Not long after, Breitman read an article by the historian Walter Laqueur that traced the story of an anonymous German industrialist who in 1942 brought to the West information about Hitler’s planned use of gas chambers and crematoria to destroy European Jewry.
Breitman, after months of archival research, proved that he was Eduard Schulte, a prominent-but-secret anti-Nazi CEO of a large mining firm who traveled frequently between Germany and Switzerland.
Together, Breitman and Laqueur then wrote Schulte’s story that detailed the muted reactions to his warnings: Breaking the Silence: the German Who Exposed the Final Solution (Simon & Schuster, 1986; University Press of new England, 1991).
In this mass, Breitman found a small file of British decodes of German police radio messages that revealed important information about the first stage of the Holocaust.
Breitman then served as director of historical research for a small U.S. government body set up to oversee implementation of a 1998 declassification law called the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act.
In the latter, Breitman and Lichtman argued that Franklin Roosevelt’s policies toward European Jewry fluctuated substantially over time according to circumstances and political calculations and constraints, but that his record nonetheless compared well with that of Winston Churchill, and also with later presidents when they were confronted with genocide abroad.