Shadow Of The Swastika Part 5

"Dulles had this goal in mind: Not a single American businessman was ever going to be convicted of treason for helping the n.a.z.is.

None ever was, despite the evidence. According to one of our sources in the intelligence community, the U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps had two large 'Civilian Internment Centers' in Occupied Germany, code named 'Ashcan' and 'Dustbin.' The CIC had identified and captured a large number of U.S. citizens who had stayed in Germany and aided the Third Reich all through World War II. The evidence of their treason was overwhelming. The captured German records were horribly incriminating.

"Yet Victor Wohreheide, the young Justice Department attorney responsible for preparing the treason trials, suddenly ordered the prisoners' release. All of the n.a.z.i collaborators were allowed to return to the United States and reclaim their citizens.h.i.+p. At the same time, another Justice Department attorney, O. John Rogge, who dared to make a speech about n.a.z.i collaborators in the United States was quickly fired. However, the attorney who buried the treason cases was later promoted to special a.s.sistant attorney general.

"Dulles and his clients had won. The proof is in the bottom line.

Forty years after World War II, Fortune magazine published a list of the hundred richest men in the world. There were no Jews on the list. The great fortunes of the Rothschilds and Warburgs had been diminished to insignificance by the Depression, the n.a.z.is, and World War II.

"Near the top of the list were several multibillionaires who had been prominent members of Hitler's inner circle. A few even had served time in Allied prisons as n.a.z.i war criminals, but they were all released quickly. The bottom line is that the n.a.z.i businessmen survived the war with their fortunes intact and rebuilt their industrial empires to become the richest men in the world.

Dulles's clients got away with it. President Roosevelt's dream of putting the n.a.z.is' moneymen on trial died with him."

England also failed to see justice done, according to the authors: "The British authorities in Germany ordered the U.S. Army to release all of the VIP British n.a.z.is and hand over the evidence against them. Even before Roosevelt's death, Churchill had already begun to withdraw from his commitment to prosecute n.a.z.is." The reason?" Too many British industries might be seized as n.a.z.i fronts. Too many upper-cla.s.s collaborators might have to be prosecuted. The Germans were defeated, and the Soviets were now the enemy.

"Funding for British war crimes investigations suddenly dried up.

n.a.z.i bankers such as Herman Abs were released from prison to work as economic advisers in the British zone of Germany. The history of British 'efforts' to punish n.a.z.is after the war is aptly summarized in Tom Bower's book, 'The Pledge betrayed'. . . .

"The pattern was repeated all over the remnants of the Third Reich.

Despite direct orders from President Truman and General Eisenhower, I.G. Farben, the citadel of the n.a.z.i industrialists, was never dismantled. Dulles's clients demanded, and received, Allied compensation for bomb damage to their factories in Germany. Only a few of the top n.a.z.is were executed. Most of the rest were released from prison within a few years. Others, . . . would go virtually unpunished. No one ever investigated the n.a.z.i sympathizers in Western intelligence who had made it all possible."

(12).

As we have seen, the American industrialists who did business with the n.a.z.is were in no way inconvenienced by war crimes trials, and even received compensation for damages to their n.a.z.i war plants. Some n.a.z.i industrialists were charged and convicted by the Nuremberg war crimes trials but, in their book, "The American Establishment," authors Leonard and Mark Silk observe that in the late 1940s "the United States and its leaders faced an agonizing moral problem in coming to terms with those German industrialists who had willingly done business with the n.a.z.is and who were now just as willing to do business with the Americans in the reconstruction of Germany. The problem was dramatized when those German industrialists who had been convicted of war crimes at Nuremberg were all released from Landsberg prison in early 1951, their sentences commuted by the American High Commissioner [of German Occupation], John J. McCloy.

". . . . Whatever the motivation," the authors continue, "the blanket release of the convicted industrialists was taken within Germany - and by them - as a sign that businessmen were not to be seriously blamed for their involvement in matters for which others were hanged or suffered long imprisonment." (13)

The motivation for the ma.s.s release of imprisoned n.a.z.i war criminals is described in the book, "The New Germany and the Old n.a.z.is," by T.H.

Tetens, an expert in German affairs.

Tetens observes that in "1950, when Was.h.i.+ngton showed its eagerness to create a new German army of 500,000 men, the SS [at that time reorganized into a neo-n.a.z.i front group called HIAG, which stands for 'mutual a.s.sistance,' a so-called veterans organization], together with the old Wehrmacht officers, started an all-out campaign for the immediate release of all war criminals. It was a superbly organized blackmail action, enjoying wide support from the public, from all parties, and carried toward success by Dr. Adenauer's astute maneuverings.

"The Chancellor suggested an inconspicuous way to solve the problem with 'parole,' 'sick leave,' and other roundabout methods. The more the U.S.

High Commission in Germany showed leniency, however, the stronger the pressure became: either 'all so-called war criminals are released or there will be no German army.' American diplomats followed Dr.

Adenauer's plan to feed the nationalistic monster piecemeal. Every few days we quietly released one or two more from prison - the Krupps, the I.G. Farben directors, and dozens of former Wehrmacht Generals. On friendly advice from Was.h.i.+ngton, the British and the French, extremely reluctant, had to follow suit. When the supply dried up, there remained behind bars only the SS, the ma.s.s murderers from Dachau, Belsen, and Buchenwald, and the toughs from the Waffen SS who had ma.s.sacred American, British, and Canadian prisoners of war. This put High Commissioner John McCloy in a most embarra.s.sing position. . . ."

Tetens explains how Chancellor Adenauer helped High Commissioner McCloy and the U.S. State Department avoid this embarra.s.sment: Adenauer "suggested the formation of a review board, with three German members sitting in and having equal voice in making recommendations. The whole procedure was to be shrouded in secrecy, and it was decided that the names of those released should not be revealed to the public. In this way the last few hundred 'poor devils,' those SS ma.s.s killers and s.a.d.i.s.ts, were quietly set free within two or three years." (14)

Christopher Simpson, in his extensively doc.u.mented book on the subject of U.S. recruitment of n.a.z.is, "Blowback," goes into more detail of the backgrounds of those released:

"The beneficiaries of this act included, for example, all of the convicted concentration camp doctors; all of the top judges who had administered the n.a.z.is' 'special courts'" and dozens of similar cases.

In addition, "McCloy's clemency decisions for the Landsberg inmates set in motion a much broader process that eventually freed hundreds of other convicted n.a.z.i war criminals over the next five years. . . . By the winter of 1950-1951 the most senior levels of the U.S. government had decided to abrogate their wartime pledge to bring n.a.z.i war criminals to justice. . . . in the interests of preserving West German military support for American leaders.h.i.+p in the cold war. While n.a.z.ism and Hitler's inner circle continued to be publicly condemned throughout the West, the actual investigation and prosecution of specific n.a.z.i crimes came to a standstill." (15)

One case merits special attention: Sepp Dietrich, "the organizer of the Fuehrer's bodyguard. Dietrich carried out Hitler's personal murder a.s.signments" and, Tetens continues, "was in charge of the liquidation of the Jewish population in the city of Kharkov. During the Battle of the Bulge his troops committed the Malmedy ma.s.sacre, killing more than 600 military and civilian prisoners, among them 115 American G.I.s. He was sentenced to death, and the sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment. In 1955 he was one of the last poor devils' quietly released from prison and greeted by the Bonn government with the homecoming pay of 6,000 marks." (16)

In a "New York Times" article published February 1, 1951, one prominent American expressed support for the reduction of sentences for those responsible for the ma.s.s murder of the 600 unarmed prisoners of war at Malmedy, describing the decision as "extremely wise." The American was Senator Joseph McCarthy, Republican from Wisconsin.

Tetens observes that, despite the wide-spread fear by "the French, the British, and the smaller European countries" of a re-militarized Germany, "the outbreak of the Korean War (June 1950) brought a total change. The provisions which banned all military and veterans'

organizations lost all their meaning and were no longer enforced.

Western Germany was allowed by the Allies to set up its own General Staff, camouflaged under the name Blank Office. Supported by Bonn and tolerated by the United States, a nation-wide network was created to reactivate the experienced officers and the man power of the old Wehrmacht. The short period of 1950-51 must be marked as the time when Hitler's old officers, SS leaders, and [n.a.z.i] party functionaries returned to power and influence." (17)

Tetens' comment that the n.a.z.i's return to power in Germany was "tolerated by the United States" was a historical understatement. By the time Tetens' book was published in 1961, hundreds of convicted n.a.z.i war criminals had already been smuggled out of Germany to avoid prosecution at the war crimes trials at Nuremberg, recruited by, and on the payroll of several U.S. government agencies, including the Army CIC, the OSS, and the Office of Policy Coordination within the State Department.

Over the past fifty years, it is now doc.u.mented, these Americanized fugitive n.a.z.i war criminals have been involved in, and in many cases in charge of, many U.S. government covert operations -- international weapons smuggling, drug cartels, Central American death squads, right wing anti-communist dictators.h.i.+ps, LSD mind control experiments -- the Republican National Committee's Ethnic Heritage Councils, and the Presidential campaigns of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George Bush.

THE GEHLEN ORGANIZATION.

Probably the most influential n.a.z.i to come to work for the United States intelligence agencies during the Cold War was named Gehlen.

"Reinhard Gehlen," writes author Christopher Simpson, "Hitler's most senior military intelligence officer on the eastern front, had begun planning his surrender to the United States at least as early as the fall of 1944." Of "several hundred" high-ranking n.a.z.i officers who switched sides at the end of World War II, Gehlen "proved to be the most important of them all.

"In early March 1945 Gehlen and a small group of his most senior officers carefully microfilmed the vast holdings on the USSR in the . .

. military intelligence section of the German army's general staff. They packed the film in watertight steel drums and secretly buried it in remote mountain meadows scattered through the Austrian Alps. Then, on May 22, 1945, Gehlen and his top aides surrendered to an American Counter-intelligence Corps [CIC] team." (18)

According to Tetens: ". . . [Gehlen] immediately asked for an interview with the commanding officer . . ." and offered the United States "his intelligence staff, spy apparatus, and the priceless files for future service."

Gehlen was sent to Was.h.i.+ngton and his offer was taken. "The Pentagon-Gehlen agreement," states Tetens, "in practice guaranteed the continuation of the all-important Abwehr division of the German General Staff. Hundreds of German army and SS officers were quietly released from internment camps and joined Gehlen's headquarters in the Spessart Mountains in central Germany. When the staff had grown to three thousand men, the Bureau Gehlen opened a closely guarded twenty-five-acre compound near Pullach, south of Munich, operating under the innocent name of the South German Industrial Development Organization. . . .

"Within a few years the Gehlen apparatus had grown by leaps and bounds.

In the early fifties it was estimated that the organization employed up to 4,000 intelligence specialists in Germany, mainly former army and SS officers, and that more than 4,000 V-men (undercover agents) were active throughout the Soviet-bloc countries. Gehlen's spy network stretches from Korea to Cairo, from Siberia to Santiago de Chile. . . . When the Federal Republic [of West Germany] became a sovereign state in 1955, the Bureau Gehlen was openly recognized as the official intelligence arm of the Bonn government." (19)

How important was the Gehlen Org, as it became known, to the history of the Cold War? Simpson's research doc.u.ments that it was perhaps the most significant element of all:

". . . . The Org became the most important eyes and ears for U.S. intelligence inside the closed societies of the Soviet bloc.

'In 1946 [U.S.] intelligence files on the Soviet Union were virtually empty,' says Harry Rositzke, the CIA's former chief of espionage inside the Soviet Union. '. . . . Rositzke worked closely with Gehlen during the formative years of the CIA and credits Gehlen's organization with playing a "primary role" in filling the empty file folders during that period. . . .'

"'Gehlen had to make his money by creating a threat that we were afraid of,' says Victor Marchetti, formerly the CIA's chief a.n.a.lyst of Soviet strategic war plans and capabilities, 'so we would give him more money to tell us about it.' He continues: 'In my opinion, the Gehlen Organization provided nothing worthwhile for the understanding or estimating Soviet military or political capabilities in Eastern Europe or anywhere else.' Employing Gehlen was 'a waste of time, money, and effort, except that maybe he had some CI [counter- intelligence] value, because practically everybody in his organization was sucking off both t.i.ts.'" (20)

By 'sucking off both t.i.ts' Marchetti is referring to the fact that Gehlen's elaborate operation was penetrated by Soviet spies at the very time it was our most important source of intelligence upon which the Cold War was based. In fact, the Communists had infiltrated n.a.z.i intelligence long before Gehlen switched sides.

TRIPLE CROSS.

"In each generation," write Aarons and Loftus,"Soviet intelligence created 'anti-Communist' emigre front groups, ostensibly to foment revolution and topple Bolshevism. The front groups attracted support from the West. Considerable financial a.s.sistance was supplied and close ties forged with various Western intelligence services. This enabled the Communist double agents running the front groups to co-opt the legitimate emigre opposition, splinter their leaders.h.i.+p and provoke them into premature and poorly organized rebellions which were easily defeated. More importantly, the false front groups were a vehicle for long-term Soviet penetration of Western society. . . ."

The authors identify one of these groups as the Narodny Trudovoi Soyuz (NTS), or the People's Labour Alliance. The NTS represented itself as a group of anti-communist "moles" inside the Kremlin and, in the 1920s, recruited a Communist agent named Prince Anton Vasilevich Turkel.

Turkel, who actually worked for Soviet Military intelligence (GRU), went on to penetrate French, j.a.panese, Italian, British, German, and even the Vatican intelligence services before the end of World War II.

"After World War II, Turkel worked for West German intelligence (the Gehlen Org), collaborated with many of the spy services of NATO, including the American Military Intelligence Service (MIS - for offensive intelligence), the US Army Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC - for defensive purposes), the ultra-secret State Department Office of Policy Co-ordination and the Central Intelligence Agency. . ." (21)

"Just before World War II began," according to the authors, "an Austrian Jew named Richard Kauder created a secret intelligence network, code named MAX." Kauder, using the name of [Max] Klatt - Turkel's intelligence chief ["Unholy Trinity," Aarons and Loftus, p. 166] - "worked exclusively for Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, the German spy chief who collaborated with the Vatican and the British to topple Hitler during the war [the group known as the Black Orchestra]."

The n.a.z.is thought the Max network was made up of "so-called Fascist Jews" who "were willing to spy against the Soviet Union, not for the glory of the Third Reich but to save themselves and their families from the concentration camps." The Max network was supposed to have had "the only communication link to a secret network of 'White' Russian Fascists inside the Kremlin [Turkel's NTS], who had supposedly infiltrated Stalin's military headquarters prior to World War II." But, the authors continue, "the Max network was not made up of Fascist Jews. They were, in fact, Communist Jews who risked their lives inside the heart of the Third Reich's intelligence service."

The Max network actually misled the n.a.z.is, feeding them false intelligence on the capabilities and intentions of the Soviet Union, leading "the n.a.z.i divisions into a series of death traps on the Eastern front." The Max double-agents were responsible for the n.a.z.is defeats at Stalingrad, "the giant battle of Kursk where Hitler's tank divisions were slaughtered. The final sting," continue the authors, "was to mislead Germany into believing that the Red army was on the verge of collapse in 1944, when in fact the Soviets were preparing for the most ma.s.sive onslaught of the war.

"It would not be an exaggeration to say that the 'Fascist Jews' of the Max network did more to defeat the German army than all the Western intelligence services combined. Seventy percent of all Hitler's divisions were destroyed on the Eastern front, largely as a result of the misleading intelligence supplied by Max." (22)

When Gehlen was recruited by the United States, Allen Dulles ordered the ex-n.a.z.i spymaster to "revive the Max network." Gehlen already had plans to do just that, intending "to make Turkel's Max network the centerpiece of his new West German intelligence agency. As soon as a Republican president was elected in the United States, Dulles intended to take over the CIA and make Gehlen and Turkel the heart of his anti-Soviet network.

The Soviets, of course, were delighted as they watched Dulles and Gehlen attempt to plant a Communist spy ring in the heart of Western intelligence. . . .

". . . [E]ventually, in 1956, the Allies decided that the whole thing had been a giant Soviet-controlled operation. Dozens of operations, hundreds of agents, thousands of innocent civilians had been betrayed. . . .

". . . [T]hree years after Dulles became head of CIA in 1953, his pet 'Fascist,' Turkel, broadcast the CIA codes to start the Hungarian uprising prematurely. Thousands of innocent Hungarians rushed on to the streets of Budapest to start the revolution.