Home / Contents Assets in the United States Before, during, and
after the United States entered the war, the U.S. government
endeavored to deny Germany control over economic assets in, or
being brought into, the United States.1 Because the United
States took control over so many assets, it undoubtedly seized
some that belonged to Holocaust victims, though unintentionally.
While U.S. officials were not oblivious to the intensity of Nazi
persecution, it would take until the end of the war before
policy began to accord special status to victims and their
assets. Even in the immediate postwar period, other issues took
priority, and it seemed consistently more important to fight the
enemy than to aid the victims. When the Germans invaded a
country, the U.S. government assumed that the assets of that
country, including those located in the United States, would be
used to help the Axis powers and acted to block them. The
Treasury Department immobilized foreign-controlled assets while
the Alien Property Custodian (AP