Sounds like UNC law professor Eric Muller is having a lot of fun, and I’m a bit envious.

He is at the National Archives in D.C., doing research for his book about internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII.

In this very recent blog post, he notes that back in the 1940s, the War Department (that’s the "Department of Defense" for all you kiddies out there) kept its filing system in such a way that some files would be adjacent to other files on completely unrelated topics.  Because of this peculiarity, Muller stumbled upon a file from then-Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy — a filed simply labelled "Jews".

In it, Muller learned something which surprised him (and me). 

Sometime in 1944, a top Gestapo official in Turkey approached the British through a "Zionist official".  It was an offer for a deal: the Nazis would give up pursuing of total extermination of the Jews in exchange for war supplies and provisions.

For example, Germany offered to "evacuate" one million Jews from the occupied countries of Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Poland — to the countries of Spain and Portugal — in return for 10,000 trucks of "coffee, tea,  cocoa, and soap".

According to Muller, the Brits and the U.S. said "no".  And he provides a graphic:

That’s a pretty remarkable find.  And I wonder why that proposal was rejected.  I’m not sure I disagree with it — after all, there was no certainty that the Nazis would keep their end of the bargain. 

On the other hand, the Nazis offered to to release "five to ten thousand" as an act of good faith . . . before the tradeoff.  And even if the Allies were duped, all we lost was some breakfast drinks.

But then again, such an operation might have thwarted D-Day efforts, which were in the making (D-Day was only weeks away).

Anyway, war historians can sort it out.  I just thought it was noteworthy.

UPDATE:  Another Muller discovery.

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