Dr. Kevin Conley Ruffner

Professional Background

Kevin Conley Ruffner received his A.B. in history at the College of William and Mary; a M.A. in American history at the University of Virginia; and a Ph.D. in American civilization at The George Washington University.

From 1991 until 2017, Dr. Ruffner worked at the Central Intelligence Agency. Following his retirement, he worked as a contractor from 2018 to 2023. Among his assignments, Dr. Ruffner served as a staff historian with the CIA History Staff where he focused on the relationship between the CIA (and its predecessor organizations) and Nazi war criminals and collaborators during and after World War II. He also assisted the Interagency Working Group as part of the Nazi War Crimes Declassification Act (NWCDA). The CIA declassified a number of Dr. Ruffner’s publications, including two books of documents, Forging an Intelligence Partnership: CIA and the Origins of the BND, 1945-49, and Forging an Intelligence Partnership: CIA and the Origins of the BND, 1949-56, as part of the NWCDA.

Dr. Ruffner also served in the U.S. Army, Army National Guard, and the Army Reserve. In his final assignment, he assisted the Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO), a predecessor of today’s Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), in expanding U.S. efforts to locate missing American personnel in the former German Democratic Republic.

Fellowship Research

Kevin Conley Ruffner was awarded a Broadening Academia Initiative Hybrid Fellowship for his research project, “Between the Holocaust and the Cold War: U.S. Army War Crimes Investigations in the Soviet Zone of Germany, 1945-1947.”

The largest element of the U.S. Army’s war crimes program between 1945 and 1947 involved nearly 1,700 individuals tried in 462 cases, mostly at Dachau. Even before the Soviet blockade of Berlin in 1948-49, the United States faced many problems with the Soviets regarding war crimes, including the gathering of evidence, interviewing witnesses, and conducting onsite investigations in the Soviet Zone of Germany. The Army ended its investigations in eastern Germany in 1947, administratively terminating dozens of pending cases.

Drawing on the holdings at the USHMM and the records of the U.S. Army’s War Crimes Group, the American Graves Registration Command, the Office of Military Government (U.S.), and the Army Judge Advocate General at the National Archives and Records Administration, this project will examine the U.S. Army’s investigation of Nazi war crimes in the Soviet Zone of Germany between 1945 and 1947.

Fellowship Period: November 1, 2024–April 30, 2025