Harvard Prof Smuggled Nazis

"Parsons acted from what he regarded as the most ideal and imperative motives of national duty," said Ford Professor of Social Sciences, Emeritus David Riesman '31, a colleague of Parsons. While he said he was not aware of the accusations against Parsons, he added that the reported actions did not surprise him in light of the sociologist's staunch anti-communism.

Parsons in Germany

In his article, Wiener writes that the primary focus of Parsons' actions in Germany was Nicholas Poppe, an expert on Mongolian languages. Poppe worked with the Nazis during the war and was banned from the United States, according to the article.

Poppe is a key player in Christopher Simpson's recent book Blow-back: America's Recruitment of Nazi's and Its Effects on the Cold War. Simpson says Poppe helped the Nazis set up a government in his native Caucusus.

Poppe later worked for the SS-think tank, the Wannsee Institute, which researched the Jewish communities in the Soviet Union that the Nazis planned to exterminate, the book says.

In his memoirs, Poppe claims his work at the institute involved researching the "history, ethnography, culture and natural resources" of Siberia.

The State Department became interested in using Poppe as a Soviet expert in 1948, and a department telegram of that year said Harvard was "anxious to get" him, according to the article.

When the first attempt to secure Poppe's entrance into the United States failed, Parsons asked Edward Mason, a member of the Russian Research Center's executive committee, to seek help from State Department official George F. Kennan.

Kennan, the architect of the containment doctrine, personally intervened so Poppe could come to the U.S. Simpson wrote.

But the director of the research center could not obtain a Harvard appointment for Poppe. The article says Poppe later wrote that the University rejected him "for political and some other reasons."

Poppe, 93, then joined the University of Washington. He could not be reached for comment.

During the '40s, Parsons also sought to appoint two Soviet citizens who fought for the Nazis during the war, the article says. The Nation reports that the two were not allowed into this country, but they gathered information from other Soviets living in postwar Germany for the Russian Research Center.

In all his work, Riesman said, Parsons was a "man of action," heavily involved in American politics.

"He seemed by many--because of his theoretical evaluations--to be very aloof and intramural to the academy, but he wasn't," Reisman said.