II issue involving what normally would be a quintessential internal matter, the disposition of property.