Secret Documents Reveal How Allies Knew of Holocaust for Years

Allied powers were aware of the Holocaust more than two years before the discovery of Nazi death camps, a new book on World War II war crimes reveals.

"The major powers commented [on the mass murder of Jews] two-and-a-half years before it is generally assumed," Dan Plesch, author of "Human Rights after Hitler: The Lost History of Prosecuting Axis War Crimes," told The Independent.

Plesch, director of the Center for International Studies and Diplomacy at the University of London, said the allies had even prepared war crimes indictments against Adolf Hitler and team of Nazi monsters.

The new information was found in United Nations archives not seen in 70 years.

The data shows while the governments of the United States, Britain and Soviet Union were aware of the ongoing mass slaughter of Jews, they did little to rescue them.

Plesch uncovered the information after a long lobbying effort, according to the book's publisher, Georgetown University Press.

"From the 1940s until a recent lobbying effort by Plesch and colleagues, the [United Nations War Crimes Commission] files were kept out of public view … under pressure from the U.S. government," the publisher says.

"The book answers why the commission and its files were closed … They cover U.S. and Allied prosecutions of torture, including 'water treatment,' wartime sexual assault, and crimes by foot soldiers who were "just following orders."

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